D&D 5E About Morally Correct Outcomes in D&D Adventures [+]

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not moral to try and impose your moral viewpoint on someone else. Ergo any "morally correct ending" is inherently immoral. (Note, Prisoner 13 does not specify a "morally correct" ending).

Paradoxes aside, D&D is a role playing game. Which means the morality of the characters can and does differ from the morality of the players. I mean, in real life I wouldn't kill anything, but that doesn't mean I'm not a murder hobo in D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder if a movie rating PG- R type of thing could work with morality. I recall having this when describing the amount of violence and gore in your game and wonder if it could fit.

Hays Code - Wikipedia

 

[CreamCloud0]

i don't think constructing any 'morally good endings' for the adventure would really achieve much, even if a group achieved said ending would it really get them anything?
personally i'd rather more in-universe character reactions to how the types of solutions players might have used to achieved the adventure's goal.
you broke out that innocent prisoner from the cells? well the guards are still going to have a bone to pick with you for doing that even if they were innocent.
made a deal with the mages to bring back the artefact of the adventure safely? if you did that-great! but if you just smashed it for a quick and easy way to stop the ritual then they're not going to trust your word so easiliy next part of the story.
broke the dam and flooded out the invading forces? cool but you still just caused a ton of collateral damage.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

"Quick" (hah) note @Emoshin on the subject of Trolley Problems, since you mentioned you have minimal experience with the study of ethics*:

Spoiler: Semi-off-topic aside

The original point of Trolley Problems (before they even got that name!) was NOT to say that there was some singular, right answer everyone was supposed to get. In fact, it was exactly the opposite! This class of philosophy questions was originally proposed by Philippa Foot (one of my favorite philosophers) in 1967, and then refined and given the name "Trolley Problems" by Judith Jarvis Thompson in 1976.

Foot, you see, was a "virtue ethics" proponent, which means (more or less) the theory that ethics questions are best answered by determining what the components of good character ("virtues") are, and then seeking practical means to develop those attributes. However, she was writing at a time when two other theories, "utilitarianism" and "deontology," had been dominant for quite a while, with utilitarianism by far the most dominant. Utilitarianism, again hyper-distilled, claims that we can (in some sense) calculate the ethical value of actions, e.g. actions that increase pleasure and reduce pain, and thus doing whatever gives the calculated best outcome is correct. (More advanced versions recognize "higher" vs "lower" pleasures, with the former categorically better than the latter.) Deontology is complicated so I won't get into it, but the TL;DR is that it's about moral duties, identifying them and fulfilling them.

I give all this context to explain why Trolley Problems were so influential, and why they're now badly misunderstood and usually used wrongly. Foot used this argument in its raw form to say, "Look, for all of your claims about utilitarianism, people don't actually behave that way. And I can prove it, through the way people respond differently to this moral thought experiment." Her original framing gives a contrast between the following three scenarios:

1. A judge or magistrate is presiding over a court where there are rioters demanding that a culprit be held responsible for some crime. The rioters have five innocent hostages, and will kill them if their demands are not met. The magistrate has no idea who the real culprit is, nor even if the real culprit is available to be punished; they have a choice between framing one innocent person who will definitely be killed by the mob, or allowing the five hostages to die.
2. A pilot is flying a single-person airplane with a heavy cargo, when the engine cuts out. She has the choice of aiming toward a densely-populated area or a sparsely-populated one. However, recognizing that this has too many open variables (e.g. it's possible to hit no one in either location), she proposes...
3. You are a trolley driver on an otherwise empty, runaway trolley. You cannot stop the trolley and the tracks are narrow and difficult to escape. You must choose whether to allow the trolley to stay on a track that has five people working on it, or switch it to a track that has one person on it.

She posed this because, from a purely utilitarian view, the answer to all three problems should be identical: fewer deaths is always preferable to more deaths, and thus we should choose to pilot the plane toward the low-population area, we should direct the trolley to the track with one person, and we should sacrifice one innocent life in order to save five innocent hostages. But the thing is, actual people don't do that! While almost everyone agrees that the correct decision is to crash the plane in a low-population area, a lot of people are very reluctant to change the path of the trolley in order to save five people, even if they are otherwise heavily committed to utilitarianism. And then the courthouse example is even worse, with most people considering it utterly unacceptable to sacrifice one person in that way, even though from a utilitarian/consequentialist perspective the two situations should be entirely identical.

