alignments

Alignments

Here is a revised indepth look at alignments;

Lawful Good

1) Uphold the word and spirit of the law wherever you travel, and permit the system of justice its way unless such a system proves itself antithetical to justice for the community. Expose corruption for the system of justice, and respect the agents of justice for their authority in these matters.
2) Put forth all your strength to protect the weak from those who would exercise their strength unjustly and in the service of Evil.
3) Exercise the virtue of respect for the community by invoking consensus.
4) Always grant mercy to those who are truly repentant, aiding them in the expedition of penance of all sins against the community and against Good.
5) Always ply all resource toward the healing of mind, body, and soul in the service of compassion, the service of Good, and the community.
6) Always exercise your strength of arms and spirit to the measure necessary to effectively oppose, diminish, and nullify the source and ends of Evil. Always exercise enough strength to defend your well being and health or the well being and health of another and no more.
7) Do not use your divine gifts to misrepresent the source and ends of Good to serve your own ends.
8) Always uphold the tenets of order to build for the greater good, rather than to destroy or oppress.
9) Always exercise the virtue of charity for the material and spiritual well being of others.
10) Uphold honesty and truth as sacred; the choice of a man to serve the Good is worth nothing if its essence is obscured and unknowable. Keep all promises and oaths and remain sensible of honour.

Neutral Good

1) Let good sense rule all other actions.
2) Waste no opportunity to benefit your fellow man, but let not your commitment exceed your ability to deliver, otherwise you have damaged his trust and committed an evil through good but unwise intentions.
3) Respect the beliefs of others if they differ from your own as long as they’re not doing anyone any harm. There is no absolute truth.
4) Honesty may not always be the best policy, but it’s the one you should always strive for whenever possible. However, sometimes a lie prevents greater hurt or its unnecessary longevity.
5) If you’re going to break the rules, accept your responsibility for breaking them and suffer the consequences of your actions within reason. Keep in mind, though, that sometimes the rules can be wrong.
6) In a confrontation it’s polite to keep things equal and fair. Abide by the rules of engagement so long as your opponent obeys them as well. Make sure that if he breaks those rules, breaking them on your part doesn’t make you the bad guy as well. Keep your self-respect.
7 Help others who are sincere to change for the better but only if they ask. Sometimes asking isn’t done with words.
8) If intercession is required to prevent harm to another, intercede else you are an accessory to the fact but do so sensibly and creatively.
9) On the other hand there is a difference between an injustice and a life lesson to be learned for experience’s sake; moderate the negative consequences of another’s folly with grace and compassion.
10) Remember that there is no perfection in the mortal world; hold no one to an absolute to which you would not hold yourself.

Chaotic Good

1) Service to ethics (law and chaos) is second to service to Good.
2) Put forth all your strength to protecting the weak from those who would exercise their strength unjustly and in the service of Evil
3) Protect the rights of the individual to pursue personal freedoms, and they harm no others. The rights of the individual to pursue personal freedoms may be revoked, if that individual would serve the cause of Evil.
4) Grant mercy to those who repent if their actions merit such trust.
5) Ply all resource toward the healing of mind, body, and soul in the service of compassion, and the service of Good.
6) Exercise your strength of arms and spirit to the measure necessary to effectively oppose, diminish, and nullify the source and ends of Evil. Exercise enough strength to defend thy well-being and health, or the well-being and health of another, and no more.
7) Do not use your gifts to misrepresent the source and ends of Good to serve thy own ends.
8) Foster change for the Good. If a system does not serve the cause of Good, change the system whenever possible.
9) Provide an example of personal responsibility in your service to Good.
10) Uphold honesty and truth as sacred; the choice of a being to serve the Good is worth nothing if its essence is obscured and unknowable. Treat each being according to its merit, and exercise virtue toward it accordingly.

