Morality & Reality - meta-ethics in your game

What is good? What is evil? Are they real physical forces, purely mortal moral judgements, or what?

What started me thinking about this again - after I've already laid out my opinions and tool box for both gods and morality in games - was a rather heated discussion about a particular real-world religion and its morality or lack of it. I'm naming no names. The discussion got rather entrenched, but it made me think of a few things that I found helpful.

Now there are plenty of discussion threads out there on alignment, and some very serious heavy debate about religion. I'm not going to try to replicate those here - I want to look at how the different points of view can be used when creating your game world.

Like my article on gods, I think that one's attitude toward Good and Evil in the game setting can have profound consequences which may be more wide reaching than you'd expect. As in that article, I'm going to present some stances that  you might consider for your game setting, and look at how these influence the setting.

I'm going to talk about Good and Evil with capitals, in that I want to distinguish these grand concepts from the less important good (meaning beneficial, competent, fitting, etc.) and evil (meaning nasty, ill, etc.).
I'm also going to talk about gods, angels and demons, and mortals as creatures that have different moral scopes within a fantasy game setting - but I'm using these terms generally: I don't mean to refer to D&D 3.5's demons, WoD's angels, or Zoroastrianism's gods, or any other specifics.

Debating ethics

Good & Evil are Actual Forces?

In this stance, Good and Evil are real, measurable forces, like temperature or mass.

As well as conscious beings having morality, Good and Evil can inhabit objects and places. A book may be inherently Good, its presence harmful to Evil creatures - or dreadfully Evil, driving its readers insane. An Evil ring may corrupt the wearer. A Good, sacred place may heal the sick.

If Good and Evil are tangible forces, then are sapient creatures left with a fixed morality? Can Good be driven out of a person? Can an Evil being become Good?

Of course, it's a common complaint about alignment systems that characters' mortality becomes fixed, and this stance seems to reinforce that idea - but it needn't be like that...

A flexible alignment system in action?

Only Actions are Good and Evil?

Only the actions of sapient creatures are Good or Evil in this stance.

Things cannot have morality, only people - and then only as the result of their acts. By doing Good, Bobby the Barbarian is Good. By doing Evil, Winifred the Wizard is Evil.The Book of Nasty Tales, however, is just a book, the Sword of Demonslaying is just a magic sword, and the Chapel of Holy Rest is just a building.

Perhaps the build up of moral actions can be detected in a person - their Evil becomes tangible through their repeated acts, and we can sense it, through divination magic, or as a creepy feeling.

This stance inherently allows the moral standing of a person to change as they choose to act differently. Over time, a Good person can be corrupted by Evil acts, and vice versa. We can have redemption and damnation as story arcs - a rich vein of role-playing to mine!

While this stance is flexible and arguably more realistic, it lacks the supernatural element of Good and Evil that we enjoy from  fantasy literature.

The Middle Way

The above stances can be somewhat restrictive - especially for a fantastic setting, which is of course where we most commonly want to play with Good and Evil ideas.

Perhaps there are beings who are inherently Good and Evil, who are exemplars of those morals - Angels and Demons - but the common folk, the mortals of the setting, are free to choose their moral acts, and in choosing, to determine whether they are Good or Evil.

Perhaps objects can be imbued with Good and Evil by exemplars like Angels and Demons, or particularly pious or profane mortal magic users.

In such a setting, mortals retain free will, and can change their moral codes over time, but the existence of creatures of absolute morality is permitted. We can have our inherently Evil monsters, our literally holy ground, AND our ambiguous and mutable protagonists, struggling to do the right thing.

Self-censorship in RPGs?

There are times when I wonder about my sense of good fun.

Last weekend, I ran a game where the players had fun battling through storm conditions on the high seas, getting excited by running the risk sinking and drowning - when that very night, in the North Sea, dozens of real sailors lost their lives in a shipping disaster.

Regularly, I run games where religious intolerance, inter-faith war, assassination, fanaticism and the like are sources of entertainment - while the so-called Islamic State and al-Qeda are organising and inspiring the murder of journalists and aid workers
.
Is it okay to use these horrible events, vile actions and situations as part of a game?

Yes - of course!

We can examine the world through RPGs. By playing roles, we can understand people better, empathise better. By imagining what brings a person to behave in a certain way, we aren't condoning it.

Would you say that Sean Bean is evil because he played the corrupt agent 006? That Alan Rickman is a bad person because of his portrayal of the Sherrif of Nottingham?
Would you say that Peter Jackson is promoting black magic because he made films about Sauron and the Witch King of Angmar and all those evil beings?

Story telling is one of our ways of coping with the nasty and horrible parts of the world - and roleplaying games especially so.

So let's not self-censor ourselves. You only have to answer to your player group. If it's cool to you, then it's cool.

Playing roles - revisited

In my first "Playing Roles" post, I talked about the different forms of role playing that I've noticed people tend to do. Here, I'll talk about overcoming embarrassment - the idea that by acting up a role, you're making a fool of yourself.
 
Recently, I was chatting online with a mate who has trouble getting into character at the game table.
At the end of it all, he suggested it'd make a good topic for a blog - so here's an editted transcript of our chat, and a few comments to expand on it.

Via messenger

Me: As far as RPing goes, you seem to me to be a bit embarrassed about actually playing "in character".

Jack:Yeah. I get too shy doing it.
I always try to make a character based on someone from TV so I have a rough idea.

Me: Nicking other people's characters is fine - we all do it a bit. The point is to put yourself in their shoes.

Jack: I know we are all nerds together but I hated drama and stuff at school.
I can do the whole loud, blunt Jack act quite well, but that's it.

Me: Sure - make characters who are easy for you to play before you try hard stuff. You know - play Jesse from Breaking Bad. He'd be right up your street.

Jack: See, Vin [Jack's rogue character] was always Mike from Breaking Bad in my head. Sutrin [Jack's warrior character] was always going to be the Hound [from Game of Thrones] - but I never really got the ball rolling with him.

Me: Okay  - but you aren't a grim tough guy, yourself. You're more of a gobby youth, innit blood! That's what made me think of Jesse.
Me, I like to play clever, slightly posh chaps who want to do the right thing, but get out of their depth and have to bluff and blag their way through.

Jack: Is that why you are always a mental wizard? ;)
I was thinking gruff type dude would be easy as I can just be blunt.

Me: You may be blunt, but you're not gruff.

Jack: Sure. Right then - that's my plan. I will make a Rogue for [the next] game, and he can be a street urchin type - BITCH! Totally works, yo!

---

Play yourself

The short version is this: play yourself - or a version of yourself. 
It's usually within your comfort zone, you don't have to stop to think about character motivations so much - it reduces the strain and lets you enjoy the game.

Acting like yourself is far less out there than acting like a large ham, booming all your statements and trying to sound like Brian Blessed or Laurence Olivier.

I've seen the same sort of embarrasssment in LARPing - it's far easier to get people to come and play contemporary or near future LARP where they get to wear their own clothes than it is to get them to dress up like Robin Hood.

Once you've got the hang of playing a version of yourself, you might want to try assembling a character out of part of yourself, rather than just slotting your whole personality into the setting. 
Maybe you're a bit of a science nut, who finds social niceties difficult - then you might find it easiest to play a bookish wizard with little time for social skills.

Myself, my day job is working in product safety compliance, applying laws and safety standards rigidly: so aside from clever-but-naive idealists, sometimes I like to play strong enforcers of some code of ethics - cops or paladins or whatever the setting has - who have to learn to moderate their black-and-white morality.

Great actors talk about finding a connection with their character from their own experience, so that they can channel their own real emotions into the performance. 

You'll need to know yourself to play like this - but I've found that playing various versions of myself over the years has given me a better understanding of those parts of my own personality, which in turn makes me better at playing other roles.

If you start by making an alter-ego of yourself who shares much of your own personality, then their behaviour in the face of the game's scenarios starts out as easy - and in time, that behaviour and expeience will change the person that the character is, as their life moves away from your own. 
Then you'll find you're playing a well-rounded character, with just a hint of you buried under the wealth of experience they've gone through.

Table NSG1.0 & 1.1 - the Nemesis Speech Generator

Like many GMs, I like to make up tables for silly things. I found one of them today - my Nemesis Speech Generator.

