[Insurrection] Motives and Virtues as Attributes

[stefoid]

so the summary is that MJ should be more specific as to what virtues and motives are, and ensure they are used consistantly, since they seem to be central to his game.

[Narf the Mouse]

The upside of courage would seem to be the ability to fight better.
The downside of courage would seem to be a higher chance of dying in a battle.
But, what if your character is perfectly fine with that? Patriot, martyr or just berserker?

I think what my point is, is that 'downside' is all point-of-view. The way I'm envisioning my RPG is that, even if the character dies in battle, they can still win, because they will get meta-game rewards to spend before they kick the bucket - ie., '...Remember my legacy...My people...Remember *Urk* the cause...Fight...On...' (Spending all the meta-game rewards on a morale boost for your side).

I guess the other point is that win conditions are determined by the player and character and thus ultimatly by the player.

So, I guess I sorta meandered my way to a point...Tell me if you find it. :D

[MJGraham]

Dunno if that works all the time, though.  I mean, just because someone is courageous (example) doesn't mean they are reckless, overconfident ,etc...  A brave hero might choose to fight against the odds to rescue the maiden whereas a brave villain might choose to run away - saving his bravery for fighting the bank guards or whatever.  Its more about motivation .

So I think the  pro/con might work for motivations, but not neccesarilly virtues.

It's true that a brave person might not be reckless and overconfident. This is my way of explaining such a persons lack of recklessness and overconfidence within the confines of my game. Recall that there are virtues and motives. A courageous person with sufficient motivation can avoid becoming reckless and overconfident. For example a character with courage +4 wants to flee from an opponent. Here his courage +4 becomes a penalty. But his motivation has been accounted for yet. Let's say he his involvement motive is at +5 (he's the kind of person who always has to fit in and always wants to belong). If there is sufficient reason to use his involvement +5 in a manner which is positive for him (if he doesn't flee he will be placing his friends in jeopardy and they've all run so he might as well run too), he will be able to erase the penalty acquired by his courage and end up with +1 bonus.

Any bonus/penalty when rolling to resolve a conflict combines one virtue and one motive. A charlatan's confidence game might work through his negative honesty virtue and his positive affluence motive, i.e. he is greedy and dishonest. A priests rise through the echelons of his church might be a result of his positive loyalty virtue and positive recognition virtue (he is ambitious, craves status, and is completely devoted to his religion).

Virtues only show you half of the picture. To see it fully you need to look at the character's motive too. In some cases a character's virtues and motives will clash. In the example above of the character fleeing from combat, his courage is clashing with his involvement. His involvement motive is stronger than his courage virtue and in the end his involvement wins out, i.e. he gets a +1 bonus. At other time a character's virtues and motives will work together. Returning to the example of fleeing from combat, if the character's courage was -2 it would act as +2 bonus for the purposes of fleeing from combat. This +2 bonus could then be added to his involvement +4 for a grand total of +6. Similarly a character's virtues and motives can work together, but at odds with what the character wants to achieve. Again returning to the same example. What if the character didn't care about his companions? What if he has no qualms about placing them in jeopardy or he doesn't care if they decide to run? What if his involvement was at a -5 instead of a +5. In this circumstance he would add together the penalty for being courageous and the penalty for being exclusionary and too brave for his own good for a grand total penalty of -9.

The OP gave the example of honesty as a virtue.  In a moral sense its a virtue, but in  a practical sense its not.  More like a motivation in that the character is compelled to tell the truth, the way Im reading the example.  As a virtue, you might be better off with 'believable' or whatever.

Believability in relation to what? Without taking into account a character's motivation, in my game a character with a positive honesty is believable when telling the truth but as soon as they try to lie they show all the classic signs of a person in the midst of a falsehood. They can try to lie as much as they want, but if they want to stand any chance of being believed they probably need to be more truthful. On the other hand a character with a negative honesty is excellent at fabricating falsehoods but often fails at being believable when it comes to telling the truth.

Does all of this necessarily make a character with a positive honesty an honest character? In a certain sense this character will certainly have spent much of his or her life being honest. They would have honed and practiced their honesty until they became excellent. It helps to think of virtue not as morality alone, but as excellence too. A character with a positive honesty has had years of being honest, they excel in honesty, for them honesty has become second nature. Sure they can choose to lie. But their clumsiness at dishonesty makes lying very difficult for them. To lie goes against years of experience and their very nature. If a player wants to do well, he or she will choose the most honest course of action for such a character.

