"cognitive alignment"

[hengest]

I like Von 's system described here, and I've been worrying about something cousin to it but undeveloped.  A kind of "cognitive alignment".  

Law and Chaos describe your relationship to your home culture and primary relationships: do you unconsciously expect system (expect things to make sense) or are you desperately grasping at straws?

The other axis is Likeness and Partness (i.e. metaphor and metonym...sort of). Likeness people tend to think "sword...dagger, mace, knife" (things like a sword) Partness people think "sword...sheath, mail, helmet, rations, pack, friends" (things that are 'associates' of a sword).

Possibilities

• Law - Likeness: from a village untouched by war and a stable family unit, imposes a picture of reasonable authority onto any new situation, immediately understanding it as a different "version" of what is already known.  Gang leaders, party leaders.
• Law - Partness: imposes a picture of reasonable authority onto any new situation, and sees all such situations as pieces of a greater authority.  Scholastic clerics may be of this type.
• Chaos - Likeness: unstable attachments to people and places, which does not necessarily mean a wanderer -- clingy, grasping, acquisitive.  May take comfort in rhyming games, also relationships and activities that replicate disturbing experiences from the past.  Many classic villains.
• Chaos - Partness: unstable attachments, may tend to crackpot theories, seeing each item as a pointer to a greater whole.  

Would any players want to think about this?  Likely not.  Maybe more on the world-building side as a tool for thinking about leaders and such while developing the recent history of an area.  

[Von]

My question about alignment systems is always "what bearing do you want this to have on play?"

I have never found alignment more relevant than when it governed who can be turned and by what in OD&D and never less relevant than in later editions of the game when it's just a couple of words on a sheet and nine out of ten PCs act Chaotically Neutral anyway.

So: nice idea, but what concrete game effect will it have?

[hengest]

Probably none for practical purposes. I was just thinking about it a lot, so I posted it. Maybe, as I said, just a private organizational tool. Not at the same level as classic alignment with turning and so on.