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

Two Ways To Create A World

Before I wrote Bane of Souls, I did a lot of world-building in preparation. At the time, this was unusual for me, but I didn’t feel time pressure because I’d only started working on it whilst trying to get a separate (and doomed-to-fail) story traditionally published. So, I tried to do as much background work as possible. Continuity was a big weakness of mine, and having background info ready and waiting helps both keep the world consistent and provides immediate ideas for little snippets you need (for example, social habits might include smoking, visiting cockpits and bare knuckle boxing).

This stood me in good stead, and the world created served as the foundation (with later additions) not only for Bane of Souls, but Journey to Altmortis and a future trilogy (first part, Kingdom Asunder, due for a December release).

However, I accidentally discovered a completely different approach when writing comedy. My world-building for Sir Edric was zero. I made up the incidental aspects (brandy being Andelic, elves having Greek-ish names, the Ursk eating humans) as I went along. Reviewers praised the world-building but, whereas I’d put months into Bane of Souls’ background, I’d done sod all for Sir Edric.

I’m a cautious sort of chap, and my writing method probably reflects that. So it was a bit of a surprise to find that the most neglected aspect of the comedy went down very well.

This does, I think, highlight an important point that’s relevant to both approaches. You’re not writing a guided tour of the lovely, or horrid, world you’ve created. World-building only matters insofar as it touches the characters and plot. And as showing is almost always better than telling, it should be, at it’s best, indistinguishable from the story. It’s the antithesis of an info-dump, the desire is to get the reader to learn about the world without even realising they are.

Maybe that’s why the Sir Edric approach worked so well. There’s little description, but a lot of action and dialogue. An inspiration for this is the approach adopted in Outlaws of the Marsh, a Chinese classic I bang on about sometimes. It’s brimming with action. You don’t need to be told Sagacious Lu is hard as nails, you learn it when he flings a gang of thugs into the nearest cess pit.

So, maybe a lot of background work isn’t just unnecessary, but a backward step. After all, I’m not here to write a guidebook for the Kuhrland or Denland or Felaria, but to write an entertaining story.

It’s worth pointing out a substantial difference between the two styles, though. I write comedy, for Sir Edric, from a single perspective. The eponymous knight is the centre of the story, the world, the perspective. Just about everything is filtered through his prism (hence why attractive women will get more description than plainer ladies). Kingdom Asunder and other serious writing is done from multiple perspectives. This means getting continuity right for both the world and things like timing the plot is more complicated.

I think the single POV approach of Sir Edric lends itself more naturally to spontaneity, as well as making it easier to keep things consistent. It’s not an area where there’s a right or wrong answer, because the two approaches both have merit, but I think it’s interesting that, even for a single writer, the two can work despite being completely different.

Thaddeus

The Decline and Rise of Mankind

There are two competing approaches to the state of mankind in Greek mythology. Basically, things are either gradually degrading and getting worse, or civilisation is improving the world.

The Golden Age, as Hesiod wrote, was a real concept in ancient myths, based on a blessed age of mankind when there was no war, the climate was splendid and food plentiful. Mankind then progressed through the Silver and Bronze Ages, ending with the Heroic and Iron Ages (Iron being current for Hesiod, writing about two and a half thousand years ago). In short, everything’s deteriorating over time.

However, there is a directly opposing perspective. Namely that mankind is civilising the world, and that as civilisation progresses so everything improves. There are a huge number of Greek myths related to monster-slaying, effectively taming the relics of vicious antiquity and making safe lands previously plagued by chimeras, the hydra and so on.

Have to admit I had to check this on Wikipedia, but another aspect could be technology. Prometheus was punished by Zeus for giving fire (technology/knowledge) to mankind, and some say this ended the initial Golden Age. By chance, Prometheus is also sometimes associated with Lucifer, and the knowledge of fire equated with eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. So, the ending of the Golden Age and the exile from Eden could be directly comparable or (if you choose to view things this way) even the same event.

The idea of industry as a bad thing is no stranger in fantasy either. The iconic images of Saruman having the trees torn down are pretty unambiguous, as is his treatment of the Shire (at the end of the book, the films take another path).

On the other hand, Red Country (by Joe Abercrombie) has new technologies advancing warfare and other spheres, and the opening up of new country as civilisation expands to reclaim land lost by a fallen/declining empire.

