How many sub-genres are there? And are all of them even necessary?

I tried to answer one of those "pick one game for each genre" polls.

The problem was, I tried to answer honestly. So, knowing that most games that do well at representing a sub-genre actually suck at representing other sub-genres within the same genre (case in point: DCC is great for S&S, but trying to run a high fantasy campaign with it might require...dropping some rules, at least), I tried to answer by sub-genres.

Then I realised that by answering honestly, I'd created such a huge list (shown below - though I wouldn't blame you if you haven't read it) that it totally defeated the point, with the point AFAICT being "tell us which games you would return to time and time again". (If you have 50+ games, you can afford to switch between them, so even if a system starts grating at you after a while, it doesn't matter. You can just switch to something entirely different for a change, then revisit it after a significant pause.)

So I went to thinking: do we really need such a huge number of sub-genres?
Furthermore, I was thinking, different authors writing in the same sub-genre feel really different. Sometimes, their own works in entirely different genres might well feel closer than another work that shares a sub-genre.

Should I just go to my old system of "genre classification"? It only allowed for, like, 5 genres: Detectives (no matter anything else, if it's about a crime, it's listed here), Martial Arts stories (happily lumping swashbuckling and wuxia together), Fantasy (anything with magic), Historical (including present-day, as long as there's no magic), Sci-fi (anything in the future and/or speculating about advances in technology - so I used to happily lump together Asimov's "Foundation" and "Blood music"). Then I specified the "flavour" by adding the author's name.
So, Blood Music would be "Greg Bear SF", while the Foundation series would be "Isaak Asimov's SF". LotR would be "Tolkien's fantasy", while "Earthsea" would be "Ms. Ursula's fantasy", and Amber would be "Zelazni's fantasy". Always worked for me and my friends...
I'm now trying to remember why I gave up on it.

Still haven't found an answer to any of the above questions.
(If you care to know: At the end, I just shrugged and posted "I pick my own homebrew, since I can adapt it for everything". Of course I can, it's my homebrew. Switching it to emulate another system's qualities wouldn't even be a houserule - more like an update and going from edition 0,755 to 0,756...so while technically it's true, it was also a not really helpful answer.
Though, to be fair, I should have posted "Traveller 5, some other edition of Traveller, Mythras, Pocket Universe, BoL and my own homebrew" instead. Ah well, live and learn!)


The huge list that prompted my considerations:
4 colours Supers: 4 Colours. Doh!
Gritty supers: Wild Talents
Hard SF: 2300 AD
Ecologist Science Fi- Blue Planet
Space Opera: Traveller 5
Post-humanist SF: Eclipse Phase or Transhuman Space, leaning towards the latter
Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk 2020
Neo-Cyberpunk: Fates Worse Than Death with BtEoM supplement
High Fantasy: Godbound with Scarlet Heroes for the mortal level.
Romantic Fantasy: FUDGE with the HeartQuest Shoujo supplement.
OSR Dungeon Crawl: DCC, doh!
Non-OSR Dungeon Crawl: 13th Age
Victorian Gritty Fantasy: Backswords and Buckles
Fantasy Africa: Solomon Kane
Movies-inspired Swords and Sorcery: BoL, latest edition
Novels-inspired S&S: Mythras
Exalted Fantasy: I said Godbound already, let's give Ex3 a chance
Ancient World Fantasy: Mythras
Swords and Sandals: Zenobia with 43 AD and Warband (seeing as how they are variants of the same system, I treat themas supplements).
Swords and Planet: Pocket Universe, with Bethorm as a setting supplement
Gritty Novels-inspired Swashbuckling: Flashing Blades with the High Seas supplement
Funny Film-inspired Swashbuckling: Honor+Intrigue
Fencing Pirates: Le Pavilion Noir (with the fencing supplement, of course).
Anthropomorphic Fantasy: Ironclaw, with the Jadeclaw and Bone and Ivory supplements, and Usagi Yojimbo as a supplement for the Japan- analogue.
Fantasy in space: Hellas
Arthurian Fantasy: Pendragon 5.1
Mythic England:
Post Apocalyptic Fantasy: Earth Dawn 2e from FASA...the edition choice is just "because I already own it".
Mecha, Monks and Ninja: TBZ, of course.
Espionage: Night's Black Agents
Techno thrillers: Millennium's End
Steampunk: Jadepunk
High-Powered Wuxia: LotW
High-Powered Wuxia with focus on finding legendary weapons: Weapons of the Gods
Low-Powered Wuxia: Qin with all the supplements
Kungfupian, preferably generational: Tianxia
Wuxia with Xian xia: Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate
John Woo movies, with or without talking apes: Feng Shui 2
Fighting Games emulation: Fight! The Fighting Game RPG
Shonen: Fight, but with the Shonen supplement
Boxing/MMA Stories: Contenders
General Martial arts stories: My own homebrew started as a way to do this, and find it does so nicely already.
Urban Fantasy: Witchcraft
Vampires-focused UrbanFantasy: Vampire City
Summoners-focused Urban Fantasy: Sorcerer
Dragons-Focused Urban Fantasy: Fireborn
Historical games: Mythras or my own homebrew
Pulp: Savage Worlds with Thrilling Tales
Noir: A Dirty World
Whodunit Detective Stories: Fear Itself
Medieval Whodunit: Maelstrom Domesday
Heist Stories: Skulduggery RPG
Western: My own homebrew makes it equally easy to play gun duels, as presented in the fiction  (and unlike how they probably worked),or the way they probably happened
Slice-of-Life Anime emulation: OVA2e
Dimension Hopping Reality Bending Adventure: Amber
Time Travel: my own homebrew. I don't think it's good enough yet, but I can adjust it - and no game I know does a much better job, so I'd rather trust myself.
Slaughter Horror: Snuff: The Downloads of Death
Mythos Horror: toss if a coin between CoC 7 and Delta Green
Mystic Horror with Mad Wizards: Unknown Armies 3e
Fairy tales: My own homebrew or Mythras
Trade Empires in Ancient Rome: Worlds Apart
Trade Empires With Flying Ships: Volant


