XDM Page Spread Leaked to The Internet
Posted July 2nd, 2009 by Howard TaylerI’m checking out the new website over at xtremedungeonmastery.com (your official source for all things XDM) and what do I see? A page spread, right there where anybody can read it without buying it.
It looked almost exactly like this.
And if you clicked on it, you got a version that was large enough to be completely readable. Except the footnotes. They were incompletely or “squintily” readable.
Not to be outdone, I posted the same stuff in here. Go! Click! Read that page spread, and marvel at the wit and wisdom of the Grand Masters of XDM. But you’ll not proceed past mere marvelling. In order to truly bask and absorb you must take the heroic journey yourself, returning with the elixir, the sacred prize… in short, you’ll have to buy the whole book.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
if i were a gamer i’d see that two page spread as an incentive to buy the book, as i’m not a gamer i’ll simply take the url for your page over to “wayfarer’s moon” and ralph howard’s comics site, “tales of the questor” et. al., where i know there are gamers and post it to lure them here
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
You’re awesome, gunner. Thank you!
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Ah . . . when I saw that they’d moved the “player types” down to three, the smallest list I’d ever seen, I was skeptical. After looking, though, I have to compliment them. They’ve taken the Aristotelean/Thomistic view of the human person as an expression of a mind/body/soul composite and applied it to gaming. (C. S. Lewis referred to it as the head, belly, and chest, respectively, though I’m not sure he used the word “belly.” He referred to it in The Abolition of Man in a very clever image.)
True Star Trek fans ought to be familiar with this composite due to the Kirk/Spock/McCoy trinity: Spock is Mind (logical), McCoy is Body (humanistic), and Kirk is Soul (willful). If they were playing an RPG, Kirk would be primarily a Warrior Player (focusing on clear distinctions and getting to the goal), McCoy would be a Social Player (focusing on setting and the good life), and Spock would be the Thinking Player (always calculating the exact odds of every die roll).
Of course, as the Hickmans point out, no person is entirely mind, body, or soul; Kirk, McCoy, and Spock would be mixtures as well. Kirk would lean to being a Social Player secondarily, but would also be calculating odds of how far he could push things, and would definitely have a high Bluff/Persuade/Whateverskill modifier. McCoy makes a good Warrior Player before a Thinking Player, as he’s quick to action, but he’s still scientifically trained and wouldn’t leave his brain behind. Spock probably evenly splits when it comes to a secondary type; he’s extremely decisive when the situation is obvious, and (assuming you got him to understand roleplaying in the first place) would find it perfectly logical to act his part to the best of his ability.
Now, none of that answers the question as to what RPG is most popular among Starfleet officers. Speculation abounds.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
if only there was a listing of xdm’s then i could PLAY games rather than just reading about them…
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
thank you for the compliment howard, i’m also old and crafty, sneaking in the names of two other favourite strips, (besides yours) here, but i’m sure you and rhjunior already share at least several readers, you both have interesting, entertaining comics.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Good move posting the page spread, Howard. I’m not a gamer only because my mother squelched it during my early teens, convinced as she was that role-playing killing in Dungeons and Dragons was at least as morally reprehensible as role-playing prostitution.
But even though I never picked up role-playing as an adult, the material from XDM looks so fun that I’m adding the book to my wish list. As in, as soon as I’m not broke I’ll buy that, right after getting all the Schlock volumes.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:17 pm
@TheDoctor: Any categorization of gamer types is either done for humor or as a tool. In this case it’s a tool to help the XDM come up with strategies to keep all the players involved. But that’s the next page over…
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:06 am
Damn… almost wished that I was into RPG stuff. That’s what Howard’s artwork does to people! Definitely will recommend the book to my DMing friend!
BTW, Howard… do you know that Google saw fit to put two ads for Chinese weight loss site on the front page of Schlockmercenary.com? I’d love to see the logic that lead to linking XDM with Chinese women on diet…
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:07 am
As someone who has generally found RPGs to be severely lacking in role-playing elements, I’m wondering if anyone knows of alignment systems which move substantially beyond good-evil lawful-chaotic.
I have two basic problems with such systems. First, it just seems odd to me that characters would only have a couple of values (out of dozens) that actually represent character attributes. Second, both those values are completely subjective.
I find role-playing to be fun…but I’ve never found an RPG that actually facilitated or rewarded role-playing. Not that I have the patience to really look for one. And the gaming elements (roll dice until you are dead or victorious) don’t strike my fancy much either. Power-building an uber is fun…once, for any given system.
So, there could be a really good RPG out there, but I wouldn’t be likely to know about it, since I’m not really into RPGs in general.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:37 am
Very neat stuff. I do have to ask, tho’, Howard – How’d you get the Hickmans to let you do a self-portrait for the Warrior Player archetype?
*grin*
-John
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:41 am
First off, I have to say that I was very impressed with the page-spread. I’m usually a little leery of “advice” books, but was already willing to give this one the benefit of the doubt due to the authors and artist. And you’ve both exceeded my expectations.
Second, to Normad:
The “roleplaying” in an RPG should not have rules around it. Setting rules for roleplaying completely defeats the purpose. Roleplaying is essentially improvisational acting in a group, with the extent of the roleplaying being whatever the group is comfortable with. The rules in RPGs are instead a framework for figuring out things, including combat, that are hard to just roleplay. As for rewarding roleplaying, that again is in the hands of the gamemaster.
In my group, we tend to alternate who’s running a game based on the week. The big game right now is Star Wars d20. About one in three sessions has no combat, and very rarely any dice rolls, as we all just fit into character and do investigations, chat with each other in character, and so forth. Heck, even during combat we do some roleplaying. In a fight inside the docking bay of a capital ship, for example, our “face” character (an aspiring crime boss) had pulled the leader of the pirates to one side to keep him out of the way. While the rest of the party took care of the other pirates, he sweated out trying to keep the boss from knowing what was going on and getting as much information out of him as possible, all in conversation with no die rolls (except when he palmed his blaster, of course). And for his part in the encounter, he was rewarded just as well as those of us who were actually fighting.
It’s all in how you run it, not in what system.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:12 am
Not to be horrible, but in the rightmost speech bubble in the top left illustration, shouldn’t that be spelled “innkeep”, as it refers to the keeper of an inn, rather than “inkeep” as it is spelled there?
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:58 am
Desman: I’m not an RPGer, and I bought it. Maybe I’ll get into RPGs after I’ve read it. And/or maybe I’ll write a review, for people like you, of what it offers to non-gamers.
I get the impression there’s some interesting psychological stuff buried in there, validated by experience of manipulating people into having a good time.
Normad: I think part of the point of XDM is that the flaws you’ve identified in RPGs can be fixed by having a good GM.
As for alignments, a GM who was willing to start a political debate amongst the players could pit two very different civilisations against each other, both of them technically Lawful Good. (It’s probably best if the bone of contention is something the GM is undecided about, even after looking into it enough to fairly represent both sides.)
And as for systems that encourage role-playing: I think Minimus fits that bill. It’s been mentioned in Blógünder Schlock before.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:21 am
Looks like an eminently recommendable book, even if *I* haven’t read it… I too will be forwarding this to a DM/GM acquaintance.
Is it just me or does the social player portrait look an awful lot like Elf?
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:23 am
No, whether or not the DM is any good at encouraging and rewarding role-play doesn’t have anything to do with whether the game system helps with role-play. Saying it’s entirely up to the DM is just making the point that the game doesn’t matter.
The thing about Minimus, appealing as it is, is that it resolves the lack of systematic role-play by making the rest of the game less systematic. In fact, the game rules (such as they are) can be improved considerably through the total concision of boiling the whole system down to “If it sounds cool, say yes”.
Which is a fun way to run a creative jamming session, but it is about as far from a system as possible. For anything that a player might try, the DM applies a quintuple-subjective test on whether to allow it, then assigns an arbitrary likelihood of success based on the remainder of that subjective test, then allows the player to slightly modify it (based on more subjective tests). Why even have a test at all? Because then nobody could make the claim that it is a game.
