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oxinabox
2009-10-29, 01:05 AM
How do you go about stylising the Good guys, so that they are nearly as terribhle as the bad?

A world where the Rebels, in order to win agaist the dark tyrant empire, give up they oridinally stood for,
and become the darkness threy fought.

for examle the Ashamen fro Robert Jordans WoT,
They're the good guys, but many of them take pleasure in killing, in voilence.

To defeat evil, you mast be Harsher, tougher, harder more ruthless.

and then i this characteristion there must still be some Good left in the Good Guys, some reason people consider them to be hope.

how do you do this?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-10-29, 01:11 AM
Look at, say, the Operative from Serenity. He plans to create a world without evil, and will kill himself when he does so because to do it, he must become evil.

Or any rebel force IRL that has had to resort to dark tactics in order to have a chance. They admit they must do terrible things, but they do them to bad people in order to make their world a better place.

Or Rorschach.

Cracklord
2009-10-29, 01:12 AM
Read A game of Thrones. It will all become clear to you.

Ravens_cry
2009-10-29, 01:14 AM
Petty, intra-faction squabbles, taking brutal measures to 'preserve the revolution'.
"Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!" to quote Mr. Slant.

Zaydos
2009-10-29, 01:16 AM
We must save the common man, but they are cowardly and for fear of their own skin they would turn us in to Big Brother. It is for this reason that we kill them if we are discovered. It is for their own greater good that they die, even if they will never understand it. If a few must die for liberty than so be it. Fear, hatred we will use whatever we must to save civilization from this tyranny.

Poison the water supply to render the personnel of the government base unconscious even if it means children will die from the poison? check it's for the greater good.

That kind of thinking can make the "good" guys fairly bad. For the "greater good" any evil can be justified.

averagejoe
2009-10-29, 01:21 AM
This seems to be pretty much what happens when you give control of characters to PC's. Except maybe without that whole, "Some good left, some reason people consider them to be hope," thing.


Petty, intra-faction squabbles, taking brutal measures to 'preserve the revolution'.
"Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!" to quote Mr. Slant.

What's that about fish? :smalltongue:

Temet Nosce
2009-10-29, 01:22 AM
Justification of things through belief, the ends justify the means (even if it's unclear whether the means will succeed), etc. Also, make them incredibly judgmental and bigoted.

Have your "good" guys be poisoning entire populations, "mercifully" killing children to save them from their parents evil, scorching the country side so their enemy has no food, etc.

crazedloon
2009-10-29, 01:23 AM
Paladin 5/ Gray guard 10/ Black Guard 5
you are still a paladin (have all your abilities as you do not fall thanks to your gray guard levels) and yet are an evil son of a ****

This progression also is rather characterful... fluffy because you start out as a shining light of hope, justice, and freedom and as you learn that life really does not work that way and you become a harsher more violent until finally you are no longer good you do evil acts for a lawful reason.

Omegonthesane
2009-10-29, 04:31 AM
Paladin 5/ Gray guard 10/ Black Guard 5
you are still a paladin (have all your abilities as you do not fall thanks to your gray guard levels) and yet are an evil son of a ****

This progression also is rather characterful... fluffy because you start out as a shining light of hope, justice, and freedom and as you learn that life really does not work that way and you become a harsher more violent until finally you are no longer good you do evil acts for a lawful reason.

Gray Guard does not work that way!
Seriously, you stop being Good, you fall from GG and can never be redeemed. So, your build is not viable.

5 Paladin/5 Fighter/10 Blackguard would fit the flavour better, but all three of those classes suck. This is a problem with the game, not the concept.

bosssmiley
2009-10-29, 07:00 AM
Power, and the necessities of command, corrupt you. Distancing you from the people you were trying to save in the first place. You can't be buddies with people you may have to send to their deaths.

The Authority comic had a whole story arc about "We're the good guys. When did people get scared of us?", right before one of their number started a church and another led a coup that overthrew the US govt. (Yeah, it all got a bit 'obviously tubthumpy' after Warren Ellis' run)

Jim of LotFP wrote a thumbnail outline for this type of game:


But you want to make it metal...

