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Megatron

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Why are neutral quests barely implemented in rpgs? If you're not saving someone you're killing them. If you're not killing demons you're robbing churches.

How about more or a chance to keep your overall karma at 0 through the entire game? It can't be that hard to implement a quest where you have to do something really bland or the deed cancels itself out.

How about helping an evil witch up after she's broken her hip? Or mabye break up a fight between a biker and a priest?

RPG's need to explore the realms of doing nothing.
 

Spazmo

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You have a point. Those who wish to remain neutral usually have to engage in incredibly erratic behavior, saving babies from burning buildings one day, and setting fire to buldings with babies in them the next.

But then again, your character has to take a position at some point. I mean, what exactly is a neutral quest? Going out to buy milk? Flesh out your idea with examples, Megatron.
 

Megatron

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Well you could have neutral quest givers in game, that gave you jobs which cancelled each other out (See below)

Killing another neutral=bad
Helping another neutral (e.g Fed Ex)=good

But if you help someone evil this is counted as evil or kill something evil this is counted as good. The only solution would be for some slightly stranger quests, such as

-STOPPING Good or Evil doing one or another. Something not existing would equal a neutral action.

-Helping a lesser evil/good in a fight against another evil/good.

-Destroying a large stash of drugs and not telling anyone. This would be bad short-term as it may kill a few junkys and mabye make the dealer poor but long-term a lot of junkys would survive by going cold-turkey

I could carry on with a few more except I have to go to bed?
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Actually, Rosh and I had a discussion about Paladins in D&D last night of a similar nature. We were talking about how it would be more interesting if Paladins were only restricted to Lawful because of the oath requirement, but could be good, neutral, or evil, depending on the god they were loyal to. After all, it's rather silly that only Lawful Good gods get paladins, isn't it?

However, the problem with this is the divine spells. Most of them are fairly binary, good or evil. You have Cure Wounds, which is typically good, or Cause Wounds, which is typically bad. So, dealing with a Lawful Neutral Paladin situation, especially in D&D, would be tricky at best since the divine spells are so black and white.

Basically, you have the same situation in that spell type as you do in most CRPG quests.
 

Rosh

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Saint_Proverbius said:
However, the problem with this is the divine spells. Most of them are fairly binary, good or evil. You have Cure Wounds, which is typically good, or Cause Wounds, which is typically bad. So, dealing with a Lawful Neutral Paladin situation, especially in D&D, would be tricky at best since the divine spells are so black and white.

Then we went into discussion about something that brought on a whole new aspect that some CRPG writers haven't taken into account. Intents of the character. This is also going by the intents of a LG Paladin would be to uphold good and law, an LE Paladin (or anti-paladin, if you will) would be more intent on using the laws to their own advantage while also thwarting good. Then comes LN, which like the Outer Realms plance, minus good or evil, there is just pure order and law.

To "solve" that binary (and how I believe, stupid) implementation of Heal = Good, Harm = Evil, we bantered around a bit. I had said a "purpose spell" could be in place, of it being a single spell but could harm or heal, depending upon the necessity of the situation. That opens up a whole new can of worms not only in how to determine if it's within the realm of pure Law of LN, but also the possibility of handling it in a CRPG. Deep logic tabls would need to be used, and often custom-tailored to the situation.

Okay, in the simplistic and often brain-dead fashion of D&D, healing an evil character would be an evil act, or harming a good character would be an evil act. That's where the DM's discretion comes in, and actual, real role-playing comes into focus. Here's some examples:

Harming a good character so they are incapacitated and unable to go do something rash that could harm a lot of people, while might be a blunt way of doing things, might have to be the last resort of good intents and save lives.

Now with healing an evil character? Quite simple. What if you could feed that evil character bogus information so that when they returned to their unit, they ended up going around a settlement they were planning on razing, or basically were neutralized from doing their malicious objective?

The crux of the matter with good/evil/neutral, is intent. Without some serious logical reasoning ability of AI and scripting, this would be quite a challenge to do, but it may very well be the next step for the social interaction facets of CRPGs.

