One of my favorite nitpicks about 4th edition was the weird simplification of the alignment system. Instead of a two axis system of law vs. chaos, good vs. evil that allowed for nine alignments, they reduced the total to five: good, evil, lawful good, chaotic evil, neutral. I've gone through thoughts about this. Does that mean that evil is inherently lawful or inherently chaotic? Is this supposed to be on a single scale? Regardless of whatever they were thinking when they made that choice, I hated it.
Now, this isn't my love song to the alignment system. I think it's far too limited a system and one that is far too reified within the world. To quote Barley Stonemug when he was accused by a Paladin of being evil "What does that even mean?" No, while I've made my peace with the alignment system as a heuristic system that can guide character choices, this entry is about the inclusion of personality.
D&D5 adds a number of specific personality aspects to the game. Every character has a number of specific characteristics tied to who they are. Personality traits are behavioral quirks the character might have. "And there was Jimmy Two Times, who got that nickname because he said everything twice." Ideals are higher or lower purposes, a refinement of the alignment system that says more specifically what the character is out to achieve. "For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster...To be a gangster was to own the world." Bonds are ties a character has to individuals and organizations that drive them. " I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't." Flaws are things that get a character in trouble. "You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?"
Now, these aren't new to role playing. You've always had characters with personalities. But putting that on the character sheet, making space for it is new to D&D. And they've gone further than that. These personality aspects are tied to a new system, Inspiration! You can get inspiration for good role-playing, forwarding the story by playing out your character. Then later on, you can spend that inspiration to gain advantage on a roll. It's a sort of limited drama point system, but importantly, it's based on actually playing a character.
In my mind, this owes a lot to Dungeon World. One flippant way of expressing my interest in D&D5 is that it takes the parts of D&D that Pathfinder and Dungeon World improved and recombines them. Dungeon World spent a lot of energy on defining the role playing aspects of your character, including goals and bonds, and D&D5 seems to have taken that and run with it. Here's hoping it works. Of course, that's not the biggest thing they've done to add character to the game. Next time, I'll talk about backgrounds.
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