Is 'Good vs Evil' fantasy better for long-term campaigns than more 'amoral' Swords & Sorcery?

[S'mon]

Thinking about all the D&D campaigns I've run tabletop and online over the last thirteen years or so, it seems to me that I've consistently had difficulty running long-term campaigns in a Swords & Sorcery milieu - Conan, Fafhrd/Mouser, Elric et al. I love the 'Wilderlands of High Fantasy', which is a very S&S setting, but I've never been able to maintain a really long-term Wilderlands game despite several attempts.
Whereas games with fairly clear cut Good vs Evil factions such as my Forgotten Realms Loudwater campaign seem to have a lot more legs. It helps a lot that the PCs like the good NPCs and have a lot invested in protecting them. Likewise my online Yggsburgh game is not traditional high fantasy, a big inspiration being Hammer Horror but there again Hammer Horror has a strong moral framework, which Swords & Sorcery lacks. The church may be corrupt, the leading PC may be a ruthless social climber undone by his own flaws, but the bad guys are typically truly evil Diabolists, Werewolves, Vampires, not just another bunch of guys with swords and a competing agenda. I've heard that non-D&D games like Traveller that lack this Good vs Evil dichotomy also have trouble maintaining campaigns when compared to eg Star Wars, but my experience is limited.

I was wondering if other people have had similar or reverse experiences? Is a strong Good vs Evil framework an aid to long term campaigns? Does its lack inhibit long term play?

 

[Rune]

My campaigns do either have moral themes or subthemes running along in them, but the NPCs (and PCs) are never completely good or evil. Or, at least, if they are completely evil, they aren't automatically irredeemably so.

 

[Kinak]

Good thread idea.

Personally, I'm not sure it depends so much on a moral framework as it does a meaty conflict. You want opposition to the PCs and want it memorable enough that they don't lose track between sessions, but it doesn't necessarily have to be good vs. evil.

For example, my longest running campaigns were grey vs. grey and human evil vs. lovecraftian evil.

In the former, the game had several conflicts moving from the background to the foreground. At the start of the game, these were mostly the PCs getting dragged along in international or divine conflicts. By the end, their quarrels with NPCs were driving those conflicts.

The trappings of good and evil were in that campaign. One of the main conflicts was a serpent god trying to escape his binding and the followers of a sun god trying to keep him bound. That's a classic (hackneyed, really) good vs. evil plotline.

But the sun god was distant to the point of being neglectful, his followers had largely lost sight of his goals, and the serpent god thought (justifiably) that he would do a better job running things and was generally fairly reasonable. The PCs teamed up with both sides as the situation warranted.

In the latter campaign, the PCs staved off the apocalypse basically to preserve their own playground. But the PCs themselves were far more evil than the forces that would have brought about the apocalypse (which were more just antithetical to existence than malicious).

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[TerraDave]

There is a great quote on this very issue in the original DMG in the context of the long running game, and hopefully some will post it!

Like Rune, I usually have mostly amoral charecters serving some greater good, or at least following up on a bigger plot or theme that has an element of stopping evil. Basically its something ties the campaign together and gives incentives over the longer term along with treasure and head-bashing.

 

[billd91]

A lot is going to depend on the players and the campaign hooks, but I can see the argument that running strong thematic campaigns (like good vs evil) makes it easier to keep coming back for more. It's easier to find a character's motivation in an adventure game that's got such a strong theme. Without a strong theme, it takes more work to brain up the character's motivation and ongoing need to adventure.

 

[Umbran]

Thinking about all the D&D campaigns I've run tabletop and online over the last thirteen years or so, it seems to me that I've consistently had difficulty running long-term campaigns in a Swords & Sorcery milieu - Conan, Fafhrd/Mouser, Elric et al.

Well, look at a couple of those source pieces. Elric, himself, is a pretty nasty piece of work. He looks amoral when contrasted with his antagonists, who are worse than he is. And the works are pretty darned explicit that there's a moral system at play (Law vs Chaos, in theory, but in practice it reads a lot like G vs E). It is just that Elric and those he's against are all at the same end of the spectrum.

Fafhrd and Grey Mouser? Sure, these guys are of Neutral alignments, certainly not dedicated to Good. But again, look at the antagonists - often very nasty things. While their own motivations are often profit or revenge, they're still often pretty clearly morally superior to their antagonists.

So, I'm not so sure that S&S lacks a strong moral framework. It may lack protagonists who are strongly dedicated to Good, but the *framework* is still there.

 

[Salamandyr]

S'mon, I think you're right, but I think the reason has less to do with morality and more to do with overall plot structure.

Good vs. Evil lends itself very well to stories where the players have a long term goal to achieve, like "gather all the mcguffins" or "defeat the dark lord", in order to "save the world". These kinds of plots are fun, give the players easy to grasp motivations, and provide a coherent framework for a compelling long term story.

By contrast sword & sorcery adventures tend to be better for episodic adventure tales, (there's a reason that most iconic S&S major stories are short stories) because the characters rarely have long term goals. There is no overarching villain; instead there are plenty of opponents, usually dispatched with gusto. If an opponent survives a couple of encounters, he might become a nemesis, but generally he's weaker than the hero...a contrast from Good vs. Evil, where the Dark Lord is usually the most powerful guy around.