More or less, with the trolley problem, Foot was arguing that we don't, and shouldn't try to, reduce all of ethics down to mere arithmetic, which was in some sense the key selling point of (consequentialist) utilitarianism, the idea that we could skip past all the tedious debate and definitions etc. by employing math to identify correct solutions. This critique made room for a virtue-ethics response to the prevailing moral theories of the day, and was part of the return of virtue ethics to general ethical discussion.

*Almost wrote that as "minimal experience with ethics," and HOO BOY that would've been a SPICY thing to say!

 

[Enrahim2]

I think perhaps an ilaminating take on this issue might be rather than focus on the highly charged word "morality" rather try to use the more positively charged term "feel good".

In various entertainment it is often easy to identify works that is clearly "feel good", and others that very clearly do not fit this label. If you take a random well regarded work of any medium, I think the chances are much higher for it to be at best ambiguitly "feel good".

However the way I read the poll is that most people playing D&D want to have at least the chamce of achieving a "feel good" ending. After all I believe many players (including me) basically tend to have that as a "win condition" for the game, and being presented by a scenario where you cannot win is generally not considered much fun.

What do this have to do with morality? Well, it is tightly coupled, as outcomes of obvious moral ambiguity is generally preventing the good feeling. Even if you saved the 100 people on the train track, the death of your friend sours the experience, no matter if the scenario writer considered this the "morally superior" outcome.

And this bring me to the answer to the question. The adventure should have a feel good ending. And the only way to get a feel good ending is if all obvious elements of the ending are "universaly" accepted as morally "good". As an adventure writer, if you are simply chasing the goal of a "feel good" ending, you will automatically also put effort into making a "morally good" ending.

And my guess is that it is the feel good ending most of those asking for a "morally good" ending want. That is having a morally good ending is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to give them the kind of ending they want.

 

[Emoshin]

"Quick" (hah) note @Emoshin on the subject of Trolley Problems, since you mentioned you have minimal experience with the study of ethics*:
The original point of Trolley Problems (before they even got that name!) was NOT to say that there was some singular, right answer everyone was supposed to get. In fact, it was exactly the opposite! This class of philosophy questions was originally proposed by Philippa Foot (one of my favorite philosophers) in 1967, and then refined and given the name "Trolley Problems" by Judith Jarvis Thompson in 1976.

Yes! This was covered in the book I mentioned in the OP. The book also covers Aristotle's virtues, Kant, utilitarianism, etc. The book used the Trolley Problem as a guide for thinking about "good" and "bad" and ethical dilemmas in a way more thoughtful way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And my guess is that it is the feel good ending most of those asking for a "morally good" ending want. That is having a morally good ending is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to give them the kind of ending they want.

I suspect both of them are individually necessary but not sufficient, and only sufficient jointly.

That is, it seems reasonable to me that the two properties are orthogonal. You can have a "feel-good" ending that is morally questionable/grey, a "moral-good" ending that feels bad, an ending that is both things, and an ending that is neither.

To borrow a term from video games, people want a "golden" ending: an ending that resolves all the plot problems neatly, gives a satisfactory conclusion, provides definitive answers to the moral dilemmas, and achieves something like "happily ever after." That said, "golden ending" usually implies at or near true perfection, with nothing bad left. In morally-nuanced works, even the option closest to a true "golden ending" may have bittersweet elements or true loss/hardship, but those things should feel like worthy sacrifices on the journey to success, rather than wasted potential or pointless destruction. A noble self-sacrifice at the conclusion of a character's long arc of redemption and transformation can be part of a "golden ending" if that sacrifice feels narratively earned and karmically satisfying.

 

[Emoshin]

I suspect both of them are individually necessary but not sufficient, and only sufficient jointly.

That is, it seems reasonable to me that the two properties are orthogonal. You can have a "feel-good" ending that is morally questionable/grey, a "moral-good" ending that feels bad, an ending that is both things, and an ending that is neither.

