Moral system?

[Najir]

Iv been using this mechanic on my game. It is a moral System. It works by you have multiple choices when you talk to npc's. Depending on your actions you gain a bad or good variable or none at all. As you gain or lose moral your story and missions change as you progress. You could end up killing everyone you see, causing people to try to arrest you and not give you quests. While others will give you quests, or you could help someone and you will become more friendly twords other npc's thus gaining rep and new things to happen. This mechanic is based on freedom and replay-ability. I was wondering how you would make or use a moral system, and if this is a good mechanic and should be used in my game.

 

[Zephaniah]

Well, there is a few ways you can do this.

You could easily do this by eventing. Name a variable "Morale", or something like that. add or subtract from the variable depending on the choices the player makes, and set some variable amounts as a condition for good or evil quests.

If you're looking for a bar to display whether or not somebody is behaving good or badly, you might need to turn to a script. I know that there are moral system scripts for XP and VX, however I do not know whether or not there are scripts for Ace.

If you need more clarification about using eventing I could help you out. Just pm me. Otherwise, good luck!

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere]

I think a morale system can be good in an RPG. Just look at Fable, or Mass Effect, or Star Wars: KOTOR. Mostly, the morale system should work both ways: if you're really aligned with the good side, then you get quests from good guys. If you're aligned with the evil side, then you get quests from bad guys. I don't think it's a good idea for you to exclude quests from people just because they're choosing to be evil. I'd say that the whole point of having a morale system, is that people can choose to be good or bad if they want to, and either side has perks.


Although I wouldn't call the stat "Morale", because that is defined as "the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time". I'd prefer using a name like "Alignment" or "Moral" (without the e).

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I'd really use a variable for this... then if you want a bar to show it, you can use V's Variable Gauges

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere]

you gain a bad or good variable or none at all.

The OP already knows how to implement a morality variable. I think he's asking what kind of event structures etc. would work with a moral system? How would you structure quests and stuff based on a person's morality? At least I think that's what he's asking.

 

[kerbonklin]

Both moral sides definitely have to be balanced out in rewards. However if you do choose to make one side more difficult than the other, it should be forewarned somehow for newbie players.

Here's an example. Let's imagine the player is either a protector-hero, or a killer through the moral system. If you protect a town from an evil invasion, the people reward you with a strong weapon afterwards. However if you're a killer, then maybe you invade the town, steal that strong weapon to use, but then have to fend off hard battles against the town guards.

 

[Najir]

The OP already knows how to implement a morality variable. I think he's asking what kind of event structures etc. would work with a moral system? How would you structure quests and stuff based on a person's morality? At least I think that's what he's asking.

You are right i know how, i was asking how other people would work this out and how they would do a moral system. Even if someone misunderstood the question i can use that feedback to modify my own system.

 

[AwesomeCool]

Read this thread (on the front page) as I just asked this question and got some good responses.  

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/23639-thoughts-on-character-alignment/

In my opinion a good moral system is akin to planescape torment.  Where it is not just good vs evil, but have the player question what it means to be good or evil.  For example, giving money to a poor person to help them, but later you find out that this person who you gave money to squanders the money and gets in trouble for it (thus causing more problems for him then if you gave him money in the first place).

Also make the alignment system more grey then black vs white would also be awesome (aka more in-depth choices then do I kill this guy for fun or not)

 

[Najir]

I like that ideas, gives me some help for making the choices better. Also thanks for the link.

 

[Milennin]

I don't see the point in having such a system, since killing NPCs literally removes content from the game (if you kill quest givers) And if you let players kill key NPCs they can get stuck, but if you don't let them, it ruins consistency in your system.

I'm not that much a fan of moral influencing dialogue because it makes dialogue very predictable (NPCs afraid of you if you're evil, NPCs worshipping you if you're good), and it's just really easy to break character consistency by suddenly being the nice guy when people already saw you as someone evil (or vice versa). Doing all these things also takes a ton of time to put together...

But really, dialogue options that aren't black/white are a lot more interesting in my opinion, because it makes the outcome of a choice more unpredictable. And they're less likely to break the consistency of my character, regardless of what I pick.

 

[Mike]

I'd use morale and "past event" combined. Past event will be a variable to check how many morale does the player actually has. And each NPC will have variety uses "past event". For example: NPC_A loves cookies and NPC_B loves candies, so if the player destroy a cookie factory, NPC_A will hate him much much more than NPC_B, heck NPC_B might not care that much about destroyed cookie factory.

I'd also use morale to determine my party morale. If party morale is high, the character won't retreat easily from the battle when the AI thinks he/she will die / lost.

Character retreat will be determined not like by party morale but also leader / player morale. Both values will be combined with unique algorithm for every character, and the result be used to determined whether character will retreat during battle at moment X or not.

 

[rx.concepts]

I would head the old D&D route for this. Set up two variables, one to scale lawful<->chaotic and the other good<->evil and then align NPC's accordingly. You wouldn't necessarily have to visualize this to the player at all if you could do it well enough, but I probably would. I think the D&D alignment system is about as robust and flexible concept as any.

