Properties: Alignment and disposition

Some of the most important traits of your character are alignment and ethos. Alignment determines how much the well-being of others matters to you at the expense of your own -- or vice versa (selfishness/altruism). Ethos determines how much observing the laws matters to you. Together, alignment and ethos form your character's personality or worldview and are the foundation of your roleplay.

Personality matters enormously and determines a huge number of aspects of the game: from your Path, clan, and religion to the experience you gain and the items you can wear.

Alignment has gradations: you can be just slightly evil or very good. The most evil alignment is called devilish, the most good -- angelic. The degree of your alignment affects the amount of experience gained when killing characters.

ALIGNMENT TYPES (WORLDVIEWS)

• Lawful-Good: They believe that a lawful and organized society improves the lives of the majority. To maintain the common good, laws must be reasonable and followed without exception. When people respect laws and help each other, society as a whole prospers.

• Lawful-Neutral: They believe in strong government but make no distinction between tyranny and democracy. They believe that certain groups within society can achieve more in resolving particular issues than society as a whole. They obey laws, though they understand that laws cannot be perfect.

• Lawful-Evil: They use society and laws primarily for their own benefit. They view the concept of power as an open division of society into the classes of Masters and Servants. They observe moral norms and laws only as long as these coincide with their own interests. They believe that openly breaking laws is risky and unwise, preferring to achieve their ends through others or through corruption.

• Neutral-Good: The balance of forces matters, but law or chaos ultimately changes the amount of good in the world. The world is vast and populated by very different creatures with different goals and freedoms. Violence against the individual is itself an evil. Good cannot be imposed. Social structure is not immutable: if rulers bring evil -- they must be overthrown; if good -- they must be supported.

• Neutral-Neutral: Such people cannot be judged by common standards. Good and evil are empty words to them. They strive for an absolute balance of all forces in the world, which often leads to actions that seem illogical from the perspective of everyone else.

• Neutral-Evil: Only their own well-being concerns them. They can pursue their goals equally well by using society or without it. The only thing that matters to them is their own ego. The concept of conscience is unknown to them.

• Chaotic-Good: A strong individual with their own sense of good and honour. They do not believe in the ability of laws to bring good to everyone, so they take justice into their own hands, like masked superheroes. Their actions serve good, but may prove unacceptable to society.

• Chaotic-Neutral: They are inconsistent and disorderly in their own actions and judgements. Criteria of Good and Evil do not influence their decisions. They are absolutely unreliable and entrust themselves entirely to fate and chance.

• Chaotic-Evil: The bane of all that is good and orderly. Society's laws are for weaklings who cannot defend themselves. The strong have the right to everything. And the only right of the weak is to submit to the strong. The leader is the one who makes others obey through fear.