Frustrated Question on Morality and denied characater concepts in Dresden RPG

[Rel Fexive]

I see scions as being much like changelings.  The more they embrace the Other, and the more power that gives them, the less freedom they have and more they are forced to act according to the nature of their Other.  Yes, I have a character idea based around that.

[Indraasil]

Now, I don't know the rules for Spirit of the Century, so lacking that as a background I might be a little confused, but here's my problem: It seems to me that so long as a wizard does not enter into pacts (such as swearing on his power), it's entirely possible for him (or her) to achieve quite a lot of power and retain free will.  Yet from what I've read, as your PC wizard gains power he will eventually lose free will.  That doesn't quite make sense to me; a wizard, constantly practicing his art and performing it in combat will keep on getting better.  Sure, he might become paranoid and jaded, but I don't see how that will actually override his capability to make decisions.

I understand that creatures like vampires and the Fair Folk are "slaves to their nature", but I think wizards and practitioners aren't comparable if they don't use black magic or enter into demonic pacts and the like.  So maybe I could get a bit of clarification?

[iago]

I can't see Marcone as having a positive refresh. Especially with his soul gaze describing his personality as being like that of a tiger. That sounds like someone controlled by their own nature to me.

Yeah, he's close to the edge. At some refresh levels, I don't think he's doable -- look at his power base and knife tricks alone! -- but I could see him as MAYBE just being this side of having free will in a game with a higher general power level..

[TheMouse]

I understand that creatures like vampires and the Fair Folk are "slaves to their nature", but I think wizards and practitioners aren't comparable if they don't use black magic or enter into demonic pacts and the like.  So maybe I could get a bit of clarification?

Mechanically, it works like this:

Characters have a pool of points, called fate points. Each session it begins filled to a certain point. This point is called your refresh. So if your refresh is 5, your fate point total begins at 5 each session. Abilities beyond the norm are purchased as Stunts. Stunts reduce your refresh. Things like magical power, super speed, and the like come as Stunts.

Here comes on the scene Aspects. These are things about your character that are both narratively and mechanically important to the game, with both an up side and a down side. So an Aspect, "Always polite to women," might be possible. You can use a fate point with such an Aspect to add to a roll. Let's say you're convincing a woman to let you past security. You spend a fate point and justify the bonus you get by saying that  she's impressed by how polite you are and thinks you are trustworthy.

Remember the bit about a bad part? Well, those are called compels. The person running the game (or even you) can force you to act differently by compelling an Aspect. These complicate your life. You might be about to do something and the person running the game might point out that doing that would be really rude to the woman you're talking to. You can then either accept a fate point and act accordingly or spend a fate point and do whatever you want.

This is where freedom comes in. The higher your refresh, the more fate points you're likely to have. The more fate points you have, the more compels you can resist. The more compels you can resist, the more you can do whatever you'd like.

Since Stunts -- from which magical power  is derived -- reduce your refresh, they cause you to need to give in to more compels. This reduces your freedom of choice somewhat, therefore magic stuff reduces your freedom of choice.

Remember all those times where Harry can't use technology or the like? Those are compels against some applicable Aspect in game terms. You know how he is chivalrous to a fault? Likewise, a compel. In the thinking of FATE, that is a decrease in free will.

Before you get worried that you're going to be forced to do things you don't want to, that isn't how things work. You choose your own Aspects. You choose exactly how successful compels affect your behaviour. By the wording of an Aspect and how you choose to react to it, you're choosing what problems you'd like your character to face. Characters not facing problems is boring.

In terms of the books, it's not exactly the same. Harry doesn't lack free will because he can use magic. He is, however, pushed into a variety of situations because he's a wizard. He lives in "interesting times," as it were. Normal folks around him lack quite that weirdness magnet thing going on in his life.

So it's not that wizards lack all free will. It's that wizards live complicated lives. The more powerful they are, the more complicated their lives get. Real ass kickers are ruled by their passions, chased by their pasts, and bound to make dreadful decisions.

