Shattered Kingdoms

The struggle between light and darkness is a defining feature of Pyrathia and permeates most aspects of SK. There is a huge (huge) difference between temporarily teaming up when it's necessary for the best interest of everyone and the things that get people cursed, which basically include ignoring the above struggle. Perhaps it would be better to be specific about violations so that it's more clear where the line is drawn, but it's not nearly as disparate as your conclusion seems to indicate. (Thanks, OA, for clarifying while I was typing.)


To clarify:

Scrupulous characters should never, ever level against lighties. Not only is it highly doubtful that it could reasonably be explained away as "for the greater good," it nets them negligible experience. However, these characters do differ greatly from grays as they seek protection for others outside of themselves and strive for virtue over vice. They are most definitely "good" guys, but they're more interested in the ends than the means.

You must have pulled that principled helpfile from the webpage because the one in-game has been updated. (The one for scrupulous is also pending a revision.)



Liberty includes being free from oppression, which is a manifest consequence for allowing those who would oppress others to continue on unfettered. Again, there's supposed to be good and evil, clearly delineated and working against each other in the game. (check out help roleplay in-game as opposed to on the site, too. We need to do some updating here.). Further, leveling as a lightie can be done almost exclusively against beasts, demons and undead, so if you wanted to play one that took the extreme of life and liberty applying to everyone, you could.

There is no such thing as "reform" in SK. Alignment is a permanent attribute of your character, and this is an IC realism as much as an OOC one, though I will be certain to make it much more clear in the edit to help alignment because that is something that's actually missing.

Okay, I'll make sure to check the definitions in-game versus the website much more often then. I had done most of my reading from the website while at work (LOL) or while my character was sleeping during training cycles. I guess I'll have to go back and look at each one from the game itself to make sure that the definition I understand is the same as what is currently in place Thanks for your help Meissa.

Good points, Serakyla. I think that it's certainly understandable that in some extreme circumstances that a scrup lightie might work "alongside" an aberrant darkie to battle against some evil that threatened to destroy them all, but those circumstances should certainly be exceptional. In general, I also feel like the lighties are, and should be, more harshly judged as it relates to working with dark auras, compared to a dark-aura working with a light aura to accomplish his goals. Darkies don't care who they hurt or kill, but lighties do.

This reminds me of an RP one time where I was playing a hellion leading the Midnight Council and a necromancer was asked by the leader of the Hammer of Light to help him take our cabal relic. The necromancer did, of course. Later, my conversation with the necro went like this.

Me: "Why did you help the Hammer of Light take our relic?"

Necro: "Come on, I couldn't possibly turn down the offer to destroy everything that the Hammer stood for. He actually asked a necromancer for help! By agreeing, I basically condemned him to destruction."

Me: "Huh.... well, okay. I guess that does make sense. I'm not even mad. Hey, mind helping me get our relic back?"

Necro: "Sure, no problem."

Afterwards the Hammer leader got into all kinds of hot water and got ejected. It was pretty amusing really.

Honestly... with the ability to deport and immigrate to another country, the ability to change religions/tribunals/cabals etc (although recognizably extremely difficult to pull off and should be), the fact that alignment is so set in stone doesn't make sense. In my opinion, alignment should be modeled after the actions of the character and not necessarily the other way around. In other words, you could start off with a good intention in life (say principled or scrupulous) but throughout the lifetime of the character, things occurred that altered the way the character views the world. He could even be cursed to insanity (diabolic). It happens in life, a LOT... thus should be a possibility in SK as well. I'm not saying it should be something that occurs all the time and perhaps it requires the completion of a very difficult quest, particularly depending how hard the pendulum is swinging... but to say that what you believe when you are 17/18 like a human or half-elf starts or 100-something as an elf, etc is going to be the exact same that you believe +/-100 years later without considering all the occurrences in the character's life up til then, is a little far-fetched.

I've read somewhere that a character's stats change based on age... and we have paragons and IMMs who watch over the RP of everyone from time to time and award either bonuses or penalties based on correct RP... why couldn't there be a system where those same individuals (or the IMMs only if you want) can give Good or Evil points that at a particular junction in life would cause the alignment to move in one direction or the other. It would make for a much more interesting character life-span... AND alleviate all of these problems of not playing to the correct alignment. After all, you would become the alignment of the style of character you play... Just a thought/suggestion. Then again, I'm sure you've probably heard something like that before given the vocal activity of the player base i see here in these forums.

It's not really possible to change religions, and changing trib/cabal is so rare it might as well be impossible.

Basically, I think you just need to reverse the horse and cart in your thinking. Your actions in SK do not determine your morality, but are instead determined by your morality. You don't decide something and that affects your alignment, your alignment decides for you and you must act in accordance to that.

She wants SK to merge with KoToR!

This is something that's very unlikely to change.

It was just a thought/suggestion. Doesn't change a bit my enthusiasm for playing the game =)

Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome, but I just wanted to be up front that it's on the short list of things not to hold your breath for.

I did make a smiley devil instead of a frownie one. I love KoToR.

Well maybe one day when I'm invited to be an IMM I can look at adjusting that, LOL. Don't worry about me Meissa... I think you guys really are doing a great job here. The events that I've read about, the changes I see in all the code updates, it's really exciting stuff and I can't wait to be able to participate in a lot of it. I've found myself quite addicted to this game already, particularly because it's soooo much like the table-top games I love, but yet I don't have to wait 2 weeks to get all the players together for a 6-hour adventure

One thing I would like to emphasize about those events is that they were handled entirely in-character. As the player of said hammer leader, I wanted my character to be crossing a line by doing it, I expected the consequences for him and was glad they came (I would have been disappointed if he had gotten away with it). As happy as I am about the increased vigilance regarding alignment, I hope that that style of RP can remain possible--although it is obviously the exception to the rule.