I think that "crime" is bad terminology for this one. Clarity really is the measure of how "mundane" you can keep your life; it makes sense that you can't use your Fae powers and maintain a high clarity, because any use of them at all invites the muddling confusion of Faerie into your life. It's less of a morality meter than the other nWoD games' meters.
I'm not familiar with the Clarity scale as such, but the higher levels of every morality system in the World of Darkness are next to impossible to keep unless you radiate saintliness. Remember, Morality 10 has to make a degeneration roll for thinking "gee, I wish I had a Rolls Royce" ("selfish thoughts"), and Wisdom 10 punishes you for using a minor magical power to turn on a light switch. So absurdly restrictive requirements at high levels are not uniquely hard on Changelings but rather par for the course.
Also, given that from what I've heard it's equal parts morality scale and PTSD-O-Meter, it figures that doing things that bring back memories of the most traumatic experience of your life might cause problems.
The difficulty of keeping Clarity isn't what bothers me - it's the fact that the fluff reasoning behind it says that Clarity is about "balancing your human and fae halves", while the crunch for it seems to support "denying your fae half altogether".
If the Clarity description had said "this is about trying to deny your fae half", or if the crunch had, again, come off as more trying to actually balance the Changeling's two halves, then I would not have a problem.
But, honestly, I feel the N Wo D's Karma Meters as a whole tend to not be very good.
Clarity 10 is not what represents a balance between your human and supernatural halves, Clarity 5 is. High Clarity is more human, low Clarity is more Fae.
I know it's easy to mistake "higher" for "better", but WW never actually expected you to reach 10 Clarity anyway. Heck, you're lucky if you can keep 7. The Morality meter is really a form of player control. Because unlike real life there are no real consequences of acting of in-game actions, so it is easy to fall to the lure of becoming a hoarding jerk, since the game seems to reward that kind of behavior. (Like the opening scene in Darths And Droids where the "diplomats" loot the waiting room as soon as they are left unsupervised.) Games like D&D were actually built around recognizing and rewarding this. But you can avoid those kind of players having an advantage and encourage realistic behavior by giving those actions consequences. Hence the Morality scale.
Supernatural Morality really just uses the same rules, but they are expanded to include penalties that 1, prevent players from abusing their superpowers, 2, forbid that they act differently from the intended mood of the game. For example, Changeling forces you to stay away from Fae and maintain your mortal relationships. There is no reason why a Changeling couldn't be content with a life in Faerie or not miss their human relationship, but since those would be a different kind of game you force those motifs by making them Clarity breaking points.
Morality stats over 7 are really just an abstraction, since they'd require you as a player to abandon everything that makes playing a supernatural fun, and have impossibly high exp costs anyway.
If I had to say one thing I don't like about Wo D Morality is that Morality is only ever expected to decrease. This is because WW expected the player's stories to be about slow corruption and descent into decadence from the get go. So the Morality system probably suits you if you enjoy roleplaying My God, What Have I Done?.
That is why petty theft gives you mental illness: because the basic assumption is that every character has strong conscience and will be haunted by it if they do anything bad.
I'm not a fan of this kind of system, either (I'm allergic to Wangst, especially if my characters do it). Though making Morality more flexible is not that difficult: change the exp costs (so that it is no more an exp sink, and players actually spend points on it, not caring that they may lose them the next session) - this makies it more flexible, and allows it to up and down a lot - and get rid of the Derangements. Make up some other penalty for being evil if you want.
edited 4th Nov '11 1:18:41 PM by Vree
"Balance between human and fae parts of life" isn't a particularly good way of describing Clarity, per my understanding. It's more about being able to judge the truth of the world from your own solipsistic hallucinations. Acting like the True Fae dings you because it reinforces your similarity to *their* solipsism. Entering the hedge, at high levels, dings you because it's in inherently unreal and acts as a reminder of the further unreality of Arcadia.
The morality systems have always been the worst part of WoD. Exception: The one in Genius, but that was made by fans and not actually WW's work.
