Doing away with Alignment? The horror of it all!

My recent post about using the spheres of power as the "religions" of Mystara has led me to thinking about the role of the three alignments (or 5 if you use Holmes rules, or 9 if you've adapted the AD&D/D20 model) in play. They only really come into play in a couple situations:

• The Druid, Paladin and Avenger "name level classes"
• Spells and Magic Items that determine a creature's alignment
• Spells and Magic Items that affect only creatures of a certain alignment

Beyond that, the three alignments don't really do much. Most players can be trusted to adopt a personality and ethos for their PC without having the vague ideals of Law, Chaos or Neutrality foisted on them, and frankly, those players who don't bother with defining their PC's morality will probably ignore their alignment anyway.

The D20 Modern game, which I have very little real knowledge of, uses an alternate system of defining a character's moral code and behavior patterns; allegiances. Instead of a vague sense of Law, Chaos or Neutrality, players can pick allegiances to specific ideas, dogmas, organizations, etc. The teachings or rules of these objects of allegiance help to shape a character in the same way alignment was intended to, but with much more interesting and easy to factor into a campaign story results.

Here's an overview of the system, taken from the D20 Modern System Reference Documents at Wizards of the Coast's website, and modified a bit to fit a Classic D&D campaign:

Allegiances 

The allegiances system is an optional replacement for or expansion to the D&D game's standard alignments system. 

A character may have up to three allegiances, listed in order from most important to least important.  These allegiances are indications of what the character values in life, and may encompass people, organizations, or ideals. A character may have no allegiances (being either a free spirit or a lone wolf) or may change allegiances as he or she goes through life. Also, just because the character fits into a certain category of people doesn’t mean the character has to have that category as an allegiance.

If the character acts in a way that is detrimental to his or her allegiance, the GM may choose to strip the character of that allegiance (and all its benefits) and possibly assign an allegiance more suitable to those actions.

Pledging Allegiance

A hero’s allegiance can take the form of loyalty to a person, to an organization, to a belief system, to a nation, or to an ethical or moral philosophy. In general, a character can discard an allegiance at any time, but may only gain a new allegiance after attaining a new level.

Having an allegiance implies having sufficient intelligence and wisdom to make a moral or ethical choice. As a result, a character must have Intelligence and Wisdom scores of 3 or higher in order to select allegiances. In other words, normal animals (Despite possible loyalty to their pack or master that mimics allegiance, this is in reality a more primal, instinctive sense of order. For lack of a better explanation, the allegiances of an animal do not make it susceptible to any of the drawbacks or benefits a more defined, thought out "human" type allegiance would.), constructs, unintelligent undead, etc are not capable of allegiances. Undead and construct type minions are motivated by magical control exerted by their creator, not any sort of free will drawing them to his cause.

Allegiances include, but are not limited to, the following examples:

• Person or Group: This includes political or religious leaders or superiors, loved ones, relatives, heroes or idols, etc. A character with this type of allegiance will attempt to follow the will of the person in question, or emulate them as best as possible.
• Organization: This may be a family, guild, religious group, a gathering of like-minded individuals, a clan or similar extended family group, a secret society, a military unit, a government, a university, an employer, or other established association of folks. 
• Nation: This may or may not be the nation that the hero currently resides in. It may be where the individual was born, or where the hero resides after emigrating to a new home. Bear in mind that one may be loyal, even fanatically so, to a nation while not supporting its current government
• Ethical or Moral Philosophy: In terms of a Mystara campaign, this generally means the character is devoted to the ideals of one of the 5 spheres of power, but can include other things like charity, pacifism, justice, etc. Druids, and other followers of "neutrality" or balance as the concept relates to the merging of the 5 spheres, refer to this philosophy as Druidism, or Naturism, not neutrality.
• Religious Figure: Beyond the basic Philosophy of a sphere, the PC may be devoted to a specific Immortal, historical martyr or saint-type figure (living religious leaders kind of fall under Individual or Organizations, but there's no order or rules implied here, just ideas for what to use as allegiances), or in the case of more primitive or shamanistic societies, powerful nature or ancestor spirits.

Allegiances and Game Play

"Alignment Tongue/Language": Individuals of identical (or possibly closely related, DM's fiat) allegiances may communicate with each other using slang, jargon and colloquialisms specific to the concept they are devoted to that is difficult or impossible for those not as deeply interested in that concept to understand. This replaces the idea of alignment languages in the standard rules. One big difference though. It's ridiculous to think that a character suddenly loses their ability to understand an alignment or allegiance language immediately after abandoning that allegiance. Over time, at the DM's discretion, the banter of followers of a devotion will evolve, and the character will slowly fall "out of the loop" and understand less and less, but in the short term, they can still understand the cant of their former allegiance perfectly well, which can provide a crafty DM plenty of opportunity for intrigue as NPCs who remain true to an allegiance feel threatened or offended by the presence of a traitor who is privy to their secrets.

Allies and Comrades! When dealing with npcs and intelligent monsters of the same allegiance, and once that shared allegiance has been realized (some communication will be necessary first), a character will invoke a +1 bonus to reaction and morale checks involving him by those individuals.

The Druid Class: Whether you use it as written, or as one of the 1st level alternatives such as the one I provided recently  it is assumed that this class must be neutral in alignment. If you drop alignment to use allegiances, it is mandatory that a druid PC have, and maintain, an allegiance to druidism/naturism as mentioned above. The DM may also weigh the other allegiances the character has or gains, if any and rule that they are anethma to the ideals of druidism and forbid the character from taking them.

The Paladin and Avenger Classes: Like the Druid, these classes are assumed to be tied to a specific alignment, law and chaos respectively. If alignments are out of play, consider the allegiances that exist, or potentially exist, in the campaign mythos and make at least one allegiance a prerequisite for using these classes. Paladins will devote themselves to people or ideals that symbolize chivalry, goodness, charity, light, etc. Avengers lean towards concepts of brutality, tyranny, darkness, and other such nastiness.

Know Alignment and similar spells, natural abilities and item powers: You may wish to reword these effects so that they determine a character's allegiances, starting with the strongest and going on from there, but I'd also consider just ditching these kind of spells altogether.

Detect Good/Evil and similar effects: These are, even using alignment as written, vague and undefined in a morality system that doesn't define either good or evil! The use of these powers also tends to lead to arguments like "are orc babies evil?" or "is a mass murderer evil when thinking about the tasty soup he's eating and doing nothing else?", and in my opinion, they are best left out of the Classic D&D game. Another option is to simply rule that "evil" to any particular character or individual simply means "allied to something in opposition to my allegiances", and "good" refers to people or things related to the same, or similar allegiances as the character's.

Items and powers that effect only one alignment, can be used by only one alignment, etc: Swords +1, +2 vs Chaotics. Staves that can only be used by Lawful clerics. What do we do with these kind of things? This is actually the easiest thing to tweak! Instead of a Sword +1, +2 vs Lawfuls, you could have a Sword +1, +2 vs devotees of the Entropy Sphere, or a Ring of Protection +2, +3 vs. devotees of the demonic Immortal Orcus. So on and so forth. This has the added benefit of making items both more interesting and unique as well as less apt to turn their owners into "all terrain killing machines". And of course, the roleplay and story possibilities, with the associated allegiances probably wanting to own or destroy the items in question, are endless.

I haven't tried this in play yet. I'm definitely interested in any feedback! I may introduce specific allegiances in future material here on the Dungeon, but that is beyond the scope of this article.