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And the example I took was from Pathfinder? And I don't think I am being overly harsh, because even if we do what you suggest, I still have to build three settlements before it can be accomplished.
Even then what I mentioned was three oppesite alignment groups forced to coexist in one settlement.
Also I read all conan books and it was never that black and white. There was nearly always a good guy amongst the bad guys rank. Or how about the entire resistance movement against the opressive kingdom in the second book?
Again your using meta-game concepts as a argument which isn't what I asked for. You can tell me all day and night about the alignment tree, but that dosen't explain anything. You want a DnD example? Fine.
Never winter nights 2, when you go to the city of neverwinter, you literally meet people of all alignments. From Lawful good to chaotic evil. They all live in the same city. There has never been this restriction before in real life or in DnD. Never did I play a game of pathfinder and was suddenly stopped by the door, because of my alignment.
I see what you all are saying. But it is all such a clear made to game concepts and none of you have said how it works to compliment the setting and the story of the game.
You do realize that all of your examples are of societies that are sundering because of the lack of cohesion in values, right? We should thank you for all these examples that HELP the argument for alignment in settlements.
Again back to Howard. He always painted entire civilizations of "NPC's" in broad strokes. Any exception to the rule within a society that had been judged so was crossing from the status of "NPC" to hero/villain status, be it as a major or minor character.
It compliments the game and the story because players have to deal with consequences of their chosen alignment and evil characters will actually be evil and good characters will actually be good. If you want in depth back stories of NPC's then of course Table top or single player games are leagues better for that. I play table top on the side, it's a totally different game with a different focus.
But PFO is about translating those role play concepts into a kingmaker style online campaign and yes this is the way to do it.
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An Evil Cook! How would that work................
Greed-o-vision:
Come right in hated customer. Take a seat. Whats that? Someone put tacks in your seat. Oh dont worry about that I just paralyzed your body. Now stay right there and Ill bring out a true cullinary abortion....... Ah youre still here (snickers). Now hold still while I put in this funnel down your throat, I wouldnt want the taste to accidentally trigger your upchuck response. Here let me forcefeed you this disgusting and depraved dish. Isnt it horrible. Good......... Excellent. Now my nomal price for that dish is 4 gold, but for you ill just take all your money. Lets see, 2700 gold, that sounds fair. Ok all thats left is to knock you over the head, throw your body in a dark alley, and wish you good luck. What? Oh yea, didnt I tell you? Your food has a lethal poison with delayed action.
A few months later:
(Sigh) whats wrong with me? Well my business went under. I just dont understand what went wrong. I strived to offer the best in absolute evil customer service,........... Yet for some reason, I never get repeat business. Truly mind boggling?????
No, I think that's an A-hole cook. An evil cook offers the best buffs for the bad guys that it can, sells poisons to the Assassins (or priests, whatever), and serves baked unicorn at the village feasts.
If a Settlement's alignment reflects those of the members, I think that having your cooks, merchants, etc. be Evil would be important to an Evil Settlement. You wouldn't want them suddenly shifting the Settlement's alignment to Neutral just becausse you didn't pay any attention to them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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apparently[/i] evil. He will constantly have to keep up this facade by performing evil deeds because his apparent alignment will slowly drift towards his core alignment.
So one way to detect "spies" is to watch for folks who are performing evil acts "more often" than the members of the settlement who aren't drifting away from evil. This could get interesting.
Require all suspects to meet in the guildhall under close observation by trusted members, give them no capacity for performing evil acts, and then have your clerics test them every-however-often's-required. You'll find your spy in due course.
Next stop: weekly "loyalty meetings"!
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Forcing the players to do it all one way, a meta gaming way at that is bizarre and problematic. The more options their are, the happier the player base will be. There should at least be "some" option to have a mixed alignment settlement independent of the grid.
Remember Ryan's said they don't intend PFO as a WOW-type "we want everyone to play this" game. Their intent is to have a core group of fanatics who want to play the game as GW envisions it.
It sounds as if at least some of your large guild won't want to play PFO, and GW will be okay with that.
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There is a difference between living in the borders of a community and being a member of the community. As it is, unless you set trespasser laws, Anyone can walk into any settlement and trade or use it's resources depending on the amount of restriction you place on non-members using them. Being a member is being a citizen. It has obligations, and it has requirements. In NWN2, how many of the CE characters would be considered desirable members of the community? None. They were tolerated as long as they didn't do anything that broke enough laws for them to be killed for doing it. If you decided to remove them, the no one else would really care.
Being a member of a settlement, means no only to you live there, but you are liked. You fit in with the majority of the people there, and they look out for you by giving you discounts and perks that aren't available to those who are just passing though.
Makes sense to me. You can enter and hang out and do your business in any settlement that will let you (if you are friends and want to play together this is one way to do it). Being an actual part of the settlement though, whatever that exactly represents (buying a house, voting, flying the banners?) requires you to be of the same alignment.
