Tip for Making an Ethics Challenge

Homeschools are great for teaching virtues. Parents who spend their days with their children can actively shape their character without worrying about what sorts of conflicting messages they're receiving while away at school all day. Role-playing games are one tool parents can use to challenge their students to think about questions of morality. With games, kids can practice applying their virtues in make-believe situations. But how do you create these ethical challenges?

One easy way I've discovered is to eliminate "black and white" situations. In traditional fantasy RPGs, "monster" races are almost always considered evil, while "hero" races (like elves, halflings, and dwarves) are almost always considered good. The evil goblins have raided the local villages, and the heroes track them to their lair, slay the evil critters, and seize the treasure. So far so good, no shades of gray (unless the party of adventurers tries to keep the loot that rightfully belongs to the villagers). But what if it wasn't so cut and dry?

What if goblins aren't automatically evil as a race? Many would be rotten to the core, sure, but maybe that's partially a product of their environment. What if it turns out that the land where the villages stand once belonged to the goblins, but they were forced off of it by the king's men? What if this is just the tail end of a back-and-forth feud going back so many generations that nobody remembers who started it? Violently invading the goblin lair and walking out with treasure takes on a whole new complexion in that light. This is why the saying goes that the scariest thing in a dungeon is a party of adventurers!

A scenario like the one above might be a little tough for kids to sort out, but you get the idea. When you introduce a little gray area into the world of make-believe, your kids will have to come to grips with questions of right and wrong.

Third Person and the Virtues Faerie

Today we played Pathfinder RPG with the two kids next door. My two oldest started going at it almost right away, arguing over who was going second in the marching order, and their friends sighed in frustration at having to wait until the argument was over for the game to continue. So I cut them off and told them that if they were going to argue, then they would have to argue in character, thereby suffering any natural consequences of doing so (like being overheard by monsters). My 9-year-old looked at me, said, "Ok," then turned to her sister and said, "Norma goes second!"

My oldest replied, "Since when do you talk about yourself in the third- wait, which one is it? Second person? Third person?"

"Third," I said.

"Yeah, that," she exclaimed, staring her sister down with a smug expression.

And so their assignment for Monday is to each write a one or two paragraph scene from today's adventure, from the point of view of their own character, but told in the third person narrative mode. After they've done that, I'm going to have them rewrite the scenes from the first person perspective.

Oh, and I almost forgot: my wife listened in on the game today and played an unusual character known as "the Virtues Faerie." Here's how it works: when the players aren't acting virtuously, like when they're fighting with each other to the point of disrupting the game and ruining everyone's fun, then she shows up and uses her magic to punish their misdeeds. She can take XP, gold, supplies, you name it. Anything she wants. Today she made off with 300 gp!

That settled things down quite nicely.

The Big Game

Our friends have gone home and the dust has settled, and I can finally report on how our Pathfinder RPG session went.

Marra, played by a seven-year-old girl, seemed to have a great time. She was thoughtful, attentive, and enthusiastic. She understood everything that was going on and seemed to have a fairly solid grasp of the mechanics of the game, given her age and that it was her first RPG experience. She has a tendency to roll high on a d20; I don't think she missed or failed a roll for any skill check all night. Marra is welcome at our table any time.

Her parents had interesting playing styles (the wife was a first-timer) which brought something new to our table, and they seemed to have a good time, but I don't think it was necessarily the game. Whether they'll join us for future sessions will depend in large part, I suspect, on how badly Marra wants to return. They are always welcome, of course. Regardless, we will see them again because they are such dear friends, but I suspect we're more likely to engage in a rousing game of Qwirkle than D&D or any of its offshoots when next we meet.

My wife played her half-orc monk true to character, which made for an interesting dynamic between her and my oldest daughter during the opening scene at the Mean Bean, a coffee house. Now, I hate to be the kind of dad who throws his kids under the bus, but they don't read this blog, and what I'm about to say is relevant to the topic of using RPG's in homeschool and teaching to virtues, so here it goes: my kids were in rare form last night, and not in a good way.

Elerisa can be a bit of a control freak, and it was annoying the other players at the table. My wife and I both found ourselves correcting her as she tried to tell her sisters - especially Fiona, our youngest - what to do. At one point when Fiona said what she was going to do, Elerisa basically told her something to the effect of that's stupid, don't do that, do this instead. Elerisa wanted something and my wife wasn't letting her character just have her way, because questioning Elerisa's actions was the right thing for the half-orc to do under the circumstances. Elerisa became obnoxious and badgered my wife as she tried to get her way and it became a parenting situation. We prevented it from getting too ugly, but I was embarrassed and I think my wife was too.

My oldest was not the only offender. Fiona became a wall flower and decided she was too embarrassed to play with first-timers (her explanation to me later), even though Marra is her best friend. With all the commotion and with her tiny, increasingly bashful voice vanishing beneath the threshold of normal human hearing, it was hard to figure out what she was trying to do in game (which, as it turns out, was to run into the Mean Bean's kitchen to hide from the fight that was breaking out, and to look for marshmallows to throw into the fray). Meanwhile Norma, my "middlest" child, couldn't be troubled to pay attention to the game and spent much of the evening on the floor of the dining room with her feet sticking up in the air. She said she was restless, a claim that was supported by her constantly asking me for an update with regards to the time. This from a child who is always asking when our next game is going to be.

