51 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

We’re repeating the same points over and over again. We have very different notions of what s typical session involves and what a typical players does. And is the math behind it.

You don’t think there’s a rocket or that this has negative consequences for game play. Fine. That’s the experience at my table and it’s a common complain of the Morality system.

I’m not saying there is or there isn’t. I’m trying to give a possible reason why this might be happening. You might truly want to slow the progression, but, if your players are actively trying to make the morally correct choice, following the Jedi Code to the letter , and thus limit, if not eliminate, getting Conflict, then they will rocket up to Paragon status, and this may possibly be what they want for their characters. That’s not the fault of the Morality mechanic. That’s an active choice of the players and their characters. You’re never going to prevent a “rocket” to Paragon if the players don’t take Conflict worthy actions.

I’ve had comments that it’s too easy and that the mechanic is not engaging.

And yet again the cycle goes on again where you insist that there is no rocket (or that it’s fine or what it’s designed to do or it’s RAW or it’s maybe what my players want). I appreciate the effort but it’s clear (for a while) now you’re already telling me things I already know and have considered.

I’ve been pretty clear multiple times what I’m trying to accomplish and what the issues are for my group. You just refuse to accept it. But thanks for the comments anyway.

I understand what you want to accomplish, and I accept that you’re having trouble doing so. My point is that it’s not an issue with the RAW. It’s likely simply that your players don’t make enough Conflict worthy actions, and as such, nothing you can do will stop the “rocket” to Paragon. The only thing that will slow down their rise to Paragon is earning more Conflict, and that requires them to make morally poor choices, use more DSPs, failing Fear checks, or any combination thereof. And that requires you to put them in more situations where they have to make those choices, and make it more difficult to make the morally correct choice. The trick is to do so without being heavy handed or arbitrary. That is the only option.

...

I find all of this discussion very interesting.

and as for my two cents. I’ve found that if a player invests heavily in force powers (especially combat based ones) the morality system or at least the path to paragon a little more interesting. I have wondered for a while if this is actually the developers intended use for conflict. It’s meant to be coupled with heavy force power use. That is why RP wise it’s difficult to implement, and without a very force-centric character it’s way to easy to skyrocket to paragon

has anyone else noticed this in their play?

16 minutes ago, slope123 said:

I find all of this discussion very interesting.

and as for my two cents. I’ve found that if a player invests heavily in force powers (especially combat based ones) the morality system or at least the path to paragon a little more interesting. I have wondered for a while if this is actually the developers intended use for conflict. It’s meant to be coupled with heavy force power use. That is why RP wise it’s difficult to implement, and without a very force-centric character it’s way to easy to skyrocket to paragon

has anyone else noticed this in their play?

Certainly characters that never roll their Force dice (because they instead use powers that Commit dice) tend to gather less Conflict. This is kinda weird in that the Commit route is "safe" in comparison to active use.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

Certainly characters that never roll their Force dice (because they instead use powers that Commit dice) tend to gather less Conflict. This is kinda weird in that the Commit route is "safe" in comparison to active use.

I just found this interesting because a a GM I struggled to come up with situations that gave conflict. I usually just resorted to the “random dude is being mugged, do you rescue him and take conflict for fighting or do you ignore him and take conflict for that.” Even that was difficult since most of my campaigns took place in places where this didn’t make sense (not to mention how it ruined the flow of the session). However, later on I played in a campaign with a new GM to help him get practice, and I picked a force combat based character, and I found that conflict management was actually interesting on my end. I didn’t float up to paragon and I actually had to make difficult choices (thanks to dsp) to remain a Jedi, and the GM did nearly nothing to actually force this (other than the usually difficult campaign decisions).

So, the tl;dr is either the system is designed for use with force powers, or I was just a good player and made it interesting by my GMunderstanding of the rules.

I never thought about that for committing dice, but you are right. I wonder if there is a house rule that could be implemented here?

28 minutes ago, slope123 said:

I just found this interesting because a a GM I struggled to come up with situations that gave conflict. I usually just resorted to the “random dude is being mugged, do you rescue him and take conflict for fighting or do you ignore him and take conflict for that.” Even that was difficult since most of my campaigns took place in places where this didn’t make sense (not to mention how it ruined the flow of the session). However, later on I played in a campaign with a new GM to help him get practice, and I picked a force combat based character, and I found that conflict management was actually interesting on my end. I didn’t float up to paragon and I actually had to make difficult choices (thanks to dsp) to remain a Jedi, and the GM did nearly nothing to actually force this (other than the usually difficult campaign decisions).

So, the tl;dr is either the system is designed for use with force powers, or I was just a good player and made it interesting by my GMunderstanding of the rules.

I never thought about that for committing dice, but you are right. I wonder if there is a house rule that could be implemented here?

The problem with your mugging example is that fighting, or even killing, in and of itself, does not garner Conflict (unless you're a follower of the Dagoyan faith) . It's only in attacking unprovoked, killing in cold-blood, harming or killing a helpless individual, that garners Conflict. Attacking to defend another, killing to defend your life or that of another, these do not garner Conflict. Period .

On 3/18/2019 at 2:02 PM, slope123 said:

I find all of this discussion very interesting.

and as for my two cents. I’ve found that if a player invests heavily in force powers (especially combat based ones) the morality system or at least the path to paragon a little more interesting. I have wondered for a while if this is actually the developers intended use for conflict. It’s meant to be coupled with heavy force power use. That is why RP wise it’s difficult to implement, and without a very force-centric character it’s way to easy to skyrocket to paragon

has anyone else noticed this in their play?