Yes, I know. That's a huge number of systems. That's what bothered me, too: do we really need that much?
My feeling is that the answer should be a resounding "no". But how do we change that?

Binding Books for Tekumel/Create Your Own Yozi

Here's a system-agnostic way to create your own demons for Tekumel. Because someone pointed out that The Book of Ebon Bindings only has Change demons, and not Stability demons...
And I thought of a series of interlinked random tables.

Step one: Pick Stasis/Stability or Enthropy/Change. Or toss a coin. If you have Stasis, add "a" to the number of the tables. Enthropy means you add a "b". 

Step two,optional: Do you want to decide a god in advance or not? If yes, roll on table 1. 

1a: Roll 1d10, or 2d10 pick higher/lower.

1. Hruu
2. Wuru
3. Vimuhla
4. Chiteng
5. Ksarul
6. Gruganu
7. Sarku
8. Durritlámish
9. Dlamelish
10. Hriháyal

1b: Roll 1d10, or 2d10 pick higher/lower.

1. Hnalla
2. Dra
3. Karakan
4. Chegarra
5. Thumis
6. Ketengku
7. Belkhanu
8. Qon
9. Avanthe
10. Dilinala

Or, you know...just decide whether you want a Cohort or a main god/dess, and roll 1d5 on table 1C (c for Common, it applies to both stability and change).

1-Authority and Rulership (the "boss" of the pantheon)

2-War and Violence

3-Wisdom, especially occult

4-Death and Afterlife

5-Sex and Family

Either way, if you have chosen a god or goddess already, when you'd roll the other tables, only pick results that "fit". A courtesan might not be the best option for Sarku (or at least I prefer not to imagine it).

Step 3: Pick the basics of your demon. Roll on table 2. 

2a - roll 1d24 or a 1d100

1. Warrior (1-5)
2. Scholar (6-10)
3. Priest (11-13)
4. Maiden (14-15)
5. Slave (16)
6. Pe Choi or other "friendly" race (17)
7. Unfriendly race or extraterrestrial menace (18)
8. Grazing beast (19-23)
9. Predator (24-26)
10. Earthly predator (27)
11. Earthly vegetarian beast, likely horned and/or of great mass (28)
12. Marsupial (29)
13. Bird with great speed or strength (30-33)
14. Bird of prey (34-38)
15. Lizard-analogue (39-40)
16. Frog-analogue (41-42)
17. Invertebrate considered useful (ex: eatable mollusque, a scarab that must eat the body of the deceased in order to guarantee the ascension of the soul 43-45)
18. Colony-based Insect (46-50)
19. Construct, humanoid (51-54)
20. Plant (55-60)
21. Fungi (61-62)
22. Animated item (63-69)
23. Geographic location (a big boulder, a forest 70-75)
24. Roll twice and combine (ignore this result if you roll it again, 76-100).