To borrow a term from video games, people want a "golden" ending: an ending that resolves all the plot problems neatly, gives a satisfactory conclusion, provides definitive answers to the moral dilemmas, and achieves something like "happily ever after." That said, "golden ending" usually implies at or near true perfection, with nothing bad left. In morally-nuanced works, even the option closest to a true "golden ending" may have bittersweet elements or true loss/hardship, but those things should feel like worthy sacrifices on the journey to success, rather than wasted potential or pointless destruction. A noble self-sacrifice at the conclusion of a character's long arc of redemption and transformation can be part of a "golden ending" if that sacrifice feels narratively earned and karmically satisfying.

And this is all contextual to the group... If the party is entirely composed of all "Evil" PCs, then the PCs likely just want to survive this mission (and then go back to their old "Evil" ways). If they achieve the "feel good" ending, it could be entirely incidental.

However, at the player level, maybe the "feel good" ending is that the "Evil" PCs all sacrifice themselves in a big TPK to save the world.

But then another gaming group where the PCs are "Good", then the "feel good" ending lines up more closely between the player and PC.

It is very complicated.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To borrow a term from video games, people want a "golden" ending

To also borrow a concept from video games, there are often degrees of success, with the "golden" ending the most difficult to achieve. I don't think in an RPG the "best" ending should be automatic. The players should have to work for it. Players should always be aware that "you fail and the world ends" is a possible outcome.

 

[Enrahim2]

That is, it seems reasonable to me that the two properties are orthogonal. You can have a "feel-good" ending that is morally questionable/grey, a "moral-good" ending that feels bad, an ending that is both things, and an ending that is neither.

I am curious what sort of situation you have in mind that is feel good, while morally grey/black? I could not think of any when I formulated my post. At least I would say they appear very tightly coupled from all feel good examples I have in mind.

Maybe I should emphasize that I here are talking about the surface obvious elements of the ending. For instance starwars has a feel good ending, despite it involving vandalised decades worth of work, and killed thousands of people. It acheives this by putting front and center the focus on this being the destruction of a weapon in the hands of someone that happily just used it to kill millions of innocents.

And I think it is this kind of surficial moral good ending players of D&D should reasonably expect. After all once you start looking deeper into the morality of killing sentient beings, basically all published adventures quickly falls appart..

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I am curious what sort of situation you have in mind that is feel good, while morally grey/black?

That would depend on what the PCs are trying to achieve. But "we get to keep the huge pile of loot" is a fairly common one. Treasure Island for example. Jim Hawkins gets to keep a huge pile of stolen gold, and the murderous pirate Long John Silver escapes punishment.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To also borrow a concept from video games, there are often degrees of success, with the "golden" ending the most difficult to achieve. I don't think in an RPG the "best" ending should be automatic. The players should have to work for it. Players should always be aware that "you fail and the world ends" is always a possible outcome.

Oh, most certainly. To paraphrase myself from the ending-voting thread, the idealized adventure in my head has:
(a) a difficult but highly satisfying morally good ending that is maximally heroic etc. etc.,
(b) an acceptably good but imperfect ending that is easier to achieve,
(c) a weakly bad ending that is sort of the natural failure state from lack/waste of effort, and
(d) a strongly bad "you really screwed up" ending that might be very difficult for the area/setting to recover from.

Some adventures generally shouldn't go HAM for moral endings (sometimes it's just fun to explore a ruined city or whatever), but some adventures should. A good healthy mix of light-hearted and heavy, pure-adventure and morally-charged, colorful and grounded, etc. is what keeps gaming fresh.

 

[Enrahim2]

That would depend on what the PCs are trying to achieve. But "we get to keep the huge pile of loot" is a fairly common one.

But do it make a difference to the feel good aspect if this pile came from the hoard of an evil dragon, or by plundering the taxman of a benevolent king? I think it would..

 

[Emoshin]

Also I think there's another great point which have been touched upon by @Steampunkette and @Enrahim2 and maybe others.

In "How to Be Perfect", here are some examples of angst one can go through when making moral decisions:

• Oh, You Bought a New iPhone? That's Cool. Did You Know That Millions of People Are Starving in South Asia?!
• This Sandwich is Morally Problematic. But It's Also Delicious. Can I Still Eat It?
• I Gave a Twenty-Seven Cent Tip to My Barista, and Now Everyone's Yelling at Me on Twitter, Just Because I'm a Billionaire! I Can't Even Enjoy the Soft-Shell Crab Rolls That My Sushi Chef Made for My Private Dirigible Trip to the Dutch Antilles! How Is That Fair?!

