Fellow GMs, players, game experts please hear me out and help me! (You are my only hope!)
Recently one of my player wanted to become Force sensitive. He is a cunning scoundrel, smuggler by trade, gambling, stealing, shooting first.
I let him, on the condition he picks up a morality so I can keep him in check via his master (a hidden jedi - his only source of learning).
He is not in any way evil character, he is more like a trickster, still selfish acts, silly pranks not far from him. I didn’t intend to change his personality, just a narrative reason his master can scald him for doing too much bad thing.
My problem is, 5-6 sessions later he is now a light side paragon by numbers which honestly doesn’t really makes sense.
He is rather passive, not the most contributing player at the table he doesn’t have many proactive actions and even then rarely does outright bad things. He might steal something shiny, but usually only kills in self-defense, though his crewmates are rather bloodthirsty, but at the least a ruthless bunch of mercs and assassins doing “Edge-like” things.
I check the conflict table after every session, but I don’t feel I could have awarded more conflict to him, especially for things his party does when he is in a different scene.
I probably do something wrong, because him become paragon doesn’t feel right, but I don’t want to rob him the satisfaction. Still I feel like I should change something.
Never played or GMed FnD games so probably doing a lot of rookie mistakes here.
Thanks for the help!
I was also dissatisfied and troubled by the rate some players gain positive morality points for being pretty much passive.
I removed the d10 and made it a d4, that way people who are striving to be better and become paragon can still improve but don’t feel like they are stuck if there aren’t many situations that come up that they can increase it with. It’s a difficult thing to do as a GM to have some sort of moral dilemma every session, and shouldn’t be expected.
If my players take conflict they aren’t allowed to roll the d4. Or if they don’t want to they can pass. An average of 2 is better and a slower increase than an average of 5 from a d10.
However, if you’re using the RAW system and you plan to stick to it then don’t have players roll Morality every session. Perhaps only every few sessions or after a story arc. This will slow the rate and keep a more realistic feel.
As @Cloudy suggested, in my games we do the Morality roll every few sessions or at the end of a “chapter” rather than every session. Players also don’t roll at all if they didn’t gain any Conflict. This definitely keeps the Paragon creep at bay.
What FR is he at? Is he using a lot of Dark Side pips to fuel powers?
It may help to move away from the table as written and start balancing the Morality to the rest of the game. Even inaction in the face of his crewmates blasting first and asking later could be worth an extra Conflict or two, even if the table doesn’t explicitly suggest it.
Morality is story fuel as much as Obligation and Duty. Add some more conflicting situations into the mix. A few more hard choices here and there can allow him to either really earns his place among the Paragons or rack up more Conflict and have some meaningful struggle.
Though I would argue that if the player managed to keep their Conflict to 0 by actually being a paragon of virtue, he deserves the boost.
But the general point still holds.
True, however it’s different acting good, or not acting bad. By mechanics the result is the same. I do intend to reward him for behaving paragon, I just don’t want him to creep up just because he barely didn’t make any meaningful decisions in a session.
That is what is in my mind too and I’m gonna pay more attention to it. When he became FS I didn’t realize this can happen, but we learn new thinga everyday
He is FR2 but relies less on Force Powers, rather swinging the lightsaber
I was reading this and I like some of the ideas you guys have expressed. This led me to come up with the following solution. First let me present the issue I had.
My player used two dark side points during two different sessions. But no light points at all. So he had 2 conflict and I rolled a d10 with an 8 result. He gained 6 morality despite never doing anything ‘good’. This seemed off to me.
I think in the future, if he just uses dark side points for a game session, then when I roll for conflict and he rolls higher, then he just avoids losing morality, but he’s not going to gain any. I feel there shouldn’t be a reward for doing only dark side actions.
If he does both, then I’ll roll for it, but also, to avoid giant 9 point leaps, I’m going to do a dice progression. Tell me what you think.
If you do nothing (no Force use or no morality based interactions), I roll nothing.
If you have one interaction whether good or bad, then I roll a d4.
If you have 2, then a d6.
If 3, then d8.
If 4 or more, then d10.