Table 2b. Roll 1d66 (2d6 of different colour, giving you a result between 11 and 66).

1. Roll once more 2
2. Roll twice more
3. Roll 3 times more
4. Warrior, probably berserk-like or mounted
5. Scholar, likely mad or extremely methodic
6. Priest
7. Courtesan
8. Vacchan
9. Slave
10. Dark-clad Assassin
11. Non-human Tekumelian race
12. Enraged, stampeding grazing beast
13. Stalking predator
14. Corpse-eating beast
15. Bird of prey
16. Carrion-eating bird
17. Snake-analogue
18. Lizard-analogue
19. Frog-analogue
20. Horned beast
21. Fish
22. Worm
23. Other invertebrate, likely considered harmful
24. Carnivorous plant
25. Fungi
26. Algae or jellyfish
27. Spider
28. Scorpion
29. Poisonous or corpse-eating insect
30. Construct, non-human looking
31. Undead
32. Animated item, likely not man-made: Stone, sand, diamond
33. Incarnation of a disaster (hurricane)
34. Animated geographic feature (forest)
35. A hive, swarm or pack with one mind
36. Ethereal presence

Now combine all results you got, if you have more than one, and go to the next step. 

Step 4: Roll on table 3. 

Add an elemental condition to your demon. This is a guideline-only and the "element" doesn't need to be presented! 

A Wind demon might be fully material, but flying...or it might be the wind itself (the scourging wind, for Change demons). It might be watery, or command water (salty water, for Change demons). 

Table 3a (I let it to you to guess which die to roll...or you can roll 1d100).

1. None 1-44
2. Light 45-52
3. Air 53-60
4. Water 61-68
5. Earth 69-76
6. Gold 77-84
7. Steel 85-92
8. Shadow 93-100

Table 3b. Roll 1d20 or 1d100...seriously, you don't need me to write that out!

1. None
2. Fire
3. Wind
4. Water
5. Earth
6. Gold
7. Steel
8. Brass
9. Darkness
10. Beast
11. Poison
12. Smoke
13. Blood
14. Acid
15. Salts
16. Thunder
17. Electricity
18. Shadow
19. Void
20. Flesh

Step 5:  Combine them into a narrative description that fits.

Step 6: Consider which god or goddess said demon is most likely to serve (note: a "slave" demon likely has no free will and you might want to roll on Table 1).

Step 7: Decide what said demon's goals, needs and wants, dislikes, hates and quirks are. Demons often reflect the identity of the god/dess they serve.

Step 8: Decide on a binding ritual. The type and element should help you, but it should be costly, require precision and sacrifice - or it doesn't count...

Also remember, no demon works for free. The personality should help you devise a suitable payment.

So, how does it work?

Well, you start with Step 1, and pick a pantheon. Let's say you got Stability.

Then you roll 100, double, and get "maiden" and "plant" on the results. You roll "gold".

Your demon is a plant girl, walking on feet of greenery, that leaves golden nuggets in her footsteps. I decide she's an Avanthe demon that aims to preserve the crops and reward the good farmers.

Too bad you need to boil gold in a pot of ironwood and pour it on a still-living flower so you get the golden flower. You need to arrange enough of those to make a nice arrangement, while reciting the magical formula.

If you fail to do a nice one, the demon appears, but smashes the arrangement and takes the caster away for uses best left unmentioned.

Oh, and you know why this has the Exalted tag? It also works for demons of the 2nd and 3rd circle, or even new Yozis!

Have fun!

A.

What does Exalted 3e combat system model? Why, real life, of course!

It has been brought to my attention that many people can't get over the conceptual hurdle of Exalted 3e's combat system having two kind of attacks. "Why", they say, "is this attack withering, and this one decisive? They're both, you know, slashes".
The answer is, because the enemy is not static. And the enemy wasn't equally prepared to meet both.

