Gamasutra - Learning from 'Lawful Good' in roleplaying games

Over at Gamasutra, Catherine Kross's overview of morality systems in RPGs starts with tabletop games, but her argument makes it way toward some locally beloved CRPGs.

The key is to create openness and room to explore through the interaction. Are you compelling the player to simply make a red vs. blue choice [*cough* - ed.] or can you show them something more? Knights of the Old Republic 2 had a very different moral character from its more popular predecessor and placed a good deal more emphasis on demonstrating the limits of the player’s power. Kreia, your character’s mentor throughout the game and a steely-voiced advocate for moral ambiguity, bathed you in shades of grey that forced you to question deeply held assumptions.

A rather (in)famous moment occurs when you land on the planet of Nar Shaddaa, a world-city characterised by extremes in vice and poverty. You are immediately confronted with what has long been a mainstay micro-moral choice in KotOR: a homeless man asks for spare change. What is interesting, however, is the way that Kreia intervenes: she lends you her Force sight to show you the consequences of your actions. No matter what you do, it ends badly for the poor man you’re asked to help. If you refuse him money, he stalks off in anger and beats up some of his fellow vagrants. If you give it to him, he becomes the object of their jealousy and they attack him.

... this is profoundly cynical, but it works on a number of levels: illustrating Kreia’s morality, for one, and also demonstrating that sometimes you as the player cannot make everything right. Sometimes you face a situation with no good options, where tokenistic acts of morality may have unforeseen consequences. It’s an interesting case where the restriction of player choice paradoxically opens up an exploratory space for the player.

...and some less locally-beloved games:

Sometimes the best morality mechanic is not to have one; other times it means using the game environment itself to express moral ideas. Dragon Age 2’s affection meter (divided between Friendship and Rivalry) was intriguing because it measured levels of emotional attachment rather than a simplistic love/hate dyad; it permitted different shades of cathexis, a committed Rival could still fall in love with Hawke or still stand with her at the climax, it just flavoured the relationship very differently.  A similar mechanic could be applied to moral distinctions as well, going beyond good and evil, and lending complexity to any recreation of the law/chaos dyad.