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Changes to alignment/ethos axes

 
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Clifton



Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 530

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:08 am    Post subject: Changes to alignment/ethos axes

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Lying is an ethos axis thing, not an alignment axis thing. That should not be hard to understand. It would be much more wrong for a lawful evil character to be lying all the time than it would for a chaotic good. From an RP standpoint, a chaotic good character wants to make the world a better place and he'll do it whenever the opportunity arises. When Duarte, a somewhat powerful killer and a Legion applicant, was helpless in front of a chaotic good character his life was basically forfeit.


I just read this. I really like the concept, but don't think I fully get it. Can I get more detail on how alignment/ethos has changed from Burzuk's system? TiA.
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Davairus
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Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 10344
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:11 am    Post subject:

The helpfiles were not changed afaik.
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Nycticora



Joined: 09 Feb 2013
Posts: 2277

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 2:36 am    Post subject:

I was referring to changes that were made in 2005ish such that over 80% of characters were chaotic and the "lawful" and "neutral" ethoses were almost completely eradicated. Clearly someone decided that our players were too stupid to handle roleplaying, so they took your toys away to prevent you from hurting yourselves.

It was stuff that you probably didn't even notice come back. Stuff like halflings being allowed to have any ethos (they were chaotic-only when I was immed), illusionists being allowed to have any ethos (they were also chaotic only), Knights and Legions being allowed to be lawful (Legion was chaotic only and Knight was no lawfuls allowed), thieves and ninjas being allowed to have any ethos (these were also chaotic only), allowing elf and drow bards to be good and evil, adding Orderly equipment to complement Wild equipment, etc. etc. if I looked up every change I could go on forever.

I almost flipped my shit when I found some of that stuff, it looked for all the world to me like someone had intentionally sabotaged the game to drive players away.
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Kato



Joined: 03 Nov 2013
Posts: 219

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:22 am    Post subject:

It's also problems with the alignments, not just ethos. People get really angry whenever a neutral PKs someone, even with a great RP reason. The problem is that the cookie cutter molds have been around for so long that people complain when others deviate from them
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Davairus
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Joined: 16 Jan 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:38 am    Post subject:

I've stated repeatedly on the forum that I consider the alignments to be the guidelines and I do not expect a character to always follow their chosen ethos/alignment perfectly. That is unreasonable. They are not cookie cutters. That statement has been false for the last 7 years. I expect people to trend reasonably close to their alignment most of the time, but that is all. Clearly, I have not been communicating this well enough. I dont know what else to do at this point. Maybe stick it in a helpfile and link people to it when they act like this is news. Really, I dunno.
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Kato



Joined: 03 Nov 2013
Posts: 219

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 11:34 am    Post subject:

I really don't think it's a problem with helpfiles or imm input, it's a problem with the game's culture. From what Nycticora said, it sounds like at one point the cookie-cutter good/neutral/evil RP frameworks were intended. Even if we don't want them anymore, they stick around because fitting a character to those old archetypes requires pretty much no effort or thought. And since so many characters follow this pattern, a subset of players, the group of people that get pissed off and look for rule-breaking when their characters die, tend to view exceptions as OOC when the opposite is true.

My advice to people who don't know how to break the mold is this: pretend alignments don't exist, build a character's RP however you want, and give it an alignment afterwards. Alignment is a system that is definitely needed, but the idea of it restricts character complexity and diversity.
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BlackWidow



Joined: 24 Apr 2014
Posts: 470
Location: Yes

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:25 pm    Post subject:

Kato makes a good point, and I agree when he suggests that alignment makes things more rigid. It doesn't have to be that way, though I've always wondered about lawful ethos. The way things are here, lawful ethos always seems to mean that a person will never break the laws, and if they do they get punished immediately. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the concept, but the way I see the lawful ethos does not always mean that someone will always follow the laws without question (unless they're a Justice, in which case I would assume this is almost a mandatory requirement).

The lawful ethos seems to be defined as law-abiding without question, and yet I have been tempted sometimes to play a lawful ethos character which had a different, somewhat less rigid view of the world. From how I see it, the lawful ethos could mean that this person follows the traditions and customs in their culture, not necessarily that they rigidly follow the rules and regulations without question. So long as they are not a revolutionary or otherwise breaking laws repeatedly, they might still be lawful ethos.

I still shake my head when I see people talk about lawful evil characters sometimes. There seems to be such a stereotype that they are almost always as bad as a chaotic evil character, when this is not really true. I am pretty sure in fact that a lawful evil character should generally not be seen as evil by everyone. Most people are not evil by nature, or so they claim and so their friends think. For example, Margaret Thatcher was hated by many people, but some of those she was close to saw her as benevolent. I would personally consider her an example of the alignment, though with real people it is sometimes hard to tell.

The point is, the system is sometimes a bit rigid if we stick to stereotypes. Do we really want all our lawful evil villains to be corrupt tyrants or dictators, or all our good aligned heroes to be saints without any faults? Personally, I would find that to be boring and a bit unrealistic.
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Andrael



Joined: 15 Jan 2013
Posts: 779

PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 5:16 pm    Post subject:

I also don't like how people see someone who is chaotic and assume that they 'MUST' be a law-breaker. I've played chaotics who merely obeyed the laws because for the moment it suited their purpose, or they had no reason to break the laws. I don't like the idea of oh, let me make someone, just to break laws. It sounds pointless, despite how much fun it might be. I don't like that whole thought chain though that if you are all chaotic people have to break laws. I mean on one character I embraced but on another character of the opposite alignment, there's not a purpose or reason to. I know that most people tend to be chaotic due to some factor, a bit more liberty on their 'RP' freedom or whatever, but they don't act like a cookie cutter chaotic.

I really hope that made some sense... Embarassed
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