Alignments

LotFP does a great thing with alignments which is to take Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, and bring them to a cosmic scale. I feel like quoting the rulebook is a must. See how it does not prescribe how to play with your character? There is no "Alignment Shapes Character" and nothing of the xp penalty or losing divine favor etc. here.

"Alignment is a character’s orientation on a cosmic scale. It has nothing to do with a character’s allegiances, personality, morality, or actions. Alignments will mostly be used to determine how a character is affected by certain magical elements in the game. The three alignments are Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic."

Also, see how clear and to the point are these descriptions, giving a new face to law and chaos, and making neutrality a default state. Also very interesting, in terms of world-building and in terms of shaping the relationships between characters, and between characters and NPCs, are prescriptions about classes with mandatory alignment(s).

"Those who are Lawful in alignment are part of an inevitable destiny, but have no knowledge of what that destiny is and what their role will be in fulfilling it. [...]

Those who are Chaotic in alignment are touched by magic, and consider the world in terms of ebbing and flowing energy [...] Many mortals who are so aligned desperately wish they were not. [...]

Mortal beings exist as Neutral creatures, and remain so throughout their existence unless taking specific steps (often unwittingly) to align themselves otherwise. [...]

Clerics must be Lawful. Elves and Magic-Users must be Chaotic. All others are free to choose their alignment. [...]"

If you are interested in some additional considerations about the LotFP alignments system, you can see my previous post here: Some thoughts on Alignments.
https://daimon-games.blogspot.com/2018/10/some-thoughts-on-alignments.html

Now, moving away from rule books and into the world of house-rules, let's see some considerations about alignments in the next link. I don't agree with the entire article, but it's not the point. I think it helps focusing the thoughts on the topic. After a brief comparison between "Alignment Shapes Character" and "Character Shapes Alignment", there is an interesting take on "Destined Death". Note how Destined Death provides not just a gameable option, but an overview of the world you play in.

This is quite a fine example of rules shaping the fantasy world of your game.

The article also contains an interesting list of 20 possible alignments, such as Family, Home, The City, A Community, but also Law/Chaos or The Sky, or Fire... (roll a d20 at char-gen? interesting because it gives a twist to the basic concept of character you may have in your head... because it gives you something to bring at the table even when the character is brand new and therefore it has no "past").

It goes in a more traditional direction than LotFP (LotFP twists the original 3 alignments in a new way, while this article does what many house-rules do, adding options and adding flavor, often in search of a "better" version of the original system). Still, worth a read... if only for the "Destined Death" and some ideas in the 20 alignments table.

An Alignment System
by Gorinich Serpant
I greatly despise the alignment grid, I could go into detail but many others have succinctly pointed out it's myriad of issues already. I feel better about the original three option one, but grand cosmic conflicts aren't something that has grabbed me that much. [...]
Destined Death: As a character's life is intertwined with their alignment, so must their death be. This doesn't mean that you can't die in a way unrelated to your alignment, but it does mean if you do than they will become restless, and become unquiet dead until they are properly buried. This is one of the purposes of burial ceremonies. [...]

Your alignment can change and evolve if you have a significant life experience, but generally it's going to be a change in your relationship with the alignment not switching to a completely different one. It should be rare and impactful enought to be ruled on a case by case basis. [...]

https://whimsicalmountain.blogspot.com/2018/09/an-alignment-system.html

Now, I have to admit that I didn't consider the alignment something which is gameable, something to play with. Rules about alignment so far has resonated with me mostly as how creature might interact with the character, or about spells effects or even selection of spells (i.e. a list restricted to chaotic alignment only... a classic).
But now I have the LotFP approach in mind ("cosmic", rather than "moral"), and this idea of destined death. I also expanded a bit on that approach - see my previous post with Some thoughts on Alignments - https://daimon-games.blogspot.com/2018/10/some-thoughts-on-alignments.html
That post is mostly flavor, but it shows how alignments contribute to shape the world of your game.


Now, how about alignments becoming relevant according to where the characters are? Aaron Parr came up with a simple yet powerful idea: mapping hexes (locations) to specific alignments.
As you'll see in the linked article, it is also possible to expand this to magic (schools of magic are mapped with alignments, and therefore with locations). This is again quite interesting in the prospective of building your own game world: how is magic connected to alignments and your pantheon of divine powers? And extending the concept: how are Magic-Users powers and Clerics powers connected?
The article then goes on with an idea by Zak Sabbath - using numbers to map alignments to hexes.

Gameable Alignments, Final Name & Compatibility

by Sami Mobarak-Sadokierski

[...] Parr came with the idea of mapping hexes to specific alignments, if your setting assumes that the pantheon exists. This means, in a specific area of your hexcrawl a god or an aligned pantheon holds control over it (could be denoted through a coloured hex number number), determining what can be done here from a magical perspective (this was my reading of the idea). Parr did state that this would work best if the game assumes a Three way Alignment System - a system where there is a Law, Chaotic, and non-aligned alignments. [...]

Proposed by Zak Sabbath, in relation to Parr’s wish to make alignments more gameable, was that hexes with a specific number were aligned to specific deities. The example by Zak was that the Cheetah God had sway in every Hex ending in 1. This simple idea got my head spinning, for if anybody knows a bit about Numerology have an idea of where this is heading. [...]

The last idea I could think of was having alignment as attributes for player characters. These attributes could be used in a manner to give the PC’s leverage when dealing with social encounters. People, who are aligned similarly as the PC, might act favourably if the player succeeds in one of the Alignment rolls that are relevant. [...]

http://projectirregular.blogspot.com/2018/10/gameable-alignments-final-name.html

When I will analyze the twenty quick questions for your campaign setting by Jeff Rients, we will see how certain decisions about the game world could also shape your house-rules.