The Importance of Being Virtuous

[cardinalsin]

But the difference is that people don't generally attach great importance to their character being a good sailor. People are more likely to attach importance to their character not being utterly callous.

I think canonically CMP1 is not merely somewhat callous, or "means justify ends" but utterly callous.

[bravesirrobin]

like i said, i don't think you can take each virtue in isolation to determine what a character would or wouldn't do. the same way that the descriptions for various levels in each ability are clearly stupid, as it entirely depends on the level of attributes too.

in terms of a proposal to give everyone a new virtue point, i might take a slightly different approach and up everyone's starting virtues to 6. meaning that people who initially spend bps on virtues could merely recover them to spend on something else. however i would like to encourage people to spend it on virtues in most cases.

[Learned Hand]

Well I assume it will be moot soon enough anyway. I don't know if we'll have many comp 1 characters left

[oneiros]

Well, I'd put Com up to 2 then coz Azir's *not* a completely "I have no use for you, you can die" sort of guy. BSR's analysis was fairly spot-on as far as I'm concerned - he just doesn't mind too much if something nasty has to be done to meet objectives but he'd rather not where negative fall-out would impede the group's reputation, etc. and will work to mitigate impacts where possible. I.e. he usually has an ulterior motive for any compassionate act; he won't help someone simply coz it's nice to do so.

[cardinalsin]

Can I ask what people think about "the greater good"? Is this part of what concerns a compassionate person, or not? Is compassion only about helping individuals?

The idea that "the ends justify the means" tends to imply that the ends aren't part of compassion, but I think the opposite. I would say high compassion high conviction = ends-justify-means (i.e. because you want to help people but you recognise that you need to do bad things to achieve this). High compassion low conviction = "lily-livered liberal" (basically unprepared to do bad stuff, wants to do good stuff, both on an individual and wider basis). Low compassion high conviction = "ends justify means", but where the ends in question are more personal or ideological than "for the greater good".

[oneiros]

I'd say "the greater good" and helping individuals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Compassion can be towards more than just individuals but I'd say that concern for individuals plays a significant part.

At the risk of being controversial I'd would argue that putting an animal down, culling a herd to prevent spread of disease or euthanasia are not compassionless acts and advocating that some die so that a society may survive is not an out-and-out callous course of action.

Following through and how far you take the argument will depend on other factors, conviction etc. As has been said, I don't think you can or should take one virtue in isolation - the spread is more important to how an interpretation plays out.

[Blackrat]

oneiros said:

I'd say "the greater good" and helping individuals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Compassion can be towards more than just individuals but I'd say that concern for individuals plays a significant part.

I'd agree with that. IMO a hi-Comp character might well support "some must suffer for the greater good", but should find it difficult to actually carry that through if they have to do it themselves. I think this is probably a fair comparison to real life - although we recognise that sometimes we have to hurt people, if we care about them it's still difficult to actually do so.

[bravesirrobin]

I think that is absolutely a very good point, but I would also say that Conviction can be based around the greater good as well, which is a slight problem in overlap of virtues. basically conviction is the best one since it is about dedication to your own code/morals/whatever, and therefore high conviction can you lead to do things other virtues would support merely by believing in them.

[cardinalsin]

So what I'm asking is, if Compassion is about concern for both individuals the greater good, surely CMP 1 means you aren't concerned about the greater good? How then can it be "ends justify means"?

Conviction is willingness to do bad things for a cause. Compassion is your interest in the cause of helping others, whether it is individuals or groups or the "greater good". You have to both in order to be interested in doing bad things for the greater good.

I guess you could get concern for the greater good out of some ideological or practical concern, without any actual compassion to motivate it. This would be something like doing good works for the glory of god, or feeding the poor because they might revolt otherwise. But it wouldn't amount to doing bad things because you were concerned about the greater good in itself.

Conclusion: Low compassion characters should not be particularly interested in doing "good" things. CMP1 is not "ends justify means", at least not as we normally understand it.

[cardinalsin]

bravesirrobin said:

I think that is absolutely a very good point, but I would also say that Conviction can be based around the greater good as well, which is a slight problem in overlap of virtues. basically conviction is the best one since it is about dedication to your own code/morals/whatever, and therefore high conviction can you lead to do things other virtues would support merely by believing in them.

This is exactly the problem. It's like there's no good reason to take Compassion, because you can always say "my moral code prohibits me from harming individuals or walking on by when others are suffering". Compassion here appears to just be about how emotionally affected you are by suffering. That seems wrong to me.

[oneiros]

Well (and this may be part of the problem) the converse could also hold true. A high Comp character could use the passion he feels to help others to moderate the drawbacks of having other virtues low.

As for the low comp should not be interested in doing good things, I agree insofar as "doing good things for the sake of doing good things" is concerned - i.e. 'pure' charity. Comp 1 could suggest someone who would do good things if there's something in it for them - selfishness. The lack of altruism could be considered an alternative view of low compassion as opposed to just sadism or cruelty.

[Blackrat]

I think this highlights that the virtue system is shit. Just like alignment. And in fact like most attempts to mechanicalise a character's moral / ethical self inevitably are, I suspect. Let's scrap them altogether

[bravesirrobin]

I agree that in principal I would rather have a system that ignored them. However the Exalted system uses them in too many ways. As you well know.

[Blackrat]

True. Let's scrap Exalted, then.

[greywolf]

Wow, a lot has happened on this threat. BR, are you in a bad mood again? First it was scrap pdp, now its scrap exalted all together!

My view is that the virtue system has the potential to be a useful way to help you define your character's personality, and could add soemthing significant to the system but it doesn't work particuarly well in practice. On the persoanlity definition, I put a lot of thought into the virtues combination when I was designing my character. I actually would have prefered to have 2 in Comp, but decided that, as a soldier, GW would be more of a "in war you must do what you must to win" sort of a guy so took the decision for character rather than mechanic reasons.

Its tough to know how to make it work effectively, short of giving some extra in game benefits from having a high compassion. One though I have had is giving high compassion characters extra dice for certain activities based around the virtue. For example compassion could also represent a characters ability to empathise with NPCs which could then improve there social interactions (possibly giving compassion value in extra dice on certain social rolls defined by the ST?). Just a thought, and others will have views.

Also, I really liked BSRs description of all the characters based on their virtues. GWs description is fairly close to the way I see him and how I try to play him.