Instrumento: Matrices de estudios de mercado, factibilidad y demas

Remember, the sins on a Morality chart should come up at some point during the story, because that forces the characters into a choice — commit the sin and gain whatever advantage that allows but risk degeneration, or take the high road and deal with the results. Also, we don’t advise Storytellers to place acts on the chart that they personally find reprehensible. A Storyteller who is also a parent might find child abuse morally unforgivable, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be on the chart. Indeed, if it’s a hot button for the Storyteller, he’s probably better served telling his players that it makes him uncomfortable and for them to simply avoid the situation entirely.

Once the Storyteller has decided which sins, if any, must be on the chart, the players populate the rest of it with actions that their characters would risk degenera- tion for performing. The players can get a sense of how to figure these out by using the questions listed under Sanity, below, but let’s delve into the process a little deeper here (with the understanding that the Storyteller needs to clearly define what Morality is really measuring).

The player needs to consider the character’s life up to the point that the chronicle begins. The default is Morality 7, which makes a character socially functional, with no particular drawbacks or benefits as a result of his ethical outlook. What does that translate to for this particular character? The character still has a long way to fall before becoming an unplayable monster (if that is indeed what happens to him at Morality 0 — see below), so what is the baseline? How does the character look at other people? How does he view himself and his place in the world? What kinds of actions would he find im- moral or unethical?

Note that this is different from being unwilling to take certain actions because of the temporal conse- quences. Some people claim to be “above morality,” but they don’t rob, steal, and commit violence because they know they would be held accountable for those actions. Whether those claims are legitimate or just adolescent puffery isn’t at issue; you can make that decision for your character. But Morality is an inherently internal process, quite separate from considerations of outside consequence, so if you feel that your character simply has no moral outlook, talk to your Storyteller about how you can create a Morality chart that takes into consideration your desires for your character and the story’s needs.

Some guidelines for creating sins:

• Remember the levels on the chart. At Moral-

ity 8–10, the sins are minor and very difficult to avoid committing. Most people have “selfish thoughts” many times a day, since “I wish I’d gotten the last donut, not Hardigan” and the like are such thoughts. By the same token, though, remember that such actions grant the player five dice to avoid degeneration, and five dice

grants a better than 80% chance of success. It’s hard to maintain that level of Morality, but that’s only because the sins are so hard to avoid committing.

Likewise, the sins in the middle of the chart grant three or four dice — still good odds of success, but not nearly as good. The sins are also much harder to commit casually. Indeed, they should be acts of will. In order to risk degeneration, the character has to take an action, not just have a thought or react to a stimulus. A rule of thumb: if the character has the level of Morality neces- sary to risk degeneration from committing them, he should feel compelled to stop them or report them if he becomes aware of them.

Finally, at the bottom of the chart, the sins should be serious infractions of the character’s moral code. A character that does these things knows quite well that he is doing something wrong, though once he actually does it, he might realize it’s not really a big deal (that would be the result of a failed here degeneration roll).

• Choose things that you might have to do. Con-

sider the Morality chart on p. 91 of the World of Dark-

ness Rulebook. At Morality 4, we find “impassioned

crime.” Loosely put, that means if the character gets into a fight defending a loved one and kills someone, he risks degeneration. That’s not great, but the result of not defending the loved one would be far worse to the character. Moral decisions aren’t supposed to be easy. They’re supposed to cause dramatic conflict for the character. That’s the whole point.

Taking an even more extreme example, characters in

Changeling: The Lost can lose Clarity (their Morality

trait) as a result of unexpected life changes. A changeling leaves town, and returns to find his home has burned down. He might lose Clarity, through no fault of his own (mind, while the world might act capriciously, the Storyteller shouldn’t, but we digress). That’s because one of the themes of Changeling is the tenuous grasp on reality and sanity. When the illusion of control slips from the Lost, it might break them just a bit. When designing your character’s chart, consider what would shake him up to the point that it might drive him mad, with the understanding that it’s probably going to happen (or at least threaten to happen).

• What does Morality 0 mean? The World of Darkness Rulebook says: “If a character descends so

far that her Morality drops to zero, she can no longer be played in any meaningful way. She becomes a true monster, inflicting pain and suffering on everyone around her without the slightest hint of remorse and no hope of redemption. At that point control of the character passes to the Storyteller.” But as this section (indeed, this book) should show, nothing is set in stone. Depending on what your Storyteller wants Morality to mean, losing it might mean something other than utter depravity.

