[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Travis Casey]

On Tuesday, April 18, 2000, Charles wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, Richard Ross wrote:

>>Instead, I came up with a scaled alignment system.  The basic premise is
>>that if you're alignment is down there with Lucifer it's gonna take a lot
>>more than a few slain goblins to lift you up to St. Peter's level.  Then I
>>hit a problem.  Is the reverse necessarily true?  If you're good, doesn't
>>committing an evil act hit you harder?  Slaying a newborn child may be the
>>evil guy's normal pasttime (none or a slight alignment shift) but if the
>>good guy does it he can expect his alignment to plummet.  This basically
>>results in a world where it's easier to be evil than good, although it's
>>hard to get to the extremes of either (and hard to stay really good).

> Well, if you think about it you can draw a few parallels to reality.  For
> instace, any sort of relationship, it's MUCH easier to get on someone's bad
> side by doing something they don't appreciate, like harming them or
> something they value, than to get on their good side.  For instance, if
> you're with a friend and you say something truely insulting then it will
> most likely take you more than one really nice comment to get out of the
> doghouse, so to speak.

Extending the parallel, though, there's also a sense of history in a
relationship.  For example, if Dale, who's been my best friend for
about 15 years, says something insulting to me, chances are that I'll
think that either I misinterpreted what he said, or that he's having a
very bad day and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time.

To incorporate this idea into an alignment system, you could keep
track not of a single number indicating, say, good/evil, but of two
numbers -- a total of the "good things done" and the "evil things
done".  A character's alignment could then be determined by the ratio
between these.

This gives a level of inertia to alignment based on history -- Buffy
and Biff may both have a 2:1 ratio of "good" to "evil", and therefore
have the same "alignment value", but Buffy's might actually be
2000:1000 while Biff's is 20:10.  If Buffy or Biff started acting
consistently evil, Biff's alignment would change a lot faster.

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.

Another possibility would be to keep two totals -- say, one that is
adjusted as above on a weekly basis and one that's adjusted to a lower
total on a more regular basis.  The second total would be more
sensitive to sudden changes in alignment.  One possible use of this
would be for divine warnings and such ("Biff, you have been a good and
faithful servant, but you are veering from the True Path...").
Another could be to help make a system where it's easier to go one way
than the other -- for example, your alignment could be determined by
whichever ratio is more "evil", making it easier to fall from grace
than to redeem yourself.

(I'm using good and evil as examples here, but there's no reason why
this scheme couldn't be used with other values, or even in a multi-way
alignment system.)

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)





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