A few random thoughts on this

- While gods demonstrably exist, equally it would be clear to most characters that lots of them do. I can see many non-priestly characters being ley believers of more than one faith. Or to be even more situational in their worship - Bob the city guard prays to St Michael when his unit is facing off with two dozen massive black orcs. When he goes fishing on his day off, he prays to Tsu-Ling...

- A few more minor strictures or restrictions might add a lot of flavour without being such a blunt instrument on roleplay - e.g. you always should / should not wear a hat in the temple

- What about more distinctive phrases, sayings or prayers?

Julian

- What about more distinctive phrases, sayings or prayers?

Well we all know the god of justice says that shock kills anybody..

Basil, the High Priest of LotS has some very distinctive sayings for encouraging the faithful, but I don't think the filter will let me repeat them

C

Agreed.

Huw

No ressing the Friday topic on a Monday Huw, you know the rules!

C

Unfortunately this isn't a democracy, and the views of the player base, however sensible, are not taken into account.

Viva verial caster ..................

That's because there are no single 'player base' set of views, and the game system needs to maintain its core identity for another 25 + years.

Democracy is over rated, especially when governance is taken from the hands of the knowledgeable and placed in the hands of the consumers.



Jan

Whilst i respect Huw's thoughts on this, I believe three things have kept Labyrinthe running for over 25 years and I'd like to share them with you.

(1) an adventure site which is basically perfect for LRP and out of the weather and available all year round with good transport.
(2) at any one time core 'owning' team which has been able to make the business decisions which have kept it running for almost 3 decades.
(3) and a traditional fantasy core rule system with the quorum of basic classes (fighter, thief, cleric and magic user) basic social groupings to grant a common purpose(alignment) and a traditional heroes for hire adventure approach.


(1) is obvious; (2) gets us past death by clique committee which assails so many clubs eventually; and (3) means that the game can be trusted to be playable year in year out, characters retain their value and distinctiveness, and that the game does not have to reinvent itself every so often when the game morphs too far to make play practical any more.

Ironically, playing Huw's druid campaign really brought home item 3 to me a few years back, cheers Huw (awesome campaign too!)

Alignment is baaaaaaaad.

My suggestion is a halfway house: 10pts, table #1 "Fully Rounded Personality - the character's alignment should no longer be considered by the referee when assessing their behaviour".

Or, of course, some kind of meaningful description of what alignment is and means (both IC and in terms of game mechanics) could be added to the handbook.


J

I don't think you should lose points for purely alignment-related roleplay reasons - but you should be capable of being black-marked or grey-marked for alignment reasons. I'm not sure where I stand on bringing faith into that judgment. For instance, I was grey-marked as Yosh for being too easy-going on James Isteed's undead-raising witch, on the basis that I was a lay believer of Elbereth. Now it was cool as a roleplay seed for the 3-day shortly afterwards because I couldn't risk another grey mark. But logically, it might be that my faith in Elbereth is weakened or that I lose the benefits from that faith - True Believer etc., - but I don't surely stop being goodly just because I don't shiv a necromancer or bump off his ghoul. It should be possible to be "spirit-wracked" for not following your faith - losing benefits of the faith. Then again, for paladins or angels, I can see any serious failure to keep to the faith as prompting them to fall to evil.

Another angle on this is the fact that some characters might be allowed to have better abilities because they have restrictive alignments and behavioural restrictions. A pervasive example of this is ressability. A goodly or neutral human can have a Restore Life and for 10% or 20% of vitae be back on their feet and good as new. An evil human can use poison and hire assassins but needs an Animate Life (making you a 6th level dismissable and discernible undead who can't cross a 6th level Protection from (Evil) Spirits) or a Breath of Life evocation (probably only available off-dungeon for 30% of vitae IIUC, or maybe 20% but you become a manifestation of some eccentric druid's strange fantasies). This is a concrete problem for evil characters but as I say evil characters can use poison and hire assassins. Whereas goodly characters who want to hire assassins have to get an imperial hiring licence and do it with mercenaries...

Anyone can hire assassins or use poison. Think there used to be an old rule about Paladins using poison to kill APs that got extrapolated to mean goodly couldn't use poison.

And you might find it difficult to get someone to sign off on a hiring license to murder.

Well, be that as it may, the point is that playing a goodly character accurately means not sacrificing random peons to demon-gods in order to gain power, and generally trying to do the right thing, and in return you're more ressable than evil characters. There are little pros and cons for different types of character for their alignments all over the place, like evil characters getting better yellow paper passed for backstab for instance. Taking away alignment would mess with the system.