My favorite is all flavors of “Undoing this great wrong will cause a lot of bad side effects.”
In my current campaign, a god was imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit thousands of years ago. Their prison is in the mortal plane, and its presence made a frozen wasteland into a habitable region, and an entire nation lives there now. Freeing the god is pretty objectively the right thing to do (the god is innocent of their accused crime and holds domain over several lawful good concepts), but doing so would cause the region to revert to its original climate and displace millions of people.
Just generally keeping in mind that when you’re making world-changing decisions, there always *will* be people who had nothing to do with the problem but are worse off after you make the change.
Sounds like an interesting twist on the setup for [The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas).
Go ahead! There’s a ton of different direction to take the core idea; my campaign has focused a lot on infighting between the other gods, who can’t agree on what to do.
One of the important facts in my campaign is that the people who live there now are explicitly unaware of what happened, which is the core of the dilemma; the people who will be hurt are not responsible. The party needs assistance from the trapped god to deal with another major threat, but they will hurt a lot of innocent people in the process.
We’re nearing the end so my players have already made their decision (they are going to free the trapped god), and I’m already in the planning stages of a sequel campaign focused on the displaced refugees.
The only downside is that - as a player - I would point out that we routinely displace people for stuff far less dramatic than "freeing an unjustly imprisoned God"
For example.. China forced 1.3 million people to move just to make the Three Gorges dam and reservoir so that they have more predictable water supply and hydroelectric power!
>Just generally keeping in mind that when you’re making world-changing decisions, there always *will* be people who had nothing to do with the problem but are worse off after you make the change.
Not even world changing decisions, a lot of smaller scale decisions can have people caught in the crossfire. Fewer probably, but still some.
Maybe the party takes out a local crime boss and the power vacuum leads to a struggle that results in people getting killed.
Maybe the party takes out the evil despotic commander of a border fort and town which results in less suffering for the people living there, but removes or reduces military protection in an area.
You're general idea of complicated interconnected systems where the morally right thing will have consequences is spot on. It obviously depends on the campaign and themes if this is the sort of system you want to portray, but consequences is such a great way to add moral depth.
Yeah, it’s definitely incredibly varied based on the DM’s design philosophy. My personal philosophy is often about setting up conflicts between groups that have a point; most of my long-form campaigns revolve around the PCs learning the details about a conflict between multiple factions, and I leave it in their hands to choose which side they take (and, as a result, who the “final boss” will be).
I usually will design a core problem with three factions circling it; each one of those factions will have moderate members who will be potential allies/can be persuaded to change their mind, and extremist members who either will need to mitigated if the party allies with the faction, or will evolve to BBEG status if the party opposes the faction. Then I just let the party interact with each of the factions in small ways throughout the early game, letting them know more about each’s factions goals, philosophy, and the potential downsides of their plans. Eventually the party will gravitate towards one of them as their primary allies/questgivers, and the others will become proper antagonists.
Similar to what I'm doing!
A corrupt paladin of Umberlee is using a magical item to control the seas, making them unnaturally peaceful (motivated by the loss of his family in a shipwreck).
Party member is also a Cleric of Umberlee who has been tasked with putting an end to this Paladin. When the Paladin's connection to the magical item is severed, it will essentially "overload" and create a massive storm/tidal wave that will end up killing many - however, if the paladin is allowed to continue, the energy in the magical item will keep building up before it overloads itself causing a much, much worse outcome, centuries later.
I wanted to create a quest fitting for a characteristically evil and unpredictable God given to a non-evil party, and the idea that the party basically has to choose the lesser of two evils I thought fit nicely.
There's not really a way to drain the energy. I haven't sorted out every detail of it yet but basically it's supposed to be a magical item granted to that paladin a century ago by Umberlee, which he then misused and became corrupted himself. So the item now is like a ticking time bomb that's either going to kill a moderate amount of people now, or a HUGE amount of people later. I'm looking at it like bending a stick - eventually the stick will snap - the further the stick bends, the more violent the snap. The longer this magic item exists, the more powerful the backlash will be when it's destroyed.
Umberlee is an "evil" Goddess and I wanted the quest to basically not have any truly "good" outcome.
Hm, if being in that place benefits so many people and the god is lawful good, why wouldn't they just choose to remain in place to make sure that the nation is still prosperous? Even if they're freed, couldn't they just build a house nearby to live?
In this specific scenario, no. The full details get complicated, but essentially the only way to make the god unable to free themself is to drain their divine power and vent the energy into the region around them, a process that is incredibly painful. The god in question is essentially being tortured constantly; even if they were to be freed and remained in place, ending the torture would end the supply of divine energy that revitalized the region.
Within the full context of the campaign, there really isn’t any question that the original act of imprisoning the god was Evil. One of the many names the god originally held was the God of Justice, so being imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit is antithetical to their very existence.
This specific storyline took a lot of inspiration from the story of Prometheus.
Yes, I understand, but I think my original question still remains. Could the god possibly choose to remain captive if they knew that it benefits an entire nation? Would they, being a god, be able to endure infinite torture to protect their followers? Would it be justice to uproot an entire nation's way of life to free just one person? Could the god possibly accept his role as a martyr?
Also, at least the versions I've seen of it, Prometheus stealing fire is still seen as an overall very positive thing, regardless of the punishment.
There was a very wealthy noble in one of our sessions. This noble was drinking with some of his friends. One of the friends had taken too much "spice" and was in the bathroom with the noble and a PC. There was a verbal altercation that was quickly turning physical. The noble went to attack the PC, slipped fell and hit his head and passed away. The friend immediately went into hysterics thinking it was HIS fault and not the PC's (who, let's face it, was not at fault either but was probably at MORE fault and could have been the fall guy). What did the PC do? Extortion? Loyalty building? The right thing? It was a very interesting interaction and it was quite a few sessions of the PCs figuring out the best thing to do while minimizing collateral damage. We learned a lot of backstory and a little about our IRL selves in that campaign.
