People who don't take characters into their group cause 'oh no, Astarion is a vamp spawn/tried to knife me, therefore he is evil' or 'Shadowheart follows Shar, therefore she must be evil' are either ignorant, or choose to role play their characters in a shallow way
Way to kill your credibility. Anyone who doesn't do things your way is ignorant and shallow. What a load of bull.
I might've worded it better, english being about my 4th language learned. But still, it's up to the person to roleplay how they see fit, I'm not here to pass judgement on people 'not doing things my way', hell it wasn't even the intention of my post, but it also shows quite a bit of your character that you grasp at anything possibly perceived as negative/offensive to try to insult someone. All I was doing was trying to explain it to Abits that there are different ways of playing with alignments, more nuanced or less so.
To me, murdering people in games, for the sake of 'goodness' is still murder. Whenever I play D&D games I like to think things through (like 'what would my character do in this situation?') and I do my best to try to talk my way out of difficulties rather than attack on sight (that's what zealots do), or in case of characters like Astarion/Shadowheart give them the benefit of doubt.
You, as the player, know that Astarion is a vamp spawn or that Shadow is a priestess of Shar, but your character doesn't. Astarion doesn't introduce himself as 'hi there, I'm Astarion, a vamp spawn and I'd like to suck your blood' or Shadow doesn't say 'I'm Shadowheart, priestess of Shar' it's up to your character to figure that out. Altho, I still think the name 'Shadowheart' is such a stupid name. And on top of that, she doesn't really act like a classic priestess of Shar, you can tell she's quite conflicted inside. My prediction is, if you let her live and don't murder or toss her away for being a Shar priestess, that she might somewhere down the line be swayed to the light.
Seriously? You insulted people like me as ignorant and shallow, and then you want to try and turn it around on me? I have said nothing to insult you. In fact, I have gone the extra mile to not insult you. In an earlier post you said that redemption stories are your thing. I consider redemption stories to be the silliest of RPG tropes. Furthermore, I believe some things that you do (like pledging yourself to a god like Shar) are so terrible that they make you ineligible for any sort of redemption. Nevertheless, at no point did I attack or insult you for having your preference for redemption stories. Because that's just not my way. You should play your game in whatever way makes you happy, redemption stories and all. As should I. So don't try and turn this on me. You are the one who insulted anyone who decides they want to role-play good-alignment as it has long been defined in D&D history and FR lore.
As for these specific characters, I have never said I would react a certain way based on meta knowledge. I have actually posted in several threads against role-playing based on meta knowledge. So if, upon first meeting any of these characters, I don't have enough information to identify what they are, I will just keep role-playing my very good aligned character. But, and specifically in SH's case, the moment I do find out she's a Sharan, I'm done with her at that point (unless she renounces Shar right then and there). By contrast, I can see myself being willing to keep open a relationship with the likes of Astarion and Lae'zal until such time as my exclusively good actions come into conflict with them, because I would be open to seeing exactly what kind of vampire/githyanki they are (the good kind, perhaps?). But someone who says she stands by Shar? No benefit of the doubt can be extended to such a person.
"You are the one who insulted anyone who decides they want to role-play good-alignment as it has long been defined in D&D history and FR lore."
Just nope. Ever heard of nuance? It's easy to write a paladin of Tyr for example, it's hard to write a fleshed out one, their reasoning as to why they follow Tyr (why not Helm? Torm? Illmater?), their struggles, their past, their family situation. What could possibly corrupt such a person? Take a look at Aribeth de Tylmarande from NWN, in base game she was an alright paladin but seemed to have fallen to darkness too easily, that's an example of bad writing, but the expansion HotU seems to have fleshed out her fall out of grace. Also your line of thinking about alignment is a bit too rigid. There are so many ways to interpret different situations.
''You insulted people like me as ignorant and shallow, and then you want to try and turn it around on me?''
I'm not the one who immediately went ahead and snapped on a complete stranger because of two simple words that were given as an example. But ...if out of my entire post about different ways of roleplaying the only bad thing you seem to have cherry picked is ''shallow and ignorant" and your feelings got hurt because of it, then I'm sorry, like I wrote earlier: I didn't mean to offend anyone by that. But don't pretend that you didn't try to insult me by calling my line of thinking 'an utter bull', I understand, I unknowingly offended you and you lashed out, it's fine. But a little advice for the future: don't be so easily offended by what someone across the globe writes about something you both enjoy. Different cultures, different ways of expressing one's thoughts. Also, if I expected anyone to get offended over something, it'd be the 'lawful stupid' line.
You don't like my 'naive and nice to everyone' way of playing, you don't like 'redemption stories' either, that's totally fine by me. I don't enjoy playing an overzealous character who's ready to dump/murder someone unless they renounce their ways. We're different people, different playstyles. Also, the only way I would justify doing what you'd do to Shadow is if I played a cleric of Selune (obviously Shadow would clash with that character eventually) or a paladin. But something like a chaotic good sorcerer or a neutral good wizard, I really don't think they'd care as much and would be willing to give her the benefit of doubt, they might judge her negatively or distrust her, sure, I think they don't really care as much for the "petty" squabbles between gods. Ooh, also I heard that if you play cleric of Selune and keep Shadow around, you might actually get Shadow to hate Selunians less and slowly change her outlook. So I dunno, you do you boo.
As much as we may disagree, I think it's time we'd agree to disagree... and agree to one thing: we should stop derailing this topic further.
