Using Moral Dilemmas In Games

Moral dilemma will be defined in three ways, each relevant for the purpose of this article, and each definition comes from The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd edition.

1. Any problem where morality is relevant. Ex: I have promised to pick up my best friend from the airport. A writer I admire happens to be at the cafe I'm at before I'm to go pick my friend up. I start a conversation with the writer, and then am in a dilemma of promise breaking/valuing my friendship less than talking to someone I admire.

2. Any topic area where it is not known whether something is morally good/right or not. Ex: When someone asks if abortion is immoral in anyway this refers to abortion as a moral dilemma.

3. A situation where an agent morally ought to do each of two acts but cannot do both. Sarte's classic example: a boy who ought to care for his sick mother but also ought to join the resistance to fight the Nazis.

I will now go over why moral dilemmas ought to be presented in roleplay games, and give some suggestions on how they ought to be handled.

If you are interested in having your characters, or your player's characters act out complex issues, to discuss the consequences of their decisions, then you ought to use moral dilemmas. By their very definition, moral dilemmas are ambiguous, or at least challenging to reach conclusions to. It therefore ought not be possible for a player to simply roll a skill check to have the GM tell them what the "correct" answer is. These dilemmas necessitate the characters think, discuss, and possibly grow or conflict with one another over these issues. This creates drama and adds extra detail to characters.

It should be suggested now though that you ought not to create a moral dilemma where you, the GM, believe there is only one correct answer, and then judge the player for disagreeing with you. Similarly for players, having moral dilemmas in games requires some maturity and ability to both think as the character while distancing oneself enough to not judge the other players when they think otherwise than you. Conflict is drama. If you want the characters in your group to be more than monster killers or stats on a sheet this can help, but decisions and arguments in character should never be taken personally.

Also, for players, in moral dilemmas such as example 1. a more dramatic version of this: you have the opportunity to find out who murdered your wife by meeting a stranger BUT at that same time the rest of your group is fighting for their lives, and if you don't show up to help it is likely one of them may die. Personally, I like scenarios where knowledge (or any kind of growth) has a price. If the other players in your group are actor-types or at least think of their characters from a first person standpoint, it can be fun and rewarding to have your character take a dark turn, abandon the group to pursue knowledge solely for vengeance. Players who are more tactical might get angry at such a decision because you hurt the group's chance of winning a fight, but otherwise when presented with a situation where you can aid the group or aid yourself, in the right group, doing the "selfish" thing would be a way of exploring your character and creating interesting conflict in the group. Or, if your character misses the opportunity to go see the stranger to save the group this can give your character cause for depression or some resentment to the group. This creates drama and depth but will not be appropriate for every game.

It's advisable to not use moral dilemmas in games where the characters are meant to be the paragons of virtue. In such cases when they are GOOD then it is probably best their conflicts be with purely evil types. Putting these characters in moral dilemmas interferes with the player's ability to have the character the game is meant to have, and destroys the tone of the game. It's best when starting a new game to talk to players about the tone, themes of the game so everyone is in agreement about what kind of characters they should play and what kinds of situations they'd be dealing with.

Here's a link to some classic moral dilemmas that you can try to use in your stories.

How Morality is Portrayed in RPGs: part iii

World of Darkness: Virtues and Vices

One (possibly shallow) problem with virtue ethics is that it does not tell us what we ought to do as well as deontology or consequentialism. Deontology, in the form of the categorical imperative offers advice on how to proceed in certain situations as does utilitarianism, which offers up something like a cost benefit analysis of pleasure v. pain. These moral systems offer solutions in many cases - sometimes too easily [Bernard Williams makes this criticism of Utilitarianism], or not the answer we want to say is moral, but they offer solutions where virtue ethics might be unclear on answers. When a teenage girl is pregnant and she wants to decide if she ought to get an abortion she can weigh the pleasures v. pain this could cause now and throughout her life and her relationships to others, she can look at the interpretations of the categorical imperative and wonder if she'd be treating the fetus as a mere means, but what do the virtues tell her? 

