So, what the title says. Five or six players and one (possibly, but not likely, two) non-force using characters. What to do about Morality?

I'm not keen on using Obligation or Duty in this campaign, especially with it most likely only pertaining to one character. I really don't want to interrupt an awesome campaign about a band of plucky heroes on their way to save the galaxy because the pilot needs to pay his bills.

So, I'm left with two options...

A) Have the non-Jedi track Morality just as the Jedi do.

B) Ignore Morality.

Which do you prefer and why?

If you really don't want Obligation for these individuals then they get a Morality of 50 for the sake of character creation choices, but that number never changes unless they later become Force Sensitive. They have the benefit of doing whatever nasty things they want and making the rest of the party squirm, but they never see the benefits of having a morality. It will take a nice character development tool away from you and the player, but its by far the simplest solution.

Do not, i repeat, do not track Morality for a Non-Force user, its un balanced and has practically no effect on them anyway.

I really don't want to interrupt an awesome campaign about a band of plucky heroes on their way to save the galaxy because the pilot needs to pay his bills.

That's a curious statement, because that's precisely the plot of Episode 5.

Regardless, even if you don't want to use Obligation and Duty, you certainly shouldn't use Morality. There's no point tracking it for players with PCs that cannot actually be affected by the Conflict rules.

As an aside; Duty doesn't have to be to the Rebellion, it works perfectly well for a Para-Military group, a corporation, a tribe on an uncivilised world, The Empire or one of its sub groups (ISB or II?)and a Band of Jedi trying to rebuild the Jedi Order.

In your campaign it may not fit, and that's fine, but it is an option to give everyone a Duty to what ever works in the story.

I really don't want to interrupt an awesome campaign about a band of plucky heroes on their way to save the galaxy because the pilot needs to pay his bills.

That's a curious statement, because that's precisely the plot of Episode 5.

Regardless, even if you don't want to use Obligation and Duty, you certainly shouldn't use Morality. There's no point tracking it for players with PCs that cannot actually be affected by the Conflict rules.

Haha, exactly. If the smuggler says "Guys I've got to go pay off this debt or I'm a deadman" they would either go help him or let him go do that, either way great adventure hook, and lets the 'jedi' get caught up in some scum and villainy.

I find the biggest hurdle with Obligation or Duty is the randomness of it. After struggling with random duty in my AoR game, I have simply taken the chart for my party and make sure that we have a mission that alternates among 1 or more of the member's duty goal(s) when planning for them. When we has the smuggler join as their pilot I added her obligation into the rotation.

If you really don't want Obligation for these individuals then they get a Morality of 50 for the sake of character creation choices, but that number never changes unless they later become Force Sensitive. They have the benefit of doing whatever nasty things they want and making the rest of the party squirm, but they never see the benefits of having a morality. It will take a nice character development tool away from you and the player, but its by far the simplest solution.

Do not, i repeat, do not track Morality for a Non-Force user, its un balanced and has practically no effect on them anyway.

How could it possibly be unbalanced ?!?!? Really, it would just track the good/evil rating of the character, though I'm assuming he would just shoot up to LS Paragon right away. I was thinking of giving him the DP and Strain bonuses that the Paragon gets, give some mechanical incentive to work towards Paragon status. For the most part I was thinking of tracking it so he would at least be somewhat motivated to be a good guy. I really want to run a campaign about Good versus Evil, without Morality the non-force user can be as evil as they want without consequence.

I find the biggest hurdle with Obligation or Duty is the randomness of it. After struggling with random duty in my AoR game, I have simply taken the chart for my party and make sure that we have a mission that alternates among 1 or more of the member's duty goal(s) when planning for them. When we has the smuggler join as their pilot I added her obligation into the rotation.

Yeah, I probably won't ever use Obligation or Duty. I have handled the kinds of things they cover with narrative means for so long that it seems odd to assign mechanical values to them. I try to create a living world for the PCs to interact with, obligations and duties are just part and parcel of existing in a living world.

If you disallow the non-Force-sensitives from having the mechanical effects of being a LS Paragon or a Dark Sider, then you're probably okay.

Part of the concern comes in that part of what the rules figure as a steady source of Conflict will be that Force user PCs will be converting dark side pips on their Force dice into Force points to properly activate Force powers, especially in the early going when they're only rolling a single Force die. Without that source of Conflict, a PC is generally going to go up in Morality, making it easier to hit LS Paragon, thus getting the extra strain (which by itself is nice to have for just about any PC) a lot sooner than Force user PCs would, since the Force user has that extra source of "temptation."

If you disallow the non-Force-sensitives from having the mechanical effects of being a LS Paragon or a Dark Sider, then you're probably okay.

Part of the concern comes in that part of what the rules figure as a steady source of Conflict will be that Force user PCs will be converting dark side pips on their Force dice into Force points to properly activate Force powers, especially in the early going when they're only rolling a single Force die. Without that source of Conflict, a PC is generally going to go up in Morality, making it easier to hit LS Paragon, thus getting the extra strain (which by itself is nice to have for just about any PC) a lot sooner than Force user PCs would, since the Force user has that extra source of "temptation."

This. In the current system, in order to reach Paragon a Jedi doesn't just have to resist the urge to do bad things (or to fail to do good things), they also have to resist the desire to use those dark side pips to make their powers work. Without that, a non-Force Sensitive just has to be a decent person and suddenly they're backlit by a heavenly glow.

If you really don't want Obligation for these individuals then they get a Morality of 50 for the sake of character creation choices, but that number never changes unless they later become Force Sensitive. They have the benefit of doing whatever nasty things they want and making the rest of the party squirm, but they never see the benefits of having a morality. It will take a nice character development tool away from you and the player, but its by far the simplest solution.