Make the violence horrible. All of the ruling class - all of them - are despicable warmongers who sacrifice the well-being of their people to wage ever more senseless and destructive wars.

If it's rich, it's evil. If it's powerful, it's evil.

The PCs serve as Iron Hippies, fighting the power in the only way it understands... violence and force. The "points of light" are not physical locations, as the entire world is a dark, dark place. The points of light are in the hearts of the true, the unconquered, those that can see through the lies.

... until one day in the campaign... it's the PCs who are rich. And powerful. And even if they've always fought well for the cause, they're going to wake up one day and find that they're the enemy they've always been fighting against. Power always corrupts, always. If it's rich, it's evil. And the PCs have killed a lot of evil, and taken its stuff, and have gotten very rich. If it's powerful, it's evil. And the PCs have gained a lot of levels, and are very powerful. They've sold out, they've come too far to truly embody the spirit they've always championed, and it's up to the next generation of oppressed, angry warriors to be able to fight the good fight.

That's f***ing metal.

(source: LotFP (http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2008/05/making-your-campaign-metal.html))

Ravens_cry
2009-10-29, 10:51 AM
What's that about fish? :smalltongue:
It's Dog Latin for 'Hail the new boss, same as old boss.' You can thank the inimitable Sir Terry for that one.

Radar
2009-10-29, 12:52 PM
Also:
Who watches the Watchman? :smallcool:

chiasaur11
2009-10-29, 12:54 PM
Also:
Who watches the Watchman? :smallcool:

Sam Vimes, of course.

JonestheSpy
2009-10-29, 01:04 PM
This progression also is rather characterful... fluffy because you start out as a shining light of hope, justice, and freedom and as you learn that life really does not work that way and you become a harsher more violent until finally you are no longer good you do evil acts for a lawful reason.




To defeat evil, you mast be Harsher, tougher, harder more ruthless.



Gee, y'all watch 24 much?

Personally, I get really tired of this trope - for one thing, I don't think it works out that way all that often - more like two gangs of thugs battling it out, and the winner calls themselves the Good Guys, but were never terribly good to start off with.

Without getting overly political, I suggest just reading up on some modern history for an idea of the benefits/weaknesses of this approach.

I'd say what's being described here isn't "Dark" good guys, just protagonists in morally compromised positions - which can certainly make for good stories and characterization, don't get me wrong.

Telonius
2009-10-29, 01:18 PM
Depends on how you define "dark."

You can be a somber, broody hero, like many versions of Batman, or (arguably) Rorschach. He's in a gritty setting, and is doing his best to fight the good fight, even if people think he's a nut/bad guy/part of the problem.

Or, you can be a protagonist that uses brutal means to achieve what he sees as a greater good. He's dark, whether the setting is or not. Jack Bauer, the Punisher, Ozymandias, and Vaarsuvius are in this category. (Rorschach could also arguably fall in here).

Or, you can have a character who really is defined by his demons, but is a main character regardless. Think Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, or Belkar. This sort of character really doesn't care if his actions are "good." He just happens to be fighting on the "right" side.

Aron Times
2009-10-29, 01:20 PM
Code Geass.

That is all.

Choco
2009-10-29, 01:31 PM
Personally, I get really tired of this trope - for one thing, I don't think it works out that way all that often - more like two gangs of thugs battling it out, and the winner calls themselves the Good Guys, but were never terribly good to start off with.

That sounds like 99.99% of all real life conflicts ever! Think about it, who on any side of a war wakes up in the morning and says "MUHAHAHA I am gonna do lots of evil things today!" Even those who are almost universally accepted as being evil, like Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, think(thought) that they are right and their enemies are the evil ones. If Hitler had won WWII we in the US would probably be reading right now about how the great Fuhrer liberated us from our evil Jewish oppressors, and most people would believe it too due to being brainwashed into it from birth.

Though unfortunately if you are playing D&D, good and evil are fairly tangible so this should never come up technically.

