1. Evil people can basically kill whoever they want.

2. Goodie people can basically kill any evil they want, and also enemies of their cabal - for example Fortress people can now hunt even neutral villagers because they are at War, right?

3. Whom can neutral people fight? Only enemies of their cabal? I know some people were writing roles to explain why they kill someone else - for example when gnome didn't like bigger people or when member of one race didn't like members of many other races - but some of them got their alignment turned into evil very very fast.

4. Whom can Nexan fight when all things are totally balanced?
Can neutral Outlander fight anybody else other than enemies of Outlanders?


5. Does it mean that goodie can kill overall more people than neutrals?

My view is somewhat different.

There are far too many scenarios to decipher a general flow sheet as to what acts are good and what are evil. To further that, our alignment morals are based on our societal norms IRL. There is no absolute truth in good and evil, just what our society portrays as good and evil. I feel that is the basis for my view on alignment.

A good alignment would signify that a person will think and act selflessly and with good moral. That being said it falls under the intent of ones actions to determine the degree of good or evil a person acts under. Stealing and killing are evil acts in and of themselves, but we justify them as good and evil based upon intent. If you are killing to benefit yourself, the act is evil.

I don't think there are any neutral acts aside to apathy in general. A neutral will choose his acts according to the goals set forth and they will be either good or evil acts. There must be a balance for these acts as long as the person is neutral. As long as the good acts and the evil acts have some semblance of balance, the person is neutral. Now I've seen people take the stance that they kill anyone they wish... to me that's evil. If there is no balance point for the evil you do with the good, then you are evil. This is a highly circumstantial alignment with lots of choices to be made.

A truly evil person will act in the interest of himself or herself alone and act outside the normal moral code of society. At bare minimum exchanges will be quid pro quo in trade. The alignment in relation to others "should" have no bearing in whom they choose to kill. Their Hierarchies of darkness are generally only accepted by fear and power levels. If they get a benefit they will stand in line, but they will also backstab anyone to get a step up.

I don't like this discussion, because in all honesty the interpretation of alignment is based upon opinion. My opinion differs from Daev's his from others, and etc.

I view neutrals as being able to do what they want without impunity, as long as they do not continually do evil? Explanation below:

Goodie won't steal a candy bar because he knows its morally wrong

Neutral doesn't give a #### about morals, and stole the candy bar

Evil guy burned the store down, after stealing everything.

I can apply this example to killing as well.

Goodie won't kill an elf, because it'd be deemed 'wicked' by society

Neutral doesn't give a #### what society thinks, so kills the elf. and leaves it at that

Evil killed the elf, and his entire family to see which family member could scream the loudest.


Now if neutral devoted his life to murdering elves/etc? likely evil. If neutral sees random good guy and is like hey I think I'll kill this dude, I view that as simply being neutral.

My $.02

Not trying at all to be snarky here

but as far as I can tell, this ends up, in practical effect, being

1) Goodie: Not allowed to kill everything you want.

2) Neutral: Allowed to kill everything you want.

3) Evil: Allowed to kill everything you want with some extra RP sprinkled on top.

I feel like this is more or less exactly what the other players and imms expressed, too, at the most basic level. And it's about how CF works right now.

There are theoretically consequences for a neutral guy who kills everything in sight, but as far as I can tell you have to really try at it, over and over and over, in a really high profile way, before you're even noticed up in immland, let alone consequences which may come down on you.

I disagree with your breakdown. First of all, I'd be careful not to confuse alignment with ethos. Your stealing example I think would be more influenced by ethos than alignment, and even the way you phrase your killing example (what "society" thinks) sounds like more of an ethos breakdown. The way you phrase it, your "good" guy sounds like he'd still be OK with killing the elf if society said it was OK (let's say his society was Udgaard), and your evil guy just sounds like complete sociopath, and evils are not necessarily sociopaths. Even your neutral guy sounds a little sociopathic.

If you have any depth to roleplaying, let's assume all characters, regardless of alignment, except for completely demented sociopaths, all have emotional needs and desires, rationalize their own destructive behavior, are to some extent opportunistic, and some variable sense of loyalty, need for approval/acceptance/whatever.

