Using grey morality injects ambiguity into a story. This ambiguity can then be used to drive conflicts and forge characters.
This happens a lot in my current Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Right now, there's this hobgoblin warlord that's building an army. He uses slave labor, gathers lots of weapons, and absorbs independent goblinoid communities into his army. Sounds bad, right? When the party infiltrated his camp as caravan guards to gather intel they didn't find something like the pits of Mordor. It was an organized war camp but there was nothing exceptionally cruel going on (that we noticed at least).
When he offered a banquet for the caravan to celebration the completion of the deal, we totally thought there was going to be poison. My character downed an antidote. There wasn't any poison. We later learned that this warlord was a repeat customer of the human city states and had never cheated any of them. In fact, we discovered that his army was not meant to attack any of the city-states (at the time, at least; on-going campaign and all) but a kraken worshiping cult that had been abducting sailors and transforming them into sea-spawn.
We weren't sure who we should side with, if either of them. It led to a lot of interesting discussions within the party. Some of us wanted to attack the warlord for being a slave-owner and some wanted to side with him because they saw the kraken cult as the bigger threat and/or greater rewards lay in working for the more lawful of the two. The roleplay of these debates was a lot of fun.
My own character was mostly interested in hunting and eating so he didn't care which side ended up filling his belly.
There was even a mysterious monk following us. We weren't sure (until the most recent session) if he worked for the hobgoblin warlord, the kraken cult or a third faction. Thus, we didn't know if he was an enemy or a possible ally. This also led to fun roleplaying.
If things had been more straight-forward then we won't have had the opportunity to have these fun moments. Discussing a course of action, in-character, was made possible by the ambiguity of the grey/unknown morality of the characters we met.
What do you think? If you'd like, please share with me such moments of your own campaigns.
Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback
This happens a lot in my current Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Right now, there's this hobgoblin warlord that's building an army. He uses slave labor, gathers lots of weapons, and absorbs independent goblinoid communities into his army. Sounds bad, right? When the party infiltrated his camp as caravan guards to gather intel they didn't find something like the pits of Mordor. It was an organized war camp but there was nothing exceptionally cruel going on (that we noticed at least).
When he offered a banquet for the caravan to celebration the completion of the deal, we totally thought there was going to be poison. My character downed an antidote. There wasn't any poison. We later learned that this warlord was a repeat customer of the human city states and had never cheated any of them. In fact, we discovered that his army was not meant to attack any of the city-states (at the time, at least; on-going campaign and all) but a kraken worshiping cult that had been abducting sailors and transforming them into sea-spawn.
We weren't sure who we should side with, if either of them. It led to a lot of interesting discussions within the party. Some of us wanted to attack the warlord for being a slave-owner and some wanted to side with him because they saw the kraken cult as the bigger threat and/or greater rewards lay in working for the more lawful of the two. The roleplay of these debates was a lot of fun.
My own character was mostly interested in hunting and eating so he didn't care which side ended up filling his belly.
There was even a mysterious monk following us. We weren't sure (until the most recent session) if he worked for the hobgoblin warlord, the kraken cult or a third faction. Thus, we didn't know if he was an enemy or a possible ally. This also led to fun roleplaying.
If things had been more straight-forward then we won't have had the opportunity to have these fun moments. Discussing a course of action, in-character, was made possible by the ambiguity of the grey/unknown morality of the characters we met.
What do you think? If you'd like, please share with me such moments of your own campaigns.
Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback
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