Sword & Sorcery character motivations are usually more abstract. Why does Conan continue to adventure? Because he's restless and doesn't fit in anywhere. Elric? Bipolar disorder, and need for stimulation (and a soul sucking sword that needs feeding) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? usually boredom or poverty and a hard aversion to "honest work".

So if your idea is to run a long running, year long campaign with a compelling overall story, where each character is working toward a collective overall goal, then Good vs. Evil is just easier.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I was wondering if other people have had similar or reverse experiences? Is a strong Good vs Evil framework an aid to long term campaigns? Does its lack inhibit long term play?

To answer the last question, I think a lack of Good vs Evil framework relies on the players having clearer goals for their characters. In other words, it can inhibit long term play if time isn't spent maintaining some long term goals for the characters.

In my group we typically spend some time in character creation looking at goals for the character. Later on in the campaign, some or all of these goals might have been accomplished. This might lead to the campaign peetering out because there is a lack of motivation for the characters. I haven't run any long-term campaigns ever, so I really can't say if that's the case though.

 

[delericho]

I was wondering if other people have had similar or reverse experiences? Is a strong Good vs Evil framework an aid to long term campaigns? Does its lack inhibit long term play?

No, the Good/Evil emphasis is neither better nor worse for long-term play. It's just a different emphasis.

However, where D&D potentially has difficulties with the more 'amoral' style of play (in the long-term) is one of associations: we tend to associate the Good/Evil style with the Epic Quest model that D&D does so well, while we tend to associate the more amoral sword & sorcery style with a grittier style of play. D&D does okay with that style, just about, at low levels, but as the levels go up it becomes harder to maintain the style.

And with long-term play, of course, the players are going to want to go up levels.

So, for a long-term 'amoral' style of game, I probably wouldn't use D&D (any edition) - I'd almost certainly go for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Ed). If I had to use D&D, for whatever reason, I would go for something like E6 - but even that would be under protest.

 

[steenan]

Wall of text incoming. You've been warned.



In my experience, a good vs evil framework is not necessary for a long-term play and can, in many cases, be harmful for it. But moral themes, in general, are exactly what one needs.

In all campaigns I ran or played in, the following were the major factors that made the long-term play engaging:

1. Idealist PCs. They don't need to be "good". They may be thieving brigands, or aggressive drunkards, or manipulative bastards. But they must have things they really care for, other than themselves. Things they will make sacrifices for. Things that they will fight for - and die for, if things come to that. Personal rules they won't break when it's easier or more efficient to do it.

2. Players who don't want to play safe and that accept their characters may be hurt, not only in physical sense. Players who want their PCs' values and ideals challenged as much as (or more than) their competence.
In other words, players who put things in their character backgrounds not because they look nice, but because they want them to matter.

3. A GM that does not run their own story, but weaves the campaign around things that are important to players and PCs. Who makes the PCs' values meaningful. Who's not afraid of asking hard questions and endangering whatever the PCs care for.
It's definitely not the same as a rat bastard GM that destroys things important to PCs for fun and creates lose-lose dilemmas. The fun part is getting what one wants - but having to decide if it's worth the cost.



The typical problem with sword&sorcery in RPGs is that, without an external moral framework, many players tend to create characters with very self-centered motivations and goals. While fun for some time, it just stops being interesting in a long-term game. But it's not the setting and genre that do it, it's players' decisions.





Just a handful of examples from a recent campaign I played in:

One character had a lover before the game started. She was sure he betrayed her and married another. In the course of the game she meets him and finds out that he was forced into a marriage he didn't want and later found a way to cancel it. So here comes the first question: How does she see him now? Does she still want to be with him, does she judge what happened his weakness, or his fault?
They decide they want to be together. But he now holds an office in the administration, while the party plots against the government. He's not an adventuring type, while she takes a lot of risks. How much does she tell him? Will she directly ask him to break his oaths, or ignore the problematic topics, or pretend she's not doing anything strange? It took several sessions (with other things going in parallel, of course) before they were finally fully reunited, and it was a powerful driving force for the campaign during this time.

Another character's fiancee was murdered, for reasons unknown to him. Shocked by what happened, he backed away from active life and focused on scientific research. He decided never to fight and kill, even though he had powers that could really help in doing it. In play, he started changing. He had to defend himself; later he killed a creature that tried to murder his sister. Finally he found who ordered his fiancee's assassination and decided " the pacifism, I'm gonna kill the person responsible".
Only after he did it (and nearly died in the process) he was able to figure out what he really deems worth fighting for and why his earlier actions were really misguided. The series of trials forced him to confront himself and, through pain, made him much stronger. He finally put his knowledge and skill to use.

In both cases, our GM did a great job taking our backgrounds and putting them in a spotlight. She didn't see out character concepts as sacred and inviolate, but she also didn't just mess with them. She just looked us in the eye and asked:
"So, your character believes that's most important. And if I do this? Are you still so sure?"
and left the answer up to us.


Having the characters fight for what they believe, and choose, and evolve - that's what makes a long campaign engaging.