Shattered Kingdoms

I don't know why you keep using this same straw man. The organizations on SK have an ethos and a purpose. Their ethos is in accordance with certain groups of alignments, and their purpose is to allow characters of any alignment to have some faction membership options. Dulrik saying that organizations don't have an alignment has absolutely nothing to do with this. If this were not the case, and if these groups had no ethos and were wholly decoupled from alignment, then every faction could get taken over by a diabolic character and box out virtually every non-evil alignment from joining any of them, for the sheer impossibility of them being able to play their alignment appropriately while taking orders from a diabolic character. Or, the opposite could happen, and a principled character could take over every faction and then simply not let evil people join because, as a principled character, he doesn't want to work with them. But both of those scenarios are ridiculous and everyone who has played SK knows that. Why? Because the organizations do have an ethos and are designed to prevent this sort of thing.

This incredibly simple example shows how fatuous your entire argument is. Every time you get leaders leading out of type, a lesser version of the extreme examples I've given happens, for all of the reasons I've already elaborated in this thread that zero people have been able to debunk. IMO it's time to put a moratorium on people leading factions with characters of inappropriate alignments. Factions don't have alignments, but they can certainly put restrictions on the alignments their leaders have.

Cabals should be allowed to do whatever they want because the PC leaders are the actual leaders. Tribunals should have some hard-coded restrictions because their NPC leaders (queen seremela, the emperor, etc) would not allow certain alignments in their police force, or would at least not allow certain alignments to lead their police force.

There's no reason an organization's purpose or ethos could not change over time as a result of the people in the organization, but in the SK world, NPCs are static and in charge of tribunals, so there will be limitations on these organizations.

OA is the only person who has done that ITT, and I don't think anybody is buying it anyway. I am presenting an argument for the consideration of the IMMs, not something that I believe is any conclusion they have reached (yet). The only assumption I have made about IMMs is that they believe that there has been a rash of widespread alignment adherence failure on SK. I also agree with that assessment, and I am sharing some ideas to address it.

What's even more interesting than your interesting observation is that, in accordance with the very logic I have been espousing ITT so far, this could have been entirely avoided with appropriate faction leader alignment restrictions in place. IMMs would not needed to have been involved if the factions all had appropriately aligned leaders. You see the problem as being players presenting their conclusions as IMM conclusions, but I see the problem as IMMs having to get involved in the first place, which then inevitably leads to scenarios like this. IMMs really shouldn't have to get involved in things like this (especially not on an IC level, though OOC is still occasionally required), but it happens when factions stray too far from their purpose and when leaders in multiple factions are simultaneously the wrong alignment for those factions. It turns everybody's alignment RP upside-down. I say cut the problem out at its source and quit wasting time dealing with the symptoms.

This problem is, of course, only exacerbated by things like the oathbreaker flag and hard-coded CRS. It makes playing your alignment even harder if doing so risks getting you an oathbreaker flag for standing up to an inappropriate leader, but then we have to hear here that alignment trumps faction and religion and whatever else. When there are hardcoded penalties like being an oathbreaker for playing your alignment right and trying to play in a faction with an inappropriate leader (or even worse being in a faction when an inappropriate leader gets promoted) it makes your character much less interesting and less fun to play. It contributes to early retirements and lack of character development when someone gets shut down because of this. The incentive structure in the game should not be at odds with good RP, ever. You should not RP well only to have yourself made an oathbreaker or unable to join a faction appropriate for your character because of a terrible choice of leader. A player willing to let his alignment-based RP fall short would come out better than someone whose alignment-based RP is flawless in cases where a faction has an inappropriately aligned leader, and that is clearly a shortcoming that needs to be fixed.

If you want people playing their alignments properly, then please make it less painful/annoying/disincentivized for them to do so. Make sure it is fun, the players in question have great faction options with appropriate faction leadership, and have good RP rewarded. Do not let poor choices in faction leadership run amok and undermine other players and the entire game by wrecking what should be a very simple light/grey/dark paradigm that SK relies on to function.

The reason is OOC. Factions serve an OOC as well as IC purpose. OOC they make the MUD more appealing to players and allow any type of character an opportunity at membership in at least one faction. When specific factions get hijacked, that OOC function is undermined. There may be no legitimate faction choice for a perfectly legitimate character concept that could easily fit in a faction that has an appropriate leader.

Your IC argument doesn't really hold water anyway. Yes, tribunals rely on NPCs with alignments. But cabals have access to extra powers that presumably come from a supernatural origin, and that supernatural force could easily have an immutable ethos. I'm suggesting it should and should be enforced as such. Back on an OOC level, it would clearly improve the player experience at SK for all the reasons I've already talked about. It would also free up valuable IMM time to do things other than police players for bad alignment adherence. Instances of that would be significantly reduced.

Queen Serena might be pissed, but I'm personally glad that my necromancer, Queen of Chzzrym, can permeate in your subconscious after 18 months/2 years

Clearly, we're not on the same page or playing the same game.

Anyway, the problem is less about what alignment is rolled and attached to a character and much MUCH more about how the alignment is played (or whether it is at all). That's not going to be solved by a wave of the magic wand of defining alignments for player-run organizations. If anything, it will require MORE scrutiny before and after the leadership flag is granted.

I only want to chime in to make sure you understand his point. The Talon leader is a dogmatic sorceror. A paladin answers the call to join the Talons and serves willingly under the dogmatic sorceror's leadership. A diabolic mercenary joins and rises to leadership as a replacement of the dogmatic sorceror. The paladin would be playing out of alignment to do anything the merc says, so he is forced to 1). play out of alignment, 2). be at constant odds with the leader as he tries to get him removed from power, possibly leading to being removed from the Talons and thusly gaining the Oathbreaker flag for playing his alignment properly, 3). give up from the start and accept an Oathbreaker flag for once again playing his alignment properly, 4). quit the character. It can go vice versa, of course. The paladin gets leadership, so the diabolic character has the same choices. If a greybie always leads the Talons, this problem almost never comes up. The choices above are forced choices, all of which lead to less fun for a majority of people.

I'm completely okay if you, Meissa, don't see it this way, or agree with it in general, but I do want to make sure you understand it, at least, and accept that there are some that think and feel this way.

I caught that as well...Rofl. That was a good character though, Jen.

I agree with it in general, but I don't think factions are necessarily the right focus.

Unfactioned players are every bit as guilty of breeches in alignment.

Styles is still right on the general point that playing a dissonant character is an inherently selfish choice in a social game. That's not to say there isn't room for each character to have something unique, but when you get characters who are actively playing against alignment norms in more than minor ways those characters probably don't belong in leadership roles.