(07-21-2014, 03:28 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: My favorite alignment system (and my favorite RPG) is the one in Shadowrun. That is to say, there isn't one. All characters are various flavors of criminals, and no rules hinge upon your morality. You just do whatever you think your character would do in a situation.
There are however two stats which are used to track it somewhat. Street Cred is essentially your character's reputation. This can come from a number of sources, but it generally means your character is reliable, trustworthy, will help you out in a pinch, won't snitch, etc etc. It is gained through play, and can be used in various etiquette type rolls, or to convince people of things, but it can also be negative, as it makes it harder to have your character walk around the world unnoticed. Saving an orphanage might be good morals, and good street cred, but it makes it that much more likely your character will be noticed by someone you'd rather not be noticed by.
The other statistic, is notoriety, which is how brutal, destructive, criminal, evil, or just plain ruthless your character is. For example you might gain notoriety by killing someone who doesn't pay up after a job, or killing hostages in order to help escape from a botched raid. It can be used to help with intimidation attempts as well, as people will be scared shitless of what will happen to them. Like Street Cred it also makes your character more recognizable.
The thing I like about this system is that it's organic to the gameplay experience, everyone starts off as a mostly rookie shadowrunner. It also helps with the problem in some RPGs where a character might be a murder-machine, but have bad social stats, and thus can never intimidate and scare anyone. In Shadowrun, after a while, just the whisper of your characters name might have the Guards drop their guns and surrender, and the employee's not even consider hitting the alarm button.
It only really works well within the context of the game though. Though it could be adapted I suppose.
Those must be the result of later editions, last one I played was 3rd, I think, back in the early 00's. They also seem like an effective mechanic for dealing with the usual sudden but inevitable betrayals that I recall being the major plot element of all of our campaigns. Are the two stats interlinked? Like, being more Notorious gives you less Street Cred based on your actions?
I feel like Essence could also be seen as a morality system within Shadowrun. Essence is very much about dealing with the human condition, but it's more of a metric of how human you, the character, remain in the face of increasing cybernetic augmentation. Cyberpunk 2020 did something similar, albeit more explicitly, by including the possibility of reaching a state of "cyberpsychosis" when you lost too much of your original self.Â
Obviously, that's not really very helpful within the context of FF14, except that it indicates that alignment and morality systems can model morality beyond "how much of a jerk are you to other people." Perhaps something could be devised, for those so inclined, to indicate the state of a character's connection to Hydaelyn, and what, if any, effect that has on the character.
Verad Bellveil's Profile | The Case of the Ransacked Rug | Verad's Fate Sheet
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