I respect that there are people that will be unhappy with this, my view is that since this is a game and not primarily a city planning simulator you have to take the good with the bad and its just not possible to create a system allowing for every possible scenario that players can conjure. The alignment restrictions will hopefully create distinction and incitament for PvP and other activities between settlements. The tradeoffs have already been brought up.
I think the game will be more fun with the restrictions, not just for me but to most people, but others will find the game less fun for it.
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This is completely off topic, but the cook thing made me wonder if we could make or contaminate foods? Imagine sneaking into a city under disguise and selling poisoned foods to its citizens. This could be good for everything from behind the scenes war efforts to trying to discredit your competition.
Sorry for the derail. Go back to alignment insanity. ^.^
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Goblin Squad Member
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apparently[/i] evil. He will constantly have to keep up this facade by performing evil deeds because his apparent alignment will slowly drift towards his core alignment.So one way to detect "spies" is to watch for folks who are performing evil acts "more often" than the members of the settlement who aren't drifting away from evil. This could get interesting.
Require all suspects to meet in the guildhall under close observation by trusted members, give them no capacity for performing evil acts, and then have your clerics test them every-however-often's-required. You'll find your spy in due course.
If locking them up for weeks is what you intend, yeah (I wouldn't know but having alignment drift considerably in a matter of minutes doesn't make sense to me).
Anyway, the system I proposed is for IC-spies, if you want to meta-spy on a rival guild it would be better to just create an alt with the core alignment that fits with the settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is completely off topic, but the cook thing made me wonder if we could make or contaminate foods? Imagine sneaking into a city under disguise and selling poisoned foods to its citizens. This could be good for everything from behind the scenes war efforts to trying to discredit your competition.
Sorry for the derail. Go back to alignment insanity. ^.^
That's worth posting on the Traps thread.
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Players should be free to run settlements how they wish, I have run guilds with a mix of player alignments all in one area. It can and has worked fine. This insistence that it doesn't via quoting literature is silly, game wise and roleplay wise it does.
I'm sure it worked really well in whatever small pond you were playing in. If you do not integrate the RP into the gaming system you are counting on self enforcement and as we well know by now, that only works, sometimes, in small groups. Plus, why would you dismiss literature and it's importance in Role PLay? Everything in the game is based on literature including(especially) the alignments.
Alignments on an individual basis are fine, but I disagree with it massively. It will cause problems, anyone thinking it wont is deluding themselves.
Of course it won't be perfect. It will however be a step forward in online role play
The only argument I have heard that makes any sense is that if you want to be an OOC meta gamer, you can coordinate your settlements to include all. Thats fine if you want to encourage meta gaming planning wise but I still disagree with that but there is another problem.
All roleplay and gaming requires OOC meta gaming. Get over this argument, its old and weak.
How long exactly will it take to build three settlements ? In that time my fellow guildies will not be able to be part of the same thing. Yet to hear anyone say with certainty how long it will take.
You want your diverse mega city where Barbarians, paladins & neutral merchants have everything they want and you want it overnight. Ok, good luck with that.
A perfectly viable solution to me would make this optional. If your village/settlement/city conforms with alignment, I.E all its official citizens are within the correct alignments. You get a bonus. If its not, you don't. A bonus such as faster settlement growth and increased profit would be a real legitimate bonus to encourage players to use the aligment grid. But if players truly want to have a mixed alignment settlement they can, even if its at their own cost.
I wouldn't be surprised if it gets tweaked to there as they move forward. Dancey has said repeatedly than when it comes to designing this type of system it's much easier to start strict and then loosen it up if necessary than to start loose and try to tighten the rules because you realize you aren't getting the play style/behaviour you want in your design.
Be easy on the specifics. This is FAR from done and we will get to crowd forge it in open beta.
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The only argument I have heard that makes any sense is that if you want to be an OOC meta gamer, you can coordinate your settlements to include all. Thats fine if you want to encourage meta gaming planning wise but I still disagree with that but there is another problem.
It's an OOC metagame solution (build a kingdom a certain way) to an OOC metagame problem (I want to hang out with my friends, even though our characters have no reason to get along).
How long exactly will it take to build three settlements ? In that time my fellow guildies will not be able to be part of the same thing. Yet to hear anyone say with certainty how long it will take.
And yet you will still be able to play together, interact, conduct business, and kill things.
apparently[/i] evil. He will constantly have to keep up this facade by performing evil deeds because his apparent alignment will slowly drift towards his core alignment.So one way to detect "spies" is to watch for folks who are performing evil acts "more often" than the members of the settlement who aren't drifting away from evil. This could get interesting.
Require all suspects to meet in the guildhall under close observation by trusted members, give them no capacity for performing evil acts, and then have your clerics test them every-however-often's-required. You'll find your spy in due course.
Next stop: weekly "loyalty meetings"!
The fascinating thing about this is it would create a demand for nongood spies. That unpleasant ghoul hunter your settlement generally snubs? Bad news, he's the only Lawful Evil guy who'd even consider helping you deal with the slavers attacking the village. Time for some groveling!
