No, actually, Evil can't be more moral, because moral is defined as what Good does. The problem in that situation is just that Ravor fails to see that the moral choice is to slaughter that village.

~J

In regards to the D&D alignment: Take a look at the Eberon campaign setting...it has a much better take on alignment & the factionalization there of. You have a mythos and people of all alignments who follow said mythos but, have their own interpretation of how it should be followed. Kind of like real life. It still breaks down around the LG slaughter of the kobold village but thats just one of those paradoxal quagmires based upon changing social mores.

Why do you say it breaks down?

~J

That kind of goes into the whole "inherently evil/good genetic pre-destination/disposition" thing unless you are playing strictly by the rules and what the stats book says holds true for all members of the species. Logically a person/monsters character is shaped by its social dynamic & experience. There are exceptions to the norm but, in general an intelligent being doesn't instantly want to eat the tasty hobbit right from birth so killing of said babe by the Lawful Good Paladin of the God of Justice and All Things Nice isn't a very good or moral act in today's terms.
Of course "good" & "Moral" are terms subjective to the periods society & cultural norms.

The "Book of Exalted Deeds" goes into much more detail about what constitutes an evil act...at least from a game perspective.

I thought the "Book of Vile Darkness" was much more fun. Of course the rules in both books were pretty much the same differing only in application.

OK, I have thought a lot about Mai Lai the paladin.

Mai Lai should be female because the name sounds a bit feminine in the context of fantasy RPGs. Mai Lai's shtick is, of course, systematically trying to "cleanse" places that have the wrong species living in them. As such, Mai Lai would first generally try to recon a place, sketch a preliminary map, and then plan an assault such that there's nowhere for the defenders to escape and they can be slaughtered to the last individual.

With these objectives in mind Mai Lai is likely to spend a lot of money on hirelings in order to be able to block off areas to the enemy and conduct systematic sweeps. Furthermore, since chopping goblins with a sword is a bit inefficient and tiring, Mai Lai likes to use flaming oil a lot so as to hit as many enemies at once as is possible. Perhaps Mai Lai will even be saving up to finance a wheeled catapult that fires incindiary projectiles.

Naturally Mai Lai is Lawful Good and the character concept is to see how far we can push Lawful Good to resmble Lawful Evil while still being Lawful Good and not violating any paladin-fu rules.

Oi, and now we see why I only play either Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral characters in DnD.

Bonus points if you are playing in the Realms, since athiest and other such undesireables are fated to suffer horribly in the wall of the faithless after they die. Therefore, it is a good act to convert them to be a follower of your god, by torture, if necessary.

My wife and I recently moved, and since we scored a second bedroom we've decided it'll be a game room. Other than the computer desk and a tv/X-Box combo, this room is books. Shelves and shelves of the damned things. We are both gamers, you see, and both had been gamers for over a decade a piece before we even met -- we have books a-plenty.

For shits and giggles, I decided to organize our books while unpacking. I cleared out a bunch of space on the floor and just started stacks, sorted (roughly) by game company. I had one for D&D, one for Shadowrun, one for Privateer Press, one for Games Workshop, one for Star Wars, one for CP:2020, one for L5R, one for Champions/HERO, etc, etc, all the way down to one for "other." In addition to being a handy way to roughly categorize them to make it easier to find what I'd be looking for some hypothetical day, I figured it would be fun to see what game system could lay claim to the most shelf space.

My money was on Shadowrun. We've both been playing it since SR1, are both rabid collectors (not just players), and, hell, we met playing Shadowrun. Even with us selling or trading away most of our doubles (to save shelf space, after moving in together), I figured it was a shoe in.

To my surprise and chagrin, it was the World of Darkness stack that won out when all was said and done, looming over its rivals like the mightiest oak in the forest, leeching sunlight from its lessers and growing ever taller at their expense. It was a stack roughly as high as my wife's chin, with its nearest rival (Shadowrun) just about the right height for a boobie shelf.

Two things struck me; it was going to be a pain to get the stacks of books turned vertical instead of horizontal and put onto shelves, and either my wife is even shorter than I tease her about, or we've got a fuck ton of WoD books we never use.

Turns out it's the latter. She didn't shrink or anything, we've just got a lot of World of Darkness crap. And -- lemme tell you -- I've played in exactly two sessions of a Vampire or Werewolf or any other game of theirs in the last ten years.

So my wholly unscientific little study of "what books do I have the most of" just made me realize I really do just have their shit lying around because I enjoy reading them, and not because they've got a core system that makes them worth actually playing.

