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[Dark Like Snipes]

Personally I think the broad interpretations of good and evil in Dungeons and Dragons would fit this game well.

Though by all means let us not... actually use it since their alignment system since even within their own system they break it and have many exceptions, omissions, and holes within it. It is why even Wizards of the Coast ignore their own allignment system.

Also you are sort of incorrect about the "Good and evil" allignment. As you are mistaking will and intent. Good characters spite creatures all the time and kill them by the bucket loads. Many evil characters also are law abiding citizens who would never genuinly bring someone to harm (unless you read the allignment as it is in the guides... where the Evil allignments are broken and don't follow the rules of the game)

It's not perfect, but that's the reason that it's a pen and paper ruleset and not a proper religious tome (and even those have holes and gaps). I'm not meaning a literal implementation of it, characters don't need to have an alignment on their personality page, I just think it would be a decent inspiration for the system. And an evil person may not physically attack everyone in sight, but they will build their ambitions by exploiting others in any number of ways. A simplified view sure, but it kind of needs to be for implementation in a video game.

[Neonivek]

I know, that is why I didn't argue against the bulk of what you wrote.

[aattss]

The point of good is to give you space to build your fortress to prepare you for evil, not to also be difficult. However, if they only killed (your) undead creatures, then it can be both easy and hard.

[Starver]

I'm not entirely sure that this will translate unambiguously into the conversation at hand, and the main purpose of the thread, but once when playing Space: 1889[1] a fellow player took the pictures in the source material regarding his character type (Anarchist) to heart.  To whit he just threw explosive devices at everybody/everything he could.  (And, of course, only so long as he had explosive supplies at hand.)  A better player[3] would have been insidious and sneaky and wheedled their way into the Establishment so as to then subtly cause chaos.

Similarly, when I first tried D&D, I was attracted to the idea of being a Paladin.  But I was discouraged from this idea by being told how difficult it was to do anything as a Paladin without some experience behind one's metagaming to in-character justify being able to attack and kill the various random XP-fodder monsters necessary to progress.  But I later saw Paladins played so well that one of them could even justify the killing of a fellow group-member of long standing (it was expeditious to do so, but not strictly within the remit of the attentions of a supposedly extremely-lawful/extremely-good character).


There's wiggle room in such systems.  And perspective.  And the needs of Narrativium are also a prime influence, especially upon NPCs where the GM is more DM Of The Rings than Darths And Droids in nature...  And I see Toady as the ultimate GM (or getting there, at least[4]), albeit by proxy.


[1] Steampunk RPG, essentially, for those that don't know it.  Set in a mock-Victorian universe with HG Wells tech and more...  But societally, and stylistically, the caricaturisation was very much Victorian.  IN SPACE![2]

[2] Well, it included 'Perelandra'-esque interplanatary empire-building and exploration...  You could stay earhbound (or hop onto Nemo-esque submarines) according to the particular campaign plot/derail you were into...

[3] Not me, I was often an engineer/inventor in that genre of game.  Once was even a "Scott Montgomery", with my own liftwood spaceship, invented 'space torpedoes' for it, had speaking tube arrangements that you'd make a rather particular whistle down to attract attention of the rest of the crew.

[4] And he's already making his worlds obey one of the number one rules for both screenwriting and proper RPG campaigning: Always know what your characters are doing when they're not on the screen (interacting with the PCs).

[Wastedlabor]

The falling point for absolute good is that, to preserve a perfect balance, pain needs to be shared, but to have the capability to apply that pain to a third party after relieving it from the injured one, the social construct takes on characteristics of evil and becomes very vulnerable to misuse. (If you don't preserve the balance, then the parts of society that take all the pain lose all motives for goodness and, since you can't forego completely the instinct of self-preservation, they resort to evil, therefore moving your social construct, as a sum, away from absolute good.)

As a practical example, in a good biome, if grazing animals were starving due to drought, dwarves would share their harvest and let everybody be a little hungrier. A consequence of that, though, is that, because that system has the power to impose starving, a goblin siege could burn the pastures and make the system kill the dwarves.

An absolute good biome could be tricky on its own because there's no wiggle room. If some trees have clogged a water channel, you can't cut them now and compensate mother nature later; maybe your plump helmet stocks are so low that paying back for the (inedible) trees throws you into a spiral of starving and hunting for vermin instead of getting work done. A non sentient system cannot make judgements about how much it can trust you to repay in the future, so it would want to apply the compensations required to preserve "good" immediately.

[Neonivek]

Well remember that "good" and "evil" are not true concepts in Dwarf Fortress like they are in other settings (such as Dungeons and dragons where good and evil is an actual force like Gravity).

