On 2/9/2017 at 0:23 AM, Kael said:

I've always hated this kind of response about the Morality system because I see it as a failure of the GM that he is letting a character get away with killing a child once per year in the first place and not having other repercussions crop up. I also see it as a failure of the player as it is highly inconsistent to play a character that just randomly kills a child once per year. The character you describe is unrealistic in application and as such any such game where you have a character that ritualistically kills a child once a year but is somehow at 100 Morality is really adding up in a way that real people work.

The system is flawed because it doesn't serve as an effective tool for the GM to introduce consequences. The whole point of having a morality or karma system in a game is that the universe keeps score even you got away with your crime, but in this game it's easier to get into the clear with your morality score than it is to deal with prosecution, and that defeats the whole point.

Compare it to a system like Humanity in Vampire: The Masquerade. That's a system that truly exists to introduce a consequence to causing chaos. Vampire contains a very similar thematic aspect of persecution as Force & Destiny in that vampires need to stay hidden and will kill their own if they feel like they are risking exposure too much. It also contains a much more effective system for ensuring that players stick to some form of moral code though. Losing a point of humanity is a big deal, and the less humanity you have the easier it becomes to lose more of it, because every Vampire in the game has a dual nature, with their "dark side", the Beast, being entirely outside of the control of the player and always able to cause more carnage that the player has to live with if they don't keep the Beast under control. Compared to the F&D system it's much more of a struggle, and even evil characters have to grapple with their humanity in Vampire, by adopting a moral code that allows them to not become a mindless monster.

I also don't think it's a failure of the player either if they are playing a character that hides their evil nature from the world. Of course killing a child randomly makes no sense, but what if it's, let's say, a dark sider who uses Harm once a year to suck someone's life out to stay young forever?

What if they don't personally kill people at all, but just decide to save their company a few credits by packaging starblossom jam in mildly carcinogenic duraplast? If that company ships to several planets and serves billions of people they might be indirectly responsible for hundreds of deaths every year but nobody will really be able to pinpoint that one decision as the reason, and even the character responsible wouldn't be aware of the deaths it caused. You'd award some conflict for making a decision like that, but conflict has an entirely temporary nature, even if that decision persists for years, claiming more victims left and right.

Conversely to Aetrion, I've found the Morality/Conflict system to be a very effective tool as a GM to get across that as a Force user you're being held to a higher standard of accountability with one's actions, provided the player isn't angling to play a sociopathic murderer, in which case he's not going to care about any sort of karma meter no matter how you skin it.

Plus, strain threshold tends to be a lot more valuable to a PC than a couple extra wounds; I use Obligation in my FaD campaign in addition to Morality, and the two Jedi-type PCs absolutely dread it when someone's Obligation gets triggered, especially when it's theirs since that means less strain for them to use, either for extra maneuvers or more importantly to fuel their Parry and Reflect talents. So go too dark, and not only are you giving the GM an extra dark side Destiny Point at the start of each session, but you take a permanent hit to your strain threshold. And since you're stuck using dark side pips (which still give you Conflict for using even if you're not taking strain), that's an increased likelihood of slipping further down the Morality track.

Of course, this requires the GM to be on the ball and assigning Conflict when the PCs do things that warrant it, and to also not let players try to weasel their way out of Conflict, an issue that was endemic of the dark side scores used by WEG and WotC in their Star Wars games. The Force has a pretty strict measuring stick for what's good and what's evil; the more severe the act, the greater the Conflict generated. Killing a foe that's been trying to kill you in combat is fine (you're acting in self defense of your life), but killing that some foe when he's unconscious and at your mercy is Capital-M Murder. Torture someone for information ala Liam Neeson in Taken? Say hello to plenty of Conflict, especially if you leave the guy to die in excruciating pain afterwards. Shoot first at a couple of random bounty hunters that might be after one of your allies? Again, Conflict for starting a fight without seeking other means to defuse the situation. If the GM isn't willing to put in the effort to employ Morality and assign Conflict, it's not that much different from the GM not being willing to put in the effort to come up with an engaging story and instead just having the players sit around and randomly rolling dice.

