[MUD-Dev] Alignment

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 07:09 PM 8/25/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>[Jeff K:]
>> The one thing alignment DOES do in the AD&D system is serve as a rather
>> brute force balancing agent.  If you are going to allow evil PCs (as our
>> OLRPG does) then alignment becomes an issue because the strongest character
>> types in the game are NOT evil types.  I consider this necessary to keep
>> the world from disintegrating as well as to overcome the basic advantage
>> ruthlessness has...
>
>Hmmm.  What basic advantage does ruthlessness have?  In my experience
>behaving in a basically 'evil' manner tends to accumulate you many
>enemies and no friends, while being 'good' gets you the opposite.
>It seems to me that this gives someone who is 'good' (== makes lots
>of friends) a severe advantage, since he/she always has strength of
>numbers and friends to help him/her out?

Im afraid Ive seen rpecisely the opposite.

We are basicly pack animals us humans, and a ruthless domiantor can quickly
grow his circle of support far beyond that built on friendship.  The
freiendship ties may be stronger, but that is only an issue if the
dominator slips up and betrays weakness-- at which poitn another alpha
rises to take his place.

Now add in all the ways a ruthless person will work to get ahead that a
person with ethics wont and the advantages become fairly obvious.

If beigna good person was really a sufficient deterrent against beign taken
advatntage by the rutheless, why were polcie invented?  Another example...
how ruthless is the richest man i namerica?  If you DONt think Bill Gates
is a ruthless predatory SOB, then you havent really watched the history of
Microsoft.

JK
>
>
>
Jeff Kesselman
Snr. Game Integration Engineer
TEN -- The Total Entertainment Network -- www.ten.net

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