Shattered Kingdoms

Simple question. How are adventuring or melee classes without access to detect aura or know alignment supposed to differentiate between light and dark auras while leveling? Some places it's painfully easy such as the valley of ashes or cloud realm or so. Other NPCs, not so much.

Furthermore, how is a lightie warrior supposed to know that another PC is dark aura or so? Some people train darkies in dark areas such as the chancel and such.

Finally, places like the valley of ashes which has constant struggles with the treant and minotaurs..Are lighties supposed to attack / rescue the darkies they see fighting the treants? I'm just curious and wanting some transparency on these issues.

I understand the lighties have values and should be held to higher standards, but how do we decipher what those standards are and keep them from becoming impossible? Thanks.

Concerning Valley of Ashes, or Tlaxcala, etc.: I would think lighties and darkies training in the same area (and obviously on opposite sides of the fight) would be an excellent opportunity for some vs. interaction and mentor-level PvP.

I don't think this is really very hard. Put yourself in your lightie character's head. At level 1, whatever your backstory is, somehow you're working in the general theme that you're a Good (capital G, which is to say light-aura) guy in a gritty world who wants to train up as an adventurer.

Now, this is going to involve some killing. You wind up in newbie arena x and they say "fight all these zakamis/sparring partners/fellow gladiators/termites until you're ready to explore." Pretty simple - no major moral qualms there. You get out and wander around a bit. Ask for more directions later and someone says "Well you could go kill goblins in a cave near Zhenshi, or villagers in Chibunei, both would be good training". Wow! Our first OOC quandary. Both are recognized OOCly as places you could go at that level, both are in range, and the game would probably let you get xp for both (Chibunei's gray-aura). But wait, it's not that complicated. You're a Good guy, so you go kill the goblins instead of massacring the villagers.

What's more, you find someone there also killing goblins. Your character being an outgoing guy offers to team up and you do. Then, you finish up and that guy, being a conniving evil bastard, offers to take you to a spot he knows where you can massacre halfling villagers and really level up fast. Another OOC quandary! You think it might [REDACTED] this player off if you don't go with him, depriving him of the elite leveling bonus from grouping, and you really like running around with other players so you can gtalk OOCly about the Kardashians. But again it's not that complicated IC. You're a Good guy so you act surprised/dismayed/angry/whatever and say No - you'll stick to killing goblins instead of villagers, thanks, and while you're a little surprised/dismayed/angry/whatever that this other person is going to do something bad, you don't feel bad yourself, because you were with him only for killing Goblins. Maybe if you're particularly religious you talk to a priest about it, but you certainly haven't done anything against your alignment and while a particularly righteously angry god might blemish you for it, the same immstaff person behind the screen won't curse you for it.

All right - enough windbaggery... the point I'm making is that Enlights/Curses are a way of communicating via carrot and stick your successes and failures as a PLAYER, not as a character. This is an OOC concept not an IC concept - the same way those examples I gave up above are OOC quandaries, not true moral quandaries for someone of Good alignment.

And yeah, I've over simplified. But allow me the hyperbole. This definitely doesn't get remotely complicated until a scenario like VoA that you proposed -- but just act your alignment and your character and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Could you rescue the treants and fight off the darkies? Certainly. Could you avoid the conflict, filing a mental note that you can't really trust the judgment of the guy you saw? Certainly. Could you fight it a little more passive-aggressively, redoubling your efforts to slaughter minotaurs to make sure they can't overcome the weakened treant side? Yeah. Talk to the guy, trying to convince him to come with you to kill minotaurs because the minotaurs are obviously in the wrong and the treants need protection? It'd have to be done delicately, but I could see it.

The one thing you can't do, obviously, is go up to the guy and say "Hey bro u look elite let's grp up to kill treants/minos rly quickly and lvl up". And there's a lot of that which goes on.

I've had some great light vs dark RP on Solyenna in the midst of leveling. And that, the individual scenarios, goes way beyond "My people are at war with your people. Die!"

Well-said patrisaurus.

All my dark aura chars have leveled in Tlax. Almost none of my light auras have, because I find it hard to justify a light aura going there to slaughter a bunch of mages hanging out and causing no harm to anybody. The few whom I have leveled there will kill ONLY the dark aura priests in completing the quest.

It's role-playing your character and your alignment. The champions and heroes of our favorite fantasy books wouldn't go slaughter and pillage a village full of fishermen. Your elf or griffon probably wouldn't either.

Leveling is a grind, kill anything that moves.

RP is for other people.

If you test that theory, it will be made clear that RP is not just for other people.

IC, alignment RP is mostly to amuse the gods. OOCly, RP is mostly to amuse the imms.

I've seen a lot of thorough discussion and back and forth here and other threads about the lighties and darkies, what can and can't/shouldn't be done for either side. What I haven't seen hardly anything about is the greyies and that's where I get confused as to how you guys interpret the RP should be.

On that issue, I see it as the greyie can hang with/help etc either side as long as the greyie personally 'ICly' sees the benefit from doing so, whether that be immediate or in the near future. I also see that, depending on which KIND of greyie the character might be, regard for aura of the other is pretty much disregarded when it comes to leveling as long as it comes down to the primary objective... what is best for the greyie character period. This is how I view it based on the all the help files that I've read. Please either confirm this or correct my thought process in this. For me, lighties and darkies are easy to understand... it's the middle of the road guys that seem to be more difficult to lay a finger on what is 'right' and 'wrong' RP for them.