Motivations give your character something to care about.  Do they neccessarilly give you an advantage or disadvantage?  Maybe if you are using a virtue in support of a motivation it counts double and if you are using contrary to a motivation it counts half.  i.e. if my motivation is 'self-preservation', it becomes a lot harder to use the 'courage' virtue than if my motivation was 'revenge' and I was fighting the guards standing between me and the 6 fingered man.

Motives in my game are not the little pep talks that people give themselves. They're not affirmations. They're not the justifications we offer ourselves for taking a course of action. They are a characters passions. They're a character's enthusiasm.    A scientist may want to discover a new theory or to disprove an existing one. But his motive (as it is defined under my game) is not simply what he wants, its what he craves. It might be recognition from the scientific community. It could be power in the form of knowledge that he alone possesses. Perhaps he wants to become wealthy as a result of his discovery. His desire to discover a new theory or disapprove an existing one give a direction and goal for his motive. But his motive is what drives him. Its what fuels him towards his goal.

Try to do something which you are not enthusiastic about. Sure you can do it. But when you're passionately committed to it you'll probably do it so much better. That's where the advantage/disadvantage for motives kick in. Think of all the great works of art, music, literature, the great scientific discoveries, the sporting achievements etc. They were all done by men and women whose passions were manifested in the talents they expressed in their chosen fields.

Asking if motives necessarily give you advantages or disdavantages is very similar to what I asked myself when looking at other roleplaying games with their physical and mental attributes. To use a classical physical attribute as an example, does strength give an advantage or disadvantage? It depends on what the character is trying to achieve. A better question to ask is which attributes should I be focusing given what I am hoping to achieve with my game. One person might say that strength is the necessary attribute in combat. Another person might say courage. Someone else might say that they are both necessary. Yet another person might say that neither are necessary. But they would all be failing to answer the question if they didn't know what they wanted out of their game. In my game I want the character's personality to be the focus of how the player interact with the game. I want all of their decisions for their characters to be weighed up against their characters personality. Instead of only asking themselves how will my character achieve X, I want them to also ask why does my character want to achieve X. I want to bring the parts of a character such as alignment, disposition, demeanour etc. into the foreground. Which is where they belong in my opinion.

[MJGraham]

so the summary is that MJ should be more specific as to what virtues and motives are, and ensure they are used consistantly, since they seem to be central to his game.

Virtues and motives are attributes. Virtues explain how a character does something. Motive explains why they did it. A wealthy merchant who has acquired his fortune by being scrupulously fair with his customers and in doing so winning their fidelity will have done so by honesty (the virtue that shows how he did it) and by affluence (the motive which shows why he did it).

One easy way of distinguishing between motives and virtues is that there are no moral baggage attached to motives. They are amoral. In the example above we would not think of the merchant as being a bad person because is honest and fair in his dealings. But what if a rival merchant was to set up a business and this merchant was a dishonest as the first one is honest? Both are motivated by the desire for wealth, i.e. affluence, but one seeks to achieve it through honest dealings, the other through dishonesty. Despite both of them being motivated by affluence, we would probably consider the first to be moral and the second to be immoral. If we had no knowledge of their virtues (or lack thereof) we would be forced to conclude that these merchants are amoral.

[MJGraham]

The upside of courage would seem to be the ability to fight better.
The downside of courage would seem to be a higher chance of dying in a battle.
But, what if your character is perfectly fine with that? Patriot, martyr or just berserker?

I think what my point is, is that 'downside' is all point-of-view. The way I'm envisioning my RPG is that, even if the character dies in battle, they can still win, because they will get meta-game rewards to spend before they kick the bucket - ie., '...Remember my legacy...My people...Remember *Urk* the cause...Fight...On...' (Spending all the meta-game rewards on a morale boost for your side).

I guess the other point is that win conditions are determined by the player and character and thus ultimatly by the player.

So, I guess I sorta meandered my way to a point...Tell me if you find it. :D

If the character wants to die in battle its not up to me to decide if that's alright. That's a choice the participants have to make for themselves. I would hope the character's death happened in such a way that was befitting the aesthetics of the game. But that lies in the hands of the participants. I can give them the means, I can encourage them,  but I cannot force them to play in a manner befitting the aesthetics of the game. Once again, it has to be their choice.

[Narf the Mouse]

I wasn't speaking of forcing a player to play a specific way; the way I envision my game, meta-game rewards come when your character risks their life, that's that only 'push'.

I think one of my points was that in some games, dying is penalized as loosing, regardless of the characters' goals. But it sounds like you have that covered.

