Love them or hate them morality systems are deeply ingrained into the concept of role playing games. Whether you’re picking the Up-Left option in Mass Effect or building your back story for the common born paladin in D&D 3.5, such systems are very much stuck with us till the end of time.

They exist as behavioral guidelines and mechanical measurements for the forces of good and evil within the scope of the setting. Some settings use their morality systems as a catapult into other ideas, special kinds of classes, skills, or talents that characters gain through following certain moral codes. The Paladin in 3.5 D&D as an example was required to follow a code of honor and good in order to maintain his class features. Deviation from this code resulted in a loss of those features.

In storyteller system games morality is different depending on the flavor of horrific monster or terrifying creature you play but all follow a common theme of trying to maintain the balance between the human side and the terrible creature within oneself.

And while there are hundreds of thousands of arguments from one side or another about the necessity of morality systems it can’t be argued that they don’t have their place in the world. They work as guidelines for people to play from differing perspectives and give normal people without any acting or characterization experience a foundation to work with. Problems arise from such systems, as they do from any system, from the vague wording of the books and how they apply to the subjective world of morality. They attempt to put into simple mechanical terms, the way religions do, what good and evil are and how they affect people and the world. Unlike religions however game books tend to be about as clear as molasses.

Communicate Communicate Communicate

Thankfully games should never play like religions (unless you somehow find that fun) therefore you can have things like open discussion about the morality rules of the game and how they affect the group without heated arguments. Now that being said keep in mind your personal morals and viewpoints are unimportant in terms of the world. What does matter are your characters moral viewpoints and how they stand in the greater view of the setting itself.

If you are using a pre-made setting then that should be your first reference when discussing how the world treats certain touchy subjects. In some worlds slavery is a necessary and pragmatic practice with all the evil/good line being different depending on whom you talk to. The same goes for subjects such as sex, labor, capital punishment, and all that. Again I have to emphasize that while giving an opinion is perfectly fine your own views still have no real bearing on the game setting itself. Now some things are kind of obvious just to have a functioning civilization (Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, etc. etc.). Others such as the greyer areas are dependent on the group to decide where they fall on the moral compass. So what you need to concern yourself with is mainly how the world treats these grey areas, how your character treats them, and how the gm will work with or against you on these points.

How many dark side points are beating a puppy to death with a baby worth?

One thing that games typically put alongside a morality or alignment system is a mechanical way for players to tally up just how much evil or good they do. Nothing starts arguments faster than when a GM calls someone out on one action or another and gives points/checks/penalties for a moral action intended or not. This is why it becomes important to set precedence and baselines early on. You want your players to know exactly where they stand when they have their characters act in a certain way. This is where notes come in handy. To start here’s a couple of handy tips when determining the severity of an action where it concerns mechanical systems.

1. Unintentional banal consequences don’t count. You don’t suddenly become a cackling maniac because hundreds starve to death due to the freeing of farm slaves.
2. In a setting with gods a desecration and betrayal against one’s own god’s ideals are always severe. Seriously don’t fuck with deities.
3. If it makes you and the rest of the group turn and go “what the hell? That’s disgusting dude!” Then chances are it was probably pretty severe.

The other problem comes when said morality system forces a behavior change in the character based on how the mechanics determine that change. Some systems take the control literally away from the character and into the hands of the gm. Others merely reflect how the character has already been acting. Even in the second case a player may take offense and an argument may start as they will undoubtedly feel the way they’re behaving is not in line with the proposed change. Again this is where records and agreements come in handy. If you note precedents and let the player know the direction their character is going before the change than you can curb a lot of the argument away.

“No! No take backs for dead hookers! Never take backs for dead hookers!” ~Anonymous GM

One thing no mechanical system I’ve come across has ever covered was a conflict of morals and how they should be handled by a GM when they come up. Usually this is held up by anti-mechanical morality systems as proof of their overwhelming correctness and the abolishment of morality systems forever. Usually just before cheerfully eating a stray kitten sandwich.

The reason behind this lack of coverage is simply because the designers are not trying to define the morals of your character for you. If they tried to cover situations where either option led to overwhelmingly evil or good consequences players would call foul for one reason or another and burn effigies of the writers for not conforming to their own moral viewpoints. Simply put they’re trying not to tell you how to play your character. It is up to the groups themselves to determine how to handle these situations.

To give you an example of a situation where such decisions become relevant allow me to give you a popular example from D&D 3.5 concerning paladins. Let’s say that a powerful demon has captured a large number of innocent souls and bound them with his dark power to his body and soul. He is enacting a plan that would allow him to torment and rule over let’s say an equally large portion of people. He informs the paladin that every blow on his body would be felt a hundred fold by those innocents bound to him and that his death would send them spiraling for eternity into eternal damnation until the end of all existence ever. Any attempt made by the paladin to disrupt these plans will result in torture to those innocents. What does the paladin do to maintain his powers? Well that depends on the groups philosophy.

1. The Hard-line: The paladin falls. Inaction is allowing the demon to operate. Action willfully harms innocents. If you are not granted or implied a third option this is always a dick move on part of the gm. Always. If this is the case you need to call them out on it. If they can’t give a sufficient explanation for putting you in that situation then it may be time to find a different group. Hard line groups are more common than they really need to be and tend to be even more unrealistic than the morality systems they try to stick hard to.
2. The Soft line: The paladin cannot allow harm come to innocents nor allow the demons plans come to fruition. In this case he doesn’t fall immediately but may have to either make a hard decision or seek an alternative method of defeating the demon or at least dealing with his defenses. Divine inspiration, heroic sacrifice, or becoming judge dredd is all options.

The difference between the philosophies is that one cares more about action while the other focuses more on intent and motivation.

Intent vs. Action vs. Ignorance

Sometimes a question comes up as to whether the intent of an action outweighs the evil performed by an action. If a man invents a device with the intent of saving hundreds but ends up killing thousands did he commit an evil act?

Well that partly depends on his knowledge of how the device would affect others and how it could be exploited to others detriment. The triad of intent, action and ignorance all work together in helping determine the severity of a bad or good act and how the GM should handle it. In this case if the man knew of the consequences but went forward anyway with no fail safes than he committed a wrong act. If he knew of it and took steps than the act lay somewhere in the middle. If he was unaware of the bad consequences and only meant to do well only to have it twisted to some dark end than only his inaction to correct or balance the evil would cause it to be an evil act.

This kind of morality judging can be tricky particularly since the GM is not psychic and player actions and intent often differ from character actions and intent. A player may be fully aware of the consequences but later say his character is innocent due to ignorance. This is of course where the philosophies come into play.

Under some hard line games the knowledge is above action and intent. Without knowledge of one’s actions than the action is meaningless and intent plays next to no role.

Softer games try to balance between the three and determine on a case by case basis how the three interact in order to judge a characters actions. Intent is placed slightly above action which is equivalent to knowledge. A character meaning to do good is usually forgiven if they have little knowledge as to the full consequences of their actions.

In the next part we’ll discuss individual morality systems from three games and talk about how they reflect the flavor of their respective settings and why the games could not be conceivably separated from that system.