Sliding in to follow up on this one with some concrete questions to see if I can wrap my brain around what's intended for characters--
1. Say I want to app a Viking warrior who, at some point in his past, failed to take revenge for an insult against his family because he pitied the perpetrator. He's also done the normal Viking things like kidnapping women, raiding Christian monasteries, and using a suite of (what we'd recognize as) underhanded tricks to ensure his honor is satisfied when facing otherwise unarmed foes. Would the Ancient hold him to account for the latter acts, which are morally in-line with his notions of honor and the worldview of his time, or the former act, which is a moral violation?
If during an in-game event he again failed to enact revenge when he had the opportunity, would that raise or lower his moral progress?
2. Say instead I app a character from a society who has a class of women like the Roman Vestal Virgins, down to taking a thirty-year vow of chastity enforced by the threat of execution for violation of it. She comes into the game after violating her vow and being executed for it. She's wracked with guilt for what she's don and believes it led to a series of environmental disasters and poor omens in war that hurt her homeland. Would continued violations of her vow be treated by the setting as morally neutral, or morally negative? Would "progress" be for her to grow out of the sexual morality of her home culture and come to love herself and the loose community of Travellers more, or to recognize and atone for what she's done while maintaining her vow from then on, whatever temptations the Islands throw at her? (With a [jiggle of my hand] at the idea of atonement beyond suicide necessarily applying for her base culture.)
3. Or, say I app the character this journal belongs to, who is nonhuman (disregard the PB--last played in a game that humanized characters). It is engaged in a genocidal war against others of its own kind who, from a human perspective, simply want to be left alone in peace to practice their own religion. However, because of the extremely marginal environment on the character's home planet, any group that wants to be left alone in this way imperils the survival of the whole species. Would this character be expected to repent of its genocidal mindset, or of the moments of weakness where it hesitated in killing a heretic and therefore failed to protect its whole species?
no subject
1. Say I want to app a Viking warrior who, at some point in his past, failed to take revenge for an insult against his family because he pitied the perpetrator. He's also done the normal Viking things like kidnapping women, raiding Christian monasteries, and using a suite of (what we'd recognize as) underhanded tricks to ensure his honor is satisfied when facing otherwise unarmed foes. Would the Ancient hold him to account for the latter acts, which are morally in-line with his notions of honor and the worldview of his time, or the former act, which is a moral violation?
If during an in-game event he again failed to enact revenge when he had the opportunity, would that raise or lower his moral progress?
2. Say instead I app a character from a society who has a class of women like the Roman Vestal Virgins, down to taking a thirty-year vow of chastity enforced by the threat of execution for violation of it. She comes into the game after violating her vow and being executed for it. She's wracked with guilt for what she's don and believes it led to a series of environmental disasters and poor omens in war that hurt her homeland. Would continued violations of her vow be treated by the setting as morally neutral, or morally negative? Would "progress" be for her to grow out of the sexual morality of her home culture and come to love herself and the loose community of Travellers more, or to recognize and atone for what she's done while maintaining her vow from then on, whatever temptations the Islands throw at her? (With a [jiggle of my hand] at the idea of atonement beyond suicide necessarily applying for her base culture.)
3. Or, say I app the character this journal belongs to, who is nonhuman (disregard the PB--last played in a game that humanized characters). It is engaged in a genocidal war against others of its own kind who, from a human perspective, simply want to be left alone in peace to practice their own religion. However, because of the extremely marginal environment on the character's home planet, any group that wants to be left alone in this way imperils the survival of the whole species. Would this character be expected to repent of its genocidal mindset, or of the moments of weakness where it hesitated in killing a heretic and therefore failed to protect its whole species?