Let's take your elf-killing example:

- Good: Most of the time, he's really not going to kill the elf - not because society deems it 'wicked', but because he has an internal aversion to causing pain and suffering, especially on someone innocent. Even still, the good might kill the elf if he has a compelling reason that (in his mind) serves the greater good - for example, for cabal reasons. In this case, "society" (his cabal) is justifying his action; the victim is NOT entirely innocent (they use magic, broke the law, etc), but he's a character bent upon considering the ethical consequences of everything he does. He has *scruples*, and killing in such situations does not come easily.

- Neutral: While there are some neutral characters that, as you say, "Don't give a #### about morals", I think this attitude towards playing a neutral more often than not is borderline evil behavior. Your example makes it sound like he's just going to kill the elf - just because he's there. He'll dump his corpse on the side of the road and not have any reservation about doing so. I disagree. I believe a truly neutral character almost always needs a *strong motivation*. He probably has some sense of right and wrong in most cases, but just doesn't subscribe to the righteousness thing. It's not like he is devoid any sense of scruples or empathy, he's just more even-handed in considering his actions, and believes certain so-called "unethical" actions to be justified, and with suitable justification, he has no qualms about breaching ethics and can do so without hesitation or remorse.

The difference between the neutral and the good is that the where the good Battlerager, if he doesn't choose to avoid killing the elf mage altogether, is going to have a heavy heart about killing the elf mage, may do so without vicious pursuit, and will treat the elf with some degree of empathy. If the elf is a non-mage with a potion, the good Battlerager would leave him alone. On the other hand, the neutral Battlerager will kill an elf who is using magic without remorse. But if the neutral Battlerager sees uncaballed magic-free elf warrior walking down the Eastern Road, can he say "I'm neutral! I don't give a #### about morals! I'm going to kill him and leave it at that!" I guess technically he could, but I consider that evil behavior, as it's completely senseless, selfish violence - and that's evil. If that's how the character behaves all the time - it's a problem.

- The Evil guy just needs to be selfish and cruel and have an active disregard for ethics (or better, a sense of ethics that happens to be twisted). He can kill the elf for whatever damned reason he pleases, but being as sociopathic about it as you describe, is not a necessary factor in being evil, and evil characters who behave this way are often very shallow.

I don't like this discussion, because in all honesty the interpretation of alignment is based upon opinion. My opinion differs from Daev's his from others, and etc.

I believe the presupposition is that there is, IC, a moral law independent of mortal (and possibly IC immortal) opinion. In CF the establishment of moral law is never defined--is it a product of the immortals, is it a product of some True God, or is it somehow magically incorporated into the design of the CF universe?

To me, your neutral is really evil and your evil is bad-comic-book evil.

I wouldn't really break it down this way, but I wanted to comment on this specifically:

>3. Whom can neutral people fight? Only enemies of their cabal?
>I know some people were writing roles to explain why they kill
>someone else - for example when gnome didn't like bigger
>people or when member of one race didn't like members of many
>other races - but some of them got their alignment turned into
>evil very very fast.

Generally I think neutral

1) Has some consistent criteria of who they will or not kill (and yes, I consider archetypal Nexus to be consistent even if who they kill shifts -- it still adheres to a clear standard or rule)

2) And that kill list can't amount to "basically everyone" or what you have is an evil character who might think they're neutral. Like, you're a gnome who wants to kill everyone bigger than you? That's basically everyone. You're a ranger who wants to kill whoever dares come into your forest? That's basically everyone.

Any character, regardless of alignment, can kill based on whatever their role dictates. Your alignment should then reflect your character's animus and motivations.

While in theory a neutral can kill "whoever they want", where this runs into trouble is when we see a neutral killing with impudence.

To try to offer some greater clarity, think of it this way;

- Goods are more or less bound by what you might call Thera's Universal Ethics.*

- Evils more or less completely disregard those ethics

- Neutrals, varying from one neutral to the next, understands these ethics and acknowledges some kind of value to them, but is not bound by them and their decisions will be a mix of ethical and unethical behavior.

(*Thera's Universal Ethics resembles, but is not exactly like, RL ethics, but with the antiquated/fantasy white hat/black hat sensibility mixed in.)

Of course the alignment spectrum is just that - a spectrum. A good can still be good and carefully breach ethics thoughtfully and selectively, but if he does so too much? He risks being made neutral. Similarly, a neutral can choose to disregard ethics quite frequently, but if he does so with such frequency that he becomes indistinguishable from evil? He risks being made evil.

