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Moral and Ethical Ambiguity, Part 4 of 4 – Conclusions

October 22, 2009 in Articles, GMing, Inspiration, Rules by Fitz | No comments

Welcome back!

So from the first three parts of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3), you hopefully have seen some of the thought that went into our slightly different take on alignment for Moebius Adventures. Again, this is totally portable and could be used with any system I think.

RPGBlogCarnivalLogocopyBut does it work? The jury’s still out. Ultimately, this may not be a usable alignment system. But it provides some interesting flexibility that the traditional good/evil scheme may not. If nothing else, perhaps it offers some methods for fleshing out characters in addition to a traditional good/evil alignment.

I think that new players should focus on the basic alignment grid of Good, Neutral, and Evil. But more advanced players may want a bit more play in how they approach decisions for their characters in a given world.

When conflicts arise between different levels of morality, it definitely gets interesting.

Let’s say that someone is trapped in a burning building and your character has enough time to safely extract the individual from harm. A character with a light moral alignment (+6 to +10) would save the individual, since Man is more important than Nature (in order of moral codes). A character with a gray moral alignment (-5 to +5) may or may not aid the trapped person. Is the person a friend? Would there be a possibility of a reward? These things may tip the scale one way or another. A character with a dark moral alignment (-6 to -10) might have started the fire or help the fire burn other nearby buildings. Maybe they consider cities dirty, unnatural structures and seek to, like Nature, clear the area for new growth.

Considering these qualities of Morality and Virtue provide some interesting insights into how our characters deal with the world around them and the people in it.

Hopefully I haven’t put anyone to sleep with this series. I think it’s philosophically interesting to approach roleplaying from more abstract ways than the old “good vs. evil” scheme.

Thanks for your time!
–Fitz

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Moral and Ethical Ambiguity, Part 1 of 4 – Intro

October 16, 2009 in Articles, GMing, Inspiration, Rules by Fitz | 4 comments

For this month’s Blog Carnival, I thought I’d throw some different ideas out there about an alternative to the simple alignment grid…

Though I understand the attraction of a simple alignment scheme for some games, I’ve always been fascinated by the gray area. Rarely will you find anyone who has a perfect moral compass. As Citizen G’Kar said once in an episode of Babylon 5 – “The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.”

yinyangIt’s that “enlightened self-interest” that motivates even the most well-intentioned individual.

What is alignment? A character’s alignment generally describes how the character perceives moral choices in their world. Are they really good? Really evil? Or somewhere in-between?

Though extremes may be interesting experiments in roleplaying, I find that most player characters tend to fall in the Chaotic or Neutral camps, using their judgment to decide whether to do good or evil or obey the laws. It’s that gray area between good and evil that most of us reside in – using the context of the decision to help us make those crucial decisions.

It’s in the spirit of the “gray” that for the Moebius Adventures system we created an alternative to the traditional good, neutral, and evil alignments – Morality and Virtue – to measure character behavior a bit differently.

Morality indicates how a character views right and wrong. Virtue reflects a character’s attitude to pain – do they ease pain or cause it? Together the two scales help define how a character can gauge decisions.

RPGBlogCarnivalLogocopyWhat are morals? Morals are principles or standards relating to a system governing right and wrong behavior in the universe. Codes of morality provide frameworks that benefit an individual or group if used properly.

What is Virtue? Virtue represents the mortal drive to ease or cause pain and suffering in themselves and others. Someone’s virtue isn’t determined by how they perceive the pain they inflict or receive, but in how they deal with that pain.

So by now you’re wondering how the heck any of this could be playable… And I agree, it gets a bit philosophically deep. But as with alignments, we’re talking about rough guidelines for PC behavior. Evil may be just another way of saying that an individual is immoral and likes causing pain.

But what happens when a character (PC or NPC) strongly believes in their morality, is ok with a certain amount of pain caused to others, and yet is opposed to the social or natural order of the world? Does that make them evil? Or does it make them good? It all depends on the context of a particular decision, doesn’t it? The player or GM has to weigh the decision of the character based on the circumstances around them – just like in life.

