15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Think of Senator Palpatine keeping his more dastardly actions in check for years yet never remotely leaving the dark sider zone of Morali5y.

Was he actually keeping them in check? Or did nobody ever just find out about them? I mean, he orchestrated a galaxy-wide war intentionally pushing factions to cause harm to themselves and to others. Pretty sure that falls under the "Your actions/inactions cause harm to others" on the Morality chart.

And apparently according to some of the Legacy stuff, he was busy doing things like Sith Alchemy on Anakin's mom (probably against her will and without her knowledge), to make the Evil Sith Force Baby that was Anakin, and then dumping her on Tatooine as a slave and seeing what happens. All of those actions would garner significant Conflict at my table, whether anyone knew he did it or not.

I agree with @KungFuFerret . Palpatine was definitely working some serious Dastardly machinations in the background. No, he wasn't going around "murder-hoboing" babies, and such, but he was masterminding all sorts of villainy. That is how a "low-key" Dark Sider keeps gaining Conflict. He does it through manipulations and subtle acts of evil.

42 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I agree with @KungFuFerret . Palpatine was definitely working some serious Dastardly machinations in the background. No, he wasn't going around "murder-hoboing" babies, and such, but he was masterminding all sorts of villainy. That is how a "low-key" Dark Sider keeps gaining Conflict. He does it through manipulations and subtle acts of evil.

Yeah I mean, by that logic, you could almost say Hitler was an Ok kind of guy, because he didn't directly kill all those people, he just set in motion the actions to have it done. And I don't think anyone, except a particular alt-right faction, would agree with that logic.

4 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Yeah I mean, by that logic, you could almost say Hitler was an Ok kind of guy, because he didn't directly kill all those people, he just set in motion the actions to have it done. And I don't think anyone, except a particular alt-right faction, would agree with that logic.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. Sure. Uh huh.

So when would the Conflict for a long running evil plan be gained? At each step? It matters when the mechanic calls for a roll each session.

On 5/5/2018 at 11:31 AM, HappyDaze said:

There have been several threads about using the Morality mechanics, but just about all of them come from the assumption that PCs will be striving towards Jedi-like understandings of the Force. I want to look at it from the other direction: how well do the Morality rules work when the PCs are playing antiheroes or villains. In either case, this can certainly include dark side Force users as protagonists.

The first point I'm wondering about is the tendency of Morality scores to increase easily simply by refraining from doing nasty things. I've noticed that, if the dark side were a pool of water, Force users seem to have a "natural buoyancy" and float up unless they actively try to stay under. In light side games, this is the "coasting to Paragon" issue, but in a dark side game, this might have some rather unusual effects on game play. I can see issues if the calculating dark side user resists his urges to do evil and thus avoids the Conflict needed to keep him in his dark side happy place. Has anyone had any experience with this from the perspective of players or gamemasters that want to see dark side characters in play?

Keep in mind that if a character has gone to the dark side, they have to use Dark Side pips to fuel their powers rather than Light Side pips (or pay strain cost + DP use). Characters still earn conflict for using Dark Side pips, even if they are Dark Side Force Users. That should give them enough conflict to stay neutrally buoyant at least.

16 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

So when would the Conflict for a long running evil plan be gained? At each step? It matters when the mechanic calls for a roll each session.

If the guy is pulling the strings to manipulate others into doing evil, he gets Conflict. If he's using the Force for selfish gain, he's gonna get Conflict. He doesn't need to be killing anyone.

16 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

So when would the Conflict for a long running evil plan be gained? At each step? It matters when the mechanic calls for a roll each session.

I would say any time those plans caused harm to another. Like say, when the Trade Federation began killing the Naboo....Naboobians? Naboonans? Naboostafarians? Eh, whatever you call them. When he sent his attack dog Darth Maul to kill 2 Jedi, emotionally scarring Obi-Wan. Later on, whenever he would use his influence to push Anakin further down the Dark path, etc. Basically every time, in the prequels we had a significant plot development, and it was made clear it was due to Palpatine (even if nobody else knew it).

So, for example purposes, if I were the GM at the table with this Palpatine PC, I would probably do it like this:

"Ok so, you manipulated an entire galactic faction to illegally embargo a planet, told them to attack the 2 Jedi ambassadors without provocation while they are on your ship under a flag of negotiations, this also blew up their ship, and killed their pilot and crew. Sent in your Sith apprentice to directly attack the Jedi after they survived your first attempt on their lives, finally killing one of them. Sparked open conflict in space and on the ground on the planet, and simultaneously set in motion further machinations to destabilize the galaxy.....so yeah that's definitely more than 10 Conflict, so don't even bother rolling pal, in fact, just go ahead and set that Morality to 0, and I'll let you know if/when you ever get to move it back up, but hey, Kudos on not letting anyone figure out it was you."

