[WoD 2.0] Moral(ity) [split]

[Black Iris Dancer]

Something I like to do that you might wish to consider is not describing the character's mental states (guilt, etc.), but rather his lower-order physical and psychological states. In this instance, for example, you might narrate the succesful degeneration roll very simply, making no particular reference to how the character feels: “As you pull the trigger, she screams, `we're pregnant!' Her head lights up in a ball of flame.” You could specifically mention that he feels nothing, if you want to highlight that aspect of it. Over the next few days, though, he might have impulses and feelings that seem strange to him—he doesn't “feel bad” about killing her, so why does he keep thinking about it? Why does the jack-o-lantern display at the costume shop downtown make his stomach rumble with acid? The effects would be mostly mild, but even then, as pointed out by various posters here, he could rightfully gripe that he didn't gain a derangement, and shouldn't have experiences akin to having one.

A friend and I came up with a couple of modifications to the Morality system that would address this. The first change is somewhat tangential to your current concern, but may nevertheless be interesting: degeneration rolls occur not only for things your character does, but for things she sees as well. She gains an additional bonus depending on her level of uninvolvement—+1 for seeing something horrible happening and attempting nothing to stop it (but hey, she didn't help), +3 if she is truly a powerless bystander, up to at most +5, for truly extreme situations where she is forced to witness a terrible action, and actively restrained against leaving or doing anything to stop it. Apart from this, degeneration rolls are made as per normal. If you fail, you roll your new Morality as specified in the book to see if you gain a derangement. If you succeed, however, you still gain a derangement. These derangements should, of course, reflect the character's psychological response to whatever she saw or did—perhaps she has flashbacks, or goes into denial, or (appropriate to this situation) justifies whatever she did to herself, saying perhaps, “these creatures just aren't human”. Regardless, the idea is that if you do or witness terrible things and yet keep your basic sense of empathy and compassion, the echoes and memories of these terrible occurrences should produce some degree of psychological trauma. This distinguishes a successful degeneration roll from a failed degeneration roll with no derangement—in the latter case, the character simply becomes more hardened, willing to accept more horrible things in the world. Successful Morality rolls are distinguished from unsuccessful ones that produce derangements in two ways: (1) your Morality remains high, so you are still succeptible to degeneration rolls at your previous level (that is, you still think doing things like this is wrong), (2) the sorts of flaws characters develop are likely to be more akin to someone haunted by memories of what they've seen or done, rather than someone who believes what they've done isn't wrong and so is that much more of a monster for it.

I don't know how applicable this is, and changing this in the middle of a chronicle could lead to issues, but it's something to consider.

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.

I completely agree. I also have a bit of a problem with Morality levels five to seven because of this; yes, the laws generally say that stealing is fairly wrong, but you can be an incredibly compassionate person and not have a big problem with, say, taking millions from McDonald's. I usually recast those rankings a bit, saying that a Mortality 5 sin is theft or property damage that clearly harms (financially, mostly) a number of people, in a way that's usually obvious at the time or easily deductible, a Morality 6 sin is theft or property damage that harms a few people, significantly but usually not irreversibly (“Yeah, it'll suck, but their insurance will pay for a new car…”), and a Morality 7 sin is theft or property damage that causes only slight harm to others. Something like stealing a million dollars from Microsoft would honestly probably go around Morality 9, as might shoplifting from Wal-Mart. Stealing something from a smaller store, less able to just ignore the inventory loss would probably be Morality 7 or 8.

About your Hunter's Heart Merit: I like the idea, and your draft of it. You might consider making a stronger, maybe four-point version of it, wherein your character completely dehumanizes one sort of supernatural, and therefore doesn't have to make any Morality rolls pertaining to them at all. Blow up a vampire's warehouse? Jam a stake through his heart? Whatever. Considering some people to be total monsters has its drawbacks: characters with this Merit have a -3 penalty to all social interactions with members of groups they consider monsters. Additionally, characters will probably find that their actions in such situations creep out and even alienate their friends and cohorts.

(As a further digression, the characters in Buffy are pretty screwed up by the end, albeit not directly racked with guilt for the monsters they'd killed. They certainly have guilt and denial and neuroses abound, though…)

[Robert Bohl]

Thanks for the excellent response, Black Iris.

