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Shinizak
2010-05-08, 08:24 PM
I'd like some suggestions for some blue and orange morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality) for two alien ruling courts in a WoD game. I'm starting from square one so any and all suggestions are appreciated.

Doc_Shiny
2010-05-08, 08:32 PM
Hm... just some thoughts for one races morality. Perhaps they have a power/strength based hierarchy-type base in which the stronger you are, the more you influence the current norms of their society. It's not inherently bad to kill another of their kind. If the current "strong-man" in the area is for it, then it is considered a "good" act, or at least that's the closest that the human mind can relate to it.

Gametime
2010-05-08, 08:32 PM
Isn't the very nature of blue and orange morality that we can't comprehend it?

I would think providing a system would defeat the purpose. If you want to make an alien system of morality that your players won't understand, just flip a coin to make decisions.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-08, 08:42 PM
I agree-- the point of blue and orange morality is that it is not comprehensible, so have your races act totally incomprehensibly.

Have one that would just as soon kill anything as say "Hello" to it. Give no insight as to how they make their choice (Kill or greet).

Have the other be extremely gentle and never, ever proffer violence upon another... until, with no explanation or warning they utterly destroy someone or something they apparently held dear.

Catch
2010-05-08, 08:45 PM
Obviously, you want a value system that dispenses with arbitrary ideas of "good" and "evil." Imagine a race of dispassionate scientists, indifferent to morality, and solely focused on scientific progress and the acquisition of knowledge. Efficiency and efficacy are their ideals, and research potential is a judgement of value. So, this race might protect a species from extinction in order to study it, and then dissect a creatures while still alive, to observe its organs in action.

Godskook
2010-05-08, 09:23 PM
Isn't the very nature of blue and orange morality that we can't comprehend it?

Yes and no, see below(I'm a poet, didn't know it)


I would think providing a system would defeat the purpose. If you want to make an alien system of morality that your players won't understand, just flip a coin to make decisions.

THis is where no comes in. The Adam's Family is a good example of this kind of thing, and it is quite comprehensible. Its just so entirely alien that comprehending it requires effort to shatter assumptions that are never spoken.

@OP, consider some of the examples given in the article:
-Galacticus
-Adam's Family
-Sparks

Note how in these cases, each one's orange/blue-ness can be reduced to a simple concept of how they're different from us:
-Eats planets
-Halloween theme
-The "spark"

So how are these aliens different from the 'norm' of your game. What's their society and physique like?

chiasaur11
2010-05-08, 09:28 PM
Two sides.

Red and Blue.

Red loves:
Patriotism (vague)
Violence
Robots
Blind loyalty

Red hates:
Laziness
Blue

Blue likes:
Cynicism
Bitterness
Kittens

Blue hates:
Babies

kestrel404
2010-05-10, 11:16 AM
The most easily agreed-upon moral absolute is that killing is evil. Get rid of this, and many other concepts go out the door with it. You can pretty quickly end up with a perfectly logical and utterly alien idea of morality.

Of course, I believe that morality follows form and function - change the nature of the life you're dealing with sufficiently, and you'll wind up with something that has a blue/orange morality. For example:

Race X is a sentient dark-energy construct that evolved in a liquid-hydrogen environment (extreme cold, aquatic, interesting quantum properties). So, let's say that this race had worm-like regeneration (cut one up, and it grows back together), extreme and long-lasting emotional reactions, and were all atheists (in fact, unable to understand the concept of deity - anything that cannot be rationally explained is catalogued and ignored). Then they ascended from physical form to become a soul-parasyte which could attach itself to any other alien entity. This soul parasyte is absolutely immortal, except in the case where a mind-reading ability is used. Because the soul-parasite relies on the uncertainty principle to survive, any bit of itself which is observed dies. If an X has its mind fully read, then it is utterly destroyed.

So, how does this change the beings morality? Well, in their present form, mind-reading - and by extension all mind-affecting abilities - that is used on or by thier hosts is tantamount to murder. Further, they can only really live if they are attached to another being. So while they considder mind reading and other such abilities to be the most utter form of evil, compulsion and many of the other reasons why we would considder mind affecting abilities is completely morally acceptable to them. Likewise, because of their ancient heritage, physical violence, slaughter, and other acts of destruction would be considdered a kindness of sorts, while the use of fire, in any form, would be an attrocity on par with the worst of war crimes.