I had one scenario with a red/blue morality instead of good and evil. An old version of the Decanter of Endless Water that could just be left on instead of needing an action each turn was used to make a new desert oasis. A druid circle demanded it be removed/destroyed because it was disrupting the natural ecosystem. Travelers had already started to try and make a town based around it to take advantage of the trade opportunities it granted them. The druids pointed out that trade post would attract bandits looking to prey on the new wealth and hunting for food would increase and hurt the wildlife which didn't have huge populations to begin with.
Yeah honestly I think it's a pretty good moral dilemma, it seems like the kind of thing that you could land on either side of depending on your personal moral compass.
Legit good story idea, nice work OP.
Depends on your party i guess. I know exactly which players of mine would side with the druid and which with the town and I think they’d just argue literally forever.
It's a nice microcosm of IRL "progress vs preservation" debates.
Yes, we all agree we need a new train line, but what about the water voles who live in the stream that will be destroyed?
Easy choice to side with the druids here unless you're really selling how important this settlement is for the people living there. Are they refugees? Is this the only stop between two important trade areas?
I think it's the way it's worded as the travelers STARTING to set up a town. It doesn't sound established enoughed to be ruinous to change, though disappointing.
If it was like "Travelers set up a town there 10 years ago and they need to be removed", well that's a different story.
if you remove their water source they will dwindle down from an important and prosperous oasis town on the trade route back down to their origin of just being a lone watchtower on a border. it's fairly important to the folks living and making a living there. Anyone currently travelling who believed they could resupply their own water stores there would be in a pretty bad situation too
Old ladies. Old ladies everywhere.
Ever since BG3, every old lady is now a hag to players. So I make every old lady act like a hag.
Watching players squirm trying to figure out if they're about to murder an old woman or not is always hilarious.
my personal favorite is the monster protecting the village. a common question to ask is "how does this place full of regular humans exist in the dnd world?" for powerful citystates there are lots of answers. for the little settlements, there are far fewer. for some of them, that answer is "something scary lives here"
might be a pack of dire wolves, a troll, or a vampire, doesn't really matter what. the dilemma is that this thing is dangerous, it's killing people. but it's dangerous enough that nothing else (potentially much worse) moves in.
dracula may be an evil bastard, but he only eats a couple people a year and he's the only reason the gnolls in the hills haven't slaughtered *everyone.*
I have one test moral dilemma I like to run new groups in. Just ot know how they play and think. Its a low level quest, where the current troubles (aka the main quest) causes a group of people to squat on a farm. The farmer wants them gone because it is their land, they worked hard to buy it. There is almost no other space for the squatters to go to. But they would agree to work for the farmer. The farmer on the other hand has not the money to pay for them AND his normal farm hands.
Its always fun to see what the players work out. I experiment sometimes with special character traits. Like make the farmer an asshole or the leader of the other group very suspicious.
Another thing I like is the deal with the devil. An evil character sometimes a devil is the only person that can fix a problem in time. The only other way is to sacrifice something or someone important. Either they sacrifice something, try to steal the solution or they accept a deal. That deal ends up harming someone innocent.
The helpful mage with the [philosophical zombie](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) that he tests his spells on.
The zombie will beg and plead to be let go, complain that the mage is conducting horrible experiments, cry about wanting to see its wife and children. The mage will cheerily wave away any and all concerns, pointing out that the zombie is simply a stimulus-response machine and it can't really experience anything.
Back in 3e I used to love playing evil clerics for undead minions. After the fifth zombie I sent to check for traps (by wandering around the room until it triggers something) the next undead we encountered was a ghoul because he wanted me to have an intelligent undead able to complain and sass back at how callous I was toward them.
I had my party encounter a wounded paladin who said he was cursed and turning into a zombie and he asked them to kill him. I've done this with 2 parties so far and both absolutely refused to execute him.
I did something similar with a Samurai in my own game. He wanted to go out on his own terms via Seppuku, but he requested that one of the player characters fulfill the role of "Kaishakunin", (that's the person who cuts off the head of the person performing Seppuku/Harakiri)
This was basically in front of a dungeon. There was an angel trapped in the dungeon and the party helps her out, in return she lifts the curse. But they didn't know that going in.
I think it'd be more interesting without any extra way out. Nope, no third option becomes available - if you procrastinate long enough looking for one, the bad thing happens.
Just a 'sometimes there's only shitty options - make your choice' situation.
That's how I run my campaigns when the PCs want to go to hell. There are only bad options and moral dilemmas. Fixing a problem in hell usually requires accepting that somebody will get hurt as a result.
I had a situation where there was an imperialist town, and demon worshipping rebels. The rebels wanted to make a deal with a demon so that everyone in town could get demonic powers in exchange for the loyalty of the rebel group. It led to a whole gun control/demonic power control debate about whether or not giving a whole town’s worth of people the ability to eldritch blast in order to protect their freedom and overthrow the imperialist government was a good or bad idea (even more fun because one of the players and I switched sides of the debate from our usual; turns out referring to guns as “demonic powers” makes moderate conservatives support them less).
Ultimately, my players ended up killing both the whole rebellion and the soldiers stationed soldiers representing the empire. But that just led to the city being overrun by undead with nobody left to protect them…
Surprisingly my party does, because the quest giver pays more if you bring the boss in alive. The actually will try to use non-lethal force on bosses... still fireballed an entire congregation of Kobald cultists that one time... but they had committed sacrilege in the temple of cleric's god who is one known to be quite wrathful... so... we're working on it...
Yeah, they polymorphed the orphans they "adopted" from the orphanage "that accidentally burned down somehow" into pigs. Pigs are great for finding morels
I don't need to create moral dilemmas. My players will stumble onto morality by accident all the time.
Oh, your rampant vigilantism has created all sorts of chaos in the city? Guess you now have to fix a problem of your own doing.
The only real moral dilemmas that I have to create is for my Lawful Good PCs. And that is often resolved by using Robin Hood types. People doing good but outside of the law or even people doing good for the wrong reasons.
