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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
"Narrativist" 9-point alignment
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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6643575" data-attributes="member: 177"><p>I think that relaxed approach is based on two things:</p><p></p><p>1) We are talking about PCs, not nations - while high level PCs are capable of great destruction, they tend to stay *highly* focused, and keep collateral damage to a minimum. Wars kill and displace people by the thousands and tens of thousands, PCs generally act specifically to *avoid* mass deaths.</p><p></p><p>2) Up through 3e, we were talking about PCs who could *detect* evil, and the state was largely inherent to entire easily-recognized groups (basically, the enemy is usually in uniform of a creature that is "usually evil") such that discerning a valid target was pretty easy.</p><p></p><p>Start talking about nations, and/or without a magical power behind alignment, and I don't think the loose approach remains very plausible. </p><p></p><p>In the real world, where our leaders are not really so stuck on being textbook-good, we have things like Shakespeare's <em>Henry V</em>, in which the author takes great pains to try to divest the king of moral responsibility ("Every subject's duty's to the king, but every subject's soul is his own.") - and who is Harry really trying to convince, there? And ultimately they have to use an atrocity by the French to really justify the fight. You figure somehow it is plausible that people in the fantasy world are going to elide over the question?</p><p></p><p>So, while this may all work for your players, I am unconvinced this is a direction players in general would follow. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Except that you don't get to decide which moral questions the *players* choose to consider. Stuck in a war scenario, with characters apt to become powerful enough to sway the overall course of history... they are pretty apt to question the morality of the war itself, and whether they need to intervene in that. This territory has already been covered by Babylon 5 - the Vorlons are Law, the Shadows are Chaos. The main characters sought a way to reject *both* the law and chaos sides, and kick them both out as being immoral and non-constructive.</p><p></p><p>One path to making it work is to limit the PCs such that bucking the system is untenable. For example, if you play E6, you can very easily set it up so that the PCs have no legitimate chance to impact the course of the war. The war becomes an environment, and nobody questions the moral status of a hurricane.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 6643575, member: 177"] I think that relaxed approach is based on two things: 1) We are talking about PCs, not nations - while high level PCs are capable of great destruction, they tend to stay *highly* focused, and keep collateral damage to a minimum. Wars kill and displace people by the thousands and tens of thousands, PCs generally act specifically to *avoid* mass deaths. 2) Up through 3e, we were talking about PCs who could *detect* evil, and the state was largely inherent to entire easily-recognized groups (basically, the enemy is usually in uniform of a creature that is "usually evil") such that discerning a valid target was pretty easy. Start talking about nations, and/or without a magical power behind alignment, and I don't think the loose approach remains very plausible. In the real world, where our leaders are not really so stuck on being textbook-good, we have things like Shakespeare's [i]Henry V[/i], in which the author takes great pains to try to divest the king of moral responsibility ("Every subject's duty's to the king, but every subject's soul is his own.") - and who is Harry really trying to convince, there? And ultimately they have to use an atrocity by the French to really justify the fight. You figure somehow it is plausible that people in the fantasy world are going to elide over the question? So, while this may all work for your players, I am unconvinced this is a direction players in general would follow. Except that you don't get to decide which moral questions the *players* choose to consider. Stuck in a war scenario, with characters apt to become powerful enough to sway the overall course of history... they are pretty apt to question the morality of the war itself, and whether they need to intervene in that. This territory has already been covered by Babylon 5 - the Vorlons are Law, the Shadows are Chaos. The main characters sought a way to reject *both* the law and chaos sides, and kick them both out as being immoral and non-constructive. One path to making it work is to limit the PCs such that bucking the system is untenable. For example, if you play E6, you can very easily set it up so that the PCs have no legitimate chance to impact the course of the war. The war becomes an environment, and nobody questions the moral status of a hurricane. [/QUOTE]
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