I think a common mistake people make when creating characters in the World of Darkness is playing them at the morality they want them to be at instead of the morality they are at. That is a big reason why so many themes of the game are lost. A starting character in the World of Darkness is supposed to be unlikely and unwilling to kill a man, or to steal from his peers.
Of course, sensible games allow a player to start at a lower Morality, sometimes in exchange for XP (something I've never understood). I think a character should be able to start at any Morality they like, usually somewhere between 4 and 8.
Games like Vampire and Mage are about, partially, a slow descent into madness. But if you start out mad, how can you possibly play that out?
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While I do agree with your assertion, I think (or suspect) that this and the vast majority of problems associated with online chronicles all stem from three root causes that apply equally to players and Storytellers:
ReplyDelete1. People being jerks.
2. Poor or unclear communication.
3. Failure to adapt the published games to the online environment.
I'm of the opinion that this particular problem (Morality) arises from 1. or 3., sometimes both.
The default character creation rules for VtR and MtA assume, as you point out, that the character descends into madness. Yet this is merely one theme/element of these games available for exploration. After playing out that theme innumerable times through innumerable characters across multiple game formats (TT, chat, LARP) for over a decade, I'm weary of it: I don't want to play any more neonates/noobs for a while. But I'll have to settle for playing a noob with a lower Morality score, which isn't quite the same thing as playing a more experienced character (and I do understand why it's unfair to hand out more experienced characters to just anyone).
Good blog! Discuss.
Thanks for the great comment.
ReplyDeleteI think that #1 is a problem only because of the lack of trust in the online environment. A long time ago a few people acted like jerks, and slowly more and more people came to assume that everyone would act like jerks if they weren't careful. To defend themselves, they started acting like jerks first. This cycle has repeated since New Bremen, and it will take a united community to overcome it.
#2 is trained by good ST and player training, but that doesn't exist (yet) either, except for what little bits and pieces people scrabble together for themselves and the occasional mentor-apprentice relationship.
#3 is much more difficult, and something I'm still reflecting on myself.
Loving the throught-provoking discourse!
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder something. Chat-based WoD rp is a tiny sliver of the totality of online rp. Consider for a moment how many untold hundreds (thousands?) of fan-fic boards, journal-based writing games and play-by-post games are in existence. Granted, much of that is based on licensed media, everything from Harry Potter to Twilight, but it's still a form of roleplaying. Are those communities as plagued by a high incidence of jerks as the chat-based WoD community seems to be? Is there something about online WoD play that attracts people who are predisposed to be jerks?