[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Vadim Tkachenko]

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Adam Wiggins wrote:

> 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.

Well, I couldn't find the thread in last two months - November folder
contains 194 unread messages, thread names don't tell anything about
that - can you please remind me the thread name?

> > 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.

Well, I think exactly the opposite - because of my ambiguent treatment
of RP

My model has the relative G-E alignment instead of usual absolute - to
be brief, 'alignment communities' which have different views one at
another - see the detailed description at the project pages (below). I
believe that this way it's much more realistic than an absolute
alignment.

>  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.

Exactly, this is why I decided to split the usual 'alignment' term into
'alignment' (which is plain G-E) and 'predictability' (L-C).

In connection to the discussion about the safe zones and guard summons,
can I tell that if there's a rule which says 'the violence in this area
will not be tolerated', and character tries to kill/abuse somebody else,
this character should be deemed more chaotic than it was before?

Also, I believe if the abovesaid is true (and recalling the idea about
'blaming' the character so next time the guards see him/her they  become
more and more convinced [s]he should be eliminated), it may also reflect
the guards' tendency to chase the chaotic characters as potential
troublemakers - they are [supposedly] proven to disobey the law in the
past.

> 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.

See, the worst problem for me is that instead of coding, I keep thinking
over and over and thus don't have a possibility to test it :-/

> I think the real question is why you need to track a character's
> motivations.

As said above, chaotic character is a potential troublemaker, and being
lawful is an IC requirement for some orders - notably, Paladine.

> 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.

See, I don't believe in admin intervention - because usually admins have
other problems, like work (how many MUD admins are full-time paid MUD
admins?), implementation, you name it. Thus, I'd like to minimize it and
eliminate any IC admin intervention.

> 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.

This can coexist with what I was talking about

--
Still alive and smile stays on,
Vadim Tkachenko <VadimT at 4CS.Com>
Gradient MUD project: http://206.139.13.23/~vt/gradient/
--
UNIX _is_ user friendly, he's just very picky about who his friends are
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