Musing on RPG Morality Mechanics

RPG videogames have a range of approaches to morality. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 went for straight good and evil with paragon/renegade and good/bad karma respectively. More recently, faction-based approval/disapproval, such as in Pillars of Eternity, has become more popular, perhaps as it offers a more nuanced take on things.

I think there are a couple of interesting other ways that morality could function in RPGs, (focusing on a more medieval/fantastical world rather than a sci-fi universe).

The old medieval medicine system (if we can call it that) involved four humours. There was blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. That could easily be translated into morality/behaviour, with blood and phlegm good, bile bad, and blood/yellow bile action-oriented and phlegm/black bile more thoughtful.

A sanguine (bloody) character would be your bold hero, diving into the fray, keen for action and leading from the front. A choleric (yellow bile) would be aggressive beyond morality, eager for bloodshed and more concerned with self-interest than public esteem.

I think that’d be an interesting approach because it has overlap between a thoughtful/action-oriented approach and good/bad. If certain options are only open to good/bad characters or thoughtful/action-oriented characters then in a given playthrough you’ll have a set of options that (unless you copy your playstyle) will differ when you replay the game. It’d also mean your actions matter.

Another way to go about such things would be to make gods more than window dressing. I’m not a vegetarian, but it’d be interesting if you had to pick gods/a god and live according to their precepts, and that could include a nature-based vegetarian style. Similarly, you could have a pacifist religion (perhaps excepting saving your own life), a god who demands his followers drink alcohol daily, one whose acolytes swear poverty, another whose worshippers must regularly participate in frisky time (making brothels part-business, part-temple), and so on.

The price for contravening your god’s whims would be divine punishment, including gameplay penalties, and a quest to restore you to the god’s favour. Or you could jump spiritual ship, which would make you loathed by your former co-religionists. As for advantages, you could start off with minor bonuses and have the opportunity through side-quests to climb the spiritual ladder to enhance them.

This is slightly similar to the faction-approval approach mentioned near the the start, but there are some significant differences. Not least is the limitation on approval (you can’t join the Lovely Peaceful God’s cause *and* worship Angor the Intensely Violent). Another is that it’d be largely (maybe entirely) optional, whereas faction interaction, at least to an extent, is usually a requirement in games that have them.

And it could easily co-exist with a faction system. Maybe you need to persuade leader X to help you. Sure, you can do that via the old approval system, but if you’re the High Priest of his religion (through prolific questing) it’d be cool to just order him to help on pain of excommunication.

Charitable works is another area that could work. Not only would, say, setting up an orphanage boost your reputation, it could also help get beggar children off the streets, improving your relations with businesses who don’t want half-starved urchins cadging coin next to their stalls.

Thaddeus