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Mouse
Acolyte
USA
28 Posts |
 Posted - 01 Jan 2010 : 09:16:38
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So who here actually runs the Realms with moral ambiguity involved in the PC's parties and encounters they do? I don't mean making everything all black-hearted bloody and terrible (that's not morally ambiguous, it's just being juvenile), but pitting good guys against other good guys because sometimes they have opposing goals. Like having Cormyrian Purple Dragon Knights work against Miklos Selkirk's Silver Ravens (some of the good-aligned ones anyway), even though both parties can be good? How about Good rogues who don't really care who if they steal from evil or good nobles, but still go and help people sometimes, and be a generally decent person.
I just heavily dislike settings and stories where "Good/Evil" are two, completely defined and separate sides where no one hurts people of their "Alignment" like they can all automatically tell.
I once ran a party with a Paladin, a few neutral clerics, a thief who stole from everybody the party met but was a friendly and most definitely the most helpful member of the party, and Scourge Maiden of Loviatar who was Lawful Evil and her obsession with whipping and domination was a source of much hilarity among the party. She and the Pally actually got along rather well (though he got along well with everyone frankly), despite being of opposing alignments and having opposing gods (he was Paladin of Illmater and she was a Cleric of Loviatar). They had many humorous theological discussions on suffering, and were generally polite to one another.
Anyone else ever bother to try running like this, or do people do this quite often? It seems to me that the Realms themselves often could work within a morally grey standards (let's face it, being paid coin bounties for the ears of creatures you actively seek out to kill in their own lands is as morally upright as colonial French scalping Indians for the same reasons, I don't care if they're "always Chaotic Evil"), but the writing itself often forces everything into stark black and white. I'm interested in others opinions and stories on this subject
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"Barbarians are more polite then civilized men, for civilized men know they may be rude to another without having their skulls cleaved open as a general thing."
-Conan |
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Cleric Generic
Senior Scribe
United Kingdom
565 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2010 : 11:44:33
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I generally regard alignment as an inconsequential vestige, from my side of the DM screen. The players use it as a sort of vague role-playing aid, along with some other key character traits and who is 'evil' or otherwise is generally determined by more subjective criteria.
In setting I regularly have the 'good guys' display decidedly un-heroic traits and generally keep things a bit ambiguous. However, I reckon it's a good idea to have at least a few straight up good guys and bad guys for the party to have around.
Also, I'm using 4e with it's alignment system that's atrophied to the edge on non-existence anyway. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2010 : 14:10:59
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| At least a couple of the Adventure Hooks I wrote had some built-in moral ambiguity... One dealt with the PCs being caravan guards, and discovering that a vampire was preying on guards and townsfolk wherever they stopped. The vampire wasn't actually killing anyone, though, it was just taking enough blood to get by. Eventually the PCs investigate and find out the vampire is part of the caravan's cargo. He's a former paladin and a famed vampire hunter who recently became a vampire, and he just wants to go back to his home temple and let his superiors lay him to rest. |
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woodwwad
Learned Scribe
USA
267 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2010 : 19:19:33
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I'm real big on this idea in my game or if I'm in a game. Two characters (read characters as either pc or npc for this writing) both good could have huge problems with each other, likewise two evil characters could hate each other far more than anyone else. Good is more likely to be heroic but a generally good person can have a lot of what we'd view as negative traits. Make a good npc both cheap and cowardly and see how much your party will dislike them.
There is so much moral greyness in the games I've run, I'll only use a few examples, as I'm huge on this kind of play. It just makes the game more interesting, if you see the "monsters" and know there is a chance for more than combat and maybe you even see their point of view, it's really all about point of view. As the DM, you have to understand the point of view of each character you run and then so doing if it is presented to the players, if they can or bother to see it just about anyone can be sympathetic and a lot of npcs who are evil can become really sympathetic.
