Playing Lawbreaking characters

[Wanderer]

Hello everyone and well-met. I'm a veteran gamer, newbie here, that became aware of the DFRPG's existence through reference in other RPG boards. I am vaguely aware of the content of Dresdenverse book and TV series from reading the DFRPG books and wikia, but I have not yet gotten to read/watch them (so much fiction, so little time...). I bought and somewhat digested the game, and I may state I am much pleased by it in most aspects as a fan of urban fantasy, except one that is a huge stumbling block to me: the Laws of Magic and Lawbreaker rules.

You see, because of my playstyle preferences and personality issues, I am downright annoyed and have no sympathy for those TT or VG game systems that try hard to force players to RP good characters only, and harshly punish them if they stray from conventional moral behavior. I much prefer to play callous, amoral anti-heroic or villainous characters that care nothing about the laws, property rights, or the sanctity of life or mind of their enemies, have no scruples whatsoever using lethal or mind control magic in appropriate circumstances, and may do the right thing or save the day for any reason but having empathy. They are usually loyal to friends and team-mates, do not indulge in gratuitous atrocities, and may often be idealists in their own kind, but never in a way that would make them moral paragons. Being forced by the system to play the opposite kind of character or suffer severe performance penalties up to and incuding loss of character to NPC-hood is a total no-go to me. Any opposite thematic concern of the game has to give way.

So after much reflection I found the only feasible way to reconcile my playstyle needs with the DFRPG rules was to devise and implement the following kind of house-rule:

Responsible Lawbreaker [+ 0]:
Musts: This ability may be taken instead of Lawbreaker immediately upon breaking one of the Laws of Magic, provided the violation of the Law was done in justifiable circumstances according to a recognizable ethical code of the character’s. You must specify the Law broken at the time you take the ability. This ability must be taken separately for each Law of Magic broken—noted like so: Responsible Lawbreaker (First), Responsible Lawbreaker (Fourth), etc.
Description: You've broken one of the Laws of Magic and been able to rationalize, justify, and internalize the event according to your own beliefs, attitudes, and values. Suitable circumstances that may fit this requirement for the first four Laws of Magic include, but are by no means limited to, self-defense or in defense of someone else, dire necessity, with the subject's consent or implied acceptance of the outcome or its risk, without cruelty or malice. Your capacity to use dark magic if necessary became a part of you in a way that does not threaten to consume your identity. It does not empower your magic in similar circumstances nor it lessens your free will in any meaningful way.
Effects:
No Slippery Slope. You suffer no negative effect - apart from possibly drawing the ire of the White Council - whenever using magic in a way which would break the specified Law of Magic, as long as it is done in a way that fits a recognizable ethical compass of yours. You lose no refresh for this ability nor you are under any obligation to change your aspects to reflect it.
Ethical Boundary. If you ever choose to gain a bonus to magic that would violate the Law, this ability is lost and you must take Lawbreaker instead. If you ever break it in a way that would not fit your beliefs and values, you get the choice of accepting their failure and picking Lawbreaker or working to resolve the contradiction. The latter typically means some serious soul-searching, atonement, redemption quest, or the like, and may often require to change one or more of your aspects.

This would effectively deal with the unacceptable system aspects of the Laws of Magic and Lawbreaker rules. The social aspects remain to be dealt with, i.e. the Warden problem, and their rabid persecution of Lawbreaking characters. I assume I would be able to deal with that by playing my characters as regarding the White Council as a deeply misguided, violently intolerant, and bloodthirsty fundamentalist organization, a murderous crossbreed of Inquisition and Gestapo/KGB for a magical police state system, especially given their "death penalty for every transgression" policies and themselves as freedom fighters or professional criminals on the run from it. So I am left with the issue of how to play characters being potential enemies of the Wardens all the time. After some reflection, I see three possible strategies:

Hide. I assume it may be possible to cover one's tracks and hide all evidence of Lawbreaking activities from the Wardens' notice for a long time, but I'm not sure of what this would entail. E.g. would the Sight or Soulgaze become a problem, and how a character may protect oneself from them. 

Seek protection. Due to the Unseelie Accords, I assume it would be possible for a Lawbreaker to get patronage from some other powerful supernatural faction, and get 'diplomatic immunity' against the Wardens. I suppose the character would still get some kind of occasional harassment from the Wardens, but nothing like nonstop assassination attempts anymore. Of course, the character would then have to repay their patrons with some kind of regular service, quite possibly represented by an appropriate Aspect. I would very much prefer not to use Mark of Power nor the position of Sidhe Knight for this.