IMO, it's important to be cognizant that, when we talk about a "heroically good" or "feel good" or "morally correct" ending, this is in context of the genre of those who are desiring that "good" ending.

Which is to say that for some tables, being an escape from reality, D&D allows for (not automatically, but through heroic effort) actualizing that perfect outcome without all the angst.

For other tables, an escape from reality might be an opportunity to transpose and explore those moral nuances, where that angst is a feature, not a bug.

If that's true, then perhaps the twain shall never meet across those two kinds of tables.

 

[Enrahim2]

That would depend on what the PCs are trying to achieve. But "we get to keep the huge pile of loot" is a fairly common one. Treasure Island for example. Jim Hawkins gets to keep a huge pile of stolen gold, and the murderous pirate Long John Silver escapes punishment.

Ah, you edited in a great example! I agree that Treasure Island has quite a feel good ending. But would this have worked in an RPG as the provided "good" ending of a written adventure? I am not sure. While in the book we can get the feel good by accepting the protagonists values as the important focus, and provide a moral framework for the reader to understand the text trough.

In a rpg however it is more likely one of the protagonists would have been strongly opiniated about the fate of LJS, and hence the adventure not allowing for an outcome where he is put to justice would have been problematic.

I think this point to an important distinction between how to acheive a feel good ending in rpgs and other media. In other media you have more tools to dictate the moral framework the ending should be interpreted under. In starwars, if one of the characters had as a main goal to somehow get to use the death star to the rebel's advantage, the ending might have been quite tragic.

Hence I think my proposition that morally good and feel good is tightly coupled still holds. But it is only for rpgs seeking "universality" of the moral might be needed, due to lack of other tools for dictating morality. In this case, striving for feel good ending still appear like a good tool for trying to acheive a sufficiently "morally good" ending for most interested.

Of course if you just make an adventure for a known set of players/characters, you have a lot more to work with to determine what would make aproperiate "win" conditions.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am curious what sort of situation you have in mind that is feel good, while morally grey/black? I could not think of any when I formulated my post. At least I would say they appear very tightly coupled from all feel good examples I have in mind.

Maybe I should emphasize that I here are talking about the surface obvious elements of the ending. For instance starwars has a feel good ending, despite it involving vandalised decades worth of work, and killed thousands of people. It acheives this by putting front and center the focus on this being the destruction of a weapon in the hands of someone that happily just used it to kill millions of innocents.

And I think it is this kind of surficial moral good ending players of D&D should reasonably expect. After all once you start looking deeper into the morality of killing sentient beings, basically all published adventures quickly falls appart..

I don't actually consider the destruction of the Death Star a morally ambiguous ending. Anyone who died on board the station was an active combatant engaged in a (civil) war, who had participated in outright war crimes (the destruction of Alderaan, an explicitly civilian target.) Preventing the commission of even more war crimes by destroying the Death Star is not some sort of horrible mass murder. It is a terrible loss of life, and the deaths of the crew absolutely should be mourned (because all deaths are tragedies!), but it is not something to beat oneself up over.

I would consider it a "feel good" but morally-questionable ending in any of the following cases:

(1) A very bad person, who has done bad things and gotten away with it, and whom the party strongly and justifiably dislikes, gets punished for crimes they did not commit. The PCs enjoy watching them get their comeuppance. This is morally wrong--no one should be punished for deeds they didn't commit, even if they have done other wicked things--but it is almost certainly going to be satisfying, hence, feeling good.

(2) The players have successfully stolen something very valuable without getting caught. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is morally wrong, yet such heist-type stuff is often thrilling, exciting, and deeply satisfying if you can pull it off and get away with it (consider Ocean's Eleven.) This is especially a "feel-good, morally-questionable" ending if the stolen item(s) weren't themselves ill-gotten gains or the like, but rather legitimate goods/purchases/etc.