Wouldn't even have to be based on lawful, neutral etc as in the D&D concept, you could replace them with greed/generosity for example as 2 extremes, anything you want really.

But the D&D system is nice I think, you can easily fit any character morality into those 9 simple ideals, especially NPC's since, in a game, you aren't going in depth on them too much. I'd argue even if you did, it would still suffice.

You can take any character from gaming/movies/literature and slot them in somewhere in the D&D alignment scheme, sort of. Some examples are Vader was Lawful Evil in Episode IV, Lawful Good I guess in Episode I (I never actually saw it, I'm assuming he was a good guy Jedi), Talbot in Shakespears Henry VI is Lawful Good, Tidus in FFX was Chaotic Good.

Obviously morality is much more complicated and usually it changes over time as the character develops in the story but, you hopefully get the idea.

 

[rx.concepts]

Oh and I also agree with kerbonklin. Without knowing the details of your game, I'd say that you would either make the consequences totally different (so replay the same game with a different story according to actions; pretty daunting task to do well resulting in different story progression) or make them superficial (you can get the same quest in but from 2 different NPC's depending on your actions, but the quest/rewards are essentially the same, if given perhaps for different reasons, and the story advances just the same either way).

 

[LittleSandcat]

My game is going to use a kind of moral system that directly affects the story - you pick a good option and a little bit of the story changes - you pick a lot of good actions and lots of the story changes, and the same for bad actions.

But, if you pick a good or bad action (saving or killing a character. for example) at a very crucial point in the story, and the story might change drastically. However, players won't know how important each action is individually without playing the game multiple times with different choices.

 

[Lars Ulrika]

To say things short, in my game there is a rudimentary morality system. It won't allow you to turn psycho and kill everybody but you can go thug and get some cities guards after you while what used to be dungeons turn opened with shopping and resting options (and some unique items you will only be able to get by conquering the place if not their friend.). Some choices (including turning thug) open access to different side quests too. I plan to usually make two side quests per city , one for the "lawful" and one for the "thug" heroes. 

It might slightly change the ending too, but nothing significant. 

 

[deilin]

In the game i'm making, if is 3leveled as to what changes things.

Theres Holy and Bane, which affects some aspects of story, but the biggest factor in some things is my favor gauge.On the main character, it how favored yor character is as a whole by the populus. Onthe other characters, its how much they individually favor the main character. Favor will determine if some characters oppose, ally with, or even join you.

This of course calculates into which ending you recieve.

 

[Sel Feena]

People shouldn't be allowed to veer schizophrenically from Saint to Killer - the options available in any situation need to make sense depending on where your character currently lies on the moral scale. Although having said that, I don't think people behave rationally all the time. You could handle this by allowing the player to pick some things they love/hate - this could then act as a positive/negative buff for their morality score in any situation involving their loves/hates. So a normally good and kind person would have additional options open to them when dealing with elves if they hate them for any reason, and so on.

 

[UsainSloth]

The problem with moral system for me might be like, spending a lot of time eventing those. It might also limit writting possibilities because of the moral system. You might even have to write more because of it.

And don't forget, stuff that you evented for like hours might not even get played by the player. Since if you do can kill the NPC and the NPC is important, it's lost game content.(as said by Milennin)

You could've used that time to polish up the game more.

I also find myself just staying on 1 moral to stack it up. Not really because I wanted the choice. F.ex in infamous if I did something good I tried to stay good eventhough I wanted to be bad at times but it wouldn't benefit me at all when I would change from good to bad or from bad to good. Most morality systems feel tacked on and can be real bad when the writting is terrible. Since I don't have to think much about the choice itself.

BUUUT short answer:

Yes if you can pull it off well.

No if you can't.

 

[whitesphere]

In a game, I would have the "morals" of the player be determined by the actions the person chooses to take.  In one idea I'm working on, the player finds a sad mother whose child is now hiding in a cave.  But, later in the next town, we find that child is quite the thief.  So, the choices?  Do you turn him in and collect a nice reward (and easily open up a nifty class choice --- the Emissary)?  Do you refuse and battle the guards?  Or, do you try to find a costly third option?

And, say you're investigating a Thieve's Guild.  Do you steal from the Thieves?  Is that right?  And how do you deal with their leader once you meet with him?

I think a good moral system would be implemented with a single variable which indicates the person's state.  But, it should in game have carefully balanced out consequences.  In the end, I'm considering a player who goes to one extreme or the other can choose an aligned Knight class (Holy or Forsaken Knight) which have very different play styles.

Yes, Forsaken Knights can have, well, allies.  But, by the definition of "evil" I'm using, the allies are NOT friends...

So a good system can add to replayability but if done poorly, it can all but railroad players (oh, this class is a TON stronger than the other one) and undermine the very point of ethical choices in the game.

 

[deilin]

It IS a lot more writing. That part cannot be helped.

The average player WONT see all of it, especially if they don't know it affects the game. It's a gamble as a dev, but there are also players who look for stuff like that. I don't really care for "game achievements", but many players do, so I've added "Merits" you earn by doing certain things in game. If a player knows you can get different endings, and event, there are people that will look for them.

SIDE NOTE:: I cant quote people. Is it only me?