Shattered Kingdoms

But the alignment system is part of role-playing too. Lighties don't get to kill things without cause. Now as players, we can make up stories to generate those causes. But if we OOCly know a NPC is good at heart, or merely unprincipled, that strongly limits the available stories. IC knowledge is even more limiting.

The required cause depends on the alignment and character. "Kill him, he's dark aura," can be more-or-less sensible for some scrupulous characters. There are good reasons to have more of a story around this. But those are essentially OOC reasons of storytelling and player courtesy.

But this is why, in general, lighties need more specialized leveling areas than darkies do. It has less to do with XP gain than with providing those reasons. It's a lot easier to justify killing a demon than a man. You can't really have an RP mud if there's too much incentive to break character.

From my characters?

No.

You realize that not everyone that kills someone else is a horrible monster or an avenging hero killing off Hitler for the benefit of the world, right? Sometimes people just get pushed too far and there you go, Lightie on Lightie violence. OOC knowledge should have 0 part in any role playing game, especially all of this aura nonsense. If someone makes you mad and you don't do anything because they're a lightie aura and you know you'll get cursed, then no. No thank you game.

Hopefully one day this stupid Light Versus Dark mindset will disappear and the game will actually be about role playing instead of winning, possibly around the same time people stop making throwaway characters and getting worshiped for it or absolutely having to GM and whipping sorcerers and priests to enchant your junk so you can pretend you're doing something worthwhile when you dogpile on Necromancer McUnprepared in the name of The Most Holy Light and score one for the Good Team.

They make MUSHs for people like you. Light v. Dark is a part of this game, and always will be.

Thanks for playing.

Thank you for proving my point, Ninefingers. Enjoy your rPK and whining at people that don't play with Detect Aura up at all times.

This gets into whether a character in extreme enough circumstance can break his alignment. The best stance, IMO, is yes, but that it's still cursable besides its IC consequences. Dulrik has changed the rules so good-on-good violence is curseworthy in general. This doesn't mean it's never proper, but you ought to have a darn good reason.

If you suspect your character is going to do things like this, you should really consider making him gray. If your character is going to do this enough to level, your character should definitely not be light-aura.



I strongly disagree. If we're going to have a shared story, there has to be some internal consistency. You can't spontaneously decide the Meissa temple in Uxmal is actually an evil cult, and then expect other players to back you up on it. Such reasoning is why you're required to read and conform to SK's help files. Blending such OOC observances, and others such as courtesy and storytelling, with staying in-character is part of an RP MUD's challenge.

For an example of what happens when everybody just stays IC, consider a MUD where diabolic characters routinely murder newbies. That's perfectly IC. It forces characters to avoid common areas, which is also a good IC response. But this isn't a MUD many of us would want to play.



This happens when you're playing a character class partly balanced by how much other characters hate it. And in general, evil alignments give a character great freedom to act, and a great number of enemies. Good characters have more friends, but more restraints. Pick your poison.

We can argue in any particular direction we like but it all boils down to one soul-crushing realization: A bunch of almost-pacifist "Let's protect our supposedly neutral city" guards are always working with a Crusader-like "Kill them all and let God sort it out" type just because both are Light aura.

At least the various evil alignment groups aren't automatically willing to gang up and stomp on elves just by virtue of them all being Darkies. It's bland, it's not imaginative or entertaining and above all, it makes no sense except in a way that makes it an RPVP server of World of Warcraft. Keep in mind that you can't talk between the two factions on WoW and that's swiftly becoming the norm for SK as well unless you count /spit or getting a return-fire ganksquad. Assisting role playing indeed.

There's often quite a bit of conflict involved. You're just not likely to see it if you're not part of the relevant organizations. I agree with you there's a problem; I just think the problem is one of RP visibility. Storytelling needs more emphasis. That's the solution to "It's bland, it's not imaginative, ...", not stopping IC conflict and making everything still blander.



Of course not. What's in it for them? If it weren't for lightie attacks, darkies wouldn't organize as much as they already do. This gets back to the friends vs. moral freedom alignment comparison.

People whining about cabal secrecy immediately invalidate anything involving cabals enriching role playing in SK. The only time this actually becomes relevant is when you either join that cabal or are on the side that particular cabal likes to PK into deletion.

Just because you're a nice guy doesn't mean other nice guys are going to get along with you, and just because you don't agree or help that person doesn't make you a Greybie. Characters should have more motivation than "You are Lightie, I am Lightie, he is Darkie. Make it so." if they want to be even vaguely interesting.

Then again, as Ninefingers was happy to rub in our faces, SK isn't about that; it's about Light Versus Dark, Collect the Flag and RezRPing. Occasionally it's also about big, planned RP events where the side that's going to win was already chosen before it started. It is kinda funny when people see RP events as the perfect time to level their character, though. To the point the experience gain bonuses have to be cut during the event proper.

I don't PK much at all. And I play a sorc that NEVER has detect aura up.

Open mouth, insert foot.