Alignment Titles

[The Crazy Animal]

I always thought that the mmud system was lacking on the part of Alignment titles any chance at having subdivisions of good like the evil Alignments get?

TCA

[DeathCow]

I had not quite put my hand on that in that past.  You are right.  OK.  I'm drunk.  I was talking with a fellow greatermud..blah blah..i was talking with Valetine tonight and she gave me some insight into other Muds.  Which I haven't played.  She reenforced my idea that alignment should be and powerful factor in a characters life.  She comes from a RP(btw when your drunk special text is difficult, Mouse over RP) background, and she suggests that players should have, yummy sprite, a  non-power based goal..wait where am I going with this....I don't recall.  OK so yeah..



She laughed at me a little about my evil gypsy side quests....>WHICH i like and im sticking with....am i typing ok? and who.....nvm..this is done for the night...any one got a mario 2 cap in like 2 minutes :)

[The Crazy Animal]

I always thought that a characters alignment was secondary to the intentions/goals of that character.

Take for example you make a character that wants to free the land of an evil ruler. In the course of doing so the character is faced with the choice of how to do this. He can raise an army of like minded people or he can force people to take part in removing that ruler. If in this case he picks by force he would not be much better than the evil ruler. Another example could be someone of say a robin hood type of goal basicly taking from the rich and giving to the poor. if in this case the way of getting is stealing then history would more likely see him as a villain than a saviour but that is mainly because the poor tend not to be the authors of history books.

In either character study one is left with the quesiton is what alignment should these two characters have. In the case of alignment it is really a misleading term it should be called "Renowned" meaning simply what type of deeds that character is known to have done dispite the intentions the character held at the time.

If you want to be true to psychology and real character development you should have, a system set up as a character's archetype vs a renowned modifier. This is so that a once character decides they want to rid the world of evil has to make the choice of how (s)he is going to do it. Playing into this would allow some instances were a player must take account for things they did while completing their goals. In cases like that, they should and require additional acts to return themselves to their original purpose if it leads them off course. To me this is something that MMud missed entirely.

TCA

[DeathCow]

I like it...

Of course, its really complicated for a text based game...If I can come up with a way to do this, I'd certainly like to have something similar to it in the game.  And yeah, FIXing alignment is going to be the first thing i work on after we get the game up and running.  Multiple levels of good is a possilbilty, as well as preceived vs true alignments.

[The Crazy Animal]

Well the first step that you?ll need to take is finding your base archetypes or personality types that you want in the game and then manipulate the content and storylines around their behaviors to guide them healthily towards good or unhealthily towards evil then that would give you something to work with as far as content goes. Each of the personality types would then need some portion of the storyline to challenge their basic desires and fears and result in further effecting their alignment by the deeds they do the complete the quests.

I would suggest using maybe a physiological personality study like the Enneagram to model the system after as this would give the system a little reality base but not enough to take away from the fantasy theme. I?ll give you a base over view of the Enneagram so you can see what I mean. In the Enneagram system, you have 9 personality types these are: Reformer, Helper, Motivator, Romantic, Thinker, Skeptic, Enthusiast, Leader, Peacemaker.

Each one is has a worldview, a basic desire, and a basic fear. In addition to this there are three basic ways they act health, average, unhealthy but I won?t go into that right now as I just want to show you what the types are and their basic motivators.

Peacemaker:
Worldview: the world if filled with conflict, I shall keep bring them peace.
Basic desire: to find union and peace
Basic fear:? to find separation and unrest

For example at what point does the peacemaker face the decision to become a warmonger to fix the situation. In the event that they do become the warmonger what do, they need to do the repair the damage done by their deeds. Should they appease the gods and make offerings perhaps something else. There are many things they can do and try the difficulty of which could depend on the alignment modifier and would give the game a range of play and complexity that could be built in slowly.

I put some of the basic info for the other types below just so you can see what they look like but I?m not going to give examples for each.

Skeptic:
Worldview: The world is an insecure place and needs leaders, but who is worthy of leading?
Basic desire: to be secure in the world
Basic fear: I can?t trust anyone anymore.

Enthusiast:
Worldview: The world is full of opportunities and I shall enjoy trying them
Basic desire: to be happy
Basic fear to be deprived of the opportunities that the world offers

Reformer:
Worldview: the world is imperfect and I will fix it.
Basic desire: people think I?m correct
Basic Fear: people will condemn me

Leader:
Worldview: The world is unjust and I will bring justice
Basic Desire: to be self-reliant
Basic Fear: to be reliant on someone else

Helper:
Worldview: the world is full of people and need and I will save them
Basic Desire: people love me because I save them out of compassion alone
Basic Fear: people hate me because I have power

Motivator:
Worldview: The world values its heroes
Basic Desire: My deeds will be legendary and my glory shall be on the lips of time
Basic Fear: My deeds will be rejected and I?ll be forgotten

Romantic:
Worldview: I exist in a world where I'm unlike the rest of the people
Basic desire: to be understood and find my place in the world
Basic fear: to feel defective and or misunderstood

Thinker:
Worldview: The world is a mystery and I shall solve them all
Basic desire: to understand the world
Basic fear: to be overwhelmed by the complexity of it all

TCA

[DeathCow]

Well that would certainly add many lairs to the game.  Could make the test look something like the tarot cards from ultima 4,  something like that..  But to actually integrate this kinda of thing would be very complicated.  Or at least very consuming.  Its almost like adding 9 times the amount of quest text that there already is, then adding what ever I'd need to...Its extremely complicated.

