14 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

But what you’re seeing as a “problem” is not really an inherent in problem with the system itself. Just the opposite. It was the solution to one of the biggest problems with the previous systems. That random element is a deliberate feature of the Morality system and, if removed, would result in the same problem the old systems had: a punitive Darkside Point accumulation that guarantees a decrease in Morality for even the slightest infraction, basically ensuring a character falling to the Dark Side unless he or she is a perfect “boyscout”/“girlscout” and absolute paragon of virtue.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this point then. A random element does need to be added I do agree but it could have been done way better so it didn't feel so arbitrary or such a pain on the GMs or the Players. The system's flaw is that the randomness makes it very swingy and highly unpredictable. In MOST play sessions it should work as intended because cumulative die rolls fall around a bell curve, but in the case of our campaign it is very swingy just because every now and again that will happen by randomness alone and one person is getting lots of high numbers when he feels he doesn't deserve them and I'm getting a lot of low numbers when I don't feel I don't deserve them. The numbers are mismatched from our character's actions The randomness needs to be able to be played around, mitigated (and not just a binary do or do not style especially when i'm trying to play a force wizard type character, I understand the destiny point and strain cost, that feels great to play with but the conflict becomes burdensome to even spend one of them out of the risk of getting that really low die roll). or dealt with if you are going to anchor a somewhat crucial part of a character to a random die roll. That is just good game design when it comes to making a system feel rewarding or fun to play. I'm trying really hard to understand the system, i really am but as I peruse the forums i usually get the same responses to the morality problem rather than insightful ways of how to get the most out of the system without requiring huge amounts of work from the GM or players.

I guess you could say our group found the edge case that the morality system doesn't seem to work for.

Thanks for listening to my venting, I hope you took none of this personally. I will continue to look out for other solutions though.

It’s one D10, that’s not that much of a swing factor. You were just unlucky and your friend got lucky. The only other cause could be the particular die each of you used. In my experience, I have found that individual dice tend to roll consistently high or low on average. You might be using a die that tends to roll low and your friend might have a die that tends to roll high. It happens. It’s not the fault of the system.

Individually perhaps not, BUT it can be over subsequent die rolls, and we all use the Same die that belongs to the GM so it isn't the dice. As i said my group probably found the edge case where the system breaks down.

Except it’s not the system breaking down. It’s working exactly as intended. The “problem” is simply your respective rolls not being what you wanted. You were unlucky he was lucky. It’s that simple. It’s not a flaw in the Morality system.

We can agree to disagree on that point. I'd also like to remark that intended doesn't mean "good" but that can be subjective based on play styles.

1 minute ago, Earl_of_Madness said:

We can agree to disagree on that point. I'd also like to remark that intended doesn't mean "good"

Yes, it is good. The system works and works well. You would be hard pressed to find a better one. It is the best “light side/Dark Side” mechanic any iteration of the SW RPG has had to date.

That is your opinion, You can have your own opinion. I'm glad you enjoy the system. Please understand that i don't and the rest of my group doesn't either. What seems like a feature to you is a flaw to me. Perhaps we come from different backgrounds of games and RPGs and how our groups want them to play. If you don't have solutions to the problem my group is facing i'm done talking about it. I disagree, please drop this, I'm going to look for other solutions. That is what I want, I'm not here to debate the nitty details of the system, I just want solutions that will work for my group so we can have a good time. Just telling me to deal with it isn't really helpful.

So for the Morality roll, having 5 Conflict per session you're at a 60% chance to not lose any Morality. (because you can roll 5-10 on the die and either stay even or gain Morality). Yes there will still be 40% chance you lose Morality. If you can't take that chance then do as much as you can to mitigate being awarded Conflict. Never start a fight. Never allow great evils to happen in front of you without trying to prevent it. Be heroic.

But yeah the system is designed specifically that the more Conflict you are awarded, the more likely you will lose Morality. There should be some sessions here and there where you never gain Conflict but are still allowed a Morality roll because you had the potential to gain Conflict but didn't.

