Shattered Kingdoms

I was curious as to why these alignments do not allow rogues anymore. I've seen aberrant rogues in the past and thought they played pretty well. Just struck me as odd.

Because the imms are trying to kill RP.

Also on the topic of Alignments.

Why in the hell is dogmatic a GRAY alignment? It should be split into a light aura version, and dark aura version. Sorry, but if you go kill 10 little kids because someone told you to...uh, you're [REDACTED] evil. Mmmkay.

Unless dogmatic aura characters are allowed into the Hammer/Fist/Adepts(if they ever come back). Saving children from a burning building makes you a good person, even if the only reason you did it, is because it's your job. A selfish person wouldn't jump into a burning building and risk their life, just because it's their job. Kthx.

Perhaps you would save children when ordered and kill when ordered. You may not like it but orders is orders.

Yes, sure, but if you kill children because of orders...You're [REDACTED] evil. No matter what you think about yourself after doing it. =/

HOWEVER. If alignments could fluxuate(spelling?) in SK, I think Dogmatic would be awesome. You could start off Dogmatic, then let's say you run into the Emperor of the Bright Star, and he tells you to start killing children, you would then become like Diabolic or something. Or maybe Dogmatic(Dark) or wtfever.

I've played dynamic alignment muds, trust me it would not fit here well at all.

Based on your two examples, if the character in question did those sorts of things both consistently and passionately, I'd say their proper alignment falls within the spectrum of "Principled" and "Aberrant" respectively. But plenty of people perform "good" actions that have been socially-institutionalized with very little actual benevolence involved. And plenty of people do ostensibly-"evil" things simply because they're being ordered to by people whose authority they feel is legitimate without any true malicious intent of their own. Just two RL examples - obviously not every corporate donor is in it for the sake of pure philanthropy [as opposed to PR], and soldiers are expected to routinely execute orders with whose consequences they may disagree and personally regret for years.

In short, Dogmatic is like "fundamentalist LN and otherwise basically unaligned." Judgments about how these characters' actions look morally are obviously going to differ depending on the alignment of the party doing the judging, but in my opinion the difference between selfishness and evil as the concepts exist for our purposes is one defined more in depravity than just callousness alone. And I'd say Dogmatics believe these difficult questions of moral philosophy are best left to someone else - whether that's out of true belief in the social order they work to support or just personal apathy about such things on the character's part doesn't really make any difference.

And I can understand where you're coming from about the slippery-alignment thing, but I'm fairly sure the dynamic alignment can of worms is one very few of us really want to open here, not only as one of many who'd be called to make judgment calls on such questions that would probably satisfy no-one, but as one who's seen the topic come up for years and years and be met with the same eventual "no, probably not" by the majority every time. Feel free to imply something like that ICly as backstory, of course.

oops g2g, moar arepee 2 kill

It confused me too. But more or less what Thuban is saying is that good and evil in this game are determined by a character's feelings and intentions moreso than their actions themselves.

A character who saves children from a burning building because he is ordered to and wants his paycheck is Dogmatic. A character who saves children from a burning building because he loves and cherishes all life, especially those of precious little children, is a lightie. And yes, a Dogmatic can be ordered to do something we'd call evil, and then the next day, be ordered to do something we'd call good. The point is that the character in doing these actions thinks little of their moral importance, just that they abide by whatever set of rules they ascribe to.

Dogmatics seem to me like a lot of soldiers would seem. I mean many times they may do things they dont want to, but they follow orders regardless. Also your average citizen is not quite a depraved sociopath, but often times they are selfish and certainly not heroic lighties

.... sooo why can't rogues be aberrant or principled again?

I explained it already.