In almost all cases, the neutral is going to have more autonomy to kill who he wants than a good. (Or, I guess you could say, a broader range anyways, in the case of Nexus, who will tangle with more people but still do not have complete autonomy on choosing targets.) We expect the neutral to be somewhat thoughtful about it. Nexuns have the Balance to consider, and other neutrals will have their own conditions. But goods? Goods are expected to have some hard and fast restrictions that are adhered to consistently, and that's a big difference.

(*Thera's Universal Ethics resembles, but is not exactly like, RL ethics, but with the antiquated/fantasy white hat/black hat sensibility mixed in.)

Are you appealing to natural law here?

More or less, yes.

CF of course, has some obstacles to that. Death/murder is not permanent, injury is not truly crippling, theft is easily recovered from, and the world is swarming with soulless inhabitants that perpetually regenerate themselves. CF would be impossible to play without a flexible understanding of ethics taking those things into account. But I think if we think in those terms, we can understand that blatantly killing everyone who crosses your path is evil, and that being a sadistic sociopath isn't a necessary condition for being evil. Thera ethics shouldn't be THAT far afield from what most of us would understand to be natural law/universal ethics.

Now, there are exceptions. Something like your Saraba followers' behavior in players normally would make me raise my eyebrow and consider them for an align change to evil. But since you are there putting their feet to the fire in terms of demanding thoughtful roleplay, I dig it. I do think part of the fun of CF is you can experiment with coming up with different ideas and speculative philosophies about what might make a person good, evil, or neutral in our little sandbox. But MOST of the time, a neutral who kills with impunity isn't actually exploring a deep character role; they just want to rack up as many kills as they can while enjoying the benefits or race options of neutral alignment.

as long as it doesn't really mess up their cabal ideals.

Evils can kill whoever they want, even if it does kinda conflict with their cabal ideals. I've seen some face consequences for this, though, while I've seen others get off with no punishment at all.

Your character should kill whom he kills because of how he feels about the world, about himself, and about others.

Your character should not be evil because he has a red aura. He should have a red aura because he's evil.

With rare exception, evil people should not see what they're doing as "evil." Scions are off the hook for this, because betraying your world is pretty clearly a crappy thing to do, but an evil Outlander should think that what he's doing is a good thing.

Likewise, goodies should kill whom they kill because of their views. Sure, Maran might see any red aura as an invitation to attack, but most goodies should have a bit more of a nuanced view on it.

Once we start with X can kill Y because of Z, we get further away from the ROLEplaying and closer towards being Call of Duty.

>With rare exception, evil people should not see what they're
>doing as "evil." Scions are off the hook for this, because
>betraying your world is pretty clearly a crappy thing to do,
>but an evil Outlander should think that what he's doing is a
>good thing.

That might be true for humans and other any-align-possible race. But I think evil races, especially drow, don't think they're doing good. They just like causing suffering and they know it's mean and they like being mean because being nasty is in their blood. I think of Fire Giants as just not giving a damn. They're brutal without specifically wanting to see people suffer and often lack a coherent understanding of other sentients' suffering. And they wouldn't care anyway because "SMASH"

Not that all or even most of these races need to be this way, but I don't think that it should be rare for them to know they're doing evil. And it should be rare for them to think they're doing good. These are fantasy archetypes, not misguided humans, who are more like what you're describing.

Even cultures of cruelty, with callous disregard for the suffering of others don't really rub their hands together and cackle and say "look at all the eeeeevil I'm doing."

I think they're just selfish and don't think about it that way.

I've been watching Game of Thrones again and think that Cersei Lannister is a good example of how evil can be cruel, but still think that what they're doing is good.

Maybe swap "doing good" with "what anyone would do, if they were strong/brave/whatever enough".

"Evil for evil's sake" is a viable evil roleplay direction, but realistically I think it would be a very very small minority of evil roles.

>Even cultures of cruelty, with callous disregard for the
>suffering of others don't really rub their hands together and
>cackle and say "look at all the eeeeevil I'm doing."

Like I said, you're absslutely right when it comes to human cultures. I think it's different for non-humans. And I don't mean it as "look at the eeeevil I'm doing" so much as 'hell yeah, causing misery is grrrrrreat!" and not need a notion of Doing Good as a motivation. I think that making the world a worse place for other people is a reasonable goal for a pathologically evil race. And if they're smart enough to talk about ethics, they could identify that as evil.

The closest human analogy I can think of is someone who is just really bitter and likes to see bad things happen to other people. Real people generally don't go around causing those things, but this is a fantasy setting.