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Oh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements--we've all played in the D&D game with the one Chaotic Evil halfling ranger, or the one Lawful Neutral kobold duelist.
So sure, you'll have to split up when it comes to training. Otherwise, though, you can stick together without trouble.
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Oh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements--we've all played in the D&D game with the one Chaotic Evil halfling ranger, or the one Lawful Neutral kobold duelist.
So sure, you'll have to split up when it comes to training. Otherwise, though, you can stick together without trouble.
Chances are, that will depend on alignment drift caused by associating with wildly differing alignments. If that CE halfing ranger runs around stabbing the mayor in every NPC settlement (this actually happened in one of my group's tabletop games...), then the CG sorceror is probably going to experience some alignment drift for being in the same party - guilt by association. Stick together long enough, and the adventuring party members will likely drift toward a common alignment, which may or may not interfere with their settlement memberships, training, ability usage, and so on.
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Oh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements--we've all played in the D&D game with the one Chaotic Evil halfling ranger, or the one Lawful Neutral kobold duelist.
So sure, you'll have to split up when it comes to training. Otherwise, though, you can stick together without trouble.
I haven't kept up with it in awhile so I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure this was an OotS reference? If so, thank you. :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I haven't kept up with it in awhile so I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure this was an OotS reference? If so, thank you. :DOh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements--we've all played in the D&D game with the one Chaotic Evil halfling ranger, or the one Lawful Neutral kobold duelist.
So sure, you'll have to split up when it comes to training. Otherwise, though, you can stick together without trouble.
I think you're right, and I totally missed it!
"I GOT A 4!!!!!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can't design a game that will please "everyone". It is impossible.
That is an opinion, of course, but I challenge anyone to disprove it. ;)
Having said that, is there anything really wrong in letting "players" choose what alignments are allowed to be citizens? There are advantages to more uniform settlement alignments, so let them choose and let the "chips" of those "decisions" fall where they may.
Edit: Of course, without that to argue what will be next? Why does my diverse settlement have to suffer higher cost, limits to building, etc....?
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Oh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements...
We kind of do...
...Off-screen: So, what about Lawful Good and I hang out with a Chaotic Evil character? How does that work?
Kaesh831: So, will alignment restrict my ability to play with other people in the world?
Stephen Cheney: So, Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil characters - there's nothing stopping you from being in the same party. You won't be able to join into the same official group because those are usually restricted to one alignment step. It's possible you could both be a member of a kingdom by a transitive property, but that'd be really hard to do, and I'm actually not sure how you'd do it. But you can be in the same party.
And, the important thing about that is that you would be really poorly off if you're the Lawful Good guy, because the Chaotic Evil guy has many less restrictions on his behavior than you, so he could embroil you in fights that cause you to lose alignment. Conversely, however, if you're running around and there are a bunch of Lawful Good knights running around that you've got your alliance rating with really high for them, the Chaotic Evil guy might get attacked by them and you wouldn't be. And vice versa for his factions that he's got on his
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... is there anything really wrong in letting "players" choose what alignments are allowed to be citizens?
This is probably the best response to a lot of the concerns being raised here.
Which seems counter productive to the way that the game seems to want to come together.I think this is a common misunderstanding of sand box games, and catering to this misunderstanding has been the doom of many of them.
You can't play your character "any way you want". You have to play a character that is constrained by the internal logic of the game world.
We have chosen to use the Pathfinder world as our game world, and its internal logic is that people have alignments and those alignments are intrinsic aspects of the people who live in that world (rather than abstract philosophies like they are in our world).
Not only will your character have to have an alignment similar to your friends' characters in order to create a society with them, but if your character's actions cause your character's alignment to shift too much, you'll be kicked out of that community too!
Playing within these constraints is part of how we generate a world that "makes sense" and is fun to play in. It is also a way that we provide challenges to the players - figuring out how to do what they want while remaining within the rules is fun too.
RyanD
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Regarding alignment in settlements. While i understand people might be let down they can't live in the same settlement as their friends, i think there are good reasons why the system is as it is right now.
It sort of makes sense that mixing child killers, who rob all their neighbors, with the nicest neighbors in the world wouldn't work. Reality may not always be the best way to set up a game, but in this setting i think it is.
GW looks at previous sandbox games and wants to avoid the constant kill on sight PvP that seem to be the main gameplay in such games. They want diplomacy, trade, craft etc. to flourish (but also wars of course). They call it meaningful human interaction. So a way to handle this is to penalize those who constantly kill random people for no reason whatsoever, with the alignment system. By having settlements of certain alignments be at a disadvantage when it comes to upkeep, training etc. (at first i disliked this, but i see what GW wants to do). So if we were to allow people of any alignments into any settlement, this system would not just go to waste. I think people need incentives to play meaningful, for this game not to turn into a KOS PvP game. For people not to ruin other peoples experience to the extreme.
