I totally agree with you Luke. Did you play Mass Effect though? (it’s made by same company that made KOTOR) This time they took a different approach to the GOOD/EVIL personality of your character. Both can coexist allowing you to create a “grey character” which can have both Black/White traits. There are two bars that fill up (Renegade/Paragon) but both can fill up and they do not cancel each other out.

@Mart: Well, no. By “when it was appropriate” I mean “when no one was around to see it” or when he could justify it somehow.

Let me give you a scenario:

We are hired to protect this noble dude and his family (wife, two 3 young kids). Apparently he pissed off some necromancer who is out to get him. We go and kick the crap out of the necromancer, but in the combat few of us gets wounded – including the noble. The guy is bleeding bad but all he can talk about is how we need to burn the necromancers lair and destroy his spell books. My friend wants the spell books for himself, so he argues we should secure them and deliver them to the Arcane University in Altdorf where they can be studied and/or properly disposed of.

The noble won’t have any of that, so my friend offers to put the discussion for later and heal the poor guys wounds with a spell. Only he doesn’t cast heal but some slow acting curse. Within the next hour the noble is dead, and the rest of us playing neutrals are none the wiser. My friend explains that his wounds were to grave and that there is nothing more he could do. The truth is that he would probably be fine, if it wasn’t for the healing spell.

But our characters think nothing of it, especially when friend declines his part of the loot, if we allow him to “take the books to Altdorf” (which he won’t but there is no way for us to know that).

So yeah, he was definitely not Robin Hood – he killed a guy with cold blood just because there was an opportunity to do it, and he didn’t feel like arguing with him any longer.

But yeah – you are right about the robin hood thing. In D&D terms Robin Hood was probably Chaotic Good – he wanted to help people, but he did it outside the law. Then again, his case is special since he did what he did because the law itself was corrupt. So in essence Robin was lawful good – at least initially.

So yeah – alignments look nice on paper but don’t really work when applied to examples from real life or even from fiction.

@Mart: That is precisly the Achilles’ heel of any morale systems. By posing a clearly defined good and evil standard in the form of points, it stops being a morale system and instead a point based game.

A great morale system will instead gauge how this paticular choice affects the world. Let say you meet a homeless poor man on the streets in a major city, and he asks you for coins. Do you beat him up, ignore him or give him some coins? The choice is possible pretty clear cut. Yet, one can make it more interresting:

What if the man is known to steal from the local pub? Some might see it as morally right for him to do that in order to survive, while others might think that he is clearly stepping over some bounds. That the first choices become less clear cut and determined by ones own standing.

A morale system is rather bland in a black/white world, since the player is just roleplaying a given role and is distanced from the action. A morally grey area is more interresting, since we can allow people to explore what they themself would in thoose situations, some they might not ever be in.

But reducing a complex system to simple numbers makes it seem worthless. Especially if that number determines other aspects of the game like energy consumed from certain spells (kotor) or how many recourses you get (BioShock).

I better stop writing :P

“Good” and “evil” are too subjective to me. This is because no one can be omniscient. What constitutes as “good” to one can also be seen as “evil” to another.

[quote post=”2898″]He was the nicest, kindest, most polite person in the world. But he was also unmistakably evil, since he always had his own personal agenda, and had no qualms about murdering and torturing people, or stealing from them. But only when it was appropriate or if it could be justified.[/quote]

Could this also describe Robin Hood? If he steals from the rich and give to the poor, would that constitute good or evil? What if the money which he stole is to be for a new bridge to link two cities to increase trade? If he gave it to the poor, it would be wasted because it would just be gambled away. How can this be stereotyped into good or evil?

I agree, games that have a moral system are so black and white. I like what Jakob said, that the game should only represent how the world will judge you instead of having “good” and “evil” actions. I also think that games make the choices so obvious. If you want to be good, just to nice things. The games don’t really pose difficult moral choices. The ones who try to make them to shallow without much impact. Like the choice at the end of Fable II is just about what it gets you in the end, not about what actually happens as a result of your choice.

