Lawinator 3: Rise of the Orders

[Scurvy_Platypus]

The following is taken from the August 2003 issue of MaximumPC Vol8 No 8, pg16 , sidebar.

As if general ennui weren't enough, another plague has beset the Sims Online - the mob. The San Jose Mercury News reprted that, in the absence of any government or internal policing, a group called the Sims Shadow Government has taken over to allegedly address the anarchic behaviour of some players. Sims creator Will Wright admitted that Maxis is powerless to stop this development. Predictably, the situation is getting ugly, as shadow government representatives meet outside the game to plot revenge against wrongdoers.

Personally I find this quite interesting at a number of levels. The first is that even a game like the Sims attracts enough punks that a problem has occured in the first place.

The second is that Maxis "is powerless to stop this". Not sure if it's because people are paying to play, so that ties their hands or what.

The third is that punishment within the game can occur. Given the nature of the Sims game, I'm a bit unsure how justice is being administered. It's intriguing however that people have figured out a way to do so.

The final, and most important thing in my opinion, is the fact that a group has formed. The nature of the game is such that it's been a complete free-for-all, and relies on the players working together cooperatively. In reaction to whatever problems have occured, Law has sprung up. Now putting aside the issue of whether or not the Law will ultimately be self serving and become corrupted, it has some interesting potential implications for Avlis in terms of RPing alignments. Given the fact that the formation of this Law is relatively spontaneous,, and others are apparently joining it (albeit in a covert fashion is seemingly implied) what if any effect do you think this would have for True Neutrals?

I've recently talked with a few people regarding TNs and how the way in which TN seems to be frequently played. The play style I've seen (and I'm not just limiting this to Avlis, but PnP experience as well) is almost a Do-a-good-thing here-now-do-a-bad-thing-there approach to maintaining "balance". I think this approach is rather limited in scope, and would result in a flip-flopping person of a potentially ridiculous degree. Live one day in the city, one day out in the woods. One day eat meat only, one day vegetables only, one day nothing at all, one day a combination of all of these. One day plant a tree, one day kill one. And so forth.

Now, some people would say that's taking it to the extreme and being ridiculous, but while they are in part correct, in part they're wrong. Overall it is ridiculous, and this type of behaviour would be more the province of a mentally ill individual, as opposed to a set of moral and ethical values as alignments are intended to be. Yet as I've said before I've seen plenty examples of this type of behaviour on a limited scale. This group should/should not be banned from the city because of the Lawful/Chaotic or Good/Evil trend of[fill in the blank]. This creature needs to be destroyed because it causes the balance to tilt towards...

One of the other things that's been brought up specifically in relation to Avlis, is the role of the Equalizers. Under the system that I see many TNs employ, it would result in them fighting for M'Chek until M'chek wins, and then fighting for T'Nanshi until they win, and then flipping back to M'Chek. Back and forth endlessly. In fact, some people feel this is EXACTLY what would/should happen. I think that this view is what happens when looking at the issue of Balance in the short-term, as opposed to the long-term view.

So this leaves me wondering... all you TNs out there... do you look at things from a Long/Short -term view? When you're trying to maintain "Balance" what Balance is it exactly that you're maintaining? Do I need to be ready to beat you because one day you're my friend, the next day my enemy? Just how far do you carry maintaining the "Balance"?

[subspace1011]

*grins* Cor is not true neutral, but he is chaotic neutral, and I can tell you how I play him. Basically Cor'Angelus likes to look at the long-term effects of things, realizing that regardless of what he does, nature will balance herself out in the end. He's highly intuitive, and tends to let his intuition decide what constitutes a balanced situation. Of course, his chaotic nature intervenes when "convincing" people that his way is the right way.

He does look to short-term effects when necessary, such as split-second decisions (ooc: like that little fiasco with the Oog, in which he followed Damar, instead of the Oog) because while the Ebony order is considered evil, at the time, the behavior of the Oog and the Ivory order was evil to Cor'Angelus, and thus the Ebony Order became instant allies. Essentially, he was using an evil group to bring down a "seemingly" evil group, which to him, brought the two in balance.