Good and evil lands are not actually "good" and "Evil". So they cannot really be "Absolute good". Mind you this isn't an objection to what you are saying but more of a "you don't have to worry about reflecting your idea of absolute good, because that concept doesn't exist in Dwarf Fortress as each race, being, and diety has their own interpretation that isn't enforced by the universe".

[Babylon]

Good as "easy mode"  is, IMO a terrible idea.  If Good was easier to settle humans and dwarves and goblins would settle there, as it is only Elves actually do.  There is a reason for that.  Neutral calm is meant to be the easiest setting for settlements and a good region should present it's own challenges that are different and distinct from those offered by evil.

[Archereon]

personally, I think good regions shouldn't be actively harmful at all.

Rather, they should have great benefits, but be extremely demanding, and will turn passive aggressive at the slightest provocation, and actively hostile a little beyond that.


Cut down tons of trees and hunt lots of animals?

Pixies start harassing your dwarves, stealing stuff, and worse sometimes.

On the other hand, you get healing rain (which also helps invaders) or something like that.

[NTJedi]

I think the game should overall stay the same in regards to good, neutral and evil because new players generally need an easy relaxed area such as the current good areas to learn the game.  One of the main reasons new players give-up on dwarf fortress is because the game is so complex... we don't need to make good areas more demanding or difficult and scare off the struggling new players to even a greater extent.  For this reason good areas need to remain easy and peaceful... the good, neutral and evil areas are essentially one of the main variables for determining the games difficulty levels.

[dizzyelk]

I think the game should overall stay the same in regards to good, neutral and evil because new players generally need an easy relaxed area such as the current good areas to learn the game.  One of the main reasons new players give-up on dwarf fortress is because the game is so complex... we don't need to make good areas more demanding or difficult and scare off the struggling new players to even a greater extent.  For this reason good areas need to remain easy and peaceful... the good, neutral and evil areas are essentially one of the main variables for determining the games difficulty levels.

The problem with that, though, is that good areas are no more easy than a tame/wilderness area. The only difference is the unicorns and whatnot wandering through. A good area should FEEL different than a nonaligned area.

[Leatra]

The idea of making a "lawful good" aligment (emphasis on lawful) sounds !FUN! but...

I think the game should overall stay the same in regards to good, neutral and evil because new players generally need an easy relaxed area such as the current good areas to learn the game.  One of the main reasons new players give-up on dwarf fortress is because the game is so complex... we don't need to make good areas more demanding or difficult and scare off the struggling new players to even a greater extent.  For this reason good areas need to remain easy and peaceful... the good, neutral and evil areas are essentially one of the main variables for determining the games difficulty levels.

This.

[Neonivek]

We already have "Easy mode" lands.

It REALLY cannot get any easier then a No savagry forest or grassland or mountain.

Any easier then that and you are babying the player and removing core elements from the game.

[Leatra]

We already have "Easy mode" lands.

It REALLY cannot get any easier then a No savagry forest or grassland or mountain.

Any easier then that and you are babying the player and removing core elements from the game.

I still play with no aquifer.

[Neonivek]

We already have "Easy mode" lands.

It REALLY cannot get any easier then a No savagry forest or grassland or mountain.

Any easier then that and you are babying the player and removing core elements from the game.

I still play with no aquifer.

I mean even bigger elements then Aquifers. Aquifers are nothing compared to the "Easy mode" we are suggesting here.

[Sadrice]

If there is to be an Easy Mode and a Hard Mode, I think it makes a lot more sense for that to be the Benign/Savage scale rather than the Good/Evil scale.  This would also increase playability.  Just because a player isn't very good at the game yet, doesn't mean they want to embark in the land of happiness and rainbows.  It would be nice to be given the option of picking less challenging versions of each (i.e. serene/calm/sinister) ordinary ordinary versions, or nightmare mode versions (joyous wilds/untamed wilds/terrifying).  This could be as simple as each region having a random selection of appropriate features, with, say, sinister having 1-2 types of evil effects while terrifying has 5-6, or there could be something more complex, like sinister rains being blood or a mostly harmless syndrome and a small chance of zombification of corpses, while terrifying rains melt your eyes out before the hapless victim gets huskified.  The same sort of mechanic could apply to good or even neutral zones.

As for good regions, I don't like the idea of direct analogues of evil effects (though healing rain might be interesting).

I really like the idea of there being severe consequences to messing with the locals in a good region (by cutting trees, harvesting plants, planting aboveground farms, killing the wildlife, open pit mining, etc).  Perhaps the elves could be even less tolerant of clearcutting good regions, while not minding so much if you fell all of the dead trees in an evil region?