Thoughts on Morality

I've often been at odds with Morality as mechanical function of gaming systems, at least as the way Dungeons & Dragons seems to have done it. I like what it can do as a descriptive framework to help give a character that spark of life. I also like how it can provide a outcome basis for reward. The article "On Alignment & Bullshit" on Delta's D&D Hotspot got me to think about this some more. In particular, I wanted to take his breakdown of Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic (LNC) and merge it with my relativistic sense of Good/Neutral/Evil (GNE). The most interesting part to me was that internally most villians will come up as either Good or Neutral

Delta's LNC went as follows:

• Lawful = Rules apply to everyone, including me.
  
• Neutral = Rules apply to everyone, excluding me.
  
• Chaotic = Rules apply to no one, including me.

I liked that quite a lot. Probably mostly because it's succinct. The only weakness I see may be that people are more wishy-washy than that, and that as a descriptive frame work the system may work better as some combination of poles. Then again this does that, as do the D&D descriptions, so it probably works.

My relativistic interpretation of GNE generally goes:

• Good = Altruism
• Neutral = Wishy-Washy
• Evil = Egoism

I'm not saying that Altruism is Good, or that Egoism/Selfishness is Evil, just that's those are the spectrum poles that I think are more important in the long run for characterization.

The type of game I tend to run fits the Gothic Horror genre pretty well. I consider Lovecraft and the whole White Wolf product line to be major influences. I don't mind when it gets a little campy, but I generally feel that many or even most villians/antagonists are acting for generally altruistic reasons. That's certainly not always true. Motivations may also be for personal survival or empowerment, but even they will consider that the actions they are taking are appropriate.

I very much like how the Storyteller system builds in morality as a reward mechanic, and especially how it provides the refresh for the flexible Willpower juice stat. I think, instead of the 7 deadly sins/7 heavenly virtues dichotomy I instate a ideal self/subverted self dichotomy. I do like the idea of taint as well, and especially for certain powerful templates, and I think that subverting yourself to add to your Willpower stat should have significant negative impacts over time. It should be dangerous. The idea being, that by choosing to reinforce your shadow self you are changing yourself and making it easier for the bad things to find and influence you. It may also be a path to power, and it certainly can make for some interesting redemption stories.