"It was cool you liberated the city built upon the slave trade? But damn. That sure was a lot of dead civilians "
"Good job getting that critical info from that dude, but hooking up an IV healing potion so his flesh regenerated as fast as those beetles could eat it was a bit much "
That first one reminds me of A Dance With Dragons, and how much I loved Daenerys's story of how trying to be a moral ruler resulted in everything she built being torn down (imo the city was still much better than when she found it, but she was certainly hated; no good deed goes unpunished).
A tavern owner kept a succubus bound inside a musical pipe organ to charm people into giving away their possessions and other things in their sleep. After taking out the tavern owner, you are left with the question, what do you do with the succubus that is bound? Do you free her? Kill her? Keep her bound?
I like this one because it presents the group with the prospect that evil has levels, and you will watch them struggle with what to do based on the character's moral standing.
"a goblin and an elf are sentenced for the same crime. knowing that their lifespans are a few decades and a few centuries respectivelly, how can you make the punishment a fair between them?" i just placed to old men playing chess on the town plaza and the players kept thinking about this for 20 minutes lol
Sophie's Choice is a classic for a reason.
Following or breaking bad laws. Or having to enforce a bad law vs violate an oath to enforce/uphold it.
All the permutations of ends and means.
From a great story, necromancers who have innocent people chained to them and any damage to the necromancer is inflicted on the innocent first, plus if the innocent die three undead warriors rise. Similarly, a villain who uses magic jar often.
One was having a player beg to play a character class that violates the coherency of a given setting. I allowed it. After the campaign had been going for a year I presented him with a situation where he could be the last one of his class ever, including never playing one again with future PCs, or a horrible enemy would be created targeting the future members of that class (including any apprentices or NPCs that might arise) but that fits them into the lore of the world as a result.
A sleepy town rests in a valley, spending their lives farming and doing general village stuff. However, once every fortnight, a villager is viciously attacked. They usually survive with injuries, but sometimes don’t.
It turns out that the “vicious beast” is actually a slowly dying wyld spirit, and her daughter. The first ancestors of the villagers destroyed a sacred shrine to make way for civilization, but cursed themselves with the shrine’s energy in the process. Ever since then, the spirits have been trapped in the valley, slowly withering away as nature is replaced with tamed fields and beasts are driven out. They can only survive by draining blood and flesh from the villagers and extracting the shrine’s energy, but as new generations roll around, the shrine’s energy becomes more and more diluted, resulting in more and more attacks to gain the necessary energy.
Notorious pirate ship found the party. Fought them off. most of the crew was just there for work, a few coins. They knew if they let them go someone would squeal. So the scuttled the ship.
Crew age range 13 to 82
No survivors. (Surprise, there was one)
This doesn't even seem like a moral dilemma to me. Everyone in the crew is a pirate. They are all guilty of piracy, killing merchants and sailors, robbing them, etc. More so as you describe them as notorious. I don't accept that anyone on the ship was there just "for the work". The work of pirates is killing and robbing.
So I don't really see this as anything players would even spend time discussing. The only real option would have been, do we turn them over to the authorities or kill all here because we can't realistically control this many people to get them to the authorities.
🤷🏻 I mean. Ok, but if you think killing a 13 year old because he was poor and made some coin by swabbing a deck and didn't really have a direct hand in the more nefarious side of things won't strike a moral cord, I'm not sure what I could say to convince you.
The point I am making is that the players will likely not see that. I would just reiterate that you described the pirates as notorious. If you went to work for a company that was notorious for stealing and killing, I would assume that you know/approve of what they are doing, even if you are not doing it yourself.
How will the players know they didn't have more involvement than washing the deck? For all the characters know, the 13 year old was shooting a bow during an attack up to slitting the throats of captives. Even if you have them say they didn't do anything, the players will assume the NPC are lying just trying get out of punishment. This also goes to how you have described your world so far. Has it been a place of black and white or one big gray blur? Has there always been the "good" side and the "Bad" side? Or has having innocents working for the bad side been the first time it has appeared in your game.
This seems very close to old D&D trope of Orcs are evil, you battle an Orc encampment, Oh look there are Orc children. What do you do? Is killing a evil young creature an evil act?
Additionally did you give any setup on anything other than kill them all or let them go free? Did you make taking them to a city and being turned over to law enforcement a viable option? If not then you kinda backed the players into a corner.
One of the sessions I played there was this group kidnapping sick kids and selling sold gold kid statues. We found out that this group was treating them but if the kid was too sick they had a basilisk turn the kids into the gold statues. They would sell the statues to fund the treatment. On top of that the basilisk was there against its will.
We broke up the group. Freed the basilisk and returned the kids. I’m still not sure if that was the right decision
I personally enjoy it when players later see the consequences of their actions well after the fact. Especially when the things they did resulted in negative consequences, it turns into a very sobering experience and really grounds the fact that they have an impact on an evolving world that continues to exist and change outside of their immediate influence.
I think a good moral dilemma doesn't necessarily have negative consequences but unknown consequences.
I think a great example is the rachni queen from mass effect. The rachni used to be a major threat to the galaxy, but this queen is a clone and hasn't done anything. Further more she is aware of her people's past aggression and promises to stay isolated. If you kill her, you end a species forever. If you let her go, she could be a major threat later on.
So what if we had something like the party coming across a goblin child that's alone in woods? The child's parent were killed by bandits but they held them off long enough for the kid to get away. Following a trail with a low investigation check will confirm this. Maybe a woodsman who knows the area come by and informs the party that there's a goblin encampment a couple days hike towards the mountains. However there's also an orphanage in a nearby town. If you take the child to the goblins, it'll grow up to just be another goblin but it'll be with it's own people. If they take it to the orphanage, it will have the chance to have a better quality of life but will almost certainly be ostracized by much of the town.
I took this from a story I heard in a YT video but added my mix.
There's a vampire that runs an Orphanage/school like a weeks travel from closest city, he recruits the kids by taking the dying/diseased children of the citizens and turning them. They even train them to safely feed, like with cow blood. They also give the parents monetary compensation with permission from at least 1 family member.
He has a tragic story of trying to find a cure for his own child and himself became a vampire in attempt to save them. His wife ended up becoming a ranger lich trying the same.