I don't think I've ever played Cor as a "must do good or evil once in awhile to create balance" Cor instead flows with nature's balance, and makes decisions on what he believes is the choice that will lead to maintaining the balance. At the same time, he realizes that if he leaves things alone, nature will eventually create balance by itself. Cor makes decisions that he feels will assist nature in bringing itself back to balance.

When he says "maintaining the balance", he means that he is doing whatever he can to help nature balance itself, between good and evil. There was a really neat discussion a while back on defining good and evil, someone should dig it up.

[Aloro]

Neutral, "Undecided": A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutrality is a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil. After all, she would rather have good friends and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

Italics added to the above for emphasis.

Neutral characters can be your average apathetic Mikonan citizen - "He looks hurt. hey, that guy's getting away! Someone should do something!" "Yeah, that's terrible. Maybe one of these other folks will stop him. Not my problem though."

A neutral character might think, "Well, laws help people to live together happily, but too much law can make my life unpleasant. Freedom's important, but not freedom for people to do things that will hurt me. It's nice to help others and be a good neighbor, but in the end you have to look out for yourself."

Neutral characters or Orders that serve Balance don't have to continually switch sides, nor could I imagine the Equalizers repeatedly changing sides in a conflict. A long-term plan, properly applied, will preclude that necessity. You look into the matter, you decide on a scale of years, decades, or centuries which way things need to change to maintain moderation, and you apply yourself to making that change. If e.g. you think that over time the good dragons will destroy or change some things they shouldn't, you might bring in evil dragons to counter them.

Neutral characters can also be completely mercurical, and change on a whim. The fey goddess Titania is a good example of one such. She has no interest in Balance as such, nor as a rule do her people. The fey will be very nice to you, and give you wonderful gifts if they like you. Do one small thing to offend them though, and they'll curse you for life.

- Aloro

[Vergilius]

Seeing how I play a Cleric of Mikon, who perhaps shades a bit on a couple of sides, but for the most part is TN, and seeing how I've only caught the tail end of your discussions in Avlis IRC, just enough to get a sense you were a bit pissed at how TN was played but not really why, I feel I could comment on a few things that you have written, and perhaps enlighten people how I've resolved the issue.

First of all, I don't feel I've played Pollio at all as a side-switcher, or a do good one day and bad the next. In fact, most days he does stuff that is what I would call neutral: If we define good as placing the good of others in front of your own and define evil as placing your own good above that of others, then neutral to me is the balancing point. Pollio acts for his own benefit and that of others, but not in near the extreme that the good or evil alignments would do so as. At least, that is the typical standard I use for good and evil, for lack of something better. Some days of course, he will act more for his own good, and some days more for the good of others, but never really too far from the center, at least in my book.

So that is him as a character.............this is then complicated by the fact that he serves Mikon, god of balance and choice. Now, in all my time playing a Cleric of Mikon I have had one of two problems. The first is that if you read up on the world information and precepts, it is real easy to get a laxadisical or passive picture of how Mikon's servants function in the world. Balance and choice are interconnected in that everyone is free to choose, generally equal numbers choose good as choose evil and choose law as choose chaos-----so we DON'T have to act. Pollio can sit around and twiddle his thumbs. This is the problem I ran into last May and part of the reason I rolled up a new character.......the end-all of this logic was that he had very little motivation to do anything, at least very little in the way of Mikon. All his motivation was personal and through relationships. This takes us to the second problem: you have noted flip-flopping can be annoying, and indeed I think on an extreme as you listed it would be insane. On the other hand, between world information and the like that I've read on Mikon, AND PMs with DMs about this and that. Its generally expected that the Clerics of Mikon WILL throw their weight on this side or that of the balance. I play Pollio as very very very tolerant of everybody, but when one group nears the extinction or explusion of another, I feel it is totally IC to act to prevent that. Thus, Pollio intervened in the ban the OOG petition and a lot of that is still playing out. But in general, if things like the OOG mess didn't look so serious, Pollio would perhaps have responded with indifference.