DarkSetzer
2009-10-29, 01:33 PM
Read A game of Thrones. It will all become clear to you.

Or the Chronicles of The Black Company.

Yora
2009-10-29, 01:35 PM
I watched Ghost in the Shell with friends yesterday, and it made me think that the good guys are good, because they try to prevent harm to innocents. But their methods really aren't that different.
They try to capture desperate suicide bombers alive and help people in danger, but when they deal with criminals or think someone got away to easy, they don't think much about murdering or maiming them. Theft and blackmail are also frequently on their list, and I don't think the law allows them to through peoples brains as much as they do. They also don't seem to have any problems to ignore orders or break laws as anyone else does.
In some way they are as corrupt as all the bad guys, but they mostly do it so that no innocents come to harm, instead of personal gain.

And I think I never heard anyone of them claim that they are good guys.

root9125
2009-10-29, 01:43 PM
Also:
Who watches the Watchman? :smallcool:

I do. Darn good movie!

Oh... you meant... Oh.

Right.

SurlySeraph
2009-10-29, 01:46 PM
Paladin 5/ Gray guard 10/ Black Guard 5
you are still a paladin (have all your abilities as you do not fall thanks to your gray guard levels) and yet are an evil son of a ****


Gray Guard does not work that way!
Seriously, you stop being Good, you fall from GG and can never be redeemed. So, your build is not viable.

However, Shadowbane Inquisitor *does* work that way. It doesn't let you keep your paladin abilities if you fall, but it lets you keep your paladin-ish SI abilities. And you can use the paladin levels for those bonuses that Blackguards get for having paladin levels.

Volos
2009-10-29, 01:48 PM
I find it important to make the line between good and evil very fuzzy for my players. If they have to make hard choices, they feel better when it turns out for the best... or they get really upset when it goes up in flames. Either way it's an amazing way to make the players involved. For more experienced players, the standard Paladin equal Good and Necromancer equal Bad doesn't do much for them. They need a challenge. The best challenge for a player who already knows how to make a powerful character is a moral challenge. Or atleast in my opinion.

CorvidMP
2009-10-29, 04:36 PM
Or the Chronicles of The Black Company.

second that.
Though its more about functioning in a world with out any good sides to chose, than losing your way while fighting evil.

Yukitsu
2009-10-29, 04:37 PM
I think this is treading into anti-hero, or technical protagonist territory, as opposed to good guy painted differently.

Optimystik
2009-10-29, 05:09 PM
Gray Guard does not work that way!
Seriously, you stop being Good, you fall from GG and can never be redeemed. So, your build is not viable.

Ah, but the question is: what makes the GG fall? They have a LOT more leeway than the standard Paladin.

You can be a Jerk Ass, even a Thug, as a Grey Guard without actually slipping to Evil, and your abilities will be fine.


I think this is treading into anti-hero, or technical protagonist territory, as opposed to good guy painted differently.

Read the OP again: anti-heroes are exactly what he wants.

The Demented One
2009-10-29, 05:12 PM
Look at pretty much every single social revolution to happen in the real world post-1776, ever.

lsfreak
2009-10-29, 05:18 PM
You want Black-and-Grey morality done right, play KotOR2 (though to get the full impact, play the first one too, even if the fist one's pretty much Black-and-White). The vast majority of people that really impact the story are either on the surface good but have dark streaks to them, or appear neutral or evil but once you get deeper you see there's a lot more there. There's only a handful of people that you could genuinely label evil, and one or possibly two that can be called good without going into "good, but..."

This is of course assuming that D&D alignments are tinkered with so they actually work. Cuz if you don't, then everyone in the entire game falls into either Lawful Neutral or Evil.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-29, 05:39 PM
Ah, but the question is: what makes the GG fall? They have a LOT more leeway than the standard Paladin.

You can be a Jerk Ass, even a Thug, as a Grey Guard without actually slipping to Evil, and your abilities will be fine.



Read the OP again: anti-heroes are exactly what he wants.

