Shattered Kingdoms

Thank god for that. There's so much equipment that zaps neutrals for no reason it's not funny.

Oh my god, it's imperial mesh! Can't touch this!
(cue MC Hammer)

They would no longer have auras themselves. Or clearly represent good and evil. Some of their portfolios might have to change to reflect that. If Dulrik still has all those good spheres and Dabi her own, they will be left-overs from an era of "Dulrik Good, Dabi very Bad". Ain, (who would have become one "neutral" god, you would have no way to justify two mirror images) Sargas, Zavi and all grey gods is a good example of a god who fits in with a non-alignment system. Dulrik, Dabi and a few others aren't.

So yes, I think there might be quite a few changes.

Anti-aura eq never has made sense. It's a pretty central mechanic for a lot of the game (and most MUDs), but it really doesn't make sense a lot of the time. The Paladin and Hellion classes would need a retool no more than the gods. Follow the code/vows, follow your god. Does theology change just because noone can judge things in an absolute, magical way? Real-world good-evil religious judgements aren't limited because someone doesn't glow or absorb light to tell you about their moral status. Bolt of glory would fry the same people it does now, except instead of evil priests it would be priests of 'evil' gods. If you want to make a distinction about priests of gray religions, you could force people to choose if they want to be on the good or evil side of that god's axis- like Ain presently, except it could be a soley coded, behind-the-scenes distinction. I'd prefer making it just priests of evil gods, though. I'm not sure about the balance of doing so, as some evil priests might just go Achernar to avoid Paladin problems. Detect aura's just a utility spell, and it's the problem with the atmosphere here in the first place.

Spear of Faith is the kicker, and I have *no* clue about an easy fix for it.

Radamanthys: To fall back on the old real-world believed epitome of evil, even Hitler believed he was doing good. The fact that he is, by almost any moral judgement but his own, evil is not mitigated by the fact that he did not have a black aura around him. Removal of auras does not remove good and evil as a game theme.

Forsooth: If you want to make people still commit their characters, you can leave alignment in but only viewable by the imms.

When I speak of auras, I also mean alignments and in the end, good and evil.

It gets so subjective, so "grey", so 'inbetween', that it effectively is no longer there.

Yes, Hitler was "evil", (more like, insane) but those fighting him were not saints, or even "good".

Just so everyone is clear, this is a "What If?" thread. We aren't going to be taking out alignments.

Clear. You'd have done it ages ago if you were going to. I can dream, though.

Rad: I know. Leaving them in so imms could check them only would, effectively, eliminate them from RP scenarios, barring people being deliberately and far out of character with it. There's no reason for anything beyond the assumption of a measurable good/evil axis to actually change in such a system, however. None of the game's things are reliant upon people glowing. You say that the gods of the game would somehow change if morality were less measurable, or even impossible to measure. I do not see any reason for it. Nothing in the game is reliant on being labelled good or evil by the mechanics except for the bits which have already been brought up.

This is usually necessary when you are exceptionally rough when driving your car.

I can honestly say that I would be the first one to abuse an alignment change, no matter how long it would take me to RP it out. The ability to change alignments is too abuseable by players and twinks alike, that it should never be implemented as common law.

A hellion in the Fist. *drool*

A paladin in the MC *drool even more*

That is why it has been suggested that you can only change to another valid alignment for race/class. So, no lightie necros and no darkie paladins. . . so on and so forth.

Yes, Muktar, but it has been shown over the course of time, that if you give many people in the human race an inch, they will take a mile. And once any type of alignment change would be put in (thank you Dulrik for saying it wouldn't), then people would push for being able to have a full-blown sliding alignment scale.