The Dresden Files > DFRPG
Frustrated Question on Morality and denied characater concepts in Dresden RPG
TheMouse:
You're welcome.
The idea is that to some degree, all supernatural power makes folks a little less human. Humans have free will to make up their minds on any score. Things that are less human have less free will and are more likely to be bound by their own nature.
This shows in the books, too. Who is more likely to be ruled by some unreasoning aspect of their nature, Morgan or Murphy? Clearly Morgan is influenced by what in game terms would be compels against his Aspects. Sure, Murph does some unreasonable things, but it's not this constant drive like Morgan.
Even moreso this is clear with actually inhuman beings. Various sidhe pretty much spend the whole time being very much themselves, bound by faerie rules. Red Court vampires are ruled by their vicious nature. In game terms, these beings have negative refresh, so they would begin each session with no fate points and would thus be totally unable to resist a compel. Even worse, those with actual negative refresh rates have to give in to multiple compels before they begin to earn fate points for it. They have to go through a lot before they get any free will in regards to the core bits of their nature.
The fun part about all this is that you get to be sure that the Aspects you pick for your character will come up like this. To a very real degree you get to choose what the game is about right there during character generation. Want the game to focus on trying to keep your life as a wizard apart from your family life? Choose an Aspect like, "I need to keep this secret from my family." You've just made sure that your family will come into your stories, and you've made sure that you can always spend fate points to make you good in your role in those stories.
Justin:
Okay, so, let me see if I understand how that would work. Let's say you've got a Red Court Vampire with an Aspect like "Uncontrolled Red Court Vassal." To him, I suppose Fate Points represent whatever magic he gains from drinking mortal blood. So, when he has no Fate Points, he can't resist any compels against that Aspect, such as the desire to drink blood. Once he's been compelled enough times to gain an actual Fate Point, he can then use that Fate Point to resist the next Compel to drink blood. Logically, a GM would want their Red Court NPCs to be well fed.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but a person's Refresh rate will only bring them back up to that many Fate Points if they have fewer than their Refresh. If they have more Fate Points than their Refresh Rate, nothing happens. They don't lose the extra ones.
For a PC Aspect, let's say you've got a Focused Practitioner with something like "Neuromancer." The player can tap that Aspect, spending a Fate Point to gain bonuses on his rolls when using a mind-affecting spell. That would be the good side of the Aspect. The bad side would be the GM compelling the player to use his Neuromancy to "fix" things, like other people's personalities. This would earn the Neuromancer a Fate Point, which he can then use to tap his Neuromancer Aspect to gain a bonus to his roll to act on the Compel.
Wow. It does become easier to bend other minds the more yours gets bent.
Do I have the gist of things?
TheMouse:
You're pretty close.
Refresh is the number of fate points you start a session with. If your refresh is 5 and you ended last session with 10, you've got 5. If you ended last session with 1, you've got 5. This is to avoid the temptation to camp on massive numbers of fate points instead of spending them like mad.
So some Red Court vampire with a refresh of negative 2 will automatically give in to the first 3 compels each session and end up with a single fate point then. Once something monstrous reaches negative refresh, it's monstrous all the time.
Second, it doesn't matter which Aspect earns you fate points. If your Neuromancer Aspect earns you a fate point by means of a juicy compel, you can just as easily use it to invoke your "big as an ox" Aspect totally unrelated to what earned your fate point.
Related to the Neuromancer Aspect, we know from previous teasers that there are going to be Stunts related to having broken the Laws of Magic. If you break the Law associated with mind control, you get a Stunt which lowers your refresh by 1 but adds 1 to all future attempts to break that Law. It's like a Dark Side thing where once you've done things the evil way, there's always an incentive to tempt you to do it again.
Maria:
--- Quote from: iago on April 02, 2009, 02:13:20 PM ---Ahazil,
First and foremost, you're reacting to a small part without seeing the entire whole. So keep that in mind: without the full picture, you're not seeing certain things which are true -- such as White Court Vampires, at least at some levels, being fully playable in the game. Thomas (at least in games of certain power levels) is definitely a playable PC!
Here's a short version of the answer: Ultimately this is not a question about MORALITY in the sense of GOOD vs. EVIL. It's a question about POWER vs. FREEDOM. In the DFRPG, the more powerful you are, the less freedom of will you have. This is canonically true in the novels, and doesn't just apply to the bad guys! Angels have a lot of power, but no freedom. Well-intentioned folks like the Summer Lady, Lily, have a lot of power, but no freedom.
In the stuff we write in the game, we sum up the effect of this as: "Monsters have Power; Mortals have Free Will". So when we say that a Red Court Vampire becomes an NPC when its powers are fully manifested, we're not saying that it's because they're evil. It's because they've manifested so much power (supernatural or natural) that they've lost their freedom of will -- the essential thing that makes a player character.
From a system standpoint this is a simple case of saying "if you don't have the points to take the powers, and you buy the powers anyway, you stop being a PC". The fact that this is sympatico with the notion of POWER vs. FREE WILL from the novels is an extra benefit for us, and ties the system together with the story, which we like.
That's not to say there aren't elements of morality that are in the books, baked right in. Breaking the Laws of Magic -- which has SOME elements of morality in it -- does actually mentally corrupt someone, just the way an increase in power can. So we've got that baked into the system.
But there's no baked-in specific-religion morality in the game. If anything, the game is highly friendly to the perspectives of all religions.
If that's not your cup of tea, I can understand that, but it's not out of line with the books at all.
--- End quote ---
That doesn't sound true. that sounds like you defense of the choice to make evil=npc. First of all PCs can get powerful and they stay pc. So its not about freedom. I agree, there is no reason someone can not be playable as a red court vampire for example. Everything has limits to their power, but they make the choices they can with what abilities they do have. The Summer Ladies can decide what to do, they can even decide to upset the balance of Faerie, but they know the consequenses, so they are unlikelt to do so. Same with the "good" guys. A wizard could kill a Queen of Faerie, but they know to do so would be a disaster for the world. No difference at all.
iago:
You can protest the reasoning, but it's how the game's being done. If that's not to your taste, we have no complaint about you choosing to spend your gaming dollars elsewhere.
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