Goblin Squad Member
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It depends on how sustained your look is. If you take a brief snapshot and then make a snap judgement then your likelihood of a false positive is almost assured.
I will use Bluddwolf as an example. You may very well catch him in the act of a Lawful Good activity, such as putting down an escalation, would that not through your whole perception of him off? I believe it would, unless you have read my Bio for him.
The problem I see with the argument: "In other words, you can't fully determine what a character does from their alignment, but you can almost always tell what their alignment is from their actions."
This assumes that they are acting within the confines of their alignment, and most players don't do that. Players have their characters act within the confines of their character's actions.
It is not alignment that controls the decision, but the vision of the character that the player holds that decides that. But, few people are so strict in their actions that they can be deemed predictable.
I believe that most players play their characters with more flexibility than a strict interpretation of the alignment system would suggest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah and philosophically there is nothing wrong with that. What is good, if not merely the absence of evil?The funny thing about the alignment system, especially programatically, is that it's fairly easy to identify and quantify Chaotic and Evil acts, while it's much, much more difficult to do the same with Lawful and Good acts. This is why the active and core alignments are a good idea. Instead of attempting to identify and quantify every Lawful and Good act, the player states that they are 'Normally a Lawful and Good person', so when they are not out murdering and pillaging (because of peer pressure naturally) they trend back to their natural state. Generally speaking, Law and Good are passive, gradually but constantly accumulating (if that is your nature). Chaos and Evil are active, moving the meter significantly but sporadically based on specific actions.
I saw a description of Asmodeous in one of the core books as pure Lawful, unfettered by other considerations. This would mean Evil is actually the absence of Good. Similarly, Chaos is the lack of Order. Although reversing the logic, Sintaqx's point is still pragmatically accurate and functionally useful; it is still easy to identify and quantify non Good and non Lawful acts (or acts which violate whatever it is to be Good and/or Lawful, by default being the negation).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that describing the alignment system as having only 9 locations is inaccurate; in the entire space of character actions, four lines have been drawn (law, chaos, good, evil) dividing that space into nine regions, which together cover the entire domain of possible character actions.
In other words, you can't fully determine what a character does from their alignment, but you can almost always tell what their alignment is from their actions.
You can not do either.
"you can almost always tell what their alignment is from the totality of their actions."
Since we mere mortals can't see the totality of one's actions, alignment is the purview of the "Gods" or the "GMs", in both PnP and supposedly in PFO.
You can always tell the alignment of one's actions from those very actions.
It may not be perfectly specific, but one can generally get a pretty fair description of someone's alignment with enough actions to review. Especially if you're trying to describe their current alignment rather than try to describe their lifelong alignment.
And all of your examples from earlier in this thread, Bluddwolf, are examples of pivotal life changing reasons why alignments can change. They are not examples of dualistic alignment.
Everyone has urges pushing them in all directions of the alignment chart, but where they choose to go, and their personal reasons for their choices are what make up their alignment, not the disparity of urges.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And all of your examples from earlier in this thread, Bluddwolf, are examples of pivotal life changing reasons why alignments can change. They are not examples of dualistic alignment.
That's an astute observation, Blaeringr; I didn't catch that. Pivots/life changing events are the basis for most good story plots, of course.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not just story plots. There are very few people, in books, fantasy, or real life, whose "alignment" stays the same their whole life.
So of course it's ridiculous trying to describe the overarching alignment of someone's entire life. If you think that's what's being attempted, then you are missing the point.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The objection that a comprehensive alignment metric system will occupy too much development resources is without merit.I'd rather have druids and monks sooner with a less perfect alignment system, than have a perfect alignment system and a delay on druids and monks, for starters.
Perfect alignment system is a whole 'nother order of thing.
I want druids and monks in too, but more significant to me is that the game is done right. The basis of the game will affect everything, with or without monks or druids.
