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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7815616" data-attributes="member: 4937">Even if I agree with you, this is Session Zero stuff. Once both sides have a clear understanding and the code is defined, the player no longer is the arbiter of whether it's being kept.I've got a Paladin and a Shaman in my current campaign that I'm running. Both have to live according to a code. Both had that code outlined in Session Zero. The Shaman actually does get to create their own code in my game, but once the bargain is made, I'm pretty much - in my capacity as the spirits that the Shaman is bargaining with - the one that decides if the bargain is being kept. This isn't a hypothetical for me.The fundamental problem with logic here is you assume no player would want to explore having to live up to an externally reviewable moral code as a thing of interest in and of itself, and what players are really interested in is mechanical advantages and that they'd only impose some code on themselves in exchange for some sweet mechanical advantage. All your logic makes the assumption that this is imposed unwilling on the player as some sort of handicap or punishment that they are enduring and it's not in fact part of the fun, because you just assume everyone would want to maximize their own freedom of action and maximize their mechanical advantages. Have you ever considered that having your roleplay constrained by a moral code is a reason people want to play a Paladin and not something that they are all the time trying to rules lawyer their way out of? Have you ever considered that people might not consider it offensive to live a life where they assume that some higher power knows better and is wiser than they are, or that even if they don't in real life believe that they might at least want to explore that? Why are assuming that the aesthetic of play that is going on here has something to do with needing to have mechanical compensation for restrictions on how you play the character? Because that argument makes assumptions about why the game is fun, and leads to dysfunctional play where the paladin is all the time trying to break the spirit of the code that they are keeping.The thing is that it seems like you offended by the idea that person's actions might be constrained by something other than their own volition. And while that is an interesting philosophical position, it's not one that in the context of the game we have to hold up as absolutely true.What I owe the player is rich enjoyable story, which is why you might notice that my focus on this has always been to discuss with the player not what has just happened, but what happens next. If a player says, "I want to play a character who is bound in the service of a deity and is trying to live out a moral code as some of moral paragon.", what I owe him is that experience he says he wants.Everyone is familiar with the rule, "No evil characters.", enforced in the social contract of some games for various reasons, including that the players are morally offended by exploration of evil in play. What we are also learning is that there are some groups with a social contract, "No lawful characters", because they are morally offended by exploration of lawfulness in play. (Yes, I understand that in 5e, as in my own game, there are 'oaths' for 'paladins' which allow you to play a non-lawful Paladin, but I don't want to also get into an argument what a non-lawful 'oath' would look like, and in any event oath taking is a rather lawful activity.)</blockquote>

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