True Neutral or How most CRPGs pigeonhole you into Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil

[Aron Times]

One thing that annoys me about the vast majority of CRPGs is that they tend to pigeonhole your character's actions into Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil. From Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights to Icewind Dale, either you're a mass-murdering saint (Lawful Good), or a mass-murdering demon (Chaotic Evil). This is problematic for players like me who prefer to take the middle path, the path of an average person.

 

I was wondering if Pillars of Eternity would allow me to play a character who is simply minding his business, and not out to delve into dark dungeons in search of buried treasure and long-forgotten magics, not unless he has to of course. I am wondering if I could play a character that spent most of his time tending to his stronghold and the area around it, content to rule his little domain within the larger domain of <insert country name here>. Is that a viable character concept, or am I obligated to journey halfway across the world and back again to be able to advance the plot?

 

I don't like traveling in real life. I spent the first twenty years of my life in a dense urban area, and rarely ventured further than 3 miles from home. When I moved to rural Missouri, I experienced a massive culture shock. The nearest supermarket was over 6 miles away, which was twice as far as my active radius in my hometown. For the first year or so, I was deathly afraid that the vehicle would break down or run out of fuel miles away from home, and I'd have to walk the mind-boggling distance to the nearest gas station for help. Fast forward to today, nine years later, and the fear and culture shock are distant memories, but I still dislike traveling farther than I can walk. This is one reason why I work mostly from home, with the occasional hour-long drive to the main office; while I dislike long travels, I can tolerate it every now and then.

 

Compare this to travel in Pillars of Eternity, which, to my understanding, is on the verge of a Renaissance, at least, on the most technologically advanced parts of the world. Travel was difficult at best in the old days, requiring ample supplies to last the journey, to say nothing of the necessary manpower to protect against wild animals and highwaymen plaguing the lawless lands away from civilization. People simply did not travel more than they had to back then.

 

Another thing I am hoping for is to not be overly "punished" for not taking the heroic path. While CRPGs generally allow for good and evil choices, good choices tend to be rewarded disproportionately better than the evil or even the neutral choices. Heroes should not get a free ride in the story, or at least, they shouldn't get a much easier ride than the other options. Just ask any cop or firefighter or soldier or anyone who puts his or her life in danger on a regular basis if taking the theoretical moral high ground always works. Or if zero-tolerance policies against crime actually work. Life doesn't run on a black and white morality, and neither sould PoE.

 

So, will I be able to play the game by focusing on my stronghold? Will taking the middle path or the self-serving but nonmalevolent path be viable in this game?

 

Wow, that was long. Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

P.S.

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Will I be able to finish the game without being a mass murderer? The sheer amount of killing in CRPGs is just crazy. What I'm asking is, will enemies sometimes NOT fight to the death?

[Zwiebelchen]

P.S.

I hope this would be an option, but not in the scale "I just murdered 100 mooks, but I have a choice to not slaughter the person responsible..."

 

False perception of morale in a nutshell. Seriously, I kill hundreds of people protecting the uber-villian boss and then get an option to spare his life? What kind of messed up logic is that?

 

That being said, I played some NWN modules in the past where your actions had a serious influence on your alignment. Every theft or lie shifted your alignment more towards chaotic and every killing that did not emerge from self-defense shifted towards evil. It was very engaging, though sometimes extremely hard, especially when playing a Paladin, as the situations that allowed shifting alignment towards lawful again were sparse. At the end of the module, I usually always ended up at Chaotic Neutral. Somehow, that's always where the balance between alignment shifts upwards and downwards for my playstyle ended. A real eye-opener.

[PrimeJunta]

So, will I be able to play the game by focusing on my stronghold?

Unlikely. The stronghold was a stretch goal, whereas exploration is one of the core planks. If you don't like exploration, you probably won't like P:E.

 

Will taking the middle path or the self-serving but nonmalevolent path be viable in this game?

 

Likely. There are no alignment mechanics, but there are faction reputation and personal reputation mechanics. These ought to support a much broader range of paths than simplistic good/evil(/law/chaos).

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Will I be able to finish the game without being a mass murderer? The sheer amount of killing in CRPGs is just crazy. What I'm asking is, will enemies sometimes NOT fight to the death?