(3) The party successfully starts a war between two rival powers, ensuring that those powers won't team up against their allies. This is less blatantly "big moral wrong" than the previous two, but it's still very morally questionable. They will have intentionally caused a lot of unnecessary death (among people who aren't massive war criminals, unlike the Death Star crew) for their own benefit. That benefit might be an overall good thing, but it's still a very morally-questionable method of achieving that end.*

(4) Basically any game where the PCs are actually evil or doing the bidding of actually evil employers. Whatever victories they get, whatever things make them "feel good," it's pretty much definitionally going to be morally-dubious at best. These are of course rarer, since a lot of DMs don't run games with evil characters, but it's a relevant example.

(5) Resurrecting a beloved dead friend/lover/family-member/etc., even though it means doing something nefarious. Relatively simple, that one. Getting back the person you love even though it means a deal with the (literal) devil? There are a lot of people who would take that without a second thought and be happy about it, but it's clearly morally dubious.

*You can see a reversed version of this (killing someone innocent, albeit unpleasant, in order to ensure that their people ally with the "player character" allies) in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight." TL;DR: The station commander recruited an ex-spy to get the Romulans to help in the war against the Dominion. It works...but only because a Romulan senator and his two bodyguards, all innocents, were murdered by the ex-spy. It is a genuine victory for "the good guys" (Sisko himself says that much) that the Romulans are now helping, but it was won through blatantly immoral means--and Sisko finds that he can live with his guilty conscience, somewhat to his surprise.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But would this have worked in an RPG as the provided "good" ending of a written adventure?

I would be happy with it, so would my players, on the assumption that the players had developed a fondness for the villain, as in the book.

While in the book we can get the feel good by accepting the protagonists values as the important focus

No different in an RPG. Remember, the PCs' values may not be the same as the players' values. If they want gold, then getting gold is the "good" ending.

provide a moral framework for the reader to understand the text trough.

For a Victorian novel, Treasure Island is decidedly amoral, as the whole pirate genre is wont to be.

In a rpg however it is more likely one of the protagonists would have been strongly opiniated about the fate of LJS, and hence the adventure not allowing for an outcome where he is put to justice would have been problematic.

Maybe so, but that would emerge naturally through gameplay, there would be no need to decide what the players do with LJS ahead of play. But if I told my players they where playing a pirate campaign, they would likely create characters who were scoundrels.

In other media you have more tools to dictate the moral framework the ending should be interpreted under.

Which is why the only moral framework should be the one provided by the players, in accordance with the characters they have created.

 

[Emoshin]

Which is why the only moral framework should be the one provided by the players, in accordance with the characters they have created.

Friendly reminder that this is a +++++ thread, which is experimental and means a lot of things, including positive contributions to the "What if"? hypothetical premise in the OP.

The hypothetical premise includes the possible question of what moral framework the author of the adventure might be leveraging, not putting the onus on the players for this specific thread.

I cannot say for sure, but I am feeling a little worried that your posts are inching away from the OP premise.

I just wanted to check in with you and see if you're OK with aligning your posts to the thread rules of engagement?

 

[Enrahim2]

I don't actually consider the destruction of the Death Star a morally ambiguous ending. Anyone who died on board the station was an active combatant engaged in a (civil) war, who had participated in outright war crimes (the destruction of Alderaan, an explicitly civilian target.) Preventing the commission of even more war crimes by destroying the Death Star is not some sort of horrible mass murder. It is a terrible loss of life, and the deaths of the crew absolutely should be mourned (because all deaths are tragedies!), but it is not something to beat oneself up over.

I would consider it a "feel good" but morally-questionable ending in any of the following cases:

(1) A very bad person, who has done bad things and gotten away with it, and whom the party strongly and justifiably dislikes, gets punished for crimes they did not commit. The PCs enjoy watching them get their comeuppance. This is morally wrong--no one should be punished for deeds they didn't commit, even if they have done other wicked things--but it is almost certainly going to be satisfying, hence, feeling good.

(2) The players have successfully stolen something very valuable without getting caught. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is morally wrong, yet such heist-type stuff is often thrilling, exciting, and deeply satisfying if you can pull it off and get away with it (consider Ocean's Eleven.) This is especially a "feel-good, morally-questionable" ending if the stolen item(s) weren't themselves ill-gotten gains or the like, but rather legitimate goods/purchases/etc.