You could get a lot more differences out of such an alien race. In fact, once you get down to the nitty-gritty of their point of view you'll probably start getting real headaches. Such as how race X would considder any form of charity to be extremely rude, or how the more ornamental or decorative something is, the less valuable they would considder it. They would considder the cistine chapel to be a prime example of a building that should be torn down and replaced by high-rise condos, and the CPU running your computer would be the essence of high-art. Just as some examples.

Subotei
2010-05-10, 03:30 PM
For incomprehensible gods (Moorcockian Chaos entities etc) I always think of children playing in a garden, from the point of view of the ants that live there.

You have a very advanced civilisation on the go (for an ant). Today the children are ignoring you. Yesterday they saw you and squashed some of you, just because. Tomorrow they may destroy your home building a new den. Or they could get very interested in what you're doing and play with you for a while. You cannot make sense of their actions, because you are an ant.

In short, you are totally inconsequential to the children, unless they find you an interesting diversion. They don't appreciate the harm etc, because they're children. If they learn (ie become adults) they'll probably just ignore you and any interaction will be accidental - unless you cause them a nuisance...

Gnaeus
2010-05-10, 03:37 PM
One good source is the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh. The alien race evolved from a herd species, so they have no concept of love, only of loyalty to their association and leader. The narrator is a human diplomat, who tries to avert diplomatic crises between the 2 races, but can't fully wrap his mind around the viewpoint of the Atevi.

Arbane
2010-05-10, 10:57 PM
As people have pointed out, it is possible to make a Blue & Orange morality that humans can understand--it just tends to be based on fundamental values and priorities that human's don't have.

For example, imagine a race that reincarnates, and remembers their past incarnations. Calling something a "Matter of Life and Death" to them might mean "Do the laundry first."
How much of a crime would they think murder is? how big a crime would emotional abuse be? What would their social structure look like?

avr
2010-05-10, 11:27 PM
The morality of ruling courts is likely to benefit those courts, either their members or their rulers. So the first question is, what are these courts made of? Vampires, or changelings, or what? WoD has several options.

abandon hope
2010-05-11, 12:21 AM
To show your regard for a true statement you should mock it so as to demonstrate it's resilience through the ridiculousness of those statements. But a direct contradiction of a true statement should be met with a true (though not necessarily positive) statement about the originator of the contradiction in order to attune the originator to the actual state of the world.

Should be simple to play, and confusing enough to cause a party member to ingest a good portion of their lower body. If your people are not particularly stubborn, they may write it off as orange/blue. Even if they do understand, it should enforce the alien aspect of your society.

EDIT: Fixed pronouns.

CCC
2010-05-11, 07:42 AM
One good source is the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh.

C.J. Cherryh writes good blue and orange morality in general. Her Chanur series stars the knnn, who are just bizarre, the t'ca (with seven brains who speak in a matrix and claim that they cannot lie), the kif, who will do literally anything to stay alive and gain advantage but do not understand the concept of "friend" (though they know very well what "ally" means; it means someone in whose interest it currently is that you remain alive a little longer), and the stsho who are psychologically incapable of violence but still very, very powerful (and extremely rich, as they pretty much control the banking sector) and not to be lightly trusted (and they are willing and able to hire violence from other species where necessary). Among other species...

See here (http://everything2.com/title/Knnn) for a brief overview of the knnn.

Ravens_cry
2010-05-11, 11:53 PM
How's this?
On the surface, incredibly strict rules with overly harsh punishments are encoded in the law. However, no one actually follows this written code, but instead follows unwritten code, the code of the Benders, Breakers and Smashers. Benders work within the written system, twisting it to their will, obeying the letter, if not the spirit, of the Law. Breakers merely break the Laws, but keep it out of official notice. Smashers break the Law flagrantly and publicly with undisguised disdain. An old Smasher is highly respected, as is a young Bender.
Outside of this society of criminals are the Lawgivers who create the laws. In some generations, the laws are anal retentive, but logically sound, while in others even the most basic commandments are mutually exclusive and non sequitur. Each era has it's heroes, suited to the Laws of the time. A successful Bender in time when Watering the Cow and Not Watering the Cow having death sentences is legendary indeed While in a time when surveillance is pervasive and invasive, A Smasher who lives to a ripe old age is almost divine.

