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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 5779410" data-attributes="member: 78958">Morals are hard, true enough.I think there's no right or wrong way to go about in-game morality. However, it is very necessary to reach a group consensus. If you want verisimilitude, but the players feel uncomfortable about delving into the ethics of an entirely different society, you're at odds, and that's something that needs resolution. I think you could either just talk to them out of game and explain how you see the game society's morality. Or, you could just adopt a pseudo-medieval version of today's moral system to make your players comfortable. Common ground between the two might be hard to find.It seems to me as if you're aiming for immersion first and foremost, which is one of the most important parts of DMing. Immersion can stem from identifying with your character, and that can derive from two roots: you either accept the game world (and your character, who functions within it) as a system totally divided from your own experience, and delve into it fully - or you want your character and the game world to be close enough to your own experience that you can identify from that side. Both are powerful tools of DMing, and neither is inherently superior to the other.After a while, playing in a different society gives you a feel for the way that society works, and that can be exhilarating - bit by bit you feel more and more at home in a world with its own inner logic, you feel you can make meaningful decisions, and you really feel as if the rules of the game world apply to you, as well, while you're gaming. That's fantasy roleplaying in its best sense.However, being able to connect with an in-game character's and society's workings and problems quickly, since they're rather close to what you know from your real-world experience, lets you 'become' your role much more easily.For example, if you're aiming for a medieval feel, you should probably also take into account that love simply didn't function in the romantic way we're used to; figures of authority were much more readily accepted even if they overstepped their legitimation; the average person had probably seen lots of relatives, including parents, siblings, or offspring, die, and their death was accepted (if lamented) as just the way things are; the temporal was considered less important than the afterlife; almost nobody was ever without afflictions, constant harassment by some disease or other, parasites, etc.; far from good-natured fun was made of disabled people, of the poor and luckless; public executions were considered good sport (and the executed was expected to give a good showing); etc.It's hard to buy into a fantasy that would really detract from your overall enjoyment of life...</blockquote>

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