Turning evil makes them fall.

Mystic Muse
2009-10-29, 06:11 PM
if this is D&D you'd have to take out the alignment system as the "good" guys would not be able to remain good in it.

Solaris
2009-10-29, 06:37 PM
if this is D&D you'd have to take out the alignment system as the "good" guys would not be able to remain good in it.

As it turns out... most of the time. Depends on who you ask.

There's the concept of the monster at the gates. The sheep dog. The person who's become the monster to fight the monster, does the 'evil' of killing and fighting so others don't have to. Callous, brutal, but the line between him and the real bad guys are who he will kill. Good guys aren't always nice, and neither are the bad guys always mean.

Optimystik
2009-10-29, 07:39 PM
Turning evil makes them fall.

Exactly. For normal paladins, turning Neutral makes them fall.

Antiheroes can be, and in fact usually are, neutral.

Stormageddon
2009-10-29, 07:53 PM
Paladin 5/ Gray guard 10/ Black Guard 5
you are still a paladin (have all your abilities as you do not fall thanks to your gray guard levels) and yet are an evil son of a ****

This progression also is rather characterful... fluffy because you start out as a shining light of hope, justice, and freedom and as you learn that life really does not work that way and you become a harsher more violent until finally you are no longer good you do evil acts for a lawful reason.

Still got to be lawful good as gray gaurd.

Roderick_BR
2009-10-30, 07:33 AM
if this is D&D you'd have to take out the alignment system as the "good" guys would not be able to remain good in it.
Agreed. Just remove any penalty for being bad, and players will quickly become eviler and eviler themselves. You don't really need to rise a finger.
"I learned this new spell, and I want to test it badly. I'll cast it on the first commoner we run into."
"The tavern owner doesn't want to give me the information I asked? I threaten him with my +5 life drinking greataxe" (actually happened with a friend whose character was "chaotic neutral")

Ok, seriously, try those scenarios where the only exit is doing something horrible to prevent something worse. Careful with witty players that can find a 3rd option. If you try to deny it too much, it may look like rail-road. Signficant victories can come at high prices, ones the PCs usually don't suffer themselfes, and others have to pay (sacrificies, for example).

Starbuck_II
2009-10-30, 07:52 AM
Still got to be lawful good as gray gaurd.

Without good reason you mean. As long as you have a good reason you can break the code: that includes alignment technically.

BloodyAngel
2009-10-30, 12:35 PM
The easiest way to get a gray game is to simply make the characters more... well... gray. ALL of them! Make the world itself more gray. The peasantry aren't long-suffering but good people. Make them more greedy and neutral. If they were at the top of the ladder, they'd be just as bad as the people there now. The king isn't a kind and noble man. He's an arrogant jerk who thinks he's better than everyone around him, and only protects his lessers because he sees them as his. And of course the villains have to be gray too. If the bad guys are all black-hearted monsters with no redeeming features... then it's more of a black and white game, as the world will be glad to see them gone, and the heroes will cheered for. If the villains have more "good" qualities, it makes the heroes feel more gray for having to take them out.

Give your BBEG a young daughter. Make him a formerly good guy who turned to evil because he lost his wife and oldest son, and he's grown angry and bitter. Make the ones who took them from him gray as well. Maybe it wasn't monsters... maybe it was the force of a rival kingdom who had their own reasons for the fight. Maybe there was a schism amongst the royal family over who would rule, and the followers of both sides tried to earn his loyalty by threatening his family. Something horrible happened, and now he blames both sides, and wants nothing more than to tear the kingdom down because he hates nobles and monarchs who do what they want with people's lives. He's now a violent anarchist who just wants to see the ruling structure burn! But he's still got one shred of good in him left that calls him daddy. He's doing it for her. And god help the good guys if they get the idea to try and use her against him.

