There has been a lot of discussion recently about these things, without much understanding of what they actually are. Also, thanks to fallout3 there's a "moral ambiguity" issue floating around. The Witcher promises us a different morality, and of course we have the gaming journalism ethics flamewars. On top of all that, there are a few interesting threads about what makes for good RPG choices and consequences (good vs. bad, good vs. good, bad vs. bad).
I'd like to propose a very limited framework of ideas to try and help sort out some of this crap. I say "very limited" because what I describe will be wrong. This is an area that takes MANY years to really get, and many books' worth to describe accurately. Terminology and semantics are VERY important, but I'm trying to simplify things so they're usable. I'll be using words in very particular ways that are not necessarily the way everyone else uses those words. Those differences are exactly WHY I'm posting this. I hope to accomplish 2 things:
1) Dumbfucks will be better able to communicate clearly in a way that doesn't create contradictions and confusion. Hopefully this will help them contribute to the various discussions rather than derail them.
2) RPG designers might be able to use this simple framework to create various value-systems that are believably coherent and thereby create "meaningful" moral ambiguity instead of just empty alternatives that people laugh at. Also, for a given value-sytem, they can create situations that really are interesting for the player.
Here we go:
Notice there's also a disagreement about the fundamental value "Pursuit of Happiness". Is the Pursuit or the Happiness the actual value? This confusion is because it's not actually a FUNDAMENTAL value, but was presented as if it were. This is exactly what having a good framework can help avoid. Pursuit of Happiness is essentially the same as Liberty (i.e. opportunity to do what one wants), and shouldn't have been a separate value. Happiness is a different value altogether, and wasn't included in the list to begin with. So pretty much everyone is confused on this issue because they started with a muddled concept of Values, Virtues, Morality, and Ethics.
So to create a believable society in a game (familiar or unfamiliar, doesn't matter), or to clarify your own thinking so that you don't look like a fool:
As for games, interesting decisions are those that involve difficult Value conflicts. The closer the total Value balance is, the more difficult it is to make the best decision. Also, the more discrete Values are involved in the evaluation, the more difficult it is to make the best decision because it gets exponentially more difficult to "add up" everything on the pro and con list. Using this framework, there is no "bad vs. bad" decision because in order for something to be "bad", it has to be in violaton of some Value, and therefore one is really deciding if that Value is more important than other Values.
I'd rather not get into a discussion of the actual content of value systems, since that'll just devolve into a flamewar. But I would love to have an interesting discussion about the framework itself, and whether or not my simple proposal is sufficient to guide game designers and individual thinkers who haven't spent a lifetime thinking about these issues.
I'd like to propose a very limited framework of ideas to try and help sort out some of this crap. I say "very limited" because what I describe will be wrong. This is an area that takes MANY years to really get, and many books' worth to describe accurately. Terminology and semantics are VERY important, but I'm trying to simplify things so they're usable. I'll be using words in very particular ways that are not necessarily the way everyone else uses those words. Those differences are exactly WHY I'm posting this. I hope to accomplish 2 things:
1) Dumbfucks will be better able to communicate clearly in a way that doesn't create contradictions and confusion. Hopefully this will help them contribute to the various discussions rather than derail them.
2) RPG designers might be able to use this simple framework to create various value-systems that are believably coherent and thereby create "meaningful" moral ambiguity instead of just empty alternatives that people laugh at. Also, for a given value-sytem, they can create situations that really are interesting for the player.
Here we go:
- - At the base of everything are values. These are things that people act to accquire and to keep. (the particular list of Values is actually the result of a lot of other thinking in terms of metaphysics and epystimology, but for this discussion, lets just start here)
- Next up are virtues. These are attitudes or principles that are supposed to result in the accuisition and retention of values. I think we can generally ignore virtues, because they get supplanted later by more detailed things and in a relatively quick game, it would be difficult to accurately define them.
- Next is morality. This can be most simply defined as a hierarchy of values. In other words, a list of values does not define morality. You need to add the relative importance of each value so that confilcts can be resolved in a consistent manner. This is the most interesting layer for most people because they have honest disagreement about the relative importance of various Values. It's also very easy to ignore an ultra-important long-term fundamental value in the face of immediate accquisition of much less important Values.
