The seven deadly sins are:
- Lust, which obviously includes sexual longing but is generally used to mean other forms of desire (like lust for power, wealth, status, etc.)
- Gluttony, meaning overconsumption
- Greed, meaning avarice
- Sloth, meaning not just laziness, but a lack of care or interest in anything; a kind of navel-gazing indolent self-centredness
- Wrath, meaning uncontrolled rage, and particularly of the vengeful or vindictive kind
- Envy, ‘nuff said
- Pride, the worst of all, which places the sinner at the centre of the universe
You could of course create an entire bestiary of monsters grouped on the basis of instantiating these sins (goat men = lust, lungfish men = gluttony, etc.), and I may indeed do something with this idea at a future date, but it occurs to me that deploying them in combination, a little like the alignment structure, could be even more productive in inspiring ideas. What you would do is roll 1d8 (a roll of '8' being a 'neutral' result) and generate one sin, and then roll another 1d8, and put them into combination.
Hence, I have just rolled two 1d8s, and generated a '4' and an '8'. This is a result of sloth/neutral, or True Sloth. This is a being which embodies melancholic indifference; it spreads its indolence like a cancer as it travels, and its abilities are designed to drain energy, motivation and vitality from its victims. Perhaps something like a giant slime mold? Or a plaintive, child-like spirit of mournful and pathetic anti-energy.
I've just done it again, and generated a '1' and a '5'. Lustful Wrath. This perhaps opens doorways through which one is reluctant to pass, but one can steer the result away from undesirable connotations by interepreting Lust along its nonsexual axis. This is a monster which seeks to amass power and status in the most vengeful terms and will act to destroy any who fail to bend the knee - a lich-like undead king, perhaps, or a juggernaut-like titan who dominates an entire region through sheer force of will.
One more time, and I got Gluttonous Envy. Nice: a being which seeks to devour the possessions of others (perhaps their magical abilities, to put a more interesting spin on 'gluttony'?) or is malevolently parasitic, like a primitive vampire?
A fun idea to play around with for a Thursday evening.
ReplyDeleteHow about pairing them with the 4 classic humors/temperaments? (You mention Melancholic in that sloth description and it got me thinking). Then you have a dynamic system with multiple axes like the Law-Chaos /Good-Evil system we are all so familiar with.
OMG. Brilliant! - Jason Bradley Thompson
DeleteLove it. Great concept.
DeleteI could also see a character alignment system using the Seven Sins and the Seven Virtues as tables. Upon character creation you could roll with a d8 on each table with an 8 indicating you would roll for a second entry on the same table. Then a d4 on the temperament table to finish things off. Could work well with NPCs too.
ReplyDeleteSee above. Great concept.
DeleteRound it to using a full d8; the 8th Deadly Sin is generally agreed to be Woe/Despair.
ReplyDeleteCombining these is an interesting idea partly because when monstrous behavior manifests, it seems like it's often not monodimensional in its underlying motivation. Wrath, for example, is likely to have a trigger assuming someone hasn't been brain damaged.
ReplyDeleteWrath + Pride: "What'd you say to me?"
Wrath + Envy: "I'm going to key that motherfucker's car"
Wrath + Sloth: Harder to immediately conceptualize, though wrath could arise from the shame of one's sloth being recognized. Or e.g. saying of your coworkers, "I don't feel like doing anything, but fuck these people anyway, they don't deserve it"
Wrath + Greed: Robbery with violence when it goes on longer than is necessary for the larceny
Wrath + Gluttony: Most of us don't see it much but in times/places where hunger is more prevalent I think it would probably be more familiar
Wrath + Lust: "I'll show her"
Pride is insidious in part because it can justify anything with "I deserve it" or "I'll be able to soak the consequences"; it's also the fuel of victory disease, that turns good outcomes into long-term complacency and the sacrifice of the unique element that was the key to success.
Yes. Although I think the idea behind the sin of Wrath in its pure sense is not that anger is bad - it's Wrath for its own sake, meaning taking revenge/seeking vengeance.
DeleteWrath + Sloth is an interesting one but I would put it more like the anger of disaffected youth. You've never known discipline or been shown how to do anything and have wasted your life but are only inchoately aware of it, so you lash out against the world through delinquency etc.
Wrath plus sloth really sums up an Angry Online Man; unfortunately not something readily translatable to fantasy games, though you could have a go.
DeleteHave you ever looked at Pendragon?
ReplyDelete; )
Everybody always says that!
DeleteProbably for a reason.
DeleteHi there, just letting you know, there is an OSR system named Wretched, that has this as a core mechanic. At character generation, you choose one Sin and/or one Virtue that may lead the character to ruin or redemption, giving a mechanical benefit on one hand and a drawback of some kind on the other. For example, a Lust-driven character suffers a negative on rolls to resist seduction, but gains a bonus to charm or seduce others. A Patient person may find it difficult to react quickly when a situation calls for it, but gains a bonus to stay composed under stress.
ReplyDeleteNice. I’ve used this notion of sins (and the matrix you suggest) for developing motivations of villains in my superhero game. Adding another layer, some villains might be abstractly “greedy” or “wrathful”, while most have an object (or objects) toward which their sin points.
ReplyDeleteAnd layering on, I’ve used the corresponding virtues in three ways. First, as a way a villain justifies himself. Second, as yet another list of sins when pushed to intolerance: it is “kindness” to murder the suffering; it supports “temperence” to remove free will; and so on. And third, as a way to develop friendly, or potentially friendly NPCs.
A superhero setting, for me, is such a broadly melodramatic space that characters can lose the plot, as it were, and villains can run together. As GM, anchoring NPC motivation in a shared language around basic human experience helps me keeps my villains and their plots focused rather than allowing any villain to commit any bad act. Doctor Doom doesn’t rob banks, for example—and neither does Catwoman for entirely different reasons. It keeps the villains unique in my players’ minds. The players have the experience of encountering wildly different thieves, terrorists, world conquerors, mobsters, and monsters all because of what those pesky villains “really” want.
Yes, the point at which virtues becomes vices has always been interesting to me - I really like this idea.
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