Which basically gets back to the point I was making. If the best example of a game “system” that encourages role-play is one that reduces everything else to a completely subjective status, then it might be time for some fresh ideas about systemizing role-play in games.
And, no, that looks nothing like Elf.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:48 am
@Normad: First, regarding “alignments” and mapping them to the real world, I suggest looking at World of Darkness.
The D&D system is not about morality, it is about being “aligned” with the universal or planar forces that in turn call themselves good, evil, law, chaos, and neutrality (balance.) Using it as a descriptor for moral/amoral/immoral behavior is going to leave gaps, and the further you try to refine your definitions the more broken it gets.
Second: regarding game systems rewarding role-play, there are a lot of systems that have a game mechanic for just that, but their implementation is dependent on those playing. Which is exactly the same as those systems’ combat mechanics, skill-check mechanics, random encounter mechanics, etc, in that those elements are rarely going to be played the way the designer intended.
This in no way invalidates the claim that these are games. If you still think that, you may have a working definition of “game” that is too narrow to admit role-play under the umbrella in the first place.
Third: thank you! It doesn’t look like Elf to me, either.
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 am
Dang, after seeing the spread, I feel compelled to buy one just for the descriptions of player personality and dynamics. Oh dear.
Kind of takes me back to highschool and watching from the sidelines while I was devouring electronics theory books by the stack. If they had invented robotic elves, terminator orcs, nuclear powered balrogs, schematic design XP and electronic magic-detection circuit tuning, I probably would have been at the table instead.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
You win; Copy ordered, and eagerly awaited. Maybe it’ll be enough to get me back around the table again. Thanks for helping make this contribution to better gaming, Howard. :)
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
So:
Tagon: Warrior, with elements of thinker (odd, I know, but he’s actually pretty good at combat thought processes, just not normal ones.)
Kevyn: Thinker with elements of warrior (Not much of a social person, but Kevyn has already said himself he will make sure he knows how to use every weapon he’s likely to come across.)
Elf: Warrior with elements of social and thinker (See last ‘chapter’ for why social. Manipulation of the rioters through fear rather than straight shooting at them)
Enesby: Social with warrior and thinker (“All conversation is psychological warfare”)
Thurl: I’d say Social with Thinker in the mix. He’s a warrant officer and quartermaster, so while he can fight, he probably looks for ways around it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I guess for me the thing is that the XDM categorization rings all too true, but not because there are three different kinds of players. It’s because there are three distinct activities that players (and DMs) must juggle during a game, and generally they all have very little to do with one another.
During any given moment in any RPG I’ve ever tried, you can only do one of those things at a time. The only exception is Alignment shifting due to attacking/looting things the DM (or scenario creator) didn’t want to you to attack/loot. And since it’s often not completely obvious you weren’t supposed to do so…well, maybe I should try writing a concise game system and see how well I do.
I do like doing each of those things, but it would be fun if they were more interrelated. I’ll think about it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Normad – I can second the World of Darkness recommendation as a game that takes a mature approach to morality. Characters track some classical virtues and vices, and stuff from White Wolf in general is just . . . morally complex. Not necessarily goth or degenerate (well, sometimes) or even necessarily ambiguous, just complex in ways that involve adult judgement and an ability to make moral tradeoffs. I also particularly like Exalted for this–more of a light side heroic approach, but with a lot of really complex issues underneath.
For a more extreme case, you could look at Burning Wheel (or, I hear, its newer and more popular friend Mouse Guard). This is a game that has no fixed moral scale, but a lot of personal struggle between virtue and vice. Characters set their own moral compass by writing open-ended statements like, “I always get paid, no matter what” or “Sorcerers are vile creatures who must be removed from the earth” or “I will yet do my bit for king and country” or “Honesty is the best policy”, and they are judged by their own standards. It’s not morally ambiguous, though–characters are expected to become real heroes and rewarded for it.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Ha! And I forgot to say what I came in here to say . . .
I love the XDM website. I just wish I had access to the full talk those videos came from! Hilarious, and great points. Great gaming is 90% skill and the other 90% passion, and those guys have *got* it.
I’ve been excited about the book for months–perhaps skeptical that yet another how-to-DM book could teach me much I didn’t already know, but I figured it’d be unique and couldn’t hurt and I like Howard’s artwork. How humbled I feel. This is gonna be great! I can’t wait!
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Chris Barrett: Actually, I’d say Tagon’s more of a thinker. (I know that sounds strange, what with him being not much of a thinker.) Warriors enjoy combat for its own sake. Tagon wants to get paid. The thinker is the type Most Likely to Ask “What’s Next?”, and Tagon and Thurl are the two people most likely to ask “How are we going to make next month’s payroll?”
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:43 pm
i think the distinctions are not in HOW the players play but WHY they play. your ‘min-maxer’ despite the hours they spend crunching numbers are often the warrior type. they just want to fight and beat things, they don’t need any goal in the story, just an endless supply of enemies to best.
basically i think the two pages boil down to:
warriors: i’m here to kill things.
social: i’m here to talk with people and have social time.
thinkers: i’m here for the story.
adjust your campaign accordingly.
i.e. if i’m a warrior type and we spend the whole time convincing council members to do something without killing anything, i will want out of your game. if i am a ‘thinker’ my character needs a goal, i don’t want the dungeon crawl, i’d rather talk council members into declaring a war to further my own goals, though i am happy to ‘talk’ with my axe.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 pm
While we’re doing personality analyses, I’m just going to have to point out that nobody has brought up “What Would Schlock Do” yet and let you guys discuss it.
July 4th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Danget! This book is going to drag me back into table top RPGing, I can tell.
Sigh, I’m going to miss my free time…
July 4th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Normand
Have a look at GURPS. I can’t find alignment in there and it does deal with real character traits. Steve Jackson games publish it and I find it better than D&D and co.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I managed to dodge the bullet on xdm, but the second printing and the new t-shirt I couldn’t resist. It’s early shopping for hannukah … that’s my story and I’m sticking to it (the book is for me though.)
July 4th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Yeah…I keep running into the barrier where I criticize the typical alignment models as being subjective and simplistic, then people tell me to look at games which have even simpler and more subjective alignment ‘models’.
Put simply, the problem isn’t that the usual alignment system is ‘restrictive’. The problem is that it is so open to interpretation. This tends to separate role-play from actual game-play mechanics, since attempts to implement alignment changes into the game-play mechanics end up tripping over the inherent diversity of opinion that exists as to whether an act was moral or immoral.
I’d like a system that simply categorized the kinds of actions PC (and NPCs as well) are actually taking. I was sketching out a physics engine for a tabletop system, and trying to figure out if the aerodynamic requirements for flying creatures were realistic (pretty close, I was able to build a realistic bald eagle using my character generator, anyway) when I realized that I was kinda drifting away from my intended topic.
The thing is, I want the game ‘physics’ to interact pretty seamlessly with the story mechanics and alignment system. So I do have to think about how that’s going to work. But building bald eagles to check the flight models…might have been a something of a side issue. I should probably be working on the nationality/reputation part and figuring out how to integrate simple things like “do you kill people a lot?” into the system.
July 4th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Managing to tie “It’s About The Players” with Mr. Tayler’s LiveJournal:
DM decides to hold a zombie-based scenario — in *UTAH*, a place
where the locals are well-known for Being Prepared For Catastrophe.
I hope he wasn’t surprised when he only managed to whack *one* PC
out of six. :)
July 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Normand,
I’ll recommend GURPS to you as well. Rather than an “Alignment” or other scale-of-morality, you select personality traits. Advantageous personality traits cost points, restrictive personality traits give bonus points. Both being charitable and being a sadist are disadvantages because they restrict the kinds of things that your character can do, rather than being valued on an arbitrary moral scale. The system is not bound up in moral judgements about actions, only wether or not the character is restricted by a disadvantage or enhanced by an advantage.