Now if you're trying to go dark, don't stop at 5 Conflict a session because you are weighted towards not losing Morality. Steal things from people who need them, kick puppies, vandalize government property, murder innocents.

Star Wars has a very black-and-white morality regarding Force Sensitives. You're either good (albeit not perfect and can make mistakes) or you're so evil that you only wear black, have anger tantrums and choke your subordinates. Follow that kind of morality and you'll head to the Light or the Dark fairly easily.

Earl_of_madness. House rule to fix your issue. One player rolls the D10 (or GM does), and that affects all characters affected by Morality.

@Earl_of_Madness

Alternatively, as noted before, half Morality gains, but full losses. So if you have 3 conflict and roll a 5, you gain 1 Morality, but if you have 7 conflict and roll a 5, you lose 2. It'll slow everyone on the way to Paragon and make sure that one session of bad actions combined with a bad die roll isn't negated by one session of bad actions with a good die roll.

Or just change die size to a smaller one.

I've wondered about representing the difficulty of becoming a paragon or coming back from the dark side but changing dice size as follows:

Current morality:

1-10 or 91-100 : Use D4

11-20 or 81-90 : Use D6

21-30 or 71-80 : Use D8

31-70 : Use D10

Easiest solution I have found is to start all force characters with 5 conflict per session. Use ACTIVE acts of avoiding conflict (non-lethal encounter resolution) to decrease conflict, and use kill/aggressive tactics to gain conflict.

This way as long as the character is more or less neutral, they should hover around their starting morality after a number of sessions. However they do have the potential to drift, which would put pressure on them to try to restore their desired morality.

Works much better than the "I killed less than 5 people today, so odds are I'm getting 'gooder'" system in the book.

@Darzil , @Cifer , and @Silidus .

Thanks for your suggestions, i'll bring some of them up with my GM, I appreciate the help and your own personal thoughts.

also @emsquared thank you for your suggestions as well. Your suggestions were helpful and were some of the easiest fixes.

For myself I will be using the Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion Force rules and ignoring Morality. Having run a Force and Destiny campaign I found that the system really doesn't work without bombarding the characters with conflict causing choices, this doesn't mesh with my preference of story driven games and frankly was boring. Instead any player who does anything which could be construed as dark side will be told this is a dark side act and you will gain dark side points, these points will not be easy to get rid of.

1 hour ago, eldath said:

For myself I will be using the Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion Force rules and ignoring Morality. Having run a Force and Destiny campaign I found that the system really doesn't work without bombarding the characters with conflict causing choices, this doesn't mesh with my preference of story driven games and frankly was boring. Instead any player who does anything which could be construed as dark side will be told this is a dark side act and you will gain dark side points, these points will not be easy to get rid of.

So make the conflict choices story driven.

Or just ignore the Morality rules and try to run things in a way which works with my group without feeling the need to bombard the characters with conflict causing choices, story driven or not.

The following is an Optional Morality System designed by my gaming group which eliminates the random factor of rolling conflict. Instead, a characters actions result in Positive or Negative points which are applied directly to their current morality score.

Morality System options.docx

Do you really have to "bombard" them though? In my experience the majority of "Moral conflicts" they face are basic rpg "adventuring" choices.

'We're on a stealth mission, and we just blundered into a patrol. Do we gun them down before they can raise alarm (combat first = conflict)? Or try to talk?'

'We've got to get these Imperial data files. Do we take the easy route and steal a facility key from this janitor (stealing = conflict), or risk the holonet security and try to slice in?'

'We've infiltrated this high society Empire-supporter and arms manufacturer. They are about to execute a Rebel mole in their ranks, and we have to watch. Do we let them (Knowing inaction?), or do we try to bargain for his life and risk exposure?'

Lying? Coercion? Both super common.

Combine these low hanging fruits with Force Power checks where you show your PCs it's the easy path if they just accept that Dark pip...

And it's actually really easy to implement the Morality system.

The hardest part is "training" yourself as GM to identify these common everyday choices as Conflict choices.

Get buy-in from your players to help identify these choices, and it becomes easier.

