moral dilemmas

[Mark1733]

Besides the typical "do we turn in the bad guy or just kill him" scenario, what have been some simple, yet excellent moral dilemmas DMs have given their PCs?

My DM gave me one and then I gave it to my son who is 10 yrs old. I was playing a NG barbarian at the time; my son was playing a NG ranger. In both instances, our characters needed to hunt some food. The DM (me in the case of my son) says, "you spot a deer about 80 feet away. Just as you are about to let the arrow fly, a fawn walks out from a nearby bush and begins to suckle." My son got this really sad face on, and me and my other son started cracking up. In both cases, my son and I chose to have our characters relax their pull and pick off something else. Later, I remembered, we both cried watching Bambi. I thanked my DM for giving me that one. Why my son chose to off the lowly groundhogs I gave him, though, I'll never know.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Just last session I made the PC's choose between serving a devil or face the possibility of her killing their family and friends. It wasn't much of a choice for them. The party had just had been in a big fight and everyone was on 15 hit points or less, with 2 PC's on less than 5 hit points. She basically gave them a deal they had no choice but to accept.

The session before that I made them choose between doing a deal with the same devil or being killed. That deal involved them destroying a statue that she was bound to in exchange for her letting them escape. The PC's were going to destroy the statue anyway so it wasn't too big a deal. The real kicker was that one PC had to remain behind with her as insurance.

A couple of the players said that they would rather die than do a deal with a devil. One PC attacked her and missed before the LG Cleric agreed to remain behind so the other PC's could escape. The devil then used Charm Monster on the Cleric to get him to divulge everything he knew about his home town, friends, family and the rest of the PC's. She then used that information to get the the whole party to agree to a second deal where they had to serve her for 10 days (see the first paragraph).

Considering only 2 out of the 5 PC's wanted to make the first deal with the devil it was pretty evil of me to then manipulate them to make them agree to a second deal with her just a day later! Then again, devils have never been known for their nice qualities!

Olaf the Stout

 

[Jack7]

Moral dilemmas are common to the scenarios I write for my games. I always try to include at least one moral dilemma per adventure but they aren't usually very simple. Usually they are sorta complex and then the players have to figure out either how to resolve them or how to best choose the lesser of two evils.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I once killed off the entire player party except for the Paladin. The BBEG I was using walked up to the paladin and offered:
"Forsake your God and worship me, and I will raise your friends. Deny me and you, and your friends will suffer an eternity of awakened death."

The player was genuinely surprised I put that up against him.

He denied, and escaped, but it did its job.

 

[LostSoul]

I generally don't write in moral dilemmas, I try to let them arise naturally through play. The easiest way for me is to create characters who believe in something (or simply want something), and then have the DM put pressure on that belief (or obstacles to the goal), usually through NPCs.

 

[ppaladin123]

Moral dilemmas can be campaign breaking moments when the party turns on itself.

In one game I played the party had the choice to either 1. return the pieces of a magic artifact to the tribe that rightfully owned it or 2. destroy the artifact.

The artifact in question allowed the user to open semi-permanent gates to the plane of his choice. It had previously been broken into pieces out of fear that it would be used unwisely and would result in connections to some unsavory places (the abyss, the nine hells, the far realm, etc.). It could also be used as a tool for great good to tap into the positive plane for healing, find answers to difficult problems, irrigate parched earth, call forth angelic protectors and so forth.

Half the party argued that the artifact should be returned to the tribe so that they could reassemble it and use it to help their people (who had been suffering drought, famine, pestilence, etc.). They trusted in the competence and good will of the tribal elders and noted that the artifact was the rightful property of the tribe (they had created it long ago and it had been stolen). The other half argued that the artifact was too dangerous for anyone to wield and that it would likely lead to mass destruction and great danger for the entire world. They claimed that the greater good required us to destroy the staff and ignore the property rights in this case.

In the end we came to blows. A few party members were killed, one piece of the artifact was destroyed and the other pieces were whisked away to the tribe. Those who favored the tribe became exiles from the main city-state in the region since that state (and its associated church) favored the destruction of the artifact.

Incidentally, the guy who ran that campaign will soon run a follow-up. It takes place 100 years in the future. The tribe managed to replace the missing piece of the artifact and reassemble it. For about 25 years they used it to better their people. Then they accidentally created a persistent dimensional rift connecting the material plane to the far realm. Now the landscape is twisted and corrupt and aberrant creatures stalk the land. The world is dying.

 

[Morrus]

One story arc ran around the impossibly cute, innocent 6-year old girl who just happened to be the manifestation of pure evil but didn't know it.

 

[roguerouge]

I used Siege of the Spider Eaters (a great Dungeon adventure by Tim and Eileen Connors), which has a great moral dilemma at its end. The party basically has the choice whether to perform an abortion by removing the spider eater eggs from a paralyzed aranea or to let the spider eaters breed in their natural manner.

Another one has been recently introduced in that same campaign, which has a Demigod Crisis theme. As the pantheon's become too crowded, the demigods need to get faith share or die. They each chose an avatar to be their representative to accomplish that goal. The PC is the avatar of the demi-goddess of good luck. After facing off against a few other icky avatars, she ended up rescuing the avatar of ill-fortune, a commoner chosen by Loki to have a life so bad it will encourage people to worship him to ward off bad luck. Of course, her goddess hates Loki and wants this commoner dead, pointing out that the world and the commoner would both be better off.

 

[Jhaelen]

We recently discovered a camp of slave traders and after some scouting and waiting for an opportune moment decided to free the slaves. After we had slain a couple of slavers including the only spellcaster among them, the rest of them surrendered.

We disarmed and bound them and then freed the slaves. The slaves upon noticing the bound slavers immediately turned on them and started killing them while the slavers screamed and begged us to defend them from the raging slaves who were bent on taking revenge.

It was interesting to see how every pc acted differently and according to their understanding of justice.

This wasn't a D&D game, btw. it was Earthdawn. And it nicely supported my opinion that alignments aren't required in a good rpg. All you need is group of pcs with a well-developed background, everything else follows naturally from there.

 

[Grymar]

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. What I do really enjoy is making sure that the players know that their allies are not good guys, or that their actions do have consequences which will play out across the world.

For instance, I once used a fallen-paladin-turned-vampire as one of their primary contacts and benefactors. He still wanted to eliminate evil, but he also was aware that becoming a vampire (even against his will) had ruined his chances to be a "good guy." So he helped his church quietly, eliminating threats, stealing from organized crime and then donating the money to the church, that sort of thing. And he used the PCs party for many of these jobs. They were uncomfortable with it at times, since they were being asked to do some questionable things, but they knew the motives were in the right place (ends justifies the means). And they were never sure if he was going to turn on them, which added to the fun. (He never did, by the way. He was a great tortured character that I really enjoyed having around).