If you’re feeling really advanced you can apply a variety of modifiers to your characters traits, given the right modifiers you could even have a charitable sadist bully who suffers from combat paralysis, and only uses violence when violence is directed at him.
With GM approval of course…
While I agree that Minimus is too arbitrary for my tastes there will always be an element of arbitrary judgment calls. That’s actually where tabletop games have been superior to computer games since the beginning, a live GM can make judgment calls on unexpected and creative actions where a computer is restricted to limited inputs.
Aside:
The fact that you went from working on an ‘alignment’ system to calculating an accurate aerodynamic simulation of biological fliers tells me you need to play some tabletop before you go writing one. There’s practical limits to the degree of ‘physics’ accuracy you can achieve in a reasonable amount of play-time, and even if you intend that character &/or vehicle generation be a computer-aided, between-session activity, there’s still limits (limits that GURPS Vehicles, 2nd ed. leaned on heavily).
If I’m running a vehicle centered game (like anything with giant robots) it still takes me months to pre-generate all the basic vehicles, even though the latest edition has streamlined the process immensely.
If you’re making a computer game, then go ahead and sim-away, but SJGames Writers guidelines has a great rule of thumb: If reality and playability conflict, playability wins.
This is all my own $0.02.
July 7th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I’m not sure how I would have written something on that order of complexity in a couple of hours. In any case, it took me a few minutes to get a working bird out of it, but that’s the most complicated thing I thought of trying. I didn’t allow anything more complicated than simple arithmetic in my modeling scheme (which ends up leaving an unavoidable hole in scaling, but oh well).
Anyway, I did come up with descriptions for a multi-axis system of morality. I believe that each axis is sufficiently specific that you could plausibly create non-subjective criteria for assigning alignment changes to highly specific actions. There would be three classes of action for each alignment, minor, significant, and major. A minor action could shift your alignment value within the bounds of a category (Neutral being the median category of each axis), a significant action would shift your value absolutely, and a major action would automatically change your category for that axis (unless you were already maxed out).
I started with something like nine of these and boiled them down to six that I feel are still reasonably orthogonal (in that you shouldn’t be able to determine a character’s value for any axis just by knowing information about another axis). Hopefully the concepts are clear just from the labels, but if not…I could expound.
Murderous-Ruthless-Neutral-Pacifist-Merciful
Honest-Truthful-Neutral-Dishonest-Deceitful
Depraved-Lewd-Neutral-Chaste-Virginal
Rapacious-Covetous-Neutral-Equitable-Magnanimous
Devout-Reverent-Neutral-Irreverent-Sacrilegious
Orthodox-Traditional-Neutral-Iconoclastic-Insurgent
The other parts of the system came into play because, as I said, I wanted to integrate moral alignment into the way the entire game system worked. For example, the “Ruthless-Pacifist” scale relies on more realistic wounding and death than is usually implemented in most games (I also discovered that you could beat sense into someone who fainted from…a paucity of courage, which would result in a minor shift). “Truthful-Dishonest” is interesting in that it relies on how the character’s alignment and fame affect other characters (PC or NPC). Most of the other traits are pretty basic, in that they involve simpler interactions.
Like I said, the goal is to make morality simple enough to be represented in a game. I don’t know why everybody keeps on interpreting that as implying more ambiguous, “nuanced” models and definitions.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
the thing is as you said it is subjective, i have known several people that many would call murderous, yet i knew them to be merciful, the thing is that when they permitted some one to live it was truly an act of mercy for them… for all purposes i can think of merciful and pacifist should be switched…. actually i could be wrong, i got to looking at your list, i had assumed that they where linear on only one axis. are they instead planer i.e.:
Ruthless
|
Murderous-Neutral-Pacifist
|
Merciful
July 8th, 2009 at 7:35 am
So you now have a six-dimensional array in which an individual’s morality can be described as a single locus defined by a position on each of the six axes
And you did it while shooting for “simple.”
This is the problem facing game designers today. :-)
July 8th, 2009 at 8:40 am
The objective is to make the decision less subjective, not reduce the number of values. Six independent values does allow enormously more variety than 2, but are not terribly more difficult to track.
And the values aren’t meant to be subjective. The issue is not whether letting someone live would be merciful “for you”. It is whether you let someone live that you were supposed to have killed, or vice versa.
It doesn’t matter (to this system) whether the action was right or wrong. Only what the actual was. The system uses four basic categories of character targets to help judge the severity of an action. Hostile, neutral, ally, and party member. These are typically not ambiguous in a game. Each axis differs in what types of actions are considered, Ruthless-Pacifist deals mainly with making others lose or gain health, or with actions which cause or allow such effects. Since that one involves engine mechanics (the game requires somewhat more realistic modeling of wounding/death for many of the triggers on that value to have meaning), I’ll switch to talking about truthful-dishonest.
You could base this pretty much entirely on whether or not the character attempted bluff-checks, and against whom. Trying to bluff an enemy would be expected, trying to bluff a neutral would be minor, bluffing an ally would be significant, bluffing a teamate would be major. On the other hand, forgoing a bluff against a weak enemy would be a minor truthful response, forgoing a bluff against a challenging enemy would be significant, and forgoing a bluff against a party killer would be…well, aside from suicidal, it would be majorly honest. That’s putting it pretty simply, but also very unambiguously (the system requires passive bluffs, for example, but they aren’t fundamentally different from verbal or physical bluffs).
Another feature of the system, XP and skill improvements work differently. You might not even call it XP. I think that overall it’s actually simpler for the player, the general idea is that skills you use in difficult checks improve automatically (the formula for this penalizes taking easy checks, though). So if you have to take a difficult roll, you’re getting rewarded appropriately. If a skill is too high to be challenged much anymore, it won’t be likely to improve. That helps the character build aspect relate more to the player’s actions, and since those actions are what establishes the morality of the player, it means that character build and role-play are related.
In other words, you’d have a hard time maintaining a “Merciful” rank without gaining some skill as a healer/medic. Since it also implies forgoing at least some opportunities for combat, you’d tend to have a lower combat skill (though, as already mentioned, overly easy skill checks slow down the process of improving skills, so you might actually be better off than a “kill everything that moves” character).
Obviously, the system as a whole is very different from most RPG systems. That’s the point. The idea is to integrate the three elements of RPGs which are generally entirely separate elements of existing games. I’ve experienced this, I know that it is indeed the case that you are intensely role-playing, or intensely slaughtering, or intensely puzzle-solving. I just wonder whether it is really what everyone else wants.
For my part, role-playing is so poorly served in most games that I generally find it more fun when one doesn’t use a game system at all (it’s also easier, which might have an effect). And, without the role-playing elements, most RPGs aren’t really that fun as games. But I believe this isn’t a matter of some absolute limitation on what is possible. The question is whether RPGs integrate these activities so poorly because players don’t want them integrated or because everybody thinks it can’t be done.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Hurrmm… tl/dr. Sorry!
July 8th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
My vote: What you’re describing I don’t want integrated in a ruleset. Morality is not an absolute and often depends on who is judging the act. Remember that Adolf Hitler did not think he was evil, neither did the people who followed his orders, neither did most of Germany at the time. By making such an emphasis on morality with a massive variable array you’re inviting angry morality and even religious discussions that break up gaming groups and make enemies of friends. I’ve seen it before, it’s not pretty.
Secondly you’re making massive arrays of data to record and calculate. Tabletop is a bad place for full-blown simulations because they slow the story and the action down to a crawl. Consider the time it takes to resolve any one action, multiply by six to ten (say 6 PCs and 4 major NPCs) and you’ve got the time it takes to accomplish a round of combat. Imagine that time as latency in an online game. I played a session of D&D 4.0 with three definite “Warrior Types”, each one had two characters, me being more puzzle/social I focused on one. The latency in that game was 20 minutes. I almost fell asleep on the couch twice before I finally walked out.
