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From: showard@udenva.UUCP (showard)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: a new idea for alignments
Message-ID: <972@udenva.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-Nov-85 00:05:20 EST
Article-I.D.: udenva.972
Posted: Sun Nov 24 00:05:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Nov-85 07:55:12 EST
References: <2271@iddic.UUCP> <6700007@uiucdcsp> <2301@iddic.UUCP>
Reply-To: showard@udenva.UUCP ()
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Organization: U of Denver
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In article <2301@iddic.UUCP> dorettas@iddic.UUCP (Mike Sellers) writes:
>I know this is getting long, but I wanted to elicit replies on an idea I had
>regarding ALIGNMENTS.  The idea is to make it a percentile scale (don't "n"
>yet, it gets better), with Most Evil being at 01 and Most Good being at 100.
>Different races have cultural ranges (hobbits normally go from 60-80, orcs
>from 10-40, etc.), though exceptions are certainly possible.  NO ONE starts
>out any more evil than, say a 20, or more good than an 80.  Scores higher or 
>lower must be developed.  As your character goes on, his or her actions may
>change the current alignment value.  The referee judges whether or not an
>action is more than 5 or 10 points (better or worse) away from the character's
>current value.  If it is, the character's alignment goes d6 points in that
>direction.  Also, it is likely that if a character spends time with others
>of radically different alignment that he or she (or occasionally the others)
>will slip in the direction of the peers (can you say 'peer pressure'?).  Thus
>a good character will usually not want to run around with a bunch of more
>evil people, since his alignment will probably slip in their direction.  There
>are all sorts of other uses for this, too.  For example, what if you had to
>have a certain alignment value or better to get into an order of knights, or
>to get to the next experience level (for paladins, say), or if you had to 
>have no better than an alignment of 15 to join an evil force. This would make
>it so player's played their character's alignments not just as restrictive
>values, but as things to be developed like any other ability.  Evil characters
>would always be on the look-out for things to do to make them more evil (and
>maybe they gain some other kind of power or prowess by doing so), and good
>characters would want to stay away from evil deeds and do good things (or 
>perhaps lose Wisdom points or something).  Neutral characters (45-55 range)
>would probably take great care not to stray to either extreme, lest they 
>become like these other fanatics :-).
>As you can see, this idea is not fully developed, but I would like to see
>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? 
>[Flames will be sent directly to the Great Bit Bucket in the sky.]
>
>		Thanks for listening/reading/not drooling
>			Mike Sellers

   Sounds interesting.  Another idea would be to have clerics'(and paladins')
spell powers modified by alignment.  The closer one is to either extreme (or 
to 50 for neutral clerics/druids) the more effective one's spells are.  Two
clerics casting conflicting spells could be resolved by the use of this idea:
whichever is the closest to the alignment of his/her god (or ideal, or what-
ever) prevails.
   My idea for the name of this ranking is Morality.

--Mr. Blore, the DJ who would not die!
--aka Steve Howard, ...udenva!showard
--"Look over there, a dry ice factory. Good place to get some thinking done"