Game Wish 95: How Many Colours?

Game WISH 95 talks morality:

How many colors do you like in your gaming? Do you prefer four-color games? Or should game morality be black and white or shades of grey, and if the latter, how many? Are “evil” characters acceptable? Does your preference depend on genre? Do your preferences affect the genres you like?

I’m going to talk about ‘Black and White’ versus ‘Shades of Grey’, simply because I don’t know what’s meant by ‘Four Colour Morality’ (I’m just not into the Superhero genre at all, either in comics or in gaming; I find too many of the tropes too ridiculous)

I live a strong sense of morality in games, but I strongly believe that it should come from the characters’ own motivations, not something hardwired into the setting.

I strongly dislike the idea, prevalent in some juvenile forms of hack-and-slash games, of crudely black and white settings, where one side is defined as good, and the other is defined as irredeemably evil, so that they can be slaughtered without mercy. To me, that’s not really morality at all, that’s complete amorality. There is no difference whatsoever between the black hats and the white hats when it comes down to the way they actually act. Evil orcs slaughter innocent elf children, so the elves are entitled to do the same back to the orcs. Such racial genocide has no place in any game I care to play in. Sadly, the mindset is all too common in the real world, but that’s another subject for another post.

I prefer ‘shades of grey’ games where players are occasionally forced to make difficult moral choices. It can still be a ‘good vs evil’ setting; anything from a group of angels in In Nomine to a band of allied soldiers fighting in World War two. The moral conflict can come from decisions on just how far the end justifies the means. Is it ever justified to harm innocents to prevent a greater evil? Even ‘PCs as monsters’ games can have some morality; the one and only time I’ve player Vampire all the PCs decided not to drain the mortals we’d just defeated, but only drink enough blood not to cause lasting harm.

My own campaign setting, Kalyr, is a world with multiple conflicts, with one or two pretty evil groups, but no group that’s unambiguously good. It’s occurred to me that the most recent one-shot convention scenario I’ve run could, with a few minor adjustments, be run from the other side. It featured a clash between the Kandar technology guild and a bunch of human revolutionaries. The difference between them is no more than the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

As for ‘Evil PCs’ games, I haven’t really played much in that vein. The only one I can think of was a demonic In Nomine game at GenCon UK back in 2000. But that game was played strictly for laughs, culminating in a gunfight with Tony Blair’s bodyguards at a village fete in Devon. A complete contrast to the intense morality play of the last Angelic In Nomime game I played, a couple of Stabcons ago.

To sum up, black-and-white, bad; shades of grey, good. Because that’s the way the real world is.