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View Full Version : Fourth Wall Related Ethical Dilemma



AvatarVecna
2016-07-07, 10:13 AM
A while back, I joined a game for the purpose of playing an interesting character concept in an interesting system; for the sake of discussing it here, I'll be using the game of Life (https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic288405_md.jpg). This game system is a player-vs-player game where, in-universe, you must navigate your character through the maze of options available in life (and Life) towards a specific goal that all players are competing for (let's say, to collect the most money). This version of the game of Life, however, involves a lot more roleplaying, and has mechanics in place that tie into the various personalities that can manifest in your characters as the game goes on (due to events in your life and choices you make, although most of that happens in the character background).

Now, I rarely feel truly inspired by characterization; far more often, the mechanics of a game inspire me to optimize for a particular thing, and some level of basic characterization is slapped on afterwards half-heartedly, but I was inspired for this game. Backstory for my character is as follows: at an earlier point in his life, while he was unfortunately not in his right state of mind, Jack (not real name) went on a bit of a spree, putting several people in the hospital and one in the morgue. He was caught fairly easily, and ended up serving hard time for his crimes...although his questionable mental state at the time, as well as other mitigating factors, resulted in him being released much earlier than is generally the case for such crimes.

Unfortunately, these events (both the incident and the subsequent imprisonment) took place in the later parts of Jack's developmental years, and has resulted in an unfortunate mentality: Jack has a consequence-based morality, where he believes the only reason you should act a certain way is because behaving otherwise results in society punishing you, rather than an internal conscience telling you a thing is wrong and society helping bolster that conscience. Now, this mentality would normally result in Jack being a model citizen in action (although only because the punishment isn't worth committing the crime), but Jack is under the not-necessarily-inaccurate impression that he's screwed his life over by having this murder on his record, and with no life worth living, he intends to eventually end it...but not before having a good bit of fun. Now, Jack believes that, if you commit a crime, you need to accept the consequences of your actions, and he is perfectly willing to turn himself in for whatever he does (although actions related to his love interest tend to not qualify as crimes in his mind); indeed, so far in the game, he's invaded the personal privacy of a minor (by threatening members of the school the student goes to), abused the privilege of being allowed on school grounds by making a nuisance of himself and disrupting the school day (he brought an inflatable pool to the school, filled it with Jello, and wrestled with students while taking bets on who would win), and he even arranged for another player to get flashed by other PCs at a public sports game (PCs who proceeded to verbally/sexually harrass the first PC). In that last one, Jack basically handed her a phone with a cop's number pre-dialed and dared her to make the call. Each time, Jack has been fully accepting of the consequences due to him (since consequences don't mean anything to a dead man walking).

However, I'm running into a problem. You can probably see how Jack is escalating things from minor crimes to pretty major crimes, right? That's because he's kinda losing it, due to running into the invisible Fourth Wall. The problem is that the game system is set up where players can't really be eliminated from the PvP competition prior to the end of the game when points are tallied and a winner is declared; the general consensus on this is that it's unfair to the players to take them out of the competition for any non-mechanical reason...which results in conflicts with the story. For all Jack has done in the story so far, he's hardly the worst of the lot: on just his first in-game day as part of this group of PCs, Jack bore witness to attempted breaking-and-entering, theft, multiple counts of invasion of a minor's privacy, and verbal harassment. That secretary that Jack threatened into giving him access to student files? He wasn't the only one doing it, and one of the other people threatening actually flat-out assaulted the woman in front of multiple witnesses. The assaulter, by the way, is a naturally violent character who takes out their aggression on other members of their self-defense group...a group in which they are the best in the class, and the others are far outmatched. The parts of this that took place that first day saw this person challenge the whole group to a fight one at a time until none of them wanted to fight anymore, and she only stopped challenging them to fight her some more after the teacher called her out on it. The verbal harassment? That was the player who had committed theft and invasion of privacy, who was returning the bag to its rightful owner...only to chew him out about leaving his stuff lying around where anybody could steal it, and accusing him of being a stalker since she found things in his backpack that clearly weren't his. I must admit, it was a very smooth way to cover up her own crimes by wildly accusing another to make sure nobody pointed any fingers back at her, but it's still very weird by normal standards.