This is for use when the Big Bad Evil Guy is monologuing.

NSG 1.0

NSG1.1

Gods - what are they for?

In the game-settings we play with - worlds, universes, multiverses - there is almost always some reference to gods, religion, mystic forces and the like: often these are the driving forces behind the story.

Gods and religion serve many roles in games and stories. It's important that in gaming - collaborative story-telling - we all know what we can expect from the gods and their followers.

Although I'm a non-religious person, I'm quite happy to entertain myself and fellow players with religious themes, mystic visions and other tropes - but I think that the delicate topic of religion and gods in fiction (and gaming in particular) could do with some analysis.

Otherwise, how will we all end up on the same hymn sheet?

In-game reality

What is the truth of the gods? Are they proven to be real, or is their presence ambiguous? If Zeus regularly abducts lovers and begets heroes, who would doubt his existence?

Let's split the camps into two: proven and unproven. I'll deal with unproven first, as it covers the more familiar ground (for me, at least).

Unproven

The gods - if there are any - are unproven. Their existence cannot be unquestionably and concretely demonstrated.

This situation is, of course, most like our every day real world. No matter how strong the faith of any individual or group of people, no deities' existence is empirically proven. 

• Traditions & superstition
• The intelligensia don't consider the gods to literally be true, but their traditions and superstitions are powerful tools. No-one believes that the priest in the god-mask is actually the god incarnate, but tradition dictates that all treat him as such.
• Manipulative priesthood: The gods are known to be false, but the priests lie. The population is deceived.
• Symbolic priesthood: The gods are metaphors for right behaviour. The worship of the gods does not rely on their stories being actually historically true, but more that the parable of their acts teaches the population how to behave.

 

(As an aside, it ocurred to me that - SPOILERS AHEAD, KIDS! - Father Christmas is a prime example of benign manipulation. Most of the population is well aware that they are the ones buying presents for the children, but we all go along with the manipulation that there is a magical present-giving entity, who rewards the good and punishes the bad. Consider a church that works like that... Interesting, yes?)

• Absent & subtle
• Belief in the gods is widespread and accepted at all levels. The intelligensia have complex and often philosophical ideas about the gods, while the layfolk have straightforward faith.
• Faith through teaching:  The priests have faith, and they preach this and enforce the will of their god or gods. No-one can show that the gods are real, but it serves the priesthood to indoctrinate people into belief. This may be benign, as with Santa, or it may be purely to perpetuate the power of the church.
• Faith through observance: The reality of the gods is socially given, but not readily apparent. No-one questions the gods - their existence is self-evident from casual observation.

Faith through teaching is what is required when people question the power of the church, whereas faith through observance is the state enjoyed when the reported acts of the gods are not in conflict with observable reality - either because we can't observe as closely as required to notice the discrepencies, or because those acts are in accord with reality.

Proven

The gods are a fact of life, with verifiable evidence to back them up.

This situation is not like our real world. The gods are known to act in the mortal realm, to intervene on behalf of pious worshippers. Even the most cynical would respect the invocation of the gods - there will be no atheists here.

• The "myths" are all true
• The fantastic stories about the gods' exploits - from their creation of the multiverse, to their appearance, to their powers - are all literally true. Still the gods may have powers and interests beyond mortal ken, but as a minimum, we can trust what their scripture says to be 100% fact.
• Gods are all-powerful, unlimited beings. Omniscient and omnipotent beings, the gods are literally able to achieve anything they desire.
• Gods are beyond mortal power, but limited. The gods are constrained by limits of some sort - perhaps according to their station in a heirarchy, or their patron sphere

• Gods are powerful outsiders 
• The gods are extra dimensional beings of some sort. They are worshipped, but they may not even claim to be gods - or if they do, it is in order to exploit those who worship them. Scripture about these gods may be an imperfect record of the actual events.
• Hero-gods and saints. Hercules, the Caesars and so on were elevated to godhood - larger than life heroes. Saints take their place in the afterlife as intercessionary being on mortals' behalf with the ruling deitiy.
• Meddlers in mortal affairs. Ultrapowerful being seeking to interfere with the lives and development of lesser entities - Star Trek's Apollo, Q, (and others), or Star Gate's Ra.
• Alien, unknowable entities. Incomprehensible beings whose motives are unclear. They act without explanation - Lovecraft's Cthulhu et al, 2001's monolith builders.

What is truth?

What constitutes proof of the gods in the game? You need to consider what absolute evidence is available, and what is questionable - so that you can decide how people outside the faithful circles react to that evidence.

Do you have priests who gain their magic from divine energy (and how is that demonstrably different from wizardly magic)?
Would it matter if Apollo turned out to be some errant super-being, rather than a "real" god? What is the difference?
I'll consider these questions along with Function, below.

Function

So - what is the point of gods in your setting? What story purpose do they serve? How important are religion and / or deities to your setting?

I can break this down into three functions:

• Background flavour
• Political groups
• Active characters

Background flavour

The gods and their religions are simply a background flavour - something to increase verisimilitude. Throughout real human history there have been cults and churches, and it would seem unreasonable for these to be absent from a fantasy setting.

These gods and religions are not especially important, except as role-playing and story-telling props.

Political groups

Massive congregations, infalible heirarchies and divine power can make a church an absolute ruler of its culture, even above secular leaders. Historically this has been the case for real world faiths for certain periods.
On the other hand, a religion can rule along side the secular throne. Wise advisers to the emperor hold enormous political influence.
In polytheistic socieities, the various deities' priests might jocky for supremacy with the mortal rulers - who may in turn elevate the status of the deity.

These gods and religions are important because they are the motivators of political groups - orthodox or revolutionary - but it is the people who act, rather than the gods themselves.

Active characters

The gods are present in the real world in some way, like the Greek Olympian gods, living on a holy mountain top, or like the Norse gods, living in some otherworld. In either case, they are real entities who will act on the game setting in some way.

Perhaps the gods manifest themselves through influencings nature - through storms, lightning, earthquakes, sickness and other events. Rather than manifesting in some physical form, the gods manipulate the world to do their will.
This sort of god is subtle and doesn't seem to directly influence the world, moving in mysterious ways. You can use this in games to set up divine coincidences to move the story - random fate becomes divine favour.

Maybe the gods do take on physical form, as perfect immortals, or divine animals - and perhaps these forms influence their bahviours, so that they are as petty and capricious as mortal culture. Just look at the Greek gods - stealing sexy women, starting wars out of jealousy, fighting amongst themselves, cursing mortals on a whim.

Such interfering gods can be the driving force behind adventures.

Divine magic

A common trope in fantasy games is that worship of gods gains the followers magical power.

If priests gain magic from the gods, is this the only form of magic? Are there also wizards? Is there a functional difference between wizardly and priestly magic? Or is the difference only political?

You might have priestly magic concentrate on life and death, fear and morale, and so on - whereas wizardly magic might be concerned with manipulating the elements.

Or if only politics separates divine from arcane, perhaps there would be jealousy between the two styles, so that wizards are outlawed, and the church investigates any magical practice by the layity.

The presence of divine magic in a fantasy game allows for magical differences between followers of different religions - followers of the Death god gain different sapells to the followers of the Creator god, and so on.

False gods

What is the functional difference between an ultrapowerful entity claiming to be a god, and a "true" god?
Leaving aside real-world current religious answers, let's think about why Zeus (who is a god, acording to the Greek mythos) is more qualified as a god than say, Manwe (who is not a god, according to JRR Tolkien's legendarium).
Neither are all-powerful. Neither is the creator of the world. Neither is infallible.

Functionally, then, there is no difference between "true" and "false" gods, except the political implications of the claims.

Enlightenment

There are lots of ways gods can appear in fantasy fiction. Depending on the preferences of your player group, you can use any god or gods you like - but it's usually a good idea to think about whether you'll offend anyone before you use real-world religions, or churches with similar traits to real-world organisations. If in doubt, ask.

Me, I like to have multiple religions in multiple cultures in my game settings, and I tend to have deities fit into the "Powerful outsiders" and "Unproven" categories - I'm interested in the political interaction of faiths.