Fight. I assume that past a certain power level point, it may become possible for a character to wage an ongoing guerrilla war against the Wardens, defeat WC goons when they came their way, then disapper for a while, either by relocating to a different city, or hiding in the Nevernever for a while. Past a point, persecuted Lawbreakers may even come together and organize a Resistance. I'm just not sure of how powerful a character, or a group, should have be to get a decent fighting chance against a typical Warden.

I'm well aware that the White Council is very powerful and entrenched, so a successful guerrilla war against them would be a difficult and long term affair. Certainly not something an individual may easily do on their own, and even a Resistance group (a "Grey Council") would need numbers, resources, time, and allies. Although the Unseelie Accords prove at some point an individual or group may grow so powerful and entrenched as to force the WC into Cold War-style uneasy coexistence.

I welcome constructive opinions and suggestions about this.

[Sanctaphrax]

Welcome to the forum, Wanderer.

I think you're a bit off-base about the Laws, though. They're not really moral rules as much as they are a list of things that will make you go insane. There's no moral difference between shooting someone and fireballing them, but because of the Laws and the way magic works the fireball is much more dangerous to your mental health.

So changing the Laws in order to allow morally ambiguous PCs really isn't necessary. You can have horrible psychopaths who'd never dream of Lawbreaking, or righteous heroes who break them all the time (and are kinda unhinged as a result).

Still, if you want to change the Laws, you can. It's your table. You don't even need to make a new -0 Power that does almost nothing.

[Wanderer]

Welcome to the forum, Wanderer.

I think you're a bit off-base about the Laws, though. They're not really moral rules as much as they are a list of things that will make you go insane. There's no moral difference between shooting someone and fireballing them, but because of the Laws and the way magic works the fireball is much more dangerous to your mental health.

So changing the Laws in order to allow morally ambiguous PCs really isn't necessary. You can have horrible psychopaths who'd never dream of Lawbreaking, or righteous heroes who break them all the time (and are kinda unhinged as a result).

Still, if you want to change the Laws, you can. It's your table. You don't even need to make a new -0 Power that does almost nothing.

Thanks for your answer, and the welcome. You see, it makes very little difference for me if a game system tries to pull off this kind of stunt by picking the morality excuse or the mental health excuse. If anything, the latter feels worse to me. I have my own personal reasons, arising from my own personality and life experiences, to treat the stereotype equation between having sociopathic traits and being dangerously insane and uncontrollable, the Hollywood clichè of the deranged serial killer, as downright offensive and unacceptable. And I am rather skeptical and hostile to the attempts to draw a line between using lethal force or coercion by mundane or supernatural means. The distinction between supernatural creatures being devoid of real sapience and agency and fair game for abuse, and mundane humans being a chosen race with real free will and deserving of special protection, also feels like hypocrite, arbitrary, and racist to me.

Anyway, I wrote my own 0-point variant of Lawbreaker because I thought it might be interesting to keep the canon variant around as an option for the players that really mean their characters to specialize in lethal, mental manipulation, bodily transformation, or necromantic magic, and so be justified in getting a power boost and paying a refresh price for it, if they so choose. But the players, like yours truly, that just want their characters to have no qualms in using this kind of magic should not be forced to pay an hefty refresh price just to play the way they prefer. 0-point powers are supposed to do little anyway, so it's not a real problem for me. As a big fan of immortal and shapeshifting characters, I very much like the cosmetic benefits certain canon 0-point powers provide, such as Human Guise and Wizard's Constitution, and I would sorely miss their lack in the game.

Do you have any wisdom to share about the Warden issue?

[Anubissama]

Okay, what follow is my own interpretations of the Laws, and why they effect people the way they do. And while there is no clear evidence for this in the books, I think that circumstantial evidence speak to my theory.

In the grate scheme of things The Laws of Magic aren't a moral compass. This as much is confirmed by Luccio who says that the Wouncil enforces the Laws for political stability and to prevent anyone Wizard from gaining to much power, and doing to much damage before the Wardens can get him and kill him.

But this also is only an interpretation of the Laws purpose. What the Laws truly are about, is Human Free Will.

Each Law is there to prevent the harm of human will by human magic.

*Do not kill, because a dead person cannot  any longer exercise their Free Will

* Do not shape change others, because changing their body you change their mind and their ability to exercise Free Will

* Do not invade someone mind, because you are changing their Free Will that way

* Do not Enthral, because you are suspending someone Free Will

* Do not raise the Dead, for they made all their choices already

* Do not swim against the current for time, so you don't unmake a choice already made with Free Will

Besides the Law about the Outergates, which simply protects reality. This is the overarching theme of all the Laws.

