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Alignments in my new game


assault

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I'm having a fantasy "thing" at the moment. It's got as far as considering alignment 

 

At the moment, there is Good (your side), Bad, and Neutral.

 

As I've said, Good is your side. The things you do are in the interests of your community. If your god wants you to sacrifice your children, there is a good reason.

 

Bad are on the other team.

 

Neutral doesn't care about your stuff. You might be able to win them to your side, or they might join the other. Once they do that, they are no longer Neutral. Unless they change sides... Actually, that won't restore their Neutral status.

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9 hours ago, assault said:

I'm having a fantasy "thing" at the moment. It's got as far as considering alignment 

 

At the moment, there is Good (your side), Bad, and Neutral.

 

As I've said, Good is your side. The things you do are in the interests of your community. If your god wants you to sacrifice your children, there is a good reason.

 

Bad are on the other team.

 

Neutral doesn't care about your stuff. You might be able to win them to your side, or they might join the other. Once they do that, they are no longer Neutral. Unless they change sides... Actually, that won't restore their Neutral status.

 

Please look up Euthyphro on Wikipedia.  Basically an argument between him and Socrates comes down to "Is something pious because God approves of it or does God approve of it because it is pious?"

 

This is the can a worms you may be opening up. 

 

Also, as a personal comment, I would hesitate being in a game where human sacrifice was considered a good act.  I would certainly ask for a reason and if the GM could not give me a satisfactory answer other that "Because he said so!", then I am out of there!

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23 hours ago, assault said:

Aside from a bit of trolling on my part, I was thinking about Abraham and Isaac.

Also Iphigenia.

Abraham and Isaac did not involve actual sacrifice, but only to see if they would be faithful enough to go through with it if told to do so by God. There’s some pretty deep symbolism in their story.

 

It was really quite a test of faith for Abraham, since his own father would have sacrificed him to an idol if he hadn’t been saved by divine intervention.

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On 4/4/2022 at 12:31 PM, Mr. R said:

 

Also, as a personal comment, I would hesitate being in a game where human sacrifice was considered a good act.  I would certainly ask for a reason and if the GM could not give me a satisfactory answer other that "Because he said so!", then I am out of there!

I guess you have not read about Abraham then!

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On 4/4/2022 at 2:31 AM, assault said:

Neutral doesn't care about your stuff. You might be able to win them to your side, or they might join the other. Once they do that, they are no longer Neutral. Unless they change sides... Actually, that won't restore their Neutral status.

Good! Bad! has no meaning if they are just labels.

 

Why is someone Bad and if they are Bad why can't they decide to become Good?  Christian thinking believes in forgiveness and eastern traditions believe you can work off karmic debt but ideology, especially in a fantasy setting does not have to follow our traditional paradigm.  T.S Lewis yes I know but that was the author's choice.

 

Perhaps when one breaks bad they lose the ability to be good!  Goodness, peace, mercy, kindness, forgiveness etc. might be a quality that we are born with kind of the opposite of original sin maybe and it is something that we have to protect.  Demons and evil may attempt to attack our character by making us destroy what is good inside of us because they know that once good is broken in a mortal it cannot be repaired.  It is just gone.

 

Such a world might have the kind of idyllic Andy Griffith Mayberry feel of a television show where everyone helps everyone out, no one steals  anything, the sheriff does not carry a bow and the deputy has one bolt in a quiver in his front pocket because nothing goes wrong in the kingdom.  The goblins and demons and evil races are the way they are because goodness was broken in the entire race.  Maybe at one point all the goblins were kind nice little creatures like hobbits but so many became corrupt they killed off all the good ones and there was no more good left in the race to be pushed to the next generation.

 

In this scenario the good kingdom is always under threat because Evil is always trying to corrupt people in order to turn the entire race evil.  Maybe some races are immune and goodness and evil are not absolutes so they are always neutral, able to decide or change their minds.

 

I would suggest this way of thinking about it makes for better roleplaying because the alignment has a purpose in the world.  It is explained and has rules and thus it is more than just OK I am good so I get to cast healing spells.  

 

You don't have to use this particular paradigm but if you think out one of your own and answer these questions to create a philosophy of alignment I would suggest it would be easier for you to answer these questions and make for a better game.

 

Cheers!

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Mr. R said:

I know all about Abraham and Jephthah Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jephthah

 

Out of courtesy and not wanting to say something I may regret, I will not make any further comments here on this thread!

Dude it was a joke!  It is not sacrilege.  God has a sense of humor!

 

If you doubt God's sense of humor I would just point to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars but I will leave it alone other than that!

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