The reputation system in Baldur's Gate has two serious problems:
1. Reputation is a black and white system applied to a two-dimensional alignment system. It arbitrarily decides what actions are "good" or "bad", and makes it so that every good action is embraced by every good character, and every bad action is embraced by every evil character, regardless of the other spectrum (lawful <--> chaotic). So, for example, if I have lawful goody-goody paladin Ajantis in my party, and I lie to the Flaming Fist in order to help a fugitive deserter escape the law (Samuel), Ajantis thinks that's awesome. Yay! Go us! We helped a fugitive escape justice! Keldorn would be so proud!
2. The evil options provided are less self-serving, and more psychotic. Hence, we get discussions about "Stupid evil" versus "Smart evil." If you don't like the evil options, that's because they aren't the REAL evil options, just the stupid options. Evil characters can choose to do any number of things for different, more sinister motivations. Etc...
Where it really irritates me, though, is when the two of these combine.
Let's say I buy into the notion of "Smart evil" and "Stupid evil". If I'm playing smart evil, I want to have a high reputation, so that I can use my influence to get what I want. After all, isn't that exactly what Sarevok and The Iron Throne are doing? They hide their evil behind some stellar public relations, and they're sitting pretty up in Baldur's Gate. If I want to play evil, but I still want to buy things from merchants and not get assaulted every time I enter a city, I just need to be smart about it...
Great.
...So can somebody please tell me what it is about that plan that the rest of my party doesn't get? Am I in a party full of imbeciles? Because apparently every evil NPC in the game wants me to be "stupid evil". Any action that doesn't move me towards being the Sword Coasts number 1 most wanted murderer is met with complaints, and any action, no matter how heinous, is embraced. There is never a moment where they say, "Whoa, this guy is nuts. We gotta get out of here before he gets us all killed."
Specifically... Can somebody please explain to the greedy dwarf Kagain that we'll make a lot more money if merchants aren't jacking up their sale prices because of how unpopular we are? And while you're at it, please tell Xzar and Montaron that it's bullshit that they're allowed to pretend to be nice to me in order to get me to do what they want, when they won't allow me to pull the same con on the Sword Coast.
Viconia, do you remember that time the Flaming Fist was coming after you, and I had to bail your ass out? Did you LIKE being hunted by the Flaming Fist? Cause it kind of seemed like you didn't. In that case, could you please not complain when I give a donation to the church that takes our reputation from 5 to 6? You of all people should not be happy about a reputation of 1, lady!
And it's not just the idiots around me. My dreams don't seem to grasp my master plan either. It's kind of sad when even my own psyche doesn't get me. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with "Smart Evil."
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I think a game that really nailed it was KOTOR 2. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was a huge step forward from the Baldur's Gate reputation systems. It treated influence (reputation with your crew) as a separate entity from Light Side/Dark Side points, and that one simple change made it possible to customize how the NPCs reacted to different events. It meant that not all good was the same, and not all evil was the same. The characters had a lot more depth because of it. It would have been even better, except that I'm not terribly fond of a lot of the KOTOR 2 characters (with the notable exceptions of HK-47, who is one of the best characters of all time, and Kreia, who brought more depth and complexity to the concepts of "light side" and "dark side" than anything else I've ever experienced in the Star Wars universe. Those two are among my favorite characters of all time).
A system like that, in a game like Baldur's Gate 2, would be a dream come true. It would allow for different reactions to good/evil events, but also lawful/chaotic events, and even background-specific events. And influence with party members could be used to help keep characters in check when they try to feud with one another, or when they balk at your reputation.
That's the mod I want. Or a feature I'd like to see in BG3. Either or both, please and thank you.
If my interpretation is correct, then being "Lawful" has less to do with following actual laws, but rather that the person in question values order and obedience. A Lawful Evil thief would follow the laws he deems appropriate or "just", while disobeying the ones he doesn't like - hypocritical, but to him it makes sense. A Lawful Evil thief might follow a simple code: he'd steal only from the "underserving".