Side Rant:
Plus, I just have to add my own irritation of a bit of "not quite correct" usage of words in RPGs. Even worse in JRPGs. You heal wounds, but you cure a disease, poison, or affliction. Cure light wounds might be technically right in a very rigid manner, but in context it isn't and I doubt they have been. In some JRPGs, mostly with Final Fantasy, you Cure wounds, while Healing poison or diseases. Yes...healing a disase. Figure that one out...though I could understand healing someone of a disease.

Hence, why I believe it's a good idea to take the most logical usages of each and go with them to differentiate them. Healing wounds, curing afflictions.
 

Azael

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I imagine that a Lawful Neutral paladin could be something like the Mercykillers of Sigil, but maybe less fanatic about it. Law is absolute and everyone must obey it or face the consquences.

Personally, I would think that most quests in a RPG would be in the neutral spectrum when you're not counting the motivation of the character. Saving a village from an evil dragon (hmm, would this be a cliché perhaps...) doesn't have to be a purely good act depending on the motivation of the character.
 

Rosh

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Azael said:
I imagine that a Lawful Neutral paladin could be something like the Mercykillers of Sigil, but maybe less fanatic about it. Law is absolute and everyone must obey it or face the consquences.

Precisely what I had in mind at the time, they are perhaps the poster-children of LN. Good, Evil, screw that. There is only Order and Law, against Chaos.

Personally, I would think that most quests in a RPG would be in the neutral spectrum when you're not counting the motivation of the character. Saving a village from an evil dragon (hmm, would this be a cliché perhaps...) doesn't have to be a purely good act depending on the motivation of the character.

Entirely so. A lot put good or evil by what you're going against. I believe this is wrong, because it should be the intent behind it, as is what formulates the basic makeup of alignment systems, and pretty much carries around to different ones.

The LN character would probably see this as a good source of income.
 

Spazmo

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Rosh said:
The LN character would probably see this as a good source of income.

That's just the Lawful Good-for-hire problem that plagued Neverwinter Nights. The tricky part is finding a way for neutral characters to do something important but make sure that it doesn't really change anything.

Even in the AD&D 2nd Ed. Player's Handbook, in the druid description, it says that in order to keep the balance, a druid fighting a tribe of orcs with his group might suddenly change sides when he thinks that the orc population is getting too depleted. This sort of totally erratic behavior isn't really the kind of character I would want to play.

However, I think it might be feasible if the quest involved a simple return to balance, to the normal state of affairs. Whereas evil PCs will seek to make things worse, and good ones to make things better, neutrals could just try to remove anything that happened that might tip the scales in one direction or another. However, this makes the neutral PC better suited to defending a given location than adventuring.

And then there's Chaotic Neutral PCs, who are just something else entirely.
 

Azael

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Well, druids are a special case, their obsession with what they view as natural balance isn't something that reflects on other neutral characters. Personally, I view a neutral character as someone who just tries to make his way in the world without going to any extremes, a pretty normal guy in other words.
 

Megatron

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A true neutral druid would probably just stand at the side of a battle and use large area affective spells that could randomly heal/hurt the people. Therefore the druid isn't choosing a side and is helping nature take its course.

Neutral spells could be stat changing ones, such as turning invisible. Other instances could be putting someone/thing to sleep (calming them down would be to good and killing would be to damaging. Sleeping is good as afterwards you have choices to do either)

As azael mentioned, a lot of it is decided on the motive of the charecter. There's no point doing a task from one side of the scales if your going to inbalance it afterwards. A true neutral charecter would balance out all his actions and his surroundings. The problem is with a neutral charecter is that you'd have to ignore a majority of quests as they require you to evil/good. I can't think of many instances in a game like fallout where there was a true neutral quest as everyone was looking out for themselves.

