Yeah... Ill add some stuff on alignments in.. And naz - The Jackal was a movie with Bruce Willis as a hit-man... Very poor acting, and very bad disguises

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quote: If a game appeals to beliefs and goals that the player does not have, then he or she may not even touch it, perhaps even as a protest to the developer for crossing a line that he or she is not comfortable with.

Ultima VII: Serpent Isle had traitors among good townspeople, and I didn''t like it. You sort of trust that these are good guys, and the goblins or whatever are evil and must be destroyed.

Personal Opinion:
I HATE the ADnD Alignment system. It''s one of the most misguided efforts of classification I have ever seen. Even the monstrous manual admitted this ( some dragons were " lawful neutral with good tendencies", what kind of crap is that? ).
Classifying anything according to broad categories serves to simplify the experience. You cannot get a deep game with simple alignments, because there is no real depth to back it up in characterisation.

I much prefer the Vampire system, though it is by no means perfect.
Here, you choose two personality types, from a list, or define your own: your nature, and your demeanor. Your nature defines who you really are inside, and your demeanor is how you act. I played a Caretaker/jester - meaning my character was always joking around, playing pranks on people ( from harmless to dangerous ), but deep down protecting his friends fiercely from all perceived danger.
This system is much more open-ended, and allows much more interpretation.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

I''d just go for an "open" system. Good and evil aren''t really defined. You''re just dropped into a world, and you decide for yourself what''s good and what''s evil.

- DarkMage139 (Neokatana Software)
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DarkMage: Unfortunately the player is coming from a society in which Good and Evil are already defined, and such will use its ''learned'' Good and Evil definition to make some judgement.

Something more interesting could be to ''force'' the player to understand the Good and Evil views of a ''fantasy'' society and make sure he follow the ''goodness'' side.
Of course don''t use our own Good and Evil definitions since this won''t be interesting at all.


MadKeith: Alignement are acceptable because AD&D designers knew that we are almost all using the same Good and Evil definition.
It''s just a convenient way to store people as being ''like this'' or ''like that''.
I think you should read the PlaneScape Game World, it''s the far most interesting Campaign setting.
(And redefines Alignement and ''relative'' Alignements.)


On TOPIC:
A battle that is becoming a standard is ''Nature vs Mankind'', or simply ''Nature vs technology'', I use this in the CRPG following the first I should do. (So in a long long time )

In a movie with Merlin, I saw an interesting ''Magic and old beliefs vs Religion'', or something like that, could be very interesting to use.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

quote: Original post by Ingenu
MadKeith: Alignement are acceptable because AD&D designers knew that we are almost all using the same Good and Evil definition.
It''s just a convenient way to store people as being ''like this'' or ''like that''.

But it game-mechanically limits you to 3 possibilities for good/evil and three possibilities for chaotic/lawful. As far as ALL of the game mechanics are concerned, there are only 9 kinds of people in the universe. That''s why the system sucks, it does not contain nearly enough detail to be workable in a computer game, because the computer doesn''t "bend the rules".

quote: Original post by Ingenu
I think you should read the PlaneScape Game World, it''s the far most interesting Campaign setting.
(And redefines Alignement and ''relative'' Alignements.)

This actually is more a point for my case - if they had to "redefine" anything, the old system wasn''t good enough for deeper roleplay.
I haven''t actually read planescape though, I generally don''t like predefined game worlds. I make my own.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

If you play some MUD games, such as medievia, you''ll find that they treat the good/evil issue using exactly those words. You can be anywhere on the continuum from a prime evil, through neutral with good or evil tendencies, all the way to a saint or whatever is the high end. The game decides this using a number system that records how many "good" and "evil" creatures you''ve killed and modifies the number towards the opposite end from the creatures you kill. You establish your nature through how you act in the game world, not by picking some things from a menu at character creation time.

anthalaris.8k.com

The system you describe is the ''relative reputation'' system we are using in our MMORPG Hypernovae.
(Not done yet, but designed and being programmed.)

MKV :
I too have my own world and rules I prefer, but Planescape is a real jewel by what it opens and suggests, IMO.


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

So you''re stuck in a two-dimensional space: law on one axis, and goodness on the other. Are you saying that all people are strictly two-dimensional? I think not.

The Vampire system works around that, by letting you define your own "space", within which you should be playing. My character, to stick with the example, would have seemed "neutral good" to the people on his good side, and "chaotic evil" to everyone on his bad side. This cannot be expressed using the ADnD system, even though I''ve used only terms appearing there.

There is more two it that those two overly simplistic dimensions, and that''s why "good vs. evil" bores the hell out of a lot of people.

People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

quote:
But it game-mechanically limits you to 3 possibilities for good/evil and three possibilities for chaotic/lawful. As far as ALL of the game mechanics are concerned, there are only 9 kinds of people in the universe. That''s why the system sucks, it does not contain nearly enough detail to be workable in a computer game, because the computer doesn''t "bend the rules".

The AD&D system is a compromise between realism and simplicity. An open system is pointless because, as a designer, you will already have an idea whether an NPC is essentially good or evil or whatever. There is no reason why you couldnt make the alignment relative to good/evil / law/chaos a sliding scale, but would that really add anything? After all, the only person who ever gets to see the actual alignment of the NPC''s is the guy who designs them.

What I am trying to say is, any alignment system is a simplification of reality. No system is perfect, but some are better than others. But dont dispose of alignments altogether, because they are a useful tool.