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[Neonivek]

And without a moral system, the usual choice is "saintly kleptomaniac". You save people's children with the items you get from looting their houses.

The worst in Moral choice regard is Dragon Age with the added party system.

Honestly half the people you get on your team are FREEKEN INSANE and morons. Sten and Morigan... What was that? You hate helping people even WITH a reward? Are you guys perhaps stupid? (Sten is the worst in that regard, he hates doing things)

[Sowelu]

Soooo...what do you want/expect from a morality system?  Okay, you don't want to be a total saint/demon all the time.  Do you want a little rainbow sticker when you rescue someone's cat from a tree?  Face it, the majority of moral situations don't have any lasting effect at all.  I mean...  Planescape: Torment kind of worked here, because there were sort of some good middle-of-the-road solutions.  But in Planescape, as in many games, mostly it's an issue of good vs. bastard vs. apathy (which is strangely enough how it works in the real world!).

Ooh--Here's a good one for you though.  Valkyrie Profile.  That might actually be a REALLY GOOD example of an RPG for you guys, what do you think?  For the uninitiated:  You're roleplaying as a valkyrie who is sent to collect the souls of recently-dead heroes and send them up to fight in Ragnarok, but first you have to train them a bit (IE level them up).  You can make a big deal out of giving Valhalla exactly what it wants--as many heroes as it can, your best-trained ones, crippling yourself in the process to fight the good fight--or you can slouch by, barely accomplishing your objectives, to keep kicking ass on Earth.  Also, Odin demands that you send him all the cool artifacts you find--but you can choose to disobey him and keep them instead, at the loss of some favor.

Unless you *really* screw it up, doing 'good' doesn't have a huge game impact.  It's actually kind of hard to lose Ragnarok if you are remotely doing your job.  But I guess that's where roleplaying comes in--I mean, it's my job to obey Odin, and the game is going to make a point of my disobeyal if I don't, so I feel compelled as a player to do the "right thing".  Isn't that roleplaying?  Isn't that morality?  Deciding when to make sacrifices for *no* personal gain whatsoever?  It's hard to put that into a game.

Iji does the same thing from a morality perspective, too.  Sure you can play it kicking all sorts of ass, but it's possible to play it as a pacifist and feel *really bad* when you kill someone.  Your life is more difficult if you avoid killing (except for a super-weapon at the end if you did perfectly; who cares) but you, the player, get into that role.  So, uh...  I guess Valkyrie Profile and Iji are good examples of game morality to me.  And Iji isn't even an RPG (not really).

[Neonivek]

Soooo...what do you want/expect from a morality system?

Somethings between Saint and Satan where choices arn't just about the morality of the action but what is actually done and where more then 3 choices exist?

[Muz]

Moral systems can work. I do like the moral system in some of the classics. But you can't convert it purely into a theme.

If you think realistic AI is complicated, realistic moral systems are far worse. Good AI is certainly accomplishable. But philosophers have been debating for over 2000 years on what is good and evil and they're still trying to figure it out. You can have quick fixes for it, but you can't have a game mechanic that maps all your actions into +N good points.

Also, the moral system in most modern games punish you for being evil and reward you for being good. That's not how it works IRL. Outside of fairy tales, you'd have a tougher time taking the high road, but you get the enjoyment of actually doing the right thing. If you want to simplify it into game terms, good is the hard option, but the more satisfying one. I think Iji does the best job at this.

[3]

Why does there have to be an imbalance in moral paths? Surely it's possible to differentiate between a "good" path and an "evil" path without making a deliberate effort for one to be more difficult/more rewarding than the other. If I was to know that either path would be more rewarding (oh hi, Shadows of Amn, thought you'd pop in), then it'd be obvious to me which one I'd choose.

No, I say make them as equal in gameplay terms as possible while still making them distinct in terms of narrative.

[Neonivek]

the moral system in most modern games punish you for being evil and reward you for being good

No most modern games reward you for being evil outright and make the rewards for being good less obvious or less immediate.

For example in Bioshock you had to cure multiple girls to get the extra points.

Other games make being evil more difficult in the short run while good is easy to coast by with.

[qwertyuiopas]

Do any games consider *why* as a part of the morality? So, I burned down an orphanage. Could it be that the structure was baing used to summon a demon that would destroy the whole town? Or maybe I just hate orphans, and didn't know or didn't care about the rest? Or maybe I knew of the demon but it would interfere with my regular evil deeds and probably kill me along with everything else? And what about the possibility that I was doing it to appear "good", and then use the popularity once the town learns of what could have happened as a way to leverage myself into a position where I could take control of the town and *then* become openly evil, once I have the power to *really* test the limits of the game's morality scale?

Consider this chart:



How many games do you know that give any possibility beyond the two black lines? How many give the possibility of all eight?

[Neonivek]

You mean like how some games give you "good" points for doing quests that really are cash magnets?

[3]

stuff

Even better, combine that with multiple individuals and/or factions all with different levels of knowledge of the situation/opinions on the correctness of the player's actions and we have something that actually holds up pretty well.

[cerapa]

Some dude offers you a job and money:
Good: Take job.
Evil: Dont take job.

I find it funny that a genre savvy evil guy would help everyone cause thats where all the money and +1 swords are.

[Sowelu]

A friend of mine roleplayed an evil ghoul in a D&D game.  He WAS evil, in his heart.  But he followed the party around and never did anything evil at all.  He said "Hey, I need to eat corpses to live, you guys make lots of corpses, I don't have to eat people, I don't starve in agonizing pain, and if I ever turn bad, you guys can destroy me."

But, he always had betrayal in his heart.  And the paladin ended up flipping out and going his own way.  Because paladins can't associate with evil characters.  Of course, the ghoul knew this...

Of course this is more a "D&D morality is weird" than a real morality thing, but it's just a thing about how your long-term intentions can be very evil, no matter how good you may act.

Which, I suppose, is kind of like playing as a good guy throughout a whole video game just so that you get to meet the emperor in-person and shank him.  Or like the movie "Hero" I guess.

Games can never know your true intentions when you never express them to anybody in any way!  Hrm.  But then I guess that's okay.  But...I'm thinking that NPCs should never be expected to have ANY knowledge of your long-term plans.  That way you can take them by surprise, which gives you coolness cred.

[Neonivek]

Well the thing is... Just because your evil doesn't mean you always have to act upon it and it doesn't mean you cannot have other motivations.

I always imagined playing an evil character who didn't actually do any evil because he had a genuin connection with the PCs and didn't wish to lose their friendship or trust. However if they weren't around it means he can go all out evil.

[dragnar]

I always imagined playing an evil character who didn't actually do any evil because he had a genuin connection with the PCs and didn't wish to lose their friendship or trust. However if they weren't around it means he can go all out evil.

Like Richard?
...Scratch that, richard is plenty evil around the heroes, just not to the heroes. Then again, he hasn't been half this bad since joining them.

[nenjin]

I don't know if D&D morality is all that weird. More like....in RL we associate with who we want to associate with and general surround ourselves with people that agree with us.

In D&D, you've got this pesky thing called free will and the plot, which puts you into situations with people where you have to struggle with working with them or calling them out.

Which is actually a lot like RL in some instances. Just not to the degree of...."Hey, I'm a milkman delivering delicious milk to the people."

"Well I'm a coke dealer looking for a new to deliver my product, let's hook up!"

[dragnar]

You clearly don't understand the evil of milkmen.

I am the milkman. My milk is delicious.