litphoria

The moral alignment of a character.

The moral outlook of a character as defined within a game system.

I think we want to avoid talking about "game systems" as we inherit any arguments about alignment in such systems

Did some googling, apart from D&D alignments, there is nothing that could really be useful in traits, like, completely. Save for some D&D alignment's ripped off and adjusted a bit.
Save for something simplified for something called Palladium or the like, if anybody is interested, here is a bigger explanation. Might be relevant for discussion.

Maybe it would be better to have "as defined within game logic or movie logic" at the end of the description.

To enumerate the possibilities, we have lawful good, neutral good, chaotic good, lawful neutral, neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, neutral evil, chaotic evil, then (without prefixes) good, unaligned, and evil.

Those last three are from D&D 4e, and are worth adding since they aren't equivalent to the neutral axis of other editions, and also cover generic Good and Evil like we see in a Disney movie.

Then there's the few other alignment systems that exist in other forms like Palladium's. That seems like a lot to put in one trait, and workable but odd.

I'm wondering if we might be better off with another extensible feature: treat game systems as a canon instead of a trait, and let canons grant access to a few traits that are strictly only relevant to that canon: D&D gets alignment, TERA gets an allegiance, etc.

Keta: There's a lot of arguments over good vs evil too. Like, is it good or evil if you kill someone who's completely innocent, but next week will be totally corrupted or possessed by Vecna and who will commit great atrocities? Or, is it good or evil in the D&D sense to go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby?

My point wasn't about adding even more to the mix, but rather looking at all the different approaches and figuring out if we maybe can find a way to have them some other way.
Because trying to fit more than one system is more or less foolish, and even the D&D one on its own is pretty... well, pretty big. But currently I have no idea how to handle this in a way that wouldn't be system-specific but usable overall.

The best shot at a comprehensive not-overloaded alignment system might just be sticking with the basics: good, evil, and unaligned. (I prefer unaligned to neutral for our purposes, because neutral is a chosen side, unaligned means you haven't chosen a side and is more noncommittal and could serve as the 'none' option.) It's simple and common. People going by simple game or movie logic can use it, and people with specific systems can add more detail in context about being lawful good or a miscreant if they want it.

If you want to go into great detail, it's gonna be a little like the different temperament systems you're tossing up in state of personality traits (litphoria.com): each one maps the space differently with entirely different axes and points, and there's not a way to have a comprehensive equivalent that covers all of them.

Okay, the discussion died down on this and we've not really gotten anywhere meaningful (except a general idea we'd want some kind of game-specific alignment.

How about instead of looking this as good and evil, we try some way to classify protagonist and antagonist? There's considerably more nuance in those terms than good or evil but would be a systems-neutral way of getting the concepts across. Alternatively, we could have our own definitions for good and evil and side-step all of the alignment argument nonsense.

Alternatively, we could have our own definitions for good and evil and side-step all of the alignment argument nonsense.

That would work well. If we move away from the D&D two-axis system, we won't import the same context and same arguments. Going with traditional narrative definitions of good and evil (e.g. the charming hero, the scheming villain, etc) would work well but people are going to go with the definitions they already know.

D&D has its alignment debates because of system context, which freeform roleplay won't share: it treated morality as an objective force of the universe rather than a thing people have a say in, the books overloaded the definitions of the alignments and contradicted each other and left it confusing and unwieldy, and several classes lose all their powers if they break alignment in earlier editions. Here, we just have to worry about someone saying: "Jafar wouldn't do that! He's evil!" or whatever.

How about instead of looking this as good and evil, we try some way to classify protagonist and antagonist?

That portrays story role rather than behaviour (anti-hero protagonists could easily be the evil villain in other stories), but could also work. A villainous character would want to play the antagonist role in shared stories, for example!

Okay. I'm going to unblock this and edit out the bit about it being game or universe specific. We will not tie ourselves to any system. For system-specific stuff, we might get character-sheets or things which are based on some rule set and live outside of the usual trait system - I don't think this is an appropriate place to interject any kind of that stuff right now.

That portrays story role rather than behaviour (anti-hero protagonists could easily be the evil villain in other stories), but could also work. A villainous character would want to play the antagonist role in shared stories, for example!

I was toying with the idea of having this trait use categories like Heroic, Good, Neutral/Natural, Evil and Villainous - but the thing above makes me wonder if semi-narrative terms instead of Good and Evil could be found, especially the Antihero thing.
I think using protagonist/antagonist wouldn't be too useful, given how the status can change between stories, which is already pointed out.