Unlikely. Combat is also one of the core planks of the game. There may be nonviolent solutions to some quests, but this is highly combat-focused. Murder hobo was pretty much what all the IE games were about, except maybe PS:T and even that got pretty murderous towards the end, even if you were murdering tanar'ri and baatezu.

[Namutree]

You'll probably have to do a lot of killing, but not any murder. By the way, a stronghold focused game might as well be the sims. Play that instead.

[Mor]

One thing that annoys me about the vast majority of CRPGs is that they tend to pigeonhole your character's actions into Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil. From Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights to Icewind Dale, either you're a mass-murdering saint (Lawful Good), or a mass-murdering demon (Chaotic Evil). This is problematic for players like me who prefer to take the middle path, the path of an average person.

 

I was wondering if Pillars of Eternity would allow me to play a character who is simply minding his business, and not out to delve into dark dungeons in search of buried treasure and long-forgotten magics, not unless he has to of course. I am wondering if I could play a character that spent most of his time tending to his stronghold and the area around it, content to rule his little domain within the larger domain of <insert country name here>. Is that a viable character concept, or am I obligated to journey halfway across the world and back again to be able to advance the plot?

The alignment system has been replaced with dispositions and reputation.

 

No, you can't play sim-stronghold, its not going to be sandbox game but like all RPGs will feature a main story/conflict that your protagonist will have to resolve.

 

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/stronghold

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Disposition

Edited June 6, 2014 by Mor

[Suburban-Fox]

Oh, I almost forgot. Will I be able to finish the game without being a mass murderer? The sheer amount of killing in CRPGs is just crazy. What I'm asking is, will enemies sometimes NOT fight to the death?

 

QFT!! High body count games have always bothered me for that reason - don't get me wrong, I have nothing against killing my enemies, but do I have to kill quite so many of them? Surely some of them will try to flee, or simply be wounded.

 

The problem I have with this is similar to the problem I have with most CRPG aspects...believability. When taking on criminal gangs and the like, you can pretty much expect to have to brutally murder a bunch of 5-6 people in every room. If there are 10 rooms in the building...that's 50-60 people whom you've just murdered! So, that many people die in one day, and this has no impact whatsoever on the population of the city? In a huge scale battle, then sure, I can understand having that many deaths, but if this is happening in street skirmishes with that kind of regularity, surely there's going to be a population crisis before long.

[Namutree]

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Will I be able to finish the game without being a mass murderer? The sheer amount of killing in CRPGs is just crazy. What I'm asking is, will enemies sometimes NOT fight to the death?

 

QFT!! High body count games have always bothered me for that reason - don't get me wrong, I have nothing against killing my enemies, but do I have to kill quite so many of them? Surely some of them will try to flee, or simply be wounded.

 

The problem I have with this is similar to the problem I have with most CRPG aspects...believability. When taking on criminal gangs and the like, you can pretty much expect to have to brutally murder a bunch of 5-6 people in every room. If there are 10 rooms in the building...that's 50-60 people whom you've just murdered! So, that many people die in one day, and this has no impact whatsoever on the population of the city? In a huge scale battle, then sure, I can understand having that many deaths, but if this is happening in street skirmishes with that kind of regularity, surely there's going to be a population crisis before long.

 

I kinda agree, but the issue for me isn't the amount of people I'm killing. It's how few people there seem to be in the cities/towns. Heck, in BG1 there were like 20 people in Neshkel, and a lot were guards. I'd hardly call 20 people a town. More like a tiny village.

[Aron Times]

The "Clever" disposition intrigues me. It gives off a "troll" vibe.

 

Well, even if the stronghold won't be such a strong focus, I will still buy this game.

 

One thing that this game could borrow from the New World of Darkness 2.0 (the God Machine Chronicle) is the Beaten Down condition. Basically, at the start of any fight in the GMC, the DM decides if the fight will be to the death. If it's not to the death, then after taking a certain amount of damage (IIRC, half their HP), the losing side gets the Beaten Down condition. They can no longer take any hostile actions. This allows for a combat-heavy game without the party turning into mass-murdering psychos, e.g. you can be an action hero vampire/werewolf/mage without blowing your Humanity/Harmony/Wisdom. Of course, if the fight is to the death, then neither side gets Beaten Down and the fight continues until one side remains (either the other side is all dead or the survivors ran away).