Is it courageous to get an abortion or to have the baby? It can be in both cases. 

Is it just? - It's hard to say in the moment that a decision needs to be made (or even hypothetically with infinite time). 

Temperance, wise - none of these may help. 

But what if she asks: What would the virtuous person do? Would Socrates have an abortion? 

Neither of these questions seems helpful to anyone who isn't virtuous already. 

Yet despite this, we clearly recognize some situations where virtues are applicable: it's charitable to give money to non-profit organizations like Doctors Without Borders, it's courageous of firemen to selflessly run into the flames to save another's life. In turn, it's cowardly of the firefighter who has been properly trained who doesn't run into the building that's only partially on fire and not in danger of collapsing. It's wrathful to beat someone who's only committed the slightest of crimes against you - or merely been accused. 

I don't know if this is common, but when going over moral theory deontology and consequentialism were often paired off against each other, while virtue ethics seemed to handle morality from such a different standpoint it wasn't necessarily against the other two theories. In fact, I've heard that Buddhism can be interpreted (morally) as self-effacing consequentialism that utilizes virtue ethics to reach the best consequences. Virtue ethics is often more about our relationships with others while deontology and consequentialism are about finding a principled way of abstracting all moral problems. 

Related more directly to the WoD: I like that the virtues and vices stand apart from Morality the mechanic. It reminds me of this separation in how it was viewed in studying morality. I also like that being virtuous contributes to willpower. There is no happiness or eudiamonia (mechanically speaking) in WoD, but the fact that being a virtuous person replenishes your willpower suggests very much that it is good to be virtuous. 

How Morality is Portrayed in RPGs: part ii

World of Darkness: Morality

The morality system of the World of Darkness could be broken down in several interesting ways. One way: the psychological link between loss of morality (compassion) and how this causes manifestations of derangements is interesting but not relevant to this post. I recognize this as more of a psychological issue, and only mention it because the multi-faceted nature of this morality system is worth noting. WoD morality exists on a scale of 1 to 10. Characters at level 10 represent the moral exemplars made manifest while those at 1 are capable and likely to commit mass murder. The average person (and starting character unless otherwise stated) starts at 7. There is a hierarchy of moral acts, and each level between one and ten lists what someone at the level might do without rolling to see if they take a step down. Morality is regained by spending experience points and acting out a desire to redeem oneself.

This hierarchy of morality is similar to Ross' deontology. One criticism made against Kantian deontology is that it does not account for how we ought to proceed when two or more moral duties come into conflict. I'm sure there are answers Kantians have to this, but I'm unaware of them. I do know that under Ross' system we have what he calls prime facie duties that exist in a hierarchy: lying is wrong, but it is not as bad as murder. By placing duties in a hierarchy they do not come into conflict. This system does rely upon intuitionism however, and when two or more people have different intuitions about what is morally worse than something else then they have no principled way of resolving these disputes (if they are merely appealing to their intuitions). Intuitively, the WoD morality hierarchy probably works well enough for most players, but in specific cases with the Werewolf hierarchy I remember running into problems (this will be discussed in another post) when another player and I's intuitions did not match the intuitions of the Werewolf writers. This is less of a problem in a game though because we can simply create house rules to deal with such problems. I've never met a philosopher who resolved philosophical disputes by declaring house rules. I'd love to see someone do this in the middle of an argument.

So we might say that the flaw of the WoD morality system is that it is founded on intuitionism, but we might also say that the WoD developers did utilize one of the morality systems (prime facie duties) that best captures folk morality. Whether this was done on purpose or not, I have no idea, but I'm impressed either way. In the next post I'll continue discussing the core World of Darkness book with their use of virtues and vices.

Special note: Many deontological theories are strongly based on reason instead of compassion (Hume saw the basis of morality as compassion, Kant saw it as reason). The WoD book associates morality with compassion however, and this might make it more of a sentimental theory. This might be explored later (if I brush up on my Kant and Hume).