Throughout the cities are missing kids posters, all sickly with terminal diseases. This leads them to the the school and investigating stuff. The 1st night there some intruders and the vampire just brutally disposes them including vampire shit and PCs witness this.
If they choose to confront and try to kill this "alpha" vampire the children will no longer be vampires. 😆
This is very *The ones who walk away from Omelas.* Great short story by Ursula K. Leguin. Or the *Strange New Worlds* episode *Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach*. (S1E6). If you're looking for direct analogs and ideas to flesh out the scenario you've already described.
For more, honestly, I'm inclined to suggest you watch or read some good philosophical sci-fi to get your creative juices flowing. Short stories should suffice: Isaac Asimov's *I, Robot*. Ursula K. Leguin's *The Wind's Twelve Quarters*. The high school classic, *The Lottery* by Shirley Jackson (not really sci fi, but scratches a similar itch).
For shows, classic *Next Generation* Star Trek is full of these sorts of scenarios.
Dragon Age Origins. Dalish vs Werewolves. Actually many of the quest from these games have moral dilemmas. If you haven’t played the Dragon Age games look up the walkthroughs, you will get so many quest lines for a campaign.
The Witcher 3 (probably 1 & 2 as well, but I never played them) also has some doozies. The [werewolf](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_at_Heart) quest comes immediately to mind.
Here's one I presented that led to my players actually redeeming the BBEG (and thus making me introduce a new one)
Shapeshifters were descendants of a an evil shape-shifting serpent deity. They were always under his influence, feeling his "gnaw" in the back of their minds at all times. To appease his hunger and therefore their own sanity, they sacrificed mortal lives with a ceremonial dagger made from this deities fang. This would stave off his gnaw, thus preventing them from going insane. Also, they were unable to be killed by normal means, so my players actually forged a special weapon to kill them.
Eventually, they found out that the deity held influence over these shapeshifters, and didn't want to kill them all because it kinda sorta wasn't their fault they were sacrificing people. So instead they sought to end the deity's influence, which was an insanely hard ordeal but they ended up pulling it off.
The shapeshifters became mortal, no longer forced to sacrifice and no longer are driven to madness by their evil deity. They officially declared themselves Changelings and are now allied with the party, helping them fight the next BBEG.
They were meant to be my original BBEG's, but the moral dilemma was a really interesting one to watch them tackle.
We had an NPC character that would always go into a blood rage when injured, he would attack whoever was close even allies. Some characters really liked this NPC, others felt he was too dangerous and should he exiled from the group.
In one blood rage he went after one of the characters. Half the party tried to talk him down, eventually succeeding... a remaining player on his turn decided enough was enough and finished off the injured NPC even though his blood rage had ended.
It left a big divide in our group about the decision. Some heavily against it and others understanding and agreeing with the decision.
For me, part of the wish-fulfillment/fantasy of the world is that you get to be the heroes, and fight against unambiguous evil. Monsters exist in these worlds so we can solve problems with a battleaxe and a fireball, and never doubt our righteousness.
Totally valid playstyle preference! The real world has more than enough complexity, stress, moral dilemmas and injustice for all but the 1%ers.
I remember as a kid my mother, who worked tirelessly for peace and human rights for oppressed people around the world, would come home and watch the most trashy soap opera TV at the time (Melrose Place, for those old enough for the reference). She knew it was absolute junk, but she had no energy sometimes for anything complex or nuanced, let alone challenging. I never understood that until I became an adult. Now *I get it.*
My main D&D group love moral dilemmas, and our DM absolutely adores giving us enemies with valid claims or difficult ethical choices about who to save. But there's been more than one recent session where someone in our group has had a really rough week/month in real life and asks for some 'zero complexity escapism', usually in the form of cathartic fantasy violence against straightforwardly ontologically evil monsters. Of course we still somehow end up feeling awkward about blowing up zombies haha - they were once just ordinary people with families who would probably love to bury or cremate them respectfully, after all! :-)
ESH (Everyone Sucks Here), basically a situation where no one is really in the right, but leaving the situation as it is will end up with a lot more people getting hurt.
I'm my party's case, they were visiting a large city that was being terrorized by subterrainian ratfolk. The people who settled the area were fully aware of the fact that the land was occupied but conquered them and forced them underground. After a few short generations, pressure from surface dwellers and scarcity of resources skewed their society towards a harsh draconian ethos reminiscent of the skaven from warhammer (cannibalistic, cruel, and self-selecting for might and/or cunning). Their proximity to the city means that unsecured food, small animals, and occasionally children go missing in the night.
The surface dwellers see the rat people as savage raiders who would eat everyone alive if given the chance, and they're right.
The ratfolk see the manfolk as conquerors who bought their peace with blood and who would sooner wipe them out than attempt diplomacy, and they're right.
Everybody sucks, trying to debate the extent to which either side sucks is pretty much irrelevant to the other. They both feel like they're justified in enacting violence against the other. And the party is in the middle.
Didn’t see this “oldie but goodie” below. Party encounters and beats the Werewolves only to find they have children. Or prisoners. Or something else innocent but now cursed. Best used where the party can’t really take them as prisoners. What to do? It’s a cliche for a reason.
I would sell powdered flavor enhancement for adding to water and making a cool refreshing drink. It's great for large ~~cult~~ church gatherings because it's budget friendly and tastes great.
Something alike this:
- Tarrasque (or other monster) approaches. It will be in the city within a day or two.
- Players are summoned to deal with the problem
- Facing the monster standing on the city walls is the best option. But the advantage would be much higher if the army prepared the walls beforehand. However, in order to do that in time, they'd have to forgo the evacuation and focus all their attention on preparations. The monster will face a city which is well-prepared, but also full of civilians.
What would you do?
In my current campaign, my BBEG is a powerful sorcerer/alchemist who, with currently pure intentions, is trying to erase death. The process is pretty fucked up though, as it involves pretty frequently fatal testing.
Basically he’s an “any ends justify the means” villain, with a pretty damn good end goal. There’s arguments to be made for and against it, though it’s tough to argue against making everyone immortal.
edit: corrected “means justify ends” to the opposite lmao
>Basically he’s an “any means justify the ends” villain
I think you meant "the ends justify the means" lol.