18 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

And if they are equally uninterested in Obligation and Duty, they should simply not use those either?

Those systems - Obligation more so than Duty, admittedly - work even if the player doesn't care to engage with them. Morality, on the other hand, doesn't work at all without player investment, and that includes wanting to have internal struggle as part of the character's shtick.

Also, take notice that innaction does not generate a Morality roll at the end of the session, so if no conflict opportunities arise, if no choices are to be made, no Morality roll occurs.

Although the PC can help people with his actions, how this help take form? If the PC makes a donation of an important amount of money to a charitative institution only to let people think he is cool and keep people deceived about he is a good person, I would give him conflict cause his motivation is not compassion, but coldness, deception, lure for political power... (errr, I guess this happens all the time here in earth...).

Taking another example, Assaj Ventress went into hidding for a period at Level 13 and you would agree with me that this didn't made her a better person. Later she became a bounty hunter and changed her goals, yes, and perhaps her morality could have increased helping the galaxy taking care of dangerous criminals (and changing her objectives from "dominate the galaxy at the side of Count Dooku" to "spit on criminals" also may have helped), but she still was a nasty, dark person (well, like the majority of bounty hunters...).

But innaction by itself does not increase Morality. Only when in that session the PCs are forced to make choices and how they do them.

11 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Yeah I mean, by that logic, you could almost say Hitler was an Ok kind of guy, because he didn't directly kill all those people, he just set in motion the actions to have it done. And I don't think anyone, except a particular alt-right faction, would agree with that logic.

Or the Rothchild family of bankers in our present days... ?

14 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

I would say any time those plans caused harm to another. Like say, when the Trade Federation began killing the Naboo....Naboobians? Naboonans? Naboostafarians? Eh, whatever you call them. When he sent his attack dog Darth Maul to kill 2 Jedi, emotionally scarring Obi-Wan. Later on, whenever he would use his influence to push Anakin further down the Dark path, etc. Basically every time, in the prequels we had a significant plot development, and it was made clear it was due to Palpatine (even if nobody else knew it).

So, for example purposes, if I were the GM at the table with this Palpatine PC, I would probably do it like this:

"Ok so, you manipulated an entire galactic faction to illegally embargo a planet, told them to attack the 2 Jedi ambassadors without provocation while they are on your ship under a flag of negotiations, this also blew up their ship, and killed their pilot and crew. Sent in your Sith apprentice to directly attack the Jedi after they survived your first attempt on their lives, finally killing one of them. Sparked open conflict in space and on the ground on the planet, and simultaneously set in motion further machinations to destabilize the galaxy.....so yeah that's definitely more than 10 Conflict, so don't even bother rolling pal, in fact, just go ahead and set that Morality to 0, and I'll let you know if/when you ever get to move it back up, but hey, Kudos on not letting anyone figure out it was you."

What about a dark sider that works to undermine and bring down a planetary governor? Each step he takes is no different than what a Rebel cell might take save for less concern about collateral damage and the fact that his motivation is personal revenge--he doesn't care about freeing the world from the Empire, he just wants to make that bastard (and his friends & family) pay for what they did to him.

This is where I'm wondering if the motivation for the act is as/more important than the act, because much of what he'll be doing isn't so different from the light side guy that's working with him.

That's also where I'm worried that every action will require a "why" before determining Conflict.

Does the awarding of Conflict change if the same action is done:

A) To hurt the governor (while also benefitting the people).

OR

B) To benefit the people (while also hurting the governor).

15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

What about a dark sider that works to undermine and bring down a planetary governor? Each step he takes is no different than what a Rebel cell might take save for less concern about collateral damage and the fact that his motivation is personal revenge --he doesn't care about freeing the world from the Empire, he just wants to make that bastard (and his friends & family) pay for what they did to him.

This is where I'm wondering if the motivation for the act is as/more important than the act, because much of what he'll be doing isn't so different from the light side guy that's working with him.

Bold is mine for emphasis.

I think you basically answered your own question. I mean sure, you can play the "everything is grey and all acts are evil, from a certain point of view" angle, like so many fans love to do, but the bottom line is the intent behind what is being done. Your typical Rebel cell is motivated to try and free people, and the planetary governor in question, is usually your typical Imperial jerkwad. Also they're typically not Force sensitive either, so this Dark side question doesn't come up.