Math_Mage
2010-05-12, 12:34 AM
One of the things about Blue and Orange Morality that makes it so incomprehensible is that it appears out of context. The context is often cultural norms rooted in biological functions. For example, take the Moties in The Mote in God's Eye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The key reason why Motie behavior remains so utterly mysterious to the humans through some two-thirds of the book is that they don't understand the foundational instability in Motie society:
uncontrollable overpopulation leading to war that 'resets' civilization, resulting in endless Cycles of societal destruction and rebirth.
So if you want to make aliens with a consistent but apparently incomprehensible morality system, start with a consistent but completely alien biology.

Revlid
2010-05-12, 04:10 AM
Court One believes that the colour blue, warm things, and unflowering vegetation are inherently evil, while cold-blooded creatures and things covered by a cloth or skin are good.

Court two opposes the liquid state of matter, the wearing of dark clothes, and the smell of ginger or horseradish, but supports birds and dust.

Frozen_Feet
2010-05-12, 04:54 AM
Orange wants to maximize the amount of oranges, and will do everything in its power to do so. Oranges are sacred, and thus eating them is anathema. Anyone who tries to eat oranges must be dipped in fish oil.

Blue wants to maximize amount of blueberries, and will do everything in its power to do so. Oranges are delicious, and not eating them is a sin worthy of immediate defenestration.

paddyfool
2010-05-12, 05:32 AM
Orange: the Ernago are a relatively young race of fast, aggressive gas-giant dwelling predators who spawn hordes of children, which then form part of their natural prey, and mostly get eaten. The few children that make it to adolescence, though, are recruited to the hunt and carefully tutored in Orange ways. Expansionist and greedy, these nevertheless have little conflict with rocky-planet-dwelling or space-colonising races like humans (their own colony ships merely move from gas giant to gas giant and need little in the way of resources on the way).

(This idea above was partly stolen from a sci-fi novel whose name I've forgotten).

Blue: The Lebu live for thousands of years in the heart of stars. They love their stellar homes, and cherish them above all else. They view all other life, however, as undead abominations, being as they are born from the death of stars, and planets as either irrelevant or mere fodder to be harvested to keep old stars alive (if the planet has a high enough hydrogen content, such as a gas giant). So they have eradicated prior races of gas giant dwellers that opposed them in past eons, and having noticed their rapid emergence and increase in power, have a similar fate in mind for the Ernago.

When a Lebu-Ernago conflict ultimately breaks out, the Lebu seek to simultaneously harvest multiple planets colonised by Ernago at once to prevent the Ernago expanding further. Human colonies orbiting gas giants are swatted aside, but otherwise of little interest. However, a significant population of Ernago remain, and they had previously developed stellar lances for an anticipated conflict with alien gas giant dwellers which never arose in their (Lebu-consumed) absence. The use of these is demonstrated with the destruction of a half-dozen stars, causing the Lebu to pause; and a mexican standoff is arrived at within the remaining systems, with a fragile humanity caught in the middle.

IcarusWings
2010-05-12, 10:24 AM
The problem with what Kestrel has said is that it isn't so different from our morality.
He is trying to change the specifics of the morality (from killing is wrong as it wipes you out of existence, to mind reading is wrong as it wipes you out of existence). Though the exact details are different, the moral itself is the same, don't wipe people out of existence, which can be expanded into, don't do things which are bad to others. This is the foundation of our morality and it's THAT which needs to be thrown out of the window.

A blue/orange morality would therefore be a morality system that doesn't care about consequences, whether to others or themselves. They may define a bad act as one that is difficult/easy or one that involves other people / solitary.

Merlin

Darcy
2010-05-12, 10:45 AM
It's not enough to simply have a strange definition of good and evil, you need two opposing values which influence their morality which do not have anything to do with good and evil. Something arbitrary, to the point that our most common definitions of good (generally valuing life) and evil (generally despising life) seem arbitrary to them. Rather than valuing certain things because one believes they enhance the lives of those to whom they are loyal, one values them for their inherent qualities.

Symmetry is one possible replacement for good, and asymmetry for evil. Expression and restraint/reason, perhaps, could be another choice, one where either one could be seen as "right" and "wrong" (meaning here "morally preferable"). An expressive society believes that any act is "right" so long as it is in accordance with your feelings at the moment, and that the greatest "wrong" is to suppress or disguise those feelings.

Telonius
2010-05-12, 10:55 AM
Group 1: Has no concept of "right" or "wrong." Force of will is the only determinant of what ought to be done. It's also a very hierarchical society. If it's expedient to your goal, it should be done, regardless of the consequences and regardless of whether or not it will directly harm you or your loved ones. To an outsider, this makes their decisions seem like Xanatos Roulette, but they make perfect sense to people in it.

Group 2: "Right" and "Wrong" are aesthetic only. Morality is determined by what would be most interesting to the people making the decision. This is the sort of society where a person who killed his father and married his mother would be hailed as a hero (possibly posthumously, depending on the needs of the story), as long as a seriously awesome story came out of it. The greatest sins are to break character, to use cliches, and to fail to pursue a story to its bitter end. To an outsider, this people can seem almost capricious in their interactions - unspeakably cruel in some situations, incredibly generous in others.

Steveotep
2010-05-12, 05:48 PM
Orange: the Ernago are a relatively young race of fast, aggressive gas-giant dwelling predators who spawn hordes of children, which then form part of their natural prey, and mostly get eaten. The few children that make it to adolescence, though, are recruited to the hunt and carefully tutored in Orange ways. Expansionist and greedy, these nevertheless have little conflict with rocky-planet-dwelling or space-colonising races like humans (their own colony ships merely move from gas giant to gas giant and need little in the way of resources on the way).

(This idea above was partly stolen from a sci-fi novel whose name I've forgotten).

Blue: The Lebu live for thousands of years in the heart of stars. They love their stellar homes, and cherish them above all else. They view all other life, however, as undead abominations, being as they are born from the death of stars, and planets as either irrelevant or mere fodder to be harvested to keep old stars alive (if the planet has a high enough hydrogen content, such as a gas giant). So they have eradicated prior races of gas giant dwellers that opposed them in past eons, and having noticed their rapid emergence and increase in power, have a similar fate in mind for the Ernago.

When a Lebu-Ernago conflict ultimately breaks out, the Lebu seek to simultaneously harvest multiple planets colonised by Ernago at once to prevent the Ernago expanding further. Human colonies orbiting gas giants are swatted aside, but otherwise of little interest. However, a significant population of Ernago remain, and they had previously developed stellar lances for an anticipated conflict with alien gas giant dwellers which never arose in their (Lebu-consumed) absence. The use of these is demonstrated with the destruction of a half-dozen stars, causing the Lebu to pause; and a mexican standoff is arrived at within the remaining systems, with a fragile humanity caught in the middle.

You may be thinking of WHEELERS by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. In the novel the gas giant dwellers diverted comets into their sun to avoid dangerous impacts. They did not know that their sun had plasma lifeforms who objected to this bombardment. The sun dwellers retaliated and the surviving gas giant dwellers relocated to Jupiter in our solar system. Their new plan involves diverting comets to crash harmlessly on those useless uninhabited rocky planets near the sun, especially that one with the poisonous oxygen atmosphere...

The Wheelers of the title are a third intelligent race who are produced biologically by the Jovians but cannot reproduce themselves. They discover life on the third planet, but cannot convince the Jovians of the existence of humans.

Ormur
2010-05-12, 10:50 PM
(This idea above was partly stolen from a sci-fi novel whose name I've forgotten).

I'll hazard a guess and say it's probably the Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. The Dwellers have lived in gas giants for billions of years, they experience time more slowly, live in a post scarcity society where kudos is the main currency, have no concept of pain and hunt their children. The lives of non-dwellers aren't important to them since they don't understand suffering and live for so much longer but they aren't aggressive towards other species except when threatened on a large scale. So they might place annoying non-dwellers in great risk for sport but it's not because they're evil. Outwardly they also appear as obfuscating and hopelessly disorganized.

All in all a good example of blue and orange morality if not totally incomprehensible.

Your other example also reminds me of another extremely alien species I've read about. I think it's the xeelee saga where dark mater aliens called photino birds live in stars and make them unsuitable for life by feeding on them and ageing them. On a grand scale it will make the universe uninhabitable for other lifeforms but they don't intend to do it. They're just unaware of any other life forms. Figthing them are a species that engage in engineering projects on a galactic scale to stop them and then escaping into a new universe. Humans run foul of those megaprojects (imagine messing with stars and planets might cause some trouble) and fight them, not realising that they're helping doom the universe.

Quincunx
2010-05-13, 06:28 AM
Aye, it's The Algebraist. Take a standard morality. Subtract the sanctity of life, add a currency of social connections, multiply with extreme reluctance, and divide by near-immortal lifespan. Serve hot. (It was like reading a World of Darkness novel about a coterie of Toreador vampires, with their artistic sensibilities surgically removed. A planet's worth of poseurs. *twitch*)

merlin's point about the Golden Rule, and making sure it's not part of the new moral axis, is a good one.

Plastic/static can be a moral axis. Attractive/repulsive (have fun deciding how repulsives form a society--cave dwellers' convention?). Sacred/profane. Holy/unholy. Concept of time/no concept of time (see monochronic/polychronic for hints--we're monochronic to the 24-hour day, polychronics obey several clocks at the same time).

paddyfool
2010-05-13, 06:44 AM
Yep, it was the Algebraist that I was thinking of.

The other example I'd made up, although the parallels you've offered suggest some fiction I'd rather like to look into.

TimeWizard
2010-05-13, 02:36 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)
There ya go. One impossibly un-natural orange philosophy...served.

Seriously, have you ever tried making them the villain? it's ridiculously easy.

hamishspence
2010-05-13, 02:51 PM
Wikipedia isn't very clear- I think it's summed up a bit better here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Objectivism?from=Main.UsefulNotesObjectivism

Randel
2010-05-13, 03:59 PM
The Fabricators: They think that the world would be more beautiful if it was filled with artwork instead of inert natural things (like barren asteroids, planets, and rocks). They have no qualms at all with mining stuff to melt it down and make all sorts of random odds and ends.

If an object has actual value then all the better, they will make tools and food and such just as readily as their normal supply of random artwork.

However, there is an unspecified point at which a large collection of stuff becomes 'tacky' and they have to destroy it in order to replace it with new things. Worse yet, they tend to make large numbers of factories that are boring and uniform in order to quickly make cool stuff and those are the first to get torn down to make... new factories to make new cool stuff.

They have no comprehension of sapient life except when they ask them to make more cool stuff. If they see enough people at a time that they 'blur together' and become 'boring' then they treat them as any other boring piece of raw material and try to turn them into cool stuff. When they kill somebody, if the corpse looks 'artistic' then they leave it where it is and keep moving, if it looks 'boring' then they drag it to the recyclers so it can be turned into cool stuff.

After a war, alot of their cool stuff tends to include bits and pieces of human bodies which may or may not be still alive.



Doom Dwarves:
Doom Dwarves like fixing problems, drinking lots of beer, and making traps to keep people from messing with their stuff. They dislike people bugging them, people talking to them, or resorting to direct physical violence when they could instead make traps... they also hate it when they get hurt by traps.

A colony tends to start with everyone getting along and making stuff. Then the colony grows and more dwarves come to help fix problems. After a while, there are too many dwarves in an area and not enough problems to be fixed so some of them start trying to 'help out' the others which gets interpreted as messing with their stuff. Thats a problem and so the Doom Dwarves start putting traps on their stuff to keep other Doom Dwarves from messing with it.

It soon spirals into an escalating war with some Doom Dwarves putting traps everywhere to keep other Doom Dwarves from bugging them while others bypass those traps and add their own to keep the others from making traps. The end result is the colony turns into a rube goldberg deathtrap filled with cool treasure and stuff that is all trapped while the Doom Dwarves keep trying to navigate through it all and trapping stuff to catch the other Dwarves that are making all the traps. Some of them eventually get tired of all this and try to escape to start another colony while others come from other colonies here to help solve the trap problem by adding their own traps to trap the trappers... then the current occupants of the colony try trapping the newcomers because they hate it when newbies bug them.

Outsiders often find twisted maze-like structures filled with valuable artwork and treasure... all of which is trapped in some way. Its possible to bypass all the traps, in fact its necessary since the colonies current occupants have to get around them all the time. The traps aren't there to keep troublemakers out, they were just installed by occupants to keep other people from messing with their stuff.