I think alignment and morale should be discussed before starting a new campaign. Your guidelines are good if the campaign gets the "good" or even "neutral to good" flag. When you happen to support all alignments for your party or play an outright evil or neutral to evil campaign, it shouldn't be too punishing if the party plays the previously chosen alignment correctly. Letting characters shift through alignments (slowly!) can make up great character development. However, there is a fine...
View full commentI think alignment and morale should be discussed before starting a new campaign. Your guidelines are good if the campaign gets the "good" or even "neutral to good" flag. When you happen to support all alignments for your party or play an outright evil or neutral to evil campaign, it shouldn't be too punishing if the party plays the previously chosen alignment correctly.
Letting characters shift through alignments (slowly!) can make up great character development. However, there is a fine line between "just playing your character" and "purely greedy" and "trolling/disruptive jerk". I wouldn't want either of the last two in my campaigns, but I welcome any player who can act morally grey (with reasons) from time to time. I also encourage my fellow players to discuss their morale and ethic regularly. Being a mature group, this comes in multiple layers of character personality (i.e. saving people you don't know or continuing with your plan to save your own, helping those who treated you badly or dismiss them even when in great danger)
If you happen to have a single "morale compass", and you as a DM like it that way, please encourage and help him. I know that it can be terribly annoying and frustrating to play a morally upright character when the rest of the group is more ambivalent and gets major success out of the more shady actions and outright evil deeds go unpunished. It is also frustrating to play, say, a paladin and be reduced to your goody goodness and have your complex character be otherwise ignored. Having two or more morally overlapping characters who tend to differ in ideals or plans might be the better idea than having only one shining beacon.
For our own groups, we tend to play good, though with different goals (one might be hedonistic, the other patriotic, the next completely altruistic). Therefore the compass would be somewhere between lawful and chaotic good, depending on characters. For evil campaigns, the compass tends toward lawful/neutral evil.
Pharoah was my favorite AD&D adventure. My gaming group started it but unfortunately did not get too far. I must have read that module 100 times preparing for it. If I knew anything about game design, I would convert it to 4E. I actually collaborated with some guy I don't even know on just that project. I helped him with a skill challenge for the wandering through the desert part. The rest of the series was also cool. I2, Tomb of the Lizard King, though not technically a part of the Desert...
View full commentPharoah was my favorite AD&D adventure. My gaming group started it but unfortunately did not get too far. I must have read that module 100 times preparing for it. If I knew anything about game design, I would convert it to 4E. I actually collaborated with some guy I don't even know on just that project. I helped him with a skill challenge for the wandering through the desert part. The rest of the series was also cool. I2, Tomb of the Lizard King, though not technically a part of the Desert series, was also a lot of fun to play, and could stand to be converted as well.
Letting characters shift through alignments (slowly!) can make up great character development. However, there is a fine...
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