[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, Richard Ross wrote:
> Should I go ahead with this system and risk having a mud full of evil c=
haracters (despite the
> player's best efforts), or is there a solution? =20

I'll assume your working in some kind of fantasy setting.

Now many things can be said of alignment, and many would suggest to=20
entirely do away with it, or let it up to the player to express it in
actions and roleplay.

Another way is to fix the characters alignment at what the player=20
choose upon creation.

If you are at all able to detect if the character is doing deeds=20
that is 'outside' her alignment you would count them and give=20
apropriate warnings, and if they kept 'straying from the path'=20
you give them some serious penalties to their comming actions,=20
until they 'have changed alignment' or 'have refound the path'.=20

Basing alignment on hack and slash only is very limited, it should=20
more be based on choices made in quests. If youre running a=20
hack'n'slash mud, the easy way is making it very hard to be good.=20
Of course here game balance should award good characters with access=20
to unique good resources. (holy avengers, good artefacts, special=20
spells .. whatever). If the game has a limited number of resources=20
for good and evil, being among the few good then becomes desirable,=20
since you will be less sharing the resources.

If you choose basing a dynamic good/evil scale on slayings only,=20
remember to make it so slaying goblins only take you so far on your=20
road to sainthood.

Also remember that evil begets evil, and slaying evil creatures
is not as good a deed as you'd think.=20

Example: Slaying a deamon to eat its heart and gets its dark powers.
 .... not a 'good' deed.

In short managing alignment through the game is in my oppinion difficult.
Some actions may be obvious (like slaying an angel) but most actions may
be hard to judge automatically (like a player leaving some food that=20
was poisoned, then found by a child, that dies eating it .. did she=20
do it on purpose?). In the pen-and-paper games where this originates from
the call for weather a character is acting outside her aligment is done
by the GM, this could also be a way to do it, relying on active online=20
game masters to make the call (requires lots of resources though).

Hans Henrik St=E6rfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk=
      |
address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425   =
  __|
 Dybendalsvej 74 2. th, | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological =
    |
 2720 Vanl=F8se, Danmark. |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of D=
enmark|




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