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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9852511" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't know if it helps at all to frame it as an ethical rather than moral choice (using "ethical" in the sense of pertaining to the living of a good life, as opposed to "moral" in the sense of satisfying the duties one owes to others).And so with the example of Keeler and the young sentry, it's not about daring her to do evil (a moral choice) but rather seeing what she's prepared to do, or not to, and how much she might struggle with that. (It turns out - not much.) So it sits somewhere like the same place as Mouldbreaker artha in Burning Wheel and Torchbearer 2e, and/or Embodiment in BW and the variant on that involving Creed in TB2e.I know I keep crossing the system streams, but I can't help but go to what I know - and what I know best is those BWHQ systems. Here's an example from play:So the GM forces a choice onto me as a player - abandon my errantry or abandon my mother - although I found a way to successfully cut the Gordian know (and so the artha reward was Embodiment rather than Mouldbreaker). This was a bit more intense then the Keeler-sentry example, but at a sufficient bird's eye view has a similar sort of structure. And I think it works better to see it, from the player perspective, as an ethical rather than moral choice.(The rising conflict across a moral line is from the audience perspective, not the perspective of the player inhabiting their character. Achieving this structure to play is - in my view - part of what makes for a good RPG, rather than a "writers' room" one where I don't really get to play my PC but instead have to worry about "the story".)Just to be clear what I am and am not doing with this post. I'm trying to push a little bit against your doubts about the Keeler example, albeit with an example that is perhaps a bit less generative in its resolution. But I'm not trying to defend the Masks examples. To me, at least, they feel like something has been "edited out" that should be part of play: it's going harder than just announcing off-screen badness. (To put it in canonical terms, maybe it's failing to be a fan of the players' characters?)Here's an example from the BW rulebook (Gold Revised p 377, but it's in earlier versions too, at least back to Revised):If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create trouble in play. If you're hunting a vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!That gives rise to a risk of something like the Masks example. However, there is another, cautionary, example in the rulebook (Gold Revised p 54, but again it can be found at least as far back as Revised) that I think is meant to help ward against this, at least as I read it:We had a character with the Belief: "I will one day restore my wife's life." His wife had died, and he kept her body around, trying to figure out a way to bring her back. Well, mid-way through the game, the GM magically restored his wife to the land of the living. I've never seen a more crushed player. He didn't know what to do! He had stated that the quest and he struggle was the goal, not the end result. "One day!" he said. But the GM insisted, and the whole scenario and character were ruined for the player.This seems like an instruction to the GM to be a fan of the players' characters.So for me, the issue with the Masks example is less about its generative nature, than the way it elides action by the players' character. It's too quick. (I did something similar fairly early on in my 4e D&D game. So I learned the hard way!)</blockquote>

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