Errata: Morality and Consequences

My article "Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Gaming Essentials" has been up for a while now, and I've gotten some response by e-mail; but I was having trouble getting hold of Graveyard Greg or Editor to correct a glitch which crept in between my desktop and the posting--easy to happen, since I sent an html document to Greg, who read it and forwarded it to the editor, who converted it and posted it to the site, so in one of those transfers the document could easily be damaged. If you've read it, you might have read right past the mistake (some of you who have written to me did so). I finally reached Greg, who suggested that I post it as an errata here. I'll post the damaged text as a second message. It appears that first sentence of the third paragraph was cut; it is interrupted by a fragment of html " " space code, and continues with the second sentence of paragraph six. I apologize for the confusion; the document should have read as follows in the next posting, from paragraphs three through six. Thank you. --M. J. Young ------------------ Valdron Inc Publishers of Multiverser http://members.aol.com/NagaWorld/mv.html

Yet twenty years later, gamers are still saying that it's easier to play the bad guy, and I find myself wondering why that is. It was never so at my table. Villains are particularly difficult to play, for reasons which to me are obvious. Why are so many referees letting so many players get away with murder? And that was the answer. I already had two degrees in theology before I discovered gaming, and I played with college graduates from several fields, with people involved in ministry, with philosophy students and history majors and businessmen--people who knew that you couldn't get away with murder. But apparently the typical gamers were still in school, many of them still in high school; and although for years I ran a game for the local high school kids, most of them run their own games. And therein lies the rub. A lot of gamers define evil as "I can do whatever I want, and get away with it." I've had a few gamers come to my table with that attitude. The problem is, too many referees think that evil means, "he can do anything he wants, and get away with it." DM's, GM's, referees make great demands of those who would be the good heroes; but they expect nothing of those playing the villain. Yet in many ways it's much harder to be the villain, and the referee should make it so. The referee must always remember that the villain is untrusted, untrustworthy, and untrusting. He has no friends, only cronies, henchmen and partners in crime who would sell him out in an instant, as soon as his value drops below the asking price. The concept of "honor among thieves" is promoted by con men who want to lull him into a false sense of security, so that at the right time they will get the first, hopefully fatal, blow. Evil characters will never risk their own lives to save a comrade; they will risk no more than the comrade is worth, unless they have good reason to want him to believe they are loyal. One gamer came to my table from a series of games in which all the characters were evil. In that campaign, as the adventure drew to an end, the closer you got to home the less everyone slept and the fewer characters were left alive. Never once did two characters have to divide the treasure between them when they got home. These players knew what it meant to be evil.

I trust this clarifies the article. Thank you for your time and your thus far very favorable responses. --M. Joseph Young ------------------ Valdron Inc Publishers of Multiverser http://members.aol.com/NagaWorld/mv.html

*sigh* I would also like to apologize again...I don't know why I never got his email telling me of the glitch, and so I am totally ewmbarrassed. Oh, well--at least everything is better now, yes? Graveyard Greg

...it depends on how you define evil. I found your examples a bit, well, a bit naive. The whole cut-and-dried GP's & XP's school of RP. Okay. You've established yourself as a certain type of gamer and I can't begrudge you your opinion...much. (But treasure? C'mon...I divvy up gold coins in Diablo but in an RPG...?" I like playing bad guys. I usually find this release in the form of LARPing, where I don't have to worry about maintaining some Pollyanna-ish veneer of civility (ho, ho!) but I get my "evil" fix when and where I can... I do agree that it's more challenging to play an evil character. Mainly because nothing much is expected of a hero. Slay dragons, rescue maidens, save villages. Yay. You can ace hero RPing without any kind of personality, so long as you have nice teeth and a trench-like divet in your chin ("...I'll pay the rent!"). But a bad guy? You have mania, madness, obsession. Vengeance, greed, lust and a thirst for power. true, you're not gonna reach the Heart of Darkness in some lame-o mid-80's D&D module but dig a little deeper and you might find the quintessential RP experience... Batman or Joker? Starling or Lecter? Luke or his Pop? Bad guys are always more interesting, intriguing and awe-inspiring than heroes. They're a mirror we can hold up to ourselves. Like Havey Dent's silver dollar...one side polished and pristine, the other side scarred and twisted. The interesting thing about Evil is that it is always self-aware. Evil has a motive, a reason, a goal. It justifies the most abhorrent acts in order to reach that goal. Good's reason is "Well gosh, it was just the Right Thing to Do." Evil without reason is flat and lifeless. It's easy to lump Evil all together in the "Shit that goes against my sense of morality" pile. In fantasy games that's even easier -- "Pretty = Pure and Innocent. Ugly = Incoming Fireball Spell." Awww...those poor orcs never kenw what hit them... But back to the main thrust -- good and evil characters. The good guys are the ones hacking up the bad guys? Hrm...explain that to me. To assume that evil characters are just money-hoarding, back-stabbing bastards is, like I said, a bit naive. Methinks the next time your players tromp off to the Keep on the B-lands, Mark XVIII, you should read John Tynes' POWERKILL (www.john.tynes.com) and ask yourself just how different your evil characters are from your good ones... - sp!Key, "sharing & caring on the infobahn"