Lawful Neutral

1) Honour all oaths, traditions and agreements. Oaths, contracts, agreements, and traditions all serve to shape realities between individuals within the consensus. Failure to honour these serves to shatter realities and perpetuate disorder.
2) Be unrelenting in your support of order. Contribute to the existence of the status quo. It is through order that creation is possible. It is through the preservation of tradition that civilizations endure. One cannot build a house upon sand.
3) Destroy or eliminate all sources of disruption that threaten the status quo. The consensus rules. All decisions are final unless and until the consensus itself reverses its decision.
4) Decisions are made upon empirical fact. Reality is inextricably based on unalterable rules; that which can be determined and quantified objectively is ideal for decisions of every nature. Beware emotion.
5) Impose structure where it does not exist. Chaos left unmastered is a threat to order. Mastering a thing is strengthening it from within and without using the structure of systems; as in nature, the bee builds the hive. Symmetry and discipline are tools by which all things can be mastered.
6) Everyone and everything has its place in the universe. All actions have consequences. All components rise or fall in response to its natural place in the universe. Thus is hierarchy sacred. Act with this in mind before initiating change.
7) In an ordered society responsibility is a function of place. There is accountability. Go through the proper channels whenever possible.
8) Breaking the law, breaking one’s word, breaking commitment each of these actions has consequences. Be the agent of enforcement whenever possible, and the agent of consequence to the degree the consensus permits you.
9) Planning, analysis and forethought minimize mischance and inefficient use of resources.
10) The past contains within itself the majority of all solutions to all problems. Research history to discover precedent, examples and proven cases to discover possibilities, solutions and consequences.

True Neutral

1) All actions have consequences. Make sure your actions are within your best interest.
2) Maintain relationships of mutual exchange. Treat others as you wish to be treated. If you are thereafter treated badly, you owe nothing to that individual and may cease treating them well. Judge each person according to his or her merit.
3) Repay all debts in the fullness of time.
4) Reward those who have aided you, so that they may continue to do so, and avenge yourself upon those who have wronged you, so that they may never wrong you again. Sometimes the best revenge can be indifference.
5) All things in moderation. Excess is undesirable, but sometimes unavoidable. When conscious of excess, strive to achieve balance, and be conscious that perfect balance does not exist in the mortal world.
6) Adapt to circumstance. Be resolute, but do not be inflexible.
7) There is nothing mortal that is absolute. The passage of time permits change. Acknowledge the power of change when it occurs, and give yourself permission to change your mind or alter your course as circumstances demand.
8) If it isn’t broken don’t fix it. If it is broken fix it.
9) Judge each situation according to its merit. Check the general consensus. If it agrees, follow it. If it does not agree, choose your course and accept the consequences.
10) The way of the world is that it will not run as you or I would have it but as it will. Change is a constant and an unalterable factor of existence. All things change. To survive change when necessary, stand resolute otherwise.

Chaotic Neutral

1) Change is essential for promotion of growth, evolution and opportunity. Foster change without reservation; even if benefits are not readily apparent from one perspective, initiating change may provide new avenues of opportunity.
2) Nothing is linear. There can be no true order as change is the nature of the universe. Nothing endures under scrutiny but change is constant and eternal.
3) As the universe itself is always changing there is no obligation. All things, even those things that seem immutable alter their essence under the optimum circumstances.
4) Tradition, discipline and hierarchy prevent creativity, stifle evolution, and restrict opportunity. Ignore them at best and oppose them if they cannot be ignored.
5) The nature of life is to respond to environment. Respond to the need at hand. Each moment is unique.
6) Consistency is illusion.
7) Conformity places the consensus before the Self. The ideal of self in anathema to conformity. There is no separation. Conformity ultimately threatens the individual and restricts freedom of movement and action that opposes stagnation. Conformity is death.
8) If the flow of evolution is stopped, the species dies as the world changes. If the flow of blood is stopped life ceases as nourishment ceases. Stop time, and potential is never awakened. Eliminate motion and you eliminate actualisation. Life is motion. Move or die.
9) Chance rules; there exists no fate or predetermined outcome. Therein lies the secret of potential. That which seems identical is in fact unique. What men perceive as unalterable is limited by the power of their comprehension; as men are not omniscient, neither are their laws omnipresent.
10) You are not obligated to believe what others believe. Your perception is what shapes your existence and none other. Definition limits, acceptance unleashes.