Let's start with basics, and I'm talking about real life here.
There are two major kinds of fights, ambushes (and suckerpunching, and stabbing someone while he's trying to get his sword out of a scabbard, and prison yard rushes where only one side has a shiv, and hunting herbivores that are running in the other direction, and IEDs, and carpet-bombing infantry), and duels (shieldwalls and "monkey dancing" included on equal rights here). These are symmetric and asymmetric combat, and I leave it to you to put any other situation into one of these two. Guideline: if your enemy can retaliate, it's not asymmetric combat...yet.

The thing about ambushes is that they make it safe. You just need to get into position. The trick is getting into this position with a weapon ready to strike. Then the enemy is hurt without getting to strike back. That's why they're "dishonourable": they avoid the hardest part of the duel - you getting around the threat that the enemy represents to your bodily integrity.
The thing about duels is that they're easy to win, but hard to survive. If you don't take away the enemy's options to attack, at least for a split second, he might do the same thing that happens in lots of punch-outs, where the participants are exchanging blows.
You don't want that to happen to you, ever, not if you're assuming weapons are going to be used. That's why duels were notorious for double-kills.

That's also why many combat systems, fencing included, are teaching you to attack when the enemy can't retaliate. To do that, you have to grasp or create such a moment, and be in position with a weapon ready to strike. Sounds familiar?
It should. The essence of surviving a duel is in turning it into an ambush for a split second, or however long it takes you to deliver the injury (with a sword, that's "for an instant", usually). That's the essence of fencing, and grappling, and a few other styles I can name.
It's not "charge and hope for the best". It's like fencing, where you get into a position where the enemy has at least one "window" open, and can't close it in time, then getting your stab through said "window"...you have to just manoeuvre him into opening.
Or for a possibly more familiar example, it's like Gracie Ju-Jutsu: get positional advantage, then apply submission, or just pound away. But you need the positional advantage first, and then it's an ambush until and unless he dislodges you. But you're likely to get at least one attempt for a submission.

Back to Exalted 3e
The above model is what the Exalted 3e system models, in my view. Of if it's not meant to (although I suspect it is), it emulates it so well, that it almost doesn't matter.
Now, if your enemy is an extra: there is no need for withering attacks, just take care of him at once. No, that's not realistic, but since when are "extras" rules realistic?
First, a withering attack puts your enemy on the defensive and gives you first strike next round. Keep in mind: "attack" here is anything that gives you advantage. It might be a defence.
Then, you use the openings you just created, and deliver your best shot.
You better hope that's enough. If it's not, and he isn't well and truly on the defensive, he might use you moment of weakness.
That's something that Withering attacks, Initiative crash and Decisive attacks are modelling very well (coupled with Crash attacks as "attacking in single time).
And there's nothing "meta" about the way it goes (other than the fact that "withering attacks" would be better named as "creating advantage"... But really, they couldn't use "create advantage", or the Fate guys would laugh so hard Internet would stop watching pr0n for a second and turn to see what's going on.
And as we all know, Internet stopping to watch pr0n would have nothing short of disastrous results!)

Is that just me that sees it this way? Well, no. I happened to exchange personal messages with at least one other martial artist that sees Exalted 3e the same way. His nickname and other details would remain undisclosed, but that's less important.
The thing is, when you show Exalted 3e's combat system to people trained a certain way, they often react the same way: "Hey, nice!"
When you show it to people without such training, it's often "I can't visualize it". Some of them tend to "get it" after a demonstration.
Thus, I decided to mention how I'm seeing Exalted 3e. I know that was a problem in my group...until we made a demonstration for those that didn't "get it" immediately.

Hope that helps you, too. If not, hope this post at least made you think - about martial arts, or about Exalted 3e, or about both!

-A

Exalted 3e: First sessions went on, first impressions are mostly positive!

First, I must admit: despite being a KS backer, I didn't expect the system to be as good as it is.
Still, I decided to give it a honest shot, and pitched a one-shot on Halloween. As of now, three days later, we're waiting for the third session - which should be before the end of the week.
So much for the system delivering a fun game. It works. So far, it works without major flaws.