Now of course, a couple of the quotes you have made up there, as being examples of stuff you didn't like, look like they came directly from stuff Pollio has said or whatever. Group shouldn't be banned because of balance.......creature should be destroyed. To me thats perfectly good RP given what I know of the situations, what I know of the World information, what I've read on the boards and what I've received in PMs from the DMs that are there to help me in the difficult task of RPing a Cleric of Mikon. Really, people give me feedback all the time and I'm really surprised you didn't discuss this with me before posting it up here.

So that is the dilemma. Play the balance apathetically or try to bring balance to the world and occasionally having flip-flop issues.

On the topic of Equalizers, since I've read the world information on them at least a dozen times in an effort to acquiant myself with how a follower of Mikon would think, I have a few observations.

first of all: world information: equalizers have fought on opposite sides of the same struggle in the past. equalizers generally fight for the underdogs. There is In-game information about swtiching sides to keep a war going on longer.

I'm not totally convinced that they would keep swtiching sides indefinitely as you describe. I see them more withdrawing and watching, then getting involved again if need be, then withdrawing and watching, geting involved if need be, etc.


NOw, I think you raise an excellent point on balance of short vs long term.
I want to expand the concept because it is the biggest thing that makes playing a TN difficult. Rather than saying short or long term, I'm going to call it scope. Is the scope narrow or large? IN fact, it is an issue I am dealing with in the whole OOG mess in Mikona. In fact, Pollio struggles through this mess every day of his life. What exactly does balance mean? Because from one perspective something might be balanced and from another something might be totally imbalanced. By the same logic, Equalizers may fight on opposite sides of the same war but for different reasons, all for the sake of balance. And by the same logic, when Mikon's followers can be of ANY ALIGNMENT, there is a lot of room for disagreeing over what is meant by balance. In fact, I have RPed this into Pollio. sometimes he gets confused by what balance means for a particular situation. When he's confused, I rely on the IC interaction with others to shape Pollio's opinion about something, which is a definite major factor in his IC motivation for supporting the OOG at the moment. SCope: Does Pollio look at the larget scope on Avlis or the more narrow scope of Mikona. For IC reasons, he chose the narrow scope of Mikona in this case.
The larger scope on Avlis might have someone making a different course of action in fighting for the balance. But all along, he was aware of the scope issues for the larger world of Avlis.

So that does take it down to the narrow versus the broad. If I read the Mikon world information correctly, this really shouldn't matter, because it comes down to the individual choices. Mikon is god of choice as well, and If one person chooses one path, another may choose another, and these act like a natural balance between the two.

Personally, on a very sticky issue such as how balance shoudl be carried out, I say leave it up to the individual person to figure out how to RP it. Its already hard as heck to do it well and I"m appreciative for all the positive and wonderful comments I've gotten from the players. Your comments really are the reason that Pollio is my current main character instead of Emilia.

Heck, most don't know this, but I almost ditched Pollio completely. 1 week before coming back to Avlis, I was planning on having him permanently killed on his 5 week spiritual journey that happened while I was in Mexico. What made me change my mind was the feedback and consistent comments on him and needing a solid PC follower of Mikon.

Why did I want to ditch him? It was a heck of a lot easier to RP an extreme and I spent a lot of frustrating days as Pollio's player.


Lastly, on the issue of balance. Something I'm working into Pollio is the innate struggle that a human being has with his beliefs. There are the ideals that we are taught, and then there is everday life. Sometimes we don't live up to those Ideals. Sometimes real life muddles our view of them. There is also personal attatchment. Sometimes relationships cause us to throw aside our past ideals and exchange them for new ones. I don't know how many relationships I've seen in real life with one religious person and one very against religion. I've see both become religious after a time, I"ve seen the religious person apothesize, and I've seen the two marry, fight for 5 years then break up because of it. I try to work the same thing IC. Pollio can and does make friends with people of other churches, beliefs and organizations and those organizations play into how he responds in the world.

Thus, I don't ever see him being a 50/50 TN. Right now, he has had a lot of work with the OOG, my personal opinion of his present alignment is somewhere around 55/60, even though the numbers on the character sheet don't show that. Of course, for a cleric of Mikon it matters less than for other religions, after all, Mikon's followers can be of Any alignmnet.