And I've seen the various karma meters from White Wolf's games be literally gamed to hell and back, especially Vampire's Humanity track, so I wouldn't hold those up as any sort of paragon of how a karma system should be implemented, since a lot of players use those as "how much of a jack@$$ can my character be before it gets problematic?" White Wolf may have been one of the major companies to have made the big step back from focusing on combat in RPGs, but their games were riddled with all sorts of flaws that got excused in the name of angst-ridden "role-playing!"

21 hours ago, Aetrion said:

The system is flawed because it doesn't serve as an effective tool for the GM to introduce consequences. The whole point of having a morality or karma system in a game is that the universe keeps score even you got away with your crime, but in this game it's easier to get into the clear with your morality score than it is to deal with prosecution, and that defeats the whole point.

Consequences are the GM's job, not the systems. I mean I get that it lacks a mechanical bite, but having played WotC I think the mechanical bite was always a bad idea as it deterred characters from actually exploring their use of the light or dark side outside of players who wanted to go darksider all the way. With this system you are more free to move up and down without it screwing over your character. Soooooooo

Also ....seriously ..... consequences are the GM's job.

21 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Compare it to a system like Humanity in Vampire: The Masquerade. That's a system that truly exists to introduce a consequence to causing chaos.

That assumes the player cares. I've done enough VtM to know that Humanity does not handicap you if you don't really care about the pitfalls of having a low Humanity. Hell, in some ways, reducing your humanity made other aspects of role play easier. With no real cost to boot. And when you put in Paths and it becomes clear that the Humanity system only penalizes people who want to remain mostly human. Any other player that doesn't care can easily ignore the draw backs to low humanity.

Sooooo consequences mechanically speaking in VtM are more about what the GM does to make the drawbacks of a low humanity relevant to the game. Without the GM doing that there are no consequences and we arrive back to the same situation in F&D.

As a veteran WoD player I can run circles around the consequences for Humanity.

21 hours ago, Aetrion said:

I also don't think it's a failure of the player either if they are playing a character that hides their evil nature from the world. Of course killing a child randomly makes no sense, but what if it's, let's say, a dark sider who uses Harm once a year to suck someone's life out to stay young forever?

I find it unlikely that such a character is only doing that one yearly evil thing. But honestly, if the GM is going to allow a player to game the system like that then .... more power to him I guess. As a GM I'd never allow that to just fly with no real cost.

21 hours ago, Aetrion said:

What if they don't personally kill people at all, but just decide to save their company a few credits by packaging starblossom jam in mildly carcinogenic duraplast? If that company ships to several planets and serves billions of people they might be indirectly responsible for hundreds of deaths every year but nobody will really be able to pinpoint that one decision as the reason, and even the character responsible wouldn't be aware of the deaths it caused. You'd award some conflict for making a decision like that, but conflict has an entirely temporary nature, even if that decision persists for years, claiming more victims left and right.

4

Nothing in the rules that prevents me from having them start with a small amount of Conflict daily for their choice of allowing their company to do that. I'd also get creative and add in more consequences in the long run. If the player didn't know why he was collecting Conflict I'd allow him to investigate. If he gets stumped I'd run a story wherein it's revealed that the starblossom jam is killing folks.

Granted the entire example is a level of detail that I don't play Star Wars for. If I want to worry about cancer causing jam I'd pick up Mage and play a Technocrat.

You should always know why you're gaining Conflict. If you don't, then there is obviously no source of Conflict.

If I start up a trash incinerator and it kills some idiot that has crawled inside it, I don't get any Conflict if I never find out about the death.

3 hours ago, Kael said:

Consequences are the GM's job, not the systems.

Are you saying this specifically about the consequences of moral decisions? Because there are are of course several sub-systems that determine wounds and strain as a result of the PCs' actions, i.e. consequences.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

You should always know why you're gaining Conflict. If you don't, then there is obviously no source of Conflict.

To be fair the player likely knows he's selling cancer causing jam. I can't think of any reason why that detail would come up in relation to a character's morality if the player himself didn't somehow state that he was charging good money to give people cancer. I know I, as a GM, wouldn't just randomly have jam cause cancer unless it was a specific plot point to an adventure. Under that assumption, that the PC is aware of the cancer in the jam but not aware of how many people are dying from it, I would continue to hand out Conflict daily until they stopped making jam.

