Basically, there are 9 possible states, Good, Neutral and Evil, each of which is split into 3 categories, Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic.
Lawful Good Neutral Good Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral Neutral Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil Neutral Evil Chaotic Evil
Basically, your characters actions in the game define your alignment. If you run around killing puppies for no reason, you'll swiftly become evil. Obviously.
There are certain limitations, Paladins can only be Lawful, Druids can only be Neutral. So if your alignment changes it can have consequences for your character.
sadly, it's a rare thing for gamers to uphold the alignment and beliefs of their character. For example, in a D&D campaign I'm playing in at the moment, we came across a little burial vault. The other players immediately rushed over to loot the poor incumbent. Of course, they looked to the cleric to check for anything magical in the room. I, being a Lawfull Evil Cleric,, refused. Yes I'm evil, but not only are we breaking laws raiding this tomb, but I'm a priest of Nerull, (God of death) so no, I'm not going to join in your looting of the restful dead. Now the other characters did nothing wrong, being mostly Chaotic Evil. But they seemed surprised that I'd turn down a share in the loot, (and it was damn good loot too) based on my characters beliefs. You see it a lot in games, players will nearly always do anything to accomplish their goals. Even if in performing the deed they become more evil than the bad guys they were sent to stop.
Now I'm not saying it happens all the time, of course not. I've seen some great roleplaying moments where players have made life MASSIVELY more difficult for themselves by staying true to their characters. But I've seen FAR more times where players make life far easier for themselves by being, well, Chaotic Evil
I've had great success in "prodding" players to stay true to their alignment by introducing "insanity points" (shamelessly stolen from FFGs RPG Dark Heresy) now, evil type characters aren't too fussed about a little evil influence, but a priest who is forced to sacrifice someone to stop some great evil would be taking some serious points for killing an innocent he is sworn to protect, even if in doing so he saved far more lives. If nothing else, it can be a nice plot line as he runs off on a penitent quest to cleanse himself.
Ok, moving on.
Why are players always so slow to respond to plot?
I mean I'm massively guilty of it too, when I'm not actively playing in a system, i can see all the plot hooks and hints and tips that are dropped in, but, as soon as I become a player, suddenly only the most blatant and least subtle hints seem to register. Bits of information, that would make perfect sense if I wasn't playing, become cryptic beyond belief. Things that should be obvious as soon as we heard them suddenly take most of a year and some very heavy prodding by the crew to become even vaguely solid ideas (I'm looking at you here Thanir, you know who you are). it's seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, wherever I go, people always make fun of the players inability to decipher plot.
I mention this, as I'm planning on starting a character in my local LARP SPEARHEAD, which runs daily liners about twice a month with two big weekend events a year. If you're looking at getting into LARPing and you live in or around Surrey, you should come check out an event.
Now, the new campaign started early this year, and I've been crewing since the beginning, so I've had fairly good access to the plot and what the players should know. I'm just hoping that filling out a character sheet doesn't cause my reasoning abilitities to dribble out of my ears :)
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