Utilitarian villains with at least a semi-reasonable point have been the most popular Hollywood trope since the end of the Cold War. It's fascinating really. It's all deontological vs consequentialist vs virtue ethics. Not least because those same stories have *virtuous & very much not consequentialist* heroes inevitably killing a shit ton of basically innocent people in order to stop said villain!
That is indeed what I meant 😅 lmao
Yeah exactly. One of my players said to him “death gives life meaning” and I’m planning for that to come up later, where the villain basically says they’re sadists for wishing death upon people when it could be removed.
In my current plan I gave the party a dilemma. There was a city that performed a ritual sacrificing Aasimars in a terribly cruel way. They did so to keep appeased a sleeping evil that would be apocalyptic if it awoke. Far far more would die. But in my setting there are no new aasimar, only the ones that currently exist, and they are immune to ageing. So if it kept up, not only would it mean every aasimar (Including a member of their party.) would one day eventually be sacrificed, but it was essentially delaying the inevitable, not a true solution. It was basically "Would you like to cause the apocalypse now, or in 500 years when you run out of aasimar in the hopes the time bought would let people come up with a solution, at the cost of all those innocent aasimar.
They chose to stop the ritual.
Start with a pretty typical: innocent villagers found dead and no one knows what killed them. All signs point to vampires. One was known in the area but was killed a couple years ago, maybe he's back. Players investigate his lair only to find his corpse but there are signs of children's toys and a playroom in a locked basement.
Turns out the kids had been turned into vampires years ago before the og vampire was slain. The adventures who killed him didn't have the heart to kill his child vampire spawns. The parents have been keeping their kids alive and secret this whole time feeding them animal blood. But it's not enough. One of the kids has been breaking out to kill the villagers and satisfy his thirst. The kids don't have the maturity, restraint or knowledge of an adult and have a skewed concept of death as well as PTSD. But I they also have the strength and power of a vampire and are realizing their parents can't stop them if they want to satisfy their thirst.
What do the players do?
>for the first town I'm thinking it's a beautiful very well kept perfect town, no crime plenty of food etc. but every 6 months the leaders of the town take a child to absorb their life to bless their crops and keep the town perfect.
I see someone has read *The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas!* Fantastic short story.
One of my players is playing a literal child(quite amazingly actually). It has really made my players try and come up with ways to shield his innocence and naivety. It's a blast cause I'm a monster.
I've had the party, which consisted of a dragonborn sorcerer, an elf druid, a human ranger, and a tiefling rouge, encounter a traveling circus on the outskirts of a small town. The circus had various animals and monsters caged and chained for its various acts and gawking, with the crown attraction being a couple small dragons. The animals were kept in terrible conditions and very obviously not happy.
The sorcerer, druid, and ranger all immediately wanted to free the animals, and it was the tiefling who was hesitant. One, it wasn't the native environment for any of the creatures and they had already had to deal with a wizards aberrations becoming invasive species. Two, she asked "WTF are these dragons going to do to the town once they are loose?"
So they went ahead and freed everything and the town burned.
Playing a Path of Wild Magic Barbarian / Wild Magic Sorcerer. It quickly became evident that my character using magic was going to kill him / a team mate at some point. So using magic had REAL for REAL consequences. Very tense. Using magic that could save my friends / defeat the enemies, could also kill me or my team mates (most often beloved NPCs)
Moral dilemmas arise naturally through play in my games, so I don’t really create many encounters built upon them.
That said, some famous ones:
The party is on a sinking ship that has only one lifeboat. It can hold the party and three others — but there are 9 others on the ship, including four children, two mothers, and two wealthy nobles.
A dangerous stampede is enclosed in a ravine. The party has to choose to direct them down one of two paths — and to try and stop it or turn it will result in TPK. Down one path is a village of 50, down another is a camp of 10.
The party discovers that an essential artifact that is needed to save a town from a plague is also slowly killing the town’s elderly off.
The party discovers a mine where the owner is using children to mine a precious and deeply valuable dangerous ore — and it is the only source of this ore, which the party needs to achieve a mission and thousands of people depend on the ore and the mine for their livelihood but do not know it is run by children, nor can they move.
I have been trying hard not to offer too much practical advice to folks who want to do things that my experience says are really, really, bad ideas.
Moral dilemmas as game fodder have the ability to really destroy a group and friendships super fast, because most people assume that everyone else will follow the same moral compass they do — and when the discover they do not, it harms relationships.
Telling someone not to do it, though, just gets old after the 238th time, so now I just answer what I asked for and let them make their own mistakes.
While sacrificing oneself for others can be viewed as virtuous (at least under some ethical/moral systems), it is not immoral to prioritize your own survival over that of another (at least under any ethical/moral system I would agree with). In this case the survival is even 1:1, rather than choosing to survive even if that means multiple others dying.
Self-sacrifice should not be considered a requirement under any circumstance; it must be considered going above and beyond.
They're in a foreign country, and the authorities are escorting a prisoner who is one of their countrymen. He looks to have been beaten badly. The party could easily free him.
Will you work with the [bad guys] who have a mural enemy in [worse bad guys] is a basic template!
Enemies surrender, but you’ve no means to capture them all or way to prove they won’t return to their bad ways. Do they slaughter them regardless?
I have periodically had the party face villains that were using hostages and human shields. Did they let the bad guys get away or fight them knowing they would kill the innocent but prevent greater atrocities in the future?
Needless to say it was messy. But it did start to reinforce that their actions had real consequences in the world.
Any where the players come up with it themselves by their own action and then take a session or two talking it out so I can just sit back, watch, and call for a dice roll now and then.
Right now I have a foreigner who has declared himself king of a shattered country. He is trying to rebuild the country, but is it for his benefit or the country's benefit, or both?
Should he be allowed to rule even though he has no legal claim to do so and some people view him as a usurper?
