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Rant #1: Morality Tracks
Topic Started: Jan 25 2011, 02:01 PM (61 Views)
Laraqua
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In WoD canon, everyone is either evil or about to be. It's less of 'by the grace of God, there goes I' and is more 'by the grace of God, there I go'.

It's awesome in books and movies and inter-linked adventures but after awhile, if everyone you meet is a human-demon-in-disguise, you're a monster, your friend is a monster, then after awhile, you can't help but ask: Why do I care? Its like being a Hob in a sea of Hobgoblins. It doesn't matter if you hurt one. They'd just do the same to you. It just becomes a game of see who can hit the hardest (just like Hob-politics) because you don't need to feel compassionate towards anyone.

Then the rules come along and say: "Actually, no, your average hob would be at least Morality 3 - if they ever had a Morality track - whereas your average vampire is Embraced at Humanity 7. They would be morally aghast at the idea of pirating DVDs or stealing licorice from Woolworths (petty theft). If you were a soldier, good luck, you'd be at least Humanity 2 or 3 (depending on if you consider warzone killing to be manslaughter or murder), and therefore almost a draugr."

Take a look at the Humanity descriptions. No, it's okay. I'll wait.

...

Did you read it? Yup, at Humanity 3 humans will start to realize you're a monster within several minutes of talking to you. At Humanity 2, you start to lose all reason. So y'know all those Mob Boss, Soldier, and other such concepts you kicked around? Forget about it! You'll be a ravening Draugr so quick there'd be no point. Don't even think about being KGB or someone that might actually torture once in a while. At Humanity 1, you won't even bother to clean up the corpses afterwards.

So you'd better try to keep your humanity up as high as you can. Never kill. Quit the Mafia. You'd think with those rules, vampires would be a Support Club of Twilight fans. Do bad things and you'll be insensible at the end of the day. I mean, buying it back up is prohibitively expensive, even if you're just trying to keep that 4th dot.

(Unless you're an NPC. Look at the city books for examples of monstrous NPCs. Monthly mass murder won't drop an NPC below 5 because the creators know how slaveringly insane vampires are at lower levels and that wouldn't fit with the concept).

So, what you have is a double standard where the NPCs are all hand-core bastards and the PCs are all trying to be nice people but failing? Sounds horrific, right? Except Sean ran the canonical WoD-style for me and Adam once and it made me want to start sinking XP into fighting styles just so I could get my just revenge. Did I care when yet another NPC fell to the claws of a monster? Hells no! He was a douche! I did a little party dance and moved on.

Of course, the morality system is important to show the slow (sorry, I mean sudden plummet) into degeneration that is vital for a game of corruptive horror, but do the rules really support this aim?

Here is an example of a really bad day that can turn a new vampire into a slavering monster at Humanity 2:

Stan the Nos-Man is investigating a serial killer. He hears screaming coming from a nearby building and rushes over to investigate. There's blood on one of the upstairs windows. He tries to get in but doesn't know a way, so he smashes one of the downstairs mirror (property damage at least equivalent to petty theft - windows are quite expensive) but since he doesn't have the appropriate Virtue (Prudence) he doesn't gain a bonus and just rolls those 4 dice.

Seeing a nearby gun, he steals it (Petty Theft - 4 dice) just in case. He has no intention of bringing it back. He thinks the owner of the house might be bad. He rushes upstairs, smashes in the door (more property damage) and sees a serial killer slowly carving up a girl. The killer rushes at him and he shoots him thrice in the chest (Manslaughter - 3 dice). He then scoops up the girl and rushes downstairs. Phone doesn't work and they're way out of town. He steals the killer's expensive sedan (Grand Theft - 3 dice) to drive the girl to hospital - again with no concern for returning it.

So he drives like a maniac and finds he's being followed by some guy on a motorcycle, drawing a gun. He panics, hits the brakes, and knocks the guy down off the bike. Guy doesn't have a helmet and kapow, instant broken neck (Manslaughter - 3 dice). If the guy has had a set of bad rolls, he'd be Humanity 3. He sees a black truck blocking the middle of the road and pulls into a parking lot and hides with the girl. As the guy he'd been investigating, the leader of this group of three killers, enters the car park, he aims the gun and shoots. Murder (2 dice). If it's been a Hassan-kinda day, he's on Humanity 2, looks at the girl and thinks NOM NOM NOM.

Okay, him eating her is pretty damn horrific, yeah? That whole scene kinda gave me chills now that I think about it. Vampire intends to do the right thing. Ends up worse than the serial killers. I like it....

....except that would work in a game where vampires are from 30 Days of Night. Where only fledglings made any coherent sense. Y'know, that whole vampire support club I was talking about earlier? You wouldn't get any elders masterminding the city because if even the best intentions send a kindred plummeting, what would the worse do? Any elders who did get to that point got there by being monks and re-buying their humanity during failed feeding checks. Groups like the Lancea Sanctum, Ordo Dracul and Circle of the Crone would be outlawed alongside the Brood as their doctrine doesn't prevent slides to the Beast.

You'd get no crime bosses. No soldiers. Hell, not even thieves. Vampires would be pretty zen.

How boring would that BE?!

