Non-moral gaming? (i.e., shades of grey, not black & white)

[ArcOfCorinth]

I, too, run a shades of grey campaign with my college group.

When I'm home, I DM for my little brother and his friends. I run a strictly black and white campaign with few deities for them. They're all around nine years old so I make it simple but still require them to think.

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, things are working better now because the PCs figured out that a particular bad guy helped spark the war for her own personal sadistic desires. So they have a definite bad guy to fight, but they're trying to take her down out a personal sense of revenge, not for any heroic motives. They want to take her down because she sent her goons after them a couple times, and used them in her machinations, but really, the PCs couldn't care less about the rest of the war.

I can run with it, but I do wish a little that I could have more heroic PCs. Ah well. I've got a more light-hearted game to go back to back home.

It's just a little hard, at least with how the story has developed so far, to put the PCs in a situation where I could encourage/punish them to make them good instead of neutral. I don't really think I need to, but in light of the discussion about how D&D can teach lessons, I feel as if I should somehow encourage them to be more heroic.

In the next game, scheduled (eek!) three weeks from now, the PCs will probably end up either being captured by the bad guys, or fighting their way into the main bad guy's lair. She has a little show planned for them, and an offer.

There's one other NPC the PCs really have a grudge against, who they'd really like to take down -- Alcinous Marinus, a Seren Empire knight/magistrate who arrested the party, and who has been sending soldiers to try to track them down and kill them. Marinus thinks the PCs are working with the villain, but as far as the PCs know, Marinus just doesn't like them for various backstory reasons. It's a little more vicious of a rivalry than I'm expressing here, but I don't want to spend lots of times explaining it.

Hopefully I'll be able to let them see their own misunderstanding, and to realize that Marinus is a good guy too (though as flawed as they are). Or they might kill him, which will ultimately result in them being screwed over majorly.

 

[SableWyvern]

Were the players aware, ahead of time, the style of game that you wanted to run?

If I wanted a particularly heroic campaign, I would let the players now before they started making characters, and expect them to develop concepts in accordance with this plan.

Before any campaign, I always let the players know what range of options are open to them, and what I expect. Should all the PCs have a disposition that ensures they will get along with each other most of the time? Are they expected to be good, selfish or evil? Will the campaign be driven by metaplot or PC whim? How much input do the players have into the style that the campaign is going to be?

The more options your players have, the less ability you have to direct the style. That's not necessarily a good or a bad thing in and of itself, but it's something that both the players and the DM should be clear on before anything begins.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

In order to have heroes you need to give them something heroic to do.

Had Grendel not been terrorizing the Danes, Beowulf would probably have ended up as just another warrior-prince. He probably would have ruled well but nobody would have thought of him as heroic.

Similarly, if Bilbo hadn't gone with the dwarves, Frodo probably would have just been one of the big group of hobbits who stood with the ringbearer at the scouring of the shire.

If there are no burning buildings, firemen won't run into them to save peoples' lives.

If there our worst criminals were tax evaders, double parkers, and speeders, we wouldn't have television shows about the police.

Now you can have a different kind of heroism if you put battles in terms of my people versus their people. That's the heroism of the Norse sagas or perhaps the heroism of Sgt. York. (I don't think the Germans and Austrians we fought against in WWI were a particularly bad bunch).

Your party's composition precludes that possibility though. Since members have sympathies with both sides and neither side is clearly the bad guy (which might convince some people to switch sides--it's one thing to betray your people when they're Evil and trying to stamp out Good, it's entirely different if there's a level moral playing field), it's unlikely that the party as a whole will be willing to side with either.

Consequently, if you want the party to be interested in the war and to take a side, you'll have to make one of the sides Evil. (The other side needn't necessarily be good but it would help if you want a heroic rather than a dystopic feel to the game). Alternately, you could finish off the war and have Evil villains on both sides spring up in the aftermath--groups that won't quit fighting or that want to start the war again for their own reasons.

 

[S'mon]

Obviously a party with interests on both sides is unlikely to stick with one side or the other! You could have high-ups in the Roman-style empire recognise the usefulness of the PC group and try to bring them on board permanently as frontier fighters, a French/Indian War type thing; with promises to the tribal PCs of wealth and status in their (conquered) tribes. It seems less likely that the elven tribes would be hiring Imperial PCs, but maybe if the PCs won't align with the empire, the empire will seek to crush them, forcing them to take the other side. Either way you have a very messy, real world sort of campaign, a long way from 'kill the evil orcs'.

 

[Sammael99]

RW,

I don't know how flexible your campaign is, but it seems to me that the major heroic action that could be taken by a company that has affiliations on both sides is against the war rather than for one or the other participant.

You could do this the hard way, ie. slowly set them up against both sides by witnessing massacres, terrorist actions, etc. from both sides, until they're so sick of it they'll want to stop the war. Then possibly they can hear about a cabal of serenian patricians who have the same aim and start working for them. This type of campaign would involve a lot of diplomacy and conspiracy and little combat, but if done well it could be very rewarding.