Another point this brings up could be a rule for neutral players. Someone looking for personal gain is usually one side of the scales (like good or evil) and someone trying to help someone else other than themselves is usually good/evil to. Something neutral would be to help something with no personality (Such as stealing a corpse from some grave-robbers and putting it back) or Helping a good/evil charecter change his ways. Mabye try to convince a bloodthirsty warlord that if he did nothing, he'd save more troops.
 

Jed

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This topic segues into something I've been thinking about alot: the...uh, role...of alignment in CRPGs.

Do pre-chosen roles help or hinder the role-playing experience? How should reaction be figured into this equation? What are some of you favorite/best done alignment schemes?

Just some fodder for consideration.

Jed
 

Megatron

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I was also thinking of this. You usually start the game as a neutral/good nobody and end is a good nobody. Your only recognition is a little bit of dialouge and one or two bonus items (Or some crappy CG sequence)

I think a good start to an rpg could be with the charecter starting in prison. When you choose your stats and such, an NPC generates a possible crime you did. It can be up to the player to decide if he was innocent or guilty (Innocent can also mean neutral as you may have just been a by-stander)

The end of the game could have you defeat some guys plans to do something he thought right, and possibly something the player would have done to in the circumstances and then at the end you have to decide if he was good or evil (mabye even neutral).
 

Rosh

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Spazmo said:
That's just the Lawful Good-for-hire problem that plagued Neverwinter Nights. The tricky part is finding a way for neutral characters to do something important but make sure that it doesn't really change anything

Not in particular. He could shrug the problem away and say it's not his problem. Yet, since he is lawful, a creature like an evil dragon attacking a village would be a chaotic act and therefore would defend it for that reason. It's not really "Good for hire". I'l try to come up with some more examples.

Even in the AD&D 2nd Ed. Player's Handbook, in the druid description, it says that in order to keep the balance, a druid fighting a tribe of orcs with his group might suddenly change sides when he thinks that the orc population is getting too depleted. This sort of totally erratic behavior isn't really the kind of character I would want to play.

A CN would, perhaps, but nobody else is going to be stupid enough to do that.

A TN would most likely look out for specific ideals and defend those. Like nature, which is neither good nor evil. Saving a forest from arson isn't a good or evil act, regardless of how you look at it. Usually a TN character looks out for a specific cause, good, evil, law, chaos all be damned. That cause is everything to them.

But that "balance" bullshit of the druid example above is a total load of crap. The druid would be intent on his ideals, a neutral cleric would be interested in just their order's ideals (no good or evil to sway them, doesn't really care about the laws), etc. A TN order might be concerned with "weighing the balance", but a TN character, by the definition of neither good nor evil, and neither lawful or chaotic, has their intents on a specific reason and ideas that are neither anything good, evil, etc.

Azael said:
Well, druids are a special case, their obsession with what they view as natural balance isn't something that reflects on other neutral characters. Personally, I view a neutral character as someone who just tries to make his way in the world without going to any extremes, a pretty normal guy in other words.

Pretty much so, I'd say. A (over-romanticised D&D)druid is also focused on nature and that sort of thing.

Megatron said:
A true neutral druid would probably just stand at the side of a battle and use large area affective spells that could randomly heal/hurt the people. Therefore the druid isn't choosing a side and is helping nature take its course.

Uh...why? Nevermind that really a D&D druid is focused on nature and switching sides in combat is stupid, throwing away spells like that is equally stupid unless it's by a CN character. Those kind are just...something by themselves. They don't care about good or evil, but do whatever they please, the realm of the psycho.

As azael mentioned, a lot of it is decided on the motive of the charecter. There's no point doing a task from one side of the scales if your going to inbalance it afterwards. A true neutral charecter would balance out all his actions and his surroundings. The problem is with a neutral charecter is that you'd have to ignore a majority of quests as they require you to evil/good. I can't think of many instances in a game like fallout where there was a true neutral quest as everyone was looking out for themselves.

Um...I thought Azael mentioned that "Personally, I view a neutral character as someone who just tries to make his way in the world without going to any extremes, a pretty normal guy in other words.", which pretty well fits it. A common joe who doesn't care about good or evil, law or chaos, and is just intent on whatever it is they do. A farmer could be a good example of a TN character.

