Alignment is tired, boring and essentially meaningless in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons.
Many playing the modern game trying to replace it with personality. Wizards of the Coast tried to take major steps towards personality play with their Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws system attached to backgrounds. That system uses five sentences of 5-25 words to describe the personality of the character. Alignment also exists.
Then, if the DM and/or the other players remember your TIBF and you play to it you might get advantage via Inspiration.
It’s a bulky system that requires memorizing a lot of detail that aren’t necessarily relevant to how your character is played. The Acolyte is in the SRD 5.1 CC BY. Here’s a sample of TIBF for a lawful good Acolyte.
I see omens in every event and action. The gods try to speak to us, we just need to listen.
I quote (or misquote) sacred texts and proverbs in almost every situation.
Faith. I trust that my deity will guide my actions. I have faith that if I work hard, things will go well. (Lawful)
I would die to recover an ancient relic of my faith that was lost long ago.
I am suspicious of strangers and expect the worst of them.
That’s 82 words plus two for lawful good. But really, it’s just a few. You don’t need that much detail.
Just like when you fill out that your character has brown or brown-green eyes you know there is more detail to the eyes than just that word or two. You can do this for your personality.
That Acolyte?
Faithful, Suspicious, Orderly, Erudite.
Replace the entire TIBF system with those four words. Can you memorize a few words that describe how the other characters in the party act? Absolutely! Your mind was already taking the shortcuts on the way to do so.
Then award inspiration when the character is played along their personality.
You could build your short-form personality using the official background information already provided. That’s a great start. But you could also use a list of personality traits. Here’s 638!
A character modelled off a favorite movie or TV or comic or book or video game or etc character could use their traits too.
Margot from The Magicians — sexy, strong willed, crass, loyal
Wesley from The Princess Bride — dedicated, adaptable, loving
Tasselhoff from the original Dragonlance – friendly, curious, brave, aloof
Moiraine from early Wheel of Time – determined, withdrawn, studious
Lan from early Wheel of Time – lawful, loyal, commanding
Awf, my PC in Lost Mines – persistent, exuberant, fearless
The intent with short-form personality is to reduce memorization, reward roleplaying and continue the de-emphasization of alignment in D&D.
Be generous with the Inspiration you award. Play up the personality. Just make it simpler than a system that might require 100 words when you only need three to five.