These games are hard for me to play the character that I like to play, a morally ambiguous rouge/thief/assassin/mercenary. I usually do what helps me the most but I also like to be nice to people. In most games it’s hard to stay neutral. If I do a really nice thing then all of the sudden I’m a saint, even if I’ve been doing only what helps myself thought all the game. So then I have to turn around and sell some people into slavery to counteract things like that.

Even though Fallout 3 does have a more simple moral system, the choices you can make are much more entertaining and much less restricting. There is a quest where you are asked to kill three people for a noble reason which turns out to be a sham. You find out that he really wants keys to something from these people, killing them is just an extra bonus. You can still go through with this which I did. I went to visit the three people and learned more about them. If they were a jerk I would just kill them and get the key. If they were nice I’d talk my way into getting it. But if you search around more there is also someone who wants your employer dead. I took that quest too. When I got back to inform my employer that I have the keys he gave me the money. I then told him that he had a price on his head and he told me he would pay me to kill the person who wants him dead. I took that money and then he left so I followed him. When he was clear from any witnesses I killed him, took the keys (which let you have a nice item) and got the reward from the other guy. I mean there was so many different ways I could have gone about this. In the end I still had a neutral karma which does accurately reflect what I did. I just took the path that got the most money. Overall I think Fallout 3’s moral system is much better than most.

I think this is a dimensional problem. Fable choices sucked because you only really had two, or a continuum of two choices. If choices were varied across several dimensions, I think it’d make for better storytelling.

Another great way to do morales are what was done in “The Witcher”.

Like choosing whether or not to let a “Squirrel” group take a merchants supply crate to treat their wounded, when that same merchant had hired you to keep them safe. Add to the mix that the “Squirrels” where engaging in a civil war with another group and you where suddenly in highly murky water and didn’t know who to side with (or if you wanted to side with them).

And ones action could either servere to make your life easier down the road or bite you in the ass, and you didn’t know what until maybe 10 – 15 hours later. That was great.

A good morale systems should pose some tough questions and not judge what is right or wrong, but more how the world will look at you.

@Steve: Oblivion actually has something that approaches what you are describing here with it’s Fame and Infamy counters.

You gain fame by doing heroic and/or spectacular things (closing Oblivion gates), advancing in the official guilds/factions or fighting in the Arena. You gain infamy by advancing in the shady guilds such as the Thief Guild and Dark brotherhood, or by breaking the law (I think).

Both counters only go up, and there is no easy way to reduce them. Cumulatively they add up to your notoriety. Some quests and dialog options are open only for characters with high enough notoriety.

All NPC’s have responsibly score – which affects their disposition towards you based on you fame and infamy scores. Responsible characters will like famous heroes, and dislike infamous scoundrels. It’s the other way around for irresponsible NPC’s.

Also if your infamy is higher than your fame you cannot use the divine altars to receive blessings (you get a message among the lines “repent sinner!”).

It’s actually a very good system – it works out pretty well.

I hear that for Fallout they transitioned to a more traditional karma based setup and totally messed it up. Supposedly you can make up for murdering bunch of people by simply giving out bottles of water (which you get for free) to random folks on the street.

I agree totally. While I enjoyed Fable, I thought the “evil” side was just that: douchebaggery (eating live chicks, for instance….er…the bird, not the female “chick” :) )

I like the Morrowind/Oblivion model: only IF you get caught in the middle of an evil action should you take a NPCs-don’t-like-you hit. I would prefer a system in which you gain other NPCs to speak to – the morally “on-the-edge” ones that normally wouldn’t speak to a goody-goody player. Of if they did, they would be looking to con them.

Shady vendors selling proscribed goods/spells/etc. would also be available. Of course, you might find it difficult, if you have a reputation, to talk a good healer to teach you better healing spells.

THAT would be the way to do this. Not a “karma” counter, but a “reputation” counter. I would also like to be able to put on a disguise, so while wearing the disguise I start with neutral reputation. That would be fun. Different disguises for different situations.