This "balancing scales" crap is just something on the part of some unimaginative person when writing up D&D. In how the D&D alignments are put together, everything is polar opposites. Yet in the center is some flake who is going to abiguously attack one side or another, rather than the more logical of someone who isn't going to do anything to extremes.

The "balance everything" might be some TNs - in selective attitudes and ambitions, but their depiction of TN of switching sides because the orcs are losing is just something only a CN character or a complete retard would do. Back in the real world kind of thinking (as in, outside of the geeks who wrote this crap without a clue of psychological and sociological relations and activities), the druid would be concerned about his forest more than anything, and would likely take out the one that is clearly more destructive (orcs), and rely on knowing that his team isn't going to kill him afterwards. The orcs most likely would. Hell, his team most likely would if they turned on them and they eventually killed the orcs.

Rather than the idiotic method of fighting and switching sides based upon numbers. Their depiction of "fighting for the orcs" is complete crap. :roll: Hell, if you go by the D&D definition, Planescape: Torment is horribly flawed because if you don't do anything extremely good, nothing extremely evil, lawful or chaotic, you're now supposed to attack sides based upon numbers rather than your beliefs. Yes, you just killed an evil theif...better go kill that good shopkeeper to make sure the good and evil is balanced. That makes very little sense at all.

About the only way to really do Neutral, is to have quests that might have good or evil outcomes, but relate a little to the character's raison d'etre and how they relate to that. The current D&D TN setup is little more than CN with beliefs that good and evil should be balanced. Can't be LN, because they follow order and law, and wouldn't change sides like that - changing sides like that is perhaps the biggest mark of a chaotic character. Someone who betrays his comrades isn't exactly neutral or lawful by any means.
 
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I never liked the idea of an anti-paladin. The idea floats around a lot. There's even a 3E prestige class for it called the Blackguard. Basically I think the paladin is a pretty unique individual because of the discipline and self-sacrifice required, and he draws his strength as much from his convictions as his god. A guy who's basically just in it for himself just really isn't all that inspiring, to himself or others, though. I can just imagine the anti-paladin's dilemma: "Hmm, what's that, you want me to knife that noblewoman in the back, sell her stuff and spend the money on booze and general debauchery? Man, it can be tough being your paladin, but I guess I'll see what I can do." I sort of think evil gods as they're often implemented are pretty lame anyway. If they're just in it for themselves and really could give a rat's ass about helping out humanity and have priests who help them get things they want in return for sharing a little power, that makes sense. When they start to get into the realm of evil for evil's sake, and expect their followers to do things that really gain neither the deity or the followers anything just because it's a bad thing to do, that's when it starts to break down for me. I think a lot of it is just an artifact of the alignment system, much like the idiotic TN "balance" crap.
 

Rosh

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Walks with the Snails said:
I never liked the idea of an anti-paladin. The idea floats around a lot. There's even a 3E prestige class for it called the Blackguard. Basically I think the paladin is a pretty unique individual because of the discipline and self-sacrifice required, and he draws his strength as much from his convictions as his god. A guy who's basically just in it for himself just really isn't all that inspiring, to himself or others, though. I can just imagine the anti-paladin's dilemma: "Hmm, what's that, you want me to knife that noblewoman in the back, sell her stuff and spend the money on booze and general debauchery? Man, it can be tough being your paladin, but I guess I'll see what I can do." I sort of think evil gods as they're often implemented are pretty lame anyway. If they're just in it for themselves and really could give a rat's ass about helping out humanity and have priests who help them get things they want in return for sharing a little power, that makes sense. When they start to get into the realm of evil for evil's sake, and expect their followers to do things that really gain neither the deity or the followers anything just because it's a bad thing to do, that's when it starts to break down for me. I think a lot of it is just an artifact of the alignment system, much like the idiotic TN "balance" crap.

You do have a point there, but something I did like was a dark knight. Someone who was evil, but had powers bequeathed to them (just like a paladin does, do you really expect the evil gods to just abandon their clergy?).