The only solution i see to the problem is that: A settlement is the most efficient the closer to its set alignment it's members is. The further spread out it's members is on the alignment axis, the less efficient it is. This way any member of any settlement has real incentives to be as close to the settlement's set alignment, for the settlements well being. At the same time you could have your free haven settlement (which i think is really interesting), but it's would run really bad (bad training facilities, upkeep etc). A lawful good settlement that has an evil necromancer summoning undead in his basement would take a toll on it's indexes. People would not really want him there cause he is making the settlement less efficient. Of course if he is a dear friend you might decide to let him live there, but you have to pay a price.
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You do realize that all of your examples are of societies that are sundering because of the lack of cohesion in values, right? We should thank you for all these examples that HELP the argument for alignment in settlements.
It compliments the game and the story because players have to deal with consequences of their chosen alignment and evil characters will actually be evil and good characters will actually be good. If you want in depth back stories of NPC's then of course Table top...
Um... No? The evil orginizations also worked to fight the dark forces, rallying with the good guys against a common foe. Also if you remember the resistance and the kingdom never actually came to blow, they sat down and had a chat. (not counting the evil wizards deception)
In witcher two you walk around small villages where you have people of various alignments but they were perfectly fine until you showed up and messed everything up.
And infact in never winters night by forcing good guys to work along bad guys in a settlement with ONE building, you do the world a favour. You have offered the criminals a chance of redemption and they fought off the evil forces when they came to claim the settlement.
But even then there still is no reason for them not to let other alignments in. So far I've used criminals and guards, good vs evil as examples. Fine.
What about the lawful good settlement not letting in someone who is true neutral. Why? because he is a pacifist? because he is minding his own businesses? Because he dosen't actively look out to do good deeds?
Is this like in ultima 5, where they made good deeds and charity mandatory by the state?
I just fail to see the reasoning behind this.
In the end I mostly agree with Defiante1 and Hycoo. I don't mind if evil settlements suffer from having good players in them. THAT MAKES SENSE!!! Evil guards taking bribes in a lawful good city? Sounds legit! Good characters offer charity and mercy, rather than extorting them in a evil empire? I can see that! It gives a reason to why the town would suffer. But banishing certain alignments is just silly.
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I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can justify a Chaotic Good (say, a ranger or a druid) wanting to associate with a Lawful Good (say a paladin or crusader).
The Crusader represents order, conformity, and strict control. All things that the Ranger finds abhorent. Sure, they both believe in kindness and charity, but one has no problem with vigilantism, the other thinks that such an act is no different than thievery or burglary.
They might work together on occasion, trade tips on sword play or share notes on where the local bandits are prowling, but they are not likely to keep the same friends, or consider the same towns home.
The other is assassin, but it looks like that will be a flag instead of a prestige class.
We already know that training this will be Evil only and it will a specific ability, akin to a PrC or a Rogue Talent. In addition to the Flag.
Second, I would suggest to my fellow crowdforgers not to get too mixed up with specifics like indexes and how quickly the shifts are.
So what is the point of this Blog then, other than the specific mechanics? Not much else new was announced. We already knew that Alignment would be in the game, and it would be relevant for Settlements, and training certain Class Abilities, etc.
Take Star wars for example... in the legacy era, darth krayt, the current lord of the Sith allied himself with the Jedi order, embracing the fact that good, evil, none of it mattered as long as the galaxy is his, he doesn't care about his soldiers personal believes.
Sounds perfect for a Lawful Neutral Settlement.
What does disturb me however is the alignment restriction on a guild. It seems needlessly problematic. Me and my friends had discussed how our characters would interact. I want to be evil, some wants to be good and one guy wants to be neutral... I think it should be something up to the ruler of that specific city.
Well, it IS up to the Settlement ruler, by having a TN or CN or LN Settlement, they can be open to a spectrum of Good/Neutral/Evil PCs... The point is you just need SOME point of common reference. TN is the broadest, just requiring some aspect of Neutrality (CN, LN, NG, NE, TN) which also seems the easiest to 'maintain'.
Seriously, even if GW decided to remove Alignment as a factor for Settlements completely (which cheapens the game) you would still face intra-group Alignment issues because the actions you take as a group have Alignment repurcussions, which may be more or less desirable depending on each PC's desired Alignment. AKA Alignment is meaningful. I'm not sure why this basic aspect is still being discussed, it's been known FOREVER and the latest intricacies in alignment shift aren't really any change in the basics.
Doing jobs for evil people would make your apparent aligment more evil.
I don't believe there's any evidence, explicit or implicit, that crafting gear for evil people and selling it to them results in evil alignment shift. What affect Good/Evil is explicitly coded.
So one way to detect "spies" is to watch for folks who are performing evil acts "more often" than the members of the settlement
As an actual in-game approach, that is almost certain to fail. Anybody acting as a spy will likely be fully conforming to the norms, they will simply have a plan for betrayal down the road, or be communicating out-of-game with their other associates.
