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Thread: Philosophy of beauty and corruption

  1. #1
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    May 2008
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    Default Philosophy of beauty and corruption

    Yes yes, big title and not much to say. I wanted to write on the blog (here) but apparently you need an NSA account to post there.

    I only wanted to add something to the discussion on the blog, that takes a direction i really don't like. Many say that it would be a problem that only "physical" beauty (ie appearance) helps against corruption, even going so far as to redefine the name of the attribute into something else like dignity, serenity, decency, humility, penitent, you name it ... which implies changing an (admittedly almost nonexisting) game-mechanic of shop-keepers liking hot chicks into shop-keepers liking shiny super-whatever beings. The whole notion of such an attribute (the new names) implies to me that it should not be visible to NPCs. Anyway, please do not!

    What's wrong with chaos favouring the physically ugly? Nothing wrong lore-wise. Aren't the gods around creating people? So the good gods make things beautiful, the bad ones make ... chaos beings - the very opposite of physical beauty. Only problem with this seems political correctness, but hey, whole adom is a roll-bad-die-soon game that is heavily darwinistic and thus not very political correct, and the challenge is every so often to prove to the game that you can beat it anyway.

    Also, being corrupted does nowhere in the game imply that you are evil or chaotic in the soul. It's a different dimension for good reason: Choices of the PC have nothing to do with attributes.

    /rant

  2. #2
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    Jan 2010
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    I'm in complete agreement ADOM is a game and appearance is what the game defines it as, lore-wise, no matter its name or implication.
    gate closers: GeWi GnMo(unarmed) DeAs/Pa/Mi(staves)/Ra GePr DrBb HrMo | p7: MeBf | p17: GnPr | p20: DrDu GnAs DeCk MeWp OrBf GnTh MeHe | R57: MeDu | R101: DrAs (26,674 turns) GnDu (26,748) DrAs (18,533)
    ULE: HeRa — OCG: DeMi
    currently speedrunning DrAs.

  3. #3

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    Just another excuse to make Elves even more overpowered.

  4. #4
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    The whole relationship between law, chaos, lawful, chaotic, corruption, Andor Drakon etc. is not really clear to me honestly. But you get chaotic by doing bad things like killing innocents. Then if you're chaotic, you get corrupted faster. To me this would clearly imply that being corrupted signifies you being an evil bitch. Also, none of the corrupted NPCs in the game seem to just be corrupted; they're all pretty evil: Nonnak, Kherab, Keethrax... But then, not all evil dudes seem so corrupted (assassin prince), not to mention several chaotic monsters that don't really seem corrupted. And then if you close the gate, supposedly there'll be no more corruption, but I guess people can still be evil.

    You also get less corruption if you're lawful, no matter how ugly you are. People have said that the Unicorn starsign somehow supports this change, but I don't see it. The starsign benefits are in no way related to one another as I see it. Raven has death, messengers, companions, tricks. I have no idea how you'd be able to really relate these things together. Book has lawful tendencies, increased chance to learn spells. The connection? None. But if we look at the Unicorn starsign symbolism, we see "Grace, Beauty, Purity, Innocence, Dignity". 4 of these 5 are actually related to other than physical appearance, so isn't the chance that it's the "beauty" part that gives you corruption resistance quite small, especially since you already get +2 appearance? Also, not all evil or corrupted creatures seem to be that ugly according to the descriptions (Keethrax is said to be a tall man with white robes). Neither do you get more ugly as you get more corrupted (specific effects from corruption are a different matter), nor do you on average start out uglier if you're a chaos knight.

    So, I don't really see any existing lore justification for this (in fact, in writing this it started to seem like existing lore actually speaks more for inner qualities resisting corruption). It's fine to create new lore of course. But since to me it seems like new lore is being created, I'm fine to say that this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And it has nothing to do with political correctness. Of course I cannot speak for others.

  5. #5
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    ADOM is a fantasy RPG. Whether something makes sense doesn't really matter. What does is whether it affect the quality and gameplay of the game. Which it does. It makes the game little easier for beautiful races and a little more difficult of ugly races(depending on your outlook). It also gives some use to some not so often used items.

    The end result is a more interesting game.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by meekrab View Post
    Just another excuse to make Elves even more overpowered.
    +1 to this, but as I play elves almost exclusively I won't complain
    I like my women like my ADOM loot - hunted as treasure and in extra quantity.

  7. #7
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    What if the effect was as Thomas described for naturally "uglier" races like trolls, orcs etc, but almost nonexistant for already Legol-ish races like those damn Elves? It's quite a feat for an Orc to achieve a beautiful appearance, heh.

    I mean, how would an orc look like with 99 Ap? Would it even look like an Orc any more? Answers must be given, gods dammit!

  8. #8
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    There's already an "inner beauty" stat affecting corruption - alignment. Chaotic characters are corrupted faster (AFAIK). No need for appearance to be non-physical. Corruption affects both the mind and the body, either being in good condition helps against it.
    You hit Andor Drakon, the ElDeR cHaOs GoD, and severely wound him.
    The greater balor summons some help!
    The ratling duelist disarms you. You drop your blessed Trident of the Red Rooster (+36, 6d12+18) [+12, +12]. It flies to the west.
    Andor Drakon, the ElDeR cHaOs GoD, picks up the blessed Trident of the Red Rooster (+36, 6d12+18) [+12, +12].
    Andor Drakon, the ElDeR cHaOs GoD, wields the blessed Trident of the Red Rooster (+36, 6d12+18) [+12, +12].

  9. #9
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    I think an orc with Ap99 is just an exceptionally beautiful orc: gleaming, sharp tusks; smooth green complexion, thick black hair, and so on.

    Still ugly and unattractive to a human, but an Adonis or Venus to other orcs. Beauty in any culture is strongly correlated with physical health and a person's history of injury and disease. So one could say that potions of Ap "clean up" all these accumulated imperfections, thereby bringing the person closer to the race's physical ideal and therefore more resistant to chaos.

  10. #10
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    Well, an Orc with an appearance of 99 looks like any other race with an appearance of 99. Godly adorable. Not like an Orc or an Elf. An Elf with an appearance score of 99 doesn't like an Elf either.
    Last edited by Stingray1; 01-07-2014 at 02:33 PM.

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