"Good, good. Let the hate flow through you..."

[Corvo]

Since my comments have been part of the flow of the conversation, I though I would clarify my position. I didn't mean to come across so defensive. Sorry about that.

Don't worry JamesRBrown, you were not "so defensive", it's me
In the past I think I offended unwittingly a member of this forum during a conversation, so I thread lightly, to not repeat the same mistake

[PipeSmoker]

It's good to me that people on this topic felt the need to share their view, but even better that they had the will to clarify it and understand the other's.
Quite philosophycal discussion, the best way to make our games richer!!!

P.S.: I'm not of english language, sometimes what I write could not exactly be what I mean. Bear with me.

[poosticks7]

I believe that even the best of us can be pushed to do something 'morally' wrong give extreme circumstances - and going on an adventure should likely include a fair share of extreme circumstances.

A Barding avenging the death of his family by hunting down and killing the Easterlings who did it.

A Ranger who has to chose between warning a village of a orc attack or completing his mission to deliever a message to Elrond.

A Dwarf who puts his love of gold before friendship and puts his companions in danger.

etc etc

These are story and character driven motives but each could be seen as dark or a misdeed.

The game caters well for the hard choices, but is my belief that the characters should fall into sorrow naturally not go looking for it.

[Robin Smallburrow]

Oskar

What do your players actually want to do in your campaign, and what stories do you as LM want to tell?
It seems to me that there seems to be differing views on this crucial question with your group.
To illustrate, I once ran an evil campaign in middle-earth for similar- minded players ( they all played orcs), and they soon discovered that a world where everyone lies, cheats etc. to get ahead is not actually much fun! (We labelled it Middle-earth Paranoia). Some of your players need to understand such concepts as 'the subtle magic of middle-earth, and that Middle-earth is a moral place where misdeeds will be punished eventually

Robin S

[MrNidnan]

JamesRBrown, I like the way of your though as I myself used this additional rule when one of my players used hope to overcome a missded.

This derived into interesting philosophical discussion.
But in my opinion despite the game favours this discussion, system in its inception is not so deep .The Ego think to me is not an excuse to use your hope withouth penalize to carry on with a misdeed. Let's say that after you finished the deed you can realize that you put all your heart in it, and It could feels good, that's so wrong and that's why your character must earn additional shadow or additional corruption test (before spent the hope in the missded)

I can see that a villain may hope for a nasty outcome when committing misdeeds. That hope he has is 'positive' spiritual fervour to him, even though others do not see it as positive. They will see it as the influence of evil.

That is what game defines in monsters as Hate and I consider it the same for villains once they're corrupt. Hate.
And that's what you can use it to overcome actions, not shadow as shadow is only a marker, as someone stated, of how close are you to the breakdown and to the "darkside".

[Oskar]

hmm Robin, they seem to want a lot of things at the same time, usually conflicting things.

I have a cold right now so my thought-process is not very .. focused. Bare with me.

At times when their characters have greater degrees of freedom they usually want to try violence/impulsive actions/lying as a means of reaching their goals. But this is teens with high functioning autism who played games like single-player-RPGs like Skyrim when one hero can "solo" any dungeon/dragon/army and any deeds seen as "evil" can be neutralized if only the last witness is slain. Morality never enters the game.

Basically their cooperation is somewhat forced (they would like to solo-adventure more), they feel "nerfed" (starting with low level-heroes), and are dealing with having to answer for their actions morally (shadow-points).
It's a lot going on.

So far, I've rewarded good roleplay-attempts with narrative success and misdeeds with shadow-points. But that is on a,, behavioral level. Punishment and reward. I feel ready to have a talk with them about their groups motivations. Be heroes or do they want to try to be evil? If they want to become more evil we'll play out a few "decent into darkness"-adventures and then see how that works out.

I mean, to some extend roleplaying is an exercise in how to think about the solution to a problem from many perspectives. Use brute force? Solve it quick and dirty? Cunning/Stealth? Cleverness? Or really careful?

Sometimes I think that they come up with crappy solutions because they have a hard time with problem-solving. The first thing that comes to their minds will usually be their solution. But greater solutions might come if they could focus longer, dwell on the problem. My role as LM with them is not only judge, narrator and director but also that of a gentle shepard of their group-process.

So if violence, theft and lying is what comes first to mind, why not building that into the game? Anyway, that was how I thought. But also, I wanted to have a discussion about the Hero's Journey and how power corrupts..