Goblin Squad Member
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I would motion that the area beneath a settlement might need a seperate and potentially different alignment than the surface.
Yes, I am thinking Thieves guild. Practitioners of the dark arts. An Assassin's sanctuary and proving ground. An entry point to the underworld. Warehouses of the Black Market. The location of the forgery artist. The store of the disguise master.
In the evil aligned settlement, the underground might shelter the discrete good cleric and his orphan charges, the hidden redoubt of the chaotic neutral resistance, or the underground railway for runaway slaves.
If a Chaotic neutral thief is found out in a lawful good settlement, might he espy a rathole to dive into before his ten minutes are up? Might there be an escape path for the overmatched?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If under cities are a commonly known about feature, their entrances will have to be VERY well hidden or else there will have to be a mechanic preventing the owners on the surface from taking control of them/sweeping them clean routinely.
Not to say I don't like the idea, if you have an idea on how to solve that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You know this just brings back memories of undermountain. But I would like more details about the undercity. Can players live there? Do those that dwell there have to be the oppisite of those above? Will it be a entry point for those trying to attack the settlement? Just some things I would like to know.
Really it does not matter how high your walls are and how strong your army is if an enemy force can get inside easy. Lots of damage real fast only to disappear to where you cant or wont follow. >.<
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Goblin Squad Member
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re: the undercity commonly known/guarded
Were it my campaign I think I would initially place several hidden entrances to different parts, assuming it were already a city.
In a world where the players could build their own warrens this becomes both easier and more difficult. Easier in that the players are creating their own content, more difficult because I would have to in some measure conform the game to their creations (though needed rules could be set with foresight).
In a small settlement you would have to have opposing-aligned players pretending to be of the same alignment as the host settlement, but ever digging, ever expanding their root cellars into dens, tunnelling into the sewers and stormdrains to achieve relatively easy access to the river where they probably dump into the river and thence to the wild world beyond civilized walls.
As the settlement became a town, and the town a city, the undercity might grow rather complex, perhaps accidentally opening a connection to things long forgotten...
The undercity might eventually become populated by former town citizens who ran afoul of the guards and courts, if there were such, or who had been caught poaching, or who had been challenged and had to flee for their lives. Some might be runaways, others perhaps debtors or escaped criminals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not a fan of hidden entrances to player-built structures, at all.
So just who gets to populate these things? Does some enemy organization have to construct it, or do they get it for free (since everyone seems to want a trophy for showing up these days?)
And why should a city bother with walls, when all cities have an enemy population just beneath the hidden grate? ...with entrances that only non-citizens can see, that move around? Really?
I know this sort of thing is common in standard PnP games, but it is a bad idea for a sandbox game when the act of constructing the city is one of the penultimate goals of large organizations.
So for all their hard work, an organization gets a secret enemy base built into their new settlement? And people who have done nothing get to use it to work against them? Uh, why?
Go build your own base, thank you.
Sorry. Bad idea for this game imnsho.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Go build your own base, thank you.
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That is rather the idea, do you see. The game doesn't build a secret entrance to your domicile: instead you might have the option to build a hidden exit from your house.
What that exit leads to is further perhaps something in the game environment like a storm drain, or something other players built earlier.something constructed by players rather than the game environment: what is sought are the tools to do so.
Perhaps an extension of siege warfare, where beseiging engineers might tunnel into a city if its walls are not constructed deeply enough at the foundation.
This all stems from an assumption that might not hold true: Does a settlement somehow identify a character's alignment, prohibiting a chaotic neutral from settling in a Lawful Evil town? Even if it did, might a character shift in alignment from Lawful Evil because of a streak of merciful deeds?
Might not a character within a newly alien-aligned city wish a way to escape the oppression of his or her settlement's alignment, and if so what would that look like?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So my house has a root cellar, and discovering that my Lawful Good city is oppressive to my evolved nature I decide to try and tunnel in secret to ensure I have a way to get out of the city in the event that I need to get past the guards at the gate. So I tunnel to a subterranean storm drain using underground coordinates, and the tunnel is rather long. Then anothr player has a similar idea and his tunnel intersects mine. I meet him and we form an 'underground' partnership. Eventually more join in our band and suddenly we have a counter-culture beneath the proud Lawful Good city above.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm pretty sure a settlement official will be able to see the alignment of all the citizens. I forget where I saw the comment, but it was something along the lines of being able to remove members whose alignment changes outside of the bounds of the organization.
Otherwise, since the organizations alignment is the average of all member alignments, a group could join with the intent of shifting the original organizations alignment from what the leadership sets. While that might be 'fun' for the offending group, it would fall under the 'griefing' definition for me (Griefing = having fun specifically by making the game less enjoyable for others.)
There will definitely be "spies" in every organization. But hidden entrances to a settlement only visible to them will make for less fun game-play. Why bother with a siege when you can just rush through the sewers? Since one of the stated goals of the game is to encourage mass combat, it would seem counter to facilitate that type of settlement takeover. It would definitely be easier than a real siege; and if it is easier, then gamers will do it every time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Micco: Point taken. Doesn't mean it is a 'bad' idea. My role in this enterprise currently is to produce reasonable and possibly attractive ideas. Whether the ideas themselves are actually adopted by the designers, still they may ntroduce considerations or spark other ideas.
Whether you like an idea or vote against it is appropriate and important, but your and my opinions about the idea is less important than that the idea is present and considered in its implications.
...and by the way, if a settlement automagically divines alignment doesn't that completely preclude spying and thieving in lawful settlements altogether? Or are you supposing there might be a neutral good in a lawful good settlement allied with a chaotic good allied with a chaotic neutral who informs a chaotic evil coterie? That seems rather convoluted and unsimple.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as I see the desire for alignment as a means of restricting bad behavior, I also keep coming back to the feeling that having to designate a specific alignment will greatly curtail a large amount of RP interaction. In a sandbox game, I look forward to more possibilities rather than less. I'm afraid the desire to easily spot a griefer (like the old Ultima Online "red" murderer) will also kill off real espionage, con-men, and other role-played villains that add depth and risk to an RPG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it would be better were we to discover our natural or forced alignments through playing the game, and it should be revealed to us at skill training, but prior to skill selection. Perhaps with so little experience to draw from it might be a range of alignments you could select from.
Next skill training we would again learn our actual alignment.
This would, however, place something of a burden on our deists, would-be clerics and druids. Are they not to know their deity until they learn their practical alignment?
No cleric spells until training reveals alignment?