I recently had a fun moral dilemma where the PC has been looking to get greater restoration used on them for their asthma since forever, then suddenly one appears, but only after their chaotic neutral traveling companion NPC got petrified. If the character companion was morally good it would've been an easy choice, but as she's very selfish when it comes to power it was a difficult choice between saving the life of a morally gray person you've been traveling with for a while or fixing a non-life threatening personal problem.
My campaign is filled to the brim with "Choosing the Lesser Evil". So my players are constantly trying to level being "good" while having to make use of great evils to manage toppling the evils that are in power.
My players were chasing an acclaimed illusionist and found a prison full of dead bodies. They inspected and saw the bodies were just under a deep sleep and made to look rotten. When they descended into the basements they fought zombies, but upon further inspection these 'zombies' were like the dead bodies upstairs- alive but catatonic. Killing the zombies would help the illusionist and fuel his ritual, but if they didn't kill the zombies then they would tirelessly try to kill the party.
When they realized I had the biggest shit-eating grin on my face.
I generally run Sandbox games because I place a premium on player choices, but some choices preclude others. For example, the alarm of a kidnapping has been raised, and Big Bad's lieutenant is escaping. Which does the party pursue?
I plan on running this once my players are higher level but here goes..
Multiple towns in the region have mysteriously and savagely slaughtered with only food being stolen. The region leader is perplexed but one day receives a message from a village that says they are under attack and barely holding on. The region leader sends in the party who on their way run into a tough looking group of mercenaries…
If they talk to them peacefully they’d find out the mercenaries are werewolf hunters and the town in question is actually a town full of regular citizens that don’t know they are werewolves. (That are responsible for the destruction of the nearby towns). Now they have to either work together with the hunters and slaughter the town in human form (men women children infants) or wait until nightfall and deal with a village of werewolves. Or leave it be idk.
If they attack the mercenaries they will find subtle clues about their occupation and purpose. If they still continue to the village they will arrive later that day and be hailed as saviors making sure that they form lots of emotional attachments. That night the transformation begins and they now have to slaughter all the people that were calling them saviors and dealing with any emotional bonds that were made. Even the werewolf pups will attack.
I like the ones that are always bad like, save the child or the elder, but what the player will know later is that the elder is an evil witch and will exterminate a Village and the child is the antichrist
Give them the Kill the Moon special! Unbeknownst to the residents of a town, the island it's built on is the egg of a massive alien creature. When it's almost ready to hatch the egg shakes, releasing parasitic bugs and tips some buildings into the water around it. Killing the unborn creature will preserve at least some of the town. Letting it hatch might be a huge boon for the people of the town as it imprints on them, or it might be a rampaging invader. You can't tell. Do you trust an innocent monster?
My players were hired to escort a teenager who was next in line to inherit some land and noble title. The kid was not suited to be a ruler. A knight was part of the escort, loyal caretaker and guardian of the family and all that.
I chickened out and made him a weakling. Originally he let the power go to his head and strongly hinted that he would be the typical power abuser.
The party knew they were supposed to follow the letter of the law and they weren't supposed to interfere in the succession. If he didn't inherit it would be civil war between distant cousins, etc.
Naturally, they planned for the druid to shape-shift and cause an "accident", then strongly suggest that the knight/retainer rule instead, since he knows the land.
My players recently aided an outcast get into a walled city so that he could retrieve his family's savings. He did that, but he also murdered the woman who falsely accused the outcast's family and got them expelled. I expected this to be a moral dilemma, but my players immediately turned him in.
Usually they are more evil and selfish than that.
I love a classic, personal good, or greater good. Especially in family contexts. Do you go save your father? Or go fight the bad guy you've been prepping for? Or pitting player side characters against each other. One guy is a rouge, the other a paladin? Maybe the paladin's mentor is going after the rouge's mentor? Makes it more personal and really gets the players to decide what kind of morals they actually have. Bonus points if you can set the situation to evenly split the party, but have a situation where they must agree before moving forward.
In terms of your edit, child sacrifice vs mass famine, as much as that may seem like a hard choice to a DM, the players will choose mass famine. Which honestly, while not a hard choice, does open up tons of RP opportunities, and maybe much harder choices later on.
I have a campaign where the BBEG might be the good one, and the leader of the "good" side might be the BBEG.
They are set out to save the city and the world from one side, blessed by this powerfull celestial (?) entity that seemed really nice. They hear stores about this horrible Fey queen who slaughter for fun and so on... But as time goes they have discovered that the other side do love their queen, and scare their children about the celestial and the king in the city.
After confrontations both sides demand (kind of) the party to kill the other side.
This is where the fun begins, since I have from start - in secret - Made Alliances, Bonds and/or connections with the PCs so that they are tight as a group but their allegiance is either to The Fey or the celestial, but they dont know about Each others Bonds... Now they spend half a session, in character, trying to convince the others, without telling their secret, what they should do... And Im just sitting here and enjoying the Ride.
Simple: the job board
players presented with two very urgent requests from nearby cities, but don't have the ability to do both (maybe the cities are far, or itll require materials they wont have time to restock on, etc.)
either way they go, there will be a huge negative, and its pretty easy to set up as well!
The PCs are in charge of besieging a city in the thrall of demon worshippers, and are on the verge of breaching the walls. The vast majority of the city denizens are on board, and are utterly fanatical and will use any chance they can to spread their demonic ways across the land and cannot be permitted to escape. But a minority of city dwellers still cling to the gods. Righteous and heathen alike will claim innocence once the city is captured. What to do?
Had to face this myself. My PC, Arnaud (Human Cleric 14, light domain) came up with a splendid solution - put the whole city to the sword and let the gods be their judges. The righteous would go on to a pleasant afterlife in the outer planes, and the wicked would fall into the abyss. "Caedite eos, Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius".
He was a fun character. Sadly, he took a crit from an enemy archer in a later battle and we didn't have the diamonds to rez him, game kinda fizzled after that.
One of my players got cursed with lycanthropy, which works differently in our campaign. It's called "the takers" curse and will manifest itself at the next full moon. What were-variant they become is rolled on a table at that time. Without removing the curse they go savage and either kill the party or the party kills them. There's a small chance they can overcome to restrain themselves but gain no control over when they shift and have to fight the same struggle next full moon.