But I honestly can't think of anyway that example works without the player himself having made the active choice to sell jam that also serves up cancer. Unless you just have a bad GM.

Just now, Stan Fresh said:

Are you saying this specifically about the consequences of moral decisions? Because there are are of course several sub-systems that determine wounds and strain as a result of the PCs' actions, i.e. consequences.

Obviously, moral decisions, as that is the entire basis of this discussion.

Well of course the player has to know that they are using substandard materials that are causing harm to people for it to cause conflict.

I don't see how saying that a system is a poor lever for the GM to use to introduce consequences into the game is the same as saying the GM isn't responsible for creating consequences. Of course the GM is ultimately responsible for any consequence in the game, but why can't the GM want to use a spectrum of morality that is mechanically integrated in the game to express those consequences in part? If you're playing D&D and you're constantly committing evil acts then having an alignment shift is part of the consequence of that.

The idea that you can play around low Humanity so the system doesn't matter is just silly. If you have to play around it then obviously it does matter. You have to do something to deal with it. For that matter, low Humanity isn't designed to make a character unplayable any more than low Morality is. The point is that in Vampire if you don't care at least a little bit you're trending down. In F&D on the other hand you're trending up unless you deliberately seek out conflict. The only thing you ever have to do to redeem yourself in this system is to just not do anything heinous for a few sessions.

As far as I'm concerned if the game mechanically tracks your morality that's because it's a game where some kind of karmic balance exists in the universe, and the universe keeps score even if nobody is looking. If that system is more easy to sidestep than whatever the GM cooks up to give weight to your actions then why have that system at all? The whole point of having a system that tracks good and evil mechanically is that if you've covered all your tracks and gotten away with murder the universe still knows what you did. If you can negate that fact by simply keeping a low profile for two sessions then the system just doesn't work.

For that matter, I've had people trying to play dark sided characters who found it impossible to push their morality low enough without committing wanton acts of evil that fell outside of what their character would have done. Like, if you played a force sensitive rebel operative who gets the job done even if there is a lot of collateral damage, and doesn't think twice about torturing or murdering for the cause that should be a dark sided character, but at the same time being in the rebel alliance they don't just randomly commit evil acts, it's very deliberate and has clear political motivations. If a player decides that's who they want to play then in every single session where there isn't a morally questionable decision that directly helps the rebels the player has to start manufacturing conflict deliberately to keep their character's morality where it should be.

In my experience with the system it simply doesn't present a clear spectrum of morality. All characters eventually end up at 100 or 0 and if the player or GM wants the system to actually place people somewhere in the middle they have to constantly try to deliberately manipulate their morality score as opposed to being a natural consequence of their actions.

9 hours ago, Kael said:

Obviously, moral decisions, as that is the entire basis of this discussion.

Okay. So why offer mechanical support for one kind of consequence, but not another, when both are very important to the source material, and the stories the game wants you to play?

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

I don't see how saying that a system is a poor lever for the GM to use to introduce consequences into the game is the same as saying the GM isn't responsible for creating consequences. Of course the GM is ultimately responsible for any consequence in the game, but why can't the GM want to use a spectrum of morality that is mechanically integrated in the game to express those consequences in part?

What I'm saying is the mechanical part of it matters less than the GM's ability to make consequences relevant. You don't need a mechanic to make consequences from moral choices relevant.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

If you're playing D&D and you're constantly committing evil acts then having an alignment shift is part of the consequence of that.

Hahaha. That only happens if your GM cares. The only time alignment seemed to matter in the decades of D&D that I've engaged in is when someone played a Cleric or a Paladin. Otherwise, I would have to say that D&D's alignment system had about as much mechanical bite for its morality system as F&D does.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

The idea that you can play around low Humanity so the system doesn't matter is just silly. If you have to play around it then obviously it does matter. You have to do something to deal with it. For that matter, low Humanity isn't designed to make a character unplayable any more than low Morality is.

You don't have to play around it, you just don't have to care about the consequences of having a low morality. Low morality only affected characters who cared enough to be remotely human. The moment the player stopped caring about the effect their actions had on their Humanity, the Humanity system falls apart as a system for keeping track or enforcing a moral code. Once you hit 4 or 5 you hit this sweet spot where there wasn't much that could be done to sink you lower anyway outside of some truly monster like things.

