Alignment chart templates
An alignment chart template is the grid with the arguing left in: the rows and columns are named, the cells are empty, and where everything belongs is the part you decide. Start from the blank alignment chart below, or open a template somebody has published and fill it with your own pictures before publishing your version.
Start from a blank alignment chart
Start with an empty alignment chart and fill it in yourself, or pick one of the templates below and change it.
Templates from the community
Browse alignment chartsNo alignment chart templates published yet
Publish one as a template and it appears here. Anyone can then open it, change it and publish their own version.
What an alignment chart template is
An alignment chart is a grid where each row and each column stands for a scale, so every cell is the meeting point of two ideas. The template is everything except the cells: somebody names the axes, publishes it, and everybody else argues about what belongs where.
The version most people mean comes from tabletop roleplaying, with lawful, neutral and chaotic down one side and good, neutral and evil across the other, giving nine positions. A blank chart here opens at three rows by three columns with the labels waiting to be typed, so you can put those nine words in or invent axes of your own in the same amount of time.
Grid sizes
Three sizes cover nearly everything people make, and each has a page of its own with the editor set up for it.
The size is not a decision you are locked into. Rows and columns are added and removed while you work, anywhere from two a side up to a hundred, and resizing keeps what is already in the cells.
- 2x2 alignment chart: four cells, one line per corner, good for a single joke.
- 5x5 alignment chart: twenty five cells, room for a whole cast or a whole menu.
- 3x3 alignment chart: nine cells, the shape almost every alignment chart uses.
How to use a template
Opening a template hands you your own copy. The author keeps theirs, so there is nothing to break and nothing to ask permission for.
- Open the template. It loads in the editor as a copy that belongs to you.
- Read the axis labels first: they are the argument, and they decide whether a cell is obvious or contentious.
- Fill the cells with pictures from your device, a line of text, or both. Cells can also be left hidden so readers guess before you reveal them.
- Download the PNG, or publish it to get a page with its own link that other people can open and remix in turn.
Ideas that work as templates
A chart you make for your own group and a template a stranger can use are different things. The template has to survive being handed to somebody who was not in the conversation, which rules out most inside jokes and anything that needs a paragraph of explanation.
The subjects that hold up are the ones where the reader already knows every option and only the placement is in doubt: a cast of characters everybody has met, a menu everybody has ordered from, a set of tools everybody has used, the ways people behave in a game or a group chat. Axes that are opinions rather than facts do the rest of the work, because a factual axis has a correct answer and nobody argues with those.
If you have an idea and no time to fill it in, publishing the empty grid with the axes named is a complete template on its own. Naming the two axes well is most of the work.
- Alignment chart maker: the tool itself, and everything a cell can hold.
- Community alignment charts: finished grids people have published, templates or not.
Common questions
What is a blank alignment chart?
A grid with the cells empty and the axis labels waiting to be typed. The blank alignment chart at the top of this page opens one at three rows by three columns, which is the size the format is usually drawn in.
Do I have to use lawful good to chaotic evil?
No. Those nine words are a convention borrowed from tabletop games, not a rule the editor enforces. Every row and column label is ordinary text, so cheap to expensive, useful to useless or early to late work exactly as well.
Can I change the size of a template after I open it?
Yes. Rows and columns can be added or removed while you work, from two a side up to a hundred, and what you have already filled in stays where it is. A row has to be empty before it can be removed, so nothing disappears by accident.
Can I put my own pictures in the cells?
Yes. A cell takes an uploaded image, a line of text, or an image with a description under it, and image cells and text cells can sit in the same chart.
Does using a template change the original?
No. You get your own copy the moment you open it. The author keeps their version, and anything you publish afterwards is a separate page.
Where do the templates on this page come from?
From people using the site. Anyone who picks "Publish as template" when they publish appears here. None of it is stock content brought in from somewhere else.
How do I publish a template for other people?
Name the axes, leave the cells empty or fill in only the ones that set the tone, then choose "Publish as template" in the publish dialog. It gets its own page, shows up here, and anyone who opens it starts from your grid.
Make an alignment chart of your own
Every template here started as somebody's own alignment chart. Open the alignment chart maker to make one from scratch.