Alignment is, in my view, foundational stuff. If alignment isn't integral to the foundation then it is fluff and a complete waste of time.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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It depends on how sustained your look is. If you take a brief snapshot and then make a snap judgement then your likelihood of a false positive is almost assured.
I will use Bluddwolf as an example. You may very well catch him in the act of a Lawful Good activity, such as putting down an escalation, would that not through your whole perception of him off? I believe it would, unless you have read my Bio for him.
The problem I see with the argument: "In other words, you can't fully determine what a character does from their alignment, but you can almost always tell what their alignment is from their actions."
This assumes that they are acting within the confines of their alignment, and most players don't do that. Players have their characters act within the confines of their character's actions.
It is not alignment that controls the decision, but the vision of the character that the player holds that decides that. But, few people are so strict in their actions that they can be deemed predictable.
I believe that most players play their characters with more flexibility than a strict interpretation of the alignment system would suggest.
If LG characters put down escalations more or less often than CE characters, then observing someone putting down an escalation is evidence about their alignment.
If CE characters put down escalations MORE often, then observing someone putting down an escalation is evidence that they are CE. That's the P(B|A)/P(B) term in Bayes.
The apparent causal effects are red herrings.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, an interesting concept. My immediate offer was that core alignment could shift fractionally, maybe just 1%. So with a NG core, your core good might start at 5000g/e. When you lose 500g/e to your active alignment in a killing, maybe your core alignment slips 5g/e to 4995. The next murder slips it again. Eventually your core is barely above the point you're NN, and you might not be recovering good points like you used to.
This is an interesting comment. But it brings to mind some issues that the degeneration of the [7500, 7500] to [-7500,-7500] matrix to nine alignments. This basic matrix is 15,000 x 15,000 represented as 3x3. The game mechanics limits certain relationships to 1 step in 3x3. But is a weak LG (4000,4000] more remote from an LG leaning N (1000,1000) than an NG tending chaotic avenger [-1000, 6000); or are they about the same? These are just 1000 points from the 'ideals' of L, N, G, or C
I do not see a good way to implement this, but it does represent finer concept of play. (And Design changes are expensive and risk bugs)
Could a Company or a Settlement chose and alignment that was not pure, e.g. 2000,2000 instead of 0,0? Could this then be used to allow members +/- 5000 or from 7000,7000 to 7000,-3000 to -3000,-3000 to -3000,7000? Is this more insane than the current N (0,0) community with LN(7000,2000), CN(-7000,-2000), NG(2000,7000), and NE(-2000,-7000) members?
OK certain structures, by alignment, must be built in communities to have most effect. It is easy to say a LG community is (5000,5000) and can have a paladin academy. But what if the members of the community drifts to (3000,3000)? Right now nothing happens until they get to 2499 (L or G).
I do not know where I am taking this. The game does have a 15000 x 15000 base. Treating this as 3x3 seems too P&P.
But back to Urman, I like the effect of 1% of temporary effect (+/-) of active alignment is applied to core. I do not see that this would lead to any (7500,7500) but probably to some (-7500,-7500).
Taking Urman's suggestion in another direction, consider allowing characters to pick starting core alignment anywhere in 15000x15000 matrix with quick pick options in centers of the 3x3 (9 set choices, plus custom).
Lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are two different ways to view alignment, and they both exist in Golarion at the same time.
Alignment as an ideal. For some, an alignment is an idealogical thing to strive for. This is most often seen in Druids (Who seek to some neutrality) or Paladins (Who seek Law and Good). These individuals often strive to achieve, spread, or otherwise represent these cosmic forces. For them, they purposefully act TOWARD an alignment. My primary character is likely to espouse this, as I am leaning towards Chaotic Good cleric.