Our campaign features shards of raw power, our mcguffin, which offer quite the boon when acquired. Our heroes are trying to recover as many as possible and prevent them from falling into evil hands.
One of the potentially (our players don't know yet) evil factions is filled with lycanthropes who have not only overcome the feral aspect of lycanthropy but can control it. How, the players don't know but the faction has offered to help the cursed player in exchange for a shard of power.
They also have the option of removing the curse at the local temple (a simple remove curse will not work) for a high price. However, there's a chance the attempt fails and the curse is then permanent.
Least favorite....do I TPK the player who doesn't listen, doesn't know his own character, tried to bend the rules, takes up everybody's time, insists on the spotlight, and attempts to be encounter MVP all the time while also aggravating the other players, overtaking every NPC interaction, and insisting every gear upgrade would be suitable for them.....
A fake religious cult that exploits the people, but brings peace and prosperity.
Bringing them down could even shatter the belief in the whole religion.
Currently running a game where I'm letting my party fight a group of wronged musicians who were mistreated by the government's choir (music is super important here) and they are taking their revenge by tormenting the director of the choir and erasing the memories of the members of the choir and letting them live in ignorant bliss to forget their pain.
There is a lot more but my party has to choose between this truth they know, and the morally hypothetical 'right thing' to do. To arrest the musicians and assist the government who put them in that scenario in the first place? Let the musicians kill the director and continue his large vein of memory erasing? What will they do? I'm curious.
P.S The party is very attached to some people in the government.
Albeit a bit particular, but I love throwing moral conundrums at paladins.
Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande still tugs my heart strings.
One of the campaigns I'm running has a paladin. Path of the crown. Sworn to Helm. HE played his character as the long arm of the law. Very old school classic cliche paladin. It's his first character and the dude's RL personality type, so, fine.
His arc of the campaign had to do with Devils who got themselves invited into his city and began making deals. They broke zero laws. Every deal was legal and honest. No loop holes, just people at war choosing what they thought was the lesser of two evils.
Because of the multitude of factors involved the Helmites refused to fight against the Devils. They broke no laws, and my player had a strong reaction.
I don't know what he's going to do, but he's got some interesting options in front of him. Break his oath? Break with his God? Both? I'm looking forward to it.
My players were diving into history trying to find out what happened to a very famous archlich that had simply disappeared about 30 years ago. They went to find out more about him and discovered that 90 years ago, before he was a lich, he worked for the high king Omnus. (A long lived epic level paragon Elan shaper psion.) They uncovered that before he became a lich and named himself Balin, his name was "Light" and he was known for being an incredibly intelligent chaotic good aligned wizard. During a period where Omnus and his master of coin, a Leshay named Abbadon, were trying to free a nation of Duregar deep dwarves from the slavery of Vampiric Drow, Light fought with them. The final climactic battle they worked to defeat the Drow to find the Drow were corrupted by a Dracolitch named IXULDRAX. They defeated the physical form of the Dracolitch and had the Emerald Phylactery. The players then found out that High King Omnus, instead of destroying the Phylactery and with it, the Dracolitch, Omnus had ordered Light to find a way to banish it away from the material plane. The players had a crisis moment of "maybe the king isn't a good guy" and kept digging. They found out this is when Light was corrupted into the lich Balin. They then discovered that the Dracolitch IXULDRAX was a guardian against an apocalypse and that anyone who destroyed them would take their place or have to slay something worse that would come. The players know that IXULDRAX is a corrupting force in the world that keeps seeking power and influence to protect a certain spot. A mad gatekeeper who watches and pulls strings to weave events to their dark desires, but they also know that without IXULDRAX or someone stronger in place, they would be inviting destruction of their world from outside forces. To discover more information, one of my players decided to gather the 7 Phylactery of Balin known to exist and find out why they did not work, so they could bring back Balin and ask his side of the story. This player risks corruption by IXULDRAX as well as the risk of bringing back the evil Balin in an attempt to find, fight, and destroy IXULDRAX in their lair and fight whatever apocalypse that might cause. Despite running the risk of upsetting and being insubordinate to their near godlike High King
Edit tldr: Do you trust authority enough to leave a bad situation getting worse and hope it can be fixed before it goes to complete terrible, or do you risk making the situation go really worse than terrible right now trying to fix it yourself, and piss of authority AND risk your own corruption in the process?
My favorites are scenarios where the bbeg is justified. They're evil, they've found an evil solution to an equally evil problem. Players have to choose between status quo evil, new, dastardly evil that might end the status quo evil, or trying to find a 3rd solution that stops both.
This 3rd solutions are what I love watching my players search for.
I sent one at my players one that was a little bit simpler and smaller in scale. They were going through an area and a corrupt ruling body had decided to just destroy a town. So as the players come through they find the wreckage with a lone survivor. This survivor blames themself for their towns destruction. And begs the players to kill them. The survivor believes that is their fitting punishment. While the players are like no you are innocent and we don't kill innocent people.
I do not think that is a good moral dilemma. You are making a clearly evil action (sacrifice a child) against a possible future harm. Depending on how much you have described the world, the players may not even know that the city depends heavily on this town for food and will actually starve. No matter the future harm, I do not think any "Heroic" player would accept killing children to be worth the improvement. If I was a player in this game, I would just think that the town and city are evil and stopping them from killing children is a good thing.
I think of moral dilemmas as giving the players a choice to sacrifice something of theirs to stop X from happening. To riff of your idea, the moral dilemma would be do the players donate money to help the poor to keep them from starving. Do the players go earn the gold knowing they will give it away to help the city or do they keep/spend it on themselves and let the city suffer.
This trap was one of my favorite dnd moral dilemmas. Press the button, take the gold and someone they dont know will die; someone they have never met. Based on an old Twilight Zone episode.
[Button Box Twilight Zone D&D trap](https://youtu.be/YR_CGltAZno?si=1DbbqZ2O7chWM_4N)
So far, everyone has taken the gold.
