Changing Morality rules a little?

[Daeglan 5,950]

1 hour ago, Kael said:

The redemption rules say you have to narratively go through a redemption story. The threshold for that story is 70 morality. Redemption seems to be both mechanical (reach 70) and story (GM runs an adventure designed to make you a lightsider again).

As a GM I wouldn't let a character who still goes about anger and vengeance claim the mantlehood of lightsider. 

 

Granted ....... in any game I ran ..... you wouldn't be at 70 Morality if your MO was vengeance and anger. 

You dont get to 70 morality if you behave like a darksider. Redemption requires actually changing your behavior.

[Kael 1,865]

Just now, Daeglan said:

You dont get to 70 morality if you behave like a darksider. Redemption requires actually changing your behavior.

I don't disagree. I was only making mention of it because others seemed to indicate that somehow darksiders are getting to 70 when they don't want to be and are forced to become lightsiders despite them wanting to remain evil. Others were insisting that an evil character is having to game the system to remain evil and I was pointing out that the game adds a story component to redemption that a GM isn't obligated to give them if they haven't actually changed their ways and done anything deserving of losing darksider status. 

Thus if our darksider somehow got to 70 I would still consider him a darksider mechanically because clearly he's not ready for redemption. 

But my play experience has lead me to believe that someone who is dead set on being evil is going to remain low Morality wise. 

[HappyDaze 10,108]

Tangent: So we know that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons still earns Conflict, but what about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Would doing so too often (and thus facing moral choices but not accumulating the Conflict from choosing to do the wrong thing) put a Dark Side character into risk of rising Morality? This really only applies when the Dark Side character is trying to 'fake it' as a good guy for an extended period. Is it possible for them to fake it too well?

[Aetrion 441]

7 hours ago, Kael said:

Darksided characters don't do good. This isn't D&D wherein the bad guys go out and do good things and remain the bad guys. If you're a darksider and you're doing good things you are going to become a lightsider. Star Wars, as a setting, doesn't accept that good comes from evil actions. 

Star Wars is full of characters who fell to the dark side through all the best intentions. In fact the whole central arc of Anakin/Vader is that. Ezra also had a whole arc of him dabbling in the dark side because he felt like he had to to protect his friends.

If you played out a sand people slaughtering episode in your character's story you'd hit <30, and how does that work out with having 3 more years of weekly adventures before you start killing younglings? 

[LordBritish 1,016]

If you as the GM are presenting a campaign where they can't actively manipulate people, then it's difficult to run a evil character. On the flip side, it is also the players responsibility to buy powers that allow them to take take advantage of other people. Misdirect, influence, read minds regular and often with sense. It really isn't hard to slide into the dark side. If the player doesn't try to take advantage of their super natural abilities on a regular basis rather then exercising them in a fair manner, then I imagine they will be hard pressed to fall.

 

Key thing that the galaxy should be presented as a brutally unfair place. They should rarely get precisely what they need unless they deal with dangerous powers. One example in an adventure was where most of the party refused any suggestion with slavers in defending  a rim colony against an imperial outpost despite the fact that getting other support just wasn't going to provide enough of a ground force. In the end, the Force Emergant outlaw and a Gand findsman pc's decided to go behind the parties back to recruit some urgently needed support and ended up returning with 400+ after recovering something valuble. This drove a firm wedge between those in support of and against, the former wanted nothing to do with slavers, while the latter saw them as "a bunch of arrogant bastards who put their own self purity over trying to actually solve problems in society, those Jedi died lonely, isolated scumbags for a reason." It was the most delcious slice of roleplaying that I was involved in to date. XD

It's worth noting that I was a paragon when I dealt with the slavers and despite taking a staggering 14 conflict from the consequences of life lost in that battle alone that I was still firmly in the 80's largely because the results on the dice coming up to that session were postive; indicating that the force overall did approve of the actions though the emotional stress of all that life lost was difficult to stomach; we scored another victory against the empire that day.

Edited March 10, 2017 by LordBritish

[kaosoe 7,573]

If I were to try and tweak the Morality rules, I would aim for something closer to FATE and Fate points. I would compel the player with a tangible benefit/Darkside cookie in order to do the dark and nasty thing and generate conflict.

Of course, some of that is already there. The dark and nasty path is generally the easiest, and those dark side pips are more accessible. But the first requires active work on the GM, and the second is only useful if the character makes use of powers and abilities that call for a FP.

[Jedi Ronin 1,588]

8 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Tangent: So we know that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons still earns Conflict, but what about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Would doing so too often (and thus facing moral choices but not accumulating the Conflict from choosing to do the wrong thing) put a Dark Side character into risk of rising Morality? This really only applies when the Dark Side character is trying to 'fake it' as a good guy for an extended period. Is it possible for them to fake it too well?