Quick example one of my friends wants to play a neutral merchant for our evil guild city... and now he can't. Why wouldn't a neutral party work for a admittedly evil organization, if they paid him handsomely for his services? And this suddenly applies to everyone! Merchants, cooks, even civilians must now all be evil to exist in this city. It doesn't make any sense story or RP wise what so ever.
So you're just blatantly misunderstanding the described system? Neutral is one step away from Evil. Absolutely no problem with the Settlement Alignment system as described. Worst case, if he is more than one step away, he can simply fully cooperate and mutually profit, without officially joining the settlement. Whoop de doo.
But that still doesn't make any sense. So your really saying that there would be no chaotic individuals in a lawful settlement?
No, people including myself have explicitly posted how having a different alignment should not present any problem to entering a settlement and interacting with people there. Perhaps actually reading what has been published about PFO and what people have posted would be more productive than endless ranting from a position of ignorance?
My favourite Pathfinder game OF ALL TIME was one where me and my party was stranded in this settlement, with three main factions. The evil crime group, the lawful soldiers and the neutral barbarians. We had to get along to achive as much as possible, comprimises had to be made, fun philosophical debates and issues was raised and it made the world feel all the more alive...
And such a setup seems easily accomplishable in PFO, either via one settlement (TN Settlement, NE criminals, LN soldiers, TN barbarians) or a kingdom with different factions. But do you seriously think that every single anecdotal experience in roleplaying that you've had, will be exactly implemented by mechanics in PFO? It's a computer game. Approaching it as if it could exactly mirror every single thing you could imagine is just ignoring it's reality.
I really do not like this update at all.
Nothing changed much except the details of alignment shift, now totally customizable.
Say if we run an evil, war like organisation. No one can roleplay as a good guy spying on us, or a misguided Knight who has joined us but doesn't agree with our stance.
If Alignment is straightjacketing how you roleplay, I think you should hone your roleplaying skills. Alignment doesn't dictate personality or roleplaying. Good characters can indeed infiltrate evil groups, and may have to do evil things to fit in and not blow their cover. Police or similar groups do this all the time. You may turn evil because of it. But you are still your own person with the same goals, and this "dirty" business you got involved in may eventually lead to good outcomes, bringing down the Evil group, and your Alignment will eventually recover to Good. Was it all worth it in the end? Well, that's the quandary of free will. There's plenty of novels or films with such characters, who believe they are good, their goals are good, but they end up doing evil stuff for a while. Since Alignment is a MEASUREMENT of your actions, of course alignment would shift when doing evil stuff. Just hope it's all worthwhile and you get redeemed.
Say if we run an evil, war like organisation. No one can roleplay as a good guy spying on us, or a misguided Knight who has joined us but doesn't agree with our stance.I think this blog, by introducing core and apparent alignments, actually solves those problems in a very clever way.
Yes and no, I don't think anybody should hinge everything on 'Core Alignment' as defining their PC's personality, all it is is a customized version of the Lawful Alignment drift previously planned. If you need Core Alignment to be X in order to adapt to a Settlement you're infiltrating, training up appropriate skills that fit your assumed role there, then you can set it to whatever you want, that doesn't need to impact roleplaying at all.
This is what I mean, peoples first concern will be more about maximum grid coverage rather than legitimate roleplay sense.
Really? There's a bunch of guilds/planned settlements prospecting for members, and they don't seem to all be gravitating towards 'maximum grid coverage'. As has been detailed by previous blogs, all the alignment positions will have specific benefits for Settlements, and 'corner' alignments with less 'grid coverage' (in terms of prospective members) will have more of these 'alignment bonuses' and options for specific buildings/points of interest/etc. I expect there to be Settlements of every alignment.
As I said I will be running a large guild, moving one over from another game. My major concern now is how I am going to be able to get them all in without the game mechanics screwing us over. So three settlements of the neutral tree seems the most efficient.
That may work for your purposes... But what you are trying to do is clearly accomodating out of game, meta-gaming interests which simply don't care about in-game coherency of alignment representing DIFFERENT approaches to life, with people naturally wanting to associate with like-minded souls... Rather you are ignoring that because you think people who out-of-game have the idea to cooperate should be able to have in-game mechanics reflect that even though they refuse to do the in-game things that would make such cooperation more ideal. Accomodating that just ruins things for people who can and do accept the internal game dynamics and want to play and role-play coherently with those, not imposing out-of-game structures.
Then there is the whole evil ruler argument, that if a ruler is enforcing the law however evil that law may be. Then technically he is lawful neutral unless he makes an extreme point of being sadistic.
I don't understand the point here, the ruler can be LE or LN depending on their actions... SO WHAT? Are you trying to bring in imaginary aspects of Alignment not actually associated with PFO? Well, the Aligment Drift system has been announced to cover everything outside of what is specifically coded for in actions. LE and LN Settlements have some differences in potential citizens, but alot of similarities... So what? (I expect very few Settlements to be led by one PC ruler, BTW)
The whole system is open to so much interpretation and manipulation, making it a core game mechanic concerning guilds just seems entirely unnecessary.