The thing you're missing, however, is that they too are Lawful. They aren't going to be a simple cut-throat, they have a code of honor of their own. Their main purpose is to further the deity's ideals, and most gods that support an "anti-paladin" concept are Lawful gods themselves, not those you'd find in the Abyss. They have a purpose, a scheme, and not to just be evil for the sake of it.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Walks with the Snails said:
I never liked the idea of an anti-paladin. The idea floats around a lot. There's even a 3E prestige class for it called the Blackguard. Basically I think the paladin is a pretty unique individual because of the discipline and self-sacrifice required, and he draws his strength as much from his convictions as his god. A guy who's basically just in it for himself just really isn't all that inspiring, to himself or others, though. I can just imagine the anti-paladin's dilemma: "Hmm, what's that, you want me to knife that noblewoman in the back, sell her stuff and spend the money on booze and general debauchery? Man, it can be tough being your paladin, but I guess I'll see what I can do."

Well, I think the anti-paladin would be Lawful Evil as opposed to the Chaotic Evil model that's floated around since the original first edition. After all, a Paladin must be bound by an oath, and only a Lawful character would maintain something like an oath.

As such, it would be much, much harder to be an anti-Paladin, especially if his god expects him to carry out evil actions while he must stay within the boundries of his convictions.

I sort of think evil gods as they're often implemented are pretty lame anyway. If they're just in it for themselves and really could give a rat's ass about helping out humanity and have priests who help them get things they want in return for sharing a little power, that makes sense. When they start to get into the realm of evil for evil's sake, and expect their followers to do things that really gain neither the deity or the followers anything just because it's a bad thing to do, that's when it starts to break down for me. I think a lot of it is just an artifact of the alignment system, much like the idiotic TN "balance" crap.

I tend to agree here. However, an evil god could see humanity as a game, and as such, have clerics and paladins out there to spread his will against the factions of his rival gods. Evil doesn't have to mean apathetic.

After all, it's a little silly that only the forces of GOOD and RIGHT have things as powerful as Paladins roaming around, setting things right. That's why I think there should be an anti-paladin, but a chaotic evil one wouldn't have nearly the restrictions on it that the lawful good one would nor would one be likely to deal with an oath.
 
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Rosh said:
You do have a point there, but something I did like was a dark knight. Someone who was evil, but had powers bequeathed to them (just like a paladin does, do you really expect the evil gods to just abandon their clergy?).

The thing you're missing, however, is that they too are Lawful. They aren't going to be a simple cut-throat, they have a code of honor of their own. Their main purpose is to further the deity's ideals, and most gods that support an "anti-paladin" concept are Lawful gods themselves, not those you'd find in the Abyss. They have a purpose, a scheme, and not to just be evil for the sake of it.

Evil gods don't have to ignore their clergy, they help them do all kinds of things like create undead minions, sacrifice innocents in exchange for power, etc. Making a mirror image of a paladin, though, doesn't make much sense. And even if the LE anti-paladin does have a code, I don't imagine it would be quite as restrictive. The basic premise of LE is to get your way through organization and gaming the legal system and contracts and the like. I don't think it really lends itself to being that restricted, if a god did in fact expect his LE followers to act LE, he'd probably expect them to obey the letter and not the spirit every time it suited their purposes, anyway.

Saint Proverbius said:
Well, I think the anti-paladin would be Lawful Evil as opposed to the Chaotic Evil model that's floated around since the original first edition. After all, a Paladin must be bound by an oath, and only a Lawful character would maintain something like an oath.

As such, it would be much, much harder to be an anti-Paladin, especially if his god expects him to carry out evil actions while he must stay within the boundries of his convictions.

After all, it's a little silly that only the forces of GOOD and RIGHT have things as powerful as Paladins roaming around, setting things right. That's why I think there should be an anti-paladin, but a chaotic evil one wouldn't have nearly the restrictions on it that the lawful good one would nor would one be likely to deal with an oath.

