[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Adam Wiggins]

[Vadim Tkachenko:]
> Usual alignment values in most of theMUDs and back in D&D are located in
> two planes - one from good to evil, and the other from lawful to
> chaotic. I've tried to put some sense on both

Ick. :)

>, and now I have a question.
> 
> OK, I can see the meaning of G-E plane - it's obvious that good entities
> can' use the evil ones without a penalty and vice versa, so it makes a
> sense.

Heh.  I guess you missed the long thread about alignments; most people
couldn't figure any good way to fit absolute good and evil into a mud at all.

> But, what other application of L-C plane except for paladines
> which have to be LG to be paladines at all? Even if I extend this
> requirement to, say, explicitly requiring some kind of L-C alignment to
> be able to do something, it seems artificial enough to wonder if there's
> anything wrong.

You have to keep in mind that these two alignment planes were designed as
a guideline for how you were supposed to play your character, *not* as a
reflection of how your character has behaved recently.  Lawful and chaotic
make a lot more sense to me as far as personality application.  A lawful
character is predictable, a chaotic character is not.  Naturally there's
more to it than this, but these two values were meant as a way to define
some of the aspects of your character's personality, and didn't change
unless the DM thought you weren't playing your character the way you
defined it.
Could this work in a mud without admin intervention?  I doubt it.  Even
*with* admins keeping an eye on things, judging a character's true motivation
is frequently as difficult as it is in real life.

> If I modify the definition and say that L means 'entity which follows
> some sort of a code', it becomes more understandable, but the problem
> here is that it's difficult to strictly determine 'the Code' from
> implementation point of view - well, I can say that 'doing _this_ action
> to _this_ object breaks _this_ code, but it's not elegant, I believe.

I think the real question is why you need to track a character's
motivations.  The only possible use that I can see is alignments with
particular factions - the example from the recent thread was the Empire
vs the Rebels in Star Wars - in which case your actions would be judged
by members of that faction, and if they were deemed out of line, you'd
be reprimanded or kicked out.  However, this is far more straightforward
than some sort of nebulous alignment rating, assuming the faction has
clearly defined goals and attitudes.
If you do desire a typical fantasy good vs evil struggle for your mud,
I suggest the deity trick.  Set up a god or gods who advocate selflessness
and justice, and other god or gods that advocate self-gain and rule
of the strongest.