Lawful Evil

1) The needs of the Self are paramount. The World contains the Self. Either the Self serves the World, or the World serves the Self. To master the Self one must master the World.
2) The artisan of efficiency utilizes the tools necessary to complete his work and no more. Once a tool has exceeded its usefulness it is no longer a tool but an encumbrance. Abhor waste and discard encumbrance whenever wisdom and intellect dictate. Remember however that weapons are also tools and a discarded tool can change from an encumbrance to a weapon turned against you if it is not discarded properly.
3) He who seeks control of his environment must dominate everything within it. The degree of control one has over the rewards one wishes to elicit from his environment is in direct proportion to the amount of order one has over the environment. Minimize randomness through the support and increase of order such as it serves and rewards your place in said order.
4) Eliminate all opposition efficiently, decisively and irrevocably.
5) Ruthlessness is key to victory yet exercising milder virtues at the appropriate times can elicit reward from those of lesser character. Learn and remember the weaknesses of lesser beings, and use them to your advantage.
6) Discipline of mind and body results in the increase of strength and the proportionate increase of efficiency in utilizing that strength.
7) Individuality is subversive to absolute control. Uphold conformity for the community, and eliminate all individual expression that does not contribute to the benefit of the Self.
8) Emulate the ways of the strong, and use them to advance your potential for dominance.
9) Thou shalt deny the exercise of charity; charity undermines the privation which toughens the strong and eliminates the weak.
10) Order rests upon consistency of action and expectation. Maintain balance of reward and punishment. Keep all promises and oaths and remain sensible of honour; do not make promises and oaths idly.

Neutral Evil

1) Exploit the weaknesses in others to your benefit.
2) It is the height of foolishness to spare your enemy. Yet the manner of your enemy’s death may be a lesson to others. There are many tools by which a man may be destroy yet many more useful ways can be served if he lives as an example. Judge whether the manner of your enemy’s demise or punishment as well as its timing serves your need best.
3) The natural cycle of things is that the strong prey upon the weak and the unfit. Only the strong survive. Life is cheap.
4) Be heedful of your survival, yet risk oft brings great reward. If the risk is great yet the reward is small, send others in your place; if they survive, they will be so weakened as to be unable to prevent you taking the fruits of their labour. If the risk is small, and the reward is great, move quickly and decisively to secure the prize. If the risk is great, yet the reward is as great, surround yourself with others to act as your shield against danger.
5) Only exert the fullness of your strength when you are absolutely sure nothing exists to challenge it. What your enemies do not know about your capabilities is their weakness.
6) Stack the odds in your favour. Deceit and treachery are effective tools and can last you for some time if you use them sparingly, so exercise conservatism in this area. If your life is imperilled, however, stop at nothing to survive.
7) In the wild the most effective predator is the animal that cannot be seen. Take the coloration of those around you, especially of those who have engendered trust and loyalty in others. Mimic their ways for camouflage.
8) Win some, lose some, but always get in the last word if you can and make it hurt for the other guy.
9) Waste nothing. There’s always an opportunity to shift the blame or the consequences to a scapegoat. Turn others against each other and mix in a little truth with any lie for true potency.
10) When caught by enforcers of the law, turn the bureaucracy against itself, and prolong your trial until you can devise an escape. It won’t hurt to have several irons in the fire under these circumstances.

Chaotic Evil

1) Service to the Self is paramount. Gratify the needs of the Self. The World and everything in it only matters as much as it is able to provide satisfaction.
2) Exercise cruelty in all deeds and actions. The ability to prolong the pain of others is a sign of strength and control.
3) Protect your right to pursue personal freedoms at any cost necessary. Give into your whim and will. Pursue the path of least resistance by reaping from the weak whenever possible.
4) Exploit the weaknesses of others for your gratification. Sow confusion whenever possible. The unprepared are always vulnerable when deceit murders truth and illusion masks reality.
5) You are not obliged to exercise any virtue that does not benefit your needs. Sacrifice nothing without sufficient remuneration. Impose your will when given the advantage.
6) Those weaker than you are not worthy of the caution paid to the strong. Use them to gratify your needs of the moment. Destroy them at whim; there are always more to replace them.
7) The strong are to be eliminated whenever and however possible; they stand in the way of the importance of the self. Break others whenever possible.
8) Foster change upon your whim, an it indulge the cruelty of living. The ability to destroy is divine. Build nothing unless it proves to your gratification. Teach others the truth of the world by destroying what they love and value.
9) Be inventive in your cruelty. Explore the darker emotions, as they are the expressions of the immediacy of personal need and power.
10) Uphold the negation of the higher principles when they cannot be exploited. They serve no purpose other than manipulation. Undermine any system that supports the higher principles, and encourage other beings to follow their own destruction, physically, spiritually, and mentally. Destroy all sense of community and stability

GM's Guide