Shattered Kingdoms

To answer one of your questions not answered, if you have a deeper question of aura and motivation or wish to discuss your plans with an IMM, you are welcome to email that IMM (or the patron of the church) that you feel your character will most likely be seeking in game. if there is not a particular religion then simply choose one of the active IMMs (to know which ones are active, check the announcement board that lists who is patron over which areas) or you can choose the IMM that is covering the area you will be creating in. We are more than willing to discuss things with you and try to answer any questions you may have.

I am suggesting that a character is responsible for his or her own actions falling within an alignment that his or her player has chosen.

The onus is not on the game itself to give hints, though efforts have been and continue to be made to make things easier on the person who doesn't have "easy" access to detect aura (see Tlaxcala). Basically . . . if you have no way of verifying that someone is evil, why are you attempting to kill it as a good-aligned character?

Meissa, I am a bit confused. Are you suggesting that we use metagame thinking to approach problems, because the game shouldn't help us play it? I confess I could be reading you very poorly, but it sounded for a moment there like you were saying that the game shouldn't give hints on how to play it appropriately. Should we be approaching staff each time we have a question and following their directions? I cannot come up with a reading that makes as much sense to me as I think the point you are trying to make does to you: I don't think we've communicated well.

Are you suggesting a good swashbuckler should lay down his swords and not train until he can be sure that things are evil beyond any reasonable doubt via detect aura or know alignment? It seems to me that training and completing quests may well be sufficient motivation for a good-aligned character in a MUD to want to kill an NPC... but what if the quest-giver is evil? Would that also not be "aiding evil" and equally problematic? Maybe a fresh question will steer us free of this previous tangle of misunderstandings.

You suggested that there be some sort of "gotcha" alert that should tell characters when they're about to do something contrary to their alignment. That's not going to happen, and it shouldn't.

Use the resources available in the game to determine the alignment, which are numerous and include other players, NPC dialogue, game descriptions, magic spells and others.

I'm done talking in circles with you now.

I suppose my main point all along in this arc of the conversation is that in the above formulation, short of having access to the appropriate detect spells or the appropriate scripted items (neither of which we could freely assume on every character, particularly newbies) these methods all rely on the actions and honesty of others.

Be these other people other characters or builders, the character would rely on them for guidance to kill and not kill the appropriate things. It seems strange that the policy is to approach the character committing the crime without looking at the society that might have made it. That's where I would advocate the usefulness of some sort of phylactery for good-aligned characters to save everyone, including that character and the staff, a lot of unnecessary hassle should any of those other human-based resources fail to adequately inform the character.

For another example besides the kill command, if we look at it in RP terms, what kind of good-aligned god would resurrect a deep-elf at the request of an elf and then turn around and punish the *elf* for doing it? It would seem to me that the elf would be able to be punished or chagrined without the deed having to reach fruition. Wouldn't the god be breaking alignment, too? To say it broadly: some mechanics do not enforce alignment the way that it is enforced by the humans playing and staffing and building the game. That doesn't reinforce the humans' points.

Grep, I never thought it was possible to say everything, yet nothing at the same time.

*loves this whole thread*

Which reminds me... I have a book somewhere to get published.

Probably one of the most difficult things in storytelling is foreshadowing. You want to hint at "something" so your audience and sort of peek at it, guess at it, maybe, but if you out-right point to "it," then you've ruined the fun.

Opey, I can agree with you there, but with all foreshadowing, it's completely possible to miss it. I know I do, often until I reread the book and go 'Ohhhhhhhh'. The difference here is that not catching it in these situations has a very big impact on you. I'm not saying that it needs to be that way, but I'm also fully willing to say that one of the reasons I don't play good characters is that I'm afraid of breaking some rule that I don't know about. So the most 'good' I go is grey.

I assume you've never watched any politician make a speech on tv :p