[Realm] Defining Sway

[Bill Masek]

Chris,

Your have four virtues.  When somebody performs an action that undermines one of these virtues their Sway shifts to the negative, but only if it directly benefits them.  When they do something that enforces one of these virtues their sway shifts positive.  When you sacrifice personal gain for it you get more.  You also loose virtue for "committing evil".  This last one is a bit vague.

For example, if I break an innocent peasant's mind in order to extract information from him to a nation, do I gain or loose sway? 
This action is not for personal gain.  It violates the Compassion virtue (compassion for the peasant) but also reinforces it (compassion for my nation).  According to the rules as you've written them out I believe that I would gain positive sway for this action.  Or can the GM declare it an "evil" and trump my positive shift?

Or what if an enemy army is coming to pillage and rape a village.  In order to save them from this fate, I decide to slaughter the villagers.  (For what ever reason I can not fight the army.)  This does not violate any of my virtues.  It might reinforce Compassion.  After all, I am doing it to spare them an horrible fate.  Does my Sway shift to the positive for this genocide?

It seems a bit odd that a high virtue would reduce the loss of Sway from an immoral action.  This means that if I have a high enough Courage I can act like a complete coward without worrying about the effects.  Likewise I can be a cold blooded killer if my compassion is high enough.  Even if it can never reach levels high enough to allow these extreams, you will have players performing more actions which violate a virtue they have a high number in and fewer actions which violate virtues they have a lower number in.

Consider removing Virtues as a statistic.  But keep them in the game.

If a PC performs an action that...
     ...enforces one of these virtues, +1 Sway
     ...improves the lives of others, +1 Sway
     ...harms an innocent, -1 Sway
     ...undermines of of these virtues, -1 Sway

So if you undermine one of these virtues in order to help others then no sway will be lost.  If you enforce one of these virtues in a way to help others you gain 2 Sway instead of one.  (Stand up to the enemy who wants to take your purse, +1 virtue.  Stand up to the enemy who wants to take an old ladies purse, +2 virtue).

Perhaps each PC can have a "core" virtue.  In this virtue they gain and loose Sway twice as fast.  This would add the same kind of value to your game you would get from your old Virtue system while removing dice rolls and the counter-intuitive nature of the old system.

Merry Christmas!  Consider this feed back my presant to you.  :)

Best,
        Bill

[sayter]

A very interesting mechanic idea. I had initially thought reducing the penalty for way at high virtue made more sense. then i also realised the ideas you were stating in the post....it would enforce bad behavior, in a sense. Instead, I figured high virtue would increase the sway loss if violated, but also increase the gain if "enforced" and in effect, fix the issue.

However, the method in which you present the idea is also applicable. The problem lies only in making it "fair" for everyone, and by making high virtue incur high penalty if violated, we achieve this, and reward them for "good" actions in the process by the same token.

If we limit it to the method you present, it has the same essential effect. The difference being, the moral ambiguity of the situations that would undoubtedly arise are relegated to the back row. This makes things like good and evil a little simpler to define. The kill the villagers example was great...since really, that is a great act of mercy and compassion...kill them all swiftly to spare them the coming rape and pillage....by the old system that would have been GM fiat more than anything else...and we can imagine where THAT would go in the game...especially for a GM who isnt a "round thinking" individual. Many would simply see the death of innocents, and the GM as well as the play-group would want to railroad things to a strictly "save the people" mindset.

Also, making the virtues a quality , vs a statistic, removes a little complexity from things and that can , generally, only be a good thing. I'll def. bear this idea in mind, and see where it can be taken. I'll try play testing with both, and see what is a smoother ride.