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Missions and Moral Compass
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6632957" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Yes, though not often in most editions of D&D. In Hero System, for instance, sure.</p><p></p><p>Part of it is just that D&D has a long history of randomly assembled PC parties taking fairly arbitrary quests from complete strangers for money - it was just a generic way of getting to the good part: the dungeon. </p><p></p><p>Part of it is also how much the game rewards treasure vs 'rewarding' (or even punishing) moral/ethical behavior. In 1e, you got exp for acquiring gp, you got penalized for violating your alignment. In 2e the former was at least optional. In 3e, acquiring as much treasure as possible, particularly just the right magic items for your build, made you much more powerful, and, though there was a guideline for expected wealth/level, it was just a guideline, not an expectation, you still had to make getting the goods a priority in most campaigns, morality OTOH, mainly determined the name of the spell that did damage to your enemies without damaging your similiarly-aligned allies (Holy Smite vs Unholy Blight, for instance). </p><p></p><p>Similarly, in 1e or 2e, your character started out pretty fragile and you might go through several of them before getting one safely to 3rd or 5th level and finally getting some durability. That taught players to put survival before ethics or morality.</p><p></p><p>In 5e, alignment is less tightly coupled to mechanical effects, so you aren't as penalized for picking a more restrictive-seeming 'good guy' alignment, but magic items are potentially very potent, making you literally 'just better' than without them, and there's no expectation of getting them as a matter of course, so you need to make such acquisitiveness a priority - also low level characters are back to being very fragile, encouraging survival-first thinking over altruistic/heroic. On balance, that's very much like traditional D&D.</p><p></p><p>I'd generally expect players to not be too picky about missions, but it really depends on the player. The game may encourage a mercenary or survivalist attitude, a little, in it's mechanics and traditions, but the DM is free to change those mechanics, and players are free to buck those traditions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6632957, member: 996"] Yes, though not often in most editions of D&D. In Hero System, for instance, sure. Part of it is just that D&D has a long history of randomly assembled PC parties taking fairly arbitrary quests from complete strangers for money - it was just a generic way of getting to the good part: the dungeon. Part of it is also how much the game rewards treasure vs 'rewarding' (or even punishing) moral/ethical behavior. In 1e, you got exp for acquiring gp, you got penalized for violating your alignment. In 2e the former was at least optional. In 3e, acquiring as much treasure as possible, particularly just the right magic items for your build, made you much more powerful, and, though there was a guideline for expected wealth/level, it was just a guideline, not an expectation, you still had to make getting the goods a priority in most campaigns, morality OTOH, mainly determined the name of the spell that did damage to your enemies without damaging your similiarly-aligned allies (Holy Smite vs Unholy Blight, for instance). Similarly, in 1e or 2e, your character started out pretty fragile and you might go through several of them before getting one safely to 3rd or 5th level and finally getting some durability. That taught players to put survival before ethics or morality. In 5e, alignment is less tightly coupled to mechanical effects, so you aren't as penalized for picking a more restrictive-seeming 'good guy' alignment, but magic items are potentially very potent, making you literally 'just better' than without them, and there's no expectation of getting them as a matter of course, so you need to make such acquisitiveness a priority - also low level characters are back to being very fragile, encouraging survival-first thinking over altruistic/heroic. On balance, that's very much like traditional D&D. I'd generally expect players to not be too picky about missions, but it really depends on the player. The game may encourage a mercenary or survivalist attitude, a little, in it's mechanics and traditions, but the DM is free to change those mechanics, and players are free to buck those traditions. [/QUOTE]
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