Whatever sort of deities you want to have in your game, understanding their role and being consistent in their portrayal is key to making the world seem real.

Wildlife woes

When I go running, I particularly like to run in the countryside, either on country lanes, or footpaths and bridleways.
I get to see the picturesque landscape, the rabbits, butterflies, sometimes a fox. I hear the birds singing, and sheep in the fields.

Preston Capes

Badby Woods

All very pleasant.

But there are some creatures out there that seem to have other ideas...



Near where I work, some of the local farmers keep bees. Almost any footpath I care to run along has a nearby beehive, with the resultant traffic of bees to and from the hive and plants around about it.

So I've been stung three times now by bees.

Each time it has been on the top of my head, when a bee has been caught in my hair. I have fine fluffy hair, easy for an insect to get tangled in. The second time it happened, I cut my hair really short to try to stop it happening again - it didn't help.
When I get stung on the head, there's nowhere for the venom to go (scalps are thin), so the swelling looks worse. I end up looking sort of like this:

 Or like this:

Now, I wear a bandana when I run, to keep the bees from getting trapped.

As well as bees, I've been stung a few times by a wasp. Just the one, over and over again, on my top lip. That was nasty, but not nearly as bad as the bee stings.


Moving on to vertebrates - but not exactly a wild animal: farm dogs.

There's a good 10 mile route through the countryside around my home, but it goes through a farm. This is a public road, which passes through a farm - its building are on either side of the road.
The farm appears to be run by a trio of dogs: I've never seen any people there. The first time I ran through there was with some mates - the dogs looked at us, but paid little attention.
Just before I ran through on my own, some weeks later, I met some cyclist going the other way, who warned me "There are some excited dogs up ahead."

 

For "excited", read "angry". These three farm dogs were pissed off with their territory being invaded once by whizzing sweaty men, and weren't going to let another sweaty man jog through. They herded me along - and the border collie bit me on the ankle.
(I'm told this is normal - if over-enthusiastic - herding behaviour for sheep dogs: to nip sheep on the ankles.)
Suffice to say, my personal best kilometer pace was set after passing through that farm.

Since then, I've learned that apparently dogs wag their tails differently when they're stressed and when they're happy - to the left when stressed, and to the right when happy.
Dogs know this, and they react with dominant / aggressive behaviour to dogs who appear stressed.
I theorise that being left-handed, when I instinctively wave left-handed to greet dogs - and being naturally nervous of them since I was bitten quite badly on the face by a dog as a child - I am encouraging dogs to be aggressive to me.

These days, I wave right-handed.
I also don't run through that farm.


On to avians - while running round a pond, I saw a lovely sight: some goslings being led along by their parents on the path ahead.
Of course, although I tried to give them plenty of room and go around, the parents had decided I was going to eat their offspring, and gave chase. Geese are quite big and scary when they're angry.

Worse than an angry goose waddling after me, was the buzzard attack this week.
Running along a normal stretch of road through a woodland, there was whoosh of something passing fast just above my head - a buzzard. As I ran on, I watched it fly over the road and into the trees on the other side, assuming I'd just been on its flight path by coincidence.
A few seconds later - BAM! I felt like someone had smacked me round the top of the head - a good cuffing blow that knocked my head forward and made me stagger. As I looked up and around to what had hit me, I saw my bandana flying to the ground on the verge in front of me, and the damn buzzard swooping up into the branches over my head.

A buzzard yesterday

It perched there, and keened at me: "Peeaw! Peeaw!" - I grabbed my hat and ran on, covering my head with my arms and muttering "All right, I'm going, I'm going!"
When I got back to work, one of my colleagues told me I was bleeding. Not too badly, on examination - as though I'd been badly scratched by a cat. The cuts didn't hurt so much as the impact. Still, I washed the cuts with alcohol from the solvents cupboard, to avoid bird flu or whatever nasties were on the hawk's talons.

As the attack had happened during my lunch break, I had to fill in the accident book and report it to the health and safety manager. "Wear a hat," he suggested.

I suspect the buzzard is nesting, or otherwise considers that patch of woods to its territory, and really just wanted me gone.
Suffice to say, that route is struck off my list of runs, too.

Incidently, when I was looking online for a picture of a British buzzard, it appears that my attack isn't especially uncommon:

Notice the first picture, top left...

Running is a great way to get out and about and see the countryside and wildlife. I just worry that the wildlife doesn't want to see me.
It'll be badger attacks, next...

In praise of one-off sessions

Throwing together a one-off game for an evening is something that the group I used play with used to do a lot.
Or rather, Tim used to do it a lot. I used to do it a bit. Other players used to do it sometimes. Tim was our hero GM, really. Hail Tim!

But I digress - making up a one-off game, that would last just one night, is what I want to blog about here.

I've got an ulterior motive here - I've become Tim. I'd like to get to play now and then, but I seem to be the only person in my gaming group who runs games.
Just like with Tim, I suspect that's because I volunteer to do so, and other GMs don't feel the need to step up.

Low investment

If your one-off game goes a bit wrong, who cares? You only spent an evening on it, and you still got to muck about with your mates.

You only have one evening, so the game needs to be quite simple, too. Don't try to have a complex plot, cause it'll be harder to show it in just a few hours of play. Keep the number of encounters to a minimum. Have just one villain, and a few minions. Don't have too many puzzles.

Cut to the chase

Get the game into the action as soon as you can. I've already blogged on where I got it wrong with one of my own one-off sessions. Here's what I learned

Maybe start in media res

Don't get bogged down in details - move on quickly, jump to the end of the journey

Don't use challenging encounters as a warm up

Also, my desire to start with the action has led me to a way of doing things that works quite well if you have a day or so of notice: tell the players up front what the adventure set up is going to be, and ask them why their character is going to be there.
For example: The adventure will be taking place in the castle of Baron Vileness, who is hated by the locals for his harsh taxes and bad behaviour. He often abducts pretty young folk and abuses them. He is said to have vast reserves of treasure and magical artefacts.
Why does your character want to break into the castle, and what are they planning to do there?
This lets the players think up their own characters' motives, which may only overlap with the other characters' motives in that they're both trying to get into Castle Vileness and get something from it.
Armed with the players input, I then tweak the adventure to give them what they want.
You get to steer the players into your adventure, but they control their characters' motivations.

Why is this good for one-session games? Because we start the session at Castle Vileness, with everyone already knowing why they want to be there and what they have to do.

Building on short games

One-off adventures are the best start. When you've never GMed before, or if you don't GM very often (hint, hint), it's far less daunting to run a game for a few hours, than it is to think about how a game will last weeks of multiple sessions and need an interlocking story and game-world and so on.
A short story is far easier to write than a novel - and a novel is easier to write than a whole game multiverse.

The setting that I use for my games is actually the result of a couple of decades idle thought, and collaberation from the other GMs.
What I actually have written down is tiny compared to the time it's taken. I'm actually very lazy - it just looks like I've done loads of work.

I've been watching Star Trek's original series - and it's really clear that each episode is adding to a galaxy that was rather sketchy to start off with. Ideas change and mutate over the course of the first season - but it doesn't matter! Each episode is self-contained.

So if you feel the urge to make up a whole complex multiverse, then don't try to do that before you start playing - the short games will build that game world as you go along.

The Tube Map Solution: from railroad to network

I picked up some adventure modules to run as filler in my campaign / mine for ideas. A few were good, but I found that far too many were railroaded to death.

Railroading is what happens when the players' choices are forced or eliminated in the name of plot. The worst cases are ridiculous - I've played in a game where the GM actually told us that a hovering slab of concrete appeared overhead, ominously looming until we turned back and played the plot he had written.
It was kind of funny at the time, but not really in keeping with the tone of the game (this was in the supposedly serious and gritty World of Darkness game setting) - and it's certainly not the best way to deal with players moving away from your prepared scenario.

The Alexandrian made a great guide to railroading - a tongue-in-cheek list of points to embrace when deliberately writing a railroad plot.
He's also written some great blog posts on how to open up scenarios and to make the plot flow more freely, from the players decisions.

This is all great advice when you're writing from scratch. But I suspect that like me, many GMs have limited time, and want to draw on pre-published material to make life easier.
So what I thought would be useful would be to use a few examples from published adventures where heavy railroading happens, and see how we can expand the choices to allow the players to choose meaningfully.

