I’ve been thinking lately about why I like moral ambiguity in some worldbuilding and not others, and I think it comes down to having an empowered faction that I can sympathize with enough to not want to wash my hands of the entire world lol. I think there’s a whole spectrum of moral greyness:

1. the author might be slightly ambivalent but it’s clear that they mostly agree with this faction/character, and they’re juxtaposing this faction/character with others in order to process their ambivalence (for example if they’re of two minds about something ethically, they might have two characters who fit into this category and who disagree with each other - each representing half of the author’s thoughts) (often the crew of the Enterprise in TNG will split into multiple examples of this during an episode as they disagree with each other about what the right thing to do is)

2. the author wrote this faction/character based on their understanding of a worldview that they don’t have, and it might come off like a caricature sometimes but it has enough nuance and sympathetic writing to not come off as pure evil (House in New Vegas, Quark in DS9)

3. this faction/character is basically just evil but they have sympathetic reasons (that probably don’t hold up to scrutiny) for doing terrible things. the author definitely wrote them to be villains (Killmonger in Black Panther, Caesar in New Vegas, Gul Dukat in DS9)

I think my favorite kind of worldbuilding is when there are a few tier-1 morally grey factions, and maybe a few tier 2 and 3. because then it feels like this is a world where people generally care about the welfare of everyone, and conflict happens because people disagree about what’s best for everyone

but if you have a world where there are no tier-1 factions, and it’s just tier 2 and/or tier 3, you often end up with a world that feels like it’s exclusively populated by awful people, and I don’t want anything to do with it lol. the same problem happens if all of the tier-1 factions are so disempowered that they don’t stand a chance against the tier 2 or 3 factions (the Followers of the Apocalypse in New Vegas are a great example of this, and I’m pretty sure Game of Thrones fits into this category too)

like if I can’t imagine the world turning into one worth living in, then why would I care about learning more about it or rooting for the heroes or anything else? I guess that’s what TVTropes calls Too Bleak, Stopped Caring

and I think the reason why I love TNG and DS9 so much is because those shows are able to explore morally grey questions through the lens of a cast of empowered tier-1 characters - so it’s not a question of “will the sympathetic characters ever be able to effect change in this terrible world?” it’s more like “there are multiple ways that you could look at this situation and what to do about it, so what’s the right answer?”

I’ve been thinking about how I would rewrite the NCR and House in New Vegas to be tier-1 factions, and here’s what I would change:

have House express genuine remorse for the poor starving people outside of the walls of the strip, but explain that this kind of ruthless capitalism is the only time-tested way to redevelop all of the technologies needed for a true utopia - at which point there won’t be any need for capitalism because there won’t be any more scarcity of resources. as such a long-lived character, he’s the only one with the perspective to prioritize the wellbeing of people for thousands of years to come. make sure it’s clear that this isn’t just a lie or a manipulation, and that he really does care about the wellbeing of everyone

make the NCR a decentralized volunteer militia that was created to resist the Legion. their culture would emphasize freedom from oppression for every person in the Mojave, but all of their missions (other than anti-Legion missions) would involve scavenging for pre-war tech to automate their farming, food-manufacturing, logistics, etc. because they’re spread thin and having serious supply chain issues, in part because of their decentralized nature

so the question becomes: do you support House, who will oppress people until his capitalist crucible (in theory?) produces enough tech to create a utopia? (and of course you have to trust him to step down as an autocrat at that point) or do you support the NCR, who wouldn’t oppress anyone, in the hope that they’re able to scavenge enough pre-war tech to jump-start a technological revolution that could do the same? knowing that there’s a risk that they never find a way to coordinate logistics in a decentralized way, which could also result in starvation and poverty