Come to the Dark Side

In Roleplaying, do you like themes of Good defeating Bad, do you include a clear cut moral system, do you play Good Characters more than Bad Characters? Do you like Grey moral characters?

I was going to say I've only really played morally grey, and evil characters, but thinking about it, that's just because my good characters didn't last that long, not because of some inherent preference. Emmett from Gunpowder was a very evil character that I had a blast playing, and my current active character for Dust is morally grey.

I think the theme of good versus evil is a great one, as long as people don't adhere to very clearcut morality standards. It might sound a bit cliche at this point, but I think in most cases not being "anime protagonist levels of good" is the way to go. Having at least some specs of grey in one's morality, and in the issue of morality adds a lot of fun.

Just like Ice said, morality is very rarely black/white, with most characters falling into some sort of lighter or darker grey. Going over the characters I've made (excluding the characterless, nameless Ryans) I've noticed most tend to be on the lighter "I'd rather help this guy even though he's not nice" side, some of my favorites are for example Nerites from Titans or Youssef from Outbreak.

However there are a few exceptions that delve into the darker side, and they tend to be my favorite characters. Sophia from Gunpowder is more violent and villainous than most of my other characters, but in comparison to other characters in the RP, she's fairly neutral. Jairo from AtDS on the other hand, is a character I'm trying to make as morally "black" as possible, with him enjoying death, torture and suffering all while having a purpose for it. Interested to see how that one goes ;)

I tend to play characters with quite a lot of grey to their morality, I feel that grey morality can make characters more interesting and complex but I think that characters shouldn't all be the same shade of grey either.

I think two characters of mine that are particularly notable for their "grey area" morality are probably Skellen from One Piece and Alex from Gunpowder. Skellen is a the crew's doctor and has really strong views about corruption and power abuse, but before joining the crew he made a living as an assassin targeting corrupt government officials/soliders and even now he's still much happier than the majority of the crew to use lethal force I'd say.

Alex is even more messed up than that, he quite honestly loves nothing more than hunting down and killing people. It's pretty much the only thing in his life that gives him any real pleasure and he's happy to do terrible things in pursuit of a target. Weirdly enough though, he's technically one of the good guys.

I prefer playing gray to playing black, honestly. Maybe it's my years of playing Dungeons and Dragons, but I prefer playing heroes. Even if my characters are antagonists, they have good traits, and when I play "good guys", they tend to be some of the most moral characters in the group.

Some examples I'm fond of are Star Gazer from Titans and Rex from Darker than It Seems. Titans was a group of heroes and anti-heroes, with Star being a plucky young girl who idolized superheroes and wanted to use her powers to help people. Darker than it Seems was about a group of Pokemon/Human Hybrids trying to survive in a world that was highly opposed to their existence. Despite being a hulking Dragon type, Rex just wanted to protect his friends, instead of getting revenge on the people tracking them down.

I'm in agreement with many of the people in this thread. Binary black or white morality characters makes that character a bit... boring and seems restricitve. I've seen people play purely white characters and after awhile they just became boring or the purely black morality characters were too much, too overwhelming for the RP. I think it depends on the RP, setting, etc. Typically, I'll play darker morality characters because it seems most people like to be on the lighter side and RPs always need drama!

Clear cut morals are . . .

. . . how should I put this?

They're dumb. Yes, that's it. It's generally called bad writing, unless presented in such a manner that it proves a point, typically in a satirical fashion. As for actual characters or plots? No. The only time it works is when it's someone who's incredibly set in their ways or has misguided morals, which provides something to their story and leaves for the potential of character development.

Our world isn't black and white. Characters shouldn't be either. Sometimes writers realize this and then actually produce something worthwhile (see: Pokémon Black and White Versions).

I'd say I lean to the good side with character. I enjoy helping people in the real world and that tend to bleed to characters too. Though I try and give them their flaws too. Kinda...

Well, it all depends on the world. I usually play good guys in Pokemon RP but when I'm writing on RPs with worlds in conflict, the history I set for the character usually dictates the actions of my character. Usually, I go for the good guys but not always. I'm not stubborn in this kind of things and would go for bad if the situation calls for it.