There's more then one way to get from Paddington to Liverpool Street

Fatal deviation

The renowned Dragonlance adventures have a reputation for steering the party along a pre-planned path. That may or may not be deserved - plenty of pre-published scenarios presented a linear story path, from one dungeon to the next (not all of them, but plenty enough) - but when I picked one up recently, I found a few glaring instances of serious railing.

In one part of the scenario in question, the player party is asked to aid some elves escape the bad guys - if you don't know the story, suffice to say the bad guys are very, very bad, and numerous. If the party accept, all well and good: the story continues, and the game with it.
If the heroes refuse the elves (that being the title of the section dealing with that possibility), then the GM is instructed to first beset the player characters with nasty dreams showing their death, and if that isn't enough of a hint that they've done the wrong thing, then to attack them with a horde of bad guys.

What the text then says regarding these attacks is what stunned me when I read it - it's the most blatant piece of railroading I think I've ever read in a scenario. What it says is this:

"These skirmishes will continue, one every game hour, until all the PCs are dead."

That's right - if the players don't want to play the story as written, then their characters must all be killed. It's not very much different to the ominous floating concrete slab, is it?

In situations like this, I tend to think about what the consequences of the player characters' inaction or failure might be, and then allow those things to happen. Let the game-world be changed by the decisions of the players!

Let's consider a few examples:
Luke Skywalker misses his "one in a million" shot, and the Death Star destroys the Rebel Base.
Now the game is about a dark dystopia, with a furtive and desperate resistance, instead of the relatively strong Rebellion we see in the other two films. The Jedi don't reappear - who has any faith in Luke, even if he survives? He's just a failure, along with any other survivors.
Our story focus turns to underworld connections and lowlifes, and morality becomes far greyer than the Dark and Light Sides of the Force - who is interested in that mumbo jumbo now?
There are plenty of adventures to be had as rebels: smuggling guns, assassinating Imperials, and so on - but the game has shifted away from the heroic path that was expected.

Aragorn and Co try to follow Frodo instead of Merry and Pippin.
Merry and Pippin are brought straight to Isengard and - once Saruman figures out they don't have the Ring - used as bait for Gandalf (assuming they are PCs, we'll want to keep them involved and alive). Gollum is probably either killed or at least kept on a far more close watch - since there are now several of the Fellowship to watch him.
Frodo, Sam, Aragorn and Co make a much easier route to Mordor (he's a Ranger after all) - but vast tracts of Middle Earth are destroyed by the forces of Mordor (Aragorn and Gandalf do not save Rohan and bring the Rohirrim to the Battle of Pelennor).
Does the Ring corrupt the rest of the Fellowship? Can the larger Fellowship make it through Mordor unseen? What evil forces are left occupying the lands even if the Dark Lord is destroyed? The adventure continues, but not in the way that was planned.

Those of course are big scale examples, but I'm using them to make a point.
When you look at scenarios, you need to think about what the fallout will be if the player characters don't succeed, or if they don't follow what you think is the best path. Or if the players hit on a simple short cut...

Omniscient NPCs

Years ago, when I was running a Cyberpunk 2020 game, I attacked the player team after they thought they had escaped from the street gang pursuing them. One of the players asked "What? How did they know where we went?"
I probably had some stock answer at the time ("Who are you asking?" or "You don't know"), but it made me think, and it made me improve. NPCs have to act only on the information they have available. Just as players must separate their own knowledge from their character's (just because Pete knows the abilities and weaknesses of dragons in the game doesn't mean that his character knows them too) - the GM must separate his or her knowledge from that of the NPCs.

I picked up a Living Greyhawk scenario for D&D 3.5 at the Free RPG Day one year. I understand these scenarios are quite quickly written - there's literally thousands of scenarios for the setting, which was published for just 8 years - and that administration of the many regions of the setting across the world would have been a mammoth task, so I'm prepared to cut plenty of slack for copy editing, spelling mistakes and so on. What I'm far less impressed by are the frankly bizarre NPC encounters and their behaviour.

In one encounter, the PCs are confronted by a gang of thugs who have been sent to "sound them out" (and attack them).
What puzzles me about this encounter, and no doubt would puzzle players too, is that there's no explanation given for how the thugs know about the PCs or their mission.
The PCs have literally just met with a new patron (who himself is absolutely ridiculous - he's described as having a completely empty house, if the text is to be taken literally*, and he gives the player characters no reason to trust him, but every reason to distrust him...) who has sent them off to do some job - and they are accosted by these thugs, who know who they are, who they've just been talking to, and that they are in conflict with the boss thug. (At this point, due to the somewhat scrappy writing of the scenario, it isn't necessarily particularly clear to the players that they are in conflict with this thug boss.)

The scenario says "as soon as the PCs walk outside they are accosted" [my emphasis] and that the thugs have been sent by their boss "to feel out the PCs." This implies strongly that the thugs aren't just watching the patron's house, and decide to take on the PCs as they look like a bunch of adventurers and thus mean trouble - no, they've been sent there specifically to encounter the PCs for some reason.

As if this first band of prescient NPCs wasn't enough - another one arrives in 4 rounds flat! That's less than 30 seconds later, with no explanation of why they're all suddenly converging on the players' characters' party. These new arrivals are allies, too - for some reason. They aid in the fight against the omniscient thugs, despite having never met the player characters. Neither has their boss any experience of the PCs at this point - but he clearly sends his minions to help the PCs before they actually need that help.

How do the NPC bosses know about the PCs? What if the player characters take steps to avoid being seen? What if the PCs scout out the area before leaving?

As crazy as all this seems, these are simple enough questions for a GM to think up answers to  (of course, if the scenario was properly written, you wouldn't need to). Here's how I might answer the issues:

How do the bosses know? The NPC bosses have been spying on each other, and the patron. The bosses are rivals, and this patron is clearly trying to manipulate things. When word gets to them that the patron has visitors - adventurer visitors - both bosses send their fellows round to see what's up. The allied boss's minions aid the players because they are fighting their rival's thugs.

The PCs are cautious. Instead of the patron's house being empty, there are a few unobtrusive servants. One of the servants is passing information to a spy of one or other of the bosses - and the other boss's spy is observing this leaked information. Thus once the PCs are safe inside the patron's house, the information can be smuggled out - and the various NPC groups can converge on the patron's house while the PCs are getting briefed.
If the PCs scout the area before leaving, they see the thugs scaring off the locals, ready to set on the PCs as they emerge. The PCs have the chance to try to avoid them, intervene, or whatever they wish - but the allied NPC minions arrive as scheduled, and the thugs start a fight with them. Our PC party is supposed to be a band of heroes - no evil player characters are permitted in this scenario - so hopefully they might intervene...

*Sure, I know the writer meant that there was nothing worth stealing, knowing that players tend to have their characters loot anything valuable, but that's not what the scenario said.

Dead-end maze

"Team Bravo: the first assignment" is a supposedly "mini" adventure scenario provided by Wizards of the Coast for the d20 Modern game, which immediately turned into a multi-session marathon, deviating from the original plot enormously.
It's not a bad scenario, but it's full of points where the players can easily and very rationally pursue other angles, or overlook something the scenario writers think is obvious. This isn't so much a true railroad, but a maze, full of dead ends, with only one path through it.

The plot is supposed to be essentially three encounters: one with a petty criminal who has witnessed some dinosaur killing his mate, one with the mad scientist who has cloned the dinosaurs and one of his specimens, and one with the remaining escaped dinosaurs.
However, the progression of the story hinges on a few set pieces:

• Discovery and correct interpretation of a name tag at the scene of a crime (not too difficult)
• Pursuit and live capture of the mad scientist after he's set a killer dinosaur on them (very difficult)
• Discovery and correct identification of some tracking devices to pursue the escaped dinosaurs (medium difficult)
• Facing the dinosaurs (utterly deadly)

Name tag, chase scenes and a few alternatives

Adventures need more than one path through them, or they run the risk of getting stuck. The Three Clue Rule is well established now, so I won't go over it again here.

