Gothic
Virtues and Vices
For those who like to have
a sense of who their character is before play begins—as opposed to
letting a character's personality emerge during play—the following
list of virtues and vices might be helpful for defining your
character's personality. Each virtue and vice is arranged in a
binary pair that represents a possible tension within the character's
psyche; divide 10 “points” between the virtue and vice of each
pairing to determine the extent to which the character favors the
virtue or the vice. For example, a particularly superstitious
character might have
Reason 3/Superstition 7 or
a character torn between chastity and lust might have
Faithfulness
5/Lasciviousness 5.
Virtues/Vices:
Reason/Superstition
– does your character confront the supernatural with the light of
reason or do they resort to the ancient ways of folk belief?
Reserve/Passion –
does your character exercise control over their emotions or do they
give their impassioned impulses free reign?
Restraint/Excess –
when exposed to drink, gambling, and other vices, does your character
place limits upon their conduct or do they indulge past the
satiation of their urges?
Faithfulness/Lasciviousness
– are your character's romantic entanglements limited to one
beloved object of affection or is your character prodigious with
their lusts?
Forgiveness/Vengeance
– does your character pass over the many slights offered by the
world or do they swear to exact revenge against those who wrong
them?
Authority/Liberty –
does your character respect the temporal and religious restrictions
imposed by the civilized world or do they value their personal
freedom of action above all else?
Lawfulness/Criminality
– does your character follow the laws of the land or are they
inextricably pulled toward the underworld?
Piety/Worldliness –
is your character's worldview colored by the hues of spiritual belief
or are they instead drawn to the worldly glitter of wealth?
Valor/Fearfulness –
does your character confront the world's darkness with bravery or do
they cower in the face of danger?
Mercy/Cruelty – does your character temper
their conduct with mercy for the weak and defeated or do they exult
in the agony of others?
This reminds me of the system preesented in Fantasy Wargaming.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check that out. My most immediate influence was the dimly-remembered system from Pendragon.
DeleteNicely done.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteAlternatively, if you don't like point-buy or are just a retro fetishist, you can roll 3d6 for each of these to get a personality.
ReplyDeleteYou could even start your character with these all as question marks and fill them in as the need warrants in game.
DeleteA few of these strike me as redundant: e.g., it's hard to imagine a low score in Authority but a high one in Lawfulness. Pendragon's axes seem a bit more distinct from each other:
ReplyDeleteChaste / Lustful
Energetic / Lazy
Forgiving / Vengeful
Generous / Selfish
Honest / Deceitful
Just / Arbitrary
Merciful / Cruel
Modest / Proud
Pious / Worldly
Prudent / Reckless
Temperate / Indulgent
Trusting / Suspicious
Valorous / Cowardly
Gothic fiction tends to make a distinction between Lawfulness (obedience to written, common, or natural law) and Authority (cultural and social mores that are not the law per se, but function as such).
DeleteI'm doing research right now that suggests that these two things (codified law and social mores) are actually inversely proportional within a given society. Well, that's an oversimplification, but it's a basic crude version of the underlying idea.
DeleteWhat period/location are you looking at, Brendan? I think what you say is especially true where and when "law" is still in process of becoming a fixed entity.
DeleteIt's interdisciplinary. We have anthro survey data and lab work done using social science methodology. We also have some early modern and modern historical data too (the history of ideas being more my thing), but it is notoriously difficult to get at subjectivity historically.
DeleteI like to use these type of character quirks as a penalty for taking additional skill points by raising during character creation. You have some tables for afflictions and terrible secrets I think in your written guidebook. These work great for such tasks. I am using OpenQuest, so I like to let a player roll up to 3d6x10 for additional skill points in exchange for the straight 3d6 roll to be added to the characters starting age. Each d6 requires the player to roll on tables which deliver afflictions, vices, dark secrets, etc...
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it like that before. Interesting...
DeleteIt might also be worth mentioning Pendragon's convention of rolling checks against those character attributes as an aid to determining a character's actions, and modifying the traits according to a character's actions -- As I recall by way of example, if a character with 7 Generous/3 Selfish were to act in a way the GM deemed selfish, he could declare a 1 point adjustment, making the character 6 Generous/4 Selfish thereafter.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes for a much more interesting and nuanced "alignment" system than traditional D&D. One could even designate certain virtues/vices as being of particular importance to certain deities in a polytheistic world.
It's true. Mostly, I just don't bother with alignment at all.
DeleteAs for your picture, I can't imagine what the devil is seeing in that woman's crotch that could be so surprising.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, I like your post. So I adapted it! If you can believe that. Here is a visual representation, ready to use. I welcome suggestions for improvement.
http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/gothic-virtues-and-vices-by-jack-shear/
My money's on some kind of demonic "Crying Game".
Delete