Codes of conduct without alignment. - Page 3 - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Codes of conduct without alignment.

   
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raveled View Post
I would solve this by giving a reason the party is together. They're part of a secret society, or part of a mercantile company, or part of a family group, or whatever. Lem the fighter will cover for Mit the priest when Mit gets drunk not necessarily because they're best of friends but because the secret cult they both belong to needs Mit's expertise.
This is also overly GM-specific. It's a thing a GM might do in some circumstances, but not others. If the reason the party is together is "You all applied to a job offer...", this won't work. The character may realistically have an expectation of them, if they are a knight or a priest or whatever they absolutely do, but mechanically the set-up doesn't support it. There's a reason Mit the priest might hide their drunkenness from Lem the fighter in lore and roleplay since they don't know how Lem will react to it, but Tim knows they won't be betrayed and gets drunk anyway for mechanical benefit (insert here)*, and can still expect mechanical support (insert here) without having to roleplay with the player of Lem coming to an agreement about their drinking habit.

That negotiation, where Tim and Lem's player are discussing how to make peace with their flaws and avoid undue persecution by their orders (however unfair), is a teachable moment that is being missed.

*There IS a mechanical benefit to depressant drugs, including alcohol, in the rules. They boost the regeneration of spirit points, which are the faster recovering of the two point pools used to cast spells in the setting. Tim the player is mechanically incentivised to drink like a fish but Mit the Priest is disincentivised to do so on account of their organization (and liver).

The reason for this is that the forces behind spirit regeneration are alive, entirely, and exploitably stupid. They're drawn to more inactive forces and the drunk draw them in due to their passivity. The specifics of their behaviour don't matter mechanically, they are held entirely in a social restriction. That social restriction needs to be stronger or weaker based on organisation to balance the strengths or weaknesses of that organisation. I hope that is sufficiently comprehensible.

Then put everyone into some sort of organization. Make building the crew part of building a character, just as important and engaging as picking skills for your personal player character. If you can't do that, then you have to rely on other players not being assholes. If your players being assholes is a serious problem, then I'd suggest you have issues that can't be resolved on an RPG forum.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raveled View Post
Then put everyone into some sort of organization. Make building the crew part of building a character, just as important and engaging as picking skills for your personal player character. If you can't do that, then you have to rely on other players not being assholes. If your players being assholes is a serious problem, then I'd suggest you have issues that can't be resolved on an RPG forum.
I feel I must reiterate I AM NOT THE GAME MASTER, and the condition of the Game Master's players is beyond my control. What is in my control is advice to that game master, because I am writing their rulebook. Some of my GMs may be addressed adequately by this answer, but those that are already know it. Some of those that aren't addressed by this may be reachable. The message that reaches them is the goal of this thread.

I want the players who ROW ROW Fight The Power to be rewarded, but I don't want those who play along to be disincentivized directly. I want it to be that players have to accept the powers that be and think around them are rewarded. I want to incentivise intelligence, not obedience. If a player breaks the rules in ways that even their fellows won't notice, that's a good thing and it should be rewarded. If a player breaks the rules in ways anybody will notice even if they don't directly witness it, that's a problem that needs to be addressed.

Basically, I'm looking for advice to give to Game Masters in the rulebook to make sure players think about the rules and find some intelligent workaround, rather than ignoring them entirely. That's a simple thing, expressed exceedingly poorly by me ten hours ago.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avianmosquito View Post
It seems you're assuming the lesson I'm trying to teach. Yes, exactly that is the reasonable response, but that's a significant stumbling block upon which most people fall when they encounter it. It's called "Live and Let Live", and it's something people somehow still need to be taught.
Now you have me confused. At one point you make it sound like you want to make people report things and now you tell me that the regular sort of meta gaming you see in any party is fine. I am bowing out, this is too confusing.

Okay, this confusion can be simplified to "I do not understand the concept of player/character separation.". I am asking how to non-mechanically motivate player characters to behave in a way that makes sense for them but makes no sense for their players. That is the core premise. Is it still confusing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avianmosquito View Post
Maybe, but it's awfully late tonight and I started drinking an hour ago. I'm probably also going to continue drinking and then go to bed, and I've been scheduled for my weekend (I need money and agreed to "any and all overtime").



That's a hard "no" from me. These rules are entirely social, and need social reasons for being maintained. Their violation is a part of the setting, and the rules need to encourage players who want to be crooked to be crooked in secret rather than encouraging them to not be crooked at all.



Because I only want to discourage unrealistic rulebreaking, not realistic rulebreaking. I actually want to encourage realistic rulebreaking. I want a player to look at a rule and think "Well, it's dumb I can't do that, but if I do that I'll get in trouble." and then "So I'd better just not do that even if I want to." or "I'd better hide it if I do it." I want to teach a little lesson here about stupid rules.