But that's not Jack's problem: Jack's problem is that, for all the crimes he's borne witness to, only one has ever seen consequences, and that was the person who assaulted the secretary (the violent person with a track record of such violence). Everything else was glossed over, with consequences handwaved away assuming they even got caught doing what they did. Jack threatening the secretary into handing over student files? He was there when the other player was getting dragged away for assault, but received no punishment himself. The jello pool disrupting the school day? He's still allowed on campus, not even temporarily banned. Hell, that last thing? Let's be totally clear: he instigated some PCs into flashing another PC at a major public even that had uncountable minors in attendence; immediately following this, he and the others proceeded to verbally and sexually harass the other player, before Jack basically dared them to call the cops. When the cop arrived, it turned out that apparently public nudity is legal in the state this game takes in (we were all surprised), but that doesn't excuse the harassment, especially considering their were multiple witnesses to the event...not to mention a freaking confession from Jack! Guess what? Nothing happened. No consequences.

And this is perfectly fine for this game; it's what works for this game and its players, what keeps things fair. Nevertheless, the player response to the system saying "you can't be penalized in the game part for purely roleplaying decisions you make, because that's not fair" was not "we'll pretend that breaking the law has punishments, even though we know OOC that we can't be penalized", it was to say "we can't be penalized, so we can break the law as much as we want", which is the exact mentality Jack has: since there's no consequences as long as it's not a mechanical part of the game, who cares what I do? I could blackmail the entire faculty, kidnap NPC students and brainwash them into helping me rig the competition, murder anybody that gets in my way, steal all my opponent's things, destroy whatever they have that I can't steal, whatever I want! There's no consequences! And Jack can't handle that. To be perfectly clear, Jack is insane, and is a terrible person, but he desperately wants to be a good one. The only thing that keeps him being a good person is that actions have consequences; that he's in a state of mind where most consequences are meaningless to him means he's acting like a prick most of the time, but he's not going full-on criminal because the consequences are too severe. But without those consequences, he's going to start doing bad things, and he'll end up hurting the only person he really cares about.

I don't think it's a good idea to change the system so that actions have severe consequences, but at the same time the only way to both keep the game fair and keep the story realistic is to have a gentlemen's agreement from the start that the players won't abuse their immunity to real consequences, and will behave as if they expect to be punished if they break the law...but this game has been running for long enough that such an agreement just isn't an option at this point. I'm not sure what to do here: I like this character, and I like this system, but the way the system is set up, this character cannot operate in this system for very long without going crazy from the lack of consequences, and I'm not seeing a way to keep him in the game for much longer without either completely breaking character (and ignoring the lack of consequences) or completely breaking realism (by having him embrace the lack of consequences and begin planning his world domination strategy). If anybody has an idea of how to remain faithful to the character without ruining the game's story by becoming a murderhobo, I'd love to hear it.

goto124
2016-07-07, 10:37 AM
You mentioned keeping the game 'fair'. Does that mean that if your PC get punishments, the other PCs have to receive similar punishments for similar actions? Will they perform similar actions? Will the players of those other PCs mind not receiving unequal consequences, especially if they're the ones getting less punishment?

Is "kill character/make character leave, roll new character" an option"?

Or you could convince everyone to spiral down into the depths of utter evil madness! Mwahahahaha...

AvatarVecna
2016-07-07, 11:12 AM
You mentioned keeping the game 'fair'. Does that mean that if your PC get punishments, the other PCs have to receive similar punishments for similar actions? Will they perform similar actions? Will the players of those other PCs mind not receiving unequal consequences, especially if they're the ones getting less punishment?

To return to the "Game of Life" metaphor, imagine a game of life where you roleplayed your token (and the game is like 100x as long); this version of the game would have a rule stating that a player cannot be denied a spin due to actions taken while purely roleplaying, because roleplaying actions are not a base mechanic, and should not result in mechanical punishments". That's not to say that a player can't be denied a spin other players get for mechanical reasons (we've already had portions of the game where some players had failed to qualify for a bonus roll), but rather that roleplaying with no mechanical backup is not allowed by the players to affect whether you're allowed to roll or not. If, for instance, the goal of the game was "we're all working in an office building together, and have to make money while impressing the boss), if we threaten our NPC coworkers into doing all the work and giving us all the credit, there can't be a consequence even if we get caught; if we beat up the boss' secretary to find out where the boss likes to go for lunch, so I can happen to show up there as well, there's no penalty for that, because while in-universe crimes have in-universe punishments, in-universe punishments are not allowed to impact our game-mechanics-based ability to compete.