Who needs a mirror image of a Paladin to take down a Paladin, though? The main advantage of being evil is they don't have to fight fair. I have a hard time seeing an evil character of any stripe refusing to strike an unarmed foe or throwing down his arms because his enemy has a knife at an innocent (and insignificant) hostage's throat and will kill the hostage otherwise. A paladin more or less needs his power because he doesn't do things like knife foes in the back or raise a few hundred corpses to fight his battles for him. The fact that he forgoes all kinds of things that could give him a huge advantage bolsters his convictions and gives him special and unique qualities. Evil has its own means of fighting, the paladin is more or less the embodiment of what is supposed to be good and draws his strength from that. The embodiment of evil would be something more along the lines of an assassin or necromancer, not a guy on a black horse, with black armor and a black sword, who radiates an unholy aura, wounds and poisons by touch, has an oath but it's naughty, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they're done in various bad movies and games, but they usually wind up being pretty silly.
 

Spazmo

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On the topic of anti-paladins, check out some of the later Dragonlance stuff for a good example of what an evil paladin order might look like: The Knights of Takhisis.

Snails, you make a good point about the assassins thing, but that's for Chaotic Evil. There should be a place for Lawful Evil, which is just using law and order to your own ends, which is a pretty good descripton of the anti-paladin's motivations.

And in the end, it all comes down to the DM and the player.
 
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I think in D&D the typical example of LE is the tyrant. He rules over an area for the benefit of himself and his cronies, and damn what everyone else needs or wants. He'll tax the peasants into starvation or conscript them to fight his wars, and if they don't like it, they can keep quiet or become intimately familiar with his torturer. If not in quite as high an office, a LE character might be a self-serving official or bureaucrat. Or maybe he's in the army or a mercenary company and noted for his brutality in conducting his job, then using his position or his duties as justification for his actions. Whatever he does, though, he makes sure he comes out on top and will bend and twist the law as far as he can to make sure he does, while using it however he can to put his enemies at a disadvantage. He doesn't necessarily see the law, or order in general, as being especially noble or something he'd be willing to die for, just the most efficient way to make sure he gets what he wants.

Doesn't really lend itself to a dark champion who draws his strength from following the precepts of LE behavior IMO. Someone who developed various techniques to intimidate others into submission, twist laws to their own benefit, and consolidate their power would be more in line with being the embodiment of LE. They'd probably laugh at a paladin's sincere devotion to his ethos, to them rules are only useful if they make them and force others to follow them or can pervert existing ones for their own benefit.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Walks with the Snails said:
Who needs a mirror image of a Paladin to take down a Paladin, though? The main advantage of being evil is they don't have to fight fair.

Actually, the conversation Rosh and I started about fallen paladins and went from there. The idea that a Paladin would slip to LN or LE by his actions and fall from grace from the LG god of service he was in.

You don't think an evil god would jump at the chance to further corrupt one of these paladins? Think of the role playing potential alone. You're a paladin that just fell from grace, you start getting visits from corruptor gods via voices and other manifestations offering you what the other god promised in exchange for service to him.
 
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This was actually one of the things BG2 did well. One of the most powerful swords in the game was only for fallen Paladins, and if I remember correctly alot of things where influenced by your fall from grace- Keldorn in particular.
Anyway, why not create some sort of Zealot, or Fanatic class to replace Paladin? That way you could get away with any alignment.
You don't think an evil god would jump at the chance to further corrupt one of these paladins? Think of the role-playing potential alone. You're a paladin that just fell from grace, you start getting visits from corruptor gods via voices and other manifestations offering you what the other god promised in exchange for service to him.
Agreed. Very interesting, and I hope Temple incorporates this.
 

huh

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Interesting.... are you talking about D&D alignment system, or CRPG quest design in general?

The 'D&D alignment system' is just one way of doing things, and not very good one at that. Axis of good/evil, chaos/order, bleh. But, that's a part of D&D lore and mechanics, so they are stuck with it. For example, protecting a village from a band of Orcs makes you more 'good', but protecting an Orc camp from a Paladin more 'evil' with all the dire consequences for the class, skills and spells?

