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

[mkletch]

It is in a shades of gray campaign that oyu see the best roleplaying. If your professed alignment makes your decisions for you, then you can 'hide' behind it and let the alignment definitions roleplay for you.

Our current game has alignments spread in an "L": NG, N, CN. Everybody has flexibility in how they approach problems and deal with threats, and how thei character background affects these decisions. Far too often, I've seen CG or LG become a boring stereotype, and to a lesser degree LN. Nobody really can find a consistent way to handle LE, either.

No, I'm not a chaotic person (maybe a little), and my problem is not with Lawful characters. Rather, those that want their decisions made for them often gravitate toward Law, since the perceived 'structure' can do the roleplaying for them. I've seen this over the last 15 years or so.

Take your LG or LN character, put them in a situation where the laws and customs are strange or possibly offensive to the character. See what comes out of this trial: either an unhappy powergamer or a better roleplayer in my experience.

-Fletch!

 

[ShawnLStroud]

They felt no moral obligations to either side, so they turned from being a good party into a neutral one.

I'm trying to get them back to fighting some prominent bad guys, but I wonder if others have faced similar problems and might have suggestions for how to give PCs moral dilemmas, without encouraging them to give up their morality all together.

Bear in mind that morality isn't always tied to a particular side.

You're playing with young adults. They've chosen to be mercenaries -- "problem solvers" for hire. If you'd like them to take a side, give them a good reason to do so. I'm fond of the NPC that consciously chooses to sacrifice the PCs in order to accomplish another goal. The PCs invariably live through the double-cross, then have a good reason to side with the opposite side of the NPC. Simple. Revenge IS a good reason to join a side.

You might like showing the PCs the consequences of the "bad guys" winning the current conflict. Use graphic, horrid events. What you're trying to do is set a tone, here -- one that points a finger down the road you'd like them to go. Don't go into too much graphic detail, but let your imagination loose. Remember the shots of Bosnia back in the 90s? Cambodia back in the 70s? Remember all the shots of sick and dying people in the African famines? Use those descriptions. Show the fact that ruthless people use terror in order to convince a larger citizenry to be placid. Make the players angry and uncomfortable, then hit them with a situation where they have to jump or die. Give them a situation with no planned exit and see what they do. Use their reactions and ideas to push the campaign down those alleys and paths that lead to your objective.

My current campaign started with the party being chained to a slave coffle. Over the course of two days, the party found out how terrible being the slave of creatures that consider you less than an animal can be. They witnessed casual killings, rough orc "justice" and how human chattel are used for recreation (orc males are into sharing their joy) Then, they found out that the orcs weren't even the real problem.

Now, they're being pointed at the real problem, and they 1) are terrified and 2) wanna take those suckers! That's where you want your players.

Good luck, RangerWickett -- let us know how it turns out.

 

[Bryan Vining]

I have a solution...

BTW, I do not get turned on by moral ambiguity in RPGs. I get quite enough of it in real life. However, I recognize that it is an aspect of reality some people enjoy modeling in their RPGs - just not my cup of tea.

Anyway, if we're reading you right here, you want heroic PCs. Since you've set up a dynamic amongst the party members such that they each have a reason to distrust/dislike the others, you can only inspire them to heroism by developing a situation that is larger than their disagreements. That is going to be difficult to do if you are unwilling to have something be an undeniable evil. Allow me to point out that you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can create an absolute evil for your party to deal with without removing the elements of moral ambiguity that are there. Just make the evil something outside of the war. The conflict is still there, providing the tension and cultural clash, but you've given your party a reason to put aside their individual biases - saving their people from the larger threat. That threat should threaten every character.

The obvious sort of threat would be nasty, powerful outsiders, but I'm sure you can be more creative than that. Perhaps there is someone who is manipulating events to perpetuate the war for some selfish, personal reason (profiteering comes to mind, but is a little bland). Maybe the so-called reasons for the war are lies put out by this person/creature. Imagine your party's reaction when they discover that, and their subsequent consternation when they realize how difficult it is going to be to convince any one else of what they've learned. Anyway, that's one way you could do it, but you will probably think of something that suits you better.

Cheers!

 

[barsoomcore]

Hey RW:

My campaign is completely amoral, without any reference to alignment at all. Nothing is good or evil or chaotic or lawful.

I've run into the same problem as you, where the party doesn't seem to have strong reasons to stick together and fight some heroic fight. I've taken a couple of approaches.

Give them nasty, ruthless NPC enemies who attract the PC's utter hatred. I've had great success in getting them riled up at some unpleasant sorcerer or scary vampire child. It gets even more fun when an NPC they've come to hate suddenly turns out to need their help.

Get the players on your side. A little out-of-game discussion can do wonders. I assume your players are smart enough to figure out that they NEED to stay together just to keep the campaign managable, so encourage them to come up with in-character reasons for them to do so.

Put their personal priorities in jeopardy. Most people value their families or their hometowns more than the empire to which they belong. Get them defending each other's homes and they'll start feeling more like heroes.

Put THEM in danger. Give them big, scary enemies who want them dead. Who show up at inopportune moments to cackle in approved bad-guy fashion and unleash six kinds of whoop-ash on them. A bad guy who wants to kill them BEFORE he conquers the world can force the most amoral party into grand heroics, even if it's just to save their own skins. There's lots of great stories in that notion.

I have great fun without morals. And it's easier for me to believe in my NPCs and play them to the hilt when I don't have to come up with some definition of "evil" that doesn't seem completely insane to me.

 

[Mallus]

Shake things up a bit...

Maybe you could give your group a disaster to deal with; something that radically disrupts the society they're in. A disastrous drought {natural or otherwise} that leads to famine or a plague {again, natural or otherwise}. I'd stay away from an obvious Big Bad --that's getting tired.

Any situtation that breeds dramatic stories will do. Take the plague example. Cities, villages full of the sick and dying. Power structures are shaken up. People maneuver for advantages that previuously didn't exist. Perhaps wars begin as the plague spreads unevenly across national borders. A church rises to aid the sick, or launches a pogrom against unbelievers who they cynically use as scapegoats. There is need for those who'll compassionately help, or those who'll use an iron fist to keep order in the chaos.

Yeah, I like that. A completely morally neutral cataclysm {weather, disease, magical accident} which creates a host of moral struggles... How 'bout that. Perhaps its is just the work of a Big Bad... but keep that well out sight for a while...

Keeping your setting dynamic and unpredictable should pull the players in. Putting them in danger will keep them together.

Just rock the kingdom a little. I'll bet that works.

 

[barsoomcore]

Re: Shake things up a bit...

Just rock the kingdom a little.

The DM, he don't like it. Rock the kingdom. Rock the kingdom.
The DM, he don't like it. Rock the kingdom. Rock the kingdom.

 

[Mallus]

Re: Re: Shake things up a bit...

The DM, he don't like it. Rock the kingdom. Rock the kingdom.

Just to let you know, I've already called out my jet fighters...

I'd make with the duck & covering, if you catch my drift.