One thing pointed out on the latest Order 66 podcast was an aspect to the Conflict rules I had overlooked: Dark Siders still gain Conflict for spending DS pips as Force Points (which is their default so they don't need to flip a DP and take Strain to do so).  So, just by "naturally" using Force Powers a dark sider is going to accumulate Conflict which makes it more difficult for them to raise their Morality.

[Kael 1,865]

4 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Star Wars is full of characters who fell to the dark side through all the best intentions.

Yeah who fall to the darkside. Your scenario though of a darksider doing good? That's not Star Wars. Anakin sets out to do good but becomes and remains evil. His good intentions leads him to do more and more evil. He doesn't ultimately save the galaxy by doing evil things with a good intent. Neither does Ezra. 

 

4 hours ago, Aetrion said:

If you played out a sand people slaughtering episode in your character's story you'd hit <30, and how does that work out with having 3 more years of weekly adventures before you start killing younglings? 

 

Works out fairly well. I don't think Anakin goes below 30 in Ep II. He does nothing in the movie that would indicate that his Morality is so low that the Sand People slaughter is enough to take him below 30. If I had to peg him I'd say he's closer to 60 than he is to 30. He has plenty of room to fall. Thus his 3 more years of weekly adventures doesn't present a real probelm.

 

10 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Tangent: So we know that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons still earns Conflict, but what about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Would doing so too often (and thus facing moral choices but not accumulating the Conflict from choosing to do the wrong thing) put a Dark Side character into risk of rising Morality? This really only applies when the Dark Side character is trying to 'fake it' as a good guy for an extended period. Is it possible for them to fake it too well?

 

I don't think so. I think if you're doing the right thing for the wrong reasons you are likely to employ questionable tactics that would still cause hits to your Morality overall. Not all at once mind you, but enough to keep you from rising to the 70 mark. 

But then again we fall back to the story aspect of becoming a lightsider again. A character needs to seek redemption. A character who is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons isn't the type that is seeking to redeem himself. Thus even if his Morality rises unless he seeks to redeem himself his status doesn't change. 

I think far too often we forget that the rules tie a story aspect to this process. Thus we worry about a PC hitting 70 and stopping being a darksider thus Morality doesn't work. But if we adhere to the outline presented on page 325 "not only does it require a long climb back up the Morality track to 70, but a character's redemption should also be challenging narratively." then short of that narrative challenge reaching 70 was only half the battle. I find the possibility of a Morality climb for a darksider less problematic so long as we adhere to the narrative challenge that should go along with the mechanical challenge of reaching 70. 

[Aetrion 441]

2 hours ago, Kael said:

Works out fairly well. I don't think Anakin goes below 30 in Ep II. He does nothing in the movie that would indicate that his Morality is so low that the Sand People slaughter is enough to take him below 30. If I had to peg him I'd say he's closer to 60 than he is to 30. He has plenty of room to fall. Thus his 3 more years of weekly adventures doesn't present a real probelm.

It presents a problem in the regard that there are plenty of episodes where he doesn't do anything evil or makes all the right choices, so by FFG rules he's just riding the morality rollercoaster, going up and down and up and a down until he eventually does something so bad that he goes darkside. There isn't a gradual decline that starts when he falls in love with Padme and loses his mother, it's all up and down and up and down and his morality never actually corresponds to his gradual corruption through constant war and fear of loss. 

Personally I just see a fall to the dark side more like a steady creeping corruption, not a wildly fluctuating number that doesn't actually represent the character's state of mind but only the last few weeks of action. 

Edited March 10, 2017 by Aetrion

[Kael 1,865]

10 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

It presents a problem in the regard that there are plenty of episodes where he doesn't do anything evil or makes all the right choices, so by FFG rules he's just riding the morality rollercoaster, going up and down and up and a down until he eventually does something so bad that he goes darkside. There isn't a gradual decline that starts when he falls in love with Padme and loses his mother, it's all up and down and up and down and his morality never actually corresponds to his gradual corruption through constant war and fear of loss. 

 

It presents no problem. You are treating Morality as if it is some kind of straight jacket that dictates how a character acts, feels, and behaves. This isn't an Alignment. The ebb and flow of Morality means nothing in the grand scheme of how a character behaves. It's just that how a character behaves will push you either towards darksider or lightsider. But going along the spectrum doesn't mean much of anything. 

 

12 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

Personally I just see a fall to the dark side more like a steady creeping corruption, not a wildly fluctuating number that doesn't actually represent the character's state of mind but only the last few weeks of action. 

 

Here's your problem, you're trying to get the Morality number to represent someones corruption level. That's not what it does though.  The steady creeping corruption is a story aspect that the GM and the player work out of the players actions. It's not something dictated by a number. Your fall isn't whether you went consistently down over the course of campaign. Your fall is the narrative theme of your actions that ulimtately results in you dropping below 30. Your Morality number isn't meant to set the characters state of mind. The characters state of mind influences what the Morality number will hover around. 