A less subtle and easier to manage approach would be to determine that the war itself is endangering all its participants. In another thread, someone had a campaign where the Earth was linked to Life to such an extent that the massive death of people endangered the Earth itself. I'm not saying that that should be the case IYC, but you see in which way this makes sides meaningless. I guess that's what I'm trying to say : in this scenario, you need to find a cause that makes war an equivalent danger to both sides. Then the characters need to convince the right people and maybe strategically take out a number of war-happy leaders, etc.

What do you think ?

 

[Capellan]

This discussion of good and evil and shades of grey reminds me of an idea I had for a Natural 20 book

To get back on topic, and to give away some of my idea, I think the first step in establishing a moral (or immoral) game is to establish exactly what is a moral act in your campaign.

For instance, it sounds like in your home game, there is a clear delineation of certain creatures or persons being definably Evil, and that fighting / killing Evil is definably Good. That's a perfectly good way to run a campaign, and it fact it's pretty much the assumed standard, per the PHB or DMG.

On the other hand, in your college game, you've muddied the waters a little (in fact, a lot). It's a lot harder to choose the side of Good, since it is much harder to identify - assuming that it can even exist in such a politically fraught environment. And when things get muddy, is it any surprise the PCs are less than squeaky clean?

Of course, this is also a perfectly good way to run a campaign. In fact, my long-running and nearly over 2nd Ed campaign has played on this issue a number of times: should the PCs do the expedient thing or the noble thing? Should they accept a little evil in exchange for help against a great Evil? That sort of thing. (My new 3E campaign, on the other hand, is far closer to the archetypical "killing Evil is a Good act" approach).

However, it is obvious that you would like to get them back onto a more altruistic path. How do you do this? Well, a number of people have given examples of things to do, but it basically comes down to one concept, IMO: in order to sway them back to the path of good, you need to offer them a chance to achieve something that is clearly and definably Good.

The goal you have already given them; find the bad guy and kill her; isn't at all bad, but in a morally grey world such as yours, it can't be seen as unarguably Good, either. I think that if you can find something that the group can clearly see as being the Right Thing To Do, they may well go for it. Becoming mercenaries sounds like it was a mechanism for avoiding hard choices. So try giving them an easy one, and see what happens.

As an example, maybe consider having them stumble across a group of refugees of all nations, displaced by the fighting, who have been forced to band together in a hostile wilderness area and who have begun to co-operate. Then threaten this group with some clearly evil (and totally non-political) danger, and see how they react. Give them a chance to get a real and satisfying victory for Good (perhaps with the establishment of a first harmonious village that includes members of all three nations), and you might be surprised how willing they are to risk themselves to do more such things.

Those are just some thoughts, anyway

 

[Victim]

In my experience, players in DnD often don't want to divide the group, because DnD is a team game.

Now apply this preference to a series of grayish decisions - the Romans or the elves. If each player made a strong choice, odds are that PCs would end up on different sides - if each side appears equal, you'll probably end up with about equal numbers supporting each side. Now what - the group just split in 2. That's bad.

To avoid splitting the group, players without a strong leader are going to settle for a comfortable middle ground that doesn't really alienate anyone. And, even if there is a player willing to take the lead, odds are someone will opposed to whatever that guy does, because he doesn't like that guy deciding for everyone.

 

[Fenes 2]

I have 2 campaigns. One is a more black-and-white campaign, but with ample shades of gray, set in Cormyr of the FR. It has some evident "bad guys" - evil churches and kults, some outstanding "good guys" - PC paladin, some good churches, and a big amount of neutral/shaded groups (governments, noble families, merchant houses, parts of the underworld etc.). The party battles the church of Shar, pirates, slavers, murderers and monsters and some of the PCs meddle in the underworld.

The other campaign is shades of gray. It is set in a modified Unther/Mulhorand. The PCs are in the employ of a at best neutral church with some real dark sides (led by an evil priestess), fighting against the enemies of the church, the country, personal enemies and the monster of the week. One PC is a priestess of that temple, one a drug-using assassin, and the rest is more or less tagging along. They keep slaves (and recently foiled the attempts of a NPC-adventuring group led by a paladin trying to free one of their members that has been enslaved) and have no qualms about using underhanded methods to achieve their goals. On the other hand, they oppose the Red Wizards of Thay and other evil kults and do not go out of their way to hurt others, often choosing a course of action that does harm the least amount of innocents.

The key in both campaigns is that I have the groups take sides, made it clear which side the group was on, and provided enough reasons for all PCs to at least not oppose the goals of the group.

 

[Buttercup]

I love throwing moral dilemmas at my players. Recently, my players were asked by different NPCs to do two things; 1) free some lizard people slaves, and 2) shut down an illegal drug operation. Simple, black & white morality, you say? Nope. The drug is highly addictive, and if you stop taking it, you will die. All the slaves were addicted.

So the players solved the problem by destroying the drug operation, but they kept a whole wagon full of the drug. They freed 60 slaves, and returned them to their people with a lifetime supply of the drug. Of course, those 60 weren't all of the slaves, so some certainly will die. But I think they handled the dilemma quite well. And incidently got paid handsomely by both sides.

Anyway, Ranger, I submit to you that your PCs have handled the moral dilemma you threw at them quite well. They have come to value their loyalty to each other more than their loyalty to their home countries. I don't think it means they have no morality, just that they have redefined it. I'll bet there are many ways you could milk their new focus.