If the players ignore or overlook the name tag in the first scene of the adventure, then there is no path to progress the plot.

To be fair, for the scientist chase, there is an alternate method provided to get the party to move on to the next part of the adventure: a set of scanners is present in the lab.

Deadly dinosaurs

The final encounter is a bloodbath, in which any of the player characters will be lucky to escape - let alone defeat the dinosaurs. Three dinos lurk in ambush in the sewer. The scenario is supposed to be written for 2nd level characters - very new adventurers. just starting out in their careers. I ran through the numbers for those dinos' attack capabilities, bearing in mind the heroes defensive stats.

Not to overwhelm this post with maths, the short version is that the average damage deal by these 6 hits is enough to immediately drop any 2nd level character in this game system, and more than enough to utterly kill most characters - and there is a third dino also in this ambush...

Also, the sewer itself is a death trap. An earlier point in the sewer has a severe undertow current, which requires a swim check to avoid submerging. The difficulty of that swim check equates to something like a 5% chance of success for an average character, or about 50% for a strong swimmer - but that's assuming the PCs are unencumbered by armour or gear. Wearing armour hugely impedes swimming chances in this game.
So, effectively, the scenario has an encounter practically designed to strip the armour off the characters, immediately before the dinosaur ambush...

Now, it's not necessarily a problem to have an overwhelmingly deadly encounter in a game - that depends on the tone. Maybe your game is supposed to end with one single survivor barely making it out alive (a horror action story, like Alien, or the Predator movie) - or maybe you expect the player characters to recognise just how deadly dangerous one of the dinos is from the earlier fight, and tool up ready for the hunt.
The scenario writers didn't plan that, though. The writing implies that defeat of the dinos is a foregone conclusion - "After the heroes defeat the deinonychuses in the sewer, they can go back and investigate ..." it says. There's no acknowledgement of the deadly nature of that encounter - nothing like "Assuming the heroes defeat..." or "...the surviving heroes can ..."
Nor is there enough time to prepare for the hunt: they're expected to rush in before they even fully investigate the lab. Okay, one can easily give the players time to prepare, but the wealth system of this game means that there's not a lot of extra equipment they can gather to help them out.

Fixing things
In running this game, I had to make several changes.

• I added more clues - we need at least three, remember, and the writers had only given us two each time. (Two is better than most scenarios, to be fair.)
• I gave the party time to prepare for the hunt, and more gear, and I re-arranged the encounter to remove the flanking ambush.
• (It didn't help much, though - I still had to use a deus ex machina of some rival secret organisation to extract the nearly dead unconscious heroes, in the end. Thankfully, I'd been foreshadowing the existence of this other organisation throughout the adventure, and it also allowed me to add extra plot to the ongoing story - my players' characters were now indebted to their rivals...)

They worked at the time, but since then I've thought about it more, and I think I can do better. It still smacks of a railroad adventure: the players are pulled through a plot, each event happening on cue when they show up. Of course we need the players to be engaged by the story, but if they wander off to do something else, are the NPCs really going to sit around doing nothing?When I write adventures of my own, I like to write plans, not plots. The NPCs all have their motivations and agendas, and will carry on with them despite the PCs' actions. In the dinosaur adventure above, I'd include the dinosaurs as NPCs, too.

As written, those dinosaurs are just waiting in the sewer. Surely, they'd be more likely to get out there and attack more prey? And with more attacks - not just people, but animals too - the party might be able to find more clues.
Those clues need not lead them to the same events that the written adventure planned - can the dinos be tracked to their lair? Can the players lay a trap for the dinos?

The scientist in the scenario as written waits until the PCs come calling before he goes hunting the missing dinos. Shouldn't he be more proactive? Maybe some witnesses say they've already been interviewed, and give a description of the scientist. Maybe the PCs are tasked with investigating a missing person, when he gets eaten by his escaped creations...

Lastly, who hired the scientist? In the scenario, it's written that some secret military organisation commissioned the dinosaur project - what are they doing about all this?
In my version of the adventure, I used this complication - and it allowed me to pull my player characters out of the fire at the end of the scenario when the dinos proved to be as deadly as I've suggested above.

Mapping the tube

Ultimately, all these solutions boil down to one thing: preparation.
Read the scenario (thoroughly - don't skim it!) and make notes where it seems to be lacking depth, or is forcing the players into one railroad path.
For every railroaded scene or encounter, you should consider (and note down) the possible fall out, what the NPCs are up to while the PCs are footling around somewhere else, why the NPCs are acting the way they are written, and so on.

Plans not plots
NPCs carry on with their plans regardless of the PCs.
Consider what those plans are, and how they progress while the PCs are busy. Don't just leave scenes primed and waiting for the PCs to find them.
(Of course, you can provide a set piece scene now and then - and it'll work better because it isn't the norm.)

Fallout and consequences
Rather than the story grinding to a halt, or all the PCs being killed when they stray from the prepared plot, it pays to have an idea of how the possible outcomes will feed into the NPCs' plans.
Who will lose out, and who will benefit? Think of a few ways in which the event can play out, and note down what the consequences are. This will make sure the players feel that their actions are really important in the game, rather than just steered toward your planned plot.

Realistic and limited NPCs
Knowing how your antagonists know what they know means that you can think about what they don't know, as well. You're not trying to defeat the players, just challenge them - and that needs to be a fair challenge.
Of course, in fantasy and some sci-fi settings, some NPCs might really be omniscient. But when you  decide to legitimately used omniscient antagonists, the players will be all the more worried and alarmed because this hasn't been the norm.
And even such omniscient NPCs should have some source to their knowledge - so you can consider whether it too can be thwarted.

When I first thought of writing this post, my first instinct was to bitch about how awful those scenarios were, but it's far more karmic and constructive to show how to turn those glitches on their heads.
Hopefully, then, I've provided a few ideas on how you might use an hour or so of thought and a few notes, to take a railroaded scenario and turn it into some thing more like a choice-filled tube map.

Where I Go Wrong - short, one-off games

Here's my first post beginning a series of posts about mistakes I find myself making while GMing, and thoughts about how to fix those mistakes.

Last night, I ran a game for a couple of mates in which an incident while the heroes were out hunting was supposed to lead the story into another, more significant event that was happening nearby.
The hunting was coincidental to the real adventure, but it bogged down and dominated the game session, so much so that what I had planned to be a single three hour session of gaming has now ended with a cliff-hanger, with action to be concluded next session.

Here's how it went down:

A Duchess wants to butter up a Count so that he is amenable to negotiations, and claims that the best way to do this is to arrange for him to have a successful kill of a great beast - a sabre-toothed tiger - while hunting. The heroes are to steer the count to the beast, and aid in the kill - but not steal the kill, so that the Count feels awesome.
This hunting expedition is actually a set up so that the player characters are on hand to witness some other event that happens nearby. I'll not go into what that event is, because the players may be looking - and it doesn't really matter for this post, except as the true aim of the game session.

Beardy, a player of Sefu the warrior hero, was late arriving - he thought we were going to play at the local games club for some reason. (Mrs Alastair, player of Silwen the caster hero, was on hand, due to being Mrs Alastair.) The lateness isn't too significant, but I suspect it should have alerted me to the need to keep things short...

After a little preamble in which the patron Duchess explains her needs, Mrs Alastair gets stuck in with questions. These are all good, valid questions, but we further delay getting to the action as her concerns are addressed.
I go through some descriptions of the landscape and scenery, and arriving at the Chateau where the hunt is going to start - then make the time-consuming mistake of having the guard on the gate halt them. From my description of him - trying to inject a little humour by making him a sloppy Gallic reprobate, smoking a cheroot while supposedly on duty - Sefu the warrior hero wants to sort out the guard's uniform and tell him off (Sefu was a guard on an airship before graduating to heroism). Now we take a few more minutes to discuss whether it's possible for Sefu to straighten the guard's helmet without starting a fight. I say "No - he's got a pike: if you try to close with him while he's challenging you, he'll kick off." We agree that yes, the guard would be minced up pretty sharpish, but that wouldn't be a good way to start employment as beaters for the coming hunt.
Then I compound my mistake by role-playing discussions on the logistics of beating, gameskeeping and so on. Fun, but not what I'm trying to do with this session.