If my interpretation is correct, then being "Lawful" has less to do with following actual laws, but rather that the person in question values order and obedience. A Lawful Evil thief would follow the laws he deems appropriate or "just", while disobeying the ones he doesn't like - hypocritical, but to him it makes sense. A Lawful Evil thief might follow a simple code: he'd steal only from the "underserving".
Lawful Neutral, hmm... that's harder.
That is very close to my interpretation as well. A lawful person Values order and structure over anything. If the laws support that, great. But if they don't, a Lawful won't necessarily bow to them. In this, I don't think they are being hypocritical, but merely following a different set of order and structure guidelines than the Laws that they break/ignore.
Hence, when people say Lawful's follow the law. No. Lawfuls follow structure. If the law follows that same structure, then synergy. Otherwise not. It is the major difference between correlated and causal which eludes some people.
Also to the poster who said "Chaotic Neutrals are crazy".. Wrong.
That is very close to my interpretation as well. A lawful person Values order and structure over anything. If the laws support that, great. But if they don't, a Lawful won't necessarily bow to them. In this, I don't think they are being hypocritical, but merely following a different set of order and structure guidelines than the Laws that they break/ignore.
Hence, when people say Lawful's follow the law. No. Lawfuls follow structure. If the law follows that same structure, then synergy. Otherwise not. It is the major difference between correlated and causal which eludes some people.
Also to the poster who said "Chaotic Neutrals are crazy".. Wrong.
You can't fault the guy for reading the manual. An excerpt from the description for chaotic neutral: "This alignment is perhaps the most difficult to play. Lunatics and madmen tend toward chaotic neutral behavior."
Followed by, "Not all madmen fit this description, of course; and not all those who fit this description are necessarily mad. Volo likes to exaggerate things a bit." - Elminster
But the manual's description paints a picture of insanity. Chaotic Neutral follows all of their whims, with no sense of right or wrong. The manual describes them as pure id. And a person that lacks a superego is insane. So your beef is with the manual, not the poster. Or, if you want to say that the manual is just Volo's description of the alignment, your beef is with a non-fictional character. Either way.
If you were going to fault his argument, I would have thought it would be Chaotic Evil you took exception to, instead of Chaotic Neutral.
EDIT - From wikipedia's description of Chaotic Neutral:
"A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: "strongly Chaotic Neutral"; describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution. Characters of this type include the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset."
All Cats are scardy. Not all Scardy things are cats.
"To me", Chaotic Neutral is a free spirit. Someone who doesn't plan too much, sometimes likes to raise some H@!!, but on the whole doesn't give a wet slap about 'Good' or 'Evil'. I figure pretty much Ford Prefect as the ultimate Chaotic Neutral. Go where the mood (and the alcohol) take you but don't get involved in heavier issues like right and wrong.
Lawful and Chaotic are a bit misleading terms. What gets the idea behind them better is "organized" and "disorganized". The organized-lawful character values a system to follow, be it the law or a code of honor, where the disorganized-chaotic character rather has no rules to follow and decide on a whim what's "right" or "wrong", if such things are of any concern.
My point is that, by the second edition D&D PHB, which BG takes its alignment descriptions from verbatim, Chaotic Neutral basically means "has absolutely no reason to do anything they do." In the hypothetical situation given after the alignment descriptions in the PHB, the Chaotic Neutral character has no opinion about how the party should split the treasure or whether they should pay to resurrect him, and would probably flip a coin to decide how to cast his vote. Also, the embodiment of Chaos is a giant frog. Because giant frog. Note: I think this is stupid, I'm just pointing it out in order to demonstrate the baggage we inherit when we try to come up with a workable definition of Lawful and Chaotic.
That's 2nd edition. 3rd edition uses different definitions for Lawful and Chaotic which have the unfortunate problem of not being in any way mutually exclusive, and so it becomes hard to argue that a character's behavior trends in any significant way towards one or the other.
I disagree with 'disorganized'. More free spirit is my take on things.
