>Obviously you have never read help empire but I will help you
>out with this one. Part of being an imperial is willing to do
>anything within imperial law to advance your cause. Those who
>are empire greater good oriented actually make lousy imperials
>because in doing so they often ignore the responsibility to
>advance the cause of their own sect. The motivation of most
>imperials (or good ones anyway) should almost always be, a
>world of order is good, especially a world of order in which I
>am king. No imperial makes it his goal to be a faceless
>soldier. My definition of good was adhering to a set of
>morals that are based around the furtherment of a greater
>good. Any imperial role should at its core involve some level
>of desire to get personal gain from the advancement of the
>empire so their true desires should be substantialy inward
>focused.

First, I have read the helpfiles, thanks for being an ass.

Secondly, it is easy to create a well defined moral code that at its center is the idea that strict obedience to order is good for all people. Furthering this, it can be expanded that your sect within the empire is most capable to maintain this order and thus has the best claim to lead the empire (still sticking to our moral code here). Finally it holds that only you have the true vision of what the perfect society will be and thus only you should rule the empire, for the good of all people (not breaking the role idea, or the idea that I was expanding on).

But, this is not really my point, my point is that using the idea of a well defined moral code and believing in its infallibility is not a good rule to use to judge goodness, sorry for using a CF analogy if that confused you, yes I too can be an ass.

>I am going to beat people with a bat over the head because the
>modern definition of GOODie is synominous (sp?) with pansy.
>Because I am striving for a greater good does not in any way
>mean I have to be nice, care about every single individual, or
>even care particularly much about the way in which you are
>trying to bring betterment to thera. Think of a drill
>seargent in boot camp. The definition of an asshole. But in
>the army he is one of the best players for good because while
>he might be riding you like an animal he is doing so in order
>to give you the skills that you will need to survive. Life
>isn't always easy and especially in a world like cf that is
>torn by so much war and violence I would expect more tough
>nosed goodie roles and less hippie saps.

Why do you use RL examples to explain things in a fantasy world, CF is not real life, in RL that drill sergeant is not ‘good’ by the same definition that an elf is good in CF, nor should he be, he is a RL person not a fantasy world creation.

The idea of a greater good is exactly the problem, the idea that as a player you can define your way into any idea is ridicules. There should not even be a stated character alignment if all I need to do is come up with some semi-plausible reason why my goodie would kill other goodies. Thinking about this is terms of RL conflicts is a problem, people are not good or evil in raw terms in RL, we should stop clouding the issue with what we see around ourselves and try thinking in a world in which people have god given natures that dictate morality.

>Remember you have to keep the definition of alignments fairly
>broad in order to allow a variety of roles. Not everyone is
>going to play goodie like an elf healer acolyte. And just
>because they don't fit that mold doesn't mean they are any
>less good.

Shades of gray are fine, be neutral. Does this limit choice in some cases, yes. But, if we accept the ideas of good/evil/neutral as defining characteristics of CF then lets use them and not redefine them into nothingness.

>This is a put yourself in their shoes situation. Jut because
>my philosophy does not exactly = yours in its execution does
>not mean its striving towards a similar goal. And goals are
>more important than actions because the meaning of actions is
>defined through the why's of how you did it. Otherwise we
>would have to neutralize every goodie that got wanted and
>attacked constantly by goodie guard mobs and the whitecloak
>encampment would have to go away.

Again, saying that because I did x because I believe y, and I happen to have a gold aura does not equal good. Why is it that imperials are evil in their striving for their ends but a goodie villager who kills an elf mage is just rping out his hatred of magic and is not evil, is his end not selfish, is it not his hate that he is quelling? Your idea works in a world in which actions are not judge against the quality of the inflicted. Since both the perpetrator and victim have defined moral qualities this definition does not work, unless you play ignorance which does not work in a world such as CF where these realities exist.

And finally I didn’t mean for my original post to be aimed at you personally, I apologize if you felt it was, just you made the point I disagreed with.