In RPing, I'm pretty indifferent on whether good or evil wins. I think it is more fun when it is not obvious which side is going to win. In this battle of Good and Evil though I will always play a good character. I have way too much trouble finding motivation and inspiration when i try to do Evil. Though the grey moral character is definitely something I will be looking into more.

I love me some grey, though most of my characters have stuck to the lighter shades of morality. A couple of my characters were actively trying to reach that pure white morality, but desperately struggling to make progress. I also made one who's set of morals was its own different thing, more blue and orange than black and white.

As for the part about sides in conflict, I root for whoever is most interesting.

So I really like playing dark side characters. Its a good way to get to interact with the other players, because being an agent of chaos gives you the chance to generally mess with somebody else's day. However, when i do play a light side character, I like to really go light side, all hero. The only time I go gray is in some of my NPC's, when the dark siders go light, and vice versa.

I've made a few characters from all over the spectrum.

Some of my earlier characters were very morally ambiguous, or downright evil. Vanish is SAO was a psychopathic lunatic murderer designed to play a very antagonistic role. That's what I meant for him to be and it's what I liked writing at the time. But as I progress I feel recently I'm gravitating more to characters on the positive spectrum of the moral chart.

Rowin Odo, in Venice is a good example of how I like to play a chaotic good character. Renegade in Titans started off as a "Lawful Evil" character, but I wanted to progress him throughout the story to become more "Neutral Good".

Right now, in Dust, I've just started playing my first "Lawful Good" character in a long time (maybe ever) in the form of Tenerus Stone, who was heavily inspired by the idea of a white knight and peacekeeper. I've tried multiple things from multiple facets of the realm of morality. If I had to choose a favourite, I do tend to like good characters with a spark of something "off". Maybe they need to redeem themselves, maybe they're simply insane or maybe they've just lost their way on the path to success in their ideals, either way I love a character who starts off flawed but eventually grows to be a powerful force for good.

But yeah, I also like evil psychopath murderers. I don't even care.

I tend to be all over the moral scale when designing characters. A supporting character I have planned out for an RP I've signed up for would be classified as "evil", can't go further than evil as that could potentially spoil it right now for those sharp minds. The main for that RP is seeming to lean towards a "Chaotic Good" based on the situations I've written for him thus far.

When I do play "villains", I personally try to avoid having them directly think their actions or themselves evil. I personally enjoy villains who think what they're doing is morally right, regardless of what everyone else thinks. In a sense that's Lawful Evil, but won't always be that way.

Overall though, I prefer a morally grey character with no extreme alignments, as extreme alignments tend to lead to some difficult to write scenarios that can easily rub people the wrong way. There's a reason why SMT fans debate over the "best" ending.

Grey. So many nuances to explore and so much depth to consider and cover. Why stick to black or white when you can have both?

I don't really like the clear cut good v evil as much as lighter gray v darker gray. Grey characters are pretty great. I don't know about playing legitimate pure evil or pure good characters though, my heroes and villains tend to fall into the grey area even. There's only one character I've played who's even close to being pure good, but he still has his own darkness.

Actually I usually play good characters. I guess I feel a bit too bad when I do deeds in roleplays that could upset someone or be seen as "evil" haha. However, I quite enjoy creating characters that have a selfish trace to their personality. They put themselves first and might be a bit lazy even when it comes to helping others. However, I usually don't make it consistently a bad thing. Only human.

It's no fun playing an all good character, after all.

And yeah, even in RPs here, the only place where I can see a proper good vs evil struggle is Team Rocket or such in pokémon roleplays, or possessed pokémon or zombies perhaps? And also fantasy settings probably have some good vs evil themes. But... Most stuff is just different views not getting along. Which is the most fun <3

I tend to mix it up quite a bit, some characters leaning towards good and some way eveel

I actually don't think i've ever played a 100% morally good character which is why I tried to make one close to that in FAHS so we'll see how it goes
the evil characters are always the most fun though

Come on now, of course I like grey. ;)

More to the point, I agree with the general consensus that plain good/bad makes for flat and relatively uninteresting characters. That said, I would also like to point out that in a group of morally ambiguous characters, sometimes it's the ones that are clear-cut that shine.