Moral choices in games

>>46454618
>moral choice
Don't make present them as such, and, for the love of god, don't make them binary.

Just describe a situation and see how your players/characters deal with it.
Don't call them out on their murderhobo antics OOC, and just incorporate the consequences in-game.

>>46454649
Pretty much. Don't make them choices, make them fields.

Only issue with moral choices is the risk of disruptive party infighting.
That can be avoided with a reasonable amount of backstory at creation and giving the characters bonds so they have reasons to stay together.

Otherwise, what >>46454649 said.

>>46454687
Agreed, but sometimes they have to be binary. When two people are fighting over a throne, the options really are one, the other, both, or neither.
In the example I gave, the PC's needed the kingdom's army to fight a Lich, and they only way to achieve that was a quick and decisive victory for one side or the other.
And really, binary choices are only bad when one option is "morally righteous, upstanding citizen, do-gooder" while the other is "puppy-kicking evil bastard."
Two debatable options is fine (i.e. benevolent dictatorship vs democracy, while. "Give the hobo all your money" vs "shoot the hobo in the face" is stupid.

>>46454751
You see the word "neither" isn't really a choice, anon.
There's so much you can do that falls under the "neither" umbrella, that it isn't correct to call it a "choice". It's a field, a field that isn't related to the problem at hand.

>DM: "Do you choose A or B?"
>P1: "I choose to get a beer at the nearest tavern."

I avoid binary decisions unless I'm trying to lead the party by the nose through it.
Mind you, I used to DM for a group of socially stunted semi-retards that thought D&D was for taming wild rabbits and fucking anything that moved, so I might be biased.

Typically I'd make the choice open-ended though - in your example of the two rulers, I would let them know both were vying for the throne, but also give them the 'hidden' option of installing in power anyone else, even themselves, if they could manage it.

>>46454618
these
>>46454649
>>46454687

are the strong options. One example from my games is an old wizard's house, that the PCs want to investigate for whatever reason. It is guarded by an undead, who explains that the wizard is not home, has not been home for a very long time, and oh by the way if you could please break the spell that keeps me stuck to this house that'd be great. Doing this without killing them requires breaking into the wizard's study, while the undead tries to kill them.

Once inside the study and after deciphering the appropriate notes, they have the option of freeing it, or binding it to their service. Naturally, they could always just destroy it too (and Good deities are okay with that, because undead).

>>46454751
Binary logic may be adapted for video games, but not so much for tabletop IMO.
The players will find so many ways to deal with a problem (or simply fail to see the choice), that most of the time you either have to roll with them or shoehorn your solution with the subltety of a hammer.

Illustrating my point with your example :
>I go court every general so they give me their troops.
>I kill them both and stike a deal with the regent.
>I tell them that they will certainly lose a lot of support if they aren't associated with my lich-slaying world-saving campaign (or charm them with a spell, or blackmail them,...)
>I make a divine messenger appear so they cease their bickering
>I go find another patron that can support me with an army.
>I leave the to be killed by the undead horde because they deserve to.
And so on

>>46454618
All choices are bad, some are less bad than others. The least bad choices only end with a few deaths, the worst lead to millions of deaths. The worst choice, of course, pushes blame on the other players and gains you lots of power.

When it's all over, thousands to millions of people have died, the sector is in partial chaos, and someone else is left to clean up the mess. My players retire to their mansions and their impossible pleasures. It's a hard life being ULTRAVIOLET.

>>46454618

Most people do it wrong by making the problem all abstract, instead of personal. It's easy to make the right choice if players don't feel the burn. You need to hit them on a personal level.

It's like...Here's a good example.

> The players are escorting a priestess to her destination. The girl, who is quite sheltered, clearly likes one of the PCs. She grows increasingly worried as the date of arrival draws near.
> Before they reach her destination, she tells the PC that she's going to be sacrificed/is going to suffer a fate worst than death to keep a great evil at bay.
> She doesn't want to die, but she knows that not dying means the destruction of everything she knows and loves.

This is an example of a moral dilemma, because the PC has the right thing to do and the wrong - but clearly desirable - thing. More, the wrong thing also 'feels' correct. There is, of course, no solution other than for the girl to be sacrificed.

No, the PCs can't volunteer for the job: They don't have the right bloodline.

