Kn Rule Feedback

[TH - The Hunt]

In theory, an LG zealot's is motivated by their culture and the people around them, while the LE one is self-motivated. The former is concerned with upholding tradition and protecting their people, the latter is concerned with promoting their own authority and securing their legacy. The reason they end up looking similar is regardless of whether a regent's leadership style is populist or elitist, the player still defines what their goals are, and they tend to define the same ones in both cases.

Heck, the line between 'populist' and 'elitist' leadership gets pretty blurry when the 'populist' is just using popular support to promote elite interests, which all kinds of characters do sometimes. Even non-lawful ones. It's common for regents to paint their rivals as tyrants and themselves as populists even when the opposite is true, just because populism is (somehow) more popular.

Hm, have we ever seen someone play a regent who openly expresses the view that blooded characters are superior to unblooded ones? There's a lot of them who say the gods are superior to mortals, or their race is superior to others, but somehow this division remains implicit. Pretty funny, all things considered.

[YK - Yuri Khavlor]

I disagree, you can easily play a LG character who does not give one whit about their culture. Take the dog person who devotes their life to see the animals be healtht and loved, in a society that thinks they are dirty mongrels. They make decisions based on this value to change tradition for this greater good.

Then take the LE character who is guided by patriotic zeal. The seek power for their culture and ways of life, so that it is the winner in the war of ideas. They give to their culture charities and institutions to keep it strong

Any alignment can be benevolent, any alignment can accept or reject their culture or in group values.

[TH - The Hunt]

That 'LG character' wouldn't be an LG character--at least, not after they resolved the conflict. An LG character would accept traditions as they are and resist opposition to them. You can have someone who's LG but struggling with 'whether to be lawful or good' (see Javert), but that conflict will be driving them in one direction or the other. Assuming they don't choose Javert's solution, they'd probably end up NG or TN before long. If the treatment of animals was that important to them, and their culture that much against it, they'd probably continue moving away from lawful alignment after that. And perhaps away from good, too, if they didn't keep it together.

An LE character who is "truly guided by patriotic zeal" is really just a character with LN values who lacks the self-awareness to recognize their true motivations don't match the ideals they claim to promote. Or one who defines "patriotic zeal" as the will to power and desire to have a strong realm, and doesn't quite grasp that patriotism has more to it than that, and sometimes requires sacrificing those things for the sake of the nation (and vice-versa).

A character of any alignment can be benevolent, but only (some) good characters are primarily benevolent. A character of any alignment can accept or reject their culture or in-group values, but chaotic characters are the ones who primarily do that, while characters around the LG part of the spectrum are the ones who are expected to respect and promote their own culture, defend 'family values' and all that noise. If there isn't a strong correlation, here, alignment means little.

[YK - Yuri Khavlor]

'grant me the strenth to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.'

A great credo for the LG character who stands in opposition to their cultures values and practices.

Their alignment doesnt change when they move to a new region, because the neighbours are different.

[TH - The Hunt]

Sure. It's more appropriate for a NG character, since an LG character who relies on it is going to accept things they are able to change, and fail to see a lot of the of changes they can make as more 'courageous' than they are 'disruptive'. Still, it can work for any character who's at least in the vicinity of NG alignment. (A CG one who has this credo would probably be one who's a bit shy and unassertive, despite their values.) Conflicted characters are plenty interesting, though a lot of the intrigue comes from how their situation is dynamic and unstable. Which doesn't really work if their state of affairs is normalized.

A character's alignment has to do with their background, family, and how they were raised, not their current surroundings. It's difficult for lawful characters to oppose their own culture based on its values alone, because their alignment suggests their upbringing led them to associate with those values. It's difficult for chaotic characters to do anything other than reject the values of those who raised them. This isn't too restrictive, since a character's attitude toward those around them doesn't have to be based ideology, it can be something more personal, or immediate.

CN cultures promote individualism, and expect their members to reinvent and assert themselves, having difficulty with those who'd prefer to 'fit in' to someone else's design. LN ones expect people to bend to fit expectations, and don't cope well with mavericks. NG cultures expect everyone to make sacrifices for the sake of others, NE ones expect everyone to be out for themselves, and TN ones... expect the unexpected? Or maybe prefer not to think about it.

[WB - Water's Blessing]

Just depends on the culture. The LG guy could see tons of changes that need to happen in their culture. The LG agent of change can totally be am agent of change who works to completely overhaul their culture. The difference is the kind of change they would strive for -- the LG guy's more likely to be a reactionary conservative, where the NG guy's more likely to have a more expansive and progressive view of change.

But, in the end, so long as people use it to make richer, more complicated characters, I don't really care how other people interpret alignment as long as they do so in an internally consistent manner -- or just play a True Neutral pure pragmatist.

[YK - Yuri Khavlor]

All good examples but not always correct.

Rolf Thrandson CN was not about individualism, but about community. How to balance to traditional and modern rjurik culture, while simultaneously balancing racial cultural conflicts by finding his peoples place within Anuirean Dhoesone and Rjurik.

No focus on the individual desires or freedoms but for providing a community that accommodates as much freedom as possible while maintaining its identity.


Any value,
Any action,
Any trait,

Can all work with any alignment.

What changes is why it works. A decision you make during character development.

Any Alignment base arguments about what a character would do, are incorrect.

Replace 'would do' with 'could do'.

[TH - The Hunt]

To me, that sounds like you're rationalizing the decision to give the character that alignment, rather than explaining it. From that description, Rolf sounds like a TN character, not a CN one.

It's true that any character can have any value, take any action, or have any trait, regardless of alignment. But that's like saying someone can buy anything regardless of how much money they have. Sure, it's true, but behind that truth there's the deeper one that everything has a cost. If one of a character's values, or many of their actions, or several traits or a major trait in particular are incompatible with their alignment, they have to make up for that, willingly or not, in kind or in blood. And in a big way, if it's a big discrepancy.

Don't replace 'would do' with 'could do', replace it with 'would (probably/most likely) do'. The standard character of a given alignment is one who simply, straightforwardly has the values associated with that alignment, and acts accordingly. Other characters may get there by other means, like by having a set of values aren't typically associated with each other, perhaps even in conflict, or whose actions don't follow an established pattern. But that doesn't mean 'everything is made up and the points don't matter', otherwise we wouldn't be keeping track of alignments at all.

[HBH - Bloodmage]

If I already have a sphere as a Minor and want to elevate it to Major, do I have to spend the full Major cost? or just the difference of going from Minor to Major?

[DM Juan]

The difference