The idea of fading magic being gradually surpassed by improving technology is not a new idea in fantasy, but the deterioration/improvement of the world as entropy and progress clash is an interesting idea to explore.

Thaddeus

No King Required

When putting together the political structure of a fictional country, the default setting for fantasy is a kingdom, for obvious reasons. People know, more or less, what a kingdom is and how it works. But history does furnish us with some other interesting forms of government/inheritance that could be of use in fantastical writing.

One of the most unusual, which I read about in Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies, was the system used by Montenegro prior to the end of World War One (when it got shafted by Serbia and was betrayed by its allies, sadly including the UK). The country was ruled by a prince-bishop. Not only that, the nephew of the ruler was the chap who inherited. That sounds very odd, but it does have an advantage. The ruler’s brother will not seek to claim the throne, because his son will inherit. The ruler’s son will not, but his son might. The zig-zag, as it were, inheritance could actually be more stable than the more obvious eldest son model used in traditional monarchy.

Rome’s emperor was often the son of his predecessor, but this was never the case during the Golden Age of Imperial Rome. From Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (who buggered it up by letting his psychopathic son Commodus get the job, after Lucius Verus) the emperor adopted an heir. It worked rather well. This period saw an end to the civil wars that had preceded and would succeed it, and the extent of the empire grew to its largest size.

Reincarnation is used to determine the Dalai Lama. It can take a few years for the successor to a departed Dalai Lama to be found. The People’s Republic of China (which is in control of Tibet, of course) has stated that it has supreme authority on the selection of the next Dalai Lama, which may make things rather messy.

A slight twist on monarchy is the diarchy (two kings). In a small way, England had this in 1689 when King William and Queen Anne were both monarchs in their own right. However, Sparta had two kings as a matter of course. Naturally, there’s scope for regal rivalry, but it also enables supreme authority to be in two places at once (as per the two consuls of Rome).

My knowledge of Renaissance Venice is not fantastic, but the power of the Doge and its shadowy council of wealthy chaps [not its official title] was significant. The Doge Enrico Dandolo was instrumental in the Fourth Crusade attacking Byzantium, which had the short term impact of improving Venice’s power significantly, and the long term impact of bringing down the Eastern Roman Empire and allowing the Ottomans to overrun half of Europe. The Doge was elected but usually served for life, although his executive power was diminished later on. Wealthy individuals formed a sort of aristocracy within Venice, and they had the real power for much of the republic’s life (it ended with Napoleon’s conquest).

The Ghibellines and the Guelfs [which sound a shade Red Dwarf] were the supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, respectively. Centuries ago, the Pope was not merely a spiritual leader, but one who also held temporal power. For a time, the Pope also had a dominant moral position, approving (or not) marriages and playing a critical diplomatic role to foster peace (or not) in Europe. The Pope was, as now, chosen by the college of cardinals.

So, there we are. A mixture of gaining power through election, inheritance, adoption and reincarnation, and roles that mingle the spiritual with the temporal. There’s nothing wrong with kings, but other supreme leadership roles are available.

Thaddeus

Ye cannae change the pesky thing, captain!

Being invited onto an epic fantasy writer’s blog to talk about world building…. It’s that moment when the only useful line I know spurts out: You know, I used to be a tour guide in a medieval castle. (‘Tis true. And therefore a pity that I’ve never once, ever, had the urge to write a story based in a medieval castle. My brain is having a laugh at me. You’ll see.)

Since the castle’s out, I thought I’d talk about a different sort of world building, a science fiction world, and how it differs from a fantasy one, especially since I’m in the middle of planning a fantasy trilogy (get me… still no castle, though). It seemed a good time to look at the contrasts.

For me, there is one single ultimate hurdle. Physics. How planets are made. How star systems are formed.

When I first designed my star system, I had a complex political and spatial interlink which was great until one of my beta-readers (a picky one, thankfully) asked me a searching, deep question, which went like: How in the hell can that work?

Well, I said, getting out my pen and paper to draw my star chart. And it didn’t work. It couldn’t. It broke every law of physics.

Cue much revising and thinking, and I had a lovely new system. Two central stars, seven orbiting planets, three systems close to them, four further out. Lovely.

Except the systems further out were less habitable than the central ones. Which isn’t supported by physics – the inhabitation of a star system isn’t reliant on where it is in relation to another, but in where its planets are in relation to its star. Or something.