I think force use is a factor and the way the force system works using dark side pips can be very tempting but it also has other costs above Conflict - Strain and Destiny Point. But on the other hand if you're willing to use dark pips then you'll always generate at least 1 force point per force die rolled so the cost makes sense from a game balance perspective.

I like the narrative dice mechanic but one of it's downsides can be that in some circumstances (and depending on how GMs and players handle it) the dice tell the story instead of the players - and this is much more pronounced in the Morality/Conflict system. This is why we see developers and players deciding that gaining Conflict isn't really directly tied to the dark side rising the character per se but rather is the emotional or spiritual stress of what the character is doing (so when gaining Conflict, the character is experiencing stress rather than experience fear, anger, hatred, etc).

In my current campaign one of the Jedi characters did skyrocket to Paragon (the other who doesn't show up as often hasn't has as many sessions to roll Morality hasn't rocketed as far or as fast but is still above 70) and he has invested a fair amount in Force Powers and it's typically his main source of Conflict but it's not that much Conflict. He's also fairly invested in Influence so spending dark pips for that power has it's specific drawbacks other than Conflict so he's done that less often. And he now has Force Rating 3 so as his character advances he needs to spend dark side pips less and less often.

There's also force talents which use the force dice that act similarly to force powers for gaining Conflict by using dark side pips - I'd say the Jedi PC I mentioned above does this more often with Force Talents than Force Powers.

On 3/15/2019 at 8:20 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

I understand what you want to accomplish, and I accept that you’re having trouble doing so. My point is that it’s not an issue with the RAW. It’s likely simply that your players don’t make enough Conflict worthy actions, and as such, nothing you can do will stop the “rocket” to Paragon. The only thing that will slow down their rise to Paragon is earning more Conflict, and that requires them to make morally poor choices, use more DSPs, failing Fear checks, or any combination thereof. And that requires you to put them in more situations where they have to make those choices, and make it more difficult to make the morally correct choice. The trick is to do so without being heavy handed or arbitrary. That is the only option.

I'm not sure you do understand. Much of what you just said is what I started out saying and the latter part of what you said is why RAW doesn't work for me and others, because putting the PC in lots of situations where they have to make morally difficult choices without being heavy handed or arbitrary or whatever isn't just a "trick" as you put it but rather difficult to do. In fact when I asked you to demonstrate it you said you couldn't, then said you had with 2 examples (one of which was heavy handed by your own admission) and the other not being reproducible session after session or story arc after story arc - so not applicable to my conundrum and in fact demonstrating my issue.

You've also gone back and forth on this. In one instance you said I'm not applying RAW correctly and that surely my PCs are doing things to earn Conflict, then that if they aren't then they've earned the rocket to Paragon (negating my concerns entirely as I don't want a rocket even if they're being the purest Jedi Paladin ever, I want it to be an achievement like the Obligation and Duty systems are), and now you're saying what I need to do is continually put really hard moral choices/Fear checks to the PCs to get the effect I want. Which is pretty much were we started with this. You just seem to be hand-waving the "that's the trick" part when that's the crux of my issue: the game requires that kind of continually intense moral choices to tamp down on rockets to Paragon which means it's not useful for me because (1) I don't want to run a game where the story beats/arc are like that (the movies and animated tv shows aren't, they use them sparingly and to great dramatic effect) and (2) It's difficult enough that I'm not going to succeed at it enough to work (and poorly enough when it fails that the story will suffer and I'll frustrate the players as it will be heavy handed and arbitrary when I fail).

And we keep going around in circles on this. I've gotten all I'm going to get out of this particular conversation I think.

Drop the Morality rules as they're written. The way the roll for Morality is made doesn't make sense. Rolling after each session whatever the amount of conflict earned during the session is stupid. A PC should roll for Morality only when a significant amount of conflict has been earned. For your Morality to change, one way or another, it must be really challenged.

I think I agree with @WolfRider and @Jedi Ronin here. The issue is that often a session is too short to have a meaningful number of conflict worthy events. Not every session can be a constant test of moral character. That would make things bland very quickly.

Better then to skip the rolls after a short or slow paced session, save the conflict and roll at the end of next session.

Of course, if your primary experience is pbp, I see why the issue of pacing is hard to grasp.

A suggestion I've seen is that Morality should be rolled at the end of a story arc where you've had more time for morality to be tested and natural and reasonable story elements that *might* engage a characters morality. I suspect this is why the 'Triggering Morality' rule is explicitly optional. All the 'core' mechanics (Obligation, Duty, Morality) all have elements of the GM tailoring story to the PC and call out even if a 'trigger' is rolled the GM is free to ignore it if it doesn't fit the current story (or to just decide it's triggered because it's a fit at a certain point in the story) and with Morality every session the triggering rule will happen every session which is a bit much.

32 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

A suggestion I've seen is that Morality should be rolled at the end of a story arc where you've had more time for morality to be tested and natural and reasonable story elements that *might* engage a characters morality. I suspect this is why the 'Triggering Morality' rule is explicitly optional. All the 'core' mechanics (Obligation, Duty, Morality) all have elements of the GM tailoring story to the PC and call out even if a 'trigger' is rolled the GM is free to ignore it if it doesn't fit the current story (or to just decide it's triggered because it's a fit at a certain point in the story) and with Morality every session the triggering rule will happen every session which is a bit much.

Another idea that could adapt you to a slower pacing is to use a smaller die, like a D8 or even D6.

Here's an interesting thread about Morality and issues with it and Conflict (I recently found - re-found? - it but it's almost a year old, still good):