Treading Murky Waters
Do complex moral and ethical issues come up in your games?
I was reading some writings from old archives, while trying to come up with new stuff, and one of the notes involved in "creating a dark game," was "a sense of pessimism regarding complex moral and ethical issues."
It's hard to play the bad guy. Jokes about the good-lookin' evil guys aside, I've got my own moral quandry in the game I'll be playing later today: my character is not, entirely, convinced that she's on the side of good. She understands the ethos of war, and justice, but not entirely the idea that the path we're following is "good" in the overall measure.
I was watching how they did Magneto in the X-men movie tonight while eating. He makes decisions that put him firmly in the "bad guy" camp. Decisions he didn't have to make, and to some extent, that was the point. He decided that his goal was worth more than any individual's concerns. Which is selfish; it only turns evil (IMO) when it begins to interfere with a more natural order of things: when his decisions begin to affect people who have no choice in the matter.
I'm thinking of a possible game world for my next AD&D campaign that has no neutrality. You're either on the side of good, or against it. I think the only real monsters will be (demi)human.