Honestly, and I speak as a frequent gamer of more than two decades and having played most every system under the sun, large publishers and small with a variety of groups from every conceivable mix of player types: The quality of role- Vs roll- play depends entirely on the players you are with, it has squat-all to do with the ruleset. A good DM that can tell a good story, knows how to create suspense and to execute a plot twist at just the right moment, who doesn’t need to railroad the players and knows when common sense trumps the rules, is the best predictor of a good game, not the choice of ruleset. There is no ruleset that will substitute for, no mechanic that can force good role-play. Players that are not interested will ignore your rules, players that are interested do not need them.
Now that said it sounds like it would be an interesting mechanic in a computer-based RPG where the computer actually needs such rigid definitions, and if you could manage the coding workflow somehow it could make for an interesting dynamic conversation generator with appropriate reactions from computer controlled NPCs.
In a tabletop situation however the -humans- across the table from you will be able to judge your character’s moral compass faster and more accurately than any ruleset you can contrive. It’s what we do as human beings, it’s part and parcel of our social nature, and tabletop gaming is, derisive detractors of the hobby notwithstanding, an intensely social activity.
If the group you are with does not follow the “Morality” of the setting, it is not that they lack the rules to do so, it is that they don’t care and no ruleset can make them.
$0.02.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Avoiding arguments over morality is the whole point of reducing “morality” down to discrete, irreducible values which hinge on particular game actions. Getting past the issue of “good” vs. “evil” and allowing multiple moral ideals to exist in the setting isn’t possible otherwise. And I cannot believe that 6 numeric values is somehow a “massive” variable array.
Whether or not Hitler (or anyone else) thought of him as evil, there can’t be any serious argument over his willingness to sacrifice lives to his own purposes. Because that focuses on what he actually did, rather than why, or whether it was “justified”.
Like I’ve said, I generally find that using a game system at all usually hurts role-playing. But I don’t believe that this is an inherent trait of any possible system, or even of any simple system. I think it’s a particular limitation of the way that most game systems work. What I’m wondering is not whether anyone else thinks it’s possible or easy to create a workable system that relies on explicit player actions rather than arguments over whether an act was good or evil, but whether anyone wishes there were such a system.
By saying you’d rather avoid arguments over good and evil, you indicate that a system that took that element out of character alignment would be to your liking. It seems that you simply don’t believe it possible. But that’s not what I’m asking.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Associating moral motivations and consequences with definite values is the core of every religious argument and war in human history. Even the definition of the axises you use has been the cause of fervent argument. Even within organized belief groups arguments persist about the very idea of what motivations and consequences are equivalent, greater-than or less-than in some fashion. I’ve seen these arguments erupt over D&D and Palladium’s alignment systems alike, by making it a core rule you’re guaranteeing that the “Warriors” that usually don’t care have a reason to argue about the topic.
The core of most every heated argument I’ve ever seen or been involved in was over the nature of what constitutes some aspect of “Degrees of morality”. They never end well. In-game disagreements over this stuff erupt in to friendship-ending arguments.
Aside from that: You’re developing a numeric index of a character’s moral compass. It’s unnecessary in a human-to-human environment where we, being social beings (with the exception of the sociopathic) have an innate understanding of moral decisions.
Reading Schlock Mercenary we don’t need an alignment indicator to know that Xinchub is a smarmy, manipulative git, and even if Petey does manage to reform him the Toughs should keep an eye on the S.O.B.. Likewise we know that Taigon is selfish, but it extends to the welfare of his entire company, and will agonize over having to put uninvolved civilians in harm’s way. If I was running a Traveller game with Mr. Taylor playing Taigon I would have no need of a convoluted numerical system to judge whether or not H.T. was playing Taigon in character. (Traveller having -no- alignment, or character flaw/benefit system at all).
—-
The core problem of getting people to ‘play the role’ is not one of game mechanics or alignment restriction systems, it’s the player’s psycology towards the characters in the game regardless of PC or NPC. Assuming some familiarity with Plato’s Cave here: as players in a story-based game we take our seats in the cave with the fire behind us, and make our shadows on the wall (our characters). The GM makes the shadows of all those who are not the players, and the shadows interact with each-other according to the rules of the game.
Role-Players will imagine the shadow play as a sort of reality. Sure it’s not real, but the shadows we make should react like they are for the sake of the narrative and the theater. There’s no need for alignment markers or indicators because the Role-Players put themselves mentally in the place of their shadows and react accordingly on a natural behavioral basis, they don’t need the indicators, and most alignment systems straitjacket role-players in to behaviors that are fundamentally inflexible and unrealistic.
Roll-Players enter the cave and make their shadows, but the shadows are just shadows. It doesn’t matter who they stab because it’s just a shadow killing another shadow, it has no effect on anything outside the cave. Alignment systems have no bearing on this behavior.
Some who play this way can find their style changes with a GM that makes believable characters in the telling of the story, better characters and situations/settings making it easier to suspend their disbelief of the shadow-play. I have managed as a GM to change a few roll-players to role-players this way. There are other players who will never have their disbelief of the shadow-play suspended, and for many of these it’s the fact that it is an “inconsequential” shadow-play is the entire reason they participate at all.
It’s not something you can make a rule and people will follow. Role-Playing requires the ability so suspend disbelief in the shadow-play, and have empathy for fictional persona. No alignment system will make that happen, and when it does happen no alignment system is necessary.
$0.02.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Two things:
1) the six-axis morality system is interesting, and probably perfectly suited to a complex solo computer RPG like Fable, where the people around you react differently depending on what you do.
2) The best morality system I’ve ever seen is when the GM asks players “and how do you feel about that?” Killing people in combat is necessary, and often a given. Reactions afterwards dictate moral sensibilities. I remember well the character whose player knew said character was evil, but the character was convinced he was good. Some people just need killing, that’s all.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Complete agreement with Howard about it being a good computer mechanic, It’s hard to teach a computer how to be a good improviser, and a good system for morality checks would be great, though it would have to have some way to manage the added workload of scripting responses.
Any session where I present a tough ethical decision I like to have an “After Action Report”, not to break up the session, but after the game and after the decision is made to discuss what they were thinking when they made the decision.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:13 am
I still don’t understand the argument that making a system less open to interpretation somehow increases the likelihood of friendship ending interpersonal conflicts. The system is specifically about getting past whether or not what the character does is “right” or “wrong” in some ethical sense and concentrates on what sorts of things the character tends to do.
Given that the most proffered argument against makes no sense to me (at least partly because my general dissatisfaction with most attempts to define “good” and “evil”, or even lawful-chaotic, are what inspired me to try for a value neutral system of describing morality), I have no choice but to fall back on the second most proffered explanation.
But I simply cannot accept as remotely plausible the idea that somehow tracking six simple numeric values is beyond the capabilities of most gamers and DMs…the idea that those six numbers would tax any computer capable of running software at all strikes me as reminiscent of science fiction written back in the forties.
Well, it seems that there is some motive beyond my comprehension which inhibits contemplation of such a system. Probably the fact that such a system would prevent players from arguing/apologizing their way out of choice induced alignment shifts. I have no interest in being “good” as such, so naturally I wouldn’t understand why people are so intent on such a thing in a game.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:11 am
There is no conspiracy or strange indecipherable motives here, just the voice of long experience. You want a ruleset that will prevent someone from behaving evil and still being a paladin. This is not and has never been a ruleset issue, it’s a quality of person issue.
The people who do what you want your alignment system to prevent will argue no matter what the rules are because they are cheaters and attention whores. They will game the system specifically to allow them to get away with it. They do it not because the “Rules” let them, but because the DM/GM does, and only a good GM/DM will make it stop…
… -by making the judgment calls you are trying to circumvent.-
Munchkins will take to your alignment system with glee because it will allow them to calculate exactly how much evil that they can do, and exactly what non-actions that they can do to balance it out. They’ll pour over it late at night to discover the mathematical means to do what they want with the minimum cost to themselves.
And when they use their formulae to game the system the GM will look at them like they’re nuts, make an arbitrary judgment call that sends them to the “Evil” category, but the Munchkin will drag out their calculations and say “But it’s all here, by donating to charity my character can slaughter two whole villages and still qualifies as a Paladin!” Then when most of the players are about to lynch the Munchkin and the GM makes the arbitrary call anyway, your system allows the Munchkin to declare everyone else cheaters because they’re not following the game rules.
Anyone who’s been gaming long enough will have seen this -repeatedly-.
When it happens over “Alignments”, “Morals”, “Ethics” and “Religion” the resulting arguments get nasty. Again, if you’ve been gaming long enough you’ll have seen this -repeatedly-.
Those who don’t apologize/argue about the “alignment” of actions don’t need an alignment system, and it just adds unnecessary complexity and more numbers to write and erase ’till the paper wears through.
Those who do need it, won’t be constrained by it anyway.
$0.02.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Normad wrote
But I simply cannot accept as remotely plausible the idea that…
Okay, that’s a discussion ender, right there. Go play-test your system and report back with results from the real world.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
I want a ruleset that doesn’t try and define “evil”. Or good. I don’t know how many times or ways I have to phrase to make it clear…but I suspect that it is, for reasons beyond my ability to comprehend, something that is not going to be understood. I’m not trying to circumvent judgment calls, I’m trying to reduce the necessity for them. I’m not trying to make universal judgments about right and wrong, but to avoid the necessity for them.
As for play testing…when I actually want to have fun role-playing socially, I don’t use a system because all systems I’ve seen tend to negatively impact social role-play. Not because the usual stat-sheets (with their dozens of values) are beyond me (or any good role-player I know), but because they don’t help. As for real life…I try to keep that separate from role-playing. It’s just a thing with me.
Though that does give me an idea…I could try making a morality quiz and see if the results were both varied and non-controversial. Hmmm….but the results would seem to be tautological in that case. Or it might be interesting to…try and create a statistical correlation between different belief systems…that would seem to require a lot of responses, though.
I suppose first I should start with hammering out value neutral language for the questions. That’s a hard one, since I’m more inclined to a neutral view of morality anyway, I’m less able to spot the triggers that make other people pick out the “right” answer rather than the truthful answer.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
normad:
i know you and i at least have various semantic issues. for example what you called mercy i would call ether charity or compassion, which are to me distinctly and decidedly different things.
truth fully your system makes no sense to me, as a system. however rather than burrowing into the mechanics let me ask you what is the point of quantifying the ‘moral’ system? aside from a defacto tracking system what does it do? how does it feed back into the rest of the system? i think this is the break down we assume we know what you intend and see problems.
do you find humans in general to be troublesome-curious and over emotional? exceedingly confusing? i often do.
as we would have to much lag in conversation let me try to jump ahead. your system as i understand it is flawed. it shouldn’t be six axied, it should be six planed (12 axie) as in my previous post. some one who is high scoring murderous and ruthless would kill any one who broke their code, no exceptions. where as some one who scored high in pacifist (or very negative in murderous) and high in ruthless would not kill any one even to save thousands of orphans. where as murderous-merciful understands why you would kill some one for stealing from you, but would personally probably let a thief live as long as they got their important stuff back.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:35 am
First:
The complex alignment systems you are proposing are attempting to reduce moral decisions to a defined calculation. Every religion in the world attempts to do this on some level, and they’re -still- killing each other over it. Gamers are still human beings and hold definite opinions on the matter. Morality has squat all to do with physics, if it did we could scientifically determine the existence or non-existence of God once and for all through simple scientific experiments. Morality is inherently subjective and value-based, you cannot address morality without involving a person’s values.
Second:
I never said the numbers would be “beyond the capabilities of the players”, but rather that it is an added mechanic, more math, more numbers to record, more time spent editing values and comparing die rolls -that serves no purpose-. Alignment systems are an archaic system that has survived only through the ubiquity of the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset which has integrated the nine-element alignment system in to it’s clerical and arcane magic system.
Most other rulesets -do not use alignments at all-. this point leads into …
Three: You say that you prefer to not use rulesets, so why develop a complex alignment system at all? Rulesets are there to determine what the character can do from a proficency standpoint. Rulesets define a character’s ability to hit in combat, the skill in designing a device, hacking a computer, sneaking past a guard, etc. Alignment systems have nothing to do with success at a skill. You’re looking for a system to define -what you do- when the rules are there to define -how well you can do it-.
Four: And in a similar vein I echo Red: What is the point of quantifying the ‘moral system’? You’ve stated that you want to stop people from apologising/arguing their way out of disadvantageous alignment shifts, but that’s a matter of stopping someone from cheating, and cheaters don’t care about rules in the first place, more rules will solve nothing.
—
It sounds like you need a good GM that thinks outside the ruleset, uses the ruleset as a tool for writing the story and not a bounding be-all and end-all of the game. You seem to work fine without a ruleset, but as soon as you use a ruleset you put blinders on to how to play a more interesting character.
Not everything needs to be on your character sheet.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
The system cannot and should not address the motives or justifications for a category of behavior, only whether or not that type of behavior would be expected from the character. I don’t want to judge the intentions of characters or their moralities. I simply want to model what other characters might plausibly expect that character to do.
My definition of ‘charity’ does not preclude killing, my ‘compassion’ might even demand it (which makes it good that I’m not very compassionate, I suppose). The issue (for everyone else) isn’t why I kill or how I feel about killing, only whether I kill.
The point of measuring a character’s practical morality is to judge how likely other characters are to assist or thwart that character’s actions. In real life, ‘charisma’ or ‘charm’ only go so far (it can be quite a ways, but still). Human relationships are based on predictions about behavior (usually incorrect, which is a separate element of the system). Insofar as attempts are made to get past actual behavior to motives and feelings, this is justified (by the arguments of those who attempt it) by its supposed utility in predicting behavior that would appear to break the pattern of previous behavior. Anyone having a serious discussion about actual cases will quickly see this is the case.
I want to keep the values simple (six axis rather than twelve) for two reasons. First, because we are dealing with how humans model other humans, and they have a tendency to simplify (the final simplification, “good-evil” happens to lose nearly all the actual information about what kinds of things the character does and what behavior the judge would prefer, despite which it is nearly universal among humans). Second, because where a person falls on another axis (while it shouldn’t tell you anything about their actual position on any other axis), can already imply a lot about why they might engage in a particular type of behavior.
These implications are, of course, illusion. You cannot know if a ruthless character values life lightly because of ‘honesty’ or ‘iconoclasm’. It’s just a conjecture, but an interesting one. One that makes for a good story. Which is the point.
Now, I don’t want game characters to stop killing each other. But the point of a role-playing game is that there is some reason for all the killing (or whatever happens in the game). That’s why they’re called “Role-playing” games. The point of the system is not to decide which side is ‘right’, but to establish what sides are in play. Two (or more) characters throwing accusations of evil at each other are much more interesting if they actually have some kind of practical disagreement about what they should do.
Like I said before, most RPGs, as games, are not really all that interesting. It is the story that makes it a role-playing game, and the element of interactive choice that makes it worth the extra effort beyond a simple narrative. When you remove the mechanics which make the direction of the story dependent on the choices of the character, you reduce the player’s ability to guide the story. You then either end up with a simple narrative punctuated by dice rolls (12 on 3d6 to continue the story) or rely on the DM. But if you do either of those, I don’t see the point of having rules at all.
Why bother with “my character can” rolls when everything interesting about role-playing deals with “my character would“?
Like I said, when I’ve role-played in the past, all the rules about what characters could do tended to just get in the way and slow things down. And the way most games handle the question of what the characters would do ranges from unsatisfactory to nonexistent.