Something I like to do that you might wish to consider is not describing the character's mental states (guilt, etc.), but rather his lower-order physical and psychological states.

Specifically, what I wound up doing for thisun was (from my story hour):

Vicki lets out a terrified, mournful scream and goes to all fours, vaulting over the terrain toward the fallen park ranger.  She reaches him and covers him with her body, then snaps her head back and snarls at the men.  She settles down on her behind and draws John up into her, then slowly starts to crawl backward, facing the men.

Ricky loads the flare gun and fires it at Vicki.  It hits her in the shoulder and burns its way down her chest until it lands on John.  She yanks him hard and the burning flare falls to the ground, lighting up the pair.  "Please, let us go," she snarls out in guttural mockery of Vicki's lovely voice.  "We won't bother you anymore.  Please!  We won't tell anyone."

Ricky's bloodlust was cooled by the flare falling on John.  He holds out the flare gun, unsure of what to do.  Harris helps him out.

He closes his hand over the gun, then takes the last three flares from the box.  He loads one as he walks toward her, then fires.  She lets out terrible scream and continues to scuttle backward.  Harris's face is impassive.  He walks steadily forward.

Ricky and Manny are agape.  Clutching for something to do, something normal to cling to, Ricky takes up the professional digital video camera that Manny stole for him a few days ago.  He starts taping the beast, and Harris.  The filter helps.  This isn't happening.  It's an image in his viewfinder.  It's special effects.

Vicki finally stops scuttling away.  She folds her twisted body over Ranger Birkitch and starts weeping.  "Please, let us go.  Let us live.  Please.  We won't hurt you.  Please."

Harris presses points the loaded flare gun behind her ear, and as he pulls the trigger she screams, "We're pregnant!"

The flare burrows into the meat of Vicki's head and obliterates her.  Harris drops the flare gun and pulls the burning corpse away from the unconscious body of the park ranger.  One of the men stabilizes him, and for the first time since the sun went down, the desert is silent.

In other words, I went utterly value-neutral and merely descriptive.

A friend and I came up with a couple of modifications to the Morality system that would address this. The first change is somewhat tangential to your current concern, but may nevertheless be interesting: degeneration rolls occur not only for things your character does, but for things she sees as well.

This actually does bear on the current situation, since two characters sat by and allowed (and had to endure) the murder.  I'm not sure I'm going to bang them for this incident without having prior warned them, but I'm going to ask them how they feel about rolling for it after-the-fact (since it was the last thing that happened and since they tend to like it when their characters suffer), and also let them know that I would like to use this sort of thing in the future.

This was on the "will she or won't she" Morality roll, not the derangement roll, right?

(1) your Morality remains high, so you are still succeptible to degeneration rolls at your previous level (that is, you still think doing things like this is wrong), (2) the sorts of flaws characters develop are likely to be more akin to someone haunted by memories of what they've seen or done, rather than someone who believes what they've done isn't wrong and so is that much more of a monster for it.

Interesting.  it sounds like you're suggesting (correct me if I'm wrong) to allow for Morality-induced derangements without Morality loss.  Is that correct?  How are they "bought off" then?

I completely agree. I also have a bit of a problem with Morality levels five to seven because of this; yes, the laws generally say that stealing is fairly wrong, but you can be an incredibly compassionate person and not have a big problem with, say, taking millions from McDonald's.

I leave these as is because I see property crime as a kind of dispassion (and had I my way I would have renamed Morality to Compassion).  Even if you're just taking money from McDonalds, the store owner and his employees are going to suffer, and ultimately McDonalds passes along any "loss" costs to producers (encouraging mistreatment of labor or destruction of environment) and/or consumers.  Your edit accounts for this, but I perfer the clarity of the rules as written.

[-IT-]

I think you've become to fixiated on the books interpretation of a failed/successful morality roll.  I see no contradiction with this harris character reacting differently to a successful outcome, then say another character.  

