Providing Meaningful Choices?

[weem]

One complication I've been trying to wrap my head around is that while I love making the PCs make ethical or moral choices, it's tougher to do when say, in the Underdark involving monsters, or in the outer planes involving devils/demons etc.

I assume this is because presumably down there (in the Underdark for example) it can feel like you should be killing anything that moves.

My take is that in most places there exists elements of evil and elements of good and or neutral beings (there are some exceptions of course) - it may be varying amounts depending on where you are but they are there.

The Underdark is no exception - It is like it's own world, and I would hesitate to call it an evil place (I know you didn't) and as such void of moral dilemmas. There are beings there that do not deserve to be killed - they may even need the players help. The players actions will have long and short term effects on these beings as well, both positive AND negative.

 

[jmucchiello]

I'm reminded of a Dork Tower comic where the GM is thinking about how cool it'll be if the players go one way and fall into the diabolical trap rather than going the safe way. The players pick the safe way (according to the original map) and the GM spends a beat panel weighing his options. In the end he announces that they fell into the trap and the players afterward lament not having chosen the other, "safe" route.

In any case, I prefer the setup a bunch of potential foes in various locations in the campaign area. You then determine what these foes will do for the next week or so assuming the players do not interfere at all. Some of the foes actions are motivated by reacting to one another but by and large you totally ignore the players. Next, you introduce the players into the environment and see whose toes they step on. Then you have the potential foes react to the party. You will make mistakes with how your foes will react sometimes. That's okay. All that means is the foe now has to work around his own mistakes. At some point the foes' plans are totally fubarred. At this point, you can start having the foes' plans contain contingency plans for what the party is up to.

 

[Janx]

So there's a lot to consider when it comes to choices.

Choices over 2 unknowns (right or left door of mystery) aren't really choices.

Choices that are inherently obvious to be avoided or taken aren't really choices. You're not going to kill the person sitting next to you right now and you're likely to continue breathing, rather than hold your breath until you pass out.

What that then leaves is all the other situations. For a relatively simple "orc" encounter, there's actually 6 different choices the party could make:
Fight: pretty obvious and expected outcome
Flee: always a possibility
Talk: diplomacy and other stuff
Sneak: try to hide or use stealth to avoid the encounter
Trick: by wit or magic, the players do something clever to get past the orcs
Nothing: surrender or just wait for the orcs to do stuff

I'm being overly generalized here, but that's the point. The exact choice of to use a sword or bow is a micro decision. While it has bearing on the outcome, it's not exactly rocket science to decide what happens next as a GM.

It's the other 5 choice types that some GMs stumble over or even fail to acknowledge during the encounter design. the Trick path opens up a bunch of stuff, including whether the encounter features elements to block certain tricks.

But lets back it up some, because that granularity will mainly help you design/consider an encounter.

If you consider an adventure a linear thing (which, after its done, the telling of it is), there's a number of pretty high level decision points, choices as it were.

To Undertake the quest?
The method of travel to get there?
The tools and solution types availble to solve the quest?
the approach taken to finish the quest?

Once you start making a flow chart, you can see how some choices don't have to matter in regards to the main goal. Regardless of the method used, the DM can easily describe how that method results in the party getting to their destination.

The two points I want to make from this is, as you document a linear "obvious path" identify where some choices could be made, and provide alternatives. Particularly important is to provide information and opportunity for those choices. It matters not that there is a portal in the Lizardman Swamp if the PCs don't know about it.

Nextly, the real value of choices is in what happens next. What meaning and impact do you make that choice carry. I can easily provide my PCs 3 choices of travel, and make all of them interesting, but ultimately not really impactful on the final outcome. Or, I could see that a choice was made, and attach more meaning and siginfigance to that choice.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

This discussion reminds me of the xkcd's Movie Narrative Charts. (big version)

When plotting out a campaign, these flow diagrams are more or less similar to how I think of the process. If you look at, frex, the LOTR one and do the mental exercise of deleting the Hobbits' lifelines. You're left with, imho, the "Middle Earth campaign" without the influence of a certain group of "PCs".