You keep asking me why I want to improve the model of RPGs. I have a counter-question. Why play the games at all, as they are now? There are better games if one doesn’t want to role-play, and if you do want to role-play the game currently doesn’t matter. Most of the best role-play sessions I’ve enjoyed took place completely outside any system of game rules, no remotely interesting role-play session I’ve ever enjoyed ever had the slightest thing to do with the rules of the game if one was involved.
If you think that games can’t be designed to model character choices better than they do now, then what is the point of the RPG as a game type?
July 10th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
point by point:
—
“The point of measuring a character’s practical morality is to judge how likely other characters are to assist or thwart that character’s actions.”
Unnecessary. You don’t need a numerical score to know what kind of character Xinchub or Taigon is, or how beneficial it is to aid either of them.
We are wired as human beings to evaluate these things without having to resort to numerical systems. Players aid or oppose NPCs based on their -choices- not stat rolls. GMs are free to make situational modifiers (a common one being “reputation”) towards any charisma or other social skill roll.
Computers have no inherent system for making these evaluations, and as such a computer game would benefit from this kind of mechanic, but computer games have always been limited compared to a live GM and live players, whether it’s appropriate social responses, or the ability to deal with creative solutions to puzzles.
—
“It is the story that makes it a role-playing game, and the element of interactive choice that makes it worth the extra effort beyond a simple narrative.When you remove the mechanics which make the direction of the story dependent on the choices of the character, you reduce the player’s ability to guide the story.”
Yet you are creating a system that, by your intent or not, will restrict choice of action. Actions become guided by numbers and not by the imagination of the players or the GM. You’re restricting what characters ‘would do’ to a numerical list.
- Direction of the story based on the choices of the characters is not a mechanic!!!- It is good DM/GM skills, and good role-playing by the players that makes that happen!
-Game mechanics are restrictive.- That’s what they’re for: to prevent people from claiming that their character can do anything they feel like declaring. They’re finite scores that prevent characters that are civilian accountants with a video-game hobby from firing heavy automatic weapons with the accuracy of a special forces sniper.
—
“Why bother with “my character can” rolls when everything interesting about role-playing deals with “my character would“?”
“My Character Would” is a matter of player decision, not numbers and die-rolls. If what your character, and/or all the NPCs -would do- if their reaction to every situation is laid out in the ruleset, then why bother participating at all? There’s no choices to make, no variation in action. Whether you believe in divine predestination or not Free Will makes life more interesting.
You complain about the “My Character Can” aspect as slowing down the action, and yet you’re proposing to add yet more complexity with a system regarding character ethics without removing the need to resolve questions of character proficiency.
—
“And the way most games handle the question of what the characters would do ranges from unsatisfactory to nonexistent.”
Again, this is because the question of what a character “Would do” is up to the players to decide in the game. The freedom of this choice is what makes a game worth playing at all. Without it the players are “Railroaded” in to an action, and when that happens there’s really no reason to participate at all.
—
“You keep asking me why I want to improve the model of RPGs.”
Hubris. You assume that we think you’re improving things. Your posts attribute some sort of conspiratorial motives to keep you from making improvements. I do not think of your system as an improvement, I see it being a detriment to the gaming experience. I’ve seen GM’s use alignment to prescribe character actions to the players to force them to follow a storyline. I’ve seen character race and class used the same way. It’s called “Railroading”, it deprives the player of choices, and makes the game not worth playing at all.
—
“If you think that games can’t be designed to model character choices better than they do now, then what is the point of the RPG as a game type? ”
Again, because character choices are the providence of the -player- not the -ruleset-. The whole point of Role-Playing is the improvisational aspect, the making of choices on the spot and using one’s -imagination- to work through the motives, not to be straitjacketed by numerical scales.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
There’s no need to recap for me the reasons that existing rule based systems aren’t well suited to good role-play. As I’ve said before, I agree.
But I missed the part where you explain why those rule based systems are any good at all, given everything that we both agree to be true of them. The only point you make in their favor is that ‘my character should win’ players can thus be entertained with an essentially unrelated game (at which you assert they will cheat anyway) to keep them busy while the role-players engage in role-play.
But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t count that as a point in favor of existing games…which is one of the things that makes me wonder whether either of us understands what you’re trying to say.
I’m sensing a certain degree of hostility to the idea of examining character morality beyond the “good guy-evil guy” level. But this hostility has not been explained to my satisfaction, or indeed at all. You’re acting as if I’m planning to abolish all other beloved game systems. Which, I suppose, is…well, not totally impossible, however implausible. But I haven’t been aware of saying anything to that effect. And while I have no interest in promoting most systematic games, I don’t mind playing them if the role-play is good. I can say with certainty that I’m not in favor of abolishing them, whether or not you’re willing to believe that.
The point was made (not by me) that existing games tend to break the experience of role-playing into separate and fundamentally unrelated activities. I wondered whether it might be possible to create a system that generated more continuity between these activities, by making character-leveling/build and character-morality/reputation more related to which game actions the player chose for that character. You know, for those who want to play a game, but want to role-play while gaming.
Well, first I wanted to find such a system, but then people said it didn’t exist, so I wanted to create it. And somehow, that struck some people as being a heinous crime of some sort. I’m not sure why. But I’d like to find out.
Mainly just because I’m curious about that sort of thing.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
i reiterate: let me ask you what is the point of quantifying the ‘moral’ system? aside from a de facto tracking system what does it do? how does it feed back into the rest of the system? i think this is the break down, we assume we know what you intend and see problems.
please answer this question. i belive that we all think you intend x with your rules, we think x is effectively bad. and not what you seem to want. if however, you mean to do y or z we are wrong. i can actually think of some interesting things to do with a system like yours, but your words… they make me doubt that you mean to do them, so i am left asking what do you intend? you have told me some things you intend, true, but i don’t see how your system such as you describe it plays in. i am confused. i seek clarity.
you ask why play them? we need limits on what the player can do. no ‘i turn into a t-rex and eat them.’… granted i did greatly enjoy a game where in i did that, but it was part of the rules and if you could turn into a trex it cost you a great deal and you could not turn into a cheetah….
as i see your system it is flawed. past behavior does not moddle future behavior, if past environment is not future environment. orik the orc exterminator will not do as much killing once he has completed total genocide of the orc race. this does not mean that the player ‘breaks character’ when orik suddenly stops killing on a daily bases, it means that there are no more orcs to kill. his environment has changed so his behavior changed.
but then i don’t know what you intend to do with this system.
July 11th, 2009 at 12:03 am
The point of the morality tracking system (as I’ve explained in some detail) is to simplify and disambiguate the process of giving ‘alignment’ significance to different actions in the game. Since given types of actions (like initiating attacks on a neutral entity) will always have the same effect, there is no place for argument over the resulting alignment shift.
The primary effect of alignment will be to shape the attitudes of different characters (PC or NPC) towards cooperating with each other. A Ruthless Deceitful Virginal Equitable Orthodox character should have real difficulty cooperating with a Merciful Honest Lewd Rapacious Iconoclastic character, even if they are both PCs and the players are best friends forever. That doesn’t mean that they would be automatically hostile (or automatically allies in the case of similar alignment), just that cooperation would be harder. By the way, due to a more productive (if shorter) discussion elsewhere, I’m seriously considering folding the piety and tradition axises together. So there goes my dimensional symmetry (such as it was, the number of values keeps changing anyway).
At the same time, the scenario creator can easily create NPCs, philosophies, and entire societies with reference to just a few values, and then easily use simple arithmetic to see how those societies relate to or conflict with each other and to different characters. Explaining a philosophy that could be characterized as Ruthless Deceitful Virginal Equitable Orthodox is rich ground for invention. You could have several completely different philosophies which arrive at the same practical morality. Even if they are hostile to each other (two nations at war, or individuals in conflict), the commonalities make communication and social contact easier.
