[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, David Bennett wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> Discworld uses a system much like you are describing.  It is much much
> harder to become extremely good than just good, and the reverse as well.
> So when you swing to one side or the other of neutral you do not tend to
> change much, unless you do something wildly inappropriate.  Alignment is
> still a pretty artificial system, after all isn't there some inherent evil
> value in killing anything?

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that alignment is a dumb thing to
have in a game. Organizing your players and possibly NPCs on the basis of
a one-dimensional scale sucks, I think. People aren't really "good" or
"evil" irl. I recall a quote from Treebeard the Ent in Lord of the Rings.
In response to either Merry or Pippin asking him whose 'side' he was  on
(they were implicitly assuming there are two sides, and they were using
the idea of a one-dimensional alignment scale to delineate what a side
is), Treebeard responded with something like, "Well now, I'm not
altogether on anyone's side, because no one is altogether on my side." 

--matt




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