But it is about motivation and why. There was a story arc in Rebels, with Hera's father, that typified this pretty well. They were both "fighting the good fight", but her father was very clearly depicted as "having gone too far". If a Rebel cell was blowing up entire city blocks to try and get to their targets, and to heck with the innocent bystanders, you can bet their actions wouldn't be considered sympathetic by hardly anyone. Same thing for this Darksider you are describing. The Force doesn't care about how people try and rationalize stuff to themselves, it has a series of actions, that if you do them, and you are tapped into the Living Force, you will start to go Dark. And blowing up people for personal gain/revenge, is the kind of path that does that.

What aboutthe intermediate steps? The gathering of materials, scoping the targets, and recruiting allies for the effort are all steps that might take place in a session. None of these are particularly dark or light themselves.

What happens if a Morality 50 character that wants to BOTH take down the governor he hates AND help the people he loves does these acts? Conflict or no?

I am currently running a game set in the Old Republic, and Sith side. I had several discussions with my players on how to best implement this as the base system makes a bunch of assumptions on player goals. In the short term I've done the following for this game:

1.) Adjusted all "Light Side-Only/Dark-Side Only" powers so that they only require use of the appropriate pip color if you are aligned one way or the other. example: Heal is by RAW only available to LS users. I've changed it so that the power itself is usable by either, however Heal can only be engaged with LS pips for DS users. Likewise Harm can only be engaged with DS pips for LS users. This plays into the next alteration:

2.) Darkside Users must take strain / conflict to use lightside pips. Light-Side Users must take strain/conflict for using dark side pips. The action performed with said ability has an effect of a multiplier to the conflict earned. If a DS user uses Heal to heal a sick/injured child, a 2x multipler would apply to conflict earned (altruism). Likewise, a lightsider using harm to kill an innocent would garner double conflict. this multiplier does not apply to conflict earned from other sources, but only to the force power expenditure. Alternatively, if a darksider used Heal to heal his own "Cannon Fodder" , or a lightsider used harm to kill a murderer, they would receive a .5 multiplier to conflict earned, as the action was in line with their alignment in the force (selfishness and bravery respectively). I may revisit the multiplier at some point after I get more data in a few sessions, and make it (at least partially) based around their morality triggers.

So far it seems to be working well.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

What about a dark sider that works to undermine and bring down a planetary governor? Each step he takes is no different than what a Rebel cell might take save for less concern about collateral damage and the fact that his motivation is personal revenge--he doesn't care about freeing the world from the Empire, he just wants to make that bastard (and his friends & family) pay for what they did to him.

Pay how? I think this is the key element, because it sounds like he gonna make them suffer. A lot. And slowly...

It all depends on his final choices:

- Will he torture them? kill them? Execute them in front of a crowd? Delight with their defeat and take a bath of masses? Make them suffer? Give in to his anger and hatred? Will he kill their children in front of their eyes? Or cut their legs, because they have good intel for the rebels and killing them will make that intel go away. Will he throw them to the void? Bury them alive? Gift them with some lightsaber cuts, slowly? Chop them piece by piece?

- Will he give them the opportunity to surrender? Will set his blaster to stun setting? Will only attack if attacked? Will he show their children mercy? Will he only throw a punch in the jaw of the officer out of anger, or scream to him, but that will be all (no member chopping, no torture, no void throwing...)?

He can be emotionally angry and full of hatred in both cases, but in the first case he gives in to anger, he gives in to hate, he gives in to suffering, he gives in to the dark side. In the second, he restrains himself, he takes control of his emotions although internally he is willing to chop their heads.

Another case: think of the same situation, and what would have done Leia and what would have done Maul.

50 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

What aboutthe intermediate steps? The gathering of materials, scoping the targets, and recruiting allies for the effort are all steps that might take place in a session. None of these are particularly dark or light themselves.

Then no conflict is gained, nor Morality dice is rolled. At least is what I do. But if they do as Cassian Andor and the beggining of rogue One, murdering his informant to shut him up... well, that is conflict, yep.

50 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

What happens if a Morality 50 character that wants to BOTH take down the governor he hates AND help the people he loves does these acts? Conflict or no?

From my point of view, it depends on his actions, on the final outcome, on his priorities and final choices. Anakin made a choice to save Padme. Luke made a choice to save Vader. Cassian made a choice not shooting at Galen Erso. Your PC cannot be at two places at the same time. Make him choose, and make him live by his choices.

Hope I have helped!

