Nasty, Brutish, & Short: A Hobbesian Perspective for RPGs

RPGs that exist on the market, to my knowledge, pretty much always follow a positive humanistic view of characters. This makes sense, given the fact that you are playing the character and want to believe the best of them. Most games have a specifically moral subsystem (ex. alignment) or subsystems that imply a common standard (ex. infamy). Most games have a moral exemplar; Jedi Knights, Paladins, Star Fleet Captains, Eco-Shamans, etc. Even vampires are striving to be more human (read: Good).

However, this is striking considering the degree to which most RPGs occur at a time when traditional civil order has largely collapsed. Classic Medieval Fantasy is essentially post-apocalypse. There was always a golden age in the past to justify how the gold is getting into those chests. Post-apocalypse is it's own genre of games. Shadowrun takes place in a world where nation states have largely been trampled beneath corporations. Star Wars is set in the middle of a galactic civil war. Star Trek is occuring on the frontiers of space. Vampire society is a fractured parallel world where chaos reigns. I'm sure you can see that this trend is fairly constant across setting and game system.

In this absence of order, one would expect far less moralism. After all, that is what we see in history. During times of civil strife, traditional morality breaks down and atrocity occurs on a massive scale. I feel that the best philosophical structure to use as a basis for behavioral modeling in this environment is Thomas' Hobbes Leviathan.

Hobbes describes man as having three elements in his nature that drive him.

1. Competition: The desire for material possessions drives man to kill and take from others.

2. Diffidence: The apprehension and fear of others drives man to seek safety and protection.

3. Glory: The desire for reputation drives men to perform deeds that will inspire others to either bend to his needs or to fear him enough to leave him be.

These three motivations pull on man at all times. The only thing that prevents them from occuring is a social contract, which is the subject of the book. Let's ignore that and simply discuss the ramifications of his view of human nature.

In most RPGs, morality is either fixed (i.e. you are chaotic good, there is no degree to which you are) or it is viewed as a descending scale (vampire humanity, dark side points, etc). The former leads to such idiocy as "well, all Goblins are chaotic evil and therefore killing them is of no concern to me" while the latter leads to bizarre fixations on being "heroically good" to hold back the slide into darkness. Neither of these solutions work for Hobbes, as they assume either some people are inherently good or that people begin good and slide towards evil.

My initial desire was to make 3 qualities and give everyone different values and that determines how your character is motivated, but that really isn't in the Hobbesian view either. For Hobbes, everyone would have these qualities and they would be maxed out.

So I started looking for other aspects of play that are considered to always been desired. This is what I came up with: Character Advancement.

What if the satisfaction of these urges were the only things to accrue advancement for your character. In order to gain levels, you had to acquire stuff, protect yourself, and accumulate a reputation. Obviously, the parallel to the old Gold for XP from D&D is strong here, but that seems too simplistic for me. The desire is not gold for gold's sake. It is gold for what it brings. So instead of income taxation, lets do sales taxation.

Maybe only give XP (or equivilent for alternative system) when you use your resources; whether that is wealth or more subtle things like persuasion and seduction, to improve your situation along these three indices. Obviously, it would be harder to determine what constitutes an XP-worthy event if you are judging character actions instead of game-state issues (gold in hand, monster in grave, etc). But what if your actions in pursuit of these three things are the only measure by which your character is judged, it would certainly change your play, would it not?

So the question remains, is there room for a Paladin/Jedi here? Is there room for altruism? Yes and no. You have to adopt a more cynical version of altruism. You give things away to accrue a reputation, true or false as that reputation may be to your actual morals. Saddam Hussein gave money to the families of suicide bombers, after all. This kind of thing works regardless of what side of a moral coin you sit on.

I envision critiques that this makes the world too dark. Too much Batman, not enough Superman. Too much Han Solo, not enough Luke Skywalker. And maybe that is a valid critique. But I would rather play Malcolm Reynolds than Captain Kirk. That is my personal bias and I am not claiming this would be a good solution for every game. But I think it definitely has some applications.

But what do you think? Is this a better model for human nature than what we are currently playing with?