Of course, throughout this actual game play, we get distracted with the usual nattering off topic as well - so that by the time the hunting party has set off with our two heroes inserted as beaters, it's well past 9pm.
We engaged in somewhat curtailed role-playing within the hunting party, as I'm now increasing aware of the lagging time. I spring the tiger action on them after just a few minutes of banter.
The fight with the dire tiger was rather exciting, to be honest - mainly because of the extra requirement of having to make the Count believe he was the one who killed the beast, I think. Making the players think differently about the fight, seemed to add something.
The fight started with one of the NPC beaters being ambushed - and outright killed - by the tiger. The tiger then made off, dragging its prey over the heath. I played the tiger as instinctively as possible - she wasn't interested in the hunting party except as obstacles to avoid as she made off with her dinner... until they started to seriously injure her - then she fought back.
The players were pulling their blows a little to let the count make the significant hits - until Sefu was mauled by the tiger, and dropped. Then Mrs Vexed unleashed the big spells, and the Count really had to fight it unaided. A few more injuries, and the tiger fled for her life.

By this time - about 10:45 - the tiger was well cut and stabbed and burned - and the Count's arrow was the last hit before it bled out into unconsciousness.
With a little wrapping up of the session (healing Sefu, performing the coup de grace on the tiger, role-playing of the woe of losing a beater, calming down after the excitement), I produced a cliff-hanger for the next session: rising smoke in the distance, and the flash of swords in the sunlight.

What did I learn from this?

• Move on quickly - we get sidetracked with funny scenes or colourful encounters, but the action needs to move on. 
• Rather than debating whether the guard would attack Sefu, I could have just had him bluster comically, and then direct the heroes where they were meant to go.
• Rather than dwelling on the set up of the hunt, I could have jump-cut to the heroes' hunting party travelling overland toward their goal.
• Maybe start in media res - a logical extension of the jump-cut: we could have begun with the hunting party, and recapped the introduction. These players are quite happy with narrative leaps (I've used plenty of "Cut to the Death Star" type scenes to build tension, before), I could easily have used them.
• Don't use challenging monsters as a warm up. The dire tiger was too tough, and took too long - especially as it was just a preliminary to the real point of the scenario.

Morals, ethics and character development

Right from its start, Dungeons and Dragons introduced the concept of Alignment - a bench mark of your character's moral and ethical outlook. By assigning an alignment to your character, you were making a statement about the sort of person that character was, morally and ethically - rather than simply having your character take whatever action seemed optimal.
Arguably, without this innovation, D&D would just have been an adventure game, with no in-built role-playing requirement.
(Would our hobby have developed differently without this role-playing rule? We'll never know.)

Alignment is described in Pathfinder and 3rd Edition D&D as a "creature's general moral and personal attitudes". Other games have similar concepts: World of Darkness has Virtues and Vices, for example.
I'm going to use the term alignment to refer to all such moral and personality traits within RPGs. I won't get bogged down in discussing the meaning of alignment systems of different games - you can use the links to look at the examples above.
However, in this article, I'll concentrate on the D&D alignment system, as it's the one system that comes in for the most criticism.

What alignments do for us, is they provide us with a short-hand term to describe the usual behaviour of our characters and creatures in the game. D&D goes on to describe alignment as "a tool for developing your character's identity." If your character is Good, that means something about the way she acts in response to critical situations. D&D says that "Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others." So you've got a handle on at least one part of her behaviour just from that single word.
That seems worthwhile - after all, if we have nothing to set our characters' personality apart from our own, then we could just be playing an adventure game, and not playing a role at all.

Objections
Search through almost any role-playing game forum, and you'll quickly find that many people don't like the use of alignments in their games. I asked around on some forums again, to find out what the common objections were.

Nearly a quarter of the negative remarks were to do with the bad role-playing that alignment can produce: dumb and goofy role-playing by some players has been excused by reference to the character's alignment. "I'm supposed to be totally random, innit? Chaotic Neutral For the Win!"
I'm not sure that this is really the fault of alignment systems. Bad role-players will use any excuse.
Interestingly, as we'll see from the positive comments below, the role that alignments play in fostering role-playing was raised as a positive point as well.

Over a quarter of the responders said that they didn't like the poor definitions of the alignments. "Good" and "Evil" are hard to define when confronted with complex examples - is it evil to kill hostage-takers, putting the hostages at risk? - is it evil to kill the non-combatant members of a tribe of orcs?
This is levelled squarely at D&D's alignments, and in particular, many of the comments mentioned that the definitions had changed markedly over the editions of the game.
To me, that isn't a helpful thing to raise: each edition of a game supersedes the previous one - you shouldn't try to mix rules or alignment definitions.

On the topic of slaughtering helpless orc children - the idea of species that are "always chaotic evil" took a fair bit of flack. The generally allowed exception was angels and demons and other inherently magical creatures - it was agreed that these sort of otherworldly creatures can embody an alignment.

About a fifth of the negative comments were that alignment is restrictive. Interestingly, D&D and its derivatives specifically say that alignment "is not a straitjacket for restricting your character". So how is alignment restrictive? From reading between the lines of these responses, it seems that the restrictive comment includes worries about the fixedness of alignment, rather than the narrowness of the alignment. (We'll see that this is supported by some of the positive comments, below.)
I'll add comments about "lack of nuance" to this section, as well - taking the total share of negative comments up to nearly half. This addresses the narrowness of alignment, and the perceived inability of alignment systems to reflect characters who display complex moral and ethical behaviour.

Support
On the other hand, there were some very positive responses about alignment systems in my survey.

The most common positive response (at 50% of the positive comments) was that alignments promote at least basic role-play. That ties in with what I've said above - alignments build in role-playing, by making you think about how the alignment affects your character's behaviour.

Roughly equal shares of the positive comment pool were given to a few innovations in alignment systems from various games. I found that people liked alignment systems that allow change, that base alignment on reputation, and that reward the playing of the alignment.

Lastly, a few respondents said that they liked alignments because they promote team play. If all of your adventuring group share a moral outlook, then the group is able to pull together. Players are less likely to screw over their fellow players' characters if they are working towards a common goal.

Embrace change

So we can see that players don't liked fixed alignments, finding them restrictive, and some have said they like alignment systems which allow change.
This makes for good drama and verisimilitude. People rarely have fixed moral attitudes throughout their lives. Some of the most interesting characters in fiction have changing ethics through their stories.

In the hero's journey, characters often reject the heroic quest to try to carry on with their comfortable existence - behaving in a Neutral manner: avoiding hardship and risk, perhaps while advocating that someone else should take on the burden. Later, however - because they are heroes, of course - they accept the quest, and become Good - actively pursuing good despite the risks and hardships.

George Lucas wrote Star Wars with the Hero's Journey in mind, and so provides us with some clear examples. Here we go:

At first Luke Skywalker refuses Ben Kenobi's quest (to go with him Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force), only later going when his adoptive family are killed. Even then, he doesn't appear to be particularly motivated - until he's exposed to what the Empire are doing, and meet people he cares about who are fighting against it. 

So in alignment terms, we could say that Luke goes from the human default of True Neutral, towards Good, through a series of attitude changes.

Changing personalities in RPGs therefore should not merely be catered for, they should be encouraged. Exploring how adventuring and heroism changes your character's attitude, or the villain's personality, is an exciting and interesting thing to do. Static, unchanging characters are dull.

Making alignment dynamic

Over the years, I often tried to think of ways to make alignment dynamic and flexible - to let characters move between alignments, and give players consequences to their role-playing of their alignments.
Even before I started working on this post, I was trying out some ideas.

What the research I did for this post has taught me is what people want from alignment, and what they want to avoid.
I've pinned down the goals to the following:

Alignment should be rewarding, changeable and nuanced, and promote role-playing.

Misalignment

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37591
I toyed with the idea that as your drift from your moral compass points,  you become more susceptible to magical coercion, possession and so on, and less able to produce magical effects that rely on dedication to an alignment.
Mechanically, this would be through gaining misalignment points - inspired by the Dark Side points system of the various Star Wars RPGs.
Several things made me give up on this idea - it would be hard to implement, for a start, but mostly because it punishes characters for role-playing.
So, I discarded it.