No why is this a big deal? And why does it only apply to Mortal Magic?

Because Free Will is a building block of the Dresdenverse, it is one of the fundamental bricks of it. And Magic is one of the powers used to create this Universe.

So if you are using human magic which is directed through Free Will, to forcefully influence someone else's Free Will (braking the Laws). You are basically damaging one fundamental aspect of reality, with another fundamental force of reality, by using the other fundamental aspect of reality. Your basically making a cosmic version of "stop hitting yourself".

By doing Black Magic you are weakening the basic building blocks of reality itself, and this act causes the negative feedback/damage to your psyche that Black magic users experience. And this will always happen no matter the justification you may come up with.

Dresden will always have anger issues, Molly will always reach for mind magic first to solve her problems, and it isn't a coincident that the most battle proven Wardens (a.i. which killed "in action") are the most fanatical one.

So in this interpretation a "Responsible Lawbreaker" power doesn't make any sense, bcs there is no such thing. The damage is there because you damaged reality with your use of magic.

[Wanderer]

Please don't go and try to persuade me to go along with the Laws of Magic and Lawbreaker rules, or the whole 'only humans that obey the Laws have true agency' premise, because of thematic reasons, or explain me they have to stay because being true to JB's artistic vision. It's not that I'm unaware of the free-will explanation the author put in the setting to justify this part of its lore. I got it since my first readings of the DFRPG books. It's just I'm honestly unable to accept or work with them.

With all due respect for the author and my admiration for his amazing creative feats and achievements, this free-will stuff feels and reads to me like Victorian-moralist, Judeo-Christian fundamentalist, fantastic-racism arbitrary and hypocrite bullshit ('immorality makes you insane and unable of agency', 'doing stuff with your hands or your mind makes a meaningful ethical/spiritual difference', and 'humans are the chosen race and deserve special status, but other sapient species are worthless automatons and fair game for witch-hunting') which annoys me to no end. I faced and downright hated this kind of stuff in other games and fiction, that JB unfortunately put it in this series too makes no meaningful difference to me.

As a matter of fact, I read and greatly enjoyed and appreciated JB's other main series, the Codex Alera, without a problem in the world since it had nothing like pretending that immorality, magical or otherwise, or being a non-human makes you insane or an automaton. My reading of DFRPG made me hesitant to delve in the Dresden series precisely because it made me aware the setting treatment of magic and non-humans might be a huge stumbling bloc to my enjoyment of the books. But I had already bought the DFRPG books and enjoyed a lot in them except these aspects, which I cannot honestly make peace with. So for me it is basically a choice of houseruling the Laws of Magic and this whole 'only Law-abiding humans have free will' stuff out of existence at my table, or throw the books in the dustbin and write off their purchase as a mistake out of frustration. I'm just grasping at the best way, technically speaking, to do so.

[Mr. Death]

You can houserule what you want. Tabletop games are great for that. But, in the setting, that's how it works. Actions have consequences.

Killing someone in a purely mundane, real-world way is going to have huge negative effects on the average person's psyche. Doing so by literally manifesting your will on the world -- effectively creating a link between your will and that death which reflects on you -- would only logically do the same and more.

It sounds mostly like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want the devil-may-care badass who disregards the consequences, but you want to get rid of the most pressing of those consequences, making it moot.

If a central aspect of the setting and the rules of how the world works piss you off that much, maybe it's just not the series for you. That's why I stopped reading the Black Jewel trilogy and A Song of Ice And Fire. Finding something that fits you better has to be more productive than railing about the "Victorian-moralist, Judeo-Christian fundamentalist, fantastic-racism arbitrary and hypocrite bullshit" you perceive.

[Wanderer]

Killing someone in a purely mundane, real-world way is going to have huge negative effects on the average person's psyche. Doing so by literally manifesting your will on the world -- effectively creating a link between your will and that death which reflects on you -- would only logically do the same and more.

Honestly, I cannot see any meaningful possible difference between doing something with your hands or your mind. Plenty of high-functioning, low-empathy persons that can use lethal force when necessary w/o screwing up their psyche or their life exist in the world. I have my own reasons to prefer playing their kind first and foremost.

It sounds mostly like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want the devil-may-care badass who disregards the consequences, but you want to get rid of the most pressing of those consequences, making it moot.

There are consequences and consequences. I am willing to work with my playstyle preferences creating mundane consequences, such as making the White Council a recurring threat/antagonist. I just don't want the setting and rules making the cosmos arbitrarily stacked against them, to the point of having to pay character-creation currency through the nose or getting my characters sent on the fast-track to NPC-dom for them. 