So, what are the most fun things about it?
First, social combat. Making persuasion depend on what the person being persuaded believes in, is a [B][I]very[/I][/B] big step forward. Well, I think the difference between Minor and Defining intimacy is underrated...but that's a matter of fine-tuning. At least for a change, all of my players will pay attention to what their characters believe in.

Second, physical combat. This time around, it does feel like something that has the back and forth of a real fight with weapons. Fun fact: both players in my group that practice historical fencing thought the system is quite logical and intuitive. The players that don't practice anything had trouble imagining what a Withering attack is, and how it differs from a Decisive attack.
That is, until we explained and demonstrated. "This is a withering attack against an extra from a battlegroup. This is an withering attack against someone who knows not only what end of the sword to grip, but also how to stick the pointy end in you. This is a decisive attack against the same person".
Seems to work.

The themes it encourages, however? Those are great!
We started in Grieve, where people go looking for immortality...with a catch. Of course, we started on the first day of Calibration: can't get closer to Halloween!
First actually interesting thing for the day, finding a soulless body!
Find the sorceress that did it. Release the souls she had gathered by, well, being a Zenith that can see spirits. Then beat on her until she decides she's outmatched...despite being a Dawn caste.
By this time, everything but our Night is flaming iconic...so we run to preserve our identities. On the way, you meet a thousands-years-old ghost...or at least one that claims to be one. They didn't bother to check.
Talking with the Dawn. The lack of empathy was disturbing, and she seems to love Mara. Oh, great!
The Dawn is, however, willing to negotiate, so a Bargain was accepted: she shall not kill people while in Grieve, nor steal their souls. The Zenith didn't like that, at all.
Negotiations concluded, the new Dawn left.
The next day, they find some guy who was kicked into pulp by his own friends. He had fought some chick whose appearance is curiously familiar...and his friends beated him for being a bully. And let's not forget, she didn't kill anybody, so by their deal, she is in the right!
It also helped that he himself believed having assaulted the poor, weak, innocent thing. And they managed to not just nurse him back to health: on this night the word "overheal" was crafted.
(Yes, all of the above was driven by mechanical effects from the book).

Let's see now whether they would be able to help a Dragon-Blooded recover a missing token of one of his late relatives. Namely, it's said relative's leg that was ignobly stolen...and they say the guy who stole it has a very dangerous, protective girlfriend. Maybe they'd get to learn what are these mysterious Sea Children Exalts?
But that's for next session. Don't tell my players yet!

Granted, the BP/XP split is still there, and the rules could be clearer. I houseruled the XP to be linear for anything but Merits, and any not-quite-clear rules work the way that makes sense to me (with possibly changing my mind). Seems to be solving all the issues so far!

LotW: How to make learning Legends of the Wulin and managing new characters easy!

Anyway, I've been thinking quite a bit about some systems that I like, but lots of people find complicated (well, most of those that find them complicated still like them). As a matter of fact, I'm running Legends of the Wulin now, and it fits the description. But it seems hard to internalise for many people.
Now, that might be due to the different assumptions of the system. After all, most systems expect you to tell what you're doing, and then the character makes it happen, you roll to see how successful it is.
LotW is different. It assumes that in a fight you do whatever you have an opening for, and you roll to see what openings you've got. Well, it's more complicated than that, and much more flexible... but I already said it's complicated, right:)?

Or, I thought, it might be that most people do better with a visual aid. The abacus was invented for a reason.
However, there's no visual aid to help LotW players! (A glaring omission, if you ask me... as long as it's not mandatory, I'd like it. Explain the rules assuming no aid is being used, then present the aid).
So, what visual aid would I do? Why, something like the Warhammer 3, of course:D! (Well, I've never played Warhammer 3, but it's my impression that it works like that).

So, what's the biggest issue? Resource tracking. There are three kinds of resource in LotW that you manage on round-to-round basis, Joss, Dice, and Chi!
With that in mind, let's imagine what a visual aid should hold.