[Indraasil]

Thanks TheMouse, that really helped me out.   It seems a little odd to me though; let's use your example aspect, "always polite to women".  Why would a mortal with stunts such as magic be more likely to give in to this aspect than a mortal without stunts?  Or is this a game mechanic which is entirely abstract and not really supposed to be grounded in reality?

Still, my worries are quite assuaged, as the system seems to be simply encouraging acting in-character rather than limiting your options.  I think I'll have to go read the rules system now...

[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]

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. 

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.

[TheMouse]

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.

Not all powers make you evil, though. And it's the powers that make you into an NPC.

Say for example you have a character like Michael. It's really difficult to argue that someone like Michael is anything other than a good guy. If I met someone in real life who was like him, I'd buy him a beer.

So let's start with someone like Michael, but a bit different. Give him some more supernatural powers. Maybe his faith can heal others. While we're at it, his faith can heal himself, too. Keep adding on powers for a bit. Each one costs you refresh. Let's say you start with 10. I'm going to give some powers arbitrary costs to illustrate this. Healing someone else might cost you 2. Healing yourself 2 more. It might cost 5 more to get some holy relic the ability to keep unholy things at bay. Add in a power to know when your friends are in danger for another 2 points. Oops. That's 11 points, which is a negative refresh.

That guy has so much supernatural power that he can't be a PC. All of it is aimed at helping people. He's pretty obviously a good person. Yet he's not playable by the rules.

[iago]

Yeah, let's be clear about one thing here: the cutoff we're talking about is not the point at which "you become evil", it's the point at which you lose the choice to be something other than what your nature dictates you be.

[ballplayer72]

Not all powers make you evil, though. And it's the powers that make you into an NPC.

Say for example you have a character like Michael. It's really difficult to argue that someone like Michael is anything other than a good guy. If I met someone in real life who was like him, I'd buy him a beer.

So let's start with someone like Michael, but a bit different. Give him some more supernatural powers. Maybe his faith can heal others. While we're at it, his faith can heal himself, too. Keep adding on powers for a bit. Each one costs you refresh. Let's say you start with 10. I'm going to give some powers arbitrary costs to illustrate this. Healing someone else might cost you 2. Healing yourself 2 more. It might cost 5 more to get some holy relic the ability to keep unholy things at bay. Add in a power to know when your friends are in danger for another 2 points. Oops. That's 11 points, which is a negative refresh.

That guy has so much supernatural power that he can't be a PC. All of it is aimed at helping people. He's pretty obviously a good person. Yet he's not playable by the rules.

right but mike, harry, marcone etc.. pretty much any character from the books is super powerful by normal game standards.   They are in a campaign with a massive general rate.   But they weren't always like that, they had to build up.  Thats part of the fun of an rpg.  Maybe mike just started with a shiny sword and learned the spidey sense later?  Sanya isnt' as good at it as mike, and mike wasn't as good as shiro.  Different levels.

[iago]

right but mike, harry, marcone etc.. pretty much any character from the books is super powerful by normal game standards.

What "normal game" are you talking about? They're straight-up starting characters in some of mine, if we're talking them as they appear in Storm Front.

   They are in a campaign with a massive general rate.   But they weren't always like that, they had to build up.  Thats part of the fun of an rpg.  Maybe mike just started with a shiny sword and learned the spidey sense later?  Sanya isnt' as good at it as mike, and mike wasn't as good as shiro.  Different levels.

Nothing I've said (and really nothing that Mouse has said) contradicts what you're saying. Advancement *does* happen. Folks *can* grow. But in terms of "what can I play?", that's constrained by what the GM decides is the STARTING level of power for the game.

[Knave]

You've gotta give the devs a break - they have to create a structure for the game as they see the IP/Game world/Whatever fitting into it.  If they don't draw any lines, or hand wave too much, the game would have no structure and the wouldn't represent anything.

That doesn't mean you can't use the game system to play a version of 'Red Court - The Masked Ball' - it's just not how they see the game working for playing TDF.