I of course like the idea alot.  I'm worried that this would be too much for me to do though.  At least for the momment.  After we get things up a running.  It might be nice to work on making the realm more complicated and indepth.  Something that pulls at a players role playing spirits.  But for the momment this is 'alot' of work.

I don't even know that this is something I could do without some coding..well I suppose i could have your motivation be an ability score, then have the text chk against the ability..then display the text based on the ability.  Its rough anyway I do it. 

I hate that I like this idea, but that its simply too much work for me to accomplish within any reasonable amount of time.

[The Crazy Animal]

Well it could be skimmed down a little but I would think that there would need to be at least 3 or 4 personality types to keep it worthwhile in the beginning. Luckily, there is a lot of information on the Enneagram on the web so figuring out what the behavior traits of these personalities finding some challenges for them shouldn?t be to hard. Implementing it is another story as you said.

Based on the current model of alignment you would have 3 plot arcs for each of the types which isn?t that bad. However, this might be something that would be better served up in mini quests since you can drop them in over the entire course of the game to elaborate on the main story line. Also that might make it a little easer to pull off since the plots would then be shorter in each instance.

Here's a little more info on the types keep in mind sometimes the names of the type change so try to go by the numbers that they are listed by.

Descriptions of types:
http://www.9types.com/writeup/enneagram.html#II
http://www.ennea.com/types/enn1.htm
http://www.internationalenneagram.org/aboutenn_readmore.php?id=19#descriptions
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/descript.asp
Little more about them:
http://www.enneagramcentral.com/een_cntr.htm
http://www.enneagramspectrum.com/styles/default.htm

Just as an off shoot idea do you think it would be a good idea to give some sort of merits and flaws or special attributes to each of the personality types so you might be able to play this into how people can spend extra cps in the long run and make the characters a little more unique.

TCA

[DeathCow]

There would need to be some kinda reward for each archtype.  That way it would further customize characters.  Which leads to a richer more diverse realm.  Still, its a whole new concept that really is rather large.  Its a bit much for me to work on right now.  I've just finished developing the story arcs for each of the current 17 classes.  They are kinda neat, they over lap and compete with one another.  Some of the quests have people helping others.  Still working on the balance/chaos epic quests..but..whoo ha.  its 7 am...I really should sleep soon :p

[Valentine]

...and you said that Chaotic/True/Lawful was too difficult?!

:o

[The Crazy Animal]

I?m not sure what type of rewards you were thinking but I was thinking some type of unique ability would be good rewards for each of the archetypes. Something that grows or shrinks based on their motivation score.

Types: Reformer, Helper, Motivator, Romantic, Thinker, Skeptic, Enthusiast, Leader, Peacemaker

Leader - I was thinking perhaps something the effects party dynamics and size would be good. Perhaps have benefits for this archetype when leading parties like negating mid-ranked and back-ranked accuracy penalties.

Enthusiast ? is kind of like a adrenalin junky maybe some type of frenzy effect that automatically activates when they are below X health percentage.

Peacemaker ? perhaps some type of calm creature or calm humanoid type of ability that would let a player reduce the chance of a lower lever NPC or Monster of initializing an attack.

Thinker ? maybe some type of see hidden passage or Trap ability or a reduced difficulty against intelligence stat tests.

Helper ? maybe some type of special aid that heals quicker or a boosted exp gain when sharing kills. Roughly speaking the motivational score could relate to the percentage of the exp bonus gained.

Motivator ? I was thinking with this one that maybe it could work similar to the leader style reward but work defensively so that party members would get boosted defensive abilities when fighting alongside.

Skeptic ? This was a hard one to come up with something but based on their behavior traits I was thinking that it might be a chance to make their ability work with others motivational scores so if they are fighting along side of someone with a high motivation score their reward works better. I was thinking that it could be a mirrored ability so that if they were partied in a group the group member with the highest motivation skill would be the ability that the skeptic has.

Romantic ? I have no idea what to do with this one.

Reformer ? I was thinking with the reformers it would be a good one to use with willpower/wisdom/magic resistance. Unfortunately, I?m not sure exactly what to do with it.

What are your thoughts on the types of rewards that could be given?
I realize that you probably have a lot to do but I guess that the best thing that could be done if at some point you want to be able to put this in is to mark spots in the plot that might be able to provide points that correlate to the individual personality types. Then sub quests could be added in to make them function as a whole.

TCA

[DeathCow]

...and you said that Chaotic/True/Lawful was too difficult?!

:o

Yes but i think I had tequila coursing through my veins at the time.  They are difficult to create, its a matter of imagining how they'll work.

I can imagine a system for the above, or at least something similar.

[Ian]

I love this idea.  It gives an extra level of customization, so my lvl 30 warrior isn't the exact same as someone elses.  It reflects my playing style and myself.  The rewards don't have to be big (you don't have to have ANY), but it just makes each player stand apart from the crowd that little bit more.