 Sure soldiers are effected by war, but some soldiers return with extreme psychological problems, while other do not... they may have even experienced the same situation.  Why does one soldier return home mentally scarred after seeing one corpse, while another returns without batting eyelash despite torturing and raping a prisonfull of inmates?  The answer is luck, happenstance, and the roll of the dice.  When your mind reaches that snapping point and either crumbles, snaps, hides, or, endures.

[IMAGinES]

Hi Rob,

First off, I'm not familiar with WoD 2.0 or its rules, so I'm pretty much going on the explanations in this thread alone. I'd like to have a shake at this.

I hope you'll excuse a quick chop-job and re-arrangement of some of your prior comments to reflect my understanding of the rules:

A brief primer: When you commit an act that is at or below your Morality, you roll a number of dice based on the level of that sin (so a sin at Morality 2 gives you only 2 dice where a sin at Morality 4 gives you 3 dice). You need to get at least one success...

Let me quote exactly what the books say.

"If the roll succeeds, the character's overall sense of compassion remains intact. . . ."

"If the degeneration roll fails, your character's sense of right and wrong is altered by his experience. . . . His soul hardens to the needs of others and he becomes inured to greater acts of selfishness or violence."

If you fail, you lose a point of Morality. You then roll your new Morality as a dice pool. If you get at least one success on that roll, you're fine. If you fail, you get a derangement.

Okay, as I understand the rules, the two dice are those that the Morality 2 Sin of murder requires be rolled. I assume that "manages to avoid degeneration" is different to a derangement test. Ergo, the player passed the base test and Harris' Morality didn't change; his "overall sense of compassion remains intact". Is that right?

He fires the flare into the back of her head and simultaneously she cries, "We're pregnant!" ... This is murder, in my opinion, and the player rolls the two dice for the sin, but manages to avoid degeneration...

So my problem is this: how do I narrate this moment? My read of the various consequences of a Morality check are:

Success: the guilt assails you but you manage to find equilibrium in the end.

Failure w/o derangement: You come to realize what you did was okay, and you are able to assimilate it into your psyche successfully.

Failure w/ derangement: You cut off part of yourself and let it deal with all such problems in the future. As a psycholgical amputee, you don't "look" like the other folks.

If that's your reading - and heck, for all I know there's probably a lot of surrounding text in the WoD rulebook (which I don't own and haven't read) that supports it - then it seems your player is going against the social contract in terms of the rules you all agreed to play under.

Based solely on what the rules presenation in the thread, though, it seems that the player's decision - assuming Harris already had the attitude that it's okay to kill what he perceives as monsters, no matter how human they look or seem -  is the correct one. Harris' "overall sense of compassion" was rather lacking to begin with (which makes me wonder why a player would give that kind of character mindset a Morality as high as 7, assuming that scores are on a similar 1-10 scale as Old WoD and that Morality can be "built" by the player during creation), but it indeed "remains intact".

Faililng a degeneration check, losing a point of Morality, but not getting a derangment feels like the perfect opportunity to say, "You're okay with this. It had to be done." I've already used it previously, in fact, when a guy who'd been a petty thief all his life finally got a Morality ding for it.

How do I narratively distinguish between a character losing Morality and one that goes through the same thing, but does not? That "I'm okay with it" thing was my dividing line. If I go with that, what's the distinction?

In your shoes, I'd be tempted to put that very question to your player (in a friendly and constructive manner, of course; I'm most definitely not advocating grilling the game-breaking little son of a -

ahem Er, sorry. Projecting. Anyway...). How does he think Harris' "sense of right and wrong" would have been "altered by his experience" if he had actually failed the degeneration test without derangement? Maybe he has a different, and possibly equally game-worthy, take on portraying the loss of Morality than yours. If not, he might see your point (and if he doesn't - well, I keep coming back to "Why did he create Harris with a Morality of 7 in the first place?").

Apologies if this comes across as terse or overly critical; it's not intended to be. I just can't think of a better way to write what I'm trying to get across.

[Robert Bohl]

Okay, as I understand the rules, the two dice are those that the Morality 2 Sin of murder requires be rolled. I assume that "manages to avoid degeneration" is different to a derangement test. Ergo, the player passed the base test and Harris' Morality didn't change; his "overall sense of compassion remains intact". Is that right?