(3) The party successfully starts a war between two rival powers, ensuring that those powers won't team up against their allies. This is less blatantly "big moral wrong" than the previous two, but it's still very morally questionable. They will have intentionally caused a lot of unnecessary death (among people who aren't massive war criminals, unlike the Death Star crew) for their own benefit. That benefit might be an overall good thing, but it's still a very morally-questionable method of achieving that end.*

(4) Basically any game where the PCs are actually evil or doing the bidding of actually evil employers. Whatever victories they get, whatever things make them "feel good," it's pretty much definitionally going to be morally-dubious at best. These are of course rarer, since a lot of DMs don't run games with evil characters, but it's a relevant example.

(5) Resurrecting a beloved dead friend/lover/family-member/etc., even though it means doing something nefarious. Relatively simple, that one. Getting back the person you love even though it means a deal with the (literal) devil? There are a lot of people who would take that without a second thought and be happy about it, but it's clearly morally dubious.

*You can see a reversed version of this (killing someone innocent, albeit unpleasant, in order to ensure that their people ally with the "player character" allies) in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Pale Moonlight." TL;DR: The station commander recruited an ex-spy to get the Romulans to help in the war against the Dominion. It works...but only because a Romulan senator and his two bodyguards, all innocents, were murdered by the ex-spy. It is a genuine victory for "the good guys" (Sisko himself says that much) that the Romulans are now helping, but it was won through blatantly immoral means--and Sisko finds that he can live with his guilty conscience, somewhat to his surprise.

Thank you! I think these are great examples of endings that would work great for a tailored adventures. However I think all of these would be very dubious to put as the only "good" ending in a published adventure. While it is easy to see some players that would highly enjoy these outcomes, I also can as easily envision players tooth and nail working against these outcomes. I have some additional thoughts on each.

1) I think is a strong potential second best possible outcome of an adventure, while the adventure should make it hard, but not impossible to get the bad person based on the actual crimes.
2) I think a huge reason oceans 11 work, is that they are robbing a casino. Corrupt governments, criminal gangs and businesses that profit from people's vices are popular heist locations, because it is morally defendable - hence the focus on the win for the gang is the focus, while the loss for the previous owner easily fade into the background. I think an adventure about a heist on the orphanage donation box would likely have a very niche audience..
3) The more vile the two nations, and all members of them you can portray, the more likely you are that the players actually come out of it with a feel good notion. My gut feeling though is that most parties would be more of congratulating themselves about a "job well done", but not really feel very celebratory about it. Again a strong contender for a second best outcome of an adventure, where the best perhaps might have been to be able to assassin the heads of the nations?
4) Evil campaigns is a weird beast. In particular the assumption that player joy and character joy is tightly interlinked can quickly fall apart. Players feeling joy on seeing their characters fail can often be the case. FIASCO as an rpg is an example that spesifically caters to such tastes. It could also be an indication of players wanting to explore more morally problematic issues in the game - in which case they likely fall outside the scope of this thread, and aren't really looking for a feel good experience either.
5) This one is one where I struggle to see how the outcome can be "feel good" at all? It is a closure, and a possible ending to a scenario - but it sound very much like the kind of adventure that do not really have any "good" ending. If indeed there should be a good ending to the adventure, it would have involved the resurrection happening without any moral cost?

So I still think the moral component is essential to modify the level of "feel good" for all these cases. I still hence fail to see how these concerns could be considered "orthogonal".

 

[Blue]

I think this is orthagonal to what I am looking for (and mentioned in that other thread). I want shades of grey as well as black and white, and real moral choices. And I want rewards that make sense either direectly based on what the characters do, and from what the various factions are offering for their own agendas.

That's multiple endings because of choices that matter. That's wanting morality of the characters to be part of it, because those choices should be hard and meaningful, promote in-party debate, and character growth.

But none of that requires or is even enhanced by the adventure writer moralizing on the "best" answer. There may not be one. There may be several. There may be options that don't come up because of choices made along the way. It might be that doing something morally ambiguous gets the most rewards as that's what pays best, or can satisfy the most NPCs willing to reward.

I do want at least one "good" ending possible, so that characters that strive to be heroic aren't locked out. But this isn't about the characters finding the morally best path, it's about characters finding their own path and having endings to fit those options.

The adventure designer moralizing isn't helpful and may be actively contrary to that.