I was looking through a Pathfinder sourcebook I received for Christmas and I read an interesting section on choosing alignment:
There are two ways to choose your characters alignment:
A) Choose an alignment from the nine presented below. Adapt your character accordingly. For example, you might decide your character is lawful good. The entry on lawful good tells you that a lawful good character respects lawful authority and helps people.
B) Choose character traits and then choose the alignment that coincides with them. You might decide you're playing someone who doesn't care for restrictions and often disregards inconvenient laws but has a good heart anyways. Looking through the entries below, you see that Chaotic Good fits this and put it down on your sheet.
In short:
Method A) You are Lawful Good. Therefore you respect authority and help people.
Method B) You respect authority and help people. Therefore you are Lawful Good.
The latter method is probably the best way to degamify the alignment system and is the one I prefer.
And then I thought:
Couldn't you also apply the above rules to other things?
For example:
Political opinions:
A) Bay12 is largely liberal
[Citation needed], therefore the collective opinion is _____.
B) The collective opinion is ______, therefore Bay12 is largely liberal.
I've seen people be surprised that a fair number of Bay12ers hold an opinion different that one which is liberal, probably because they applied rule A[Bay12 is liberal, therefore Bay12 thinks ____] instead of rule B[Bay12 thinks ____, therefore Bay12 is liberal]
Religion:
A) I am Catholic/insertotherreligionhere, therefore I believe ______
B) I believe ______, therefore I am Catholic/insertotherreligionhere
Something I've noticed is that organized religions claim homogenity, yet, at least in most cases I've seen, the opinions of individual believers on their own religion vary widely. It isn't "I am Catholic, so I believe ____, _____ and ______", but "I believe _____ and _____, so I am Catholic."
Anime:
A) I like anime, therefore I like this anime, this anime and this anime
B) I like this anime, this anime and this anime, therefore I like anime.
Gender[<-It was inevitable]:
A) I am a [wo]man, therefore I am masculine[feminine]
B) I am masculine[feminine] therefore I am a [wo]man
This last one is a touchy subject, but I think its important that method B be applied, rather then method A. A fair
[Citation needed] amount of the time, the two amount to the same thing anyways, but Method B seems to me to be a better way of defining it.
I'm fairly sure you can apply this to most labels. Does one hold an opinion because one defines oneself as something or does one define oneself as something because one holds an opinion? This is always an important question to ask oneself.
I'd like to hear everyone's[Except the trolls, kitchenbots and people who I disagree with. ] opinions{The latter are welcome to participate, I just won't necessarily agree with you.} on the above. Please note that I may rule discussions which are inadequately flameproof or relevant are no longer welcome in this thread. If this ruling is violated, I'll bring in Toady. This SHOULDN'T be a problem, but it is.