He's a villain and he needs to be stopped. The people need those jerk nobles to protect them from the monsters out on the horizon and the rival nations who would love to sack them. If the villain has his way, the kingdom is helpless against these threats. He'll use charms and mind control to have innocent people (nobles prefered) fight and die for him. He'll try and blacken their names and bring about revolts... he'll mercilessly crush anyone who stands in his way... but he's still a sad figure, and the players should feel just a little dirty for having to stop him.

If your players are good people, this becomes a tragic thing that needs to be done. If they're already kinda jerks, then your game is already gray. Either way, mission accomplished.

In short... you can't make the player characters gray. But you can make the world gray, and watch them either struggle to stay good despite it all (which can be more noble than any paladin can hope to be in a black and white world) or descend into gray themselves and start becoming like everyone else.

Leliel
2009-10-30, 01:33 PM
Me? I think Black vs. Grey morality is overated.

It can be done well (*cough*Warhammer*cough*) but it's not likely.

I perfer to make everyone grey, with an anti-villain for every anti-hero, and vice versa.

The necromancer may not respect the dead and plays with dark forces of out the hubristic belief that he's able to control them, but for the living, he's a lovable, friendly guy who just wants to make the world a bit better through his by learning how to ressurect the long-dead and make all people immortal.

The empire is an expansionistic and millitaristic society, but it's people are no better or worse than those they invade-"manifest destiny" does not mean "callous". According to them, they're just spreading their wisdom and technology to the world.

True, I like a few truly evil villains (a general of the empire who enjoys denying the needs of life to those he conquers, an aide of the necromancer who cares not one wit for others) but they are few and far between, and freak out the other villains as much as they do the good guys.

Grumman
2009-10-30, 05:30 PM
Rather than trying to make the good guys darker, I'd start off with more bad guys and make some of them lighter. I think there is less potential to screw up by making certain bad guys selectively bad instead of making good guys not good.

herrhauptmann
2009-10-31, 12:45 AM
Take advantage of the Banality of Evil: "There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do" -Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)
But if you take it too far, you just get the punch-clock villain and that takes away from the seriousness.

As stated, read A game of Thrones. Both sides are jerks. They fight for honor, or for territorial acquisition, or for the legacy they leave to their children. Both sides have some good and true people, and both sides have evil hearted bastards (like the Boltons, whose symbol is a Flayed Man).

I recommend reading the Erevis Cale trilogy by Paul S Kemp to get a perspective on how to do this within a D&D mentality (Game of Thrones is awesome, but hard to pull off their system of morality within a normal D20 game).
I also recommend against reading Wheel of Time. Far too many of the characters are flat, two dimensional stereotypes. A rant follows.
Nearly every woman, whether she's got the power or not, is a man-hating feminist. I can understand it out of the female witches, but not the wife of an innkeeper.
Also the author's obsession with having the witches flog each other for punishments. It's like modern Gardnerian witchcraft, Gardner was a nudist, and a sadomasochist, hence his flogging naked people with silk. Anyway, my point is that it's there because the author enjoys it, not because it makes for a better story or characters.
Or the renegade witches spend an entire book (months) marching on the tower, then finish the march by opening a portal to get them there directly. They knew how to make portals the entire time.
Then there's Padan Fain, works with the Children of the Sun, and the commander doesn't trust him, so he assigns guards to watch Fain. His guards keep getting killed, and he does nothing. He does nothing as Fain butchers a family for fun. So laughing at the white armor is sign that you're evil, but butchering children isn't?
[/rant]
I got fairly far into the series before getting fed up with all the points I mentioned above.

oxinabox
2009-10-31, 01:44 AM
Gee, y'all watch 24 much?

What is this 24?
some movie?
I don't watch many movies, or tv for that matter.


Or the Chronicles of The Black Company.
...*wracks brain* ... erh,... *strains to remember*>:smallfrown:
I read that,... um 8 months ago?
The Black company... the black company were the best guys in the whole first book.
The people thee worked for, well they were the bad guys.
The rebels we're bad.
Oh right, you mean the Rebals. got it.