Example one, the pcs save a 12 year old girl from a group of rogues led by an insain Gnoll who kidnapped a girl from her home and were bringing her to a cult of Cyric to be ritually slain for 200 gold. The church of Lathander in Daggerfall's who developed a good relationship with one of the pcs and two of the pcs totally hated, with two somewhat dislikely lathander. They end of killing the rogues and resquing the girl. They become close to her, Hayla. I use her as a mirror for one of the pcs who'd been through some similar events as she. They figure out something is "wrong" with the girl right as they are about to go into the temple in Daggerdale. They take her in, tell the priest and he suprised but deciding to check her out, does and sees she's really evil but of course unaware of what she is. He spends a 10 day with her, awake the whole time, examining her and ultimately decides she must die. When they went back to speak with him, I had him falling in and out of consciousness in the middle of them talking to him. He tells them she's extremely evil, he doesn't know what she is, she doesn't know what she is and that she's extremely powerful and he's scared that she's capible of destorying the whole town if her power comes out. He knows he should kill her, he even tries (she has a terrible rope burn around her neck when the pcs see her), but he just cannot bring himself to do it. So he asks the pcs to take her and get her from the city, he views himself as a failure for not being able to kill her. The pcs struggle with what to do with her. They know a mysterious figure in the woods that they don't know anything about other than his name, that's he's very powerful, charming and that he's saved their lives. He, A-Ya Doon, wants Hayla to be brought to him but the pcs argue about it. I guess about 4 hours of game time were spent on the decesion of what to do. It almost got one of the pcs killed. They hand her over to the mysterious man in the woods, then after they've done so he tells them he's the chosen of the newly risen god Myrkul.
Most of the pcs find they really like Myrkul and his chosen, who's very happy with them and thus likes them. They see him give an order to memebers of his family to brutally kill some people, then takes their souls, so we see he's evil. However, he's sympathetic (in that he persents a case were he was wronged and his god was wronged---one of the pcs even throws me a note saying he wants to become a priest of myrkul), beautiful, loves life and heroic (he fights hard for his people and isn't cowardly at all).
Part of the same story saw two of the pcs take a priestest/wizard of mystera who is in the area investigating A-Ya to A-Ya. Altough, at that time she didn't know that, just some wrongness in the energy of magic. The npc had only an 8 cha and was really stuck up and didn't give the pcs the time of day before she found they could help her. They'd had 3 run ins before that at the Daggerfalls Inn. She promised the pcs 400 gold to take her to the woods. When she got there, A-Ya comes out to see the pcs. She gets an idea of what he is, although, doesn't know he's that powerful. She attacks him with a spell, it doesn't work and she using a ring of teleportation to escape back to waterdeep. She of course never pays the pcs their money. She's a NG aligned character and those two pcs cannot stand her and greatly dislike mystera now. Putting both those pcs on the side of the evil characters in the upcoming battle.
One of the characters in my game is aligned LN and is decended from devils, he doesn't see things in terms of good and evil. Those alignment traits aren't even relivent to him, he sees things in terms of law and chaos. And he has detect chaos. In Daggerdale in the southern hills, the pcs met a group of Hobgoblins, with a few bugbears, who were very LE. They were former ZK mercenaries who were left in the region after Daggerdale won its freedom. These characters now don't like ZK anymore but do not like the freedom riders at all either. The Pc, Shazzd came to really relate to the LE hobgoblin leader Mook Tok and has come to see him as a father figure. Going back to this location several times. And forming a strong relationship with some of them, of course some of them weren't too happy about having what they saw as a human amongst them.
Really, it is not about good and evil. It is about who the characters feel sympathetic towards. It isn't too hard to make a good character totally unsympathetic and an evil character totally sympathetic. Also, just because a character is good does not mean they are heroic. Conversely, being evil doesn't mean you are not heroic. As a player, I really enjoy playing LE and NE characters who are heroic. I'm going to stop there but I could go on and on. The best advise I could give on the subject is to make anything not really "evil" just get its point of view across to the players in a way they'll understand it and maybe be sympathetic to it. Of course don't ram it down the pcs throats or try to make them take actions that put them on the same side. Just keep putting points of view out there and the pcs in your game will likely find one they like and you'll have some great rp.
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Kiaransalyn
Senior Scribe
United Kingdom
762 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2010 : 20:10:32
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I rarely let alignment get in the way. In the past, I've found arguments about alignment get out of hand and can ruin a game.
I tend to tone things down to a level such as Evil is akin to selfish, Good is akin to considerate and kind. Lawful tends to do things by the book and Chaotic tends to be unplanned. Most NPCs, PCs etc tend to fit this very well in my opinion. However, I do think there are certain creatures that are evil and good. Outsiders mostly. For example, a summoned devil is evil, and can be controlled, detected and protected against by spells that use the good descriptor.
I've often wondered why drow NPCs have prepared spells like Magic Circle against Good, Protection against Good, etc. There they are, surrounded by countless evil creatures, many of whom are close relations and acquaintances, in a society that turns a blind eye to murder and other such nefarious deeds so long as no-one else really powerful is inconvenienced, and these NPCs prepare spells against good creatures. 
In summary, I treat most creatures and NPCs as having a tendency not an alignment. Drow tend to be untrustworthy, mean, callous and cruel. Elves tend to be helpful and altruistic. Spells against alignment don't work against them. That's my take anyway. |
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Alignment and Other Interesting Things
