EDIT: Based on reviews and recommendations, I’ve changed “Good” to “Lawful” and “Evil” to “Chaotic”, for a more clear, recognizable and understandable description.
I had explained this in the Project Ideas & Discussions thread, but I figured I should put it here as well.
My idea is for a morality system for a multiple-protagonist RPG, specifically two teams - one heroic, one villainous -, based on the 9 alignments:
For the sake of this system, I have somewhat redefined the meanings of the various alignments.
Neutral Good is basically your standard heroism, while Lawful Good is more broader public, social good, whilst Chaotic Good can best be described as “heroics” - still well-intentioned, but also reckless and showy.
Lawful Neutral is your institutions, the law and order of the land, while Chaotic Neutral is anarchy and vigilantism.
Neutral Evil is self-serving villainy, while Lawful Evil is self-preserving, more focused on maintaining the system by which it can control. And Chaotic Evil is either hedonistic, or nihilistic, depending on which direction a character or group had ended up in that alignment.
The True Neutral alignment isn’t available for any of the playable characters, giving us a ring of possible alignments.
What makes this a “See-Saw” mechanic is that the two teams are morally linked, and must stand on the opposite sides of the alignment chart at all times. When one team pushes their alignment in one direction, the other team is moved into the polar opposite of that.
Let’s take an example:
The Heroic team (two-tone blue arrow) starts out as Neutral Good, while the Villainous team (orange-red arrow) starts out as Neutral Evil.
Heroic team arrives to a problem, for which they have three options presented:
None of the options would have their alignments outright stated in game, but you could surmise it from the context (sometimes, this would require more attention to what the NPCs or the members of the team are saying).
Lawful and Chaotic choices are naturally more rewarding in one way or another.
Lawful choices give you the warm and fuzzies, you get to help people with no hidden agenda besides kindness, and there’s some passive rewards thrown in as well: health, armor, skills, etc. Tasks and gameplay involving Lawful choices would require more work and patience for the player, as they are the more “responsible” option. In a fetish game, you could even limit certain forms of expansion to choosing Lawful. Lawful choices naturally also shift a team’s alignment towards the more “Lawful” end of the alignment chart in their respective half (more on that later).
Chaotic choices are more immediately rewarding, and you get more active rewards, such as weapons and offensive skills. Tasks and gameplay involving Chaotic choices are quicker than Lawful ones, and are often more high-risk, high-reward, as they are the more “impulsive” option. They’re good for getting revenge on jerks or just fucking with someone when there’s an opportunity for it. But more often than not, it’s the scummier choice, and you’ll inevitably end up fucking over innocent people with it. Chaotic choices also shift a team’s alignment towards the chaotic side of their half of the chart.
Neutral choices lead to the quickest resolutions, but they’re also the most unrewarding. Tasks and gameplay-wise, they’re often the quickest (but not always), and the most “common sense” or “practical” options… Which is rather counter-intuitive in an adventure game. Also, they offer little to no fetish stuff, and don’t address the deeper issues that led to the problem in the first place, leaving them feeling unrewarding from a story perspective as well. What they do allow for, however, is to halt a team’s shift towards an alignment, at the cost of passing the “ball” into the other team’s “court”, allowing them to take charge of the alignment shift.
So, how does this shift look like for the other team? Well…
Continuing from where we left off, let’s say that the Heroic team chose the “Lawful” option, and thus, shifted towards “Lawful Good”. Now, it’s the Villainous team’s turn. Since they’re linked to the Heroic team, they’re forced to shift towards Chaotic Evil. The “Lawful” Option isn’t available to them anymore…
…But this is where side quests come in. Side quests are for additional loot, weapons & armor, skills, fetish scenes and kinks not in the main flow of the story. Some of them tie back into the main quest (and are thus mandatory), but others are entirely optional. These (especially the main quest-adjacent ones) can either halt this shift, or further enforce it, even if the player doesn’t want to choose the “Chaotic” option for the main quest with the Villanous team.
And with enough “Lawful” choices made in the side quests (and “Chaotic” choices annulled by Neutral choices), the “Lawful” option can become available again for a main quest decision. However, this also shifts the Heroic team’s alignment back to “Neutral Good”.
Characters, alignment shift caps, and going beyond…
What I think would be ideal is to have both teams consist of at least three characters, each of which is associated with one of the options: one prefers to take the high road, the other the quick and dirty way, while the third just wants it done quickly, and move on. This way, there could be a regular conflict between the characters over what option they should take.
Ideally, you also want to, at least, initially, limit how far either team can shift on the alignment chart. Keep your heroes “Lawful” and your villains “Chaotic”… Until they gotta team up. Then both can be the opposing permutation of “Neutral”.
…And keep “True Neutral” empty. That’s reserved for everyone else BUT the player characters.
If you want to spice things up, however, such as add earnable “Bad” endings, you could remove the shift cap, and let your Heroes become nihilistic jerks or merciless enforcers of the Crown/Order/Whathaveyou, and let your Villains become Crazy Good, or turn into the Real Heroes Of The Story in the 11th hour.
In an RPGMaker game, where you control both teams directly, this mechanic would allow for more replayability, since by pushing one team into Lawful and the other into Chaotic will lock them out of content from the opposite alignment in one run, and with Neutral being the least rewarding option, you’re encouraged to try out playing different alignments for your heroes and villains, to see where it takes the story (which can include multiple endings, based on their endgame alignments).
On the kink side of things…
It’s best to keep a few fetishes as the default, in case someone decides that they wanna keep both teams Neutral throughout the game. It’s their loss, but they shouldn’t be excluded from having fun. You could also split kinks into the “Good” or “Evil” category (not based on actual morals, as its best to keep thing safe, sane and consensual, and strictly with adults of sound mind, for VFORs (Very Fucking Obvious Reasons), but rather, splitting your kinks based on how much one person might have control over the other, for example).
For example:
In a game where “Stuffing” and “Weight Gain” are the default fetishes, you could make Lawful task about finding people’s favorite food, giving people belly rubs, etc., while Chaotic choices involve force-feeding or letting people go hog wild and overeat.