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From: lucius@tardis.UUCP (Lucius Chiaraviglio)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Re: Alignment
Message-ID: <10055@tardis.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-May-85 19:51:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: tardis.10055
Posted: Fri May 10 19:51:43 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 12-May-85 11:18:58 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Harvard University, Cruft Lab (TARDIS)
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> Personally, I've never liked alignments a la AD&D at all.  A far better way
> to give the players standards of behavior different from their real life ones
> is to use religions a la Runequest.   By this I mean that no one has an
> alignment.  Rather, everyone, or almost everyone, belongs to some religion or
> other.  This is "enforced" on the players by making membership in a religion
> a social expectation (no atheists in the dungeons) and by providing positive
> benefits for being a member of a religion.  (Clerics might only perform
> healing
> and resurrection on coreligionists, or members of friendly religions.)  Along
> with the benefits go obligations.  Each god has certain interests and
> standards,
> and worshipers are expected to advance those interests and live up to those
> standards.

	This does enhance the role-playing, but for atheists it is quite bad.
Atheists should be able to play characters who are close to their personality
just as much as people with religion.  I can see that a good role-playing game
would simulate (even in much exaggerated form) the social difficulties have in
real life, and maybe some different ones to make it more interesting, but
characters of certain religions forbidden in a world would have similar
experiences.  This could be toned up or down depending on the world.  However,
atheists should not be nuked automatically for being atheists -- give them at
least a fair shot at starting up and surviving.

-- 
	-- Lucius Chiaraviglio
	{ seismo!tardis!lucius | lucius@tardis.ARPA | lucius@tardis.UUCP }