 

Idea: Maybe there will be an Intimidate combat option that will allow you to instantly win a fight (the enemies run away and/or despawn) if their morale is low? Maybe tie the check to the Resolve stat, which sounds analogous to the Charisma stat in D&D. Or maybe whatever the primary stat of your main character is, e.g. if he's a wizard, then you can take the Intimidate combat action to make an attribute check using the wizard's primary stat, whatever it is, and if it's successful, the fight ends.

 

What do you think?

[Sad Panda]

Another thing I am hoping for is to not be overly "punished" for not taking the heroic path. While CRPGs generally allow for good and evil choices, good choices tend to be rewarded disproportionately better than the evil or even the neutral choices. Heroes should not get a free ride in the story, or at least, they shouldn't get a much easier ride than the other options. Just ask any cop or firefighter or soldier or anyone who puts his or her life in danger on a regular basis if taking the theoretical moral high ground always works. Or if zero-tolerance policies against crime actually work. Life doesn't run on a black and white morality, and neither sould PoE.

I was actually just saying on another another threat, this should actually be the other way around: It's the cruel and selfish that should have it easier, not those who try to do right by everyone. The context I brought this up was as an alternative mechanism for level-scaling: Instead of the game adjusting to the player's level to allow those who skipped a lot of content to be able to finish the main quest, it should instead make the player choose between doing things the easy way or doing them the right way. Betray an ally to avoid a difficult battle, torture an innocent child to death to complete a magical ritual that will grand you untold powers, abandon the villagers you were supposed to protect to divert enemies off your path -- it's easy to come up with ways that sensibly reward the player for choosing evil, and I myself would dearly like to see them implemented, if for no other reason then because it then makes choosing good all the more meaningful.

 

On the issue of the law-vs-chaos, I tend to see the problem of having to choose between Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil (capitalised here indicate I'm using the normal D&D definitions) that of the chosen setting. Most cRPGs take place in civilizations where laws are by and large intended to uphold peace and justice, so it immediately follows that abiding them will tilt the player toward good, while breaching them will push them toward evil. I'm hoping that in PoE we will see more moral ambiguity in this regard -- it's an original setting, after all, so nothing's stopping Obsidian from having the player navigate inherently evil laws. All of the examples I gave above could potentially result in shift toward Lawful, rather than Chaotic: Perhaps you are sworn to out any member of the faction your companion belong to the authorities, and in sheltering them you break both your vow and the law of the land; The child could be a legally purchased slave you are legally at liberty to what you want with, and the ritual itself a contract with a Lawful Evil deity; The villagers might be the target of an ethnic cleansing undertaken by the realm, and betraying them viewed as an honourable thing to do -- like outing a criminal.

 

Finally, you noted how it's disturbing how in many RPGs the kind-hearted hero will finish the game with a kill-count in the triple digits, and I agree. Killing in self-defence or to protect others is one thing, but often the games reward (or at least don't punish) you for killing someone deemed a "bad guy", which is a very black-and-white and dissatisfying way to look at things. I hope PoE will at least to some degree acknowledge that people aren't inherently good or evil, but instead provides us with the option of trying to figure out why the bad guys do what they do, and maybe even help them. The hero should be someone who has to struggle to provide everyone's story with a good ending, including the bad guys'. The villain, meanwhile, is the villain not necessarily because their goals are sinister -- the most compelling villains are always those who themselves believe they're on the side of good -- but because they don't care who gets hurt in the process of reaching those goals.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Sad Panda

[Namutree]

 

Another thing I am hoping for is to not be overly "punished" for not taking the heroic path. While CRPGs generally allow for good and evil choices, good choices tend to be rewarded disproportionately better than the evil or even the neutral choices. Heroes should not get a free ride in the story, or at least, they shouldn't get a much easier ride than the other options. Just ask any cop or firefighter or soldier or anyone who puts his or her life in danger on a regular basis if taking the theoretical moral high ground always works. Or if zero-tolerance policies against crime actually work. Life doesn't run on a black and white morality, and neither sould PoE.