Some of them are actually very powerful casters and yet they break the rules. Their authority is great, but they have the magical power and it's not taken away by breaking their religion's rules. The gods of this setting's religions are NOT REAL, and they are the source of their own power. They only need to double-think or pick a class not based on the faith stat and they can break every rule and keep all casting power.



Not applicable, sorry. Faith is a main stat in the game, it's got an EXTREMELY loose interpretation and basically amounts to a firmness to one's beliefs, but it's a main stat and it means they have to believe to some extent that "wrong" is wrong.
OK, it sems the way I've been resolving it doesn't fit your style. And admittedly, if their powers don't come from faith, it's like any other matter of PCs deciding whether to obey the setting's norms, so I'm unsure what additional advice you want.
Anyway, good luck with your endeavor!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avianmosquito View Post
Okay, this confusion can be simplified to "I do not understand the concept of player/character separation.". I am asking how to non-mechanically motivate player characters to behave in a way that makes sense for them but makes no sense for their players. That is the core premise. Is it still confusing?
Rather than assessing penalties when they act outside of the code, you could give them benefits for working towards it. Give them a XP when they take an action that reinforces or demonstrates the tenants of the code/belief system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jomsviking View Post
Enforcing morality and ethics in a game about the wanton slaughter of greenskins.
You're making several extreme and unfounded assumptions about the content of this game.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Avianmosquito View Post
What motivation could be provided for player characters that are members of an organisation to follow (or at least pretend to follow) their organisation's rules when they're not in a position for that information to make its way back to their superiors? Especially when the party is around, what motivation could they have to follow their rules or hide breaking them when the party probably isn't going to rat them out?
Tell me, why would anyone in this world (NPC and/or PC) follow these (from what I understand often inconvenient or problematic) codes of conduct when there is no danger of being found out? As you say yourself, those in power or in cahoots with those in power break them regularly. As a consequence it makes sense for the party as well to tolerate certain indiscretions of their fellow teammates and look the other way occasionally - if they trust each other!

If the PCs don't trust each other, then it's obvious that they wouldn't violate their codes in front of other players. There are quite a few systems that integrate PC-PC mistrust and betrayal into their world such as Paranoia, Vampire: The Masquerade (the old one), and the various Warhammer systems. One way you could create such a game world is by having all these organizations be antagonistic towards each other and always looking for ways to bring other organizations down. Consequently there would be institutional rewards for players who would rat out other PCs out if the violation would reflect poorly on the opposing faction. You could even create a whole system around institutional favors and violations that would allow players to advance in rank and gain favors based on rank. This will change the game entirely though, and introduce strong pvp elements. My guess is this is not what you were after.

There is one thing you have to keep in mind: How much trust there is between the party, how they play out their loyalty to their organization, and how much the GM enforces codes of conduct is entirely up to the players and the GM, and as you have pointed out repeatedly, you are neither. As a game designer it's not up to you to enforce a certain type of roleplaying. That's entirely the GMs job.

So my advise is, rather than introducing an arbitrary reason to make players mistrust each others or tell the GM to enforce such and such, simply provide a discussion on the different possibilities on how to structure PC-PC interactions, and leave it up to the GM to resolve this. Is this a game where players are encouraged to rat each other out to gain favors in their organizations as in Paranoia? Tell the GM to make institutional benefits the primary motivation for the game. Is this a game where the players start out as naive novices who become aware of the inherent corruption of the organizations during the course of the adventure? Then the GM and players should roleplay that naivite and the growing tolerance of minor indiscretion over time (as in the players agree to follow the rules in the beginning because that's what their PCs believe in). Is this a regular adventure game where the organizations play only a minor part in the day-to-day activities of the players? Then the codes of conduct shouldn't be enforced anyway and be relegated to background flavor. All of this is up to the GM though, not you.

Quote:
I am asking how to non-mechanically motivate player characters to behave in a way that makes sense for them but makes no sense for their players. That is the core premise. Is it still confusing?
It's not so much confusing, but simply impossible. If a player understands that their PC believes this-and-that is the right way to act, then it makes sense for the player to make their PC act that way even if the player wouldn't do so themselves in the real world. That's called roleplaying. If the player however, comes to the conclusion that the PC themselves have no reason to follow these arbitrary rules, (aside from punishment) then it stands to reason that neither the player nor the character would do so. That's also roleplaying. The only way what you describe can happen is if players completely ignore their character's motivation and background and act out their whims. That's bad roleplaying, and there are oodles of essays written about it in numerous game systems.

Quote:
Basically, I'm looking for advice to give to Game Masters in the rulebook to make sure players think about the rules and find some intelligent workaround, rather than ignoring them entirely. That's a simple thing, expressed exceedingly poorly by me ten hours ago.
You just tell them that right there: "make sure players think about the rules and find some intelligent workaround, rather than ignoring them entirely" and leave it up to the GM to figure out how much they want to enforce this. It's not up to a game designer to regulate meta-gaming.




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-19 05:25:57am local time
Myth-Weavers Status