I have got a lot, a LOT of mileage out of this one. Some PCs take the girl and run. Others keep looking for a third way, but there isn't one in the time they have available. And no one really cares about solving the problem ten generations from now, do they?

>>46454751
Kill / not kill is often binary by default as well. Often even when presented with supposed alternatives (I mean what do you think they're going to do with that horse thief/brigand you arrested, community service?)

If you actually want to deal with the consequences of adventuring the fact of the matter is that most of the people/things you go around slaughtering are either not really evil, or only minorly evil, and probably none of the want to die.

In any reasonably realistic (haha fantasy and realism I know) medieval themed fantasy setting they're getting killed if you capture them instead of killing them outright.


Killing them is pretty bad from a modern morality/paladin viewpoint (ex. goblin/kobold is disarmed and begging for their life), but leaving them alive is also bad (especially for the nastier variants of above, they might go around murdering/eating/robbing people. esp the poor and weak).

Had a great game where the DM had a Kobold throw down its weapons and surrender, then beg for us to spare it, claiming it would be good from there on out.

He had most of the party convinced before I reminded them that there was a pile of humanoid bones back by their cook fires and we couldn't risk letting it murder anyone else traveling through the area, so we beat it to death with our staves. (all wizard party with no spells left because reasons).

>>46455153

So what's the solution?

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>>46455189
>Kill / not kill is often binary by default as well.
Anon, "torturing them with pain/pleasure until there's nothing sentient left in their body, and they are just an empty shell of their former selves and marionettes so malleable like a piece of gum in your hands" is also an option.
>>46455153
Take blood sample, watch the ritual, memorize all of its details, raise a simulacrum, do the reverse-ritual, hang back with your reverse simulacrum and watch as the world ends.

>>46455270

There isn't one. I got the idea from a Call of Cthulu campaign, 'Beyond the Mountains of Madness' and a bit of Fatal Frame. There's no solution there, either. Someone suffers a fate worse than death, or everyone dies.

Depends almost entirely on the game in question in question. With stuff like Pathfinder where players have alignments, I try to play to the party's morality, sometimes play characters against each other.

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>>46455270
>It's not a story about winning or losing or even solving a problem.
>this is a story about identity and life choices and being able to chart a path forward.

>>46455153
>implying
Blood magic is Evil.
Burn them all.
Repell Great Evil when it comes.

On a sidenote, doing what is Right there (preventing an innocent from being sacrificied) is different for doing what is Good (not letting the world end), even without taking into account the different reality of both acts.

Why is the DM always on the left in these types of comics?

Knights of the Dinner Table does it the same way.

>>46454618
That sounds kind of Skyrim tier desu

>>46455448
Because the DM usually speaks first.

>>46455448

Because people read from left to right. So the DM speaks first, and all the players are responding to what he's saying.

>>46455429

The whole idea is that the people there are sympathetic, too. They don't really want to sacrifice this girl. They have no choice, however.

If the seal cracks, the world ends. It's really just like that - The world ends, full stop, everyone dies badly. It wouldn't be a dilemma if the solution was just to punch the great evil in the face.

Morality is boring. Ethics are the real deal.

>>46454751
>Agreed, but sometimes they have to be binary. When two people are fighting over a throne, the options really are one, the other, both, or neither.
neither is a whole spectrum of optiosn anon
you can say fuck this shit disband teh kingdom and devide the land among lesser nobles, you can gather the nobles in some kind of council and make an elective kingdom
you can imitate the polish commonwealth's election of the king
there's always opportunists around who'dd be willing to take the throne

as a DM don't forget that and don't block it when player try to choose those options

All acts and decisions have a moral dimension; some simply more obviously than others. Give players consequences and let them ride the wave.

I had one player adopt a child and promise to find her family, but when he realized he adored her and wanted to care for her, and that her parents were manipulative and abusive, he simply stopped looking.

Eventually, she found out and it bit him fiercely in the ass. He made a choice out of love, and it was arguably a sensible one, but it was still a betrayal, and one that came close to costing him his life.

>>46455292
that's a fucking shitty plot then if your choices are either feel shitty or die and you won't allow a third way

>>46454618
>Ransack People's Gold
Rob fits better

>>46455600
Seems fine to me. You could feel shitty, but then devote the rest of the campaign figuring out a third way so no one else have to go through the same thing in the future.

