That sounds pretty realistic.

Under my understanding, the best possible system would be to base the moral rules on a certain class system or deity.

For example, as a cleric or priest, healing the weak ones, helping out, or saving somebody would be considered good. But even if you killed a lot of bad people (i.e. orcs) it wouldn''t matter much because usually, a priest wouldn''t kill, but gain "points" as a support spellcaster. And as a priest, although valued by good people, maybe he would displease the evil deities, and thus have more encounters in certain places, or have a different class (such as a robber) out to attack him. If he lost too many points (by doing things "out of class" such as robbing) he would lose some skills and turn into a different class (or, possibly, priest to voodoo shaman).

But thats probably mentioned by somebody else.

The main idea of the previous post was that there should be a downside to everything. It wouldn''t be fun if the holy priests were blessed and accepted everywhere they went, they should be attacked and have a bad point to them (so they aren''t good in all ways). If the good people were always good, then the game would get boring due to everyone being good, with no variety in the gameplay.

ok, if i pass laws to encourage bad behaviour, are the laws i passed good or bad? i think we must make sure we seperate the concept of legality from morality. i, as an admin, won''t punish players who act according to my laws, but that does not mean then they are acting morally since i can pass laws that encourages pk, without me knowing even, and it would be perfectly legal, but if we were to just settle at that, then what''s the point of implementing a system of morality that can no better function than a set of arbitrary laws?

there is still one option left of course: do we really need a system of morality in the game? what does it do?

rmsgrey:
by admitting that an implemented morality system cannot mirror real morality, we''d be admitting that those "moral codes" are abitrary and therefore are no better than tyrannic laws - there''s no moral obligation to obey those given laws, ie. players might rebel by expoliting some spects of the game and also holds moral high ground for doing so. i''m not saying that they thus cannot control players'' behaviour, but we shouldn''t kid ourselves and say that it is anything more than laws past on your own fiat.

RPGeezus:
again, we come back to the same problem. two sets of laws, each arbitrarily made. a more relevent question is why aren''t the towns-people obeying the laws of the gods? why do they not have the _moral_obligation_ to? are the two laws, regarding karma and ethics, mutually independent? ie. the towns people have the same level of moral authority as the gods. to a towns-man, what is his moral obiligation to the players? if the towns-people, in terms of moral authority, are subordinate to the gods, then wouldn''t the towns-people only have the god''s morality code to worry about? and if it''s the contrary, aren''t they their own abitraror of their own morality (they give and take their own "ethic score" in accordance to their own fiat)? in that case, didn''t you make morality into arbitrary laws pass by different factions?

to the anonymous poster who suggested hedonism:
allowing multiple moral systems where each can contradicts the other is simply creating factions, as mentioned above.

i''m a nihilist in terms of morality, so my opinion is there is no point in implementing morality into a game. i''m not much interested in proving others wrong than to know if there''s something i missed for the view i take.

Well, duh, AP. That's kinda the point of this thread. We're trying to find a way to evaluate the morality of a character, rather than assigning it. I think it would be neat to have groups that are roughly equivalent in the grand karmic scheme of things, but which just don't really get along. Like a priest and a ninja might both fight evil, but the priest thinks the ninja is extremist and the ninja thinks the priest is a coward. If they were in a unit together, they would have an adverse effect on one another's morale, and NPC's of these classes would often refuse to help one another in matters not pertaining to their shared goal of fighting evil.

I'm reminded of M:TG again. Remember how the colors were matched up? Red got along famously with black and green, but black and green were constantly at odds. White hated black, but blue was a common ally, and so on. It would be neat to see that dynamic in a more tangible sense. In fact, I've often thought that the Fallen Empires expansion was an excellent foundation for an RPG. All those warring groups, with their creepy alliances and strange technologies. It would be pretty sweet to be an Ication Infantryman. It's a shame that such great world-building went into such a fallow medium.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on December 19, 2002 12:29:48 AM]

tanikaze, I think we moral codes are already a factor in many games, one way or another. NPC''s responding to obvious breaches of morality, such as stabbing them or robbing them, is an element of more than one RPG. Reputation levels affect the course and outcome of a large number of games, and individual acts or decisions are often scripted to impact character development in one way or another, as in the "alignment" feature in Ogre Battle games, which affects the available classes and interaction between allied units.

Making it into a more fluidly dynamic system will facilitate a higher degree of character customization, as well as making certain "maxxed out" conditions less attainable. Anyone can kill and kill and kill until they are at ridiculously high levels, but it takes a totally separate type of dedication to craft a character in accordance with a legal, moral, or ethical system of conduct.

As to being impossible to implement, I disagree. The way I see it, you need two levels of rules: Local laws and universal ordinances.

Local laws can be established for each area of the world, like regional systems. Some countries will have draconian laws, and strictly punish violators, while others will be more judicious, and require lengthy legal proceedings. Some places may forbid weaponry and acts of aggression, while such behavior may be tolerated elsewhere. Such legal systems would be set forth by the designer when the game is made, and must be good enough to resist abuse.