If a central aspect of the setting and the rules of how the world works piss you off that much, maybe it's just not the series for you. That's why I stopped reading the Black Jewel trilogy and A Song of Ice And Fire. Finding something that fits you better has to be more productive than railing about the "Victorian-moralist, Judeo-Christian fundamentalist, fantastic-racism arbitrary and hypocrite bullshit" you perceive.

I'm trying to salvage my investment in the purchase of the DFRPG books, which looks rather productive to me. Besides, this is my only really serious trouble with this game as far as I can tell, and good urban-fantasy games with well-written magic systems aren't that plentiful. I put reading the Dresden series on hold precisely because the game made me aware I might have a serious problem with this aspect of the setting in the books, too.

[Sanctaphrax]

Thanks for your answer, and the welcome. You see, it makes very little difference for me if a game system tries to pull off this kind of stunt by picking the morality excuse or the mental health excuse.

It's not an excuse. It's not like Jim Butcher designed his story in order to circumscribe the PC-building choices of the people who'd play the RPG in the future. Thinking of the Laws in those terms will, I think, make it difficult to understand them.

That aside, I get why you'd dislike the association of insanity and evil and the existence of sapient beings without free will or full moral standing. If you want to reduce or remove the metaphysical weight of the Laws, well, it's your game. Might be good to make mind magic harder if you do, though, since it can be a bit of a story-breaker.

Do you have any wisdom to share about the Warden issue?

Wisdom is definitely too strong a word for them, but I do have some thoughts.

In the canonical Dresdenverse, the Wardens can expect every Lawbreaker to come to their attention sooner or later. Usually in the worst possible way, when they raise an army of zombies to conquer the world or something. If a Lawbreaker can remain sane, the dynamic changes.

In a world where you can break the Laws and not become a danger to yourself and others, the Wardens become more similar to a regular police force. And it's hard to deny that spellcasters need one; magic's potential for abuse is staggering. With that in mind, you can treat them more or less the way mundane criminals treat mundane cops. Running a guerrilla war against them is probably pointless; you just need enough subtlety, plausible deniability, and don't-mess-with-me-ness to outweight the value of bringing you in.

[khadgar4606]

I agree with wanderer having bit of dark side what makes some characters unique look at nicky he is utter sociopath with rash al ghul style ambitions yet still until the last book bastard shows love to his dauther and until dresden pour acid on that wound of him by how idiotic tthe thing he do to his daughter by damning her soul to tartarus( unless jim pulls some clever thing and returns deidre as revenge monster ) and how he has no thrusty lackeys to sacriface for his ambitions

so having darkside helps the character development also look at harry him self one slippery slope and he is litteraly inchs away turning to full blown omnicidal maniac tu save susan from red court curse if wardens see him like that morgan probably busts a cap in his thick skull hell it might be f ing molly who may pull the trigger

[blackstaff67]

He's not about arguing about PCs with a 'dark side.'  He's arguing about Lawbreaking and the Laws of Magic.  A PC can have a dark side, but one of the Laws about the Dresden=verse is that the Cosmos itself will slap your soul down if you use magic without regard for the consequences of your actions.  Magic springs from your soul, using it to break a law is like using the Force for evil--it can lead you to the Dark Side.  Actions do have consequences--even unintended ones.
 
Now, me personally as a GM, will cheerfully tell players that I'm not out to play "Gotcha!" with the rules. I'll tell a player in advance, "If you do 'A', 'B' will follow."  Emphasizing free will and choice by having the player make the decision is paramount to me.

Otherwise, you might as well be playing a generic urban fantasy RPG. 

[Sanctaphrax]

Otherwise, you might as well be playing a generic urban fantasy RPG.

There's nothing wrong with that, though.

[blackstaff67]

You are absolutely right. My apologies    if I have angered or offended anyone, my post in hindsight was rather argumentative.

[Taran]

Some ramblings mixed with advice...

Advice-like comments:

There's nothing wrong with just saying that the White Council is an organization that wants to keep Wizards under their thumb.  In which case, you probably don't even need Lawbreaking Powers.  Or, if you really don't like the racist aspect of the Laws, give Lawbreaker some real teeth and make it come into play against 'non human' victims.

Maybe make Lawbreaker give you a penalty that allows Wardens to more easily track your deeds.  +1 to rituals to track you, or more easily divine you through wards.  Gives them a +1 to discern your personality when they use a Soul Gaze.  Lawbreaker changes an Character Aspect after all, so maybe it makes those decisions come to the forefront, especially given the metaphysical connection between magic and personality.  Besides, If you do lots of Necromancy and Wardens are divining for necromancy, their efforts are going to point your way. 