Oh, I think you've made the opposite mistake--you seem to think that it's easy to be the good guy. Again, it's not in my games. One of the phrases that has been repeated often there is, "It's not enough for good to oppose evil; it must do so while remaining good." Sometimes, certainly, your justification for killing monsters is clear--the goblins have moved in recently, and are harrassing the elf community in night raids and attacks on small groups in the wood, so you've been asked to help find them and get rid of them. On the other hand, just because the orcs are living in the caves outside town, there's no reason to attack them. I ran a cavalier some time back; still low level, he accumulated a couple thousand coins. It seemed to me that he needed to do something good, so he organized a feast in the middle of winter, to feed the poor in the town and the surrounding farmlands. After all, if one gold coin buys a rich man's meal, to how many hungry villagers can you give a bowl of soup with some meat in it and a good sop of bread? As they were carrying the news through the countryside, they came upon some wandering goblins foraging in the fields. These, too, were invited to come for food. The good character can't indiscriminately attack others just because he's defined them as his enemy; he has to be able to justify his actions as good and necessary. As to the Keep on the Borderlands (which I have only run once, although I took it out a couple of times before that thinking I was going to do so), there is a justification built into the backstory--the creatures have been raiding local villages and attacking farms in the area. It might be thin, and you might argue that there is little evidence to implicate all of the monsters in the misdeeds, but it's enough of a foundation for some basic justification (and it is a module for low-level characters and beginning gamers). I found Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader equally interesting; Vader is interesting in part because of his redemption (and Lucas has said that the original three films are about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker), but Luke is interesting because of his temptation. I have always been far more fascinated by Batman than by the Joker, even in the comic books. To some degree, the attraction of role playing is the concept of the unequal playing field; but I would rather be the superior hero loved by many than the superior villain hated and feared. Both are fascinating, both are difficult, both have their restrictions and limitations. And, as I say, if you enjoy playing the villain, go right ahead. I just don't think that you should enjoy it because you get away with murder--it's unrealistic, and therefore bad storytelling. --M. J. Young ------------------ Valdron Inc Publishers of Multiverser http://members.aol.com/NagaWorld/mv.html

Just to let all of you know, I think the problem should now be fixed. I stuck the deleted paragraphs in. Sorry about the mix-up. ------------------ Aaron Powell Editor - The Gaming Outpost

Doesn't the "all villains are evil" notion limit things quite a bit? I realize that this strays a bit from the idea of evil PCs, but it does seem to be a particular mindset which limits the caliber of villain motivation to pulp evil. Can't a villain in a campaign simply be someone who is at cross-purposes to the heroes, or who has a complex history which makes them oppose the heroes for reasons they don't understand? Many of the best villains from fiction and film are those whose motivations are understandably human - I can't remember the source of the quote, but one author posited that the best villains are those who are similar to the hero, only at some point they made a choice which forever made their paths diverge. Thus, the hero hates the villain because he or she made an "evil" choice and is both prospering from it and hurting others, while the villain must oppose the hero because to do otherwise would be to admit that their choice was wrong. It is interesting that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader has come up as an example, because he illustrates my point perfectly. He is a magnificent villain, who does evil for reasons which are his own, and is clearly monstrous, but when the hero (Luke) confronts him, he learns that Darth is in fact just like him - albeit a hero who made the wrong choice and pursued a path of evil. Thusly, Luke is even more driven to stop him, and is even tempted by the same force which "turned" Anakin to evil (i.e., the Emperor), and when he sees the path which his temptation will lead him down, he rejects it, and in doing so, is able to redeem the villain and restore him to the right path - which was to destroy the Emperor. ------------------