Universal law is always in effect. Everyone knows what these are. No unjustified killing, no theft, no lying. These would be written into every legal system, to one degree or another, but on a larger scale they would have an impact on your character''s overall status in the universe, in the form of a piety attribut or something. Like the Ogre Battle alignment system, this would impact his disposition toward different careers or classes, and would have a positive or negative influence on other traits, as well. A chranoc liar would have a hard time keeping his charisma up, since he would gradually become furtive and shifty, and a mass murderer would become fairly creepy if his lifestyle involved the soulless slaughter of innocents. Aftera while, people would start to notice something funny about your guy. On the other hand, a Boy Scout would be approachable and well-liked.

I started this thread to get a general idea of how people felt about not having missions, but now I think it''s become far more interesting than that.

quote: Original post by tanikaze
rmsgrey:
by admitting that an implemented morality system cannot mirror real morality, we''d be admitting that those "moral codes" are abitrary and therefore are no better than tyrannic laws - there''s no moral obligation to obey those given laws, ie. players might rebel by expoliting some spects of the game and also holds moral high ground for doing so. i''m not saying that they thus cannot control players'' behaviour, but we shouldn''t kid ourselves and say that it is anything more than laws past on your own fiat.

I do not, and have not said that there is no way to mirror real morality with implemented morality, just that, in my opinion, the only way to do so is by making it an emergent feature of your game world rather than attempting to code it directly.

For example: you steal an item from NPC Alan. Alan gets "angry" either at you specifically, or at "thieves" in general. Alan is also more inclined to steal something himself (from you if he knows who stole from him, from whoever has something he wants if he doesn''t). Alan''s attitude in turn influences those of others - if Barbara likes Alan, she is strongly influenced by his change in opinion. Charles, who greatly dislikes Alan tends to take an opposing stance, likes you better and is more inclined to steal from Alan... This, followed through leads to the entire community becoming more inclined to theft as a way of life, and, depending on Alan''s standing in the community, a rise or fall in your general reputation in that community. If you steal items openly from everyone in town, then they will all dislike you and next time you pass through, you''ll be lucky to escape with any of your items. If you steal from everyone in town stealthily, then they won''t dislike you for a while - eventually they figure it out - but you''ll still be lucky to escape town with any items. If you then move on to the neighbouring village, they''ll be less against you, and less inclined to steal from you at every opportunity, whereas if you went to the far side of the game world, everyone would be neutral towards you, and have whatever the local default attitude towards stealing is...

Such a system could be implemented by tracking NPC attitudes towards various actions, and judging affinity between NPCs on the basis of similarity of opinion (saves the quadratic cost of tracking individual affinities - though if you limit the number of beings to whom NPCs track affinity, you again get a linear cost). Whenever an attitude changes due to an action, other NPCs have a lesser attitude change based on their degree of affinity. If desired, this could be extended to secondary effects on NPCs with direct affinity not with the original NPC, but with an NPC who has. Stealthy actions should either produce a delayed effect on attitudes (time before anyone finds out) or split the effect (obvious someone has stolen whatever, but not immediately known who)... Done properly, I would expect such a system to encourage a code of morality as an emergent phenomenon. In which case, that would be the natural morality for that game-world.

Tanikaze: Another point - the game designer creates a world in which the players have to interact. By playing that game, there is a tacit agreement to abide by the rules of the game world, including any code of morality enforced by the rules. That''s why grief players are a problem - they deliberately seek to break the game world''s rules. If the game mechanics reward "immoral" behaviour, as defined by sysadmins or the original design document, then the game''s natural morality is in conflict with its stated morality, and somewhere there''s either poor design or a misguided sysadmin. In which case, I would argue players have a right to choose which morality to follow - the implicit or the stated. Of course, this could be interpreted as endorsing certain types of "grief" play, but so could the elements of the game design that reward those behaviours. Attempting to impose a moral code at odds with the natural morality of the game world is going to be about as successful as Soviet Communism (an attempt to impose a moral code at odds with the natural morality of the real world)

Anyway, I suspect I''m not making myself terribly clear, so I''ll stop trying and wait for more responses so I can try and see where I need ot clarify...