I was actually just saying on another another threat, this should actually be the other way around: It's the cruel and selfish that should have it easier, not those who try to do right by everyone. The context I brought this up was as an alternative mechanism for level-scaling: Instead of the game adjusting to the player's level to allow those who skipped a lot of content to be able to finish the main quest, it should instead make the player choose between doing things the easy way or doing them the right way. Betray an ally to avoid a difficult battle, torture an innocent child to death to complete a magical ritual that will grand you untold powers, abandon the villagers you were supposed to protect to divert enemies off your path -- it's easy to come up with ways that sensibly reward the player for choosing evil, and I myself would dearly like to see them implemented, if for no other reason then because it then makes choosing good all the more meaningful.

 

On the issue of the law-vs-chaos, I tend to see the problem of having to choose between Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil (capitalised here indicate I'm using the normal D&D definitions) that of the chosen setting. Most cRPGs take place in civilizations where laws are by and large intended to uphold peace and justice, so it immediately follows that abiding them will tilt the player toward good, while breaching them will push them toward evil. I'm hoping that in PoE we will see more moral ambiguity in this regard -- it's an original setting, after all, so nothing's stopping Obsidian from having the player navigate inherently evil laws. All of the examples I gave above could potentially result in shift toward Lawful, rather than Chaotic: Perhaps you are sworn to out any member of the faction your companion belong to the authorities, and in sheltering them you break both your vow and the law of the land; The child could be a legally purchased slave you are legally at liberty to what you want with, and the ritual itself a contract with a Lawful Evil deity; The villagers might be the target of an ethnic cleansing undertaken by the realm, and betraying them viewed as an honourable thing to do -- like outing a criminal.

 

Finally, you noted how it's disturbing how in many RPGs the kind-hearted hero will finish the game with a kill-count in the triple digits, and I agree. Killing in self-defence or to protect others is one things, but often the games reward (or at least don't punish) you for killing someone deemed a "bad guy", which is a very black-and-white and dissatisfying way to look at things. I hope PoE will at least to some degree acknowledge that people aren't inherently good or evil, but instead provides us with the option of trying to figure out why the bad guys do what they do, and maybe even help them. The hero should be someone who has to struggle to provide everyone's story with a good ending, including the bad guys'. The villain, meanwhile, is the villain not necessarily because their goals are sinister -- the most compelling villains are always those who themselves believe they're on the side of good -- but because they don't care who gets hurt in the process of reaching those goals.

 

I totally agree that heroes are the ones who should be having a harder time than villains.

[Suburban-Fox]

Regarding law vs chaos etc... I've seen it suggested that this isn't so much to do with whether you obey the law or not, as whether you value honour and truth, and whether you're likely to fight with honour, and keep your word, or not. A lawful good hero will fight his enemies honourably, and accept a yield when given in good grace (unless that person is a known liar and traitor - lawful good doesn't necessarily mean lawful stupid), while a chaotic good person will be quite happy to stab enemies in the back, hit below the belt, walk out on his friends once his goals are achieved, and do whatever needs to be done to achieve victory.

 

Speaking of which, what often bugs me in RPGs is that law vs chaos is generally seen as cool and rebellious vs stubborn close-mindedness. This isn't really necessarily the case, and while I admit that I also love playing chaotic good/neutral characters, being chaotic should have its flaws...even though your intentions might be good, people should be less likely to trust you if you have a reputation for breaking your word, betraying friends, and so forth.

 

In other words, chaotic good shouldn't mean chaotic cool, and lawful good shouldn't mean lawful stupid. Not that this matters, since there's no alignment system in this game...just thought I'd point it out. )

[aluminiumtrioxid]

One thing that this game could borrow from the New World of Darkness 2.0 (the God Machine Chronicle) is the Beaten Down condition.

 

Aside from generally making good points as far as I'm aware, you, sir, are also obviously a man of (wealth and) taste. I approve heartily.

