Not suggesting we make this change overnight, as it would be horrible to effect the people already in it.
But look at the landscape
1 Good Only Cabal
1 Evil Only Cabal
1 Evil/Neutral Cabal
1 Neutral Only Cabal
4 All Align Cabals
0 Good/Neutral Cabal
The lack of a good + neutral cabal seems like a hole to me. There's also a distinct imbalance by the fact that Syndi/Nexus have a "natural" but sometimes tense ally. If we made this change, Tribunal would also have a natural but sometimes tense ally in Knight. It also makes sense from an RP standpoint. The empire shouldn't want evil self-interested people in their ranks.
Tribunal is not meant to care about align. It cares about ethos.
Which is really weird and awkward. Its very unrealistic to have people blindly believe in laws regardless of what those laws are. The tribunal rp gets stale really fast because it basically boils down to making sure people sheath. I think it would be a more rounded RP if we made them about lawfulness towards a purpose of trying to improve the world.
A lot of tribunals follow that same RP. Even evil ones.
It's important to remember that well played evils are not cartoon villains. The road to Hell is paved with the best of intentions. Plenty of evil people follow the laws to the letter, abusing them for their own gains. Tyrants commit genocide in the name of making the world a "better place" in their own minds. A well played evil can most certainly be lawful, and still keep the malice and extremism.
A lot of tribunals follow that same RP. Even evil ones.
It's important to remember that well played evils are not cartoon villains. The road to Hell is paved with the best of intentions. Plenty of evil people follow the laws to the letter, abusing them for their own gains. Tyrants commit genocide in the name of making the world a "better place" in their own minds. A well played evil can most certainly be lawful, and still keep the malice and extremism.
It makes perfect sense why an evil would want to join.
It does not make sense why an empire would let them. People apt to abuse laws for their own gains. A well run empire would reject these people. Aabahran is a world where there are spells that reveal the truth of someone's soul. I know there's alot of history around Tribunal, but if you step back and think not about what its been but how it fits into the game I just think it would work better as a good/neutral only cabal.
If laws are being enforced and followed, why SHOULD Tribunal care about alignment? The Tribunal is order.
I think the issue you are seeing is due to looking at Tribunal like a police force. Nobody wants evil cops.
They are more than that, though. They are the force that is trying to civilize Aabahran, and bring order to it. Tyranny, while being awful, can and does still bring order. Fear of the government is a powerful tool. The way I see it, Tribunal is not about actually protecting citizens. While the laws in place certainly do just that, the protection itself is more of a platform or tool used to further the actual aim of Tribunal, which is unified rule and enforced order.
Good Tribunals generally join specifically to influence the Empire into an altruistic society. Neutral Tribunals generally join to serve the rule of law and ensure that judgement is fair and unilateral. Evil Tribunals tend to join in order to oppress others under the boot of the Empire.
At the end of the day, though, all 3 alignments have a valid place, in that their personal goals for the Empire STILL advance it's purpose.
I think the Tribunal should allow all aligns, however good alignment in general seems to have a hard time finding allies. Watcher does not like Knights (due to Avatars), Tribunals and Knight RP do not make them natural allies (evils/undead in Tribunal, Knights want to restore their King to govern the lands), and the Syndicate-Nexus alliance seems like a permanent feature of the political landscape. Looking at the remaining two cabals - Warmaster and Savant - it seems like evil align is the most popular of all alignments in the game, and any Knight (and a lot of good-aligned characters that are non-Tribunal) will just have hard time overall.
Neutrals on the other hand can group with anyone and will rarely be attacked by a good-aligned character unless they themselves initiated the conflict.
If laws are being enforced and followed, why SHOULD Tribunal care about alignment? The Tribunal is order.
I think the issue you are seeing is due to looking at Tribunal like a police force. Nobody wants evil cops.
They are more than that, though. They are the force that is trying to civilize Aabahran, and bring order to it. Tyranny, while being awful, can and does still bring order. Fear of the government is a powerful tool. The way I see it, Tribunal is not about actually protecting citizens. While the laws in place certainly do just that, the protection itself is more of a platform or tool used to further the actual aim of Tribunal, which is unified rule and enforced order.
Good Tribunals generally join specifically to influence the Empire into an altruistic society. Neutral Tribunals generally join to serve the rule of law and ensure that judgement is fair and unilateral. Evil Tribunals tend to join in order to oppress others under the boot of the Empire.
At the end of the day, though, all 3 alignments have a valid place, in that their personal goals for the Empire STILL advance it's purpose.
I get that's how it works today. My personal experience is that it ends up a little shallow. Most evil Tribunals live their entire life without actually doing anything evil because the framework is extremely rigid. There's no real evil things happening, laws allowing horrible things, etc, that happens 95% of the time. Goods similarly end up as a dilluted good, doing only semi-good things and restricted in their ability to realize their RP due to the blind order RP usually reigning over the cabal. I haven't played a Tribunal in a while, but the last one I did was a good. I tried to RP a true good trying to do the best for the city. I would always allow good criminals minimum sentence and return their items. I would vote against induction of evil Tribunals and try to influence the law for the power of good. I felt like 9/10 when I tried to RP a good people acted like I was breaking the rules. I also played for like a thousand hours (literally) stuck at T, so I don't think my angle was appreciated.
Looking at the history, it seems like far more evil Tribunals have been successful than good ones. Its hard to RP a good in Tribunal and not be seen as "shirking" your responsibility.
I just think that there are a ton of options for interesting RP for evils. Every cabal except Knight takes evils and provides excellent opportunities. Goods can't be in two cabals, and have a limited ability to participate in WM/Savant because there might be other goods and it makes it awkward and I think its why we don't see alot of E/L WM/Savants around. Its hard to exel when you can't fight some of your enemies. Tribunal should be a really logical place for strong good aligned RP, but its not because its large dominated by evils/neutrals.
sounds to me like you want evils to pay for the goodie benefits by being limited. Goods get request, they get hard coded allies. This is their trade off. Evil's get a dog-eat dog world where the next guy you group with could push you off a cliff for your armor.
sounds to me like you want evils to pay for the goodie benefits by being limited. Goods get request, they get hard coded allies. This is their trade off. Evil's get a dog-eat dog world where the next guy you group with could push you off a cliff for your armor.
So I guess they should be allowed in knight, too, then?
Of course, if we accept that some limitations are inevitable, it just becomes a matter of degree.
sounds to me like you want evils to pay for the goodie benefits by being limited. Goods get request, they get hard coded allies. This is their trade off. Evil's get a dog-eat dog world where the next guy you group with could push you off a cliff for your armor.
This does not seem to be the case in practice, though. Hard coded allies are all well and good, but when you're the only good align online and there's 5 evils running around, that doesn't help squat. Likewise, evil characters do not exactly struggle to befriend each other if you're trying to stay out of trouble (people generally don't give each other a hard time for no reason whatsoever), the sole exception being cabal enemies. Maybe some of the people who play evils more frequently than me actually experience the dog-eat dog thing.
With the current group list, it has to be way easier to get people for ranking/gearing as an evil than a good.
Well, everyone in America has this notion that the police are supposed to be good guys.
If you think of policemen as being good people wanting to protect the public its an easy oversight.
But that's in a democracy where people choose their careers somewhat.
In a different social atmosphere, those policemen are hand picked by a Leader, who may or may not be a good person.
Even here in America we allow total jerks with few redeemable qualities to wear badges, I imagine law enforcement around the globe is equally corrupted.
I always see this argument made that 'goods get request' as a positive thing. Requesting and damnation for accidentally killing a sapling or something are to me the two negatives of playing goods.