[MUD-Dev] Re: evil - good realism

[Orion Henry]

"Wilburn, E.J." wrote:

> First I'd say restricting good players from killing good is not realistic.
> You're assuming that a player, once good, is always good.  Good people
> should be able to attack/harm good people it would just cause them to swing
> towards the Evil side. (However quickly, maybe one murder would instantly
> make them evil).  Also, evil killing evil from everything I've ever read is
> a fairly common occurence.  There is no honor amoung thieves.  I suppose if
> you changed it from Good vs. Evil to Human vs. Dwarf that would be
> different.

This is one of the failings of Good/Evil systems.  All of us being
raised with the Good/Evil Movie mentality think ... well if a good
person murders a good person they become evil and if an evil 
person murders an evil person... well... nothing happens to them...
and then evil kind of becomes the sink for indiscriminate killers.

I feel that a better way to do something like this is to have two
totally different things being mapped.  How much the forces of 
Good like you and how much the forces of Evil like you.

Thus you can have.

Good likes you : not too hard.
Evil likes you : not too hard.
Both like you : very very hard.
Both hate you : all too easy.

Thus if someone becomes a traitor to their side they don't just
join the other side. They become an enemy to their side and 
thus an outcast.  Done right... being an outcast should 
be very very difficult to play.  If someone wants to switch sides
painlessly they should spend a lot of time buttering up to the
enemy so when they finally betray their comrades they have some
allies to run to.

Imagine playing an outcast where you had neither the resources
of good or evil to back you up and your only potential help is 
to hire your skills out to the highest bidder ( be it good or 
evil ) or to band with other outcasts who have no incentive 
whatsoever to not betray you.  

Also, with this scheme you don't have to limit yourself to 
good and evil.  You could have many different sides to
be aligned with or hated by and not even bring good and evil
into it... Everything is just political affiliation.

> As for !GOOD and !EVIL flags on items generally you would want to limit the
> use of those to special equipment.  A Great Sword (be it from a Templar,
> Paladin, Dark Knight or what-have-you) is a great sword.  If it has no magic
> generally there would be no alignment.  A soul stealer sword would probably
> be !GOOD though and a Holy Great Sword would probalby be !EVIL.  When
> designing equipment try to think to yourself, "Does this flag make sense?
> Why _couldn't_ a good/evil player use this?".

In the good vs. evil setting I see the abundance of good/evil only
items as a counter balance to one side dominating.  If there
are 10 Holy artifacts and 10 Unholy artifacts and 100 evil players
and 5 good players... then 1 in 10 evil people will have an artifact 
and each good person should have two... This sort of thing could
try to offer some kind of balance ( albeit small ) when one side 
outnumbers the other.

	-Orion Henry