There's been a few discussions as to how the morality system works and various tweaks folks think it needs. I believe the system is fine, but can be tweaked depending on what flavor you want your game to have.

As it is, I think it lends towards folks becoming paragons, unless you have players willing to dip into dark side pips fairly regularly or you are constantly having big morale quandaries. Which is fine, some players don't want to worry ok much about the anguished fall to the dark..

I want to run a game where the dark side is tempting, but if a player just wants to be a force user and wield a lightsaber and beat up bad guys, they can without having to step on eggshells.. I know at least 2 of my players are looking forward to having an internal struggle with the darkside.

I don't like a lot of house rules, but here's my simple solution. If you believe your character is drawing on the darker emotions, fear, anger, etc.. when I give you strain from threat, you can ask to get conflict instead. Since strain is kinda the "battery" of this system, it fits, cause you are likely to not do it till you are strung out, exhausted, and at the end of your emotional rope.

Thoughts?

Possibly something that could make only trigger if the inflicted strain would have pushed you over your strain threshold. And it only works if the PC is fighting to not give in to the dark side. But I like it, although I can imagine there may be talents in the future that do something similar. Also the requirement to flip a Destiny Point could be a good way to balance it.

That's probably one of the better houserules I've seen on these boards in regards to conflict and Morality.

Granted, it depends on the players being wiling to engage you on a role-playing level and cite the times that their characters are drawing upon their darker emotions. But in your case, that doesn't sound like it's going to be a problem for the majority of the group.

I think it has potential. For my table, I would cap it at 10/session.

I think it has potential. For my table, I would cap it at 10/session.

Maybe not so much a hard cap as the GM not assigning more than one (maybe two) conflict per dice roll, and spending the threat at about a 50/50 ratio in terms of the character receiving strain or conflict.

I could see this becoming something of a trap for GMs as it might become too tempting to assign conflict instead of strain, especially if the PC has various means to either quickly recover strain or simply negate high amounts of strain damage in the first place. It's a similar trap as abilities like Spare Clip that negate a certain outcome of the dice (such as Despair to have a weapon run out of ammo) where the GM won't spend the Despair in that way for that character since it'd be "wasted."

A fair point Donovan, I will make sure to police myself and only use it when thematically appropriate. The idea is, that when it happens, the players all realize, **** is serious for their PC buddy. It doesn't always accompany other conflict gains, but often includes the potential for their to be some. Up till now I've been allowing stimpacks to regain conflict. A terrible idea I know, but I misinterpreted the original rules when we first started gaming and the oversight stuck. This is my first game w that corrected, and this should help take the sting outta that loss.

Flipping a Destiny point is a good idea. It's possible this ruling will conflict with future talents or force powers, but I will cross that bridge when we get there.

I probably won't hard cap it, tho both presented ideas sound good if you were to do so.. but I prefer to use GM fiat as opposed to hard and fast rules.. most my players will respect the spirit the rule is in.

Thanks for the feedback guys! Of folks got more, keep em coming.

I would be exceedingly wary of allowing players to take Conflict instead of Strain. Firstly Strain is supposed to be a cheap disposable/renewable resource - whereas Conflict though in essence is reset session to session, has a potential permanence to it.

There are many ways to take Conflict via role-playing - rewarding them with free Strain seems counter-productive.

In relation to tempting the players, with the darkside- this is precisely what the force dice is for when the player makes the roll to use his Force Power but rolls black dots....

Other gains from their thoughts and actions should be enough.

What you need to be careful of is the munchkins who want to go to the DS. This is the first SW RP where DS is not punished, and there are some benefits for the PC - not to mention 7/12 chance of getting focre points from the d12.

I would be exceedingly wary of allowing players to take Conflict instead of Strain. Firstly Strain is supposed to be a cheap disposable/renewable resource - whereas Conflict though in essence is reset session to session, has a potential permanence to it.

There are many ways to take Conflict via role-playing - rewarding them with free Strain seems counter-productive.

In relation to tempting the players, with the darkside- this is precisely what the force dice is for when the player makes the roll to use his Force Power but rolls black dots....

Other gains from their thoughts and actions should be enough.

What you need to be careful of is the munchkins who want to go to the DS. This is the first SW RP where DS is not punished, and there are some benefits for the PC - not to mention 7/12 chance of getting focre points from the d12.

Fortunately I am blessed with a minimum of munchkins in my troupe.

But to address some of those very concerns I was kicking around the idea of having narrative disadvantages to gaining to much conflict in a session. Aka, yellowish hue to the eyes, deformed wrinkled skin, pale complexion. Drawing way too much can affect personality, violent outbursts (ala Anakin murdering Padme) and other signs of dark side corruption. I will likely have someone playing a dark sider from the get go. They are working together against a mutual threat.. I was going to play up that his particular tradition of the dark side discourages diving full on in. The dark side is to be courted and used, but can consume even it's own practitioners.. if used with wild abandon.

I don't intend on it being made available every session, just thematically appropriate moments, specifically climax's to story arcs or when a character is obviously on the brink.

Dark Side are not necessarily evil, just more prone to strong emotional responses. It can be seen in some ways as the lesser of 2 evils, or the quickest root to success.

Example - an imperial officer is planning to execute 10 innocent civilians. A LS paragon may look to rescue the 10 civilians at great personal risk, where a DS paragon may deal directly with the source, ie the officer.

DS does not mean frothing berserker texas chainsaw massacre leatherface style person.

Look at Palpatine - no-one recognised him as an evil master sith lord darksider.