Another rethink and that’s when the term economics entered my sphere of knowledge. Now, for me, that’s right up there with watching paint dry a spider to the ceiling. But if spatially they can’t be any less developed, it’s got to be money, right? And politics. And suddenly, I’m starting to see why space opera is, generally, up there with epic fantasy in terms of word count and info dumping and Confusing-things-which-must-be-explained-somehow. And, you know, really I just wanted to write about some guy in a space ship.

Which brings me to picky beta two. My sci fi beta. Possibly the only sci fi writer and reader with the patience to not only get through my first drafts but to do so without laughing (openly… I catch the hint of a snigger from time to time), or throwing the book out the window. The beta who asks awkward questions like – how are they getting across this massive stellar cluster (because that, my friends, is what it is: a stellar cluster, no less) with light years between these star systems. And I took a huff because, really, the book’s just about a guy who happens to be on a space ship. Which was fine until my editor asked the same question and I had to actually get off my butt and do something about it.

The upshot is more action happens on space ships than it used to and I had to draw horribly confusing timelines for book two and three which are more space-set than one, and make sure everyone was where should be when they needed to be and not stranded in an airlock somewhere instead of on the planet.

Oh, yeah the planets. Why did I come up with so many planets? With trees and rivers and seas and geology and animals. Which meant an understanding of all things organic, not just bananas. So, my O-level biology (yes, yes, I was a late starter to all this writing lark) had to get dusted off. And then I had to go and do more research. And my head hurt.

In fact, now seems a good time to list the sci fi research topics I remember studying. This isn’t exhaustive, by any means, but here goes:

Spatial distances and how to travel them (we can’t. Not really. But I need to. Which is where either FTL tech or wormholes raise their ugly head and a healthy willing suspension of disbelief needs applied. Frankly without these, space opera doesn’t exist.)

The make up of the human brain, with particular emphasis on the processing centre that has an impact on ASD (read for that, a reason for my psi powers. It’s there. Sort of. I just haven’t yet seen the need to bore the reader with the details.)

Soil structure, including heat exchange and the carbon make-up of plants (which doesn’t, apparently, include lava-resisitant roots, by and large. Darn it.)

Torture. (No FBI searches of my browsing files volunteered.) Rape, specifically of males. (Not nice reading.) PTSD. (All the joys in my little head. Ergo, the book gets dark.)

Callisto. Everything about it. Temperature, gravity, proximity to the Jupiter’s Eye. Best positions to have space sex in. (It’s okay, guys, it’s trunked. Trunked, I tell you!*)

How to fly a spaceship. (This one isn’t fair. Not one bit. Can you veer left, or twist, or do wheelies? No. You have to thrust. Although, having said that, once you get over that limitiation, there is no end to the use of the word thrust with a sexy space pilot at the controls. Believe me, I’ve done the Control+F)

Now, I’m not saying this is any more than any fantasy writer. Most of them (and you know, some of my best friends are…) seem to have an obsession with horses, and inns versus taverns which goes beyond the healthy. It’s just different. And hard.

And what makes space opera so much darn fun.

*But for interest’s sake, having artificial gravity is a good thing, not least for ease of leg, arm and wobbly bits positioning. See? Fun.

by Jo Zebedee, author of Abendau’s Heir

How big should villages, towns and cities be?

In the modern world, a city with over a million people in it is nothing special. There are Chinese cities with more people than the whole of Portugal.

But in the medieval world, or a fantasy with a vaguely realistic approach to demographics, things were very different.

For a start, the rural population was much larger than the urban population.

Villages could be spread over a significant distance, or be a very simple small settlement which would basically have a few houses, a single street and a parish church. Around 150 people or fewer would probably live in a village, but obviously that varied. It would not be unusual for everyone to know everyone in a village.

A town was a bigger deal, and had one key attribute: the market. The market meant that traders (even if just occasional traders, such as subsistence farmers selling the surplus from a bumper crop) would travel to the town and do their business. This was advantageous all round. Traders got to earn cash, the local lords got to charge tolls to use the roads, bridges and trade within the town. Towns were the beating heart of the economy, but weren’t necessarily all that large. Several hundred people, perhaps, but that would include craftsmen that would not be found in villages. Towns could be home to thousands rather than hundreds of people (although you could argue at that point the difference between a town and city was almost academic).

