Alignment...

[Ken Woodruff <woodruff@cadence.com>]

PeterM writes (in regards to problems with alignment):
>                                                     ... Evil players
> could walk right past the guards to the treasure and take it unopposed.
> Monsters should really attack any non-natives, not just those misaligned
> with them.  If you were evil, would you allow some other evil creature
> to rummage around in your home and take your treasure without a fight?
   
This mention of "non-natives" reminded me of a somewhat related idea
I had a while back, which is adding the idea of Citizenship to the game.
In essence a player would be a citizen of one of the great city-states, or
independant.  Certain areas could be hostile to others, so citizens
of one country would not be allowed in (without a fight, that is).
Other areas could be restricted to "citizens only", perhaps an inner
city within the larger ones.  My initial thought about implementation
would be to add citizenship "badges" as an archetype.  The badges could
be used like passkeys to unlock certain doors, or like passwords to
trigger magic ears or placate the guards.  Citizenship would
have to be earned, the most likely means would be some sort of quest
(e.g. slay the local dragon or some such.)  The shortcoming (or
maybe not) of this implementation would be that it would be
possible for users to become citizens of more than one place.
Unlike alignment, which would affect virtually all existing maps,
the notion of citizenship could be introduced gradually in new maps
and added to existing ones as seen fit.  One obvious initial
candidate would be ships--i.e you wouldn't be able to take a ship
to a city unless you were a citizen of the destination city.

--Ken

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Ken Woodruff           | "In every jumbled pile of person    |
| woodruff@cadence.com   |  there's a thinking part that       |
+------------------------+  wonders what the part that isn't   |
| Disclaimer: What tote  |  thinking isn't thinking of."       |
| bag full of $20 bills? |          --They Might Be Giants     |
+------------------------+-------------------------------------+