Reputed alignment

After discarding misalignment  as a bad idea, I thought about rewarding alignments - granting special abilities or bonuses based on alignment. This idea was prompted by a relatively new player who said that he didn't see the point of alignment, as it didn't gain you anything, except maybe some experience points rewards.
At first, I thought these benefits would just be connected to your normal alignment - but it gradually dawned on me that your reputed moral and ethical outlook would have at least as much effect on the world than your true morals and ethics.
This then led me to think about having two alignment systems, running in parallel - letting you play characters who were hiding their true nature, or acting against their true type.
There are so many examples of this in media - Bruce Wayne isn't the self-centred playboy he pretends to be,

In summary, what I came up with is this: 

Alignments
Your moral and ethical outlook makes a difference to your understanding of others.

It is easier to understand creatures and people who are similarly aligned to you.

You gain a +1 alignment bonus to Sense motive checks against targets with any shared alignment axis.

 It is hard to understand people and creatures that are utterly opposed to your way of thinking.

You take a -1 alignment penalty to Sense motive checks against targets with an alignment on the opposed alignment axis.

 The GM applies these bonuses secretly, without revealing the alignments of NPCs. 

Reputation 

Heroes become more well-known as they achieve memorable actions - this is reflected by an increasing reputation bonus.

Your reputation bonus is equal to 1/2 your level (rounding down, to a minimum of 0).

Additional reputation bonus rewards may be granted by the GM. Characters doing conspicuous deeds may gain increased reputation. Generally, such reputation bonuses should be no more than +1 / level.

The reputation bonus sets the level of fame for your character. If NPCs have heard of you, then you gain modifiers to certain charisma-based checks, depending on your alignment. A successful check means that your reputation modifier is applied to certain social skill checks.

To determine whether any particular NPC has heard of a character with a reputation score, make a reputation check, DC15.

A reputation check is 1d20 + reputation score + NPC's INT modifier


The GM may substitute a Knowledge skill bonus for the Int modifier if he decides the character’s past activities apply to a particular field. For example, if the character were a cleric, Knowledge (religion) might be appropriate.

Reputation acts as a penalty to Disguise checks.

Applying reputation
Your reputation modifier is applied differently depending on your alignment.

All alignments gain their reputation score as a reputation bonus to Diplomacy checks with targets having the exact same alignment. Reputation bonuses stack.

Good alignments grant a reputation bonus to Diplomacy.
Evil alignments grant a reputation bonus to Intimidate.
Chaotic alignments grant a reputation bonus to Intimidate.
Lawful alignments grant a reputation bonus to Bluff.

These rules fulfill my aims of making alignment attractive, flexible, and nuanced.

Adventure vs Role-playing vs Storytelling

What are we playing?

 I usually talk about my hobby using the term "roleplaying games", but there are some other terms that we could use: adventure games, and storytelling games.
The Alexandrian has already blogged extensively on the differences between Storytelling and Role-playing games, so I won't repeat what he's said in depth - but I think we should add this other category, adventure games, which he doesn't cover.

Adventure games

An adventure game at first may look a lot like a role-playing game: the players assume roles in the game, and overcome obstacles. The difference is in the lack of alter-ego - the player's character is primarily an avatar of themselves; there is no attempt to portray a separate character.  
Adventure games rely on the players' abilities - it is the player that solves puzzles, investigates scenes, and explores.
In the classic text adventure, The Hobbit, you may be following the story of the protagonist of the book of the same name, Bilbo Baggins, but the game doesn't expect you to take choices based on your attempt to portray the famous halfling. You are expected to solve problems and achieve goals by making winning moves.
Similarly, in Tomb Raider, you control Lara Croft, aristocratic archeologist (and exterminator of endangered species) - but you proceed through a series of challenges and puzzles, rather than trying to act out the behaviour you judge to be likely for such a character.

As a player of adventure games, it is your insight and skill that drives your character / avatar forward, not those of the character.

Adventure games use story and character as background for puzzles and action.

Role-playing games

By contrast, role-playing games manifestly expect us to adopt the behaviour of our characters. Our goal is increasing the power of our characters through experience - gaining treasure, skills and prowess. Acting out the actions that our character would take, based on our assumed character identity - and the fallout and consequences of those actions - is the entertainment at the heart of role-playing.

Role-playing games use story, puzzle and action as a background for character progression.

Storytelling games

Storytelling games focus on narrative. In storytelling games, it is often better to take actions that you, as the player, know will put your character at risk in order to progress through the story. Preserving your character becomes secondary to the story - dramatic situations are more important than amassing character power.

Storytelling games use action, puzzle and characters as devices to move the story forward.

 

Blending:

In actual play, games tend to be blend of the above.

Players may need to feel that their insight and skill is useful - adventure game style. If character skill totally overrides player skill, this can be frustrating. Consider video game characters who cannot climb over simple obstacles. Conversely, characters who achieve actions utterly unheard of by the players - interpreting clues without a clear logical path, for example - can make players feel they are being led by the nose, or "railroaded".

Storytelling requires characters to take actions that stretch reality - investigating the noise in the cellar with a faulty torch in one's night clothes, or speaking aloud the arcane inscription on the profane temple altar. These actions move the story along.

It need not be as extreme as that, of course, but for the sake of the game, characters sometimes need to take on tasks that are outside their comfort zone.
"My character wouldn't do that" means that the game stops right there for you. A blunt GM might say, "Fine: fetch me a character who will," or even, "Fine: your character sits in his apartment while the rest of the player characters go on their adventure."

So for a game - whether that's an adventure, role-playing or storytelling game - to succeed, you need to consider all of the styles.
An adventure game dissolves into a series of dry IQ tests if there is no story or character to motivate the players.
A role-playing game needs both story and obstacles that are interesting, or it'll end up just being a grind of killing wild boars till you level up.
And storytelling games can become ridiculous if the character's actions or the obstacles presented are too unbelievable.

Playing roles

It's a role-playing game! This is what we do - adopting the role of an imaginary character, and reacting to the situations those characters are confronted with - but we often have different styles and abilities.

Some players will act out every action of their character, speaking in their voice for the whole game session, while others will describe their character's actions in third person. Some players will look to portray characters with similar skills to their own, or vastly different. It's part of the escapism.
Me, I think that part of the fun of role-playing is exploring characters who are better, or worse than ourselves - I'm a weak, short-sighted nerdy type, but I'd prefer to play a sharp-shooter outlaw, or an axe-wielding mercenary. I agree, though: now and then, it's fun to play an heroic exaggeration of oneself.

Different styles

Some players are good at in-character dialogue - they will slip into the persona and speak as though they were acting in an improvised play. In grammar, that's called direct speech. Other players don't enjoy that so much, and prefer to refer to their character's speech in the third person: they'll say "Grog the Barbarian says he doesn't want to do that," rather than speaking as though they were Grog: "Grog not want to." That's called reported speech.
Of course, both these styles are valid. We're playing a game - we're really more interested in having fun, rather than pushing people's comfort zones.
Reported speech even allows you to add descriptors, rather than trying to pull off the acting for your self. "Grog the Barbarian bares his teeth and growls that he doesn't want to do that."
It also lets you put some distance between you the player and the situation your character is in, which can be useful if you're having an in-character argument, or - maybe more uncomfortable - seduction.

Social skills

Some gamers advocate doing away with social skills in games, but I don't like that approach, as I think it's unfair. Specifically, it causes problems when you have charismatic players playing uncharismatic characters, and vice versa.
For example, imagine a very forthright and centre-of-attention kind of guy playing a character who is supposed to be significantly below average in the charisma stakes. He makes no allowances for it, in game, and just plays with his own level of social ability.
Conversely, consider a player who is rather socially awkward and lacking in empathy, playing a character who is meant to be suave, cool and a ladies' man. He tries to role-play those traits - but we really have to rely on the dice results to see how cool and seductive his character is being.