Cities, in England at least, were defined as having a cathedral (and, therefore, a bishop). Economies of scale meant that cities would be richer, man-for-man, than other, smaller settlements. However, so many people crammed together almost made hygiene and crime more troublesome. Not to mention that fire could absolute devastate a city. A city might only have a couple of thousand people. Over ten thousand would be very significant in, say, the 14^th century. Only a few were ever larger (Byzantium was enormous during its height, as Rome had been earlier). A city of one hundred thousand could well be the seat of a continental empire. According to Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England (which I heartily recommend and review here), London had a population of just over 40,000 around this period.

I used to have links to a number of fantastic medieval demographic calculators, but sadly they seem to have become defunct.

It’s also worth pointing out that populations were more vulnerable at this point in history than today, and compared to the past (I’d rather fall sick in ancient Rome than medieval England). Disease was generally not handled well, with cures often useless at best and harmful at worst. Infection was not well understood, and in the middle of the 14^th century the Black Death swept through England, killing a very significant proportion of the population (so much so that the price of things like swords declined, because so many sword-owners dropped dead, and food rose, because there were fewer peasants to work the land).

Fires, as mentioned above, could rip through medieval settlements, which often had wooden houses packed very close together. Not to mention the perpetual state of warfare that existed during the 14^th century.

Nowadays the population, globally, only goes one way, but back then populations rose and fall as prosperity and advances in farm and mill equipment were balanced out by disease and war.

Thaddeus

Kuhrisch influences

From the very start of planning Bane of Souls I wanted Highford to sit at the meeting point of three countries. Whilst inside Felaria’s border, it’s also very close to Kuhrisch and Dennish territory. This meant that, although the story is largely confined within Highford’s walls, I could elaborate a little upon the peoples beyond and hopefully make the world more immersive.

The Dennish and Felarians are (magic aside) fairly typical medieval fare, with a monarch at the top, nobility and clergy below and peasants at the bottom. There’s more to it than that, particularly regarding how magic is integrated into the world, but as a shorthand summary that’s fairly accurate.

However, when writing up the background work for the two kingdoms I decided I wanted the third to be substantially different, and so the Kuhrisch came about. The Felarians/Dennish have a strong sense of hierarchy, and whilst social elevation is possible the vast majority start and end life wherever they happen to be born on the social ladder.

By contrast, the Kuhrisch have almost no hierarchy whatsoever. Men and women are born into different clans, but none has a legal advantage over the other. There are Godi (men who handle matters of laws, akin to a magistrate) and elders (men who handle matters of tradition), but neither role is a paid position. Those who are considered to abuse what power they have as a Godi or elder tend not to last very long.

Instead of laws (of which there are few), most Kuhrisch behaviour is dictated by tradition. Indeed, the lack of kings and nobles means that the Kuhrland is less like a medieval kingdom and more like the Hellenistic world of ancient Greece (albeit usually more co-operative and less prone to internal warfare). It is not fealty to the crown that defines the Kuhrisch, but belief in the same gods and practice of the same customs.

This means that the Kuhrisch are far freer than the Dennish and Felarians. There are almost no taxes at all to pay (and most of those that exist are not really taxes but donations to the God of Plenty).

Magic is reasonably widespread in the kingdoms, but in the Kuhrland it is almost completely absent. Because of this, the Kuhrisch (whilst being considered heathens by Denland and Felaria) see those who possess magical gifts as afflicted with a curse. The Church of the Divine teaches that those with magic are touched by the gods, whereas the Kuhrisch consider arcane ability to be black magic, the work of demons. After all, if it were the work of gods then many Kuhrisch would possess it. On the very rare occasions a Kuhrisch does have such power it is attributed to a non-Kuhrisch parent or ancestor, and at the minimum causes the individual to become outcast. A Kuhrisch with magical abilities may be killed outright without it being considered a crime, though this is not mandatory.

The personal names are typically taken from German and Gothic history (though I might use some Icelandic ones in the future, in the same way I bastardised the Godi for the Kuhrland). Fritigern, Athanaric, and Winguric are all Gothic names. Place names are all German.

Incidentally, the new background for the blog is a map of part of the Kuhrland. A full size (warning: it's pretty big) version can be found here. Geldfels is more or less north of Highford.