You are correct.  There is a "do I lose Morality" roll, then if you fail, there's a "do I get a derangement" roll.  Harris did not fail any roll.

If that's your reading - and heck, for all I know there's probably a lot of surrounding text in the WoD rulebook (which I don't own and haven't read) that supports it - then it seems your player is going against the social contract in terms of the rules you all agreed to play under.

It pretty much is what the books say, inasmuch as the books say anything.  It's not that I wouldn't be willing to abandon that, it's just that if I did I'd have to have thought of a way to distinguish it from a failed Morality check.

All humans start off with Morality 7.  Harris probably could've dunked it a few points if he wanted to and it wouldn't have been a big deal.  The problem is that with regard to everything other than "monsters", he fits the Morality 7 character type.  When Manny pickpocketed a guy, for example, he was bothered by it.

It's pretty much a moot point now, though it may rear its ugly head again when we start the game again this Saturday.

[-IT-]

Text strips words of their inflection and empathy, please do not take the direct questions below as an attack.

The game rules dictate that the player is still as 'moral' as before.  I don't see why you think some special rule or circumstance has to be applied to justify how he 'feels' about it.  The player understands such acts will harm his morality, but doesn't want his character to feel remorse or regret over things he is convinced are morally right.  Since the character is 'his', I don't see the point of trying to dictate his feelings with a mechanical system.  I'd say the most extreme thing you could have done was stripped him of the morality point anyway, or, made him spend a willpower point to resolve himself to what the game views as an immoral mindset.

The game has an objective code of morality - that is a fact.  To steal and not risk becoming 'less moral', one must have a humanity of 5 or 6.  This being the case I don't think it's in your purveiw to always dictate how a character 'feels' about his actions...  Do you really intend to impose the same feeling on every character that succeeds at a morality roll?  Without taking into account their virtues/vices or character personality?

[Monosodium Glutamate]

Frankly, I think this discussion has highlighted a serious flaw in the WoD rules regarding Humanity.  A lot of the potential problems that are presented as derangements (various forms of psychological trauma, for example) just aren't associated with the psychological reactions that are symbolized by Humanity loss.

For example:  people with low levels of empathy and concern for others aren't likely to have nightmares or develop erratic behavior after witnessing the torture of another person, while people who do feel for others are likely to develop at least a few psychological problems afterwards, even if it's only guilt at being unable to stop the torture.  Things like "survivor's guilt" arise because people feel personally responsible for the suffering of others.  And that's just dealing with horrible things that are witnessed -- actually performing acts that cause significant suffering to others will be problematic for the people who are fundamentally "human" and not for those who are essentially two-legged monsters.

The goals of thematic appropriateness and 'realism' would seem to require that derangements are what people should develop if they witness or carry out terrible events.  Losing a Humanity point would be a (fairly destructive) way for people to copel with those derangements:  instead of having horrible nightmares about the suffering you witnessed, you become indifferent to it instead.

Hannibal Lecter doesn't have a compulsion to eat human flesh because he has a low Humanity/Morality.  He eats human flesh because he appreciates exotic delicacies and views other people as subhuman (and fairly annoying) animals.  To people that don't view themselves as superior predators and who have been conditioned against viewing human beings as meat animals, finding out after the fact that they'd consumed human flesh would be psychologically devastating, and you'd expect such people to develop emotional disturbances afterwards.

Another example:  fans of "Firefly" will remember the boy who was forced to watch Reavers torture, violate, and devour several dozen people.  He ultimately went mad and identified with the Reavers not because he was originally inhuman, but because he wasn't.  If he had been a murderous sociopath to start out, he likely wouldn't have been so affected (although then the Reavers likely would have sensed that and not bothered forcing him to watch).  If we wanted to assign that boy a Morality or Humanity rating, it would have to be very low:  in Vampire terms, he would have been almost completely possessed by the Beast.  But that would have been because he was attempting to cope with exposure to truly grotesque levels of brutality and cruelty; his score would only have dropped so low because it was normal to begin with.

In short, it makes much more sense for derangements to be the "price" for maintaining a relatively high Humanity or Morality than for them to be punishments associated with losing those scores.  Humanity/Morality loss should either be associated with NOT developing derangements, or with a failure to cope with derangements.