One option is loss of functionality expressed in a different way. The character might go catatonic, unable to cope with the outside world in any way. He might descend so deeply into drug abuse that he isn’t playable, or (if the Storyteller really wants to set the World of Darkness on its ear) he might spontaneously become a supernatural creature such as a vampire or a werewolf.

Sanity

Sanity falls when the character experiences some- thing that shakes up his worldview too much. This in- cludes viewing the supernatural, seeing things that “should not be,” but can also include taking human life or even committing “softer” crimes such as theft. When such an event happens, the player makes a degeneration roll and, if appropriate, the attendant roll to avoid a derangement. Sanity, then, is a threshold — as the trait falls, derange- ments become more likely, but are not certain.

Of course, not everyone has (or should have) the same triggers for degeneration. Some people are better able to cope with committing violence — does that make them less sane? Instead of looking up degeneration points on a chart, the player and the Storyteller should work together at character creation to determine some probable degen- eration points for the character. Players should expect for Storytellers to use those degeneration points in play. As such, no Sanity “hierarchy of sins” is necessary. A character’s Sanity level changes, but the threshold at which the player should check for degeneration changes based not only on the character’s Sanity rating, but also on that character’s experiences. Figuring out a given character’s starting threshold becomes an important part of character creation. Each player should answer the following questions for his character (and the Storyteller should, of course, feel free to add to or modify these questions as necessary):

• What is the character’s most deeply held belief?

Note that a belief is something that the character accepts as true without rational proof. “People do awful things” is not a belief, it’s a readily apparent fact (yes, we could debate the definition of “awful”). “People are basically good,” however, is a belief. “Everything happens for a reason” is a belief. “God loves us” — actually, any state- ment regarding a higher power — is a belief.

When answering this question, though, consider that this is a belief that the character holds dear. It’s one thing to flippantly say that everything happens for a reason, and most people say it in order to lessen the blow of a traumatic event or provide some justification for a coincidence, but if the character fervently believes that everything happens for a reason, it’s worth delving a little deeper. Who decides on that reason? Does the character have faith that a god is the motivating force here? If so, which god? Does he believe in Fate, or that everything is predestined?

• How does that belief make itself known in the character’s life? A character with a deep-seated and

fervent belief in Christianity might hand out tracts at work, or try to minister to people. Then again, she might just go to church every day, read her Bible on her off time, and be quite willing to talk about her faith if asked, but otherwise worship silently. In both cases, her beliefs are informing her actions. How do the character’s beliefs show themselves in daily life? How might another character be able to discern those beliefs without it coming up in conversation? The more specific you can be, here, the better. It’s one thing to say, “My character goes to church every day.” That’s helpful, to a point; it tells the Storyteller that your character makes time to worship and that she has a schedule, and those are useful tidbits. But it’s even better to say, “My character attends the New Bible Church every evening on her way home from work. The minister lets her put her groceries in his fridge, so that she doesn’t have to make two trips out.” These statements not only give the Storyteller all of the information from the other answer, but they establish that the character has a relationship with the minister (who might then be represented by a Merit) and hint at more details of her daily life.

• What past events in the character’s life would have demanded a degeneration roll? Something has hap-

pened in the character’s life that challenged his Sanity. It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, in the scheme of things. Maybe the character got drunk and had a fling with some floozy he met in a bar. It doesn’t seem like much, but creeping home afterwards, hung over and ashamed, the character realizes that he’s been drinking too much and needs to take better care of himself (suc- cessful degeneration check). Maybe the character got into a fight while at college, punched a guy in the face, and was charged with assault. He had a few months of probation, and to this day secretly wishes he’d hit the guy hard enough to knock him out so he wouldn’t have been identified (failed degeneration check).

These past events should inform, but not dictate, what kind of events will call for degeneration checks in the chronicle. The Storyteller needs to build up a picture of the character’s psychological makeup with enough detail that he can include events in the chronicle that can cause degeneration. Figuring out some history for the character will hopefully help the Storyteller avoid arguments as to whether a given event would or would not cause a degeneration roll.

Either the player or the Storyteller can ask for a degeneration check during play. The Storyteller and the player must agree on roll; if the player feels that the circumstance is truly inapplicable to the character, she can refuse. If the player agrees to the roll, however, the character gains an extra point of experience for the chap-

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