It makes things a bit more interesting anyway.

The next couple of posts will go into more detail about how we use Morality and Virtue in-game and then how to work through some different situations.

Until next time,

–Fitz

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Friday Links for October 9, 2009 (a day early)

October 8, 2009 in Advice, Design, Friday Links, GMing by Fitz | 2 comments

Hi all!

I’m going to be gone tomorrow, so I thought I’d post my Friday Links a day early. Yes, it might warp the time-space continuum, but oh well. No worse than the large hadron collider. :)

  • Friday LinksUnique Tavern Encounters from the Bard of Valiant. You know when you read the first thing in a list of 11 and laugh out loud, it’s probably going to be a good list. This one is. I absolutely love the visual of having a bunch of burly tavern-goers drinking their grog though a straw!
    http://www.bardofvaliant.com/2009/10/unique-tavern-encounters/
  • From Held Action, we have a brief description of Spirit Mimics, such as the woman behind the counter in a diner that may never have existed. To me this is a great idea to use sparingly. The idea of a magic shop that moves around isn’t new, but maybe a phantom tavern that shifts from location to location with a unique set of NPCs. Would the PCs want to try and find it again?
    http://heldaction.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/phantom-diners/
  • Bigtime food for thought from the Emergence Design Weblog about making magic more mysterious. This is something I’m currently tinkering with in my own system and wondering about, so the timing is perfect. How do you balance the factors of game balance, rules, and knowledge to come up with something worth the PC’s time investigating?
    http://ruscumag.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/rpg-design-making-magic-mysterious/
  • In the “Things I Could Have Used a Few Years Ago” category (for a campaign based loosely on ancient Rome), Evil Machinations provides us with Roman names beyond Fred…
    http://www.rpggm.com/blog/2009/10/05/beyond-fred-roman-names-for-characters/
  • From Gnome Stew and John Arcadian comes “Johnny’s Five – Five Things About Your Game That Will Never Beat the Reality Test,” which really puts a damper on the “reality factor” of dungeon diving and adventuring in general. I think reality and the fun factor have to peacefully coexist, but there are aspects of the five things mentioned that I like to bring in now and then myself… such as having to drop a PC’s pack before going into a dungeon because the entrance is caved in and too small to get in. But who wants to have to deal with the eating and waste management portions during a game? Bring on the encounters and combat!
    http://www.gnomestew.com/johnnys-five/johnnys-five-five-things-about-your-game-that-will-never-beat-the-reality-test
  • From Akratic Wizardry, we have “The Duchy of Briz: Overview and Map,” which proves that you don’t have to have a huge setting location to find some adventure or story ideas. I love the fact that he worked in not only the history of the place, but provided hooks, such as the rumors of treasure in the cairns of Solan and the few who ever return from the hidden mounds of the dead. Great stuff!
    http://akraticwizardry.blogspot.com/2009/10/duchy-of-briz-overview-and-map-revised.html
  • From Gothridge Manor, we have some ideas on how to make Villages a bit more crunchy. Providing a bit of a skeleton for each village (max 4-5 sentences), makes a lot of sense to give you some ideas when the players get restless and want to stop in the next village for a drink… :)
    http://gothridgemanor.blogspot.com/2009/10/villages.html
  • From Bard of Valiant and Viriatha, we have some great things to consider for new characters. I especially like the idea of coming up with secrets for the character and passing one to the GM to pass to another player and coming up with the list of character traits!
    http://www.bardofvaliant.com/2009/10/8-new-character-tips/
  • In the wow category we have “Iconic Elements in Campaign Setting Design” from Badelaire at Tankards and Broadswords. I’m going to have to reconsider my own Immortals’ Wake and Phaedrus campaign settings with these iconic elements in mind. Great ideas.
    http://tankardsandbroadswords.blogspot.com/2009/10/iconic-elements-in-campaign-setting.html

So there you have it… Some wisdom from the blogosphere on all things roleplaying. :)

Have an awesome weekend!