Do not, i repeat, do not track Morality for a Non-Force user, its un balanced and has practically no effect on them anyway.

How could it possibly be unbalanced ?!?!? Really, it would just track the good/evil rating of the character, though I'm assuming he would just shoot up to LS Paragon right away. I was thinking of giving him the DP and Strain bonuses that the Paragon gets, give some mechanical incentive to work towards Paragon status. For the most part I was thinking of tracking it so he would at least be somewhat motivated to be a good guy. I really want to run a campaign about Good versus Evil, without Morality the non-force user can be as evil as they want without consequence.

Beaten too it by Dono! Mainly its unbalanced because they are not rolling Force Dice. I mean we never hear Yoda or Obi giving Han "Don't give in to your emotions, don't fall to the dark side"

Ill add that the biggest reason you don't want to track it is because then that PC CAN do whatever they want. Meanwhile the rest of the party have to either turn a blind eye and possibly gain conflict for not acting, or you get a bit of inter party banter and the non Force User ends up being good anyway. Basically you don't need Morality to guide their the decisions, the rest of the Party will do that for you! It will also provide you an extra way of putting conflicting situations in front of the Force Users, its a free tool in the GM's toolbox.

IF you decide your going to do this, give the PC a Morality, then perhaps change the dice they roll, a D6? they cant go up as quick, and they can fall very fast if not careful.

If you disallow the non-Force-sensitives from having the mechanical effects of being a LS Paragon or a Dark Sider, then you're probably okay.

Part of the concern comes in that part of what the rules figure as a steady source of Conflict will be that Force user PCs will be converting dark side pips on their Force dice into Force points to properly activate Force powers, especially in the early going when they're only rolling a single Force die. Without that source of Conflict, a PC is generally going to go up in Morality, making it easier to hit LS Paragon, thus getting the extra strain (which by itself is nice to have for just about any PC) a lot sooner than Force user PCs would, since the Force user has that extra source of "temptation."

If you disallow the non-Force-sensitives from having the mechanical effects of being a LS Paragon or a Dark Sider, then you're probably okay.

Part of the concern comes in that part of what the rules figure as a steady source of Conflict will be that Force user PCs will be converting dark side pips on their Force dice into Force points to properly activate Force powers, especially in the early going when they're only rolling a single Force die. Without that source of Conflict, a PC is generally going to go up in Morality, making it easier to hit LS Paragon, thus getting the extra strain (which by itself is nice to have for just about any PC) a lot sooner than Force user PCs would, since the Force user has that extra source of "temptation."

This. In the current system, in order to reach Paragon a Jedi doesn't just have to resist the urge to do bad things (or to fail to do good things), they also have to resist the desire to use those dark side pips to make their powers work. Without that, a non-Force Sensitive just has to be a decent person and suddenly they're backlit by a heavenly glow.

Yeah, I figured shooting up to Paragon ASAP would be a problem.

There is no roll in a session if there is no Conflict. The non-force user would only gain Conflict through narrative action. Do you think that enough sessions would pass without the non-force user rolling for Morality that it would slow the progress?

If you really don't want Obligation for these individuals then they get a Morality of 50 for the sake of character creation choices, but that number never changes unless they later become Force Sensitive. They have the benefit of doing whatever nasty things they want and making the rest of the party squirm, but they never see the benefits of having a morality. It will take a nice character development tool away from you and the player, but its by far the simplest solution.

Do not, i repeat, do not track Morality for a Non-Force user, its un balanced and has practically no effect on them anyway.

How could it possibly be unbalanced ?!?!? Really, it would just track the good/evil rating of the character, though I'm assuming he would just shoot up to LS Paragon right away. I was thinking of giving him the DP and Strain bonuses that the Paragon gets, give some mechanical incentive to work towards Paragon status. For the most part I was thinking of tracking it so he would at least be somewhat motivated to be a good guy. I really want to run a campaign about Good versus Evil, without Morality the non-force user can be as evil as they want without consequence.

Beaten too it by Dono! Mainly its unbalanced because they are not rolling Force Dice. I mean we never hear Yoda or Obi giving Han "Don't give in to your emotions, don't fall to the dark side"

Ill add that the biggest reason you don't want to track it is because then that PC CAN do whatever they want. Meanwhile the rest of the party have to either turn a blind eye and possibly gain conflict for not acting, or you get a bit of inter party banter and the non Force User ends up being good anyway. Basically you don't need Morality to guide their the decisions, the rest of the Party will do that for you! It will also provide you an extra way of putting conflicting situations in front of the Force Users, its a free tool in the GM's toolbox.

IF you decide your going to do this, give the PC a Morality, then perhaps change the dice they roll, a D6? they cant go up as quick, and they can fall very fast if not careful.

Yeah I like the idea of playing the "morally ambiguous" non-force user off against the Jedi, but I am worried it may lead to PvP conflict which is something that I do not wish to feature much in this campaign. What do they call it...four-color comics...black and white morality.

LOVE the D6! Helps slow progress, and makes up for not gaining Conflict from DS pips! STOLEN!!!!!

Glad you like the D6 idea, thought of it a while ago but doubt ill ever use it, let me know how it goes.

It probably comes down to a decision you make at the table with your players. Outline the different choices, lay it on the table, then ask them what kind of game they want to play. No one likes a PC who's difficult and annoying, so the Player would have to be on board with being a little shady but not murder hobo. The other Players would need to buy in as well, giving their blessing that having someone in the party who can do bad stuff is handy, but sometimes its going to give their PC a little grief. Like i said, don't make a decision based on what you think your group wants, instead ask them what they want.