On 5/6/2018 at 10:58 PM, hikari_dourden said:

Anger and violence pay their toll. If he is already Morality 0... well, I know this is off topic and I am only answering your reply, but I think I know how to contribute with an idea to help you to make his Morality 0 something scary: be a voice in his head, the voice of his own and enormous ego tyrannizing him, a voice that tells him how soft are their friends, that they don't have the commitment to do certain things, that they are ungrateful for all the things he has done. How is that they cannot see his good intentions? How is that they don't see that all those thugs deserved to be slaughtered? And why this child he has saved looks at him so terrified? Ungrateful brat...

Throw him a battery of really nasty thoughts he has to control, and tempt him with a reward for following this voice. In fact, this happens in real life when our own levels of stress, anger and anxiety floods and a bombardment of thoughts begin to attack and we grab our head trying to shut them up.

Remember Anakin squeezing Padme's throat, accusing her of treason. She was her loved one, and she was pregnant. But something in his head told him "she betrayed you, she deserves a punishment..."

Again, I write this only with the intention to help to make this Morality 0 feel more dark and dense.

The player of the character here. There has been some voice in the head moments, most recently after acquiring a corrupted crystal and attuning to it, leading to some whispers of the old Sith who had the crystal before. While the system says the character should have slipped down to 0 morality a long time ago, there hasn't really been any moral event horizon to push him towards proper Sithitude. Character wise it's probably held back a bit by his morality and weakness, he's got discipline as his strength and obstinate as his weakness. So he holds onto his principles very hard, and rarely follows the sensible way. Like refusing to use any sort of ranged weapons, since taking away a life should be an intimate affair where you can truly see and smell the consequences of your actions. As well as a burning hatred for anyone who would impair on someone else's decision making ability through force.

Gratitude, or compensation, isn't really a thing he's after. He does the things he does because he sees them as necessary, which has at times lead to some rather brutal murders that weren't really necessary, but there is almost always a good enough reason for it anyway. Thugs deserve to die as much as he deserves to die, their life is after all of an equal worth to his own. It's a harsh galaxy though and if he's choosing between lives, then the lives of those closest to him will outweigh any number of thugs or saints.

I didn't really set out to create a dark side from the start, I had an idea of wanting to stay below paragon level and keep it there. But events in the game sort of conspired to make for a downwards rapid slide, after that he sort of slipped into being a somewhat friendly monster. He is capable of great brutality, viciousness and can be a truly frightening murderous madman if cornered or the lives of those he cares about is threatened. But he would also give anything to keep them safe, even if that means he can't be a part of their life anymore. So the darkness comes from this willingness to do anything for those he cares about, coupled with an incapability to properly process grief and loss. The hope of redemption would be in being left alone without any need to worry about his friends safety, that's rather unlikely for a hunted party of magical space hobos though. So the future will undoubtedly hold more bloodshed and quite possibly a not so heroic death.

5 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

What aboutthe intermediate steps? The gathering of materials, scoping the targets, and recruiting allies for the effort are all steps that might take place in a session. None of these are particularly dark or light themselves.

Depends on how he goes about getting those steps done.

Does he just legitimately buy the supplies he needs? Then no, I wouldn't give out Conflict. Does he steal the materials, or murder everyone to get them? Then yes there would be Conflict.

5 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

What happens if a Morality 50 character that wants to BOTH take down the governor he hates AND help the people he loves does these acts? Conflict or no?

You have heard the phrase "the road to heck is paved with good intentions" right? I mean, what you've described is pretty much the classic trope of the Heroic Fall, and one of the classic examples is Anakin Skywalker. He did a lot of horrible things for the people he loved, that didn't change the fact that they were horrible things. The fact that he thought they were justified, didn't change the fact that the Force didn't agree, and that it stained him spiritually as a result. Love your wife all you want, but murdering a room full of children to possibly save her from a maybe fate, doesn't make you the good guy, it makes you the villain.

Again, it still feels like you are wanting to be a bad guy, without having to do bad guy things. Because you keep responding with "Yeah but what about *insert a single example contrary to the most common scenarios for this type of situation*, as if you are trying to justify it. I don't understand the hesitancy to just be the bad guy that you seem to want to be. Or, if you really don't want to "be the bad guy", then why even bother being a Dark Sider? Just be a middle of the road Morality PC and be done with it.

I'm not just going with contrary examples. I'm looking at a group of characters that fight the bad guys but not necessarily for the right reasons. These are more on the antihero side than the villainous IMO, but they shouldn't easily be able to float up to light side paragon.

10 hours ago, hikari_dourden said:

Pay how? I think this is the key element, because it sounds like he gonna make them suffer. A lot. And slowly...