Thaddeus

Fun and Games

When world-building there are certain key areas a writer should work on. Political structures, basic geography and the like are all obvious. One aspect which is less so, but quite easy and very useful for making a world more realistic, is the leisure activities of both the poor and the rich.

History gives us lots of great examples. Roman gladiatorial games are well-known (and unique, so far as I know, in human history), but there are plenty of others. The Aztecs played a ball game which involved the captain of the winning side (until a change centuries later when it was the captain of the losing side) getting his heart ripped out in sacrifice to some god or other. In the Middle Ages peasants played football, but it took place over an immense distance (miles and miles) with whole villages taking part and quite a lot of violence.

The Romans also enjoyed chariot racing, of course, which was very dangerous and outlived the gladiatorial games by centuries. In the Middle Ages hawking and hunting were very popular amongst the nobility.

Because we still play it bowling might seem a bit odd as an ancient game, but it has been around for centuries. Boxing too, although bare knuckle boxing is actually a lot safer than modern boxing. This is because boxing gloves cushion the knuckles, allowing people to hit one another in the face very hard. If you try this without a boxing glove you’ll break your hand before the other person’s face. So, death rates in bare knuckle boxing were much lower (a rare case of a sport becoming more dangerous over time).

Of course, in the past people often had greater (and more socially acceptable) bloodlust than today. Blood sports, from cockfighting (so popular in England practically every little village had a cockpit), badger-baiting and hare-coursing all the way up to bear-baiting, were very popular.

The Romans had a rather split personality when it came to animals. They often had a wide variety of pets (Emperor Tiberius hand fed his pet snake), but would gleefully watch them being slaughtered in the arena (in the Romans’ defence this was very equal opportunities of them, as they also cheered humans being thus killed). Pompey, before he ran off when Caesar approached, tried to bolster his popularity by hosting games, a common political ploy (the ancient equivalent of a pre-election Budget giveaway). However, the elephants he used were domesticated animals, who were terrified when attacked. The crowd were disgusted with Pompey for killing the tame animals, and it rather backfired as a political stunt.

Thaddeus

World-building

When writing sci-fi or fantasy, at least a basic element of world-building is needed. ‘World’ can refer to a planet, or the entire galaxy, or a single city, and just means the immediate and general environment that the story takes place in.

In both sci-fi and fantasy the author can choose to incorporate the real world into their story (like in Harry Potter and Star Trek) or not. The advantage of a real world link is that you’ve already got a basic template, but then you may have to either do some historical research or conjure up a reason why nobody notices magic happening.

Personally, I tend to go for entirely fictional worlds. There’s more freedom, if a bit more work, and you can still take advantage of real world information (like adapting a feudal system or using medieval fashion to dress the people milling about in Fantasyland).

For those interested, there’s a brilliant link below which offers a lot more info about generating numbers for a medieval kingdom:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

A bane or blessing with world-building is that the level of detail is entirely dependent upon how much work you’re willing and able to put in. There’s nothing wrong with having a basically 13^th century English country, with pig farmers and yeomanry and longbows. But, you could introduce a new element. Different intelligent species, or the practice of necromancy, or flightless birds that can be ridden like horses (such as ostriches or chocobos).

As well as specific details, there is the general feel of a world to consider. Two common sci-fi types are the ideal world (such as in Star Trek where humanity is lovely and nobody dies of starvation) and dystopian (the bonkers Aussie series Farscape is a good example, where there’s a war between the evil, imperialist Peacekeepers and the even more evil, psychopathic Scarrans).

In fantasy, there’s been a distinct shift from the relatively straightforward good versus evil of Tolkien and Lewis to a greyer, more morally ambiguous worldview (excellent examples include Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy and George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire). Being a cynical sort, I generally prefer moral ambiguity.

One of the key differences between the two genres is that (typically) fantasy has magic and sci-fi has advanced technology, and these alter the way the world works. Crucial to sci-fi is faster than light travel, due to the enormous distances in space. But, this could be limited to a single organisation or species, or the fuel could be controlled by a cartel. Or the universe could be your oyster, with every man and his dog able to go faster than light.

Often, a more detailed and unusual world can really draw a reader in. It also helps develop the context of dramatic happenings and can flesh out characters and explain their vices and virtues.

Thaddeus