The dangers of late-night rambling. :)

[TroyLovesRPG]

Hello,

Risking life is a daily thing for most people in this world. There are no medals, prizes or honor rolls for them. Unless, its reported by the media or part of a political agenda. Risking your way of life is another thing. Instead of requesting suicide from the players and giving them a cookie, how about having the players risk what is most precious to the character: money, power, combat effectiveness, knowledge, the senses, use of arms and legs, etc. The players are challenged by the difficulties their characters accept to uphold the virtues and morality they have selected.

Troy

[Narf the Mouse]

While even crossing the street carries risk, it doesn't take bravery, or self-control, or courage - At least for most people. For most people, all it takes is checking the light, looking both ways and walking.

Quite frankly, most people in most places in the world do not face anywhere near the same risk as the soldier on the battlefield.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean that other people don't face risks - You do have a point there. But, here's a question for you: How do you compare someone signing up for the armed forces out of patriotism and a rich person donating every cent they have?

[TroyLovesRPG]

While even crossing the street carries risk, it doesn't take bravery, or self-control, or courage - At least for most people. For most people, all it takes is checking the light, looking both ways and walking.

Quite frankly, most people in most places in the world do not face anywhere near the same risk as the soldier on the battlefield.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean that other people don't face risks - You do have a point there. But, here's a question for you: How do you compare someone signing up for the armed forces out of patriotism and a rich person donating every cent they have?

In Atlanta I knew a man who was blind, went to Georgia State University, and had to navigate 4 cross walks each morning and afternoon. He only had the cuckoo and whistle to let him know when to cross. That took a lot of courage, bravery and self-control to face rude pedestrians, honking cars and bad weather.

A soldier on the battlefield is not generic. What country and what war? The risk a soldier takes is great but less than a truck driver.

From Brad Edmonds 2004 --
The top 10 most dangerous professions in the US, in order, are timber cutters; fishermen (politically correctly called "fishers" now); pilots and navigators (the only one in the top 10 that would include significant numbers of government personnel); structural metal workers; driver-sales workers (pizza delivery); roofers; electrical power installers; farm occupations; construction laborers; and truck drivers. Notice that with the qualified exception of pilots and navigators, these dangerous jobs are all in the private sector. Firemen, cops, and soldiers don't make the top 10.

I don't easily fall into the trap of comparing apples in bushels and oranges in crates. That's absurd. However, based on the past decade, a millionare donating his fortune to help a community and a soldier fighting a war are comparably two people doing what they think is right and are willing to risk their livelihood. The contrast is that the donation helps a community and the soldier protects a government asset.

My post about risk was similar to MJGraham's in that the player must choose for the character what is at risk. Each person has something to lose and life is not always the most important thing. Within RPGs, death is a system effect. The character took too much damage and died. If it didn't take so fracking long to make a character, I'd probably die more often, just for the cinematic effect.

Troy

[Narf the Mouse]

Yes, that guy risked his life. Yes, that would be worth theme points. No, most people aren't blind.

Specifically, I noted 'The soldier on thebattlefield'. Granted, the danger level is different for different soldiers. But, to turn your question around, 'Which truck drivers? Which country and which routes do they drive?'

What is the basis used for comparison? As I understand it, the average battle produces 10% casaulties. Unless you're comparing 'one year in the life', with a number averaged over at least ten years of statistics and taking care to only count the death rates for the time period they were employed in that profession, the comparison strikes me as faulty.

That's ignoring the fact that my game is medieval fantasy and neither pilots, navigators, structeral metal workers, driver-sales workers, electrical power installers nor truck drivers exist - And logically, the most dangerous killer is plague.

Given that one statistic I read said that the average police man fires their weapon in earnest once in their entire carreer (Canadian statistic, will vary with country and city), I can see how those jobs are not as dangerous as advertised.

The contrast is that the rich man likely has a job he can use to continue supporting himself, but the soldier has but one life to give. As for the rest, let's not bring war politics into it, please.

Yes, if someone is willing to risk their for something, it's because they have something they consider more precious than life - Like freedom, patriotism, their ideals, pride, power...In my game, all those would be themes - The things that the character prizes enough to risk his or her life, because, in my opinion, having even one of those things is a big, huge, defining characteristic.

And in the end, my inspiration is more 'There and Back Again, A Hobbits' Tale, By Bilbo Baggins' and less 'Simcity'.

[stefoid]

so the summary is that MJ should be more specific as to what virtues and motives are, and ensure they are used consistantly, since they seem to be central to his game.

Virtues and motives are attributes. Virtues explain how a character does something. Motive explains why they did it.

thats a good explanation, which is why I have trouble with the 'if you are courageous you automatically get a penalty to run away type of stuff.'.  My motives decide whether or not I choose to run away.  My courage virtue determines how steadfast I am in that decision.