[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Richard Woolcock]

Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> 
> Here is a set of guidelines that have a different take on alignment.
> These were passed out at an gaming event I attended to be used as a
> guideline for pegging your characters alignment. Of particular
> interest to myself were the lines of graduation from good to selfish
> to evil. As with anything, your mileage can and will vary. :)
> [aligmnment types snipped]

The alignment system you stated comes from Palladium, and is in my
opinion one of the 'better' systems.  However I still feel that
alignments are only there for inexperienced roleplayers to use to
help them 'play their character'.  However having said that, I 
believe that in a mud the situation is different, particularly
those muds which don't focus so much on the roleplaying aspect.

I am working on an alignment system in keeping with the WoD theme,
which is basically 'humanity'.  There will be a number of different
sins, each with a specific level, for example:

Level 90 sin: Accidental infliction of injury (not in self defence)
Level 80 sin: Purposeful infliction of injury (not in self defence)
.
.
.
Level 10 sin: Premeditated murder.
Level  0 sin: Only the most heinous and dementated acts (torture,
              diablerie, etc).

Players will start with a humanity of 80, which can be raised with
difficulty, or lowered if you commit a sin with a lower sin rating
than your current humanity.

Thus as you commit more and more sins, your humanity gets lower and
lower - to a point.  If you go around murdering people, you'll be 
able to get as low as 10 in your humanity, but only through really
evil acts will you be able to get lower.

Thus a thief who goes around stealing from everyone might have a
humanity of about 50 (assuming stealing was a level 50 sin).  If
that thief stopped stealing, his/her humanity would slowly begin
to go back up (I might set a limit of never letting your humanity
go more than 30 or so above the lowest humanity you have ever had).

KaVir.