Alignment?

More like Lawful Evil (all for the Government, none for you) if you ask me. ;-)

I tend to play with a party alignment of Neutral Good so that I can have all three Good alignments to choose from. I typically have a Paladin in my party (yes, I know that means the Drinking Contest is a no go, which I find silly) because I like the fact that he can basically heal his own wounds, leaving less for my Cleric to take care of.

 

I think that alignment in this game, anyway, is somewhat pointless. You may play with a Chaotic evil party, but mostly the game is indifferent. My lament that is that alignment is useful ONLY in giving each party a reason to be in Hommlet, little else. An evil party will maim and kill, but the reactions are pretty much in stone for villiagers and everyone in the temple. There are outcomes that can be chosen, but the fluid nature many seek is just not there yet; technology cannot give a truly reactive to any possible outcome; only some.

I am somewhat dissappointed that an evil party is so inferior to a good one in this game (considering weapons, special magic....), after all, without evil, good would not survive.

 

blackfly-
If you are unhappy with the options available to evil parties in the game, learn how to mod and add what you think should be there. It is you with the desire and interest, who is best suited to make the game everything it can be.

-Firestrand

 

well blackfly ive attempted to level the field a little with the weapons. everyone with access to equal power weapons. the rest well we will see

 

Man...

...this was a good one! Sorry I missed out on participating earlier...I was out being Lawful Good.

My $.02...

...it would be too hard to track all of the alignment stuff, but there can be quest specific stuff made, I'm sure...like the paladin participating in the drinking contest. Make it so that evil groups helping save the princess get dinged, and chaotic groups get penalized for bringing order to the chaotic lives of villagers, neutral partys lose by participating in the whole 'old faith vs church' thing, etc.
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Corrupt departments and officers are evil for sure...and as for lawful that is even debatable b/c they are breaking the law by doing their will and not obeying the law. They may act lawful at times, but in reality are bringing chaos, not order, to the department and society. At this point, the only difference between them and those they arrest is the fact that one of them has a badge. Not for long, it is to be hoped.

 

Goodness does not need evil to be good

I am somewhat dissappointed that an evil party is so inferior to a good one in this game (considering weapons, special magic....), after all, without evil, good would not survive.[/QUOTE]

Saying that without evil good would not survive is not true. A good deed is good in an absolute sense without it having to be compared to an evil deed to be deemed good. Of course it is highly unlikely that a world would exist where no evil deeds ever took place, only neutral or good, but it is theoretically possible. Good deeds are good in themselves. This was established as far back as Plato and Socrates.

 

I think some of you are missing my point. I am not placing blame, only making an argument (that I have made before) that in this game, some alignment choices are prefered over others. An evil party cannot benefit from the Holy weapons that can be found, they are nothing more than items to sell, not use. I have found that trying to create anarchic weapons leads to crashes, although that may be fixed. In this game, it seems parties of good nature get an edge over bad ones, and in my view, athough this is the nature of the module, how about an option where if the dark path is chosen, then Unholy weapons and doors, hereto unavailable, are opened.

Considering the change in the game from today verses the unmodified game, I cannot thank those enough. I am only trying to point out that a fence has two sides, and to me it seems that success, anyway, is a little more favoured for a good party than evil. Good party reactions are obvious, but the evil party can be unpredictable. I am only suggesting that if there are Good weapons of power that favour one alignment, then why not another. By including them, they can become objects as a side quest for the opposing alignment to destroy to further their causes, again, both can win.

It may be my inherent neutrality tendancies, but I believe that no path should be favoured by design. That should be left up to the player. To say good is absolute is a human opinion, Rook. You are making an opinion which is already based in a lifetime of action and cultural bias. If good was the only action, it would not be good, per se, but a cultural norm. Having no opposite to compare to, good and evil would not exist. I am not going to get into a long philisophical argument, but nature does not exist without polar opposites: proton, electron, male, female, night, day, full, void. To say good is absolute is wrong. A good person would make that point, but to an evil person, such as IUZ, would not see it that way.

 

Goodness is not just an opinion, or 'cultural norm'

Blackfly, I politely beg to differ with you: I am using Goodness in an absolute sense, not dependant on opinion or judgement. There are somethings that happen that are inately Good, somethings that are inately Evil. Helping others out of a difficulty is inately Good, even if everyone involved regards it as an evil act. Causing someone a deliberate injury is an Evil act even if everyone involved thinks that it is good.

It revolves around definitions. I think the problem comes about because some people think that goodness and evil are pure matters of judgment (i.e. 'one man's meat is another man's poison'), whereas I believe that Goodness and Evil can exist without needing a judgment call or opinion in order to make it good or evil. Hitler's Nazi Regime was Evil, even when 60 million or more Germans thought it was good at the time. It was inately Evil because of the way it behaved toward humanity. Whilst millions fought and died defending that regime, this does not make it any less Evil. Those who fought to bring it down, therefore did a Good thing, in an absolute sense, even if their own motives were not so good. Stalin helped destroy the Hitler regime, and so acted Good in an absolute sense, even though Stalin was himself not good, and had evil motives. This is what I mean by Good. Somethings are just Good by virtue of themselves, no opinions or comparisons needed. If Hitler had won WWII then over all the people of this world today would be much worse off, much, much worse (even the Germans, the victors would have been worse off. Totalitarianism punishes everyone).

You speak in relative terms, I speak in absolutes. You speak about opinion determining what is good, I say Goodness can exist independently of opinion.

This is how I see the Alignment thing in TOEE and AD&D type games. Others of course may have their own understandings.

 

alignment 2 cents

My 2 cents, is that there's good and there's good. Depending on how you use the word, either of you could be seen as more right. When you look at the ways the great moral structures of history have been set up, you can have the Christological p.o.v., best voiced by John Milton, who said that good was absolute, and evil relative to that good; that evil was only "good degraded." On the other side of the world, you have the Taoists arguing with Confucius that concepts of good and bad should be discarded, they lead only to bad; and that their discarding will lead to good. Contra to both these, the Zoroastrians saw the world as balanced between the two, both primal. But this is the exception: most religions see good as primal, and bad as derivative, lesser.

However, the way almost all of the world uses the words 'good' and 'bad' are the way the Taoists suggested discarding, the relative way. So I'd call the score 1-1, here. Also, we're in Greyhawk, and these alignments represent a fairly late-medieval construction of the world. So make of that what you will.

Basically, the alignment system needs a strong dm to define it, because neutral can be, in some value systems, the strongest good (again, some of the Eastern tendencies come to mind, or the Stoics); or it can be indifferent. The terms as d&d uses them are not absolute at all.