[anameforobsidian]

NPCs in Gothic, particularly Gothic 1, have a visceral reaction when you kill people.  The game assumes that you just want to beat people up (monsters you kill), and you have to do an extra stabbing motion to kill them.  You murder people straight out if your last blow is magic rather than a sword, which is fair.

 

There are some rare exceptions, but even random bandits in the woods and people who ambush you can be beaten rather than killed.  Sometimes that just means they attack you with their fists though.  It also means many npcs will beat you up and rob you rather than kill you straight out.

Edited June 6, 2014 by anameforobsidian

[Iucounu]

If you define "lawful good" as an alignment where a person follows a certain set of rules or principles to determine what is morally wrong and right, you get a wide set of different views. For one, there could be the pure utilitaristic consequentialist, who in order to save two children from being tortured, would torture a random uninvolved child. Then on the other hand there could be someone who follows some sort of deontological ethics, who'd refuse to kill an uninvolved person even if it would save 10 children from being tortured to death, which most people would perhaps see as "lawful stupid". Still, in both cases the above definition of lawful good holds true, which is why when it gets complicated, I think you're better off just doing without such labels from the start. Just let the player think for himself, and the fictional characters in the game probably have different opinions about the actions of the playercharacter depending on their individual views.

Of course, in the IE games most decisions you had to make weren't that morally complicated, so it was easy to assign the player's behavior to categories like good or evil, and then have a game system that with absolute authority deems the playercharacter as a good or a bad person, so that you could for example let the evil persons be affected by the spell holy smite, and the good persons by unholy blight. But what to make of a radical utilitaristic consequentialist? Is he affected by unholy blight or holy smite? Or perhaps create an extra spell for them, like deontological smite, or whatever?

Edited June 6, 2014 by Iucounu

[Blarghagh]

I thought this thread was about me!

 

I do agree, I would like to be able to play a neutral character. One of the things I disliked in Knights of the Old Republic 2 is the light side and dark side mastery bonuses - the completionist in me felt forced to pick a path and stick to it. That's my problem, but on the other hand, I couldn't pick a prestige class either until I had a light side or dark side net shift.

 

I do think this game won't be possible without at least some combat (if I recall, Sawyer said as much in an interview) but most of it should be avoidable.

[Lephys]

^ Such systems (dark side versus light side completion) irk me, as well. The problem stems from the end abilities in any given "tree" being essentially a higher tier (or providing a higher tier of bonus) than the lower ones. Thus, if you get 10 abilities total no matter what (for example), you end up taking 5 from each of two trees, but then, those 10 aren't as valuable as having 10 from the same tree. The argument is typically "but you're more versatile now!". Which is true, but that shouldn't really have anything to do with the potency/value of that versatility. Versatility already comes with its price.

 

For example, in D&D, as a Wizard, even if you ONLY had Level 1 spells, if you had 6 from one school of magic, versus 1 from each of 6 different schools of magic, you'd be trading something off either way. It shouldn't be "Oh, if you take 5 spells in one school, you get Level 3 spells in that school! But if you don't hit 5 spells in a single school, you just get Level 1 spells!"

[Amentep]

In the context of STAR WARS lore, though, Light Side/Dark Side makes a lot of sense for Jedi/Sith.  The problem from a role-play perspective in KOTOR 2 is, ultimately, you have to be a force user and you have to be on the Jedi / Sith path.  Which itself is a carry-over from KOTOR, I suppose.

[No idea]

I really hope we dont get the aligments we got in d&d (except the 4th edition) because they make the world feel like a completely artificial place. Nobody (well, almost nobody) acts lawful good always, nor chaotic evil. At least a human. A demon is a different thing. The contray makes for humans which dont behave as humans. So it all feels artificial. I think the aligment system is oneof thegood things of d&d 4th. Edition. It is more a far more natural system.

[Blarghagh]

There won't be alignments in the game. This was confirmed in interviews early on. So don't fret.

 

(Is this thread still not about me? )

[Lephys]

(Is this thread still not about me? )

Wait... it hasn't been about you this whole time? I just thought ChaoticGood and LawfulEvil were all friends of yours on the forum. 8P

[Amentep]

Since TrueNeutral is now a mod, if this thread did come to be about him (and not alignment systems like D&D as it was to start), wouldn't he have to close the thread because it'd become off topic?