So I'm left wondering what the lessons learned are, and I think my wife has hit the nail on the head. Sadly, I won't be able to articulate it as succinctly as she did, but I'll valiantly make the attempt. She is a fan of Cesar Milan, a.k.a. The Dog Whisperer. From Cesar's show we learn that dogs feed on the energy of the people and animals around them. When there is a lot of nervous excitement, dogs will get riled up. Is there a reason to think it wouldn't be any different with kids? She points out that I put a lot of stress on myself in the last few weeks to prepare for this game. I wanted my friends' first gaming experience to be a positive one, and I think Elerisa wanted the same thing. It was our big chance to show our stuff, to share this awesome experience we've been having, and there was excitement in the air. My wife says I was handled the GM duties calmly and smoothly, but I can tell you I broke out in a sweat almost right away, so chances are there was at least some aura of anxiety about me, however subtle or subconsciously detectable. Clearly Elerisa didn't handle it well at all, and that's something we're addressing with her. There are behaviors to address with the other two as well, and we're doing that.

So today we sat down with the kids and talked about our experience last night and the kinds of virtues and soft skills we're going to work on in the future. Things like diplomacy, tact, compromise, and respect. Staying focused and channeling our energies toward accomplishing shared goals. Confidence and courage to strut our stuff in front of our peers. And finally, for me, finding that inner calm and peace of mind that comes from knowing that everything's going to be alright, and to just let the chips fall where they may.

Teaching Virtues with an RPG

My wife and I encourage our children to lead meaningful lives by "teaching to virtues." What this means is we point to well-defined virtues* as examples to guide their behaviors. Now the truth is that my wife is more focused than me on this, and she's way more consistent about taking advantage of "teachable moments" (to use the terminology of the Virtues Project) to reinforce the virtues. I want to get better, though, or at least not make things worse.

Is there a way to teach the virtues through an RPG?

I think there is, but there are some pitfalls to avoid. An obvious one is that the kids can't start to think of D&D as school or lessons. The moment the game feels like a class to them, that's when the magic ends. The focus must always be first and foremost on having fun. Everything after that is gravy, but if the kids aren't having fun, they won't play, and there go your teachable moments.

So I toyed with the idea of adding something called "virtue points" (VP) to go along experience points (XP). The idea was that whenever one of the player's characters exercised one of the virtues, I would award some VP to the player. I would say something like, "And here's 50 VP for showing gratitude to the spirit Naga." VP would help a character level up just like XP.

The more I thought about it, though, the more the idea rankled with me. For starters, levels in D&D correspond to improvements in battle competence, spell casting, or turning undead, etc. The virtues are not logically tied to these things in any way. Generosity, for example, will not help you draw a weapon faster or develop a whirlwind attack.

More importantly, awarding special points for demonstrating virtues through play is so obviously transparent that kids will see right through it. Worse, it would railroad the kids into certain behavior patterns and discourage them from "letting go" and expressing their creativity through the development of their characters in a natural way. In other words, I would rather learn about who my kids really are by watching how they play their characters than dictate to them how they should play the game.

Still, I'm the parent, and I do want to take advantage of this situation to shape their character. The better way to do it, I think, is through natural in-game consequences.

For example, my oldest daughter, who we shall refer to as 'O' (age 11), has played her character as a person of great generosity, mercy, and self-restraint. The first time I noticed this was really interesting. The party had just rescued a raving lunatic from an oubliette. Once rescued, the man was eager to get away, because he was (1) hungry, (2) unarmed and nearly naked, and (3) alert to the presence of monsters nearby. O gave him a bit of bread, but she did not want to let him leave. She was interested in keeping him around as a guide. He begged and begged, but she did not waver. She considered casting a Sleep spell on him, tying him up, and dragging him behind them as they went through the dungeon. The man became so desperate that he took a swing at her. I rolled an 8 on a d20, a miss. O had this look on her face of mingled confusion and pity, and said, "Ok, you can go." She did not strike back. It was an odd moment.

A few days later they ran into the same guy in town. He was feeling better, more himself since being fed and clothed. It turns out he's a bard who was accused by the local lord of "kissing" his wife (have to keep it clean for the kids), but what really happened was she kissed him. The perils of having an 18 charisma, right? But I digress. He thanked the party for their mercy and restraint and volunteered to guide them around town, no charge. O's restraint at the oubliette paid dividends, and I didn't have to clumsily call out the virtues.

Later the party fought some kobolds, and a few surrendered after their buddies abandoned them. Now when I was growing up, my players would have tortured the captives for information and killed them, or perhaps pressed them into service as guides and kill them later. Under no circumstances would they have been allowed to live. Apparently that's not how O rolls, though. The room had five exits, and her only concern was that the kobolds would know which way the party went and blab to the others. So she used ("wasted," my old chums would say) a Sleep spell and the party slipped away through one of the exits while the kobolds snoozed.

They're still in that dungeon. If they get lost, they may run into one of those kobolds again, and maybe he'll give them just the tiniest bit of aid for the mercy she showed them.

I just had another idea. I could keep a tally of the characters' virtuous behaviors and award bonuses to charisma-based rolls for things like diplomacy and bluff** checks. This makes more sense logically because a character who is seen as virtuous will be considered more trustworthy. I'd want to keep it kind of behind the scenes, though, for the same reasons that I wouldn't want to have an explicit VP points system. The way I'd play it is I'd tell them the DC (difficulty class - I'm not going to assume all my readers*** are gamers just yet) is 14 instead of 15 or something, and say something like "you have a reputation for your honesty" and/or "people are hearing about how you treated [fill-in-the-blank NPC] with respect." That way the behavior is reinforced more often than not, but it looks like the luck of the dice when they succeed. And it would still have that element of chance. I'm not sure about this approach yet, though. It probably needs some work.

* I'm all about teaching to the virtues, and the Family Virtues Guide is an invaluable resource, but something about this site just rubs me the wrong way. What it is, I'm not certain. Something about the branding just makes it seem so, I don't know…smug?

** Hmm, bluff: "Great job using your virtues, kids! Now, roll a d20 to see if the NPC believes your lies."

*** lol "ALL" my readers. Plural. Ha!