[Robert Bohl]

Text strips words of their inflection and empathy, please do not take the direct questions below as an attack.

I'll keep that in mind.

The game rules dictate that the player is still as 'moral' as before.  I don't see why you think some special rule or circumstance has to be applied to justify how he 'feels' about it.

Because, unfortunately, the game rules address this as well.  Also because I'm writing up a "story" based on this (really just a story hour, but there's some narration involved there).

The rules state that someone who fails their Morality check becomes hardened against that sin.  The sin doesn't cause them heartache anymore, and henceforth they may commit that sin (or things at or above that level) without internal consequence.  Further, they state that a failed Morality check means that the person was troubled and upset.

I'm willing to abandon these "rules" if I can find a good alternative.  Like I said, I'm not eager to dictate to the player how his character feels.  That makes me very uncomfortable.

The player understands such acts will harm his morality, but doesn't want his character to feel remorse or regret over things he is convinced are morally right.  Since the character is 'his', I don't see the point of trying to dictate his feelings with a mechanical system.

I certainly don't want to do that.  Really, I wanted to come up with a way for him to describe how he felt that worked with the theme and the toss of the dice.

Basically, if making a Morality check means you don't care, what you did was okay, and if failing a Morality check means you don't care, what you did was okay, where's the narrative difference between the two?  I don't need to come up with that answer, but bringing a few options to this player would be good.  He couldn't come up with anything, either.  I asked him, "If Harris doesn't have a problem with this, then how would it have been if he had failed his Morality roll?"  We couldn't really come up with anything.

The way I wound up doing it was just not addressing it.  Whatever happened, he's okay now.  For now.  But this is a guy who has stated his intention to plan the murder of sentient beings.  It's going to take its toll.

Frankly, I think this discussion has highlighted a serious flaw in the WoD rules regarding Humanity. A lot of the potential problems that are presented as derangements (various forms of psychological trauma, for example) just aren't associated with the psychological reactions that are symbolized by Humanity loss.

Well, you're encouraged to come up with something that makes sense for the degeneration at hand.  Classic example would be a guy who saw lots of people die in the war.  He was able to get through it, but he has become hardened to violence.  However, when he hears the sound of a backfiring car, he has a panic attack.

Keep in mind also the thematic purpose here.  It's not about modeling psychology realistically (necessarily, that's certainly part of it).  The real core of it is trying to realize a theme.  To whit: the more you see, and the more that you do, the more unstable you become.  By abandoning your compassion for others, your psychological integrity begins to degrade.

I don't think the Morality system is without problems.  For one, it doesn't allow for the Gentleman Hunter type.  The guy who can coldly plan the murder of another sentient creature who has not harmed you or anyone you love, yet who still would feel emotionally distressed--genuinely--at the thought of hurting the feelings of a human being.  But that's okay, I guess. That's not what World of Darkness wants to be.  World of Darkness wants to be the kind of world where being a hunter means you give up your soul in exchange for protecting people against the things that bump in the night.  That's a pleasantly discordant thing.  I quite enjoy it.

[-IT-]

That's an interesting take on humanity and derangement gain.  I think the would humanity/morality system has a been flavored with CoC's sanity rules in this version - personally I prefer it.

I think your way of working morality makes sense as well as the WoD way.  The wod way says that high moral integrity = mental stability... and that degradation of those standards can be because of you absorbing immoral things into your moral code, or in the case of losing humanity and gaining a derangement, that is because you have partitioned a portion of yourself or developed a system for coping with your sub-standard realization of your own human worth.

 People with high humanity/morality have a greater chance of developing a derangement if they witness something horibler or do something horrible... someone with a low humanity won't even have to roll.  In the WoD system Hannibal lecter is a human with a morality that flutuates between 0 and 1... by the new rules humans can function with Morality 0, it just makes them crazier - and the man hannibal lecter was based on was very crazy indeed... he inserted metal needles into his groin, dozens of them ... he ate children and wrote their parent's letters explaining how he cooked them... not the picture of someone keeping it together.

