Morality and giving players Conflict

By RusakRakesh, in Game Masters

On 17/03/2017 at 9:32 AM, NicoDavout said:

Question about awarding Conflict points:

1) When a PC lies more than once in a scene (two Deception checks for something important for example), do I award twice or only once 1 Conflict?

2) If the PC's lies, from the question 1, lead to death of the guards (for example he lied to get info about the guards positions) caused by the associates of that PC, does the PC who lied receives additional Conflict as he is partly responsible for the guards death?

3) If a PC assaults a NPC and kills him, do I award 10 Conflict for murder or 5 for assasult and 10 for murder? In other words, do I use the highest possible penalty for the scene or I add all of them? I am always positive that I read somewhere that I use the highest only, but it can be my imagination from some other system :wacko: .

Given the fact that Anakin murdered the entire village of Tuskens and did not go over to the DS, I think it should be for the highest act in the entire scene. Otherwise, Anakin should get like 100+ Conflict and would be dark side guy immediately.

4) The PC are robbers, the guards catch them and assault. The PCs kill the guards. The guards assaulted them, but the PCs are the robbers and would not be assaulted if they did some honest work. The PC did not murder them, the guards were not defensless, but yet the guards are the good guys here, not the PCs. What Conflict do you award?

Thx!

1) 1 or 0. The force isn't a moral compass, it doesn't care about little white lies that don't hurt anyone. Unless the lie threatened great danger to the person, no.

2) No on the lying, but he might get conflict for inaction if they know where the guards are but don't make any attempt to stun them. Likewise it depends who those "guards" are (Imperial stormtroopers guarding prisoners or a nanovirus), because if those guys are assoicated with a great evil event thats about to occur no conflict would be rewarded; association to the dark side is a crime in it's own right to the force.

3) Depends on context, but I would apply murder for a entirely unprovoked attack. It may be lower depending on antagonist activities.

4) Probably murder. There are plenty of ways that the PC's could have avodied killing the guards, either guile like raid, a heist or just shooting on stun. If they just went in their guns blazing, then the suffering they caused would generate conflict.

On 18/3/2017 at 11:08 AM, SEApocalypse said:

Besides, if your sessions usually ends in the middle of the action, you should adjust your planning for the sessions and your encounter designs, because this is a bad habit as a GM. You want to avoid this usually, still in that case, just delay the roll of over their part of the adventure as suggested in the CRB.

The problem is that if I "take the players by a hand", things end more-less in the time I have planned, but if I let them free, they delay and extend session with a lot of useless overplanning and discussion about the possible dangers they can encounter. Not to mention that everything is decided in a committee...but that is for another topic :) ... although I do not want to say that "I am a perfect GM and they are lousy players".

From my experience so far, the game allows to increase Morality too fast, that is why I prefer to roll at the end of an adventure in which a PC has a chance to earn some amount of Conflict and have a important moral decision to make, rather then after each session.

For example, I think that Luke Skywalker in episode 6 should roll for his conflict at the end of the events on Tatooine (1st adventure) and at the funeral (2nd adventure), regardless of how many sessions it would take.

Any comment appreciated. Thank you.

Wow, some forum necromancy :)

Since now we are a year into the campaign, I just ask at the end of each session "do you think your character should get conflict for what happened today?"

There are some specific events I ask in the middle of the session "Do you think you should get conflict for that?"

1 hour ago, RusakRakesh said:

Since now we are a year into the campaign, I just ask at the end of each session "do you think your character should get conflict for what happened today?"

There are some specific events I ask in the middle of the session "Do you think you should get conflict for that?"

I had such situation with my second group, a PC participated in an attack on a moisture farm which was overrun by local thugs, they were thinking that the farm was attacked by them. They killed three of five thugs and forced two others to surrender, but then they learned that it was Sand People who really killed the farmers. I asked by force-user PC how he feels about it (he did not kill anyone, only disarmed one thug which was then killed by one of his friends)? He said that he feels bad about the whole situation, so I awarded him 1 conflict which represented his inner conflict, regrets, maybe anger that he was not cautious (which in fact is his moral strength).