Dimers
2009-10-31, 11:30 AM
...*wracks brain* ... erh,... *strains to remember* :smallfrown: I read that,... um 8 months ago? The Black company... the black company were the best guys in the whole first book. The people they worked for, well they were *the* bad guys. The rebels were bad. Oh right, you mean the Rebels. got it.

Right. Although "The Black Company" is just the first book of a nine-and-a-half-book series, every one of which is grey-versus-dark-grey morality, so the Rebels certainly aren't the only ones. The next books in the series are great reading too: Shadows Linger, then The White Rose, then The Silver Spike. Beyond that it's more questionable, but well worth the read if you like brooding atmosphere, description of tactics, and a wild ending that takes six more books to get to. Shadows Linger in particular has an interesting fall-and-redemption arc.

Oxinabox, if you want to make the PCs dark, you'll need their buy-in. If being heroic is what the game is about for them, trying to force them to be dark won't be fun for anyone. The Book of Exalted Deeds has a good, if short, writeup on how to handle grey morality for characters trying to be light in a dark world.

Also, I agree with BloodyAngel about how to enact this change if the players are okay with it. Make the whole world darker, and the rest will happen naturally.

Woot Spitum
2009-10-31, 10:37 PM
You know, instead of making the good guys as dark as the bad guys, you could simply do away with the concepts of good and bad guys.

Just have two groups of people, neither of whom are particularly more moral than the other fighting over scarace resources. This makes for a more realistic game.

Myrmex
2009-10-31, 11:08 PM
Make conflicts align on law-chaos, haves-havenots, and arguments of good and evil are emotional pleas to convince others to join your side.


Also:
Who watches the Watchman? :smallcool:

I did. It was ok.
Would not recommend.
C-

Sharkman1231
2009-10-31, 11:58 PM
Code Geass.

That is all.

Joseph Silver wins. Watch Code Geass. Totally awesome show.
Premise:
One of many heirs of a mighty, totalitan empire, refuses to be used as a pawn by his father the king. He is a super-super-genius (IQ=win). He trys to destoy the empire of his father by leading the rebellion movement under an awesome alias. He wants to destroy the empire so he can build a peaceful would for his sister. On the way he kills tons of people and murders many of his half-brothers and sisters. Total Good Guy... Killing tons...
DARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARK
Hopefully not too much of a spoiler.

Myrmex
2009-11-01, 02:05 AM
Joseph Silver wins. Watch Code Geass. Totally awesome show.
Premise:
One of many heirs of a mighty, totalitan empire, refuses to be used as a pawn by his father the king. He is a super-super-genius (IQ=win). He trys to destoy the empire of his father by leading the rebellion movement under an awesome alias. He wants to destroy the empire so he can build a peaceful would for his sister. On the way he kills tons of people and murders many of his half-brothers and sisters. Total Good Guy... Killing tons...
DARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARKDARK
Hopefully not too much of a spoiler.

Is it anime. It sounds like anime.

AstralFire
2009-11-01, 02:07 AM
Is it anime. It sounds like anime.

Yeah. Pretty much.

Berserk Monk
2009-11-01, 02:09 AM
I would recommend reading as much of Alan Moore's works for this. The protagonist in V for Vendetta regularly kills people, tortured the woman he loved, and was planning to take down the government. Also, Watchmen: we have a rapist, a sociopath, a god-like entity that questions the concept of morals, and someone willing to destroy half a city to achieve his goals.

Mando Knight
2009-11-01, 02:13 AM
Is it anime. It sounds like anime.
http://www.asianpopcorn.com/Themes/Images_other/20090530061957.png

Lelouch vi Britannia commands you! Watch Code Geass! (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=BandaiEntertainment)


Also, making a good guy seem as dark as the bad guys doesn't have to be hard, and he doesn't have to be an "ends justifying the means" type of character. He just needs to recognize that most people don't like to face the fact that they've done wrong, and cease to care about that. And the scum who've done the wrong in his town? Hope they've got their medical insurance paid up, as Justice is brutal.