- Finally, we have ethics. These are detailed rules that people are supposed to follow. They are basically the result of pre-evaluating the morality hierarchy and pre-defining how to resolve common value conflicts. Their benefit is that because they are all "actionable" rules, rather than more abstract concepts, people can follow the rules (i.e. behave ethically) without any actual thought or analysis on their part.
- - "lawful' characters value predictabilty and consistency very highly, and are primarily focussed on ethics. They refuse to violate ethical rules, even if doing so is morally right, based on the context.
- "chaotic" characters don't give a damn about ethics. They never pre-define their reactions, instead evaluating their own particular Value hierarchy (Morality) whenever confronted with a value conflict. This can allow mood and imperfect information to dramatically affect the result, which can lead to unpredictability and inconsistent behaviour.
- "good" and "evil" are mostly unimportant. They are an attempt to categorize all possible sets of values and all possible arrangements of the value hierarchy into only two groups. That's pretty limiting. However, it can be useful for game purposes because one can define "good" as "consistent with my morality" and "evil" as "at odds with my morality". This lets different groups have different views of good and evil, even if they sometimes agree on what's good and evil.
Notice there's also a disagreement about the fundamental value "Pursuit of Happiness". Is the Pursuit or the Happiness the actual value? This confusion is because it's not actually a FUNDAMENTAL value, but was presented as if it were. This is exactly what having a good framework can help avoid. Pursuit of Happiness is essentially the same as Liberty (i.e. opportunity to do what one wants), and shouldn't have been a separate value. Happiness is a different value altogether, and wasn't included in the list to begin with. So pretty much everyone is confused on this issue because they started with a muddled concept of Values, Virtues, Morality, and Ethics.
So to create a believable society in a game (familiar or unfamiliar, doesn't matter), or to clarify your own thinking so that you don't look like a fool:
- 1) Start with a definition of Values. It helps if you use very simple, fundamental values, but even if you want to jump in with inappropriately complex, high-level Values, at least defining the list is better than not.
2) Arrange the values according to their importance. This is not a strict ordered list, since things might be equally important. It's important to have a numerical weight to each Value because Value conflicts are seldom 1-to-1 tradeoffs. (i.e. if you give up Values A and B to get Value C, is that the right resolution?)
3) If you like, define specific actions (Ethics) that, when followed, will automatically resolve Value conflicts in a way that's consistent with your Morality from step 2 (Note, this is impossible because there is an infinity of contexts and possible conflicts, but it might be useful for the more common conflicts).
As for games, interesting decisions are those that involve difficult Value conflicts. The closer the total Value balance is, the more difficult it is to make the best decision. Also, the more discrete Values are involved in the evaluation, the more difficult it is to make the best decision because it gets exponentially more difficult to "add up" everything on the pro and con list. Using this framework, there is no "bad vs. bad" decision because in order for something to be "bad", it has to be in violaton of some Value, and therefore one is really deciding if that Value is more important than other Values.
I'd rather not get into a discussion of the actual content of value systems, since that'll just devolve into a flamewar. But I would love to have an interesting discussion about the framework itself, and whether or not my simple proposal is sufficient to guide game designers and individual thinkers who haven't spent a lifetime thinking about these issues.
.
(imagine that, synonyms don't work as well as I was told). I meant "exponential" as an hyperbolic way of saying "super-linear". I was actually referring to the player's perceived difficulty in making a choice. With players, I don't agree that one choice graded from 1-1000 is equally complex or interesting as a 3-pronged value balance, each of which is graded from 1-333. Most RPG's present 1:1 Value conflicts (if any). "Kill[Y], saving [X], or don't, leading to [X]'s demise". (X doesn't even have to be a person, could be you getting money, or a town becoming good/bad, whatever). Fallout2 at least tried to get three options in the Redding decision, and that was a big step up, imo. My point is just that there's two ways to make a Value conflict interesting for the player (assuming interesting=complex): The first is to make it a close balance (since lopsided evaluations like "nuke megaton or get paid $50?" are hardly a dilemma), and the second way is to make more Values enter into the balance equation. The second a player starts thinking "If I do X, I strengthen Values A, B, C, ... but lose Values 1,2, 3 ...", then the perceived complexity of the decision is MUCH higher than just linear in the number of Values in the equation. The second is often interesting even if the balance is not close. Of course, if you can get a close balance of many Values, that's the multi-headed dick, baby!
