26/05/2013

When Truth Kills the Justice, Go the Other Way Around

We aim to shoot the head each and every time that we try to shoot something, we try to find the truth behind every mystery, to uncover the secret that was not supposed to be solved, but sometimes, justice is a lot more important than the truth.
There's a game I want to run, an investigative game, a murder mystery, but the clues contradict one another, and the PCs should use what clues they see fit to get the result that they want.
The thing that is identical in both of these situations is that the truth is not the most important thing. Sometimes, truth is not relevant at all, like in the second situation, and all of this thinking came from a movie I watched called To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a courtroom drama, with some elements that can be considered as horror, and it's a really good one. In the end of it, the Sherriff says that the truth is not this important; it will harm more than it will help, and he invents a lie to bring justice back to its place.
And that's the whole point: Justice is more important than truth. Truth should be twisted to complement the just things, but never should we do the second thing around. In games, it's really important, at least from my standpoint, that when the characters are faced with an investigation that is gonna end with a good person being harmed in one way or the other, the characters should be rewarded if they choose the right and just thing. More interestingly, though, can be a more difficult situation, where they should have to choose between truth and justice, each one with its own benefits and drawbacks.
I don't know if I actually succeeded with explaining what I mean, but to make it much more simple, and to get to the point of what I'm trying to say, I think that this is a point, an aspect, that should be explored: What is more important, truth or justice? To what extent is it true?

No comments:

Post a Comment