james_joyce

Does this just mean that pieces of those sets glow? If so, I think they need to glow more - I couldn't tell at all. The way this was written, I was expecting a new button or slider or something, but can't find anything like that.

Anarchism isn't pacifism, though. You can use violence in self defense. So if an anarchist was, for example, drinking on the street (in America), and a cop tried to arrest him, he could justify resisting arrest, even violently if it came to that. To the anarchist, such an encounter isn't philosophically different than if a kidnapper tried to force you into a van.

I want to note at this point that I'm not actually an anarchist, I just have an interest in political philosophy.

Sure, I guess you could be a sociopathic anarchist, but anarchy is the pursuit of eliminating compulsory power structures, and when you initiate violence against someone you're establishing just such a structure. So you can have sociopathic violence in anarchy, but it's not an anarchist activity.

I realize I'm being pedantic and that when most people say "anarchy" they mean people throwing bricks through windows and lighting people on fire, and that it's completely not a big deal to misuse the term in the context of light video game RP - I just wanted to get my dig in.

If you advocate the initiation of violence, you are not an anarchist. You are an authoritarian, or just a sociopath.

Of course, I'm talking about formal anarchist political philosophy, not the common usage of the word.

Anarchist
Anarchist
Anarchist

Not Anarchists
Not an Anarchist
Not an Anarchist

Anarchism is a political ideology, not mustachioed villains carrying round bombs.

SO THERE!

Well, I think the confusion comes from the fact that I was trying to place him in the D&D alignment system as distinct from any real-world theoretical good-evil framework. I would never argue that Cole was a good person in any real way.

I think Smurch has put me in my place, though. Cole is Lawful Evil.

that's actually how all states are structured - it just depends on what the rules are. Whether the rules are just or not is a separate issue.

The question would be, does Cole believe that by imprisoning/executing those who dissent, he's making the world safer? I'm trying to tease apart someone like The Center from Cole, essentially. One is concerned with accumulation of power for its own sake. The other, as far as we know, accumulates power to help the human species. The Center is clearly LE. Cole I'm having trouble with after Smurch.

No, so according to Smurch, Arachnos is Chaotic Evil, which fits with the axes descriptions, and just means that the perception that Chaos means lawlessness is false.

The descriptions of combinations is more misleading than inferring the description from the separate components, it seems.

Really?

Well it sounds like you know more about it than I do - reading through the wikipedia entry again - specifically the definition of the axes rather than the specific combinations - supports what you're saying.

That doesn't sit well with me, though - Cole doesn't appear to be self serving. He does appear to be working for the good of his people. He IS oppressing them, but "for their own good." That doesn't seem to fit.

Or maybe it means that not everything fits cleanly on the D&D axes.

But that's not what evil is in the D&D alignment system. Evil is about self-serving activities at the expense of others, the accumulation of power for its own sake, etc. Cole, on the other hand, has those mind readers in place because he thinks they're necessary to protect "his" people - clearly not an evil action in the D&D alignment framework.

LN doesn't mean we can't, in the real world, say that someone is evil. They're just not "evil" in the D&D framework.

But remember, we're trying to fit the situation with the classical D&D alignments - the devs probably don't have the same thing in mind. Just because your Loyalist character goes from working for one dictator to another, doesn't mean that one, in the classical D&D sense, isn't LN and the other LE/CE. The one still has the best intentions of his subjects in mind while the other doesn't.

Tyrant and the Praetorian government are clearly "evil" in a colloquial sense, but that's not what we're talking about here. That's why I have the Mises quote in my sig - I clearly agree with you in a basic way, as do probably most people here. Cole still fits the LN alignment.

I can't think of a situation where a name has been retconned, in any medium capable of retconning. Names get pretty attached to characters.

And having said that, they sort of did retcon the names... Emperor Cole, Praetor White.

But point taken.

Heh... To be fair, though, those names were assigned when the characters really were evil - they're retconning Praetoria quite a bit, seemingly with the explicit intent of making it more morally ambiguous.

See, I don't see "Evil" as such in Praetoria. The society is clearly structured for the benefit of its population - it's just that the means they use to get there are pretty extreme.

I'm sticking with Lawful Neutral.

You're right. Let me clarify.

Cole has achieved through force an apparent utopia where there is no crime or poverty - that represents, if you define it narrowly, a substantial reduction in human cost. To do it, he is sacrificing a small minority of the population - specifically super powered beings that don't pass the recruitment (whatever that means), and subjugating the rest through constant surveillance. Whether a pervasive surveillance state represents "human cost" is up for debate, but Cole has no doubt in his own view achieved the lowest human cost possible, regardless of the means.

Anyway, that's to frame Cole as a utilitarian. I think he still fits best in the D&D alignment system as Lawful Neutral, since his empire is based on rigid laws that aren't overtly evil.

At least you'll have the clockwork pieces.

gah! sorry.

That's less confusing, but does make me think that there won't be any content 'til Q2 2010, which is pretty far away. Maybe some mini updates?

You shouldn't, according to the tweets,
"Minimum specs for the game won't change, and you can run Going Rogue without Ultra mode, but you can turn on Ultra mode with high-end video cards"

That is, unless you want to see the improved graphics.

According to the tweets, GR is "I20," so I'd expect a few more issues before then... which is actually a little confusing now that I think about it.