Shattered Kingdoms

Actually the Palladium system was a reaction to how terrible the D&D alignments were. It's an explicit rejection of D&D, not a refinement of it. Trying to interpret Palladium alignments in D&D terms is actively counterproductive.

In D&D, alignment is exactly that - how the character is attuned with abstract concepts of good, evil, law, and chaos. In a wargame, that makes a lot of sense. You need to know what side something is on, and how it reacts to various holy/unholy effects. But these are not sensible philosophies. (Do large numbers of people devote themselves to the idea of Law above all? Or Neutrality?) Nor are they predictive of behavior except at the most fundamental level. (Try predicting how a Chaotic Neutral will treat people.)

The Palladium alignments are much more suited to role-playing. They acknowledge that all but the most depraved characters have some moral standards. Each alignment is identified with one moral standard; the idea is to pick the one that best matches your character. That choice in turn decides whether your character is classified as light/gray/dark for the purpose of spell effects.

Evaluating these alignments in D&D terms eliminates the benefits of creating a distinct moral code for each. Scrupulous isn't chaotic good, whatever that was. (Since following moral rules is a large part of being good, it never was terribly clear what this alignment meant.) The Palladium alignments are so good largely because they help define a character's relations towards others. Please don't import fuzziness from another game system.

I disagree vertically. In fact I couldn't be more opposed to this.

Its true, Palladium alignments are pinpointing of what a character can be played as. (by the way I was wrong, alternity does not have paladium alignments.)

But:


I think this opinion of yours is attributed to whoever introduced you to 3d or 3.5th edition dnd, or to your own interpretation of it. That is not what alignments are by far. Alignments in dnd are, since the first edition of the game, abstract concepts of law vs chaos, evil vs good. You place your character on the disk of this compass, and roleplay him as you damn well please. It is by far a better suited alignment system for roleplaying characters than saying that 'characters can only be principled, scrupulous, diabolic, miscreant, aberrant, unprincipled and anarchist.'


Imo the palladium alignment system was not built as a reaction to 'how terrible the dnd alignments are' at all. That is your own deduction, probably due to not understanding what dnd alignments stand for. Palladium alignments were a rejection towards neutrality, believing that nothing is really neutral. It is also a system of character 'personalities' more than tendencies to a behavioral code like the D&D system. When you analyze them in-depth, you end up having only 7 types or character personalities to play with. This is by far a more 'computer war game' approach to alignments than the classic D&D approach.

Effectively the difference between LG and Principled is that Principled describes a paladin, while LG can speak of a rogue that lives by stealing from the poor, in a city where the rules say that the strong must oppress the weak, trying his best to save as many weak as he can.
A principled character would have no choice here but to either step into this city with a mind to change the rules through force, or not step into this city at all. Or, if he did have to enter the city for some quest, but had no way of being able to change these laws, he would HAVE to ABIDE by those rules for as long as he is in that city. It is silly, but thats how it is. Paladium guidelines are very strict.

The concept of alignments seriously changes if one has ever delved into planescape books. That is a world where law chaos good and evil are actualy seen, can be touched, and noone can really escape from them. Of course, SK is not planescape, but I recommend you try it out, forsooth. It might change the terrible opinion you seem to have about d&d alignments, and you might actually enjoy what to me is the most outstanding fantasy RPG cosmology ever written.


I believe its quite the opposite, and I can keep bringing arguments as to why I think this way in this thread, but I believe the only thing all this discussion helps prove is this:

Both systems have their pros and cons. The main pro for the D&D system is acts fall into places on the scale. The pro for Palladium is Acts dont fall on the scale.

The D&D system lends itself to sliding alignments it has more of a tangible feeling to it, actions over intentions. The down side of this is that if you look around at the people in the real world it fails because people will often act out of such narrow alignment paths a "good" person will often pocket money found on the side of the road which is clearly not a good act. This system is great for what would a lawful good person do, there fore this is what I will do this because I am lawful good.

The Palladium system is more open to real life/imperfect people. The system is more build around intention rather than action. It has more holes in it but they are put there intentionally. A good example is using poison was defined in D&D as being an evil action. In the palladium system all alignments save perhaps principle are free to use poison for different reasons. A good man uses a poison because if he does not defeat his foe then people will suffer at their hands. A selfish man might use poison because it is the easiest way to get what he desires. An evil man might use poison because he enjoys the pain it inflicts.

Personally I like the D&D system because it puts limits in place that are easy to define how ever it does tend to produce 2D personalities. The Palladium system produces better 3D personalities how ever is less suited to things like good and evil attack spells because of the blurring of the lines. The problems really come when people try to use one system to guide their judgment in the other. There isnt really a single alignment the crosses over between the two systems given one is black and white where the other is all shades of grey.

Erevan, I realize you want alignments to be super-flexible. I don't. That would make alignment pretty much meaningless except as I mentioned - attunement to the various higher powers.

A thief who steals from the poor is not lawful or good in any meaningful sense, no matter how evil the city is. Don't try to enoble him with the phrase "lawful good". It's silly, and essentially an excuse to break character at one's whim. If you want your character to be good or evil, then he should be living to an appropriate moral standard.

This argument that there are only 7 possible character types is misleading; you're supposed to pick the alignment CLOSEST to your character's moral standards. Maybe a dedicated Ainite(Scale) would feel that following a bad law is better than the disruption of chaos; an Alshainite paladin might be cutting off crowned heads; a principled Meissan might simply attend to helping people, and nevermind the law. But all these characters live by high moral principles and can't steal or kill lightly, even for the greater good. Despite the variety, there's a firm core of what "principled" means, making it a useful reference.

I like the system because it encourages the player to make decisions about his character's moral standards, and then stick by them. Such character conceptualization and consistency makes for good roleplay. To do this is obviously superior than to arbitrarily "place your character on the disk ... and roleplay him as you damn well please."

What you see as superior, I see as inferior. I believe flexibility is key in chosing an alignment, for I want to play 10 completely different scrupulous characters, as far as alignment is concerned. To each his own, i guess.

Again,

The fact Erevan can have an aggressive 'death list' in the FIST or that I can run around as a paladin and spam kill without a challenge and/or kill grey aura NPCs purely for EQ by a [REDACTED], onthefly made up IC excuse is the real issue behind all alignment problems on SK.

Take every character that is made. It's an ooc set up, they pretend to RP it out ICly but everyone knows what will happen. I vote we bring back a few imms like Reina.

I recall people getting helled for a week, slain and corpse ate, deleted, and a host of other things for doing what is considered common-day practice. We had less problems of alignment back then. Things were just not in any way justifyable.

What is this aggressive death list you're talking about?

Forsooth, I agree with you. Alignments needs to have more clear boundaries of what they can and cannot do. As it stands right now, alignments are only every displayed around paragons and IMMs, maybe.

Yeah, what's this "Fist death List"?

Yim conversations with my old buddy erevan. Remember, this is the guy who helped me bypass sitebans:

Just various snippets (despite this is a derailing of the thread) of him saying what he truly feels, instead of [REDACTED] propaganda he puts on this board to keep his side on top in game:







I need to bust over to my laptop to find the conversation where he specifically talks about his 'fist death list' and how its acceptable for him to have it. But should give you an idea.


Edit: Added in some quotes for mystra for the heck of it. He never will ever use ooc information, mmhmm. This is why I hate most of you and consider the pbase to be terrible these days.