First, you have an area where you put your Lake dice.
Second, another Lake area, in case you need to roll more than once (say, like being attacked by two persons).
Third, you have an area for chits or chips in 8 different colours (usually one, but basically never more than 3 are in use together). There you put chits, representing your Chi points. If you want to get fancy, label them Enlightened, Normal, Corrupt, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Fire (with Normal having the most space).
Last but not least, you have an area for your River dice, and a dice cup for spare dice (you need to keep your Lake dice constant, even after you take from them to fill your River - this fits with the concept of opportunities used and unused). You might have a sliding ruler on the side to remind you what actions are possible, since you can't Wash after you Flood.
We can add a place where you keep a stack of cards, too. If you're putting your Internal techniques on cards, you can "play" them, and then put them back to that place.

And that's all! But it would help the learning curve immensely, I suspect.
Now, can you make an app like that? Sure you can, and it would help even more! But let's not get fancy.

Where I play wuxia

I'm planning to run a wuxia marathon soon-ish. And it seems we're going to start with Fate, namely Jadepunk... although I'm planning to borrow mechanics from each game to enrich the others as well, as well as from a few others.
But we're starting with Jadepunk, So here is a pre-generated character, built to specifications.

Sokol of the Ten Virtues
I follow the word of Ehal, and bring the Twelve Virtues to Kausao. For two of them, I've got to teach by word, but people say I'm keeping to the other ten. So they named me Sokol of the Ten Virtues.
Not at all bad even for a priest of Ehal, which I am. By Kausao standards, it makes me nearly a saint. Although that makes me a saint whose name means "falcon", or sometimes "hero", in his native language...
...Such saints might be what Kausao needs. Yet how could any saint stand the current rulers, when the people suffer daily to enrich them?

BTW, Sokol really means "falcon", I modelled him to a great degree on a real person, including the way his Techniques work! Well, except I made him a bit less disciplined than the original.
And here's the thing about the 10 virtues. Imagine the Twelve Virtues of Ehal rated 1-5 Exalted-style, with 2 being the norm.
The guy has 3 to 5 in all of them, making them Major Virtues to him... except Mercy and Chastity, where he's got 1 in each, the equivalent of disadvantage. Hence, Falcon of the Ten Virtues is both a laudable thing, and a reminder there is stuff he fails worse than the ordinary.
Sokol of the Ten Virtues
Aristocrat 3
Fighter 2
Scholar2
Scoundrel 1
Explorer 1
Engineer 0

Portrayal: Unordained priest of Ehal, weak in chastity and mercy
Background: Immigrant would-be priest from a country conquered by the Naramel
Inciting Incident: I had to kill that guard!
Belief: The Light Of Ehal Shall Guide Us
Trouble: People think I'm Naramel, Naramel know I'm not

Technique: We call that just "dancing" at home! (Keyed to Background) Refresh 2
Flexible: Allows to use Aristocrat instead of Scoundrel to Create advantage
Exceptional: When you use an Advantage you created with this technique, each invocation gives you +3 to the roll.
Demanding: requires a Fair Aristocrat roll to dance well enough, if you miss the roll, you've used up your action for the turn
Situational: Only to Create Advantage actions

Ancient fighting techniques (Technique, duh!) Refresh 1 (Keyed to Background aspect)
Exceptional: On a defence, deal shifts of damage equal to your MoS.
Focus, Situational 2: Gain +1 to Fighter rolls, but only to Defend in combat and only when using a free invocation on an aspect
Demanding: A Fair Fighter roll

Undying Valor of Ehal (Keyed to Belief, Refresh 2)
Faith protects the warrior from harm and scatters his enemies
Harmful 3
Demanding: Requires a Fair Aristocrat roll for total confidence in Ehal
Situational: Only with the Attack action
(Yes, it's funny. But then, think about it, Sokol of the Ten Virtues could easily deal damage on defence rolls - so it makes sense for this PC).

The Fire Tongue of Ehal (Keyed to Portrayal) Refresh 1
Focus3, Situational2: Roll Aristocrat with +3 to Create Advantage, but only when talking about the faith - preaching or using ethical arguments to impress your opponent in a dispute.

Refresh:1

Now, I'm not really sure why you couldn't have Troubling or Aspects on a Technique. Seems to me I could easily have a Focus Technique: +2 Fighter against people trained in Kaiyumi (or Naramelite, Tuyangian, Aerish, created in modern Kausao, the curriculum taught to the guards) combat techniques. Using them would make the Kaiyumi (or whoever) pay you special attention, logically speaking.
But that's easily fixable by taking the appropriate Aspects, which I did. Yes, I need to Create Advantage first, but that's logical.
Heh, I think it's time for a real Naramel. Or maybe the Kayumi. There are 5 PCs, so I've got a choice.