Or save the girl, then see what kind of thing DM throw at you and struggle through it.

You don't have to one one obviously good happy sunshine and one grimdark bad wrong choice. It won't be much of a choice then is it.

Welcome to call of Cthulhu, where your best option is to break even

Or be Old Man Henderson

>>46455486
>It wouldn't be a dilemma if the solution was just to punch the great evil in the face.
I disagree. If it's a Great Evil, you can fail to stop him if you aren't stong/lucky enough (and die in the process, alongside the rest of the world). Choices aren't always about paths, they can be about risks and rewards.
Players may be used to balanced encounters, but a very difficult one can provide has many moral dilemmas as a regular choice. Even better if defeat isn't always the end of the party.
I know some DMs that would go "Ahah, tricked you! There was no great evil, it was all baseless superstition." afterwards, too.

>>46455153
> She doesn't want to die, but she knows that not dying means the destruction of everything she knows and loves.

I ask her whether she likes this life. Whether she wants to go through with this sacrifice. Whether she accepts her fate.
She doesn't like it. She doesn't want to die for something just because she is of a right bloodline. She's sick of being treated like an object. She just wants to live a life of her own.
But it's not about what she wants. It's about what she needs to do.

I tell her it's not. If she wants to live a life of her own, then I will give her one.
We run away. We hide from bloodhounds hunting for us, and I teach her what it is to be a human, to live a normal life full of happiness and joy.
She grows accustomed to being treated like a normal human being. She loves this life. She resents the people who held her locked up for the entirety of her life.

Until one day, I open the door and see the hunters on our doorstep. I let them in, and she asks what's going on. I utter two words in response.

"I lied."

I help the hunters to escort her to the place of sacrifice, as she screams and cries her eyes out.
I ask whether I can attend the ritual, and they agree, seeing as I helped them hunt the girl down.
As the preparations to the ritual proceed, the head priest welcomes me with open arms, as a brother. He thanks me for my help, and offers me a place in his brotherhood.

I plunge a blade into his heart.

In the ensuing chaos, I manage to kill everyone except the girl, but I'm heavily wounded.
She can't comprehend why I did what I did. She hates me for selling her out to the hunters, she hates me for showing her a better life and then taking it away from her, she hates me for making her accept her fate as a sacrifice once again.

She is shocked. She is confused. She asks me why am I here.
With my last breath, I utter two words in response.

"I lied."

>>46455690

I thought your best option in Call of Cthulhu was to run away from the plot.

>>46455682
> but then devote the rest of the campaign figuring out a third way so no one else have to go through the same thing in the future.
except he said there is no third way
>Or save the girl, then see what kind of thing DM throw at you and struggle through it
he said everyone dies

i'm not disagreeing with you obviously but i think people should actually be able to have something resembling a win and from what i understand there is no such thing
you can't fight of this great evil , you can't find some kind of surrogate either everyone dies or the girl dies
it's not a choice it's a do you want to end this campaign on a bad note or want to continue it on a bad note button

the base scenario is great but there needs to be a third way in my eyes

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>>46455709

>>46455791
Yeah but just because NPCs tell you there's no third way, doesn't mean there isn't actually a third way. The game could be about you struggling to find a third way, or die trying.

Or hell maybe you do sacrifice the priestess, but even so you could very much agonise over the decision. Maybe the party is split on what to do? One of you might have to give one of those "we're not here to do what's right, we're here to what's needed!" type speech.

Whatever the outcome, because it's a moral dilemma it makes the decision really have some gravity, because what each PC chooses to do will immediately speak a lot about the very core of their character.

>>46455486
Sounds quite boring because ultimately it only involves a binary choice and the discussion before and it'll mostly end the same. The players surely don't want her to die, if they didn't care there'd be no conflict, but there is no point overdoing it because in the end it's a simple kill or be killed situation.

If the scope was smaller, like it'd spell the death of many people they don't know or if they could replace her with someone else and led to the discussion of wheter it is their place to undermine someone else's life just because they grew attached to her, then maybe either of those would be interesting, but otherwise it's kinda meh.

>>46455891
If I choose to save the girl and after much struggle, the world ends and the two of us are the last two people to die, I would still call that a good campaign.