For the vast majority of people, Alignment is the weight of cosmic force upon your soul as a consequence of your actions. Many an evil man would not consider themselves evil. They do not strive towards evil. Yet evil remains a cosmic force and it is drawn to them through their actions. More than one villain thought they were doing the right thing only to be utterly surprised when a Paladin's smite burns them with divine retribution. Likewise, many Good folk do not put much thought into being Good. They do not necessarily think themselves bad people, but they may not view themselves as anything out of the ordinary. Very few chaotic creatures are much concerned with chaos as a force. They are merely caught up in doing as they please when they please to put much thought into it. My destiny twin is likely to espouse this. While playing in a good alignment, the character will not be trying to keep score with actions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the settlement alignment is. Asked only on the alignment of members, it isn't meaningful for the leadership to specify a settlement alignment; they are still able to restrict entrance based on alignment.
Yes. Is that settlements consideration of alignment defined to no more that adjacent boxes of a 3x3 matrix or a defined range in 15k x 15k. The holy city may choose to allow those over 5000 L and G
Lam
<edit a misspelling>
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the settlement alignment is. Asked only on the alignment of members, it isn't meaningful for the leadership to specify a settlement alignment; they are still able to restrict entrance based on alignment.Yes. Is that settlements consideration of alignment defined to no more that adjacent boxes of a 3x3 matrix or a defined range in 15k x 15k. The holy city may choose to allow those over 5000 L and G
Lam
<edit a misspelling>
While one would expect a holy city to be massively extravagant, I do not think we would see too many fancy ones with such a tight restriction. And it would probably be toppled pretty quickly as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wait what, can someone explain this to me? If a chaotic evil character is part of a true neutral company and that true neutral company is part of a lawful good settlement that has no restrictions for member alignments, is this possible or does a character have to be one step from the settlement alignment also?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wait what, can someone explain this to me? If a chaotic evil character is part of a true neutral company and that true neutral company is part of a lawful good settlement that has no restrictions for member alignments, is this possible or does a character have to be one step from the settlement alignment also?
The most recent Dev post related to this question is this:
The choice of alignment for settlements/VCs is possibly slightly more fluid than simply 1 step. It is possible that we will need to allow a settlement to choose which of the 9 alignments they permit, and to allow them to be much more permissive. I'm still playing with this a bit (as I battle with VC/settlement relationships) but a single step restriction is potentially going to be too harsh - particularly early on in the game's life.
The difficulty with this from a settlement's perspective, however, and the reason they are probably going to want to choose a limited selection of alignments (if they end up with the choice) is that there are factional consequences. A settlement's alignment will CERTAINLY determine the kind of factional alliances and therefore the kind of factional buildings they can have in their settlement. If lets say 40% of the players want to be clerics of Sarenrae (I dont think is the case by the way I'm just using it as an example!) then it makes sense for settlements who want to attract high populations and become centres of trade to build a shrine to Sarenrae - for which there will be settlement alignment requirements.
So Tork is leaning towards not having the 1 - step restriction, but there will be a trade off in having that greater flexibility of alignment in the form of limiting demand for factional structures.
As a result of this I can see settlements becoming a bit more cosmopolitan.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like nuance. Cut and dry, black and white, these two alignments' only interaction is to bash each other...not my style and I think far less fun for the possibilities such behavior offers. A settlement where tensions exist among its denizens or at least its members and possible guests, but that don't immediately result in PvP, banishment, calling the guards, etc. might lead to far more interesting, creative, and nuanced player interaction. I like multiple ways of having to deal with one another, which often result in needing to consider multiple ramifications of those courses of action.
Sure, there will be those on the extreme ends of such interactions who will choose (and potentially be justified in that choice) to react in a black and white fashion to one another, but I tend to think they'll have the least interesting settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There have been alternatives to the "one-step" rule on the table for as long as there's been a "one-step" rule.
I like the idea of being able to set a Settlement's alignment to either "all of one" or "none of one" of the 4 alignment options. That still forces people to chose something other than true neutral. An option to pick "just one" specific alignment is probably ok too, I just don't think it will be used much.
So, it's not like this is a major change in design. It's the principle behind it that really matters, anyway.