Shattered Kingdoms

To the extent this becomes a discussion of real-life morality, I think we're missing the point. The alignments are not meant to correspond to what is good or evil in the real world. (That's a religious/philosophical question.) They're meant to capture a character's niceness towards others.

Scrupulous characters are meant to be essentially nice to all who are not evildoers. That's the justification for putting them above the unprincipled, who are pretty nice except in deep personal need, and below the principled, who hold to standards even when dealing with evil. (I realize this is a simplification, but let's not make a dissertation out of this.)

If a scrupulous person is acting more harshly than an unprincipled person, something is wrong. There may be some truly extreme cases where scrupulous people intentionally harm innocents for the greater good, but such should be both very rare and cause for deep remorse. Characters that routinely hurt average people for their causes are aberrant. A goodish cause makes little difference if it's still reason for striking out at virtually everyone.

On the other hand, if a scrupulous person isn't acting more harshly than a principled person, something is wrong there too. Killing evil people as a preventative could well make sense to the scrupulous. If scrupulous characters were vitally concerned with abstract issues like justice and fairness, they'd be principled in the first place. Certainly their war against evil shouldn't protect them from an dark spear of faith.

QFT

I am so much with Will on this.

Actually, I know principled can request items. Since scrupulous cannot, it is still wrong to wtun or kill lightie NPCs sometimes if you feel you can put the EQ to better use?

Scrupulous characters can request items without any difficulty.

I view a principled character to be morally sound, occasionally getting their hands bloody when all other options are exhausted. More of a self defense attitude. A twisted scrupulous alignment I can understand is Sherriff Wydell in the devils rejects. One that seeks to protect the public from the killers roaming around. Doing what is necessary (within reason) to bring the lawbreakers to justice. There are going to be situations with ranges of extremes...so everyone will have a different opinion on what is correct. The very, very thin line begins to blur.

What? A lightie according to you can even intentionally harm innocents? Okay . . .I can understand a scrupulous char dropping an AoE in the room that contains innocents to make sure they kill the bad guy. That is being reckless. Which fits with the scrupulous definition, but to actually intentionally kill them? That is definitely Aberrent behavior.

Example: Cop comes up to a gas station being robbed by a bunch of robbers.

I can understand that if he thought the only way to get them was to blow up that gas station, thereby killing all of the innocents. I get that, don't agree with it but I can get it.

I cannot understand if instead the cop comes in and shoots the bad guys then intentionally shoots everyone else just to make sure there isn't anymore robbers. Even if rest look like they are innocents. That is just pure evil.

Good people cannot ever intentionally hurt innocents. When you pick an alignment you are agreeing that you will stay within the boundries of that alignment. That is why this discussion is necessary. If you are saying that it really doesn't matter, then why in the hell do we have alignments in the first place?

There's nothing wrong with scrupulous people.

Pussies and paladins should relegate themselves to playing principled. Everybody that wants to kick the [REDACTED] out of someone should play scrupulous.

The problem is people taking the helpfile out of context by only presenting bits and pieces of it at a time.

Reading



Is much different than



The problem is people who have a stick up their asses and wish to stifle roleplay, or that wish to tell people that they want them to play a character how they want them to play them. They don't care about the roleplay of anybody else, but rather how they themselves think you should act, irregardless of what the help file says or any other guidelines.

Conveniently, anyone that goes against those models suddenly becomes horrible. The true model has been rejected for a replacement model that only exists in the person's mind. Consequentially, those sorts of models always clash with what roleplay really is. Playing a role.

It's disturbing to see any roleplay a person doesn't agree with to be horrible or relegated under "bad roleplay". Under the definition model of what some people want to expect of every white aura character, irregardless of alignment, would proliferate the "cookie cutter" character.

So why then, have alignments? If all white aura characters should act the same, then why not abolish scrupulous and keep principled, and just call it "good"?

It's because scrupulous characters are not principled that they are scrupulous. One needs to keep in mind that no two people think exactly alike. One may wish to do things one way, another may wish to do it another way? But does that make one good, and the other evil?

Another thing I see is the misappropriation of what "ruthless" means. To do something without pity, or without remorse, or to say that one did it mercilessly, does not mean that they were acting out of intent of evil. A good person can be ruthless, so long as they are still good in doing what they need to do.

What is wrong with scrupulous? Nothing. What is wrong is players telling each other how they should play their characters. If anything, the alignment only gives a guide of how a character would act in any given situation.

Scrupulous is there for people who want to play a white aura character that don't wish to be constrained by the limitations of how a principled person would act.

The help files for alignment are often vague and not concise, they are also short. Sometimes we have to leave things up to the imagination.

Sure they can. What about a lightie who says, "you can't kill that guy (a darkie and mass murderer) except over my dead body?"

I'd kill him.

And yes, there are quite a few circumstances where other lighties end up doing ridiculous [REDACTED] like protecting darkies.

"but find the traditional methods with achieving these goals to be cumbersome."

Tradition does equate Morality, and Morality is not merely tradition. One can be an overall moral person without a strict set of very limited options in the cases we are talking about.

Guys, scrupulous characters are just less stuck up. That's all. They are still GOOD. Lighties. Good people do good things, being ruthless to your OWN people, even when they are misguided, is wrong. IF they commit evil (and that is NOT being merely misguided, but being CORRUPT) then consider them dark and do whatever you want to them.

If a lightie insists on protecting a darkie, just shove him out of the way and get the darkie. It's THAT simple. Why do so many people tend to the extreme? Mode stun takes a milisecond to type.

Yes, in SKs, it's -that- easy to just stun everyone if there are lighties involved, and then kill the ones you want dead, and leave the rest beaten up! Yay! There are no excuses!

Mode stun is a very dangerous way of fighting. In my opinion, a true scrupulous char would not go to mode stun if it risked him not killing his target- then all he ends up doing is stunning a lightie and accomplishing nothing. Of course it depends on opinion, but I'd rather kill both then risk stunning the lightie and losing the target.


No. It's not that easy.