Here's my submission for the randomness blog bandwagon.
Behold the four Alignments of Chaos!
Dice (Alignment of the polyhedra):
When you don't know what will happen next, risk it at the last possible moment to find out!
Your success depends only on the here and now, but your chances may change.
d4: The humble caltrop registers small, but significant quantities.
d6: The hero of dice, it bands with its duplicates to be rolled often and in common situations.
d8: The soldier of dice. Strong, capable, but overshadowed by its younger brother.
d10: The non-platonic outcast earned its place by being readable and the glue holding the d8 and d12.
d12: The mystic die is used for peculiar abilities and mostly for magic.
d20: The king (or drama queen) of dice, used for the most tragicomic narrative moments.
d100: Danger: use only for moments of maximum chaos (Kill Sector or Mothership, anyone?).
Tables (Alignment of the tablets of interpretation):
You already know what will happen, and you had no control over it, so let it be.
Your success depends only on the past, but who will rewrite the tablets of the prophecies?
Tables of all kinds!
Avoid the paradoxes at your peril. Doubles: mishap; triples: doom. Remember your GLOGlaws!
Here's an example table for attacking with magical swords (d12 + d4, roll before your turn):
2: Your blade protects you from harm.
3: Everyone who looks upon your sword heals half of their health.
4: Your next strike banishes your foe to the next realm but one.
5-7: You deal damage unerringly.
8: Your weapon screams out its terrifying true name.
9: Steel rings against steel in a burst of blinding light.
10: Your sword casts a spell!
11-13: Your sword attacks of its own accord, without you needing to hold it.
14: The blade reveals a prophecy concerning your foe.
15: Your sword heals you to full HP.
16: Your next attack is a killing blow.
Card decks (Alignment of the seers):
Your chaotic fate was sealed without your consent, but what happened before will eat at the present.
Your success was predestined, but you know that history does not repeat itself...until all that can happen comes to pass and the cycle of randomness rebirths.
Draw a card before you do anything. Use its numerical value for whatever you are doing.
When all the cards are exhausted, reshuffle the deck.
Jacks count as 0.
Queens add ten to all subsequent numbers until another queen is drawn (draw another card).
Kings count as 21.
Your temperament changes depending on the suit. (Another post, perhaps?)
Hearts: Sanguine.
Diamonds: Choleric.
Spades: Melancholic.
Clubs: Phlegmatic.
Marble bags (Alignment of mystery):
You take your own chances; who knows what you are capable of?
Your success is true but irretrievable. Will you bring back your chances at a price?
Spend 10 XP to add a marble to your bag:
White marbles grant success.
Black marbles make you fail but give you 20 XP back.
Green marbles are for magic.
Don't use red marbles unless you are travelling through the outer planes.
Transparent marbles are usually impossible to get.
If you have all the colours of marbles, you become a wizard.
Do NOT lose all your marbles!
Behold the four Alignments of Order!
Resources (Alignment of sacrifice):
Every memory of failure may be forgotten, spent to bring success into your hand.
Your success comes at the cost of having failed before, but you cannot succeed otherwise.
You can choose to fail at a task unwillingly; write down your failure.
Cross out a past failure to succeed at a task; there is no other way to succeed.
Each time you do this, you age one year.
Cycles (Alignment of the celestial spheres):
You inhabit the surety of alternation between hope and despair.
Your success comes after failure, and after failure, success again. What doom will you bring?
You alternate between complete success and absolute failure each day.
Your presence is a blinding light to those who can see the unseen. You will be noticed!
Consequences (Alignment of force):
Everything you do is balanced, but you cannot foresee all ends.
Your success is always mingled with failure. Which way will you tip the scales, and which ones?
The results of your actions do not depend on you.
Choose one:
You succeed, but someone you love suffers from it.
You fail, and someone you hate suffers with you.
(You might notice that this law is not symmetrical. Astrologists ponder the concept of entropy. Why doesn't failure make the person you hate benefit from it?)
Choices (Alignment of the golden path):
Sometimes there are many good possibilities; sometimes you are between a rock and a hard place.
Your success is what you decide upon, so look beyond the veil of the dilemma.
There is only ever one outcome of each of your actions, and you know each and every one of them.
The fates and the valkyries tremble in your presence.
Humans are neutral (Alignment of hidden fate).
These arkayne seecrets may be used for good or evil, or both, or neither.
Q: Ludos_Artifex, what did I just read?
A: This is a list of mechanics involving randomness (or lack thereof) that you can use in your game (intended for broad interpretation and application). Maybe a character is put under a spell of the 17th circle, changing their alignment to one of these, forcing them to use one of these mechanics. Maybe a super-rare creature is aligned to one of these and poses unique challenges due to how they interact with Fate. My idea is that they can more or less be real diegetically; maybe there are cults or something, idk.
Alignment is one of the coolest mechanics in roleplaying games. Change my mind. :-)
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