Mere tags limiting RP I say. And Chaos/Order are so poorly defined that I've never seen it matter. 'Gray' quest are almost impossible. In D&D the absolute 'alignment' system is at the core of the game mechanics, which is not neccessary for CRPGs in general, IMHO.

I much prefered Fallout-like faction reputation/karma system. Your char just does what it does, and only the ones affected give a damn one way or another. Here, pretty much every quest (except extreme) is 'Gray'.
 

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huh said:
Interesting.... are you talking about D&D alignment system, or CRPG quest design in general?

A bit of both. There's a lot of GOOD or EVIL things in D&D or in CRPGs in general.

The 'D&D alignment system' is just one way of doing things, and not very good one at that. Axis of good/evil, chaos/order, bleh. But, that's a part of D&D lore and mechanics, so they are stuck with it. For example, protecting a village from a band of Orcs makes you more 'good', but protecting an Orc camp from a Paladin more 'evil' with all the dire consequences for the class, skills and spells?

I tend to agree, it's a little too boolean in nature. Another thing that's never made a lick of sense to me is why Orc and other intelligent races with societies were Chaotic. Orcs might be highly aggressive, but they still have a society heirarchy, which seems to fly in the face of all of them being Chaotic. It seems impossible to me that they'd develop any form of culture and society, complete with a caste system, and not have any concept of law... especially if they're intelligent.

Mere tags limiting RP I say. And Chaos/Order are so poorly defined that I've never seen it matter. 'Gray' quest are almost impossible. In D&D the absolute 'alignment' system is at the core of the game mechanics, which is not neccessary for CRPGs in general, IMHO.

I agree about the alignment in D&D limiting role playing with alignments. After all, it locks the system down upon character creation. It's basically, I will be a law biding good guy forever and forever without any sense of dynamicism.

The problem with D&D CRPGs and making a gray quest is that D&D is too damned rooted in fighting. There's not too many situations where you can have combat and a gray area, unless you slaughter both sides or do nothing, because most fights are that of GOOD vs. EVIL in D&D. Of course, you could have instinct driven animals fighting mindless undead for the neutral vs. neutral thing, but how common is that? Why bother when you'll just have to wipe out both sides?

I much prefered Fallout-like faction reputation/karma system. Your char just does what it does, and only the ones affected give a damn one way or another. Here, pretty much every quest (except extreme) is 'Gray'.

I wouldn't say that, since most actions result in a karma change in Fallout. However, Fallout's system does allow the player to pick and choose how he's going to do things with a high degree of inconsistancy should the player decide to be inconsistant.

One thing that IWD2 does do right is that it doesn't allow good guys to do the evil thing in dialogue. Of course, one could argue that it doesn't let evil people be evil either, since the game pretends that evil is just greedy. You take money for doing good deeds, which isn't that evil at all.
 

Section8

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The single-most appropriate action the Chaotic Neutral Half-Orc Bard/Barbarian that I played in my most recent D&D campaign could do according to alignment was constant use of a Rod of Wonder. No matter what situation it was almost certain to cause chaos, in most cases affecting both the predominantly good party I was adventuring with and the predominantly evil NPCs/monsters we encountered.
 

RolfEmerson

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Of course, one could argue that it doesn't let evil people be evil either, since the game pretends that evil is just greedy. You take money for doing good deeds, which isn't that evil at all.

Yea, that seems to be a general theme nowadays. The only 'neutral' stance most games make available is that of 'benevolent self interest', one who is willing to do the right thing, for the right price. Among some of my friends, this has become known as the 'Han Solo' model, as the only thing seperating him from a legitimate white hat is the demand of compensation. Even in Han, you see some of the erratic behaviour that defines 'neutral' in most games- he alternately smuggles narcotics for a violent drug lord, and then becomes a full blown hero of the rebellion, and gets paid by both.

P.S.- Yes, the flagrant Star Wars reference was uncalled for. Send only one death threat per person, please.
 

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