Meer Mortal's page

wow. new here, never seen this before. . .

uh. . smurf

Cleric.

Bleach wrote:

The reason being, Humans, are inherently lawful creatures...

Brief threadjack: I disagree :)

I think people are inherently chaotic (or selfish -- though we can argue that equivalency). But people have also learned that a lawful society keeps them safe from others' selfish ways.

I will partiallydisagree with both statements.

I would argue that culture is inherentlylawful/chaotic, and the people in them absorb the values that the culture saturates them in.

but we digress. . . .

There are so many, but here are my favorite two:

Non D&D homebrew game centered around Mecha:

The plot consisted of the group investigating a young girl, Delta, who was engineered to be a perfect meca pilot. Sad little girl with long greasy black hair (kind of like River Tam, but this game happened long before Firefly).

A player had the idea of kidnapping her after a test run of an experimental Mech. His plan was to hide in a spider hole on the arena, and once the test is concluded, he was going to run up to the 30 foot mech (named Alpha and Omega), scale up it, place a charge of explosives on the pilot door, blow it off and yank little Delta to freedom and raise her like a daughter.

As he popped out of the hidie-hole, the proximity alarm of the mech went off. Delta got the instructions to terminate the intruder. The mech swiveled in place and lowered its gauss cannon and vulcan gun to the target.

I really gave him every chance. I discouraged him from the plan from the beginning, I even rolled to hit.
The rest of the encounter was described by what the other player saw: You see him skid to a stop and look up at the weapons pointed at him. A loud rumbling noise fills the arena as the vulcan cannon spat slugs the size of babies at your friend. Dirt and dust are thrown in the air followed by an explosion. When things settle, all that is left of him is a pile of stained, ruined earth.

The second is a good example of why DMs need to check the character sheets of players they are allowing to join a campaign mid way.

The encounter went something like this:

DM: "ok, the 12 orks get up from their tables on the other side of the tavern and draw weapons"

Player: "I pull out this little wooden box, throw it at the orks and say the command word."

DM: "ok, what's it do"

Player: "it turns into a skiff"

DM ". . . waits. . a . . . a skiff? like rowing in the ocean type skiff?"

The encounter didn't last long.

I will have to admit, I don't use alignment much when I game or DM. Grimcleaver and I actually have had discussions about this.

I always felt them to be to restrictive, I hate it when a player/DM sais "you can't do that, your Good." or "are you sure your evil character will do that." Disposition accounts for actions in general, but not in the moment. I consider myself to be a good person, but every so often, i still trip a child just for a laugh.

Alignments are used as tools for character creation. They are there to help define the character, no to put him in a box.