On additional note: I was intending on writing a note in the next week or so on RPing a follower of MIkon, what options you have open as a PC (I believe there are more options here than in a lot of religious orders) and what potential RP contributions you can add to the world of Avlis. When I do decide to write this, it is my hope to encourage everyone whether you chose to play a follower or not to think more seriously about Mikon and balance and how it operates in the world, and hopefully get another PC or two out of that.

Anyway, Scurvy, you've got an excellent start on getting people to think, and I hope I"ve offered comments that DMs will find to their liking and the players will find useful.


EDIT: I just realized how long this is and the arguments are quite complex at points. I'm sure some things are unclear so please ask about them.


verg!~

[Vergilius]

Neutral, "Undecided": A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutrality is a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil. After all, she would rather have good friends and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

something of interest is also what the DMs have put on the background in the forums. I quoted it below, sorry for the lack of block script.



True Neutral

True Neutral is at once the rarest and the most common alignment in the
multiverse. Neutral characters are either incapable of making moral and
ethical decisions or refrain from them actively. "Actively" is the key
phrase here. A character who is incapable of moral and ethical decisions
would have an intelligence and wisdom scores no higher than 6 each. Very few
player characters qualify on that account, therefore the vast majority of PC
Neutrals actively refrain from moral and ethical judgments.

Within this context there are two reasons a character may not actively
pursue ethical and moral thinking. The first, and most storied in the AD&D
tradition, is the druidical "preservation of the balance" mentality.
However, this view, for obvious reasons, is uncannily rare.

The second and most common example is the character who simply doesn't
care. Neutrals of this type aren't concerned for the welfare of anybody
(except themselves), but they aren't willing to advance themselves at any
cost like Neutral Evil characters. They are comparatively lazy and lacking
in drive in this respect, still there are certainly other reasons. The
character may see advancement beyond reasonable comfort through reasonable
risk as pointless. Not surprisingly, these Neutrals have a bleak view on
life. As for the ethical (law vs. chaos) leanings of these characters, they
may follow orders if it serves them, disobey if it doesn't, act on the
occasional whim but otherwise keep to a reasonably predictable life.

True Neutrals are all about reason, and perhaps that's why they are so
few. Everybody seems to get behind some banner or cause, Neutrals couldn't
care less about such trivial matters. Often they have one fascination in
their lives which they are preoccupied with, and everything else doesn't
matter to them. In the case of druids, this is the "preservation of the
balance."

True Neutral societies are very rare, but when they do occur they tend
to be primitive. The concerns of simple survival dominate the daily lives of
such people, and for them further complications aren't worth the effort to
create. In a way, Neutrals are the most peaceful of societies, but they are
also the most infuriating because of the nearly universal lack of a drive
the members of this alignment possess.

DM's running a True Neutral should watch for any consistent behaviors
that lean towards another alignment, but often he will find that there is a
balance between the various aspects of the character's life, whether he
consciously maintains them or not.



there you have it: If you want motivation you fight for this mystified balance. Otherwise, you have a character which drifts aimlessly, which isn't really fun for a PC to play.

[engelhar]

For a long time I have been thinking of creating a second character, and at first I wanted to play a TN cleric of Mikon because of the extreme lack of them in the world. Once I started doing my research into Mikon and the TN alignment, I basically decided I had no real idea of how to play the character. Or maybe a better way to say it is that I didn't really like the idea of playing a character that had no strong beliefs.

I guess in the end their aren't many TN characters out there because it isn't all that appealing to not have a cause. And I agree with Scurvy that a flip-flopping character doesn't really make sense to me, but a character that doesn't care about anything probably isn't going to be much fun to play. In any case, I think Pollio is a well thought out character, and I give you credit for playing a character that I, and probably many others, wouldn't.

[Manuel the White]

Predictably, the situation is getting ugly, as shadow government representatives meet outside the game to plot revenge against wrongdoers.

Hey ... that's metagaming. I say we ban them for a week.