A lawful thief might plan out a heist to the last detail, leaving nothing to chance.
A Chaotic thief might do some prep recon, but beyond that would simply be 'generally' prepared for what he expected to find and go with it.
Both would (potentially) get the job done and with the same degree of difficulty/ease. But they have very different approaches to the attempt.
See, to me, that sounds more like high Wis vs. low Wis. The first one has the foresight and good judgment to plan ahead and consider contingencies like "what's my escape route if someone sounds the alarm." The second one just wings it and hopes for the best.
LOL. Did not know that the CN description in the PHB was that messed up. I might have to look it up if I can find my books. Just for the laugh.
It sounds like someone was trying to describe the outlier extreme case. But then again, someone might have merely been under a deadline and just wrote the first thing that came to mind. It happens.
I disagree with 'disorganized'. More free spirit is my take on things.
A lawful thief might plan out a heist to the last detail, leaving nothing to chance.
A Chaotic thief might do some prep recon, but beyond that would simply be 'generally' prepared for what he expected to find and go with it.
Both would (potentially) get the job done and with the same degree of difficulty/ease. But they have very different approaches to the attempt.
See, to me, that sounds more like high Wis vs. low Wis. The first one has the foresight and good judgment to plan ahead and consider contingencies like "what's my escape route if someone sounds the alarm." The second one just wings it and hopes for the best.
Ok, so to use a REALLY old example (yes I am dating myself), I see a chaotic person as being someone like MacGyver (from the 80's TV show of the same name). He never has a plan, but usually get the job done. He is very 'Go with the flow and something will come up' type. He was always making due with what was to hand and usually went in blind. Pretty much the personification of Chaotic Good.
The opposite side to this example is Murdoc, the insane Assassin that pops up in the show from time to time. This guy was a TOTAL Lawful evil character (despite being insane). He would plan and scheme these incredibly elaborate death traps to catch MacGyver. He would plan for every single contingency. He would have traps inside of traps. And he would always get foiled.
Aside from the fact that it was MacGyver's show and he was always going to win and the other guy was insane and the bad guy, neither was "necessarily" more or less 'Wise'. At least not in the way you mean. But they were polar opposites.
Fair enough. It seems like it would be hard to have mixed Lawful/Chaotic groups, though, if the Lawful characters always have to come up with plans and try to stick to them, and the Chaotic characters always have to ignore the plans.
I really can't see myself telling a Lawful Good Paladin, "Sorry, you're being a bit too adaptable when things go wrong; if you don't start being more rigid, you're going to lose your Paladinhood."
Sturm Brightblade was a total Lawful character. He lived by a code and was a strategist. Tasselhoff Burfoot was a total chaotic. He just went and did whatever he wanted and hoped for the best. Now, neither one was 'The party leader', but they get into some funny situations. Sturm is like "Here's the plan. First we do..... hey, where is Tas?"
As for your Paladin example, probably a bit lee-way is called for. Understand that alignments are intended to be fluid. No character is ever 100% lawful or chaotic all the time. Nor are they 100% good or evil all the time. Even the most stalwart Paladin will occasionally do things that aren't on the straight and narrow. And even the most nasty villain will occasionally be nice to someone. It is more about patterns of behavior. At least in my book.
No yeah, I get what you're saying (I've watched MacGyver and read Dragonlance, though it's been awhile for both). It just seems like a recipe for party conflict, not to mention odd behavior, when players playing Lawful characters feel they have to stick with a plan, even when the plan has obviously gone up in flames, for fear of losing their alignment. Likewise for players playing Chaotic characters feeling like they have to deviate from the plan even when it's going off without a hitch. If the party has a string of plans that all go really bad or work really well, it could become a problem (though only to the extent that changing alignment has punitive consequences in your game).
LOL. but that is when the wackiness ensues. Party strife.
