Moral Dilemnas in Game

[SpiderMonkey]

Lately I've been trying to bring dilemnas to the game, and blur the distinction between good and evil. So far it hasn't been too bad, but I'm wondering how to better involve the players in them.

What dilemnas have you presented as DMs, or faced as players? What worked for you, and what hasn't? How often do they come up? Go nuts, folks.

 

[Maerdwyn]

Two off the top of my head:

Use Good and Neutral villains - people who are of convinced of their absolute moral superiority, or simply misguided into thinking their actions are the right ones, and won't believe the party when told otherwise

Make the party's superior's or family or other people to whom they might have natural loyalty evil, or at least morally questionable. better yet, make the PCs benefit directly by their actions.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Dilemmas really only work (imo) if alignments are not 100% objective, writ in stone. Otherwise moral dilemmas are easy to navigate.

In my games there are numberless moral dilemmas. The best I can think of right now comes from a non-D&D game called Tribe 8 but the dilemma transcends setting as you will soon see.

The PCs are influential figures in a small community that is composed of exiles and banished members of a stronger, more authoritarian society. For some time they have lived in relative anarchy until a pseudo-religious figure attempted to unify them into a single community. In the ensuing strife another religious figure, a deeply disturbed individual (the lone survivor of a suicide cult) opposes this new unifying force, denouncing it as a fraud. At the end of the conflict, during which this dissenting prophet led followers into a violent uprising, the prophet's side loses and the prophet is taken prisoner. The dilemma? What to do with the prophet?

Keep in mind the following:
a. this society barely survives from year to year, holding her prisoner takes at least two people (the prophet and their jailers)out of the labor force needed to produce this marginal survival - running the risk of starvation.
b. exile or banishment is considered taboo by this culture due to the unfair nature of their own banishment. Also, the prophet lacks the necessary clarity of mind or skills to sruvive - banishment is a death sentence by starvation and exposure to the elements.
c. death, especially execution while imprisoned, would make the prophet a powerful martyr and cause considerable trouble in the long run by inspiring others to avenge their death.
d. Letting the prophet live would be considered an affront to the new unified community, and it would violate their nacent justice system, making the whole purpose of unifying moot.

Now, for fun let's move this into D&D by assigning alignments.
The original society is LE
The exiles are CN - with members who run the whole spectrum of alignments.
The unity movement is LG
The prophet is CG, with stronger emphasis on Chaos than Good. The prophet's followers are more CN, with some CE elements, but all are more Chaotic than anything else.

What's a PC to do?

In my game they ended up deciding to pull a Socrates - the prophet was returned to live out her life with her followers, and to commit ritual suicide. The remains were then given to the followers to dispose of in their own way. But the decision (played out IC) moved one player to tears. It isn't easy to hold someone's life in judgement when they aren't easily identifiable as 'evil', merely a differing politics.

This is what I see as a good moral dilemma. I know it isn't most people's cup of tea, but these sorts of decisions tend to elicit more thought than the usual sort of moral dilemma (do we side with the LE guy to defeat the more immediate CE or NE threat, etc).

 

[Wombat]

I recently had the group deal with a dual hostage situation.

Set up was this. Bad Guy waylays a group of Religious Pilgrims (mainly Commoners) and demands that representatives of the temple show up to negotiate release -- due to situation it was easier to negotiate than to attempt to storm.

In the middle of negotiations, Unknown Group is captured by Bad Guy's outriders. Bad Guy is angrier at Unknown Group than at Religious Pilgrims, so let's Pilgrims go with minimal fuss.

Party then sees Vast Evils being committed on Unknows.

They are several weeks away from the base city.

Do they escort Religious Pilgrims back to safety quickly or do they attempt to rescue mistreated Unknowns as well, thus potentially bringing further trouble on themselves, the temple and the Pilgrims?

 

[aurance]

Just be sure not to present your players with a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. As *interesting* as moral dilemmas may be in discussion, they are frustrating as hell in an RPG and often not very fun. If you do present one, make sure to monitor player frustration level very carefully, and also make sure to not punish them for making the "wrong" choice if they feel they made the best possible one under the circumstances.

-A

 

[Bloodstone Mage]

The PCs in my campaign, while traveling to the capital city of the kingdom, were attacked by a goblin encampment. After destroying these warriors, they came across a goblin baby. One PC wanted to kill it. Another wanted to save it.

Alignment is always fun to play with, especially in the concern of the "Is something inherently evil or can it change?" debates.

Cheers!

 

[rounser]

A variation on the Rumplestiltskin dilemma (similar to the one used in Throne of Bhaal):

Neutral character makes promise of some terrible sacrifice (such as the soul of a Good character family member) to a powerful Evil character in return for power to perform a good deed - such as, to muddy the waters of indebtedness even further, bringing the entire TPK'd PC party back to life.

Evil character approaches Neutral character for the sacrificial payment, but the Neutral character renegs, and approaches the PCs to help. PCs owe this character for returning them to life, and they can't bear the idea of the innocent Good character being sacrificed, but clearly the Evil character deserves payment. What to do?

 

[hong]

Evil character approaches Neutral character for the sacrificial payment, but the Neutral character renegs, and approaches the PCs to help. PCs owe this character for returning them to life, and they can't bear the idea of the innocent Good character being sacrificed, but clearly the Evil character deserves payment. What to do?

In situations like this, my strategy is to choose the path of greatest violence. If nothing else, it guarantees the most mayhem and fun for the evening.


Hong "powergamer/buttkicker" Ooi

 

[DMScott]

Alignment is always fun to play with, especially in the concern of the "Is something inherently evil or can it change?" debates.

Cheers!

I dunno, it doesn't seem to me that there's much reason for that kind of debate in a standard D&D game. At some point, a cleric must have Communed with Pelor (or whatever goody-goody deity) during such a dilemma and asked "Is this goblin/kobold/orc/whatever baby inherently evil?" and/or "Is it evil to kill this baby?" From then on, you've got the official precedent - heck, the church probably has it in a pamphlet to hand out to confused young adventurers. As Monte Cook notes in the Book of Vile Darkness, evil is an objective concept under the standard D&D rules, not subjective, because spells like Detect Evil can tell you exactly what evil is.

Now, if you run a game which is more subjective - where presumably Detect Evil and similar spells don't work - then you've got more room for a dilemma. But you're not really investigating the good/evil dichotomy in that dilemma, you're examining character motivations and beliefs.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The biggest problem is that in most games that evil and good are not defined and this results in players and DM applying their own morals and judgements to the game. The problem with this; people know it is a game and adjust their views and too many different views.

D&D is not a game of grey, it is a game of good and evil, that is why it has an aligiment system. What you need to do as a DM is define what is good and evil, this creates the line in the sand for your players. Now you can interact with the players on moral dilemnas because you have established something hard and you can bend your game, thin the line.

Also, let the players know that there is re-action to every action, that they can not roam the country side burning taverns down and killing people just because. Create laws of the land and let the players actions come into conflict with them.