–Fitz

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Five (Plus One) Questions for Players to Answer for a Character

October 1, 2009 in Advice, Inspiration, Resources by Fitz | 3 comments

All of this discussion of finding that emotional bond with a character in a campaign brought up something I was discussing a while back with Mike (forged). There are questionnaires all over the ‘net for fleshing out a character, but that only gets you so far.

drama_masksI was reading an issue of SciFi Magazine a couple of months ago and found an interview with actor Joe Morton (Eureka, Terminator 2). He was talking about how he prepares for a role. And he said he tries to answer five basic questions when he works on any particular story.

1. Who am I?
2. Where am I going?
3. Who do I expect to meet?
4. What do I want?
5. What extent am I willing to go to get it?

These questions work just as well for characters in a roleplaying game as they do for an actor or actress in a feature film, television, or other kind of performance project.

I’ll add another question to this list also… because we as roleplayers don’t have a props department or costume designer at our beck and call.

6. What does my outward appearance tell others?

This may not help me create a character I can emotionally engage with right away, but it might help me gain some perspective before gaming. Looking at these before a session may prepare me in ways I can’t immediately see.

For example, in our current gaming group we only get together once a month or so. Answering these questions would reacquaint me with my character and what we were doing during the last session, as well as reconnecting me with my fellow PCs – all of which would hopefully get me engaged more quickly than I have been in my current campaign. I might even go so far as to write down answers to these questions at the end of a session so I might quickly refresh my memory at the beginning of the next.

What do you think? Six simple questions to help get back into the swing of things.

–Fitz

p.s. If you’re interested in some ideas to answer question #6, check out the freebie PDF that you get if you subscribe to the Moebius Adventures News – 7 Areas to Consider to Make Magic Users Unique!

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Open-Ended Campaigns: Sandbox Trouble

September 15, 2009 in Advice, GMing by Fitz | 3 comments

In the various campaigns that I’ve run over the years, I have always tried to get close to the sandbox approach of storytelling. However, as all GMs who have tried it can probably attest, a wide open world has its issues. This is a cautionary tale to anyone looking to run their campaign wide open and simply follow the PCs. It has a few advantages, but wow can it go wrong fast.

Back in the mid-90s, I ran a campaign in my Immortals’ Wake world, which is a traditional fantasy world with some superhero elements thrown in for good measure. (More about the IW world will come out over time here eventually.) I was playing with Sean, the co-creator of Moebius Adventures and a couple of other guys.

I introduced what I thought of as a simple concept at the time… “Dust.” This Dust was only created by one particular event and thus very rare, but it was found to have an effect on people who inhaled it, much like cocaine. Yes, I was stupid enough to bring drugs into a fantasy roleplaying campaign.

Over time, I watched as a player took a low-powered character in the Thieves’ Guild and began to create his own drug and crime empire right under my nose. His friend became an enforcer/bodyguard type character and suddenly I found myself in the middle of a gang war. Thief vs. Thief. Guards vs. Thieves. And as it escalated, things got further and further out of hand. It was no longer my campaign – it was their campaign.

Before long, we ran into other issues with those two gamers and eventually we stopped gaming with them entirely. But the upside was that my in-game drug war went away.

And now, probably 12 years after that campaign, I understand what I did wrong… As others have pointed out recently in blog posts, you can’t just create a world and set the players loose. One of two things happens… either they get bored or they start causing trouble. Or perhaps it was the boredom leading to the trouble-making. Who knows?

The trick I think is to make sure that there are things going on that affect the players. In my next IW campaign, I want to start the players off getting comfortable in the setting and then pull the rug out from under them. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I have other evil things in mind. [Insert Evil Laughter Here]

And the other lesson? Don’t introduce a drug war in a fantasy campaign… Sort of like Vizzini in The Princess Bride…

“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha… [thud]“

For another take on sandbox games, check out Gnome Stew here.

Any lessons about sandbox gaming you guys have learned over the years? Leave me a comment. Let’s get this conversation going!

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