This month, I'd like to talk about charity and good deeds in the context of gaming. This is a subject that I'm very familiar with, due to the fact that I've been playing an Exalted neutral good healing-centric spirit shaman for the past two and a half to three years. Even when I'm not playing that extreme goodie-goodie, I'm usually the moral compass of the group, to the point where most people don't even believe that I'm capable of playing evil. It's inherent to the epic nature of most fantasy games to have the struggle between good and evil as a central point. Even if it's not the focus of your particular campaign, the game system or world probably has some such thing built in. D&D is a definite example of this, with its alignment system, and alignment-based spells and abilities such as Detect Evil, Smite Evil, Protection From YourAlignmentHere, etc. However, I'm not here to talk about the physical battle between good and evil. I'd like to instead focus on the little things, the things you do when you're not in combat. Some GMs may rule that to maintain a good alignment, you need only to avoid doing evil acts, and to kill evil creatures. While sometimes that can be enough, I feel that a truly good person would seek out good deeds to do, and that's where roleplaying comes in. If you play in a campaign that is based solely around dungeon crawling and combat, you don't need to worry so much, but I don't play that sort of game or write that sort of column. Under normal circumstances, I tend to be the sort of player whose good-intentioned characters buy every sob story they hear and go off on every side quest available, to help the poor downtrodden peasants or whatnot. When I started playing my spirit shaman, however, I had to dial it up a notch. I'd taken a vow of poverty, which required that I take an equal share of the loot and then spend it all on charitable acts at the first available opportunity. At low levels, it wasn't too hard to do this. Our GM isn't very generous with the loot, and our group is quite large, so the treasure would be split up into rather manageable chunks. We'd get to town, and I'd go find an orphanage and give them a ton of money, or I'd donate it all to the church of a fallen comrade, or I'd buy a lot of food and feed the town's hungry. Once my level reached the double-digits, though, it got more difficult. We had more loot, and we kept going back to the same towns, and there was no one left for me to help. When this happens in your game, it's time for the GM and the player to get creative. As a GM, when there are goodie-goodie characters in your party, you can add a nice extra dimension to your game by having a few ideas of good deeds they can do in each town. Judge how good that paladin really is by seeing if she's willing to stop and help a peasant on the way to the armor shop. Think about what problems a town might have, from homeless people to orphans to monsters attacking the farmers and damaging the crops. As a player, it's your job to actively seek out good deeds, and if your GM doesn't provide the opportunity, make something up. When I reached high levels, my character got her lover to help her found a charity in the town they most often visited. The charity was set up to do philanthropic deeds while we were off adventuring, funded by the money we'd drop off whenever we were in town. In another town, we arranged for all the children from an orphanage to be trained in various careers by members of temples around the city. These are the sort of deeds which can do a large amount of good for a large amount of people, and have a lasting impact on the world. As a GM, it's your job to throw a monkey wrench into the works from time to time. The children who are trained by the temples were originally supposed to get a brand-new, rebuilt orphanage. The local crime syndicate didn't like that, and kept the construction crews from doing their work. We tried a few things, but in the end, we had to use subterfuge. Now, in recent days, I've heard rumors that the crime syndicates are using one or both of my charities as a way to get skilled laborers. Great. Of course, there are other ways to give players a little grief for being too good. In one town, people mobbed our inn trying to get me to come out and heal them when there was a plague, and I just couldn't heal everyone. In the main town that we visit, the entire group is hailed as heroes, and every time we return, our inn is surrounded by people begging for our help. This annoys the innkeeper, and to be honest, most of the group. No one wants to be thronged by peasants when they're trying to go to the library for some much-needed research. As a player, you'll also want to try to drag your companions along for your good deeds, even the neutral and evil ones. You may not be able to convince them just on the merit of doing the right thing. I've found that hints about rewards work well, and one time I even managed to recruit most of the chaotic group members by telling them that we'd be sticking it to the strict lawful church that ruled over the town with an iron fist. Those were good times. If, however, you're the only one really interested in good deeds, it's important to not get too annoying about it. Don't derail the game and detract from everyone else's fun. Just ask the GM if there's anything that needs done, and give a brief description of how you do it. As much as I encourage roleplay, you don't have to act out the entire conversation with the starving farmer. I hope this serves as a good springboard for coming up with your own creative ways to expand on your good alignment, no matter what game you play. Until next month, happy gaming.

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Copyright © 2008 By AJ Reardon E-mail AJ at: ErtheFae@aol.com Visit AJ at: www.erthefae.com