That's how I structure a campaign. First loosely plotting out goings on in the world and how things evolve without the PCs, then going back to the beginning and turning the PCs loose on the history, drawing in their lifelines and rejiggering the interaction chart of history in accordance with the PCs actions.

In this way it's straightforward to see how the PCs choices affect the greater world; keep their choices their own and meaningful; and be able to look ahead in order to keep things "on track" and pointed in the direction of the campaign "goal"-- or least see that a different goal is the destiny of the PCs, and start preparing for it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Choices over 2 unknowns (right or left door of mystery) aren't really choices.

Only if you assume that there is no way to decrease the level of "unknown" (i.e., no divination or other information gaining possible, such as looking for tracks, signs of recent use, etc).

If the players have the option to create characters that can gain information, and do not, then changing the outcome based on what they choose made that earlier choice non-meaningful.

If the players used an option to gain more information earlier, which prevents them from doing so now, then changing the outcome based on what they choose now also makes that earlier choice non-meaningful.

It is, IMHO, a fundamental error to imagine that the meaningfulness of player choices is only determined by what is happening here and now. How consequences fall from earlier choices -- include the consequence of having to now take a random guess -- can be part of a meaningful pattern of choice.


RC

 

[Sir Wulf]

One complication I've been trying to wrap my head around is that while I love making the PCs make ethical or moral choices, it's tougher to do when say, in the Underdark involving monsters, or in the outer planes involving devils/demons etc.

Just because a creature is evil, it doesn't automatically follow that it's hostile. Some creatures encountered in the Underdark may not want to fight the PCs, either because they suspect the party would massacre them or because they see advantage in the party's presence. Some nominally evil creatures may feel genuinely friendly, eager to meet creatures from the surface.

Other planes may be tougher, but even the horrors of the outer planes may have goals other than slaughtering all they meet.

 

[Sir Wulf]

Double post...

 

[NN]

Meh.

Why not just be honest and tell your players its a railroad, although there may be different carriages and different services.



Now, my practical suggestions are

1) Dont save the world

Do not have save-the-world metaplots. Have a lesser danger, but let the party be able to influence how far Evil gets.

For example, rather than the BBEG trying to destroy civilisation, have it try to destroy the Three Kingdoms of A, B, and C.

A is resilient and moral and will survive
C is corrupt and weak and will fall

B, where the players are, can go either way


If the players are brilliant and heroic, then the 'story' can be saving of B. Maybe followed by the liberation of C.

If they are failiures (or dont care), then the story can be the escape from the cataclysmic fall of B. And maybe later the liberation of B.

Either way theres a lot of prep common to both.


2) at the scenario level, design for failiure

This is hard, but try to design scenarios so that the party failing is an option and is fun.

It seems to me a lot of adventures are of the format "discover and stop the evil cult using the macguffin of doom in the ritual of ultimate badness next thursday".

Which ends up as: a load of dM prodding to make sure the discovery happens , then fudging so the party get through to the fnal act, then more fudging to avoid a TPK.

 

[ExploderWizard]

2) at the scenario level, design for failiure

This is hard, but try to design scenarios so that the party failing is an option and is fun.

It seems to me a lot of adventures are of the format "discover and stop the evil cult using the macguffin of doom in the ritual of ultimate badness next thursday".

Which ends up as: a load of dM prodding to make sure the discovery happens , then fudging so the party get through to the fnal act, then more fudging to avoid a TPK.

Exactly. Far too many adventures are written with the anticipated reactions of PC's in mind.

 

[FireLance]

Exactly. Far too many adventures are written with the anticipated reactions of PC's in mind.

I think you mean the anticipated success of the PCs in mind. In another thread, quite a number of people were complaining that many adventure modules don't give the DM enough advice about how to deal with a broad variety of potential PC reactions to a situation.