[MUD-Dev] Guilds &

[Stephen Zepp]

[snip a lot]
>I know that Alignment is out of favor in many parts, but in my game this
>really helped actual role-playing.  Among other things, if you wanted to
>play an evil character, you had to do evil things -- starting to do good
>things would make your Alignment creep upward.  This becomes very cool
>when, for example, you have a Paladin-like character whose ability to use
>magic depends on his Alignment; one major misstep and his Alignment can
>drop too low for him to do Great Things (he's no longer "righteous"
>enough).  I use a weighted system too, so that doing things far from your
>current value affect you more than things near your current value.  This
>has the interesting side-effect of making it increasingly difficult to
>approach either end of the scale -- to be *really* good or *really* evil,
>you have to spend a huge amount of time and energy doing
>wondrous/diabolical things.  
>
>Anyway, for heroic/fantasy games, I think some form of reputation, honor,
>or noteriety is worth implementing.  For other genres it's probably not
>appropriate.
>

I'm gonna step right on my NDA with Bethesda Softworks here, but I think
it's something generic enough that they can't enforce it :))  I worked with
the designers of TES: Arena and Daggerfall for several months, and the main
reputation based interaction system comes from a design of mine that I'm
currently using in Lords of the Shadow.  Basically, you have seperate
reputations with different individuals, groups, and political "entities",
all interactive, and based on your interactions with those divisions.  If
you do favors for the Healer's Guild, your reputation with the Society of
Paladin's goes up, due to their diplomatic alliance with the Healers, but
the Sorcerors of Destruction will lose faith in you, considering you a
pansy.  Medium level reputations don't really mean much, but high end ones
on either side of the spectrum cause interesting little side effects in
both interaction and rp...the Paladin's may come accross you with a task to
go rescue a princess becuase they've heard of your valor and
trustworthiness, while the Assassin's guild may just put you on their
"Targets of Opportunity" list.  It's a relatively simple system with almost
limitless potential, and fun to boot!

Zoran