Is "kill character/make character leave, roll new character" an option"?

Yes. In fact, it's the option I'm currently considering; indeed, it was always intended to be the way he exited the game (he was never gonna win, and he was never supposed to), but I didn't expect that I'd need to take him out of this game due to incompatibility with the system. That said, I like both this character and this system, and I made this thread in an attempt to see if somebody else could come up with an idea to let me play this character in this system without betraying the game mechanics, the story, or my characterization.


Or you could convince everyone to spiral down into the depths of utter evil madness! Mwahahahaha...

Wouldn't be too difficult for the most part, although Jack is more likely to try and help these people get back on the straight and narrow than he is to drag them into hell with him; his life may already be ruined, but these people still have a chance to make something of themselves. That said, even if I totally wanted to, one of the other PCs is also a "follows the rules" type, although that's because they're a lawyer in training (and thus their reasons for wanting the rules enforced are more in line with Batman, whereas Jack's reasons for wanting the rules enforced are more in line with the Joker).

OldTrees1
2016-07-07, 11:51 AM
Let me see if I got this straight:
1) Jack has a consequence based morality. Aka "Jack ought to do what has positive/beneficial outcomes for Jack and ought not do what has negative/detrimental outcomes".
2) The world Jack is living in has no punishment type negative consequences.
3) You don't want Jack to be a murderhobo

Leading Questions:
1) Are you presuming that in the absence of a moral imperative to avoid an immoral action, anyone would do that immoral action?
2) What are Jack's amoral motivating factors?
3) Is Jack more controlled by their moral or their amoral motivating factors?

For example (modified from a real person):
Jill's moral factors are dominate over her amoral factors. However her moral factors are a null set (no beliefs about what is or is not moral) while her amoral factors inform her that murder is squicky. Despite having no moral imperative against murder, she would still refrain from murder for amoral reasons. (Although if she gained a belief that murder was moral then she would murder despite it being squicky to her)

Obviously Jill is not Jack but the same questions can shape a Jack that would struggle with their moral beliefs clashing with the game reality while also allowing Jack's amoral factors to prevent the undesired outcomes.

AvatarVecna
2016-07-07, 12:11 PM
Let me see if I got this straight:
1) Jack has a consequence based morality. Aka "Jack ought to do what has positive/beneficial outcomes for Jack and ought not do what has negative/detrimental outcomes".
2) The world Jack is living in has no punishment type negative consequences.
3) You don't want Jack to be a murderhobo

1) "Jack wants to do as he pleases, but ought to not do what has consequences". He doesn't understand right and wrong on a personal level, but he understands that society punishes those who do wrong; his lack of understanding of anything beyond consequences has lead him to decide that he'll do whatever he wants to do, and accept whatever consequences come from it; if he understands the consequences for a particular action prior to taking it, he will take those consequences into account when deciding whether to do the thing or not.

2) As of yet, consequences of any sort are almost entirely nonexistent, and what consequences have taken place (on the rare occasion there's any) have been minor and far less than sufficient for the crime; this is not because the world does not have consequences, but rather because the world cannot have consequences for the PCs without breaking game balance; NPCs suffer consequences fairly often, but the PCs commit crimes fairly regularly without a care in the world.

3) This is correct, yes.


Leading Questions:
1) Are you presuming that in the absence of a moral imperative to avoid an immoral action, anyone would do that immoral action?
2) What are Jack's amoral motivating factors?
3) Is Jack more controlled by their moral or their amoral motivating factors?

1) In general, no, but that's how Jack's mind works. He doesn't really understand right and wrong, and thus bases his understanding of right and wrong on what actions bear societal consequences and what actions don't. But don't get me wrong: while he wants to be a good person, the fact of the matter is that he's an incredibly selfish *******, and isn't very good at being good.