36 minutes ago, emsquared said:

Lying? Coercion? Both super common.

True, though most conflict sources have a "unless you really need to" clause - lying is conflict-worthy if it's for personal gain while threatening with violence is okay to avert actual violence.

1 hour ago, Cifer said:

True, though most conflict sources have a "unless you really need to" clause - lying is conflict-worthy if it's for personal gain while threatening with violence is okay to avert actual violence.

I don't think that's quite the way the clause reads ...

If there is another way, and stealing lying or coercion is just the easier way, then the action is for personal gain.

That janitor you stole the keycard from? He loses his job the next day, and his family is soon homeless.

Just because you may have avoided combat by lying or coercing doesn't mean there wasn't another way to accomplish your goal (like avoiding any kind of encounter via stealth or slicing or climbing the walls and into the ventilation or...) and if there was, and lying and coercion was just easier, faster or less risk - that's personal gain.

The number of times these actions are taken in the direct benefit of another or avoid combat are few and far between.

The path to the Darkside with this mechanic is about easy power/success.

I didn't even mention "mixed-Groups", Fear checks, or something like a Sith Force Ghost, Sith holocrons, Dark nexii, and other appropriately Force-themed challenges and encounters that are probably gonna pop up with regularity in your FnD campaign, that are easy sources of conflict.

The Morality system does take more work than just ignoring it, or handling it narratively.

Bit if you get your players interested in it as a storytelling tool to be actively engaged (instead of as a whip to be avoided) by just talking to them about it, and train your brain just a little to identify the "low hanging fruit", it's really a powerful, fun and easy to implement mechanic by which players can explore the theme of "Jedi Morality".

3 hours ago, emsquared said:

Do you really have to "bombard" them though? In my experience the majority of "Moral conflicts" they face are basic rpg "adventuring" choices.

I found that my group easily played the Jedi stereotype and rocketed to 70+. When I mentioned this on the boards I was basically met with comments like

The problem is not system, its the play... a GM needs to implant moral choices, and players need to know when to "play to lose", and walk the fine line of conflicts.

The inference being that because my games tended to be more story based and quite a few sessions have gone past with little or no conflict gain, **** even when one of my party did something dark and cut down the unconscious bad guy lying in front of him he rolled so well that his morality loss was negligible even though didn't see it as an evil act.

So wait, is it that the way he is doing Morality is making it hard for you to realize your concept for your character? Also is the prospect of everyone being a paragon kind of devaluing it for you and thus stealing your thunder a bit?

9 hours ago, Archlyte said:

So wait, is it that the way he is doing Morality is making it hard for you to realize your concept for your character? Also is the prospect of everyone being a paragon kind of devaluing it for you and thus stealing your thunder a bit?

OK just to check, whose post were you responding to?

21 hours ago, eldath said:

I found that my group easily played the Jedi stereotype and rocketed to 70+.

I'm also confuseled.

The mechanic worked, and you're angry about that?

As for the PC murdering a defenseless enemy: the Force didn't care a lick that Luke nuked 1000s if not 10s of 1000s of bad guys on the Death Star, and you're upset that it didn't really care much about your PC Murdering 1 bad guy?

Sorry, I'm not seeing the problems here.

1 hour ago, emsquared said:

I'm also confuseled.

The mechanic worked, and you're angry about that?

As for the PC murdering a defenseless enemy: the Force didn't care a lick that Luke nuked 1000s if not 10s of 1000s of bad guys on the Death Star, and you're upset that it didn't really care much about your PC Murdering 1 bad guy?

Sorry, I'm not seeing the problems here.

No I am neither confused or angry. Both my players and myself dislike the rules because it is frankly dull if the players can sleepwalk to paragon status. We do not believe that the rules work as written, at least not for us. As to the character who murdered the bad guy, cutting down a defenceless opponent who is no threat is quite different from killing the crew of an enemy battle station before it destroys a planet and the people on it, not to mention the other worlds it would be have used on had the Death Star survived. As a result I am intending to use the Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion Force rules.