Iron Chef Carnage:
most, if not all, games, rpg especially, have behaviour programmed to npcs which we might recognized as merely self perservation. it does not, imo, create a system of morality - there is not a clear consistent way to define what is good and what is bad but merely individuals approving and disapproving your actions according to each of their own beliefs as to what you ought to have done in some particular instances, which is arbitary. alignment feature like the ones in orge battle can be understood more appropriately as alignment to a faction where each have their own rules while all again are abitrary. the question to ask is why are you morally obligated to any given laws?

you can view the euthyphro''s dilemma from the agent''s perspective: do you act according to the laws because they''re right? or because they were commanded by authorities? just because the laws are given by authority does not make them right, or all rebellions would be immoral, ie. authorities would always be right. many laws are given to prevent abuses, and all games have them, but it does not thus create morality - indeed it can prevent a certain kinds of actions being performed, but there is no moral obligation to follow the "spirit" of the rules, ie. there is nothing immoral/bad/wrong about exploiting "bugs" (what i mean by bug is anything not anticipated in both design and implementation, which covers a very wide range of subjects, such as rampant pk''ing, or craft macro''ing, and not just using a spell that hits more than what it suppose to because someone entered the wrong number in the database) other than it''s illegal in the design, and this is what the designers are most concerned about, imo. as far as i can see, you can implement a lot of laws, but you cannot implement morality. eg. you can try your best to enforce the laws you enacted, but there is no way to enact anything that''d ensure people would feel the moral obligation to comply with authority (just in case it''s still unclear, you can make a law that says "one must abide by the laws," but that''s redundant as those who don''t want to follow the law won''t care for that one either).

obviouly, holding a nihilist position, i don''t agree on even the mere existence of universal laws.

rmsgrey:
your example with alan the npc is an example of the lack of objective morality. your system of reward and punishment is completely dependent on the approbation and disapprobation of others. nothing is emerging other than a lot of opinions and that seems to only ensure lynch rather than justice. this reliance on opinion is either arbitrary, or if you may, random, and thus does not constitute morality.

as for the problem with grief players, i mentioned it in my reply to iron chef carnage. however, i''m beginning to think you are just using morality differently from me. good is good and always is good, so there cannot be more than one set of morality. my understanding of morality would not allow something like "my morality conflicts with his" sort of conclusion. it''d simply be "there is no such thing as morality but a lot of arbitary opinions" since it is either truly moral, or it''s arbitrary. the way you suggest your implementation is, imo, a complete abandance of the concept of morality. for example, implementing a system like karma score in uo would be a morality system. it''s obviouly arbitrary and if you''ve played it before, you''d know how the best of intentions can turn into rewarding the most vicious as the most virtuous.

if it is not the point to make people act morally even when they are not told to, then until you can dictate every action of everyone, you won''t arrive at a moral society.

quote: Original post by tanikaze
ok, if i pass laws to encourage bad behaviour, are the laws i passed good or bad? i think we must make sure we seperate the concept of legality from morality.

Thats why we said MORALITY and EHTICS. Please read the posts before spewing.

quote: Original post by tanikaze
RPGeezus:
again, we come back to the same problem. two sets of laws, each arbitrarily made. a more relevent question is why aren''t the towns-people obeying the laws of the gods? why do they not have the _moral_obligation_ to? are the two laws, regarding karma and ethics, mutually independent? ie. the towns people have the same level of moral authority as the gods. to a towns-man, what is his moral obiligation to the players? if the towns-people, in terms of moral authority, are subordinate to the gods, then wouldn''t the towns-people only have the god''s morality code to worry about? and if it''s the contrary, aren''t they their own abitraror of their own morality (they give and take their own "ethic score" in accordance to their own fiat)? in that case, didn''t you make morality into arbitrary laws pass by different factions?

Lets address your problem: Two laws, arbitrarily made, are STILL LAWS. What may seem arbitrary to you may be dead serious to someone else. Why is sex such a taboo in N. American society? It really doesn''t matter, because it still affects peoples ethics. It may be a retarted ''value'', but it still exists.

This is not a philisophical debate on the virtues of morality and ethics. It is a discussion on how to get a brownie points system in to a game. Having ''morals'' and ''ethics'' is one way of doing that.

Will

Tanikaze, put down the Euthyphro and pick up the Republic. Read the segment about the Ring of Gyges. Plato actually refutes the concept put forth here, but I don''t like all the crap he uses to address it, so I''ll take the Ring of Gyges at face value. We follow local laws because we''re afraid of the local consequences of breaking them (jail, slaps, not being liked, execution, etc.), and we adhere to cosmic law for fear of the cosmic repurcussions of infraction.

Now, your nihilism may prohibit you from believing in cosmic law, but surely you agree that there are common threads between most local systems of law, and these common threads are ancient directives gleaned primarily from religious sources. Much of modern law is based on ancient religious law.

So, you build your little towns andkingdoms in the game with laws. If you break a law when a member of that community is watching, they disapprove. If you''re within the jurisdiction of their laws, you might be punished. However, there are universal laws as well, such as not murdering and keeping your mitts off of other people''s things. No matter where you are, doing these things reflects badly on you. Everybody disapproves of it, and supernatural forces, if there are any in the game, disapprove as well.

Players would adhere to the laws for two reasons. First, they''re afraid of getting their guy thrown in jail or being stoned by an angry mob. Second, they don''t want to bugger up their cosmic status ("karma"?) and ruin their chances to get power, opportunity, and insurance against lightning strikes.