2) I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this; assuming "amoral motivating factors" is "motivation to do a moral thing for a reason that isn't moral", such as your example of a woman who won't murder not because murder is bad, but because murder is gross. For Jack, his moral compass points in one of two directions: towards Jack (where he just does whatever he wants and accepts whatever bull**** consequences are thrust upon him), or towards Jill (the woman he's obsessing over). Where Jill is involved, Jack will cover up his actions not because he wishes to avoid the consequences himself, but because he doesn't want her to suffer consequences for his actions; similarly, even if committing a crime or breaking a rule would be in Jack's best interest, if Jill was present to bear witness to (and express her disappointment with) him breaking the law, he would be a model citizen, because her disapproval is worse than any punishment that could be levied against him by society. Unfortunately, Jill's most defining characteristic is that she's kind of oblivious to things, so Jack will generally try and go the route of "don't let her find out" rather than "don't do it or she'll find out", because barring outside influence she's basically guaranteed to not figure it out.

3) Amoral. He has basically no actual "moral compass", no guiding morality beyond "society says I'm not supposed to do this, and will punish me if I do".

OldTrees1
2016-07-07, 01:09 PM
1) "Jack wants to do as he pleases, but ought to not do what has consequences". He doesn't understand right and wrong on a personal level, but he understands that society punishes those who do wrong; his lack of understanding of anything beyond consequences has lead him to decide that he'll do whatever he wants to do, and accept whatever consequences come from it; if he understands the consequences for a particular action prior to taking it, he will take those consequences into account when deciding whether to do the thing or not.

2) As of yet, consequences of any sort are almost entirely nonexistent, and what consequences have taken place (on the rare occasion there's any) have been minor and far less than sufficient for the crime; this is not because the world does not have consequences, but rather because the world cannot have consequences for the PCs without breaking game balance; NPCs suffer consequences fairly often, but the PCs commit crimes fairly regularly without a care in the world.

3) This is correct, yes.
Noted. I would classify this as follows:
Moral factors: "Ought to not do what society punishes"
Amoral factors: "Wants to do as he pleases" (which is practically a tautological non answer)


1) In general, no, but that's how Jack's mind works. He doesn't really understand right and wrong, and thus bases his understanding of right and wrong on what actions bear societal consequences and what actions don't. But don't get me wrong: while he wants to be a good person, the fact of the matter is that he's an incredibly selfish *******, and isn't very good at being good.

2) I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this; assuming "amoral motivating factors" is "motivation to do a moral thing for a reason that isn't moral", such as your example of a woman who won't murder not because murder is bad, but because murder is gross. For Jack, his moral compass points in one of two directions: towards Jack (where he just does whatever he wants and accepts whatever bull**** consequences are thrust upon him), or towards Jill (the woman he's obsessing over). Where Jill is involved, Jack will cover up his actions not because he wishes to avoid the consequences himself, but because he doesn't want her to suffer consequences for his actions; similarly, even if committing a crime or breaking a rule would be in Jack's best interest, if Jill was present to bear witness to (and express her disappointment with) him breaking the law, he would be a model citizen, because her disapproval is worse than any punishment that could be levied against him by society. Unfortunately, Jill's most defining characteristic is that she's kind of oblivious to things, so Jack will generally try and go the route of "don't let her find out" rather than "don't do it or she'll find out", because barring outside influence she's basically guaranteed to not figure it out.

3) Amoral. He has basically no actual "moral compass", no guiding morality beyond "society says I'm not supposed to do this, and will punish me if I do".
1) Being a selfish ******* is not the same as "Will do anything if there is no moral imperative against it". This is good news.

2) Amoral motivating factors is any and all motivations and reasons other than from beliefs about what one ought to do. Basically any reason/motive that cannot be rephrased as an "ought" statement.

3) Based upon how I classified it above I think you would reverse your answer here. If Jack treats society's punishing as a compass for what one ought not do and will avoid things that pleases him if punishment would result, then Moral is the dominant side of the equation. This is not the same as having a "moral compass" or a "moral code", this is merely which side wins when they are in conflict. Jack seems like they would defer to avoid punishment over doing what pleases them (despite the world not providing punishment).

