More Morals

I think this is going to largely be new ground for me.

I know, how novel.

I am pro morality in RPG play.

Shadowrun and the like may have some sort of rebelling against corrupt or oppressive regimes, but I don’t feel it.  I just feel like committing crime to get rich.

Mercenary play of any type – don’t care.

Save people.  Build better communities.  Protect the innocents.

Because who cares about pursuing riches?  I don’t even do that in RL.  Now, this is nothing new, but …

Legend of the Five Rings is the RPG I play by far the most.  When you study the world, you realize that samurai aren’t the good guys.  Oh, they can be at times.  But, they are xenophobic, oppressive, callous, uncooperative, and quick to lethal violence.

And, yet, you can play as goodly folk … if you have a campaign that doesn’t get bogged down in the many morally nebulous areas of society.  Can just pretend your social inferiors don’t exist at all so don’t get bogged down in why peasants probably hate you for your arrogance, patronizing, etc.

Find monsters, murder them with extreme katananess.

Conan d20 was interesting for how we were definitely the bad guys sometimes, basically just mercenaries sometimes, but actual good guys on occasion in that we protected morally questionable societies from getting enslaved by demons.

It’s been ages since I played in that Feng Shui game, but it felt like we were trying to do good, whatever that means in a time war setting where everyone is trying to control reality.

I find so much about BattleTech really cool, but there are no good … factions.  Sure, there are goodly types in stories but it’s such a moral relativistic setting.  Just can’t escape that the hero of one group is the villain to another.  Mercenaries are held up as heroes and villains, much like ronin are held up as heroes or villains, but they are in a more realistic world that just isn’t idealistic enough for me.

And, I don’t need realism in my gaming.  I want to be the paladin [um, hybrid classed with rogue … as a sea-faring ambassador …].

I had this post idea before today’s Aberrant session.  My caregiver PC decided to murder … an evil, mass murdering dragon.  How often in RPGs does that take any actual decision?  Normally, of course you blow up the heads of your enemies – not only does that do a good job of stopping them from trying to kill you, but decapitation prevents them just coming back as undead to try to kill you later.

New games that don’t have PCs as heroes just doesn’t appeal to me.  Games that punish players for having their PCs try to do good things aggravate me.

While hardly perfect, Honor in L5R should always be something that should be pursued.  I can’t stand the concept of the Scorpion Clan because they aren’t even trying.  I have no interest in the Mantis being the “pirate clan” but kind of like them as the clan of the Thunder Dragon.

When L5R play is about the conflict between Honor and getting stuff done (like surviving), that also gets annoying.  Some conflict between better life and Honor is important as, if there’s no downside to doing the Honorable thing, then you aren’t really being good in any way.  You are still just maximizing utility.  But, when it’s just “fail or lose Honor” repeatedly – tedious.

Adventuring in Conan’s world works because there’s still some concept of being able to do good deeds.  Adventuring in Elric’s world could work the same, but, whenever I think about what a game in that world would look like, I just don’t feel it.  Of course, the world is so subservient to Elric that it has problems being appealing as a game fantasy setting.  Hawkmoon’s world feels similar in being all about a particular metaplot.  And, Corum’s.

Supers should be entirely about making the world better.  And, yet, much like playing rim of the galaxy scum in Star Wars, somehow people want to just bash things rather than actually try to improve the world.

A setting is not what people say it is but how it plays.  If sessions aren’t about doing good things, not actually goodly folk.  A dungeon-crawling paladin who just gets treasure minus 10% tithe is just a power set.

Sure, to have heroic adventuring (which all my play should be because there’s only so much time in one’s life) have to be heroes.

But, it’s just curious to me how little morality matters.  Why aren’t adventures about rescuing the hottie and saving the town and guarding the diplomat that will prevent the war?

I think it’s this lack of doing good deeds that makes my PBP play suboptimal.  HoR is okay.  Iron Empire campaign has me playing a Yasuki Courtier, yet still feel like trying to make things better.  Aberrant too often has a separation of what we are doing from why it’s a good thing – lot of time spent on worrying about mechanics rather than the narrative.

There is another aspect of morality.  So many times, people don’t care a lot about some PC dying.  Well, that’s because the PC was just some character sheet and not a hero.  When a hero dies, everyone should care … a lot.