I agree with Sanctaphrax that mental evocations are a game-breaker.  If you allow them without any fallout, expect most physical conflicts to be easy.  Until they run into a Powerful Psychomancer and then they're probably toast.

Lawbreaker, Refresh, Free Will and compels

I think you should be careful about disconnecting refresh from free will.  Refresh isn't just the mechanic that balances the game.  Your positive (or negative) refresh affects the choices you can make in the game.  If 'monsters' have free will, then they should always have positive refresh because, mechanically, that's how they turn down compels against their 'base nature' or High Concept.  Queen Mab, as powerful as she is, is a slave to her mantle. (maybe the same way a Head of a country has limited choice Because of the rules around the power they wield - kind of ironic)

I guess that was the whole point of the Lawbreaker power.  And powers like Demonic Co-pilot (a silly power, mechanically speaking) and Feeding Dependency.   They represent demons/outside forces trying to take away your free will.

Red Court Vampires are sentient but are driven by their blood lust - the demon has destroyed the human that was once there.  Feeding constantly is justifiable to them and nothing wrong with that unless you are human and don't want to be eaten.  Try to convince them to resist their Hunger will be difficult.  White Court are driven by their Demons as well and some, like Thomas, can resist them.

But the same can be said about humans and greed(or eating).  But it comes down to the methods they(anyone with free will) choose employ to satiate those hungers.  Honestly, a 20 refresh character with only 1 positive refresh has the same amount of Choice as a 7 refresh character with 1 positive refresh.  Lawbreaker is a silly mechanic that is designed to 'push' people over the edge because the setting implies that certain uses of magic limit your free will.  The game should have lots of compels and the more FPs you have the more choice you have to resist those compels.  If your PCs are complicated characters, sometimes they might be compelled to do horrible things or sometimes heroic things (or both at once).  If they are one-dimensional characters with aspects that give them lots of opportunities to hurt, main and kill, then that's what they will do. (justified or not)

So, yeah, it's not so much about 'I cast this evil spell and now I'm an evil Monster', it's more about 'I use spells in this way for every situation and now I don't know when to quit'.  Depending on what you do with those spells, you may or may not be an Evil Monster but, either way, you have succumbed to the power you once controlled and it controls you.  But that can happen without Lawbreaker.  That can happen by taking Evocation instead of Ritual.   And many creatures have passed that threshold...

sorry, that was long...

[Quantus]

So, Assuming for a moment that we wanted to remove the Lawbreaker mechanics: In the interest of maintaining reasonable game Balance what other individual penalties might you impose?  It's been mentioned that Neuromancy in particular might be a game-breaker, are there perhaps other mechanic limitations that would restrain it's use without a 'morality' component? How about for the Chronomancy or Baleful Polymorph Laws (for lack of a better phrase)?


Perhaps making both levels of neuromancy more difficult to invoke (touch-range only maybe), or more taxing (stress track fallout), or easier to self-counter if you are targeted?

Unwilling Transmogrtification would probably require crazy power-levels, a hardcore shape-shifiting specialty, and/or a direct thaumaturgical link to bypass natural defenses.

By the novels chronomancy is crazy hard for mortal power levels to pull off, though there is one council example.  Probably have to be case-by-case, but Sci-Fi as a whole has tons of story fodder for how Time Travel can go terribly wrong. 

Murder by magic is probably fine as it stands, at least as compared to non-magic murder.

Necromancy is a fundamentally different energy so I'd probably go with Fallout from extended use that way; maybe it works opposite of Life Magic in that you get a reduced Lifespan and slowed Healing from extended use?

Outergates are all Plot, so handle case-by-case.

[khadgar4606]

He's not about arguing about PCs with a 'dark side.'  He's arguing about Lawbreaking and the Laws of Magic.  A PC can have a dark side, but one of the Laws about the Dresden=verse is that the Cosmos itself will slap your soul down if you use magic without regard for the consequences of your actions.  Magic springs from your soul, using it to break a law is like using the Force for evil--it can lead you to the Dark Side.  Actions do have consequences--even unintended ones.
 
Now, me personally as a GM, will cheerfully tell players that I'm not out to play "Gotcha!" with the rules. I'll tell a player in advance, "If you do 'A', 'B' will follow."  Emphasizing free will and choice by having the player make the decision is paramount to me.

Otherwise, you might as well be playing a generic urban fantasy RPG.

I mean harry was inchs away from going shady side of the magic whichif i was writing means still effing red court just eff it via mavra solution cuz its kinda what angst harry would do.