[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Travis Nixon]

Travis Casey wrote:
>You could start off new characters by giving them a certain "seed
>level" -- i.e., give everyone X alignment points, which are
>distributed according to what alignment they chose to start with.
>This prevents the problem of someone logging on, doing one good act,
>and suddenly having a 100% "good" alignment.
>
>On the other end, you may run into a problem with characters having
>too much alignment inertia -- someone who's been consistently good for
>years might be able to act completely evil for several days, but still
>be counted as "good".  One way around this would be to periodically
>adjust the alignment totals -- e.g., chop everyone down to a total of
>X points while keeping their ratio as close to what it was before as
>possible.


Thinking purely about the good vs evil issue, there are really two lines of
thought that come to mind.  One is that it is easier to be evil than to be
good, but I'm not entirely sure this is true.  I would have to say that it
is definately easier to be indifferent than either good or evil.  Which
brings up another line of thought: staying on course is more difficult than
straying.

This second concept rings more true in my mind, as extremes in just about
anything in life are hard to come by, and easy to lose.  Again, based on a
scale of good to evil (which I'm not entirely sure even exists, but that's
another discussion altogether), somebody trying to be "good" will find
themselves severely hampered by even a small number of evil acts, while
somebody trying to be "evil" would find themselves equally hampered by good
acts.  If the evil sorceror saves somebody's life with no expectation of
personal gain, how evil can he truly be. :)

Of course, in any sort of alignment system, I think you'll run into problems
of how to allocate "alignment points".  Not every act is what it seems, and
the ability to discern the motives of an act (which, in my opinion, matter
more than the act itself, though I'm sure many would disagree) would
require...er, well, would require you to really be a god.  Even with a very
simple system like assigning good and evil alignments to creatures has
problems.




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