Salvation and a Moral Compass

[Ian Freeman]

Okay, here's a really, really strange idea. Atleast i think it is, has anybody seen stuff like this before?

The basic insperation comes from all the games which have some kind of "humanity" attribute (like V:tM, sorcerer and others) that tends to pose some definable rights and wrongs about humanity. Even if the definition of these things are somewhat mutable, they still represent 1 dimensional scales of morality (okay, so you can fiddle with sorcerer so humanity has nothing to do with morality, but the default tends to imply that demons are bad and so is killing people and such, and your pretty much stuck with one system in V:tM).

The idea here is to simulate the interactions between widely differing moral compasses, both in terms of premise and setting but also in terms of system. So, for this system the ONLY method of conflict resoultion directly deals with the morals of the character, which means that these morals need be defined mechanically (in some way, shape or form).

How do we do that? First... let's get a strange setting: Salvation

Tommorrow, Armageddon happens. God comes moseying along and finds out that His message has been horribly mangled by all the people of earth, and doesn't think it would be fair to judge people based on the original message. He also thinks that all people would have to be treated fairly and have the same rules applied to them.

So... in the sense of innefible fareness god decrees that the most numerous religion will dictate whom is saved and whom is cast down. He invokes this doctrine, and much to everybodies surprise... the most numerous religion is posessed by a semi-intelligent virus of which there are billions upon billions of individual life forms. These virii have such a whacked out moral system that every single human being reaches salvation and is spirited up to heaven.

Now... heaven was already built and has nothing to do with this virii. I have yet to decide just what heaven is like, any suggestions?

God realizes he's screwed up bad, but since he is innefible he can't really admit to that, so he sort of hides heaven so that the other gods won't find it and make fun of him. And if they do he'll just tell them that he enjoys a good joke as much as anybody.

So now humanity is stuck in heaven, and needless to say, they go at each others throats.

And that's where morals come in. Because what else matters in salvation but your personal moral outlook. Okay, here are the moral attributes I am working with:

Self, this is the characters belief in their personal importance. A low self means that the character goes out of their way to aid others as they feel they can and to avoid hurting others. A high self means that the person feels that they are more important. While this doesn't mean they are mean or vicious, it just means that they put their interests ahead.
   
Life, the characters respect for life. Low life means that the character is willing to throw people away left right and center. High would mean that the character can not bear loss of life.

Suffering, the characters tolerance for suffering. No pain no gain philosophy indicates a reasonably high suffering, while those who feel pangs of guilt after hearing about starvation in the third world have low suffering

Ego, the characters belief in their own ability. this is self-confidence and general belief in the right-ness of oneself.

Community, the characters acceptance of others as being the same as him. A low community indicates xenophobia, while a high community could indicate the belief that all things (human, animal, alien, whatever) are equal

Justice, the belief that concepts (like justice and honor) are more important that tangible things (like life, suffering). A high justice might mean that the character believes that laws are important to enact justice, while a low justice means the character sees a legal system as social control (a quote: "The only meaningful form of justice is to ensure that the crime is never committed again. If we start trying to achieve this by committing that same crime we have failed before we begin")

Freedom, the belief that others should be free of the influences of others. Tyrants and such have very low freedom, while a religious person who tries to teach their kids about many religions and have them pick one or none would have high freedom.

Dynamism, this is the characters willingness and appreciation of change. They believe that change is necessarry or desirable. A low dynamism indicates that the character would prefer to leave things as they are.

Resource, the character tolerance and willingness to both use and acquire resources (like money and power). A low resource could mean that someone feels that gaining power is morally unjust while a high resource means that the person simply sees power (an money and such) as a tool to an end and that the end determines the morality.

Finally, there are a three attributes that dicate how this character applies there morals.

Rational, the ability to ignores ones morals by using logic to deduce appropriate decisions. A low rational means someone is guided by their gut instincts on right and wrong while a high rational means someone can say: "nope, my morals will not achieve an appropriate end, and I can ignore them."

Fury, the characters likelihood of ignoring their morals in fits of rage or passion. ie. whether they give in to rage and things like that. a low fury would mean that someone has great control over their aggression and such.

Delusion, the belief that the rules apply to other people and not to the character. If someone has a high delusion they ignore their morals simply because they aren't their morals, they are other peoples morals.

So, here are my questions. Any suggestions on what the afterlife should be like (and whether i should keep that at all)? What do you think of the moral attributes i have right now? Is their anything i am missing? This is a very rough list.

Any suggestions on implementing these attrbiutes. Basically as i am figuring it now, the character can exert themselves only by explaining how an action supports their moral compass of by spending "points" of their dictating attributes. ie. if someone has 15 fury, they could ignore their morals in fits of passion 15 times, or whatever.