So, okay, we want our vampires to be bad asses. We want the pull toward evil so that after a bad day, a vampire really might just decide to eat the girl he tried to save because vampirism is some kind of monstrous disease. Buuuut we also want monstrous elders to make sense without forcing them to be slavering, cackling maniacs barely capable of hiding the bodies. We want the Crone to sacrifice someone on occasion. Or the LS to be cruelly callous. We want the Carthians and the Invictus to arrange for someone to disappear.

So far, I have introduced a home rule where it is a sin one level higher to order someone else to do the act. Mob boss vampires who order executions can still sit pretty at Humanity 3. Monstrous, yes. Out of control? No. Hounds can become gibbering wrecks but the Sheriff is more in control.

But I just feel like there needs to be something else. Dragging people down a path of madness and degeneration is just too easy in this system. If I properly implemented it all the time, well, we'd be back at the Vampires-as-Disease / Draugr-around-every-Corner angle (unless you guys want that - in which case, cool, but ancillae / elders will suddenly become A LOT rarer).

So I'm considering a few other adjustments.

Perhaps an ad hoc adjustment when you're driven by compassion rather than callousness? I mean, primary virtues already give you a +2, what about if following a lesser virtue, or trying to make up for it, gave you a +1? "I'm stealing his car .... but I'll buy him a new one!" It's still callous but it's not quite the same as "I'm stealing his car ... nyah nyah!"

Or perhaps create a shadow set of humanity dots. If you're at Humanity 7 and you commit petty theft (but aren't overly callous about it - stealing a rich man's rolex when you really need it as opposed to because 'it looked pretty'), you make the customary 4 dice roll. If you fail it, you lose the shadow dot. If you're penitent / decent over the next six months, it'll refresh. Commit another sin, and it's gone for good - plus you risk dropping the permanent dot and that'll sure as shit cost you exp to get it back.


What are your thoughts, any of you who bothered to read this massive post? Do you have any alternatives? Any suggestions? I'd be happy to allow folk to opt-out of this system as well and just take it as it lays in the books.
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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What about playing with ideas like thresholds from Hunter? Much like Requiem they've got issues of plummeting morality and the alternative looks interesting.

I don't know the system too well, have only skimmed it, but I recall that there are thresholds which modify morality sins. For example instead of petty theft of food being a Morality 7 sin, it turns into something like petty theft of food *and then* not sharing the spoils with my cell/family/etc being the sin. And so on. Something like that could work quite well if tweaked because it looks at the reason behind the sin (selfish vs not).
ooc: Damien Hunter

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Checkers Pockets, cockney nutjob extraordinare! (and his rats)
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Laraqua
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hehehe, my first instinct was "that doesn't fit with vampire" as they're less likely to do these sins for the right reasons than hunters. Most hunters do the thresholds because stealing from supernaturals is necessary so they can't not do it. Then I thought, actually, if you made it so that the thresholds were fairly criminalistic - petty theft is fine if you're stealing drugs OR wallets OR what-not. So it could certainly work.

I'm thinking it might be a bit too much work to apply in a LARP, though. I know I certainly wouldn't remember all those thresholds so it'd be a pain to manage the altered sin structures! With the NPCs, that'd become all the more difficult.

Still, it's a great idea that'd work well in tabletop, especially for games like Mage. It also reminds me that there's a system, I think, in the Soldier WoD book. I should take a look at that.

So, keep throwing ideas at me! Or votes! Any of these options you're liking so far?
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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Laraqua
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Trigger Rolls
Triggers represent the effects of PTSD on military characters without the loss of Morality or by at least slowing the degeneration of a character. Trigger rolls are used alongside the standard rules for degeneration, not in place of them, to help illustrate the duality of conscience that allows soldiers to lead part-time lives of violence without becoming sociopaths. Whenever a character, in the course of pursuing legitimate military action, commits an act that would normally trigger a degeneration roll, the character’s player instead immediately rolls his Morality rating as a dice pool called a trigger roll. If the roll succeeds, he manages to rationalize his actions as a side-effect of war. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that he feels no regret or remorse for his actions; rather that he is able to place the consequences of his actions into the larger view of military perspective.

If, however, the roll fails, the character has failed to fully come to terms with the new situation. He develops a mental or emotional ailment or condition which is caused by the stress, grief or remorse of having committed the “sin” or even guilt because he isn’t suffering the stress or grief he feels he should. This ailment is called a trigger and it manifests itself in certain specific circumstances related to the event that caused it to come into being. Gaining a trigger does not cause a character to lose Morality and characters may develop multiple triggers.

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This would be a simpler way of going about it than the Exceptions that Hunters use. I also like its emphasis on psychic / mental strain. The trouble would be that you'd have to replace 'in the line of duty' with some more tenuous belief system. Or perhaps if it's 'in line with virtue'? In other words, Checkers could use the trigger system if he's had to sin to do 'the right thing'. Killing otherwise unstoppable Urban Legend serial killers would qualify or Claimed (not like you can prison or reason with them) but killing someone to cover up a Masquerade Breach so you don't have to be embarrassed or owe a boon to a Ventrue, would not be.

So basically, in the line of duty would mean "when it would be immoral to do otherwise".

It won't help if you frenzy-kill or frenzy-destroy-a-place, but, if you're doing it right and feeding with assistance, that won't happen.
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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