*Ducks and runs*

Oy, did we need to bring up geezerboobs?

Bad Fisty!

My White Wolf Stack was very large as well. I traded them in to an online store for credit. All together, I estimate I got about $1,000 of store credit for them. I think the most I got for a single book was either "Games of Divinity" (Exalted) or "Into the Labyrinth" (Wraith). That surprised me; I had no idea that those books were so sought after. But this was shortly after White Wolf played out the "Armagedon" in their old game lines, and started fresh. Maybe that caused a spike in demand.

Reading the last few posts made me think about a joke I heard on the third Blue Collar Comedy show, about baloons three days after the party...

I have twice as many White Wolf books than all my other gamebooks put together. I have damn near all the vampire and mage books, with a good chunk of the werewolf/changing breed thrown into the mix. I'd say I could stack it as tall as I am if not taller.

I think I have one copy of the Mage core book somewhere that someone gave me once. Always did mean to get around to reading it.

~J

Mage is my favorite WoD game. You can get really creative with the stuff you can do. You also get to say "Isn't that a coincidence" or some version thereof alot.

Not particularly, in my mind a mixed tradition group is funner because of all the paradigm(sp?) arguements you can have, "Well, take your beliefs and shove em!"

Maybe it's my limited understanding of the setting, but doesn't it cause Paradox every time someone uses magic in a manner significantly different from that of an observer's tradition? Like, say, anytime someone in a mixed-tradition group is observed to use magic by the rest of the group?

~J

No, paradox is caused by using blatent magic, like shooting lightning from your fingers. Around "sleepers" (mundane humans) it's guaranteed, but around other supernaturals you have a chance to get away with it. Now if it's a stormy night and someone happens to get struck by lightning it's coincidental so you get off pretty much scott free.

It basically breaks down to if it's an accident or freak occurance you're good. If you run around chucking fireballs you're basically screwed. You can get away with it on occasion however.

EDIT- Some spheres are more paradox prone than others. Mind magic is pretty much the least paradoxial while stuff like time and some force effects are going to get you.

Um, I hate to beak up your lovely fantasy, but as far as I know that is a corruption of the rules of 3.5e at least. I first played D&D 3.5e, and I distinctly remember that in going through the main books that in one place it talks about role playing and alignments. It gave an example of a paladin who walked in on 2 lesbian succubi (you can see why it stuck in my memory ) and it said something along the lines that this should create an internal conflict as the Paladin was both sworn to exterminate evil (e.g. succubi), but his/her good alignment meant that s/he also had to honor love (e.g. lesbian couples). So in conclusion you've just been playing the game wrong .

For those who are unable to detect sarcasm the last sentence is an example

There are many ways to honor love. Sowing their corpses together and animating them as a Demonflesh golem so that they will never be physically separated again, for example, is one of these. It is also permissibly neutral so long as the Paladin's deity doesn't enforce obscure burial requirements.

Yes, sure that honors love, but isn't raising dead an inherently evil act? (I really don't play enough to know for sure)

Check it out, more stuff on White Wolf.

http://www.xanga.com/RPGpundit/622942464/item.html

Ugh. Somebody got Ryan Dancey on my Dumpshock Forums.

I hate to seem the dunce, but who is this Ryan Dancey, and why is he so reviled?

I'm having difficulty telling whether you're serious, but your tone sounds more sarcastic than not, so I'm going to assume it is sarcasm. My apologies if it wasn't.

The SR4 mechanics are pretty awful, but they avoided the utter abomination that was oWoD. Among other things, there aren't any flaws on the level with, say, what happens when your oWoD TN becomes 10.

~J

Dice asplode! If you have the proper spec.

What's so bad about OWoD? Personally, I prefer to the new system.

I was thinking more about the fact that, since the roll of a 1 takes away a success, when your TN is 10 your expected successes will be 0 no matter how many dice you have. If the TN can go past 10, your chance of failure actually increases the more dice you have (since each die is more likely to take away a success than to add one).

~J

I hate having things with no chance at all too (which is why I was always bugged by the way SR3 handled defaulting, and why I utterly despise SR4's fixed-TN die-pool-modifying system)—if your system cannot create high but finite levels of difficulty, it's time to get cracking on new mechanics.

~J

To resolve this confusion, I would have to have a clearer memory of what exactly the resolution mechanics were, or have access to a rulebook. Since the only oWoD rulebook I own (the only fooWoD rulebook, actually) is about a thousand miles away, I can't provide meaningful guidance as to whether your interpretation is more correct than mine or not.

~J