Looking for comments, criticisms and whatnot. Thanks.

_________________
Ian Freeman

[ This Message was edited by: Ian Freeman on 2001-06-29 11:59 ]

[james_west]

My current overall impression is that it's a very cool idea for which you've produced a clunky system. Needs something more graceful, but I haven't a clue right at the moment what that is.

[Dav]

I think clunky might be a bit strong, but I agree with James about needing some streamlining effect.

Maybe combine a few of those aspects into one trait (or opposed traits, with one at one end of the spectrum, and the other at the opposite end... bringing in inner conflict through a balancing system).  Here is a brief connection I was seeing with the first part:

Self-Community: Balancing personal goals with the goals of the whole.

Life-Suffering: Seem to go hand-in-hand

Justice-Ego: A sense of justice in an absolute sense, and how willing you are to apply that sense to your own actions.  

Freedom-Dynamism: Simple static vs. dynamic conflict, with possible bouts of "does one need to change to be free?" questions

Then, have Resource, Rationale, Fury, and Delusion remain as opposed traits.  These could be used by the GM to metagame character rolls, or as a central metagame that any player could use to augment/oppose rolls.  It could also set boundaries for when you snap or lose sight of your morals (ala Unknown Armies).

The 4 central traits, opposed by 4 central drawbacks makes a nicely balanced system, and keeps things manageable for a player.

Anyway, that is my brief .02 on the matter as it stands.  I like the premise, but the system you have lends itself to very strong character development and inner conflict resolution.  Combining this with the fact (and I *like* this) that you have none of those standard traits (strength, dexterity, perception, etc.), you have a powerful game for development of character and story.  All of this seems to slightly go against your rather humorous premise with the amoebae people.  You may want to readjust this to put a more serious spin on things (and bring in Hell, it ain't a game till the devils arrive).

Hope I didn't ramble too much.

Dav

[Ian Freeman]

On 2001-06-29 12:23, Dav wrote:
Maybe combine a few of those aspects into one trait (or opposed traits, with one at one end of the spectrum, and the other at the opposite end... bringing in inner conflict through a balancing system).  Here is a brief connection I was seeing with the first part:

Self-Community: Balancing personal goals with the goals of the whole.

Life-Suffering: Seem to go hand-in-hand

Justice-Ego: A sense of justice in an absolute sense, and how willing you are to apply that sense to your own actions.  

Freedom-Dynamism: Simple static vs. dynamic conflict, with possible bouts of "does one need to change to be free?" questions

I do admit that it needs a lot of streamlining and that would make it quite a bit more streamlined at the cost of flexibility, and flexibility is something i want.

Take for example freedom-dynamism. If somone believes that people should be free and that change is also necessarry than they would have high scores in both. Having freedom and dynamism opposed would prevent that (unless, of course they are simply called opposed traits and there scores are tracked independantly.)

The same applies for life and suffering. Someone might have a high tolerance for suffering and a high respect for life. These people basically believe that you only cross the line when somebody dies (and then their community stat defines exactly what they define "somebody" as). Sure, that kind of a belief is rare, but it is possible.

I am thinking that doing the opposition is a good idea, but still allowing the stats to be tracked seperately to get interesting situations like that.

All of this seems to slightly go against your rather humorous premise with the amoebae people.  You may want to readjust this to put a more serious spin on things (and bring in Hell, it ain't a game till the devils arrive).

The reason i picked something weird like that is because i wanted to avoid passing jugdement as much as possible. The instant you use a human religion yoou are putting in a set of rights and wrongs that can be applied to humans, which means that is seems the author is passing judgement (whether they are or not). Samething with bringing in hell, it results in a passing of judgement... unless, i make the virii's morals so whacked out that your morals have nothing to do with where you end up. But then what does? maybe the peoples names... hehe, that could be neat. All people whose names begin with vowels go to hell! muwhahahah!

[Ian Freeman]

Dav! You're a fucking muse!

This post is long as all hell. Sorry.

Okay, Okay. There are 4 sets of opposed moral attributes and 2 sets of governing attributes. Finally, there is Force. Also, everyone has three obsessions (see very below).

The 4 moral sets are:
Conviction/Dynamism
Self/Community
Life/ Justice
Suffering/Freedom

The 2 governing sets are:
Fury/Rationale
Delusion/Purity

Character Creation – Attributes (both kinds): The character must have a Force of 12 or more. No attribute may be greater than 10, but scores above 6 are pretty much in the whacko range and most people will never have higher than 2 and zeros in most attributes. Those are the only rules. What is force? Okay. See how the attributes are all opposed to another. Yeah? Well, when the scores are assigned to both sides of an opposition you take the difference between 'em and that is the Unity. Add up all your Unitys and you get your Force. So if someone had Life at 2 and Justice at 6 the L/J pairing would have a Unity of 4.