As for orik the orc exterminator, there is no provision in the system for inaction to change alignment. He’d remain famous for exterminating until he actually took actions (rolled dice) to start becoming famous for pacifism or mercy. Which is both easier and more realistic anyway.
I’ll admit, calling this a moral alignment system might be misleading, since it primarily functions to track character reputation. But whether your reputation helps or hurts depends on the preferred practical morality of who you’re interacting with at any given time. A paladin famous for killing and chastity is not going to get the same reception from a “make love not war” barmaid (or bar) he might expect otherwise from “good” townsfolk. The point of reducing these values to numbers is to make it easier for the scenario creator and the DM to produce and referee these situations without having to argue or even explain.
As of now, I don’t intend to do anything with this system (not even implement some dire plan to destroy RPGs as we know them). I’m much more interested in understanding the reaction it provoked here than in the system itself, at this point. That will no doubt change, I’m a fickle creature (and systematic categorization of practical morality is an interesting problem with universal implications, while the direction of this thread is probably not).
July 11th, 2009 at 1:44 am
I don’t think those dimensions are as clear cut as you seem to be hoping.
Violence: Is euthanasia better or worse than grievous bodily harm? How much does self defence excuse?
Honesty: Is it okay to leave out crucial parts of the truth, as long as you don’t actually lie? Is it okay to tell the truth to someone who expects you to lie? Is it okay to truthfully deny something, in such suspicious detail that you seem to be lying? Is it okay to fudge the truth to avoid getting sidetracked by unimportant details? Is it okay to make stuff up to make yourself seem more interesting? And how does one respond to “Does this dress make me look fat?”
Sex: Is porn okay? Did Bill Clinton have sex with Monica Lewinsky?
Greed: Is capitalism theft? Is it okay to steal from the rich if you give to the poor? Is it okay to steal from bad people?
Piety: Are heretics better or worse than heathens? How can you compare piety between wildly different religions? What does “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” mean?
And there’s so much they don’t cover:
* Are people who use [alcohol/tobacco/marijuana/MDMA/LSD/peyote] cool, foolish, sinful or holy? (Does foolishness have a moral dimension? Even if it doesn’t, it still affects characters attitudes to cooperation.)
* Is mind control acceptable, and if so: On who? (Anyone you want to? Anyone suspicious? Criminals? Violent criminals? Super-powered violent criminals? Foreigners? Members of a designated slave class?) What methods are acceptable? (Magic? Brain implants? Drugs? Advertising? Lovebombing? Stockholm syndrome?)
* If your setting has mind readers, should they be exterminated, shunned, accepted, or organised into a secret police force? If a “cure” can be found, should it be compulsory? Should the “cure” even be available?
Yup. People sure are complicated. Here’s a thought: Role-play what characters try to do; use the rules to see how well that works out. Morality falls on the role-playing side. It only affects the rules if you’ve got a morally-dependent magic system like D&D, in which case model the aspects of it which directly affect ability to use magic. Note that I said “directly” – if some spell requires a human sacrifice, role-playing determines under what circumstances a character is willing to do it.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Well, the piety axis wasn’t doing well as a separate value. Which is why I rolled it into the moral authority axis. And while I had considered a “drugs” morality axis, I decided against it for a couple of reasons. First, it would make more sense to give potions realistic side/after effects. Second, while all societies have taboos about what is acceptable to eat/drink/inhale, those taboos are not inherently rooted in reference to their likely origin as health practices. In most cultures, it would be considered disgusting or unnatural to eat certain types of animals. Whether that animal is a large grub or a small deer, eating or not eating it depends on how attached one is to the taboo, which could be about anything else.
As to whether or not these issues are clear cut: in a game, an attack action is an attack action. A neutral is a neutral. A healing action is a healing action. A bluff is a bluff. A party member is a party member. It doesn’t matter why your character does it (I mentioned previously that the [provisional] health model made it possible that a character who fainted due to a negative combat skill and high sensitivity could be jolted awake by damage; you could jolt that character awake using attacks–but you would still be attacking an unconscious non-hostile, a ruthless act). If an action qualifies to change alignment, it changes alignment. And it isn’t about what is “right” or “wrong”.
How many times do I have to point that out?
The whole point is to move beyond whether the players (or even the characters) think actions are right or wrong. Arguing about right and wrong, as someone has pointed out, is one of the most destructive possible outcomes of a role-play situation. So why do you all like doing it so much?
July 11th, 2009 at 9:12 am
@Normad: Point of order here… the manner in which you’re arguing is kind of annoying. You post really long stuff, state opinions as absolutes, and then wonder why people respond as if they haven’t read and understood everything you wrote.
Stop it, okay? I like the six-axis thingy you’ve done, and I’ll even concede that it could work in a table-top pencil-and-paper RPG. But it doesn’t look like fun to me. Go play-test it, and bring back results. A good morality engine is like a good physics engine — just because you managed to simulate reality doesn’t mean the game has “play.”
If you just want to discuss, that’s fine. Discuss. But please stop stating your opinions as absolutes, and start listening to what some other experienced RPG players are telling you.
July 11th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
alright, i think we have an idea what you want. you seem to want a method by which to ‘force’ people to role play their characters yes? so far our consensus is that 1) your system will not do it properly. 2) it is still open to interpretation. 3) it is wide open to exploitation. 4) humans can intuitively do it better and faster. in effect most of us believe that what you want is impossible, at least in an enjoyable game. some, like my self, believe you are doing it the wrong way.
that was the short answer.
this is the suggestion: writing down moral codes, in order of importance, for the character would be mandatory for what you seem to want. i would say no more than five or six words per code, at least five codes, perhaps the gm may add codes he feels necessary based on actions. this would force players to role play definable characters. shortness makes them more objective. a one word value list may be better. say family, friends, country, myself. would mean the character would help himself only once he had looked to kith kin and country.
in combination with your idea: if i wright ‘ only humans matter’ then i get to treat all none humans as ‘hostile’ if i attack them. if my number one is ‘never hit a woman.’ your system would treat hostile women as ‘friendly’ you would then use a ’shift cap’ to mean that i can not take any single action that would excessively shift my alignment. this way you can force people to role play and track actions for popularity purposes. say two codes per axis.
now the long answer (mostly my criticism):
you may see your system as removing the question of good/evil from actions. it does not. you built in some situational modifiers (hostile,neutral, friendly, party) these modifiers are moral judgments. killing your party member is seen as different, worse, than killing the guy who is trying to kill you both. thus one dead body is not even to your system the same as another. also you can not remove the moral judgment from people or npc’s. it is there same as the wind.
basically all i have to do to kill a neutral with little penalty is insult them, or in some other way cause them to turn hostile to me. easy enough. on the other hand if i want the ‘merciful’ i am REQUIRED to learn too heal. oddly it looks like if i keep a hostile i can beat him for little murder gain, then heal him for large mercy gain. rinse and repeat. the beatings would keep him hostile i should think. (damage to hostile[small modifier]- healing to hostile[large modifier])
in your system the ends DEFINE the means. many like my self disagree. it is my emphatic belief that there is a difference between killers and murderers. true all murderers are killers by definition, but not all killers are murderers. it does not matter to me IF you killed some one, it matters WHY you killed them. thus where i to meet an executioner and a religious thug, even though they both ritualistically kill people neutral to themselves i will treat them very differently.
another thing is that you have a poor grasp of fame and action, or at least we have another semantic difference. i have been famous for doing that which i have not done, and much of what i have done will never be known, at least not by many. i have known many to be famed for the opposite of what they actually do. you are famous not for what you have actually done but for what you are believed to have done. further fame does not travel faster than light. to change tack and go back to orik. if the orcs happened to be mostly neutral his sheet would be that of a murderous sociopath. but be honest. if orik lived in your world how you saw him would depend not on weather or not he attacked neutrals, but on how you view orcs. his fame is in the killing only for some, but in killing orcs for all.
