“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda
The morality system of Force and Destiny, mechanically, is fine – it fills a purpose. You track what the character does throughout the course of a game session and then check a list of activities that create “conflict,” then you roll a d10 and subtract your conflict from the die result – if the number is positive your character gains morality – negative – that’s how much morality you lose on a scale of 1 to 100. Close to 100 you become a paragon of the light side of the force – fall too low and you fall to the dark side. The system is a bit random and a bit shallow – but it works.
My problem with the Force and Destiny morality system is that you generate conflict by being evil. (See, Force and Destiny, p. 322 “Using Morality”). Good and evil are too subjective and personal to serve as the measure for a concept that universally crosses all extant cultures and known species in the Star Wars universe – apply concepts of property ownership and the moral rectitude of stealing from the wealthy (an actual example from the conflict table) is a terrible fit for determining whether a character remains a servant of the light side of the force or falls to the darkness.
So I’m going to re-write the rules. I have two main goals here: (1) to emphasize a focus on emotion leading to the dark side; and, (2) to remove some of the randomness by replacing the d10 roll at the end of the night with a skill check that relies on a classic jedi theme – discipline.
In Star Wars, evil is a consequence of falling to the dark side – not the cause. The Dark Side of the force is seductive, it pulls you in with emotion – fear, anger, hate and even love. By drawing on their emotions a force user can tap into the dark side of the force. These emotions disturb the force user’s connection to the force – they introduce conflict into that connection. Too much conflict interferes with the force user’s ability to reach the force normally, requiring the force user to call on the dark side more and more often until they are firmly in the grip of the dark side – acting out their every emotion using the force. Incidentally – this perfectly mirrors the mechanics of falling to the dark side in Force and Destiny.
So – I’m going to rework the conflict system away from a fixed moral view of right and wrong, toward a more philosophical concept of whether the force user is acting out of emotion. Here’s how conflict will be gained:
- Drawing on the dark side of the force – always causes at least one conflict. But I make the player tell me what emotion they’re using – what is fueling the character’s power.
- Whenever a character is expressing strong emotions (gosh, role play?) I may offer the player the choice of gaining 1 or 2 force points or extra advantage on a dice roll in exchange for an equal amount of conflict.
- Using any force power (including force talents) in combat gives one point of conflict once per combat.
- Intentionally injuring any living thing outside of conflict with the intent to cause suffering results in one point of conflict.
- Failing a fear test with threat – GM has the option to inflict one point of conflict for each point of threat spent this way, up to 3.
- Watching a friend or loved one suffer.
One more tweak to the system I’m imposing to balance out the ease of gaining conflict is to introduce ways to reduce conflict through play. The following actions may reduce conflict:
- Refusing to use dark side force points when the result matters (i.e. not when the character is sitting still trying to use sense over and over until the power goes off – but yes if the character is aware that there is an enemy hidden nearby that may attack any moment and is attempting to use sense to find the enemy).
- Spending a triumph on a discipline check to resist fear.
- Spending a triumph on a successful combat check to disengage without dealing damage as the character reins in their emotions.
- Ending combat without killing any enemies.
- Sacrificing something important to the character for a higher purpose may, where appropriate, result in a reduction of conflict.
These are loose concepts to start with which will probably require some refinement.
The assumption is that the character is going to come out of each session with at least a few points of conflict. The character then makes a discipline check requiring a number of successes equal to the total conflict earned in the session (even if the target is zero). If the check succeeds, the character gains morality points equal to the number of advantage rolled on the check. If the check fails the character loses morality equal to the difference between the characters ending conflict and the number of successes rolled. As was often noted in the movies, it is a dangerous thing for a force user to lack discipline.
Most characters will probably find themselves wandering in the middle between the dark and the light. I like the rules provided for falling to the dark side and becoming a paragon, so I will leave those as written.
Future updates will refine this system based on gameplay results.