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..