[Aetrion 441]

What exactly is morality supposed to represent then? If the actual descent to the dark side is entirely narrative driven and has nothing to do with the morality number then what in the blazes is it even for? It comes down to the same thing: In order to make the mechanical underpinnings of the game match your character you need to game the morality system because the morality system apparently doesn't actually represent your character's true morality, but just some wishy washy number based on the last few sessions you played.

Sorry, saying that my expectations of having a system that actually represents a character's true level of moral decay is the problem because that's not what the system is in no way convinces me that the system doesn't suck. In fact you're basically just making my point for why it sucks. It's not representative of a character's true morality.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Aetrion

[Daeglan 5,950]

It is a measuring stick for when you fall. Not a straight jacket. It is just mechanics for people to know when they have fallen. Nothing more. Don't put any more into it than that. The narrative is where you get the creeping corruption. The interaction and the story is where you get the creeping corruption. This is not a D&D Alignment system. This is not a Dragonlance alignment system. What you are looking for is covered by the narrative. With this as a measuring stick for when mechanics change for a character. 

Your expectation does not match up. And I don't think there is a system that would match your expectation. 

Edited March 11, 2017 by Daeglan

[Garran 485]

On 2017-03-09 at 10:18 PM, Kael said:

Darksided characters don't do good. This isn't D&D wherein the bad guys go out and do good things and remain the bad guys. If you're a darksider and you're doing good things you are going to become a lightsider. Star Wars, as a setting, doesn't accept that good comes from evil actions. 

This isn't necessarily true within the game system since you can play for Team White Hat while having 30 or lower morality (even a 0 morality). Between dark side pips and fear checks you've already got the potential and not every heroic archetype is the shining armor variety; the resulting lower-grade conflict actions (coercion in particular, theft and lying to some degree) could easily add up to push the character down the morality track. Add in a few purely roleplaying-based conflict points and it becomes fairly easy.



 



The reverse (light side bad guy) isn't terribly likely though.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Garran

[Aetrion 441]

Encountered a situation today where the morality system actually worked: My character walked into the establishment of a Trandoshan who had decoated the place lavishly with trophies from his hunts. My current character is an Ithorian who seeks to protect life, but was exiles from Ithoria for suffering fits of rage when people destroy life. He starts finding all sorts of trophies from sentient species, including a picture of an Ithorian that was hunted by this Trandoshan. He flies into a rage, attacks the Trandoshan, kills him with the help of his friends and destroys all of his trophies. 

This whole action netted 14 conflict. This is where the system actually makes sense. You're confronted with an obviously evil person who's doing business with you while having pictures on the wall where he's showing off that he wouldn't think anything about killing you for sport if you had met in the wilderness instead of in his shop. You decide to kill that person. Since you have unilaterally decided to end the life of a person who was posing no threat to you this is murder, but you're not doing it because you're evil, you're doing it because you couldn't keep true to your pacifism in the face of evil. 

Those are the kinds of situations where I can see a recovery from conflict gained from killing someone. I still think if you actually went out to kill an innocent person out of pure malice you shouldn't be able to to simply recovering by laying off the killing for a while. 

Edited March 12, 2017 by Aetrion

[Daeglan 5,950]

I dont actually get what you are trying to say...

[Aetrion 441]

I'm just recounting a situation in the game where taking conflict for murdering someone that can easily be gained back in a few sessions actually makes some amount of sense, because it was for killing a mass murderer who wasn't going to be stopped any other way, as opposed to for killing an innocent person. 

[Daeglan 5,950]

I get the impression in your game your GM is not using the chart for conflict much. I think PCs likely should earn more conflict based on their actions. Which would probably make getting to paragon harder.

[Tramp Graphics 2,328]

Käel, you might want to reread those redemption rules on page 324 again. The GM does not need to run any special "redemption adventure" for the repentant dark sider for him to be redeemed. All the rules say is that the dark sider's road to redemption shõud be filled with temptaions during his attempts to reach 70+ Morality.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Tramp Graphics

[LordBritish 1,016]

17 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Encountered a situation today where the morality system actually worked: My character walked into the establishment of a Trandoshan who had decoated the place lavishly with trophies from his hunts. My current character is an Ithorian who seeks to protect life, but was exiles from Ithoria for suffering fits of rage when people destroy life. He starts finding all sorts of trophies from sentient species, including a picture of an Ithorian that was hunted by this Trandoshan. He flies into a rage, attacks the Trandoshan, kills him with the help of his friends and destroys all of his trophies. 

