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From: bmg@mck-csc.UUCP (Bernard M. Gunther)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: re: a new idea for alignments
Message-ID: <172@mck-csc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 15:05:19 EST
Article-I.D.: mck-csc.172
Posted: Thu Nov 21 15:05:19 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 11:04:49 EST
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> what people think of it.  Also, can anyone think of a better name than
> "alignment"?  Ethos, personality, morals, and others have been suggested,
> but I'm not real happy with any of them.  Suggestions?  Comments? 
> 
> 			Mike Sellers

There is a serious problem with alignment.  It has very little to do with
the way people act.  Take the situation where Good Christian Knights were
not allowed to shed the blood of Christians, but anybody else was ok.  What
alignement would you give to the following character:

	A strong believer in his faith which says that all humans have
   soles but no other race does.  The person is a pallidan of his temple.
   He will never torture or fight deviously with another human, but when
   dealing with non-humans, anything goes because they have no soles and
   can be treated the same as cattle.  This means branding (torture),
   ownership (slavery), etc. are perfectly ok.

The person is lawful good with respect to his temple but with respect to
others he may be evil.  

Another example:

	A person inside an organization.  He will always obey his supiriors
   and will always do as they say and will never lie to them.  If the same
   person is dealing with outsiders, he is free to lie, cheat, steal, etc.

This person is lawful with respect to his organization, but is chaotic with
respect to the rest of the world.  Is he therefore lawful?  Chaotic?  Neutral??
If he's neutral it just means that neutral ballance between the extremes,
but the standard deviation is irrelevant.

Until you can develope ways to allow for complex characters to believe that
they are Lawful good even when you or I might not think so, it doesn't 
matter how you describe it.  It's all just for your convinience, so don't
worry about it.  Use whatever you like, but don't expect to be able to
represent the true complexities of real characters. 

Sorry to make this sound like a flame (which it might very well be) but I
have had to deal with some DMs who don't understand these sorts of complexities
and especially when you're running a pallidan, these issues can cause all
sorts of major problems.

Bernie Gunther