As open to interpretation as Critical Hit mechanics. Like any other mechanic, people can 'game' around it. That's the point, and I'm sure GW is fully expecting people to do so, that is the reason there is rules around the system. You can also just ignore it mostly and just associate with people who have similar tendencies in actions.
Like i've said twice before, there should be a Tolerance setting for settlements that dictate how far from the "official" alignment citizens can be, with appropriate penalties the more tolerant a settlement becomes.
The Tolerance Setting is the Settlement's official Alignment, which dictates the 'allowable citizen alignment' matrix. I'm not sure, but I believe it was previously mentioned that Settlements could willingly further restrict their membership beyond just the 1-step rule, i.e. allowing LN and LG but nothing else...???
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Like i've said twice before, there should be a Tolerance setting for settlements that dictate how far from the "official" alignment citizens can be, with appropriate penalties the more tolerant a settlement becomes.
Noted. That would be reversing the below:
Higher Settlement DI -> High Reputation/Alignment -> Access Constraints Chosen
Access Wider -> Lower Rep/Alignment aggregate -> Lower Settlement DI
?
Characters with low reputations may also find they're not wanted in certain places. Settlements can set a minimum reputation to enter the city; players who don't meet the requirement are warned, and become trespassers if they continue to enter. Settlements may also be selective about permitting players with low reputations to join, since maintaining a high minimum settlement reputation is key to building several prestigious and useful structures.
A settlement can remain competitive with a low rating in law, good, or reputation (or average ratings in all three), but the penalties add up such that a settlement that caters to low-reputation chaotic evil characters will be at a fairly significant disadvantage compared to other settlements, and such characters may have a hard time finding a place to train, trade, and craft.
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No. That isn't what I mean.
Tolerance would be the number of steps away from the Settlement alignment a citizen could be.
This could range between 0 (must match the alignment exactly) and 4 (LG with a Tolerance of 4 would allow CE members).
The more tolerant a settlement, the more severe the penalties (to one or more Development Indices, I would assume). The natural advantage to higher tolerance is a larger pool of potential citizens, and a high PC population is an obviously good thing. And you can clearly see the natural disadvantage to a low tolerance.
Note: This was supposed to correct Quandary's misunderstanding, Avena Oats ninja'd me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That does make it clearer.
Interesting. A 0-4 might need to work differently depending on each Settlement's Alignment you're talking about - although with the obvious increasingly "severe penalties" applying whichever Alignment is being considered as the starting reference. But it seems to open up another option for players. +1
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Goblin Squad Member
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Of course, the obvious problem here is that a TN settlement suddenly becomes the go to alignment, because it allows all possible characters to join with the moderate Tolerance level of 2.
But then they still lose out on the benefits of the Lawful and Good alignments. This scheme would require tweaking and some number crunching. A Spreadsheet Wizard may need to be recruited, lol.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So...if a LG and CE are living together (using this tolerance idea) and the LG looks at the CE wrong and the CE kills the LG, does the town continue on because everyone was acting within their alignment? After all, all L? people would prefer rules and laws to live by, while the more laws enacted would push more and more C? people away. How would that work? Sure in-game mechanic wise it is just changing the "tolerance" but RP and realistic wise, I don't see it.
Side note: If your bringing in "friends" from other games, why don't you all just decide on characters/alignments you all collectively wanna play, and center your settlement/guild around that? That is what my friends did. We decided to play bandits and hence we are all centered around the CN side of things. If you really have people that dead set on playing cross-alignments (LG/CE or CG/LE as example) then maybe your better off breaking into 2+ groups and just doing in-game trade or alliances. That would make more sense then making 1 settlement that "tolerates" everyone. (alignment wise) Just my 2 cp.
Oh, by the way, we still don't know how adventuring parties will really work. I'm hoping they have absolutely no alignment requirements...We kind of do...
...Off-screen: So, what about Lawful Good and I hang out with a Chaotic Evil character? How does that work?
Kaesh831: So, will alignment restrict my ability to play with other people in the world?
Stephen Cheney: So, Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil characters - there's nothing stopping you from being in the same party. You won't be able to join into the same official group because those are usually restricted to one alignment step. It's possible you could both be a member of a kingdom by a transitive property, but that'd be really hard to do, and I'm actually not sure how you'd do it. But you can be in the same party.
And, the important thing about that is that you would be really poorly off if you're the Lawful Good guy, because the Chaotic Evil guy has many less restrictions on his behavior than you, so he could embroil you in fights that cause you to lose alignment. Conversely, however, if you're running around and there are a bunch of Lawful Good knights running around that you've got your alliance rating with really high for them, the Chaotic Evil guy might get attacked by them and you wouldn't be. And vice versa for his factions that he's got on his
Oh hey, I've been Nihimon'd. So this is what it feels like.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I completely disagree with you. I think the alignment system support RP, but not guild wide. Quick example one of my friends wants to play a neutral merchant for our evil guild city... and now he can't. Why wouldn't a neutral party work for a admittedly evil organization, if they paid him handsomely for his services? And this suddenly applies to everyone! Merchants, cooks, even civilians must now all be evil to exist in this city. It doesn't make any sense story or RP wise what so ever.