I work in the business world now. I am regularly put on teams and deal with both 'Lawful' planners and 'Chaotic' go with the flow types. It is often fun to watch them go head to head. The planners wig with things don't go to plan and the more 'relaxed' types freak out when everything needs to be planned to the Nth detail. it is loads of fun and the only way I get through those types of meetings is to just observe this behavior.
Comments
1. Reputation is a black and white system applied to a two-dimensional alignment system. It arbitrarily decides what actions are "good" or "bad", and makes it so that every good action is embraced by every good character, and every bad action is embraced by every evil character, regardless of the other spectrum (lawful <--> chaotic). So, for example, if I have lawful goody-goody paladin Ajantis in my party, and I lie to the Flaming Fist in order to help a fugitive deserter escape the law (Samuel), Ajantis thinks that's awesome. Yay! Go us! We helped a fugitive escape justice! Keldorn would be so proud!
2. The evil options provided are less self-serving, and more psychotic. Hence, we get discussions about "Stupid evil" versus "Smart evil." If you don't like the evil options, that's because they aren't the REAL evil options, just the stupid options. Evil characters can choose to do any number of things for different, more sinister motivations. Etc...
Where it really irritates me, though, is when the two of these combine.
Let's say I buy into the notion of "Smart evil" and "Stupid evil". If I'm playing smart evil, I want to have a high reputation, so that I can use my influence to get what I want. After all, isn't that exactly what Sarevok and The Iron Throne are doing? They hide their evil behind some stellar public relations, and they're sitting pretty up in Baldur's Gate. If I want to play evil, but I still want to buy things from merchants and not get assaulted every time I enter a city, I just need to be smart about it...
Great.
...So can somebody please tell me what it is about that plan that the rest of my party doesn't get? Am I in a party full of imbeciles? Because apparently every evil NPC in the game wants me to be "stupid evil". Any action that doesn't move me towards being the Sword Coasts number 1 most wanted murderer is met with complaints, and any action, no matter how heinous, is embraced. There is never a moment where they say, "Whoa, this guy is nuts. We gotta get out of here before he gets us all killed."
Specifically... Can somebody please explain to the greedy dwarf Kagain that we'll make a lot more money if merchants aren't jacking up their sale prices because of how unpopular we are? And while you're at it, please tell Xzar and Montaron that it's bullshit that they're allowed to pretend to be nice to me in order to get me to do what they want, when they won't allow me to pull the same con on the Sword Coast.
Viconia, do you remember that time the Flaming Fist was coming after you, and I had to bail your ass out? Did you LIKE being hunted by the Flaming Fist? Cause it kind of seemed like you didn't. In that case, could you please not complain when I give a donation to the church that takes our reputation from 5 to 6? You of all people should not be happy about a reputation of 1, lady!
And it's not just the idiots around me. My dreams don't seem to grasp my master plan either. It's kind of sad when even my own psyche doesn't get me. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with "Smart Evil."
-----
I think a game that really nailed it was KOTOR 2. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was a huge step forward from the Baldur's Gate reputation systems. It treated influence (reputation with your crew) as a separate entity from Light Side/Dark Side points, and that one simple change made it possible to customize how the NPCs reacted to different events. It meant that not all good was the same, and not all evil was the same. The characters had a lot more depth because of it. It would have been even better, except that I'm not terribly fond of a lot of the KOTOR 2 characters (with the notable exceptions of HK-47, who is one of the best characters of all time, and Kreia, who brought more depth and complexity to the concepts of "light side" and "dark side" than anything else I've ever experienced in the Star Wars universe. Those two are among my favorite characters of all time).
A system like that, in a game like Baldur's Gate 2, would be a dream come true. It would allow for different reactions to good/evil events, but also lawful/chaotic events, and even background-specific events. And influence with party members could be used to help keep characters in check when they try to feud with one another, or when they balk at your reputation.
That's the mod I want. Or a feature I'd like to see in BG3. Either or both, please and thank you.
