[Questions] Good vs Evil

You will be able do destructive things with life Magic, and Heal with Death Magic, but you will be doing it in different ways.

This is one of the reasons we have both forms of magic are at heart the same type of Manna.

Some examples, you could cure a disease by destroying all the organisms in the blood, using Death magic. Or bring raise the dead using life magic. At heart they are the same type of manna, but are imbued with different characteristics by the filter that is the Channeler. These are very basic examples, and we will be doing a lot to make sure that the different “filters” are balanced, yet unique.

Hmm... I feel somewhat relieved now.

Sounds like you are staying away from the "evil always wins because good is dumb" model.

I'd encourage SD to not be so much like Heroes of Might and Magic 5 was and get into the whole "each race is both good and evil" concept.  While it makes some sense and is true on some level, if I'm playing a fantasy game, I want some truly good guys to play to smite truly evil villians.  There can be shades of grey in there, too, but too many things out there lose the attraction of the black and white.

And I'm certainly for allow both Life and Death magic to have counterparts in different yet somewhat equal ways.  Too often games view Life magic is viewed as purely defensive and soft.  Why can't it blow up stuff and be powerful, too?

The way Galciv2 used the alignments was great. Being good should be hard and cause you grief and being evil should be easy and beneficial. After all, why would someone be evil otherwise?

Anyway, as I understood it, you must choose either Life or Death magic, you can't have both? This was a rather disappointing part of MOM to me, why couldn't you have both?

Or it could be a race trait that would let you choose both life and death magic at some other cost (like weakened spells from other magic domains)

Well, in a fantasy setting, being evil could be a result of your species being designed by an evil being, who or what you worship, some mistake or bad choice during magical work, or just plain ole bad attitude.

But you throw away the character choice. And the fact that you can change. If you're evil because of your kind you're pretty struck with it (unless you're some kind of Drizzt do urden or Viconia-__-).

And having a bad attitude has always a meaning. You just don't act bad "because".

I was mostly just listing common narrative themes that answer the question, to show a game could have short explanations that might work for most players. Re bad attitude "just because," that was an oversimplified way of saying that you can quite consciously decide to be evil even though you were taught it is wrong and understand that you'll be risking very serious consequences for your actions.

I hadn't thought much about the idea of "character choice" in a 4x game, though. I've just been unconsciously accepting that most or all such choices are in the initial game settings. But that's because, other than MoM, I've never played one where the player POV felt anything like role-playing.

Being good should be tough, but it should also be rewarding.  It's easy to be evil, but that comes at a high cost (even if the evil person doesn't realize it).

If alignment needs an actual game presence other than just the type of magic used, I hope it has some tangible benefits along with it.  I could see an evil channeler being able to use life magic, but at a reduced effectiveness and vice versa.

Maybe to take this idea a bit further, how about just make the three major categories of magic along a continum or point system?  For example, there would be a slider between:

Life vs. Death

Fire vs. Water

Air vs. Earth

and you could slide your channeler's level of power in each around.  Or choose to put points into these areas based on alignment choice opportunities.  Although, I really wonder how many alignment choices can be made in a 4x game.  RPG, yes, but SD would really have to put a lot of effort into making ethical dillemas and I'm not sure if it would be worth it.

This is how most folks seem to describe alignment in GC2. For me, it has too much cultural baggage. I'd prefer to see alignment as a single scale, with a central range that is neutral. The effects of alignment choices would move you along this one scale, and the results would be determined by your distance from 0. Being very close to 0 would generate one set of costs and benefits, being clearly negative a different set, and being clearly good yet another.

And none of the differences should be about "easy vs. hard." It's easy to be good when you live in the Shire. It's hard to be good when you live in Mordor. And Gandalf spent the vast majority of his very long life as "the Grey."

Which brings up the even more fun question--will alignment (good-neutral-evil, not shard stuff) change be possible? If there's a substantial diplomacy layer to Elemental, it could be really interesting to consider shifting your alignment as part of courting an ally, or even better, working magic to shift the alignment of weaker channeler as part of your brilliant long-term strategy. Shifting your own alignment should have consequences along the lines of D&D level loss, maybe a manna drop from which you can slowly recover?

I disagree with the fact that GC good choices were hurting more than evil. It's always been easier for me to win as good than as evil in GC, because evil had nasty events, and diplomacy with good races was good if you were good while evil-doers didn't get that benefit.

Overall it was quite nice.

Still, I'd like to stress that NOT all fantasy have good vs. evil. Le Guin's Earthsea for instance. Also Indian myths and tales are much more shades of grey than good/evil choices. Dilemmas like: Lie (sin) or lose the war against the sinners. Which is only a dilemma if you're not a sinner obviously.

I hope that things are not simply B&W. I would like for neutral or gray alignments as well. Think of the magic as a sort of a triangle instead of a simple line. The top of the triangle would of course be neutral and the left to right good and evil. Of couse all would be equally powerful in their own right at the extremes.

I hope that things are not simply B&W

So do I. But the game is between the human and fallen ones. It's the only flaw I can see to the game. Good and Evil are just overbeaten dead horses.

But isn't that what necromancy is for?

Seriously though, I would like a bit more race choice than "humans" and "naughty humans". Though I suppose user-made content will help with that in the long term. 

I think there should also be neutral units/races, I just don't want to see something where there's no clear good and bad guys.  In essence, everything would be neutral at that point, which makes gaming so much less fun and bland.  Life already has enough grey areas- I play fantasy games to conquer evil, not rehash real life!

I hope for a grayish system when you can play neutrals aka. Smugling mass desctruction weapons to help your orphans.

"Nuclear Warfare, it's for the children"?

Hmm. 12 civs. That sounds like there's definitely room for the good, the bad, and the indifferent both amongst humans and Fallen.

I agree--*except* I think the "good guy" list should be determined by the character of your channeler and civ. Drengin and Korath may fight and despise each other, but the rest of the GC2 civs are just so much meat (or microchips). For a conservative druid type, the "bad guy" would be anyone doing big, messy things that wreck habitat. (Man, it's been too, too long since I played a game where you could create volcanoes on your enemy's turf. June is sooo long from now.)

I agree as well and I thought that idea was implicit in my statement. Neutral elements are for both the player and the AI.

I had the same thought.  I think that the GC alignments were more about play-style than anything.  If you wanted to win through winning friends and influencing people (my preference) being a Good civilization gave you a serious leg up.  If, on the other hand, you wanted to crush the other civilizations beneath your sandalled foot-equivalents, going Evil gave you all the nice extra military goodies that those goody-twoshoes were too wussy to use.