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confused (Anonymous)Mon 09-Apr-12 11:20 AM
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#3763, "RE: Alignment/Ethos Questions"
Edited on Mon 09-Apr-12 11:26 AM

          

Thank you. Those responses were helpful.

Let me flesh out the idea I have in my mind a bit, because I think it's maybe too vague at this point. My character is amoral in that he doesn't believe in any absolutes. If asked, is killing wrong? Or is saving a child from a fire right? My character's answer will always and only be, "It depends." I define immoral instead to be believing and knowing that killing is always wrong, and doing it anyway. To me that's much more inline with an idea of "evil."

My character does believe in a natural order, and perhaps you can describe that as a belief in "balance", but he also believes that no individual or group is *responsible* or even *able* to enforce that order or balance. He believes a deeper intelligence arises naturally when all beings pursue their own aims selfishly. Therefore his own role in the greater scheme of things is the same as that of any other being in Thera. He pursues his own aims joyfully and selfishly, his mind free from the mire of moral judgements. For example, that might mean watching an "evil" player get beat down by group of much more advanced "good" players, and then when that player returns to his corpse, quietly planting a nice item in his inventory and walking away. There's no overt attempt to restore balance in my character's actions. It is as it is. He was moved in that moment to kindness, he trusted his own *selfish* impulses, and acted as he felt moved to, without a cloud of moral judgments muddying his mind.

I also didn't mean to suggest my character was deeply fickle, although he will APPEAR that way to others who don't understand him. The kindness that I described in that moment was right for my character in that moment. In another moment, another situation, again following selfish impulses, he might do something else. For example while exploring naked and on the verge of starvation, he might happen on a loaded corpse and do a full loot, again following his own selfish impulses without consideration of any moral implication. Though others will certainly call this "petty" or "greedy", they don't necessarily understand his actions from within his mind.

That seems NN to me. There's no *self-imposed* order in my character's actions. At times his actions seem chaotic to others. But there's a belief that a deeper order arises in his selfishness, and he does follow that guiding principle with impeccable constancy.

  

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TopicAlignment/Ethos Questions [View all] , confused (Anonymous), Sun 08-Apr-12 11:29 PM
Reply RE: Alignment/Ethos Questions, confused (Anonymous), 09-Apr-12 11:26 AM #4
Reply RE: Alignment/Ethos Questions, Amaranthe, 09-Apr-12 06:51 PM, #5
Reply RE: Alignment/Ethos Questions, Amaranthe, 09-Apr-12 11:03 AM, #3
Reply Neutral Neutral, Twist, 09-Apr-12 10:03 AM, #2
Reply RE: Alignment/Ethos Questions, Amberion, 09-Apr-12 03:23 AM, #1
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