[WoD 2.0] Moral(ity) Quandry

[Robert Bohl]

I think it was probably a mistake for them to put in "respect for the law" in there, as it makes it too . . . I don't know.  Just not right in vibe for me.  Respect for others, compassion, that works on its own.

[Grover]

It seems like that definition could be the root of the problem.  What happens to your morality rating when you demonstrate respect for a human being by disrespecting the law (Don't turn in the man who saved you from drowning, even though he's an escaped convict)?  What happens when you disrespect a human being by respecting the law ('you stole food for your kids, now I'm gonna turn you in')?  Does the book mention any examples along the lines of 'I live in Nazi Germany, and the law says I have to turn in Jews.'?

[Robert Bohl]

No, not to my knowledge.  The truth is there's not a lot of time spent defining Morality, probably because they want to avoid being seen as moralistic or moralizing.  They give some basic sins at each level, and that's it.  I feel from reading the developers on their forums and at rpg.net that they wanted individual STs to do a lot of the defining of Morality.

[TonyLB]

Now, Rob... given this definition, is killing monsters actually something that anybody should be worrying about?  The monster-hunter is neither voiding his compassion with human beings or (arguably) violating the law.

I mean, I see what you're saying... I think you could do a really good game that way.  But it does seem to be taking a bit of a left turn from the definition.

[Robert Bohl]

In my opinion, it says "human beings" because it's the mortals book.  I generalize that to sentient creatures.  Maybe that's not the intent, maybe I am making a leap, but I feel I'm justified in that leap, and even the player in question does not disagree that, generally speaking, sentience is sentience is sentience.  It's his character that disagrees.

I think if you remove that sentience is sentience guideline, you wind up with a version of D&D in a modern setting.

In reading the Vampire rules' Humanity section, every comment there is about humans when it talks about the nature of the target of brutality or cruelty, except in one case, where it uses the phrase, "capable of virtually any act of depravity against another person."

So if you're going to go with a strict, legalistic interpretation it can be argued that vampires can do anything they want to to one another (or werewolves or, more arguably, mages), it's only hurting humans that matters.

Obviously the game doesn't "want" this.  Regardless of what the Morality description says, I do not believe that World of Darkness "wants" you to disregard non-human intelligence in calculating Morality loss.

--

As an aside, more on topic, Vampire has this to say about undead who succeed at degeneration checks:  "If the roll succeeds, the character manages to feel shame, regret or at least some human response."  And, further, about failures, "If the roll fails, the charater feels nothing except satisfaction at getting what he wanted . . . and a little more of the Man slips away and the character has less with which to fight the Beast in the future."