This alternate alignment system is designed to do the following:

- Allow more organic and diverse character growth

- Promote greater character depth

- Increase roleplaying opportunities

- Promote thinking in-character

How this alternate alignment system works:

Advances purchased with XP no longer count towards advancement, and the only way to become aligned is through role-playing. Each player gains a pool of god points, one for each god. At the end of each session players earn a number of god points based on their actions during the session, with each point assigned by the GM to the appropriate god pool. For example, if one of the characters went berserk and massacred a squad of imperial guard, he would probably receive 1-2 Khorne points, depending on how easy it was. The more extreme the behaviour, the more points are received, from one point for minor actions up to five points for extremely rare actions on an epic scale.

Take another example: seducing a single follower of another Chaos god to Slaanesh might warrant a character gaining one Slaanesh point, whereas seducing an entire world would probably warrant 3-5 points, depending on the population of the planet and how difficult it was to corrupt. Most point gains will probably fall into the lower ranges, from 1-3. Characters can gain a number of points in multiple god pools as their behaviour warrants.

Once you gain a point, place it in the point pool of the associated god. Every five points in a pool converts into an advance towards alignment. What happens next is essentially the same as in the BC rulebook: once you cross a Corruption threshold, check your alignment advances. If you have five more in one god pool than any other, you become aligned to that god. If you are aligned and have twenty advances in a single god pool, you gain an associated Mark of Chaos.

Basically, at the end of the session the players and GM should discuss and reflect on the game, scrutinizing their actions to see what resonates with each god. For an added layer of depth character motivations can be discussed as well, opening a window into each character's psychological transformation. For example, a character might kill an enemy in close combat, which would seem to resonate with Khorne - but what if he did in to fuel his own narcissism? Or, what if he did it because a witch told him that that person's grandchild would one day pose a threat to his black crusade? This opens the door to greater nuance and gives the gods more complexity and scope.

Escalation: as you gain more advances and become aligned it becomes more difficult to impress your patron. If a character becomes aligned, minor actions (those that would grant only one god point) no longer grant points and more advanced actions net -1 point. Essentially, every thing shifts along the scale. For example, if an unaligned character bursts into a rage and slaughters an unco-operative NPC, he would probably gain 1 Khorne point. For a character aligned to Khorne this is pretty standard behaviour, and will not influence his movement along the scale. Whereas an unaligned character might gain 3 Tzeentch points for tricking squads of enemy soldiers into wiping each other out with friendly fire, a character aligned to Tzeentch is so steeped in treachery that this becomes more mundane, granting only 2 points.

Advanced Archetypes that begin play aligned start with 5 advances already and 0 in the other god pools.

Benefits of this system: this system allows for more organic character growth. It is recommended that players ignore this entire mechanic as much as possible during play and just roleplay their characters to the best of their abilities. This will have some interesting results as players may find that they start to become aligned to a god they may not have considered as a patron. As a character’s alignment advances mount up his own vices and tendencies lead him steadily towards embracing one of the four Chaos powers or remaining unaligned. This system can take your character into unexpected places and provides far more organic character development than the system offered in the core. It also allows for in-depth discussions of character motivations, creating a richer and deeper role-playing experience.

Drawbacks of this system: with bad roleplayers this system could obviously become a nightmare, with players relentlessly meta-gaming to gain more advances. Obviously you should not use this system if you don’t think it would suit your play style. This system creates more work for the GM as well, so that should also be considered.

How this system works with advances:

You could easily use this system with the rules for alignment and advances in the core, granting cost increases and breaks based on the system provided. We decided that a more slimmed-down list of aligned Characteristics, Skills and Talents made more sense, both allowing for a more diverse range of characters and putting the breaks on some of the more exploitative build options. Here is our revised chart:

Khorne

Attribute: Strength
Talents:
Battle Rage 2
Berserk Charge 1
Blood God’s Contempt 3
Frenzy 1
Furious Assault 2
Hatred 1

Tzeentch

Attribute: Intelligence
Talents:
Child of the Warp 2
Favoured by the Warp 3
Meditation 1
Warp Conduit 2
Warp Lock 3

Warp Sense 1

Slaanesh

Attribute: Fellowship
Talents:
Addictrix 3 (ToE)
Dark Oratory 2 (ToE)
Jaded 1
Excessive Wealth 1
Implied Threat 2(ToE)
Radiant Presence 1

Nurgle
Attribute: Toughness
Talents:
Corpus Conversion 2
Die Hard 1
Hardy 2
Iron Jaw 1
Resistance 1
True Grit 3

This list reflects what really seem to be archetypal skills and abilities associated with the four gods. Everything else is Unaligned. Because this means that most things are more expensive, we recommend giving out more XP to balance this.

Example Actions that would provide god points:

Slaanesh

General guidelines: reward narcissism, vanity, hedonism, and seduction
- Defeat an enemy to demonstrate your own superiority (cannot be a close victory)
- Demonstrate your superiority over another in a competitive arena
- Sacrifice something in the overwhelming pursuit of pleasure
- Achieve mastery in an area of skill

Nurgle

General guidelines: reward survival, humour, promoting entropy and decay
- Survive a hideous injury
- Spread some form of pestilence
- Laugh in the face of certain doom

Tzeentch

General guidelines: reward cunning, deceit, long-term planning, acquiring knowledge
- Defeat or eliminate someone to serve a plot or scheme
- Lie effectively about something important
- Acquire forbidden knowledge related to Tzeentch

Khorne

General guidelines: reward aggression, violence, straightforward action
- Kill or maim for the sake of violence itself
- Kill or maim after giving in to rage
- Start a war or conflict
- Precipitate violent actions in others
- Strike down an ally in fury (more points)
- Kill or defeat a psyker through strength of arms

This is a mere sample and the possibilities are endless.

I should have posted this in the first entry, but here is an example from play:

The characters, Chaos Space Marines, are hired to destroy a large gang. They decide to destroy the gang from within, turning its members against the leadership of the gang. Because they later set this plan in motion, they each get 2 Tzeentch points at the end.

In the process of subverting the gang, one character uses a display of charm to win over many of the gang members, and because this is a large organization he gains 2 Slaanesh points at the end. Another character uses deception to sow dissent within the gang, but only deceives a small number of gang members, for 1 Tzeentch point at the end of the game.

The characters' efforts are successful, and the gang is thrown into chaos and internal conflict. At this stage though the characters get bored with how slow it is taking the gang's leadership to be destroyed, so they storm the enemy base and massacre their way to the gang leader, killing him. Because they discard subtlety and take a violent and direct approach, they gain 2 Khorne points later. But one of the characters used pyschic powers exclusively to kill, which are despised by Khorne, and so earned 1 Tzeentch point instead for unleashing the horrors of the warp on a grand scale.

As you can see, group actions and decisions become important, and characters can find their alignment shifting as they join in with the plans of their allies.

I'm not a big fan of systems that put key elements of a PC's personality under GM control.

I get that the current system has its issues (and I'd agree that it makes some non-standard builds a little sub-optimal), but I'm sort of inclined to suggest that if you're going to ditch the Alignment system it might make sense to make Alignment a pure roleplaying choice - just let a player declare their Alignment to be whatever they want it to be.