If my interpretation is correct, then being "Lawful" has less to do with following actual laws, but rather that the person in question values order and obedience. A Lawful Evil thief would follow the laws he deems appropriate or "just", while disobeying the ones he doesn't like - hypocritical, but to him it makes sense. A Lawful Evil thief might follow a simple code: he'd steal only from the "underserving".
Lawful Neutral, hmm... that's harder.
Hence, when people say Lawful's follow the law. No. Lawfuls follow structure. If the law follows that same structure, then synergy. Otherwise not. It is the major difference between correlated and causal which eludes some people.
Also to the poster who said "Chaotic Neutrals are crazy".. Wrong.
Followed by, "Not all madmen fit this description, of course; and not all those who fit this description are necessarily mad. Volo likes to exaggerate things a bit." - Elminster
But the manual's description paints a picture of insanity. Chaotic Neutral follows all of their whims, with no sense of right or wrong. The manual describes them as pure id. And a person that lacks a superego is insane. So your beef is with the manual, not the poster. Or, if you want to say that the manual is just Volo's description of the alignment, your beef is with a non-fictional character. Either way.
If you were going to fault his argument, I would have thought it would be Chaotic Evil you took exception to, instead of Chaotic Neutral.
EDIT - From wikipedia's description of Chaotic Neutral:
"A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: "strongly Chaotic Neutral"; describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution. Characters of this type include the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset."
"To me", Chaotic Neutral is a free spirit. Someone who doesn't plan too much, sometimes likes to raise some H@!!, but on the whole doesn't give a wet slap about 'Good' or 'Evil'. I figure pretty much Ford Prefect as the ultimate Chaotic Neutral. Go where the mood (and the alcohol) take you but don't get involved in heavier issues like right and wrong.
A lawful thief might plan out a heist to the last detail, leaving nothing to chance.
A Chaotic thief might do some prep recon, but beyond that would simply be 'generally' prepared for what he expected to find and go with it.
Both would (potentially) get the job done and with the same degree of difficulty/ease. But they have very different approaches to the attempt.
That's 2nd edition. 3rd edition uses different definitions for Lawful and Chaotic which have the unfortunate problem of not being in any way mutually exclusive, and so it becomes hard to argue that a character's behavior trends in any significant way towards one or the other.
It sounds like someone was trying to describe the outlier extreme case. But then again, someone might have merely been under a deadline and just wrote the first thing that came to mind. It happens.
The opposite side to this example is Murdoc, the insane Assassin that pops up in the show from time to time. This guy was a TOTAL Lawful evil character (despite being insane). He would plan and scheme these incredibly elaborate death traps to catch MacGyver. He would plan for every single contingency. He would have traps inside of traps. And he would always get foiled.
Aside from the fact that it was MacGyver's show and he was always going to win and the other guy was insane and the bad guy, neither was "necessarily" more or less 'Wise'. At least not in the way you mean. But they were polar opposites.
I really can't see myself telling a Lawful Good Paladin, "Sorry, you're being a bit too adaptable when things go wrong; if you don't start being more rigid, you're going to lose your Paladinhood."
Sturm Brightblade was a total Lawful character. He lived by a code and was a strategist. Tasselhoff Burfoot was a total chaotic. He just went and did whatever he wanted and hoped for the best. Now, neither one was 'The party leader', but they get into some funny situations. Sturm is like "Here's the plan. First we do..... hey, where is Tas?"
As for your Paladin example, probably a bit lee-way is called for. Understand that alignments are intended to be fluid. No character is ever 100% lawful or chaotic all the time. Nor are they 100% good or evil all the time. Even the most stalwart Paladin will occasionally do things that aren't on the straight and narrow. And even the most nasty villain will occasionally be nice to someone. It is more about patterns of behavior. At least in my book.
I work in the business world now. I am regularly put on teams and deal with both 'Lawful' planners and 'Chaotic' go with the flow types. It is often fun to watch them go head to head. The planners wig with things don't go to plan and the more 'relaxed' types freak out when everything needs to be planned to the Nth detail. it is loads of fun and the only way I get through those types of meetings is to just observe this behavior.