Reasoning behind that Force thing? Okay. The more the character's personality diverges from the human norm. The more fractured and unbalanced a character is (see how all the attributes balance one another out? Self balances with community and Fury balances with Rationale), the more they are capable of exerting their moral will on reality (see the setting below). Players must have a Force (total unity) of 12 or more. Force is also their Resource. Most people are afraid of gaining power and such, but the PCs, because of their fractured nature and power to change the world, must strive for it.

Here are the explanations for the attributes. Remember that attributes (Even if opposed) are tracked separately, so you have a Self score AND a community score.

Conviction/Dynamism. Conviction is elf confidence, belief that you are RIGHT. Dynamism is the willingness to change and is the belief that change is good.

Self/Community. Self is the belief that you are important. Community is the belief that others are important.

Life/Justice. Life is the belief that life is what counts, and is important. Justice is the belief that philosophical concepts (like justice) are important. The reason these are "opposed" is because there is always a struggle between these two ideals in society. death penalty

Suffering/Freedom. Suffering is a tolerance for others having to endure what they don't want to endure. Extremely high suffering indicates not just a tolerance but a belief that people SHOULD suffer. Freedom is the belief that people should choose for themselves (i.e. not endure what they don't want to endure). These stats are not mutually exclusive (even though they kinda seem like they are). Take for example someone who feels peoples should ensure to achieve freedom. Gandhi

Fury/Rationale. Emotion versus reason. Most people are capable of emotional outbursts and reason. That's why the stats aren't mutually exclusive.

Delusion/Purity. The belief that the rules do not apply to you (or certain others), and Purity is your belief in unity of purpose and people.

Those last two (F/R and D/P) are governing attributes. They govern when the character may ignore their morals. They may be assigned any value, but the greater any of them are the more a price the characters soul must play (God doesn't like those who break It's code).

The character then picks three obsessions. These can be anything (like photography, whatever).

Setting:

Okay, no more silliness. Armageddon is NOW. God has decreed that the most powerful moral vision on the planet will be deemed the "One True Way" in some period of time (not specified), and everyone and everything has been stripped down to it's Force, Obsessions and Morals. Nothing else about a person matters. The PCs are people who are trying to change the world, because they know that they can change other people. I would need to add in the kicker idea from sorcerer to make sure the PCs are in fact taking the initiative. The world is still the normal world, but its end is just over the horizon.

Reality is also being shaped by people morals, especially people with high Force. So lands are corrupted (or blessed), warped by people's minds and such. The landscape is meant to be pretty freaking psychedelic especially where the influences of 2 different cultures with different moral systems collide.

System:

Roll dice equal to relevant moral attribute to do something. Highest die roll = result. If obsessed, take highest 2 and add together.

This can also shape the world, replacing drama dice and such. Characters can enter scenes if they provide moral justification and so on and so forth.

Players MUST obey their moral code at all times. OR, they can spend a point from one of their governing attributes. Doing so makes them hand a die over to the GM. The GM can use this (at dramatic moments) to throw back at the PCs, or cancel their use of scene-entering or whatever

Damn, that was a long post. So what's the game about? Expressing human morality in terms of theme, setting, and system! Boo-yah!


_________________
Ian "yes, Engligh is my first language" Freeman
-Look! I'm starting to proofread my posts. Now you won't have to decipher my disjointed ramblings.

[ This Message was edited by: Ian Freeman on 2001-06-29 23:56 ]

[Dav]

Ian:

Brilliant.  Period.

If you haven't seen them previously, I would suggest looking at Planescape for AD&D, as well as Unknown Armies.  Both of these tread a similar line in terms of overall mythos and premise (though you definitely have yourself a system much more in-depth and developmental than AD&D).  

I think this is probably one of the best game ideas I've seen flit across the boards here, and I look forward to seeing you develop it.  I think you have a good point with the opposition with separate tracking for attribute types.  It gives a deeper sense of freedom for creation, as well as development for the character in later terms.

In terms of Force, would it act as a "mental balance" trait as well as a sense of division within one's self?  I ask because I like the idea that as a character becomes more powerful, things become more difficult.  With higher Force, the fraying of the self could grow so much that people begin to change toward their ideals (becoming archons or metaphysical stereotypes of their own dogma, ala Kult -- which was, in my opinion, that game's strongest point, and very underdeveloped for what it could have been).  Though, with these powers, the GM can use your Force *against* you, either as a pool to draw from each session, or as a penalty to rolls (or whatever works best for the system).  I always like power-with-a-cost attitudes in games.

