The Palladium Books games had really useful Alignment descriptors, that map pretty well to D&D alignments. I used to hand these out to my players, and it avoided countless hours of arguments.
Principled - Lawful Good
Scrupulous - Chaotic Good
Unprincipled - Neutral Good (several bits are easily flipped to map to Neutral Evil)
Anarchist - Chaotic Neutral
Diabolic - Chaotic Evil
Aberrant - Lawful Evil
This page repeats the Palladium Books text verbatim, and is cheaper than buying the books. (Although, seriously, Rifts - is good gonzo fun, despite the game mechanics being a hot mess.)
(Savage Rifts is a licensed adaptation of the game setting, with a much cleaner game system underneath. It presents a very different experience, not being a hot mess, but it's a lot more playable, too.)
Another reason I like using these as guidelines is the old joke "Chaotic Neutral is what players choose when they really mean Chaotic Evil, but don't want to admit it."
ReplyDeleteUsing Palladium Books' "Anarchist" as a guideline for Chaotic Neutral steers players away from the more "morally ambiguous" actions they might be inclined to try to justify.