moral dilemmas

[timbannock]

One of my faves is having disaster strike some unsuspecting people, and the players get the choice of chasing down the source of it or saving the people. Burning inns are great for this sort of thing.

Captives create a lot of issues, too. Bashing down doors alerts badguys, and I'm willing to execute NPCs if it means getting the players to be more stealthy at times.

Another is the cursed item: give them a magic item that is da shizzle. Then make it intelligent, and horribly, horribly evil. But make it act like their buddy. "My precognition tells me the king's steward is going to poison the king and rape the queen! You must stop him!" Of course, the steward is a Lawful Good alchemist, so he's not going to do that, but the alchemy part of the equation makes it believable...

Finally, there's the inter-party sacrifice: give one player a prophecy that seems to say something to the effect of "If you spill the blood of a good, holy soul at the Temple of Orcus, you will break the undead god's power over the temple." When they get there, the only holy character is the Paladin in the group. Does the player attack the Paladin? Does he tell him the prophecy? Is the prophecy even true? Do they have to wait for some other holy dude to come along?

 

[Piratecat]

I just posted one involving an erinyes in this thread.

More recently, I had a PC need to decide whether to honor his family obligations and accede to a contracted marriage.. even though the girl he was supposed to marry turned out to be a fiend. For the record, he did in order to stop her from reverting and doing evil. The wedding was really something.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

My group has pretty much told me they don't want any moral dilemmas,

 

[FireLance]

My group has pretty much told me they don't want any moral dilemmas,

So the question is, do you give one to them or not?

 

[tomlib]

Probably the worst thing I ever did to a party was have them run across an exposed baby while hiking past a small hamlet. It had been born with no arms and legs and left out to die.

It was a fairly traumatic experience.

Happy Gaming,

Tom

 

[the Jester]

Picture this:

The party is champions of Chaos (read that "freedom" in context), while their enemies are the champions of Law. The pcs slay one of the BBLGs...

Months later, the LG guy on the team of BBLG secretly has the super-stud of the party for dinner and offers to let him on the BBLG team. He explained that, if the pc (who was LG in the Chaotic party) declined, someone else would assume the position.

"Look," said the LG npc, "if you don't join me, the evil side of law will take over. If you do, you can help me establish a golden age of law and goodness. And I won't even ask you to fight your friends."

Okay, so the conversation was a little bit more involved than that, but hey, you get the drift.

In the end, the pc accepted, and stayed with the party as a mole for months (real time) before the big showdown.

 

[Dan23]

I'm not sure if our group has ever had any moral dilemma. If for some reason a dungeon happens to have a bathroom or something similar, the boss will invariably get "thrown in the poop."

At the end of Whispering Cairn, the first in the Age of Worms adventures, one of the PCs sat at the table and saw how the zombies in the chair all, using Magic Mouth, told Filge, the boss, how awesome he was. After defeating Filge, but not killing him, someone had a great idea: they shackled and tied Filge to his chair downstairs and had the party's wizard cast new Magic Mouths to tell Filge how much he sucks and how he just got owned and such to verbally abuse him. It was great.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I rarely do the "pick A or B, both of which suck" sort of moral dilemmas. I may spring one per campaign, but otherwise I find them to be anti-fun for my group.

Yeah. Many of those (or situations like Olaf described with his Devil) and I walk out of a game. I play a game where all my choices are shades of gray, I never win, and cannot make an impact on the game world - It's called life, and I play it every day when I get up in the morning. I play D&D to escape from that sort of thing.

 

[steenan]

I remember many moral dilemmas I've been put through in various campaigns and oneshots.

In D&D:

1. My character met a drow girl he fought many years earlier and that later was his lover. Now she was a vampire. She loathed what she became, but anyway begged me not to destroy her.
With a help from a cleric of Lathander I managed to persuade her that even after what she has done there is a hope for her. She agreed to be destroyed and raised.

2. My friend used a card from the Deck of Many Things and, as a result, a curse of Auril fell upon him. I found somebody who could remove it, but as a price for it I had to accept to perform a mission for him, not knowing what it will be and who this person really is.
I took the risk and, fortunately, it turned out fine. The mission was dangerous, but I didn't have to hurt any innocent person, I lived through it and learned an important thing in the process.

3. I faced against my shadow, a dark reflection of myself, trying to defeat and dominate me.
I fought it, but didn't destroy it. It put me through a series of tests and each time I chose not to hurt and oppress, but also not to back off or surrender. I don't know if my GM took this option into account earlier, but she let me get away with it - I showed my shadow that I'm stronger, but then joined with it instead of refusing it. I think I like the "middle paths".

4. A druid in our party turned evil and betrayed us. When we faced him, he challenged the paladin (and my character's fiancee) to a duel, and she accepted. I had to choose between helping her against her will and honor or just watching the fight.
I didn't interfere. She was killed in the duel.

In Vampire the Masquerade:

5. A vampire murdered a young girl with extreme cruelty. Our group investigated it as a breach of Masquerade, but my character also took it very personal and promised to himself he will find the killer. After finding some clues I had a very strong suspect - but no real proof of his guilt. I also knew I had no way of forcing the confession out of him in any way and that if he knew that I knew I will be dominated in no time. I had a choice of killing him in an ambush or letting him get away with what he did.
I didn't attack. Later it became obvious that he was the murderer, but then he was far away of my reach. Tough unlife.

6. We were tasked with kidnapping a girl to lure her father, a vampire hunter, into a trap. We did it. In the process, I learned how she was treated by the father and how little freedom she ever had in her life.
I persuaded my team members and then let her go, even after she told me that she may in the future return to the town to hunt us as her father did. He made his choices and we killed him for what he chose. She still had to start living her own life and it would be a crime too great even for us to deny her the chance.

In other RPGs:

7. I played a young mage-priest that escorted a princess to a great temple deep in the woods. She, like her father, was sure she went there to learn magic. I knew she was going to be sacrificed to a great dragon that gave fortune and safety to the whole kingdom - and if the sacrifice wasn't performed, the kingdom will fall in war and famine. On the way, I fell in love with her. I never told her, but she felt it anyway and loved me back.
I still brought her to the temple. I apologized to her and died with her. Two lives were much less important than the fate of the whole kingdom and people that lived in it.

 

[Wombat]

The question of placing moral dilemmas is a tricky one. In a lot of ways it is determined not only by the game group you have, but also the game system itself. Different groups of players will have a greater or lesser interest in moral dilemmas in a game, but looking at the expectations in systems themselves is also instructive.

Consider White Wolf's WoD -- this is a game that assumes such problems will arise, although not matters are moral. The character has stats not only for physical prowess and manual dexterity, but also for mental well-being and social interaction. Vampires in WoD try to balance their need for human blood with their need to retain a semblance of humanity; changelings try to give voice to their inhuman nature while still fitting into the larger community. Still, not every act is going to produce such a dilemma.

D&D, conversely, is based combat and, as such, moral dilemmas are not built into the system itself. Killing is common, something that happens in every (or nearly every) session. Character gain XP for defeating (which usually, but not always, means killing the opponent). Now this does not mean that there are no moral questions in D&D adventures -- I have seen them many times. Still, it is not the common trope of such adventures.

Unknown Armies (a comparatively little-known game from Atlas) is based almost entirely around moral dilemmas. All the characters are obsessed individuals and determining one's mental & emotional health is in many ways more important than one's physical health. Session play revolves around emotional break points -- combat may or may not take place, but emotional and moral points are constantly explored simply for characters to advance.

D&D is the most commonly played rpg in the country; WoD is number 2; Unknown Armies is all but unknown. It is possible that the placement of moral questions in the game systems themselves.