Despite all of Humanity's mechanical bite, it is very fragile in the face of a player who just doesn't care and is only as effect as the GM makes it. Which is about the same for F&D, minus all the extra book keeping.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

If that system is more easy to sidestep than whatever the GM cooks up to give weight to your actions then why have that system at all?

This statement works against your given example of Humanity.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

The only thing you ever have to do to redeem yourself in this system is to just not do anything heinous for a few sessions.

Take's a bit more than that.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

If you can negate that fact by simply keeping a low profile for two sessions then the system just doesn't work.

I could also easily do this in VtM simply by saving my XP and not doing anything to trigger a Humanity roll and then buying up ranks of lost Humanity. By the argument you've presented even your example of Humanity fails to meet your standard.

10 hours ago, Aetrion said:

In my experience with the system it simply doesn't present a clear spectrum of morality. All characters eventually end up at 100 or 0 and if the player or GM wants the system to actually place people somewhere in the middle they have to constantly try to deliberately manipulate their morality score as opposed to being a natural consequence of their actions.

Myself and others speak to a different experinces.

9 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Okay. So why offer mechanical support for one kind of consequence, but not another, when both are very important to the source material, and the stories the game wants you to play?

Is there a point to this line of questioning? There are very few systems that provide equal mechanics for all aspects. This is a rules light system. So some aspects are cruncher than others. Other rules aspects ultimately have no bearing on whether or not Morality should have more dice too it.

16 minutes ago, Kael said:

Is there a point to this line of questioning? There are very few systems that provide equal mechanics for all aspects. This is a rules light system. So some aspects are cruncher than others. Other rules aspects ultimately have no bearing on whether or not Morality should have more dice too it.

Of course there is; otherwise I wouldn't have asked the questions. No need to be confrontational.

If the system can deal with one type of consequence, there's no reason it couldn't deal with another. Just like you don't *need* a system to track injuries or exhaustion, you don't *need* one to track moral consequences. But they both add to the experience, unless the players or the GM try to wiggle out of it.

Both systems are there to help the GM with creating the story, and to enhance the experience for the players. If you have people at the table working against that, of course it won't work. But that's not a problem with the game, that's a problem with a player.

1 hour ago, Kael said:

What I'm saying is the mechanical part of it matters less than the GM's ability to make consequences relevant. You don't need a mechanic to make consequences from moral choices relevant.

Yes, you don't need a mechanic. Yes the GM is free to introduce more meaningful consequences. But this game HAS a mechanic, and the fact that other ways exist to put consequences in the game don't excuse how wishy washy weaksauce it is, especially given the fact that it manages whether or not a character is light or dark side.

It's annoying that characters who make no deliberate effort to be good or evil often end up at 100 just because they didn't take enough conflict to stay somewhere in the middle, and it's annoying that characters who are supposed to be dark sided sometimes have to do evil things just because the morality system imposes an evil quota on them so the game keeps considering them dark side.

It's annoying that the system is worthless as a spectrum of morality. It doesn't generate a number that gives you a relative position between saint and monster based on your actions. You're just either trending up or down and will eventually come to rest at one of the ends of the scale unless you or the GM try to deliberately balance it, which is hard to do given the random nature of the morality roll, not to mention there is no mechanical benefit for staying in the middle, even though that's the most difficult place to be.

It's annoying that a system that does such a poor job of actually representing morality and the lure of the dark side decides what side of the force your character ends up on.

6 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

Yes, you don't need a mechanic. Yes the GM is free to introduce more meaningful consequences. But this game HAS a mechanic, and the fact that other ways exist to put consequences in the game don't excuse how wishy washy weaksauce it is, especially given the fact that it manages whether or not a character is light or dark side.

I would hardly call it wishy washy weaksauce just because it's not as mechanical as you'd like.

7 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

It's annoying that characters who make no deliberate effort to be good or evil often end up at 100 just because they didn't take enough conflict to stay somewhere in the middle, and it's annoying that characters who are supposed to be dark sided sometimes have to do evil things just because the morality system imposes an evil quota on them so the game keeps considering them dark side.