Summary: Okay so we have a moral dominant selfish ******* whose moral code is effectively a null set ("Ought not do what society punishes, but society doesn't punish Jack") who you want to not be a murderhobo. So in essence this will behave like an amoral individual (though mentally the moral conflict might cause stress) same as the Jill I described would essentially behave as an amoral individual. So if you had a selfish ******* but needed them to have an amoral reason not to murderhobo what would it be? Easy answer is "they don't like murdering". Jack will do whatever they find fun but even being an ******* does not imply they find the gross exhausting tricky & noisy act of murder to be fun.

My advice: Look into what Jack finds fun. Sure Jack is a selfish ******* who will have his fun regardless of the cost to others (once learning about the no punishments nature of reality) but this does not entail that they would be an extreme sadist.

AvatarVecna
2016-07-07, 01:50 PM
Noted. I would classify this as follows:
Moral factors: "Ought to not do what society punishes"
Amoral factors: "Wants to do as he pleases" (which is practically a tautological non answer)

Certainly fair on the amoral factors; ultimately, his amoral factors would be more "do what makes Jill happy", followed by "do what makes Jack happy", with the former being more important.


1) Being a selfish ******* is not the same as "Will do anything if there is no moral imperative against it". This is good news.

2) Amoral motivating factors is any and all motivations and reasons other than from beliefs about what one ought to do. Basically any reason/motive that cannot be rephrased as an "ought" statement.

3) Based upon how I classified it above I think you would reverse your answer here. If Jack treats society's punishing as a compass for what one ought not do and will avoid things that pleases him if punishment would result, then Moral is the dominant side of the equation. This is not the same as having a "moral compass" or a "moral code", this is merely which side wins when they are in conflict. Jack seems like they would defer to avoid punishment over doing what pleases them (despite the world not providing punishment).

Also fair, I guess I misunderstood things.


Summary: Okay so we have a moral dominant selfish ******* whose moral code is effectively a null set ("Ought not do what society punishes, but society doesn't punish Jack") who you want to not be a murderhobo. So in essence this will behave like an amoral individual (though mentally the moral conflict might cause stress) same as the Jill I described would essentially behave as an amoral individual. So if you had a selfish ******* but needed them to have an amoral reason not to murderhobo what would it be? Easy answer is "they don't like murdering". Jack will do whatever they find fun but even being an ******* does not imply they find the gross exhausting tricky & noisy act of murder to be fun.

My advice: Look into what Jack finds fun. Sure Jack is a selfish ******* who will have his fun regardless of the cost to others (once learning about the no punishments nature of reality) but this does not entail that they would be an extreme sadist.

Hm...good points all around. Jack's probably a bit darker in what he finds fun than I've implied, but yeah, avoiding actually becoming a full-blown murderhobo shouldn't be too difficult once he gets past the current existential crisis.

OldTrees1
2016-07-07, 02:49 PM
Certainly fair on the amoral factors; ultimately, his amoral factors would be more "do what makes Jill happy", followed by "do what makes Jack happy", with the former being more important.

Also fair, I guess I misunderstood things.

Hm...good points all around. Jack's probably a bit darker in what he finds fun than I've implied, but yeah, avoiding actually becoming a full-blown murderhobo shouldn't be too difficult once he gets past the current existential crisis.

So generally Jack's dark fun will be restrained by what would make Jill unhappy but even when Jill would never know Jack's dark fun will be within game parameters.

Now the only unresolved part is how the existential crisis and moral reality crisis will affect Jack. Jack considers "Society punishes what one ought not do and thus what one ought not do is what society punishes" but Jack has not seen society punish anything. As a result, when being reflective, Jack might worry "If even that (insert last thing seen that went unpunished) is not immoral then what is immoral?". My sample size is too small to make any guesses about how that would affect Jack.

goto124
2016-07-07, 09:47 PM
So, let Jack undergo a character development arc where his tastes in what he finds enjoyable... changes to something less sociopathic? Maybe he just got sick of making so many people upset, and at some point realises he can derive happiness from other people's happiness. I won't really worry about unrealism in the speed or manner he develops, as long as you quickly get out of a manner of RP you really dislike.