Okay, so I'm trying to put an RPG together, and I came to the question of morality. What'd I want to do? Some suggested, skip it altogether, look at D&D alignment, it's so messy. But I like the idea of moral decisions with actual game consequences, even though I agree D&D alignment can be a source of frustration. I know some people have gone the route of largely ignoring D&D alignment, because of this, which is understandable; it's just not the route I want to go. So, as an experiment, I've been trying the opposite. Make alignment MORE intensive rather than less, and see how that works. These are the principles that are guiding the approach we're taking in my current home-brew:

1) Make moral values particulate and spell out consequences for each specific value in as much detail as the language of values will permit. Here I'm thinking about the constant debate over what a good character would do about evil prisoners, evil children, and creatures nominally evil that just haven't done anything as far as the good character knows. Does the good kill them because they are evil and good must confront evil? Or does she spare them, because mercy is a good virtue even when it is shown towards evil creatures?

So, here we break it up. Good is an abstraction which a character may or may not commit to. But long before she does that, she will already have chosen several smaller virtues such as compassion, honour, honesty, courage, etc. A good character with the specific virtue of compassion will spare those posing no immediate threat. An otherwise good character which has not embraced the virtue of compassion may very well slay evil wherever she finds it. And two characters equally committed to goodness might very well fight over what to do precisely because they differ in the specific virtues which they see as part of the great meme, goodness.

2) Moral categories do NOT describe a quality of the character; they do not even describe the actual behavior of the character. What they describe is a norm in the sociological sense of teh word, an expectation of what should be done and a measure by which behavior will be evaluated. They describe an orientation towards behaving this way or that way, perhaps even a desire to do so. Whether or not a character ACTUALLY does behave as they believe they ought to is a completely different question. That a character may very well fail to live up to a value is understood, in which case there are consequences (experience points). But this is to be expected rather than treated as an earth-shattering failure. A player will not hear from the GM that suddenly he has been declared of an alignment other than he intends to play. He will instead be informed that he has earned or failed to earn experience as a result of living up to (or not living up to) her moral commitments.

3) Bring the choices into the game. Rather than selecting a moral value when the character is first rolled up, moral values are chosen during the course of a campaign (using the same point buy system by which players choose other abilities for their characters). This means the player can decide over time what he wants his character to do, and he can consider such matters as compatability with other characters. This is in keeping with the nature of actual moral decisions. If one for example decides to become a vegetarian, she has to consider the question of how many friends she may no longer visit for supper. If one decides to become an outspoken  pacifist, she must think about whether or not she has just picked a fight (so to speak) with friends and family. And if one decides to embrace a life of crime, he has to consider whether or not he will still be welcome in certain circles and/or aknowledged by his or her family.

Players may take such decisions into account when developing their own characters. Well so&so is honourable and his friend is Honest. Do I support that? Do I want to exhibit qualities like those of my friends? Or do I want to follow a different path, perhaps one that will lead me into conflict with them?

Note: Points 2 and 3 make the moral system much more a part of the game itself rather than an abstraction which describes (with more or less accuracy) the nature of one's character. Alignment issues do not merely come up when there is a problem, they are a constant variable to consider in the characters actions and in choices to be made about her actual development. The idea here is that the decisions will be made with more conscious awareness of the consequences for them. People will not be blindsided by disagreement over an abstraction. They will get to know incrementally how the GM intends to apply the values they have chosen, and they will have opportunity to adapt accordingly. Nor will moral issues be an unwelcome intrusion into the business of slaughterig orcs. They will instead be a conscious part of the game from point one to point infinity. (So, the hope goes...)

4) Moral Values are not special: And here we pull up one of the ladders used to get us up here so far. Why make moral values paradigm values. Sure if a character opts to side with the abstraction, Goodness, and chooses to be a fanatic about that one, sure then, for THAT character, good versus evil is pretty much the measure of all things. But other characters might be equally interested in art, creation, destruction, nature, knowledge, etc. These need not be secondary values. To some they exclipse questions of good or evil altogether.

5) Contradiction and conflict are facts of life and sources of good drama. Characters may possess several values that go together and 1 or 2 that seem almost in contradiction to the others. Perhaps a character fully committed to the cause of goodness might exhibit the vice, cruelty. (Her heart is in the right place, but damn what she did to that prisoner was just unnecessary...) Conversely a character exibiting every other vice under the sun might just be exceptionally honest, or (odder still) rather compassionate. (He aims to conquer the world, lies, cheats, and steals to do it, but oddly enough he doesn't want to kill anyone he doesn't have to.) It's odd. Most would say that such things shouldn't happen. But it does. Note only does it happen in the game, it does in real life. More importantly, nothing is gained by eliminating these possibilities from the game. Let the inner turmoil bubble till it bursts.

6) No Axe to Fall once and For All: A character is committed to Justice for example till she decides she is not. a GM may penalize her for lying in this game, breaking a promise in that one, etc. But these are discrete gameable consequences. The decision to alter the characters core values belongs to her and her player rather than the GM. She may regard her failures as sins of a sort, perhaps promising to do better next time. But the GM will leave her to her struggle for as long as she wishes to play it out. Likewise, there is no need for a rule forbidding mixing of alignments. If moral values are paid for in experience and lead to rewards on the basis of actuial behavior, characters of opposing moral outlook are likely to gain or lose in direct proportion to one another. Players in such a fix may decide for themselves when they've had enough and act accordingly.

I think there is an interesting idea in here that could be used in a more conventional manner:

Define "Good" as "compassion, honesty, courage, and charity", for example (I'd expect the real list to be longer), and then define "Evil" as the polar opposites of "cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, and greed" and define Neutral as a pragmatic or moderate approach to the extremes (e.g., compassionate to friends and cruel to enemies or maybe simply not particularly compassionate nor cruel).  Then instead of picking an alignment as a whole outlook, choose the character's perspective on each of the columns.  So a character could be neither cruel nor compassionate, honest, brave, and greedy.  That would give you a character that is, on balance, Good but isn't particularly compassionate and is greedy as a vice.  As an added benefit, this would clearly define what it means to be Good or Evil and provides a way to add up a character's traits to figure out what they are, on balance.

As for...

Quote from: BrimshackHere I'm thinking about the constant debate over what a good character would do about evil prisoners, evil children, and creatures nominally evil that just haven't done anything as far as the good character knows. Does the good kill them because they are evil and good must confront evil? Or does she spare them, because mercy is a good virtue even when it is shown towards evil creatures?

Well, the D&D 3/3.5 SRD introduces an important concept that it hints at but doesn't really explore.  It talks about "innocent" people.  So somewhat independent of Good and Evil in the sense of being altruistic or cruel could be the idea of innocence or guilt.  A character who has never actually done anything wrong could be innocent while a character who has done horrible things could be guilty, and thus deserve death as a punishment, just as they might deserve a Hell of some sort as an eternal punishment, unless they repent or even despite repentance.  Expanding on this, it might be useful for a Paladin, as an non-RAW alternative, to detect guilt rather than detecting Evil as an outlook or making characters detect as Evil only if they are guilty (and Good only if they've done selfless things).