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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6044577" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks for the reply. I'm really sorry I can't XP it.Or - like you suggest - drop the assumption that it is the GM's job to define and police ingame morality.All this I agree with. I don't know if you read through any of the (long) recent posts on the thread, but in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/6042882-post864.html" target="_blank">this one</a> I described a paladin in my last camaign who rebelled against the heavens because they were engaged in cosmological double dealing which resulted in abandoning the innocent and the virtuous to an undeserved fate.I wholeheartedly agree that the GM predetermining the moral parameters, then having the player colour between the lines, is pointless and boring.This is interesting because it gives me a slightly different perspective on the issue (I haven't read the whole thread - ony the first page or two when it was originally posted, and the last few pages since it was necro-ed).I've seen posts coming from the direction you describe, but your gloss on that direction has made it much clearer to me: the idea is that if a player is free to shape his/her PC's own moral universe, than s/he is getting something for free. As if part of the "discipline" of playing an RPG is, as a player, subordinating your own moral and aesthetic judgements to those of the GM. In my view a very strange perspective to come from, but I think you're right that it's there.I find the whole idea of "unearned pleasure" in RPGing bizarre in and of itself, but this is a particularly bizarre instance of that general outlook. Particularly when you look at the intellectual and artistic effort in conjuring up interesting PCs, which is clearly greater than just turning up and playing an Aragorn clone, or otherwise colouring between the GM's lines.This is the only bit where I have a slightly different perspective from yours. Because the game is a fiction and not a history, if a player wants to project tournament chivalry onto the battlefield that is in my view his/her prerogative. Depending on the game's combat resolution system this may or may not be a mechanically effective strategy (4e is reasonably forgiving in respect of it, GURPs I would suspect not so much), but in at least some systems mechanical effectiveness is not always crucial for a player achieving his/her objectives in the game (eg maybe there are Fate Points earned for playing to character even at mechanical cost or the cost of losing a scene - Burning Wheel is an example).Anyway, thanks for a reply which was as thoughtful as I'd hoped for!</blockquote>

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