‘You could have several completely different philosophies which arrive at the same practical morality.’
perhaps, but would they really see it that way? take a virulent athiest, and a virulent… any other kind of theist really, do they really view each other as doing the same thing? in my experience they both think the other is dragging people into their own folly. orik may kill countless orcs, (many little shifts if i understand your system) he will not see real common ground with nick the knife who only killed ten people for their money.
this also cuts the other way. even though nicole the nice only ever heals people she may work well with orik who is constantly rushing to help towns under orc attack. she may see him as a sort of hero. they both want to help the town/humanity but one becomes murderous for doing it and the other ‘merciful’, by your system they should begin to have troubles working with one another, one praised and the other reviled by the npc’s they came to save. the same philosophy/goal/world view may have different actions.
‘Even if they are hostile to each other (two nations at war, or individuals in conflict), the commonalities make communication and social contact easier.’
perhaps but it has often been my experience that the most bitter enemy are the ones most similar to oneannother. would orik and ham the human hammerer really see common ground just because they are both genocidal? it is true often in war, particularly between mercenaries, it is not uncommon to harbor no ill will to the man you kill. this is however far from always the case.
July 11th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I see what you’re trying to do Normad, but I don’t need rules to do it. No gamer I’ve ever played with needs rules for morality checks, they’re either perfectly capable of playing a character without using alignments at all. I play systems that don’t involve alignments -at all- and I LIKE it that way, they’re not broken.
You obviously have different tastes in role-playing.
You do not however have some fictional “One True Way” when it comes to RPGs, and just because you don’t like current rulesets that are on the market doesn’t mean that they are not worth playing.
There have been games that work on a variation of the system you propose. They’re all out of print because not enough people found them enjoyable.
$0.02
July 11th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Bleah, tired…
Insert to above: Either perfectly capable of playing a character without using alignments at all, or they don’t care about the storytelling enough to be restrained by one anyway.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Normad: “How many times do I have to point that out?”
Remove the beam from thine own eye. Firstly, Howard has pointed out the tl;dr factor at least twice now. How many times will he need to?
Secondly, how many times do we have to point out that your beloved clear cut actions have very little to do with… well, anything really?
“…a character who fainted due to a negative combat skill and high sensitivity could be jolted awake by damage; you could jolt that character awake using attacks–but you would still be attacking an unconscious non-hostile, a ruthless act”
Riiiight. So, if someone you hate faints in a dangerous situation, it’s “Ruthless” to kick them so they wake up enough to save themselves, but “Merciful” to leave them to die?
Well, I suppose in some situations it could be…
July 12th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
This is…interesting. Unproductive, but interesting.
I can understand people ignoring my posts because they’re too long. But in that case, why respond at all? Why then ask me to explain myself if you aren’t interested in my answers?
Not that I can’t think of reasons to do this, but I’m loathe to ascribe them to anyone who might possibly not be guilty of such.
I’m glad that Dauric, at least, understands what I’m doing, and also understands that those who already do it don’t need rules to do it well. I’m puzzled by the following assertions that blatantly contradict both those statements, but by now I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find enlightenment here.
I am, in point of fact, not arguing at all, which I think many of you have not noticed. I’m asking questions, to which I would like to have answers. I have an answer to my initial question, whether or not such game systems exist at all (while I do not like the answer, I will nevertheless thank those kind enough to help provide it). Along the way I’ve gathered a number of more interesting questions, most of which do not seem likely to receive answers (though I would still like some).
It is, after all, probable that none of you even know the answers to those questions. I find that baffling, but not entirely unprecedented.
I must apologize for all the hurt feelings. I was, after all, merely curious. As I said, I had no real goal in this discussion other than gathering information for which I have no practical use (well, I might have used some of it). It is a habit, and not always felicitous to others’ sense of self-worth…which I probably don’t need to mention at this point.
Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat. It is only fitting that the curious recognize the inconvenience to the cat. I can’t express that real regret that would lead me to be less curious in the future. I am, after all, what I am. Thus, if anyone is feeling upset or threatened by my questions, I do not ask you to attempt to reply. I would thank you for such information as I might gain, but it is not important enough to me to justify the hurt you’re feeling. I would like to know why you are so hurt, but I can’t pretend to actually have any practical reason for wanting such knowledge.
I know this sounds like a halfhearted apology (at very best). Believe me, considering all the other things for which I’m not even going to try to apologize…no, that is wrong. I should not dismiss the import of hurting your feelings. It does matter. I am wrong to inflict such injury with no better motive than indulging my quest for trivia. I do not have the least intention of stopping my occasionally destructive pursuit of knowledge, but this is at least partly attributable to the fact that I am not a very good person.
Technically, I’m rather evil. And I don’t really want to be good. But I will go so far as to forebear further inquiries on this topic. I am, of course, still interested in answers to the questions I’ve asked, but I will not badger you anymore. I won’t ask for clarifications, or bring up new questions, or any such thing. I won’t even reply to this thread again…well, that could be inconvenient if someone genuinely wants me to explain something I haven’t already covered…it seems unlikely at this point but not impossible. Nonetheless, I won’t reply in this thread, though if someone really piques my interest I might invite them to contact me some other way. But that probably won’t happen.
I do regret that this is the best I can do. I know it doesn’t make up for my insensitivity. But at least you can relax a little knowing that I won’t stir this particular pot anymore. Well, assuming you trust me to keep my word, which I certainly wouldn’t.
Being evil can be inconvenient, but don’t cry for my troubles. I chose them myself, after all.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Wait, what? Was anyone offended by anything in this thread? I thought we were just following our nerdy urges to tell Normad he’s doing it wrong. And some of us (especially Howard, since it’s his blog we’ve been arguing on) were annoyed by what we perceive to be Normad’s obtuseness.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:52 am
No offense taken, it’s a fairly typical online debate. That said you seem to be speaking a different language, seeing contradictions where none exist, and attributing conspiratorial motivations to the rest of us.
I don’t understand where the perceived contradiction is. I don’t need a stomach pump, so I don’t have it done. Most gamers don’t need an alignment system, so they don’t use one. I don’t enjoy playing games with alignment systems largely because they’re useless, ergo I prefer games that don’t have one.
Those that argue about the ‘alignment’ of their actions will argue no matter what system you’re using, so again, why use one? These are the same people that will argue endlessly about their character’s basic attributes being ‘unplayable’ even though they’re in line with everyone else, how they’re character is a firearms expert so they should be able to modify their handgun to lob mini-nukes, and try to argue that if they hack in to a orbital bombardment satellite and start using it that the military that launched it won’t notice that it’s firing without their commands.
Game -systems- encourage role-play badly for much the same reason that current AI programs are unlikely to take over GMimg duties any time in the future: Inflexible pre-programed calculations. They’re tickets to railroaded characters and overly simplistic stories with a black-and-white morality where the decisions and their outcomes are obvious.
The best way to encourage role-play is to have a good GM that reads books like “Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering” and “XDM”, and learns and applies the techniques. A GM with a good understanding of literature and human behavior making believable settings will do more for role-play than -any- game system ever could.
Alignment systems are a restraint only on the people who don’t need it and don’t enjoy it, and has no effect on those that arguably need to be restrained by it. My position is ‘Why add more complexity for no effect?’
July 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
i wonder whose feelings he (normad) thinks he hurt? up until his last post i would have assumed no one was ‘hurt’. now i think he was, still if any one can point me at some one else i would like to study the posts and hope to learn something useful for the future. i admit i was frustrated that though i understood the words, and the sentences, and even some paragraphs i could not make them make sense of each other. but that was mostly because it sounded like it might be interesting… did any one get a clear picture of what he was talking about? at first it seemed to be a moral tracking system, that really had no way to factor in morality, then it seemed to be a system to facilitate handing out characters to players and get them to role play the characters, but it didn’t ascribe any motives to the characters…. he also talked about it being an objective system yet some level of subjectivity was factored into it…. i like to understand things so if any one thinks they have some idea what he was trying to communicate please give me a post.