Villains are a superstitious and cowardly lot. They're dense, they're idiots... and he's the Batman (http://superdickery.com/images/stories/oneshot/asbr020102hh.jpg).

imp_fireball
2009-11-01, 03:23 AM
The only quarrel I have with anime is that none of the super genius characters are also big manly men (take, they're always these wiry, beautiful saps with fair voices; originally intended to earn credits from the girl crowd, but by now is likely an artist's subconscious theme). :smalltongue:

The most beautiful have long thin eye brows, perfect falling hair, and their main (often read: only) distinction from being female is shoulder to hip ratio separated by a few proportional milimetres. And lack of boobs.

http://i00.twenga.com/livres/starcraft-dark-templar-shadow-hunters-bk.-2-starcraft-dark-templar-saga--b_2627679vb.png

The chick to the right of the face's eye, eyebrow and hair in this picture is hardly different from the picture above (aside from different artist conception; if she were rendered anime, she'd look a lot like the picture above), and very hot. How amusingly startling! :smallbiggrin:

oxinabox
2009-11-01, 05:04 AM
Oxinabox, if you want to make the PCs dark, you'll need their buy-in. If being heroic is what the game is about for them, trying to force them to be dark won't be fun for anyone. The Book of Exalted Deeds has a good, if short, writeup on how to handle grey morality for characters trying to be light in a dark world.


What, no, gods no.
the PC's are plenty dark!
they Killed the last lot of rebals (literally used there own weapons to shoot them in the back (inc using the mashals bonus to confirm crits to crit him))

they killed the rebals because they weregoing to free ~100 slaves from the Bad Empire (this is a gross simplification, but anyway).
They decided to kill the rebals, because the adding of 100 new people to the escaped community (wich only had about 32 people) would leave them:
A) easy to track down.
B) hard to feed


No, the PC's are plenty Grey.
What I want is to make the Rebals darker.

strongly considering one that is kidnapping children of travelling escaped slave communities and training them to be the perfect solders.
(ooh i can use the tactical soldier PrC, win!)


By the way my defintion of Evil is literally, the Bad Empire (simplfication)
i don't have outerplanes, (or inner) for outsiders to get in the way.
I don't have detect alignment spells.

Winter_Wolf
2009-11-01, 10:58 AM
My first thought was, "make them the 'runners in a game of Shadowrun." Let's face it, they're the protagonists, but generally they "win" by committing several felonies and misdemeanors in the course of a mission, including B&E, transport of illegal weapons, in some cases possession of illegal cyberware, probably false identities (if they both with *any* identity at all on a run), and if a run goes south, assault with a deadly weapon/assault with intent to commit murder/murder in second or possibly first degree. There's also the occasional kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, and the odd smuggling job.

I think Shadowrun is pretty cool, but you're essentially playing criminals. The bad guys you're going up against? Usually megacorporations that have questionable morality and ethics in the best of times, and use the shadowrunners as their deniable assets to commit pretty much all of crimes listed above.

Volkov
2009-11-01, 11:04 AM
Make it so that your heroes have to be so depraved that even the villain thinks they have gone too far.

Dimers
2009-11-03, 12:37 AM
What, no, gods no. the PC's are plenty dark! ...
What I want is to make the Rebals darker.

Bwahaahahaa! ... Man, that description was great! Unfortunately, I don't feel qualified to help you. Not much of my work descends below "medium grey", really.

Closak
2009-11-03, 05:38 PM
I have a story thought out in my head that i have never gotten around to writing where the good guys start out fairly nice but get increasingly more unpleasant over time.
By the end of it the only reason anyone puts up with them is because they are the only ones who have even the slightest chance of even denting the BBEG (Who is even worse, the heroes may be unpleasant jerks and all around psychotic but at least they aren't out to destroy the universe, they have effectively become the lesser of two really big evils at that point)

Not that it made a difference, because in the end the BBEG wins and the universe goes POOF despite all efforts to prevent it.


Everyone else who isn't part of the main cast are also pretty corrupt and selfish at that point (But with those circumstances it's no wonder they ended up like that)