You played out your character, he stuck to his guns and lived with the consequences. Seems like a decent story to me.

Of course if I was the GM I'll try to aim for a bittersweet ending somehow, but that's just me.

>>46455124
Precisely. In one game, we had to deal with a young dwarven king who we suspected had just assassinated his father and colluded with necromancers (our prime enemy). The other contender for the throne was his even younger brother, inexperienced and brash and also not particularly likeable (and he didn't like us meddling in return). The DM planned to make this a choice between both, with an alternative of letting the dwarven realm slide into anarchy when we don't let either sit on the throne.

During the game and final battle, we orchestrated a series of events that gave the entire credit of our victory to a likeable and righteous dwarven general we had been working with the entire time. We handed him the ancestral weapon of the king and let him proclaim victory from the balcony of the palace, even though he wasn't present at the time of battle and we did all the fighting there. The crowd loved it, and we, standing behind him, just shouted "Hail the new king!" and that was that.

>>46454618
adding moral choices is how my Freinds group violently imploded

>>46455806
top kek.

>>46455844
i fail to see how the anon who came up with the scenario counts as an npc
he literally said there is no solution

>>46455153

I know that scenario is generic as fuck, but you just described the plot for the webcomic "Atland".

In my experience, the guy with the vampire army is NEVER the goodie.

>>46456179
Even if the DM said there's no solution, it doesn't mean you can't try anyway.

Use your imagination anon! It could even be something like "well shit, I guess we'll have to go through with the ritual. But you now what, let's go the long way around and at least make some good memories for you for this world".

Then you can all have a jolly good time adventuring, making her feel special on the journey, make her a woman the night before you reach the destination, all that stuff.

>>46455791
Oh, the rituals not going to work anyway. The girl is tainted now. This is literally the situation the fucked everything up in three out of five Fatal Frames.

The * is gonna pop right open and she's going to become an extremely badass, pissed off ghost.

>>46456306
>make her a woman the night before you reach the destination
And then it turns out that only virgins are suitable for a sacrifice. Whoops!

>>46456348
To tell you the truth if I was that
>clearly likes one of the PCs
guy and I make love to the NPC priest, I wouldn't have the heart to sacrifice her when the time comes. So I would pick the end of the world option anyway.

Yes /tg/, I would pick pussy over all of you.

>>46456306
Honestly, some of the best solutions can come about when the players are determined to find a solution where none supposedly exists. I'm actually kind of glad when my players think of a solution to a problem that allows them to keep their morals intact in a situation that I designed to be complicated for them personally. Means they're dedicated.

>>46456179
Yeah, but how are the characters supposed to know it ? Blind thrust ? Metaknowledge ?

>>46456403
This, if you manage to turn two bad choices around into a good end then it's really satisfying, because you really earned that good end.

It's a lot more satisfying than oh say, Bioshock where your choice is "kill defenceless little girl for MAGIC" multiplied by 20 times and if you spared them all you get good end.

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My players are very clever. Whenever I offer them a choice, they tend to come up with something different. I gave them a classic conflict between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good: fulfill an oath, or ignore the promise to help those in need.

>GM: "The slaves need help escaping, but you're running out of time to catch King Surtur before he escapes in his golem armor! Do you free the slaves, or catch the villain?"
>Orc Barbarian: "I give the slaves my magic sword to help them with their escape. What have you guys got?"
>Cleric, Druid: "Ok, let's blow our magic on buffs and summons. A couple of large earth elementals should clear the way for the slaves to escape. Now, which way to the golem?"

Some of the slaves were hurt in the escape, but the PCs managed to down the King even without their most powerful spells and weapon. Good job, Neutral Good party!

>>46456482
they don't
which is why it's a shitty fucking plot

>>46456238

Never heard of it.

>>46456306

This, by the way, happens a lot.

It doesn't necessarily make things better, but it's the thought that counts. I've had one iteration where the girl put on a brave face right until she had to enter the room where she'd be sacrificed, upon which she had a complete emotional breakdown.

After it was over, the guy who'd conducted the sacrifice was so traumatized that the PCs had to comfort HIM.

>>46456338
I now find myself wanting a Fatal Frame inspired campaign.