Palladium's alignment system

I've recently noticed a brief outlook of Palladium's "alignment" system.

Unlike D&D, Palladium has no Neutral Alignment. Here are the available Alignments and BRIEF descriptions of them.


GOOD ALIGNMENTS: Principled & Scrupulous

Principled:
1. Always keep word
2. Avoids lies
3. Never kill OR attack unarmed foe
4. Never harm an innocent
5. Never torture
6. Never Kill for pleasure
7. Always help others
8. Works well with others
9. Respects authority, laws, self-dicipline and honor
10. Never betray a friend
11. Never break the law UNLESS conditions are desperate.

Scrupulous:
1. Keep word to any other GOOD person
2. Lie only to people of selfish or evil alignments
3. Never kill OR attack unarmed foe
4. Never harm an innocent
5. Never torture for pleasure, may use muscle to extract info. from criminals or evil people
6. Never Kill for pleasure, will always attempt to bring villains to justice alive even if evil
7. Always help others
8. Attempt to work within the Law whenever possible
9. Bends and occasionally break Laws when necessary.
10. Distrust Authority
11. Work with groups, but dislikes confining laws and Bureacracy (red tape)

SELFISH ALIGNMENTS: Unprincipled & Anarchist

Unprincipled
1. High regard for life and freedom
2. Keep word of honor
3. Lie & cheat if necesary (especially to Anarchists or evil persons)
4. Will not kill an unarmed foe (but will take advantage of one)
5. Help those in need
6. Not use torture unless absolutely necessary
7. Work with a group, especially if profitable
8. Never harm an innocent
9. Never kill for pleasure
10. Dislikes authority
11. Never betray a friend

Anarchist
1. May keep word
2. Lie & Cheat if he feels necessary
3. Not likely to kill an unarmed foe, but will certainly knockout, attack, or beat up one
4. Never kill an innocent, but may harm or kidnap
5. Not likely to help someone without ulterior motive
6. Seldom kill for pleasure
7. Use torture to extract info but not likely for pleasure
8. Doesn't work well in groups he will do as he d**n well pleases
9. Have little respect for self-discipline or authority
10. May betray a friend


EVIL ALIGNMENTS: Miscreant, Aberrant & Diabolic

Miscreant
1. Not necessarily keep his word to anyone
2. Lie & Cheat anyone
3. Most definitely attack an unarmed foe, they are the best kind
4. Use or Harm an innocent
5. Use torture for extracting info. and pleasure
6. May kill for sheer pleasure
7. Feels no compulsion to help without somekind of tangible reward
8. Work with others if it will help him attain personal goals
9. Kill an unarmed foe as readily as he would a potential threat or competitor
10. Has no deference to laws or authority, but will work within them if he must
11. Will betray a friend if it serves his needs.

Aberrant
1. Always keeps his word of honor
2. Lie & cheat those not worthy of his respect
3. May or may not kill an unarmed foe
4. Not kill an innocent particularly a child but will harm or kidnap
5. Never kill for pleasure
6. Not resort to inhumane treatment of prisoners, nut torture, although distasteful, is necessary means of extracting info.
7. Never torture for pleasure
8. May or may not help someone in need
9. work with others to attain his goals
10. Respect honor and self-discipline
11. Never betray a friend

Diabolic
1. Rarely keeps word
2. Lie and cheat anyone
3. Most certainly attack or kill an unarmed foe
4. Use, harm and kill an innocent without a second thought for any reason
5. Use torture for pleasure and info.
6. Kill for pleasure
7. Likely to help someone only to kill or rob them
8. Not work well with groups. Consistently disregards orders to do as he pleases
9. Despise honor, authority, and self-discipline
10. Associate mostly with other evil alignments
11. Betray friends at anytime.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Kevin S. feels like Anarchists are a worse choice to associate with than Aberrant people. (Also, "nut torture" is totally the best type ever. It should be "but torture". And with one "t", before you ask!)
Source is here: http://gelvgoldenaxe.proboards.com/thread/23