I don't see that slow climb due to lack of effort being that common. I also question why the GM isn't making more Conflict worthy chances for the PC. As for remaining dark, merely the act of a rising Morality score doesn't make them no longer a dark side. It takes a fair amount of work to lose dark side paragon status. As someone has already outlined earlier in the thread when discussing redemption arcs.

10 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

It's annoying that the system is worthless as a spectrum of morality. It doesn't generate a number that gives you a relative position between saint and monster based on your actions. You're just either trending up or down and will eventually come to rest at one of the ends of the scale unless you or the GM try to deliberately balance it, which is hard to do given the random nature of the morality roll, not to mention there is no mechanical benefit for staying in the middle, even though that's the most difficult place to be.

I don't know, does there need to be a mechanical benefit for remaining in the middle? I tend to think not. As for it being worthless spectrum ...... that's only true if you view Morality as a constant, meant to be one thing or another as opposed to an ever shifting condition. This game takes the position that good and evil are releative terms and that people don't remain on one end of the spectrum or the other but travel back and forth as they make clearly good or evil choices.

13 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

It's annoying that a system that does such a poor job of actually representing morality and the lure of the dark side decides what side of the force your character ends up on

I don't know, having played under a lot of moral based systems I'd have to say this is one of the better ones at showing off how back and forth ones moral choices can be. I guess if you're looking for a mroe static measure of whether or not someone is good or evil this system fails and Humanity seems better (I noticed you ignroed how Humanity doesn't live up to your criteria). I suppose if you're not being challened with moral choices and actuall consequnces and doing the right thing being harder and easier then it's underwhelming.

A lot seems to depend on having a good GM and a more flexible view of moral standing.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Of course there is; otherwise I wouldn't have asked the questions. No need to be confrontational.

If the system can deal with one type of consequence, there's no reason it couldn't deal with another. Just like you don't *need* a system to track injuries or exhaustion, you don't *need* one to track moral consequences. But they both add to the experience, unless the players or the GM try to wiggle out of it.

Both systems are there to help the GM with creating the story, and to enhance the experience for the players. If you have people at the table working against that, of course it won't work. But that's not a problem with the game, that's a problem with a player.

Not being confrontational. I'm just waiting for you to make a real point. As I stated before, just because some parts of a system are crunchy doesn't mean all parts need to be crunchy. Some aspects of gaming will always generate more crunchy rules than other aspects. But this system attempts to be as light as it can be on rules. So just because we have a system for tracking injuries doesn't inherently mean that the system for tracking morality somehow needs something more.

Your point should stand on whether or not Morality as system does what it sets out to do, not whether or not tracking wounds has more rules than tracking Conflict.

I'd call this a medium crunch system, and something like Wushu rules light. Otherwise there's no differentiation between these classes of games.

The point is that your opposition to the Morality mechanics isn't founded on anything about the system or the game's design intent, as far as I can see. That it needs the GM and the players to buy into it isn't a mark against it.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

I'd call this a medium crunch system, and something like Wushu rules light. Otherwise there's no differentiation between these classes of games.

The point is that your opposition to the Morality mechanics isn't founded on anything about the system or the game's design intent, as far as I can see. That it needs the GM and the players to buy into it isn't a mark against it.

I'm not opposed to the Morality mechanics.

Just to pitch in; I don't think being "middle of the ground" should be rewarded at all; the "reward" is presumably staying alive over valuing your moral compass (e.g. likely any survivors of order 66 had to remain low) or using emotion to enhance otherwise unremarkable abilities that were never argumented by directed training. I think Grey Jedi are a load of crap as even originally it was used as a term of slander for those that didn't follow the direct guidelines of the Jedi Order, and those that preached the values of both light and darkness were usually corrupted individuals or secret sith anyway.

What being morally neutral should represent is that the character doesn't care about the people around him or is simply conflicted in not being able to do everything, they are putting their own safety above everyone else and has likely sacrificed a few connections over the years. while a paragon likely has developed abiltie's and a understanding of the force who has become strong enough, either in connections, lifestyle or his/her own merits. This doesn't mean trying to paladin their way through, but when it is time to act they will act decisively.