The Wod way has a mechanical system of redemption.... by earning back morality one overcomes derangements... your way mechanically punishes those who maintain high morals but have to interact with an immoral world.  Both systems have their merits.

[Robert Bohl]

That's an interesting take on humanity and derangement gain.  I think the would humanity/morality system has a been flavored with CoC's sanity rules in this version - personally I prefer it.

Yes, the stuff they've done with their morality systems this time around is really an improvement.  It's value neutral.  It doesn't say killing is wrong, it just has the philosophy that killing is an act of rejecting your innate compassion for other human beings that you get as your "human starter kit".  By alienating yourself from that compassion, you start to damage a brain that was made for compassion.  And the best part is it doesn't have to accurately map to whatever the currently in-vogue personality theory happens to be.  It doesn't pretend to be a reality emulation engine.  It's explicit in saying that it has made this choice for thematic reasons.

[Monosodium Glutamate]

But to use the example of panic attacks:  they're not associated with performing violence.  People who are the victims of extreme violence or who have to cope with systemic violence are the ones who're likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorders.

I acknowledge the point that the current system was chosen partly because it helps convey a certain theme.  I'm just not sure if that's really the best way to convey that theme.

[Monosodium Glutamate]

The wod way says that high moral integrity = mental stability... and that degradation of those standards can be because of you absorbing immoral things into your moral code, or in the case of losing humanity and gaining a derangement, that is because you have partitioned a portion of yourself or developed a system for coping with your sub-standard realization of your own human worth.

Except that if the person had to develop a system for coping with the conflict between action/experience and internal morality, that implies that the relatively high morality in a sense came through intact -- otherwise there wouldn't be a conflict.  If morality simply degraded, the person wouldn't have a problem.  They'd have lost some of their essential humanity and hence wouldn't need special ways of coping with the conflict between that lost humanity and their experiences.  A soldier who learned to view the enemy as subhuman probably won't be tortured with guilt about actions in combat.  Personally, I'd rather be tortured with guilt about shooting people I've never met than view them as unimportant..

You're right that the system can work either way.  You're certainly entitled to use whatever you prefer.  I personally like the idea of derangements being part of the price you have to pay to do terrible things and retain your humanity -- people who avoid the derangements end up paying a much higher price by losing Morality.

[edit]  Once again, I'm thinking of a particular event from "Firefly".  There's a scene in the end of the first episode that I see as relevant:  Preacher Book is talking to Inara about what's happened since he arrived on the ship:

"I've been out of the abbey two days, I've beaten a lawman senseless, I've fallen in with criminals... I watched the captain shoot a man I swore to protect.  And I'm not even sure if I think he was wrong."

He's very, very close to crying.  He goes through quite a lot dealing with his fear and uncertainty and pain about what he experienced.  I think that's a great example of overcoming a very minor derangement caused by his high Humanity/Morality interacting with what he's seen and felt.

[Robert Bohl]

MSG, consider Tony Soprano.  Those panic attacks have to do with his committing violence.  I get your central point, but I have a feeling if you looked at real people who commit violence, I think you'd find some psychological damage there as well.  Serial killers are the obvious pull (depression, hallucinations, etc.).  People who've had to kill people in war don't only suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, but a host of problems including depression and obsessive behaviors.  Henry Hill (the guy that the movie Goodfellas is about) is full of compulsive behavior, and is a multiple addict.

The earlier argument that witnessing and being victim to violence should risk degeneration or derangement was a very compelling one.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi folks,

In the interest of elegance, if nothing else, I've split the above posts from [WoD 2.0] Moral(ity) quandary, with Rob's permission.

I also want to remind everyone that this is the Actual Play forum, so if we can focus the discussion on that, I think it'll help Rob's goals in presenting the topic.

Best,
Ron

[Monosodium Glutamate]

Point acknowledged, Mr. Edwards.  I admit that I don't have much Actual Play experience to contribute on this subject:  this issue has caused me to avoid playing or running games set in the new WoD.

My impression is that players are often more concerned about derangements than Humanity loss, partly because that's associated with less control over their characters, partly because that's how the system presents them.

Can anyone provide us with their thoughts about how their players react to derangements and the like?  I'd like to hear your experiences, since I have so little direct experience of my own.