So why doesn't you friend make an 'evil' merchant instead? All of you are aware of the logic and the rules of the fame prior to character creation. It's not an excuse blaming the mechanics hampering you from 'playing the way we want to' when you deliberately try to do something those rules and the logic does not allow you to.
Neutrals can work for evil...and they can be in the same guild/settlement. You just have to make sure your alignments are within two steps of one another.
Using a completely facetious parallel: My half orc barbarian uses a great axe, and I think those weapons should do ten times the damage they actually do. The mechanics are hampering my roleplay!!! No, actually I just need to adhere to the game logic and the rules/mechanics of the game. This is how life works.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doing jobs for evil people would make your apparent aligment more evil.I don't believe there's any evidence, explicit or implicit, that crafting gear for evil people and selling it to them results in evil alignment shift. What affect Good/Evil is explicitly coded.
Well that is kind of what I wrote in the same post, isn't it? English is not my first language so maybe I didn't state my case clearly, I will give it one last shot and then shut up about this :D
Now I don't think trading with evil people should give bad alignment through game mechanics but you can do evil quests to maintain an apparently evil alignment and use imagination and RP to bridge the gap.
If you look at apparent alignment in this way then it is possible for good people to live in evil settlements and vice versa.
My point is that if you don't want to create an evil character but still be a part of an evil settlement, you can keep your core alignment good or whatever and work on dragging your apparent alignment to evil, thus allowing you to properly join the settlement.
This is just a suggestion that a player could consider his core alignment his "true" alignment and the apparent alignment as something else, allowing him to circumvent the problem of not being able to join an evil settlement even though it makes sense to him. It appears that "apparent alignment" will be what the game uses to decide who can join what so if you decide (the game doesn't appear to make such a distinction) that you can still concider yourself good even though your apparent alignment is evil, you can circumvent a lot of the problems posed in earlier posts.
I think my example of an undercover cop in a criminal gang having to do evil deeds to fool the criminals he is one of them, while still being good "at heart" and having good intentions, is quite fitting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh and by the way, does anyone have any thoughts on this yet? I'm curious about whether there will be any perks in going from 5000 to 7500 at either end of the spectrum.
Any reason to try to max out the alignments to 7500 in either direction, apart from creating a buffer (Paladin with 7500 good can kill more "innocents" than one at 5000 before turning evil, evil warlords can... adopt more homeless kittens before turning good?)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unknown as yet, but I have a feeling that the examples provided are contrary to the direction the game design is moving.
And by the way, I don't have the exact quote at hand, but these vehement protests against alignment restriction mechanics was foretold by Ryan long ago. They knew when they were designing it that some folks would howl and protest.
I guess it is a bit encouraging to see his prophesy unfold exactly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh and by the way, does anyone have any thoughts on this yet? I'm curious about whether there will be any perks in going from 5000 to 7500 at either end of the spectrum.
Any reason to try to max out the alignments to 7500 in either direction, apart from creating a buffer (Paladin with 7500 good can kill more "innocents" than one at 5000 before turning evil, evil warlords can... adopt more homeless kittens before turning good?)?
Assuming the possibility still exists that a settlement could change alignment based on its population (not directly addressed in this blog), maybe the strength of individual alignments factors into that calculation? So a LG settlement where the NG alignments are low-numerical-value NG, but the LN alignments are high-numerical-value LN, might be tugged more strongly toward LN.
Edit: Changed CG to LN. Need more coffee...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Second, I would suggest to my fellow crowdforgers not to get too mixed up with specifics like indexes and how quickly the shifts are.So what is the point of this Blog then, other than the specific mechanics? Not much else new was announced. We already knew that Alignment would be in the game, and it would be relevant for Settlements, and training certain Class Abilities, etc.
The most important thing in this blog is the concept of core alignment and how that answers many of the questions about alignment shifts that we had. You can go ahead and spend 10 pages of posts arguing the fine details, but I guarantee you are wasting your time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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we love wasting time on this forum, but I otherwise agree.
A take-home message is:
If you want to be a pvp'er, you should not play a paladin and risk losing your cool abilities mid-fight. You should instead go evil (core alignment and settlement) and get access to cool evil abilities.
Another observation is that it is much easier to fall than to redeem yourself. But if you act in such a way that your active alignment becomes evil, you may be better off changing your core alignment and enjoying the benefits of that. If your two alignments clash, you will not be able to use any alignment-specific abilities that you can train.