Besides, the morality things are usually pointless rules. The other big flaw of WoD: They give too many bloody rules for roleplaying of all things. I understand how this can be helpful for newbies, but experienced roleplayers don't need that kind of construct.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-I will have to disagree. I've been DM of a Mage campaign for 3 years and the Wisdom scale has actually been very beneficent in the game. Wisdom lost and gained are memorable moments with a lot of gravitas.
So I keep hearing people disliking the whole morality thing. Can someone tell me why? I don't think I've heard reasons.
WOOF!I don't like it because it's an artificial construct. It feels very rulesy, like it's less about my character and more about technical things. For instance, say someone flips out and goes nuts for a while in reaction to some sort of trauma. However, with help from good friends and better medication, he's slowly recovering.
Now, I have to sink points into this. Loads of points overall, just to have the character have what amounts to a freak out episode.
I suppose this is okay with vanilla humans, but say I'm a supernatural beasty. Now all those points are preventing me from growing more powerful as a supernatural being, while my friends are fine. This discourages me from buying that morality back up, which means my character never recovers from anything, ever.
Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-Mirrors is useless. There, I said it. It gives you eternally useful advice such as "don't like the morality system? did you know you can just scrap it?" or "Did you know you can get faster healing, by doubling the healing times?" in other words, no real system hacks just things that anyone with half a mind could've already done themselves.
Still, the core system is fine enough that you can get away with a lot of home made modifications. I won't list the ways you can hack the morality system, but if you just add your own adjustments (decrease the exp cost or just lose it, change the roll for Dernagements, and so on) it could be saved for you perhaps.
there actually are a couple of reasons for Clarity to exist. Namely, that it represents a scale of how far your changeling is from slipping into the throes of utter solipsism. Also, because theres a very concrete risk as your wyrd goes up, that low clarity could trigger the ultimate bad end for a Changeling.
Theres a reason True Fae have impossibly high wyrd and zero clarity, after all.
edited 3rd Feb '12 9:04:50 AM by Midgetsnowman
Oh yes how foolish of me to suggest checking out a book to someone who is bugged by the clarity system, just because it has three alternate morality systems, rules for running changeling without any morality system, and guidelines for altering morality systems for your games.
Why that's only five ways to fix the problem, how shameful.
All the Morality systems work well enough if the Storyteller isn't heavy-handed with them. Also, there are some good expanded rules on Morality in the various World Of Darkness sourcebooks (Dogs of War has a few).
I've seen Storytellers who seem to love driving characters to 0 Morality/Clarity/Wisdom/whatever, and that's just stupid. However, I used to run old Wo D; I watched players commit horrific atrocities (especially in Werewolf) and suffer no consequences for doing so. The Morality chart is not a perfect solution, but anyone who played old Wo D knows why it exists.
And yes, Vampire had Humanity and the Path system, but that was because losing your humanity was one of the central themes of the game. Werewolf did not, and as a consequence players had a tendency to turn any Werewolf game into a slaughter-fest.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~Here's a supplement to Morality that explains some of the sins:
10. Accidentally hurting another person’s feelings.
9. Minor selfishness (greedy behavior, excess consumption).
8. Accidentally injuring another person.
7. Theft out of greed rather than necessity. Threatening harm.
6. Accidental killing. Intense verbal and emotional abuse.
5. Killing in self-defense.
4. Torture to extract information or intimidate.
3. Premeditated murder.
2. Impassioned torture or physical abuse.
1. Torture and murder for pleasure.
edited 13th Mar '12 6:33:39 PM by Zenoseiya
I could buy into that, though I'd rate accidental killing (ie. negligent homicide or criminal negligence) more severe than self defense (since law treats it as a case of "criminal mind" as well) and would place around 4 wilfully causing permanent and crippling injury ("torture' should be rated according to how severe are the physical and mental scars). But that's just tidbits.

I don't know, but this really bugs me. It does make a valid argument for the "non-crimes" that cause degeneration rolls (Unexpected Life Changes, Taking Psychotropic Drugs, Mortal Identity is Suddenly or Unexpectedly Destroyed), but the other "crimes" seem to all place the emphasis on the Changeling forsaking their fae side and acting like a human. The only real "faerie laws" that are noted in the Clarity table are Breaking Formal Oaths & Pledges and Revealing Your True Form to an Unensorcelled Mortal.