It all depends on his final choices:

- Will he torture them? kill them? Execute them in front of a crowd? Delight with their defeat and take a bath of masses? Make them suffer? Give in to his anger and hatred? Will he kill their children in front of their eyes? Or cut their legs, because they have good intel for the rebels and killing them will make that intel go away. Will he throw them to the void? Bury them alive? Gift them with some lightsaber cuts, slowly? Chop them piece by piece?

- Will he give them the opportunity to surrender? Will set his blaster to stun setting? Will only attack if attacked? Will he show their children mercy? Will he only throw a punch in the jaw of the officer out of anger, or scream to him, but that will be all (no member chopping, no torture, no void throwing...)?

He can be emotionally angry and full of hatred in both cases, but in the first case he gives in to anger, he gives in to hate, he gives in to suffering, he gives in to the dark side. In the second, he restrains himself, he takes control of his emotions although internally he is willing to chop their heads.

Another case: think of the same situation, and what would have done Leia and what would have done Maul.

Then no conflict is gained, nor Morality dice is rolled. At least is what I do. But if they do as Cassian Andor and the beggining of rogue One, murdering his informant to shut him up... well, that is conflict, yep.

From my point of view, it depends on his actions, on the final outcome, on his priorities and final choices. Anakin made a choice to save Padme. Luke made a choice to save Vader. Cassian made a choice not shooting at Galen Erso. Your PC cannot be at two places at the same time. Make him choose, and make him live by his choices.

Hope I have helped!

How can it depend on the final outcome when Conflict and Mortality are checked per session (well beforethe final outcome is known)?

15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I'm not just going with contrary examples. I'm looking at a group of characters that fight the bad guys but not necessarily for the right reasons. These are more on the antihero side than the villainous IMO, but they shouldn't easily be able to float up to light side paragon.

Ok well now you are kind of mixing up your terminology as I see it. Because you started off talking about being a Dark Sider, which is not the same thing as being an anti-hero. For the most part, some writers for Star Wars not withstanding, being a Dark Sider, means you are a villain. You might be a tragic villain, or a gleefully embrace evil villain, but a villain. The stuff you have to do, on a regular basis, to make yourself a Dark Sider, aren't the kind of actions that make you a "good guy."

Again, why are you so hung up on being a Dark Sider? Why does it matter? The only thing you seem to be against is "being a light side paragon." Well that's pretty easy to accomplish, just don't hit the Paragon threshold. And if you are making this Inglorious Bahsterds style of character, the stuff you will likely be doing (torture, murder, theft, arson, terrorism, etc) is going to very easily keep you from your dreaded Morality Creep Up.

I just...I don't understand the emphasis you are placing on what is supposed to be an indicator of a "bad guy". But then I've never understood the drive to be a "bad guy that's really a good guy, but baaaaad." but to each their own I guess.

I'm sorry. If you've never understood it, I'm not likely to be able to change that.

However, I see nothing wrong with a player playing someone like Asajj Ventriss (spelling?) or maybe even someone like Savage or Maul as a PC, but I'm more interested in seeing a more subtle shade of dark in a rogue Inquisitor (likely not fully trained at the start of play).

On 5/7/2018 at 2:32 PM, HappyDaze said:

Think of Senator Palpatine keeping his more dastardly actions in check for years yet never remotely leaving the dark sider zone of Morali5y.

except he didn't. He used the shadow ability to hide his forciness from the jedi.

7 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

How can it depend on the final outcome when Conflict and Mortality are checked per session (well beforethe final outcome is known)?

I think I understand what is the problem behind the interpretation that "do nothing/grey choices = Morality gain".

I don't have the rulebook here right now, but I recall that, rules as written, Morality is only checked when opportunities for conflict have arisen in the session. That is, a PC rolls for morality gain/loss at the end of the session when, in that session, the PC has made choices that could affect his integrity. No potential conflict gain situations? No roll. No integrity relevant choices in that adventure? No morality roll. The PC passes 3 weeks without taking action, watching his favourite soap opera on the HoloNet? No morality roll. Or at least, if it is not in the book, is what I understood when I read the rules for the first time and is what I do and what I think it makes sense.

I cite again the example of Cassian Andor in Rogue One: he makes a choice when he murders his informant in cold blood (big conflict gain); he also makes a choice when he decides not to shoot at the head of Galen Erso when he has the oportunity to do so (no conflict generated, but it is an important choice to make the Morality die roll at the end of the session). Another example is Saw Guerrera: he made lots of nasty things in his life in the name of justice (well, his justice), and that things paid their toll.

I understand that the type of character you want to play is more close to Andor and Guerrera than Maul or Ventress, right?

Anyway, refering to your answer: check in the book if what I'm saying about "no potential conflict gain situations = no morality roll" is true. As I said, I can't check it by myself right now.