>>46456691

Technically, Fatal Frame V is a dating sim.

I'm not joking. The main character is the weedy, Otacon-looking guy, who has to decide who his real waifu is.

>>46455189
>In any reasonably realistic (haha fantasy and realism I know) medieval themed fantasy setting they're getting killed if you capture them instead of killing them outright.
False. In any realistic setting they're getting used for leverage and/or ransomed, only getting killed if killing them in and of itself serves some grander purpose.

An invading warlord does not want to kill every captured peasant in the land he is trying to conquer, or he will have no peasants left to farm it when he rules.

But you don't really care about 'realism,' you just care about indulging your boner for grimdark murderhoboing.

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>>46456786
You know, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I can really see how it could be.

There are a lot of good set pieces and locations in theater one that I'd love to incorporate into a horror game:

>A mountain/forest with evidence of multiple suicides over many years
>A lost house that appears and disappears in a thick, rolling fog
>A lonely stretch of highway and half-collapsed tunnel abandoned long ago

Not to mention all the shrines with dark secrets and haunted mansions you find throughout the series.

>>46455153
>Presents great plothook.
>'It was a morality test guys, there is no third option'
>That DM detected

>>46457265

Exactly. It's a plothook. You guys do what you want, and as the DM I see how it plays out. This isn't a Bioware game, the PCs are free to do whatever.

It's just that this is something that'd take epic-level magic to resolve. You don't have that yet? Ah, well.

Would you prefer the encounters to scale according to level? I heard there's a video game for that.

>>46456786
Wasn't that guy possessed by the guy who invented the Camera Obscura?

>>46457305
But this is a Bioware game.
You've presented a binary decision under the pretense that the players interaction mattered when ultimately the only choice they ever had was a single boolean.
You are a shit DM.

>>46457406
Mmm... I feel like binary morality games can work, so long as you don't make a pretense of there being anything greater. It won't appeal to everyone, but there's a certain satisfaction to a pure-evil or pure-good playthrough, if done well. Just don't be an artsy jackass and talk about there being more consequence than there really is.

>>46457391
I think it was less outright possession and more like some kind of... spiritual synchronicity?

You can always split the "what's right vs. what's your duty" argument, whether you have lawful people or not... but something I think that gets missed a lot is that NPCs are characters representative of people. Those characters, like the PCs, have families, friends, and allies, and those families, friends, and allies will react accordingly when the NPC in question is wronged (or done a good turn).

I had a party that tracked down a cult that had taken over a town and ruled it with an iron fist. The cult was so powerful it ended up weaving itself into the very society of the town... so the party killed most of the hierarchy and many of the cultists (the paladin fell from grace on that one, because they jumped to a conclusion and killed a guard who had not only drawn a weapon, but simply asked "What are you doing?" when they were breaking into the lord's manor). They then left, being all heroic and thinking "my work here is done!"

They completely neglected that they left a power vacuum in the town, however. Those who remained (some cult sympathizers, some not) squabbled over who would be in charge, and many of them hired a group of mercenaries to kill the PCs - the mercenaries were good guys, on top of it, told that they were hunting the "murdering savages claiming they worked for the church that slaughtered our mayor and his aides." The look on their face when they realized the opposing cleric was a follower of the god of Life and was chastising them for their blasphemy was priceless.

>>46457606

Ugh... guard who had not only NOT drawn a weapon. I is tired.

>>46457606
Reminds me of how in FTL there's a situation where the Rebels, ostensibly the Bad Guys, are stealing supplies to extort some colonists. You destroy the Rebels but instead of being worshiped as Big Damned Heroes, your crew get bitched out because the colonists claim that now they have no supplies and you've unintentionally doomed them.

There is no winning

>>46456541
>This, by the way, happens a lot.
Do you keep presenting the same scenario to the same group or do you go through a large number of different groups?

>>46457606
>the PCs, have families, friends, and allies, and those families, friends, and allies will react accordingly when the NPC in question is wronged (or done a good turn).
One thing I liked a lot about Alpha Protocol is that every NPC in the game had an agenda. Even your dearest friends could turn on you if you opposed their life goals, and even your worst enemy could become a temporary ally if he got what he wanted out of it.
Making the end bosses betray each other was priceless.

>>46457391

He was his reincarnation.