To counter these examples, I felt I needed to come up with a couple of house rules:

Resolve social skill checks before role-playing

• Where game rules include a mechanic for social skills, get players to make their dice rolls for social interactions before role-playing the outcome
• It can be just as fun to role-play bad results, as it is to be successful

Discuss the player's social intent, then roll

• Get the player to describe what they're trying to do, including any specific topics they want to include
• Modify the skill check to account for good and bad points
• This method works well with players who aren't Machiavellian masters of manipulation, but want to play such characters

Combining the two ideas above lets you get the best of both: you can adjust the difficulty of the check based on the input from the player, and then role-play the results.

Rewarding the quiet ones

Many RPGs explicitly tell you to reward good role-playing, with in-game bonuses, extra improvement points, and even treasure. I generally like this sort of thing in principle, but it can be easy to overlook players and characters who are equally contributing to the enjoyment of the game.

Off-line role-playing - by which I mean submitting in-character write ups of game sessions, drawing elaborate maps from explored regions, anything of that sort that shows deep engagement with the game - is a source of great joy to me. I find it really exciting when someone has taken time outside the game to do their write up, or make props, or whatever.
This sort of off-line role-playing should be rewarded! That's especially important if the player is shy of role-playing at the table - watch out for this sort of player. They're the ones who don't speak up much, or avoid talking in-character, but still seems to be enjoying themselves, and aren't goofing around. Remember to allow their off-line outlet to count as much as other players' exemplary role-playing at the table.

Lots of actors relish the chance of playing a flamboyant character, an insane persona, a disabled character, a vile villain - all because they get to flex those acting muscles. Look at me, I'm acting! Notice how a great many Best Actor awards go to such intense performances?
Sometimes, though, a character's nature won't allow for much overt role-playing at the table - a silent loner, or a shy youngster - it's not appropriate for these to command much attention during the social parts of the game story.
Watch out for these characters - don't let yourself get too dazzled by overt displays of role-playing from flamboyant characters to the extent that you over look these more subtle types.

After the Heroes are Dead

What happens to your game after a total party kill?

Eventually, despite all your careful planning as a GM, the players will lose. You'll be looking round at the blank or grumpy faces of your players after a TPK, feeling maybe guilty, maybe pleased with yourself - but realising that you've just stopped the game. Dead.

So - you've killed the whole player party. Now what?

You could of course play a different game - either a wholly different game (Monopoly or poker instead of an RPG), play with different RPG rules (Traveller instead of D&D), or play in a different setting (d20 Modern instead of d20 Future).

But if you've got all the gear in place to play your preferred RPG, you probably don't want to ditch that game just yet.

Here are a few options to let your game carry on in one way or another.

New party
The traditional solution to a TPK is a new party. The players start making up new characters. This was once considered the normal thing to do, just as killing the whole party was once considered fairly normal.
Of course, early RPGs tended to have simple character creation rules, so this process often only took a few minutes. Now we have two-page character sheets as the norm, and many options for customisation, the new party solution can be more of an ordeal, less fun.

If you're creating a new party, you generally have two options for continued play:

• New goals: a fresh game in the same setting
• The new party is unrelated to the old party, and will pursue different stories and adventures.
• This will take a fair bit of work on the part of the GM - depending on when in the game session your TPK happened, you may get away with having some introductory hook before you get to take a break till the next session.
• Same goals: pick up the pieces of the previous failure
• The new party is a rescue team, or rival explorers, following the same or similar adventure path.

Captured, not killed
The bad guys have hauled the defeated and unconscious heroes away to some stronghold, where they regain consciousness. From this situation, they can think about escape ... regaining their McGuffins (and other necessary equipment) ...

• Means of escape: how do they get out again?
• You'll need to think about how often guards patrol and jailers visit, how difficult the lock is to pick, and so on.
• You'll need a layout for the dungeon or wherever it is the heroes have been incarcerated.
• Interrogation: how do you resolve torture and questioning?
• Do the rules you're playing with have a mechanic for interrogation, or will you have to make one up? Can you just roleplay it - letting the player decide how stoic his character is? This will depend on your players, but it's worth thinking about this before you spring such scenes on the players.
• Careful with this topic - your players will have different levels of enthusiasm for scenes of this nature.

Capturing the heroes can of course move them deep into the enemy base - which may have been a goal of theirs all along.

The capture scenario works best if the bad guys would realistically feel the need to extract information from the heroes, hold them ransom, or similar. It's not realistic if the bad guys would gain more by killing their enemies once they were at their mercy.
Remember though - even some dumb animals may store their fresh meat for later: like the spiders in Middle Earth

A variant of the capture idea is that one of the heroes gets away.
Perhaps the sneakiest of the hero party isn't found during the imprisonment of the fallen, and comes round by herself later. This gives us a cinematic episode in which you can jump back and forth between the gloating bad guys, and the daring rescue attempt.

Undead
The heroes become ghosts or vampires and continue a shadowy existence.

• Vile undead: the vile bad guys re-use the fallen heroes as undead! 
• A few more vampires for the evil army are always useful.
• The players then have the option of playing as evil undead (which can be great fun in itself) or trying to regain their lost humanity.
• Tragic spooks: the woe of the restless dead!
• The heroes are insubstantial ghosts, trying to influence the world to right the wrongs they left unfinished.
• This also marries up with the vile undead version, in that some players may wish to portray their monstrous undead characters as victims rather than predators.

You'll need to make sure you have some sort of mechanical method to resolve conflicts between the vile nature of the undead, and the resisting human soul. You'll also need to decide how - if at all - the heroes can be returned to life once they've become undead.
In less fantastic settings, for "undead", you could insert "hypnotised agent" - where the players' characters are returned as evil clones, cyborg agents, or Manchurian Candidates under the control of the evil mastermind. The outcome is effectively the same.
You may find that your players differ on whether they want to play as evil, or try to return their characters to life in some way. If this seems likely, you might find the group would enjoy playing these  factions off against each other.


Afterlife
The heroes are dead, and go to their appointed place in the afterlife.

• Resurrected: you are our only hope!
• The heroes are returned to life by some future earthly agents, perhaps to fulfil their previous mission, or perhaps to take on a new threat. Think of King Arthur and his knights, who will supposedly return to aid Albion in its time of need. Perhaps ages have passed, and the world is utterly different - the consequences of the heroes previous failure. Or maybe only a few months or weeks or days have passed.
• In fantasy games, magic may raise the dead. In sci-fi, maybe cloning, brain download, or cryogenics allows the heroes to live again.
• Fight for life: the Seventh Seal effect
• the heroes are given the chance to defeat Death in the afterlife, and must argue their case  to return to life.

You'll need some ideas about how the afterlife appears in your setting, what denizens there are, bureaucracy and rules, styles and themes. Are there different parts for heroes of different ethics and morals? Different cultures?

Dream prophesy
After the TPK, return the game to a prior point in play, and continue as though the previous deaths were some sort of vision or dream.
The morning before the massacre, with the heroes waking and preparing for the day ahead, is a good point to revert to, but you can pick any time you feel like - even just a few minute before.
One (or more) of the heroes had a dream or vision of the death of the whole party - and armed with that prophetic knowledge, they can try to avert disaster.

• One visionary: the Final Destination effect
• only one of the party knows about the vision / dream, and must try to convince the rest of the heroes about the danger ahead.
• This requires the rest of the players to separate their player knowledge from character knowledge, and play their roles well. The dramatic irony of such a situation can be great fun to play with - but if your players aren't up for the challenge of role-playing ignorance, then this may fall flat. Your mileage may vary, as they say.
• Shared dream: the whole party recalls the vision 
• This is obviously as far more magical event, and will tend to elicit proactive cooperation to avoid the TPK.

These method work well if the party were heavily overpowered - they get a chance to plan ahead and try again.

Death in action
Planning and preparation is required for all of the suggestions above - but you can leave that preparation quite generic until you need it.
For the Captured scenario, for example, you only need to have a sketch of generic dungeon or jail, with a few notes on guards and locks - these sorts of things can be handy whether or not you kill everyone!

Of course, it's a good idea when the TPK happens to talk about what your players want to do. It's no good trying to carry on if the players aren't on board, and it's no good trying to change the tone of the game suddenly in the middle of play - making them all spectres, or going on the spirit journey through the afterlife - if the players aren't up for that.
Remember as well to be sensitive to players personal beliefs, as far as you know them. It can be helpful to reiterate that you're playing a fictional game, not exploring religious truths.