The only benefit I see in setting a core alignment clashing with your behaviour is to fit into a settlement (ie maintaining core alignment of LG to fit into a NN settlement despite acting CE).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The blog itself seems fine and generally an improvement on GW's previous positions as far as the issues discussed in the blog go -as you would expect.
The one mystery relating to (potential) hard character alignment restrictions in relation to social groups (meaning settlements and chartered companies) is what GW is actually aiming to achieve with such restrictions. As far as limiting random player killing (and general douchbaggery) goes, it would not seem like to be a very effective tool as
* ”habitual” random player killers will very quickly find themselves in the chaotic/evil end of the spectrum and naturally gravitating towards the chaotic/evil settlements, which provide the training services they need to take advantage of the special tools available for chaotic/evil characters (such as assassination) as well as company in which to perform such actions more effectively
* ”recreational” random player killers will in any case just calculate their limits and continue to practice their craft within those limits while keeping their active alignment consistent (enough) with their native alignments and all the perks relating thereto
I cannot remember seeing any comment on how exactly the game is going to better with a no exceptions allowed one-step alignment rule extended to social groups. This question becomes even more beckoning when there are several easy to implement means to encourage players to ensure that their characters' alignments remain aligned with that of their settlement (chartered companies as a whole seem to be at this time pretty much in the air as far as exact mechanics go) without taking the ultimate decision out of players' hands.
It would be nice if GW could disclose their reasons for pushing this approach and subject those arguments to public discussion, which GW has generally been very willing to do -hopefully for the betterment of the final product.
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Here is an interesting twist to the core vs active alignment drift.
Paladins of the "Order of the Corrupted Soul"
Archetype: Paladin
Core Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Active Alignment: Lawful Good
These "Paladins" will have to constantly atone for their corrupted souls by acts of contrition (Lawful Good), in order to maintain their "Paladin" abilities. Inactivity in these acts will lead to their inevitable shift towards their corrupted nature of Chaotic Evil.
The way I look at it, these characters would b truly Lawful Good, because they would have to b constantly and actively seeking ways to be Lawful Good.
If you reversed the Core and Active, making Lawful Good core, that would mean their automatic shift would be towards LG, which would require less effort on their part.
I personally have no intentions of playing a Paladin, but I'd love to see if this RP idea would or could work out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I cannot remember seeing any comment on how exactly the game is going to better with a no exceptions allowed one-step alignment rule extended to social groups.
That is very true. I have wondered this particularly in light of the evidence that:
Corner: 2 1-step A
Middle-Edge: 3 1-step A
Middle(NN): 4 1-step A
Obviously extreme Alignments (Corner cases): LG(high rep),CE(low rep) have a special representation in game I think has been discussed?
But LE, CG have not been discussed so much (other Corner cases), though LE I believe was maybe mentioned as the arch-rivals to LG (and powerful)? Chaotic Good sounds popular on that poll that was in the forums recently. Sounds like alround nice-peeps, smoke a peace-pipe type of place to make things right?!
The other Alignments ie Middle-Edge I have no idea what representational role they might take on for the player population? NN sounds very powerful for max'ing players to mix and match, so can see that being popular for lost souls to go and then start out from?
This question becomes even more beckoning when there are several easy to implement means to encourage players to ensure that their characters' alignments remain aligned with that of their settlement
What are they?
* ”habitual” random player killers will very quickly find themselves in the chaotic/evil end of the spectrum and naturally gravitating towards the chaotic/evil settlements, which provide the training services they need to take advantage of the special tools available for chaotic/evil characters (such as assassination) as well as company in which to perform such actions more effectively
I am just gonna quickly quote Ryan to clearify how they want to punish random player killers that end up in the chaotic/evil spectrum
Chaotic Evil will be at a substantial mechanical disadvantage. (Their Settlements will suck)
So it's pretty clear that Chaotic Evil players won't have access to the higher training facilities. They will be penalized for their behavior by being weaker than players of other alignments. For this penalty to actually have any effect, they have to deny chaotic evil players the right to live in other, more thriving, settlements, where they can grow just as strong as other characters.
It would be nice if GW could disclose their reasons for pushing this approach and subject those arguments to public discussion, which GW has generally been very willing to do -hopefully for the betterment of the final product.
It would indeed be nice with some comments from the guys above, since this has become such a debated topic lately.
The following quote is really interesting though
Lawful Evil will get all the upside of being able to use force to solve problems, and will have awesome Settlements.
This seems to imply that:
- You won't be penalized (with less efficient settlements) for being evil (killing players).- You will be penalized for being chaotic (breaking laws and contracts).
So killing players outside the starter areas and the settlement areas where killing is not allowed (by the settlement's law) won't hinder your characters growth. You won't be penalized for that. (LE?)
At the same time, if you constantly break contracts, but never hurt a fly, you will be penalized. (CG?)
In short: The freedom you get for being able to break laws and contracts is being balanced by lawful settlements having better settlements. If you could be a brigand and live in the most civilized settlement in the world, you would get the better of both ends. Who wouldn't want to be a brigand then?