 

ObTopic: I think its a wise move to eschew alignment systems like D&D.

[Karkarov]

That being said, I played some NWN modules in the past where your actions had a serious influence on your alignment. Every theft or lie shifted your alignment more towards chaotic and every killing that did not emerge from self-defense shifted towards evil. It was very engaging, though sometimes extremely hard, especially when playing a Paladin, as the situations that allowed shifting alignment towards lawful again were sparse. At the end of the module, I usually always ended up at Chaotic Neutral. Somehow, that's always where the balance between alignment shifts upwards and downwards for my playstyle ended. A real eye-opener.

That reeks of a crap module.  Lying is neither good nor evil, or even chaotic in and of itself.  It just isn't lawful.  It is all about what you intend with the lie that gives it alignment tendency, again, beyond not being lawful.  You can lie your ass off and still be neutral.

 

Also to OP, average Joe is NOT true neutral.  Most normal people will either be neutral/good by D&D standards or neutral/evil.  True neutral is by far the hardest alignment to play and actually maintain in D&D because it means you literally do not consider right/wrong, morals, or order/chaos at all.  It is not very easy for a human being to think that way.

 

Also yes, TrueNeutral is actually a robot overlord.  Like I said humans can't really behave that way.

 

Either way Eternity's approach is the right way to do it these days.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Karkarov

[PrimeJunta]

As an aside, the only alignment I really like in D&D is True Neutral precisely because it's such a bloody impossible ideal to live up to. The way I've envisioned it is as a 'God's eye view' of the world, a totality where everything relates to everything else, and concepts like good, evil, law, and chaos are just somebody's opinion, and being born, living, suffering, and dying are just sh*t that happens. If you're actually in the world, how are you supposed to live with that?

 

(Also the way most D&D modules and cRPG's did it--"in the name of Balance, quoth the Druid as she sicced her badger at the bladelings"--is just dumb. The major exception are the Dustmen of Planescape: Torment. They had a somewhat coherent philosophy of life built around True Neutral, and a few of them seemed to even grok it.)

[Sad Panda]

As an aside, the only alignment I really like in D&D is True Neutral precisely because it's such a bloody impossible ideal to live up to. The way I've envisioned it is as a 'God's eye view' of the world, a totality where everything relates to everything else, and concepts like good, evil, law, and chaos are just somebody's opinion, and being born, living, suffering, and dying are just sh*t that happens. If you're actually in the world, how are you supposed to live with that?

One of the ways I've realised True Neutrality while roleplaying is what I call the "Karma Mirror" archetype: The character has no beliefs or values of their own, but instead adapt whatever outlook the person they're dealing with adheres to. They lie to the liars, but always tell the truth to the truthful; torture the cruel, but shelter the kind. They don't see any view as being inherently right or wrong, much less try to uphold one. Instead, to them everything is supremely subjective, and they leave it to others to decide the rules of the game. It's a rather interesting character type to play as, I think.

[Natusake]

Moral systems in and of themselves, completely flawed in concept. First and foremost is the misplaced idea that either a good person should get rewarded for being 'good', and a evil person should be rewarded for being 'evil'. In reality, what you get rewarded on is based on the opinions of the people around you, and some people would argue that God, or their deity also plays a role in this. So Pillars of Eternity has this part right. It makes sense that there is no 'good' and there is no 'evil', in the case of a fantasy setting. I believe, myself there is an ultimate moral in real life, but in a video game setting this is thrown out the window since my religion (or most religions on Earth) are in PoE.

 

A good person should never inherently be 'better' than a bad person, and vice versa. Some good people have good fortune, some don't. Same with evil people. This is why any sort of dogma that good is better or bad is better, or either gets better gear or rewards, is silly and futile in the conveyance of a real narrative. Unless gods come into play, which changes the game completely. Although normally the idea of 'good' is displayed by the god that you choose, but in PoE, I believe they have implied that gods are selfish and do things for their own benifit. This being the case, an ultimate morality is definitely out of the window.