I think you have a great game on your hands, and one that can be definitive for the genre that it is spanning.  You are utilizing religion in a strong manner, but doing it with a style and class that many games (yes, my own included) seem to lack.  It has a strong moral stance, without preaching, which is a *major* breakthrough for modern game construction (in my opinion).

I want to see it (please) when you get some preliminary stuff written for it.  It sounds very cool.


Dav

[Ian Freeman]

If you haven't seen them previously, I would suggest looking at Planescape for AD&D, as well as Unknown Armies.  Both of these tread a similar line in terms of overall mythos and premise (though you definitely have yourself a system much more in-depth and developmental than AD&D).  

I've never played UA or Planescape (unless you count Planescape: Torment, one of the better CRPGs). I might look into them.

In terms of Force, would it act as a "mental balance" trait as well as a sense of division within one's self?  I ask because I like the idea that as a character becomes more powerful, things become more difficult.  With higher Force, the fraying of the self could grow so much that people begin to change toward their ideals (becoming archons or metaphysical stereotypes of their own dogma, ala Kult -- which was, in my opinion, that game's strongest point, and very underdeveloped for what it could have been).  

I hadn't thought of anything like that, but that could work into it really well. Here's how I'd try it: The world is being divided, lines are being drawn in the ground and the global moral conflicts are getting ready to slug it out (not everyone is, some people are just trying to get the hell out of their way). For the first time, the "weak" have just as much a chance of sucess as anybody else cause strength and viciousness have nothing to do with this fight.

Okay, so these moral armied need leaders, right? Those are the Avatars: the penultimate incarnation of any specific moral outlook. These Avatars prepare to beat each other into submission to prove who has the One True Way. This is what many PCs will strive to become. They will try to become the embodiment of their morals in order to influence the world.

A possible twist: That's armageddon. God doesn't have to do jack all. All he had to do was provide a level playing field and real reasons (morals) for everyone to seperate and start fighting. This fighting is what's going to cause the end of the world, because millions will die in these moral crusades. This leaves the players with 2 options: Try to "win" armageddon or maybe try to prevent it entirely. Admittedly, the latter seems pretty unlikely, but hey, they can always try.

Though, with these powers, the GM can use your Force *against* you, either as a pool to draw from each session, or as a penalty to rolls (or whatever works best for the system).  I always like power-with-a-cost attitudes in
games.

Yeah, that would definetly work for this kind of game. But, I really do need to nail down the mechanics to figure out just how this would work.

Once I have a working version of the game I'll probly post it up here.

On a different topic for this idea: Arcana

I've been thinking of the idea of equipment, and I realized that they should have no effect on this game. Sort of. You still need a car to drive and a repair kit to fix it but the difference between a sword and a shotgun (or different repair kits) is totally non-existent.

Basically, I'm thinking any time that exerting morals (ie. any time dice are rolled) what equipment used is totally irrelevant.

With one exception: Arcana. Arcana are stuff with personal and moral importance to the character. Everything from a picture of a deceased loved one to the Shotgun you're pa gave you when you turned 16. These gives bonus dice for situations where that Arcana is related. The shotgun would be shooting people, but it's rarely that direct. If the above loved one died in a car accident, you could use that Arcana to save someone from a car accident. Or if they were a child of yours, it could deal with helping a child.

Arcana don't have to be positive. It could be a scar on your shoulder from when joe-bob cut you with a piece of glass. This could help you against joe-bob, or other stuff.

Whaddaya think?

[Dav]

I like the idea of Arcana quite a bit.  And the thought that the "let's go shopping" section is non-existent to very small is also appealing.  I really think that you have a strong concept here.  Once the mechanics are hammered down, I think you'll have a blast playtesting.  All-in-all, this game sounds like a whole hell of a lot of fun.

You may want to put some sort of restriction into the Arcana idea, so you don't get 1000 idiots running about with AK-47s that Saddam gave them, which makes them lovely.  Of course, I can see some merit to a bunch of terrorist holy warriors in that vein, so I think I may rescind that first statement.

You may want to be careful not to tread heavily on Wraith's Fetter idea, which may be cutting it close, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  If you don't have a reference for that game, you may want to borrow a copy from a friend.

I can't wait to see an alpha version.

Dav

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

Check out Pendragon, too. It's the grand-daddy system for dealing with several dichotomous-sets of extremes at once (Mercy-Just, Passion-Chastity, etc).

Fading Suns uses a simplified variant of the Pendragon system as well.

Best,
Ron