One of the keys to good storytelling, and hence good RP, is that *everybody* thinks they are good. The Operative from the Firefly movie is a great example; he is well aware he's doing awful things, but it's in the service of a greater good. Similarly, most crooks think they've gotten bad breaks and are just evening the scales -- and many of them are probably justified in thinking that way. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks "Today I'm going to be a villain."

I'm glad we brought TV Tropes into this discussion, as it's a rich source of ideas, and a great way to organize your thinking about this stuff. For example, the Operative is a classic Knight Templar.

On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Greg Nokes <greg@nokes.name> wrote:

On May 22, 2015, at 10:20 AM, Bruce Johnson <johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> On May 22, 2015, at 10:01 AM, Kelly St. Clair <kellys@efn.org> wrote:
>>
>> My gut feeling is that stories designed to deliver a Moral Lesson unto the players are, by their nature, rather fixed and railroady - not good adventures. There's also the risk that one's players will not appreciate/agree with the intended moral, or with being preached at in general. (Some have a particular antipathy to such lessons being embedded in their entertainment, something that is supposed to be for /them/ - it is an unwelcome imposition, like commercials.)
>
> Kelly just said what I was thinking, only more clearly.
>
> Remember: an RPG adventure is NOT a story; it’a a framework wherein stories are created collaboratively. If you, as the GM wish to impose a Moral on them, it’s got to be done much more subtly, and in response to the players actions, not the path the GM has ordained.
>
> On a broader scale, you can always use standard tropes <http://tvtropes.org> but you cannot really force the issue.

A lot of the stories that we have told around our traveller table were about (mostly) good folks doing bad things trying to make the world a better place and keep some cash in their pocket. The best campaign that I ran was based on the Hard Times book. They did a lot of morally questionable things, and had a lot of hard choices based on the “The Cold Equations”. Save 10 people, and let a colony die, or let everyone die in jump space.

I tend to shy away from “criminals in space” and more use the “good people doing what they have to” idea I guess. ;-)-----

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Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake