I don’t like Emotional/Rational. Because I don’t think hoarding everything is rational.
You might as well have a Pack Rat stat.
I think painkillers are easy enough to give out. Painkillers are common, lots of people have them, chances are you’ll be able to find others. Go into anyone’s apartment you’ll probably find some painkiller or other. Go into any supermarket here, you’ll find shelves of painkillers.
Now if you’re speaking antibiotics, that could be a different matter.
hording is not rational - it is a sickness for many people.
Yes, I’m aware. I wasn’t speaking of the mental illness.
I was speaking in terms of that thing people do in video games, where you pick up everything that’s not glued down and keep it in your backpack in case you need it later.
Hey! The old coffee cup will come in handy one day!
oh. sorry.
I call that kleptomaniacism - which (ironically) is an illness too … but then again my sisters are both people that pick up and keep everything they can in MMO and RPG games and never have any bag space open and I end up carrying half their junk until we reach banks or whatever.
but kleptomaniacism is how I think of that. I think I purposefully go as light as possible just because of my sisters. lol.
In ZE I don’t reward players for being moral or good or evil but reward them for figuring out puzzles, overcoming challenges, and passing testing choices.
Using morality stats is the single best and most frustrating aspect of Choiescript to me. You basically are interpreting someone’s motivations. When you write options for a choice, no matter how well worded, a player may misinterpret the options or your code may miss-assign a stat.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Say the player picks “To find the hen”. We are assuming the chicken is curious when he may want to find the hen to date (love +20), to ask for help with the fox (cunning +20), or to poison (marajade +20).
We don’t know why the chicken crossed the road. We have to make an educated guess.
I have found that using fairmath is essential. It grades the change in stat. In this way, if we as designers guess wrong why someone is doing something, the effects are not as harmful.
A stat named after Mara - and she thinks she\s not loved.
@JimD - I know you said: [quote=“JimD, post:27, topic:19814”]
In ZE I don’t reward players for being moral or good or evil but reward them for figuring out puzzles, overcoming challenges, and passing testing choices
[/quote]
I think your new work, Safe Haven is doing a better job of this than the first ZE did.
Right and wrong are strictly a matter of perspective. In short you’re better off to use a consequence type system or cause and effect. Imo
You mean hen/rooster, right? 
Regarding the actual issue, I think it would depend on how it’s done. My own WIP does track a player’s… less moral choices, and while this will certainly affect how some characters interact with the MC, and may even end up affecting the ending, I am certainly trying not to make any of these “wrong” or “right”, simply different.
You know you have made a mark when one of your favorite authors have a stat with your name. However, I will still being that ruthless grumpy beta testing hating Woody the Pudding and vote for Vodoo as a hobby…
Just to show where I think a “reward” was given for doing the right thing in Zombie Exodus:
[quote] He wipes away tears from his eyes and walks toward the vast array of tanks on the side of the vessel.
“I don’t want anything from you. I just wanted to test you, to see if you were worth helping. Maybe it was my way of seeing if there was any good left in the world.”
[/quote]
This is an example of how rewards can mean many different things.
So I understand that rationality/emotion is not a good stat. Does any of you have good ideas for a morality stat which isn’t outright good/bad?
Apart from that, one of the game’s main themes is the character losing his sanity becuse of the horrors of the zombie apocalypse. Most “human” choices (e.g helping people, playing card games, socializing with other humans often) raises sanity while doing weird/inhuman things (e.g slaughtring the survivor you just came across and looting him, traveling alone for long periods of time, sympathizing the zombies) lower sanity.
Notice that I never said killing a survivor and looting him is bad/not moral/evil - I only said that killing other people dosen’t do good to one’s mental health.
(Preston! Come on! I’m sure this batterd clipboard will come in handy someday!)
Compassionate/Hard-hearted
Honest/Dishonest
Selfish/Altruistic
Consequentialist/Deontological 
or with a little less jargon, Consequences/Rules. Moves one way if the reader does something with bad consequences in order to stick to their ethical code, and the other way if they break an ethical rule because it’ll have good consequences (lie to make someone happy, etc).
What about apathy/empathy?
Apathy/ Empathy might be a better opposed pair…
Apathy - you just don’t care about the situation. The more apathy you have the less connected to anything you are.
Empathy - you connect with others, you feel their emotions, needs, desires and wants. Since you connect with these you care.
These are the opposites I’d go with in your described setting.
The dictionary definitions illustrate my point of view:
vs
I agree. I changed the stats from “emotion/rationality” to “empathy/apathy”. Thanks for your great ideas.
I don’t think you should, your game will be the other games that say you have freedom of choice but, in actuality, its way more rewarding to do things one way so really its not. Maybe I’m in the wrong for thinking that way but it bothers me when games do that, like Deus Ex for example they say you have freedom of choice but doing the stealthy approach rewards you more than going on Guns Ablazing so you feel like you’re missing things when you don’t follow that path. Am I making sense?
Stealthy Non-violent approach in Deus Ex Human Revolution.
I would argue that even doing the moral thing might not have a desireable outcome, either in the short term or long term. Likewise, a immoral action might, in the end, have a desireable outcome (maybe not for the person who’s made said choice, but still).
Call me morbid, if it was me I would punish them for doing the right thing and dangling a satisfying prize between their eyes to sweet them into doing the “wrong” things.
Everyone tries to be a good person, and most importantly, during a harmless game that offers you obvious choices, you will thrive to be the hero - the true, noble and glorious protagonist who saves the day as well as the world. THEN if you’re up for it, you would come around and experiment what would eventually happen if you decide to walk on the dark path.
It’s why CoG is so alluring - that it offer us writers the capabilities to lead the players through a myriad of conflicting events that could potentially question themselves and their decisions - if writing the right things at the right place and time.
And personally, I found that the most successful gamebook of all doesn’t necessary need a good plot, nor good characters, nor good mechanics. Of course they’re important, but it’s not the point. The point is to present the players moral catastrophes where the boundaries between right and wrong are so blurry that it would eventually lead to the players having to bite their nails and shut down the game for hours on end just to think about their next moves. (Of course, it’s an exaggeration, but whoever managed to do that, I will bow down faithfully).
The thing that you should do is to thrive so that your players will think: “Should I be selfish, should I be the antagonist or being the bad guy for once. Or I should be that heroic person and sacrifice?”