This whole action netted 14 conflict. This is where the system actually makes sense. You're confronted with an obviously evil person who's doing business with you while having pictures on the wall where he's showing off that he wouldn't think anything about killing you for sport if you had met in the wilderness instead of in his shop. You decide to kill that person. Since you have unilaterally decided to end the life of a person who was posing no threat to you this is murder, but you're not doing it because you're evil, you're doing it because you couldn't keep true to your pacifism in the face of evil. 

Those are the kinds of situations where I can see a recovery from conflict gained from killing someone. I still think if you actually went out to kill an innocent person out of pure malice you shouldn't be able to to simply recovering by laying off the killing for a while. 

Interesting recalling  of a situation, this would strike me as a bad "good" character or rather a good character with a interesting flaw. On one hand hand they often act in the name of justice; in the otherwise they see no harm in committing unprovoked murder if the character is deemed to be evil, even if the truth isn't black and white.

Of course, I hold the point of view that simply killing someone doesn't lead to the dark side; the force doesn't care about life and it takes a lot to change one abruptly. It's more on the frame of mind, when one becomes apathetic to killing and begins see people as opportunities to manipulate, not people. All in all the force really doesn't give a toss if you cut someone's arm off as long as you don't do it frequently, or without attempting communication. Likewise the force doesn't care if you kill a entire death star if it is associated to the dark side; but it probably would care if you fired a death star at a entire planet's population. That being said conflict does take those minor blips into account; isolated incidents of acting rashly won't necessarily lead to a lingering machanical scar unless it's the beginning of a long process of bad habits.

Edited March 12, 2017 by LordBritish

[Kael 1,865]

10 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Käel, you might want to reread those redemption rules on page 324 again.

hahaha you of all people have no grounds to tell anyone to re-read something. 

[Garran 485]

He's right though. Even accounting for the blurb on P51, there's no actual requirement that the character undergo a personal atonement quest. The process is supposed to be narratively challenging and a personal quest might be appropriate in some cases but that - along with any other potential element of a redemption narrative - is really going to depend on the character and their circumstances.

Edited March 13, 2017 by Garran

[Kael 1,865]

53 minutes ago, Garran said:

He's right though. Even accounting for the blurb on P51, there's no actual requirement that the character undergo a personal atonement quest. The process is supposed to be narratively challenging and a personal quest might be appropriate in some cases but that - along with any other potential element of a redemption narrative - is really going to depend on the character and their circumstances.

 

I read them several times before making my argument. I stand by my statements.

[HappyDaze 10,108]

23 hours ago, Aetrion said:

I'm just recounting a situation in the game where taking conflict for murdering someone that can easily be gained back in a few sessions actually makes some amount of sense, because it was for killing a mass murderer who wasn't going to be stopped any other way, as opposed to for killing an innocent person. 

The dark side loves it when you try to justify killing. Keep on going, you can justify almost anything if you try hard enough...

[Aetrion 441]

40 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The dark side loves it when you try to justify killing. Keep on going, you can justify almost anything if you try hard enough...

Yea, that's exactly why this is a situation where it makes sense for a generally good character to be taking massive conflict but then being able to recover. The character didn't abandon his morality, he was just confronted with a situation where he violated his convictions because he felt like someone else was doing something infinitely worse. 

It makes sense for a character with good intentions to fall to the dark side if they do dark sided things with a "the ends justify the means" attitude, or if their fear or anger gets the better of them. It also makes sense for them to slowly recover if they can keep those kinds of incidents under control. The morality system works OK as long as you assume your character is trying to be a moral/light side person and all conflict comes out of situations where they slip up or had to violate their convictions. You take conflict because your actions conflict with your morality. 

It makes no sense for a character with evil intentions or who fully embraces the dark side to trend toward the light if they just don't encounter a good enough reason to do anything heinous for a while though. The system doesn't work very well for a character who's supposed to be dark sided or evil.

 

I guess what the system should really have is a choice of different "moralities" where 100 is always being fully true to your convictions, while 0 is always having fallen so far that your character becomes unplayable. If your conviction is evil you still take conflict for doing unusually cruel or heinous things, but instead of struggling against accidental redemption you're always tending toward being a cool and in control bad guy, while the bottom of the scale would represent the power crazed insanity and boundless hubris that has brought down so many Sith.  That way, killing innocents and recovering also makes sense, because it's no longer a question of whether or not you're going back to being a paragon of light, it's a question of whether or not you're losing yourself in sadistic urges at the expense of your sanity and ambitions. 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Aetrion

[Garran 485]

That's more or less what I floated in one of the earlier threads: self-control vs passion It probably wouldn't be proper to call the measure "morality" at that point, and I wasn't thinking of 0 = unplayable either, although it would definitely be unstable.

Ultimately though if the character isn't a good fit to the Morality system then I think it's best to just ignore it and use Duty, Obligation, or some other system instead. That's really the problem with it - it works really well for specific character types and narrative arcs and falls totally flat for the rest. The other two, and variations on them, are simply far more flexible.