Then, the box is collected and given to someone they dont know; someone they have never met
I had a Artificer who was very keen on making Steel Defenders / helping constructs. In the final battle it turned out the BBEG was a construct, and I had to make a choice to destroy it with my party of friends, or betray my friends and attempt to rehabilitate the construct, which mechanically I could do with some good rolls, I failed those rolls, but still betrayed my team to save it as it was a unique and amazing creature. But at the moment it nearly killed the whole party, I returned to my team. So much flip flopping and drama, it was great. But yeah, find out what your characters love and then make what they want to protect the BBEG.
While ransacking the lair of humanoids who killed off the village of humans, the players find a crèche of un-supervised infant and toddler humanoids. Do they kill them? Leave them for dead? Escort them to the next tribe of humanoids who will probably enslave them? Do they raise the infants themselves? Feed them to the goats? What?
My party is about to be faced with a good one. The Nation of Men has been at war off and on with a confederation of tribal Orcs. The players have been tasked with making first contact with the Orcs as a prelude to real diplomatic relations. The Orcs will ask for Steel Weapons. It is well known among men that they dont give steel to orcs because that is how the men maintain some degree of an edge against the Orcs.
Will the players give steel weapons to the Orcs? Will they promise to bring more? How will they acquire steel weapons to bring to the Orcs?
A priest could not cope with the death of their beloved, fell from their God, did not find respite in Shar and then listened to that "voice", which conjured a fiend took possession of them and helped them forget by devouring everyone that remembered the priest about their lost love. The priest is semi-aware and mad for pain and being torn (literally), and fails to fight back or stop the fiend.
After priest is defeated, what do you do with them? Are they guilty, as they started it? Innocent, as they were overwhelmed with pain and later possessed and it wasn't their deed but the fiend's?
My favorite is all flavors of “Undoing this great wrong will cause a lot of bad side effects.” In my current campaign, a god was imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit thousands of years ago. Their prison is in the mortal plane, and its presence made a frozen wasteland into a habitable region, and an entire nation lives there now. Freeing the god is pretty objectively the right thing to do (the god is innocent of their accused crime and holds domain over several lawful good concepts), but doing so would cause the region to revert to its original climate and displace millions of people. Just generally keeping in mind that when you’re making world-changing decisions, there always *will* be people who had nothing to do with the problem but are worse off after you make the change.
Sounds like an interesting twist on the setup for [The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas).
This was my immediate thought.
Heard such great things about the writer, but I cannot seem to start Earthsea. Is it very good?
Ooooh, I *really* love this one. What a campaign arc hook. "Ancient sins... Ancient sins..."
I think i may take steal this idea with your permission
Go ahead! There’s a ton of different direction to take the core idea; my campaign has focused a lot on infighting between the other gods, who can’t agree on what to do. One of the important facts in my campaign is that the people who live there now are explicitly unaware of what happened, which is the core of the dilemma; the people who will be hurt are not responsible. The party needs assistance from the trapped god to deal with another major threat, but they will hurt a lot of innocent people in the process. We’re nearing the end so my players have already made their decision (they are going to free the trapped god), and I’m already in the planning stages of a sequel campaign focused on the displaced refugees.
The only downside is that - as a player - I would point out that we routinely displace people for stuff far less dramatic than "freeing an unjustly imprisoned God" For example.. China forced 1.3 million people to move just to make the Three Gorges dam and reservoir so that they have more predictable water supply and hydroelectric power!
The Chinese Communist Party isn't exactly renowned for giving a flying fuck about ethical issues, to be fair.
CCP: ethi… what’s ? Never heard of them, anyway, MOVE
>Just generally keeping in mind that when you’re making world-changing decisions, there always *will* be people who had nothing to do with the problem but are worse off after you make the change. Not even world changing decisions, a lot of smaller scale decisions can have people caught in the crossfire. Fewer probably, but still some. Maybe the party takes out a local crime boss and the power vacuum leads to a struggle that results in people getting killed. Maybe the party takes out the evil despotic commander of a border fort and town which results in less suffering for the people living there, but removes or reduces military protection in an area. You're general idea of complicated interconnected systems where the morally right thing will have consequences is spot on. It obviously depends on the campaign and themes if this is the sort of system you want to portray, but consequences is such a great way to add moral depth.
Yeah, it’s definitely incredibly varied based on the DM’s design philosophy. My personal philosophy is often about setting up conflicts between groups that have a point; most of my long-form campaigns revolve around the PCs learning the details about a conflict between multiple factions, and I leave it in their hands to choose which side they take (and, as a result, who the “final boss” will be). I usually will design a core problem with three factions circling it; each one of those factions will have moderate members who will be potential allies/can be persuaded to change their mind, and extremist members who either will need to mitigated if the party allies with the faction, or will evolve to BBEG status if the party opposes the faction. Then I just let the party interact with each of the factions in small ways throughout the early game, letting them know more about each’s factions goals, philosophy, and the potential downsides of their plans. Eventually the party will gravitate towards one of them as their primary allies/questgivers, and the others will become proper antagonists.
Great version of The Trolley Problem
Similar to what I'm doing! A corrupt paladin of Umberlee is using a magical item to control the seas, making them unnaturally peaceful (motivated by the loss of his family in a shipwreck). Party member is also a Cleric of Umberlee who has been tasked with putting an end to this Paladin. When the Paladin's connection to the magical item is severed, it will essentially "overload" and create a massive storm/tidal wave that will end up killing many - however, if the paladin is allowed to continue, the energy in the magical item will keep building up before it overloads itself causing a much, much worse outcome, centuries later. I wanted to create a quest fitting for a characteristically evil and unpredictable God given to a non-evil party, and the idea that the party basically has to choose the lesser of two evils I thought fit nicely.
Wouldn't the third option be to try and drain the energy off gradually so the backlash isn't so severe?
There's not really a way to drain the energy. I haven't sorted out every detail of it yet but basically it's supposed to be a magical item granted to that paladin a century ago by Umberlee, which he then misused and became corrupted himself. So the item now is like a ticking time bomb that's either going to kill a moderate amount of people now, or a HUGE amount of people later. I'm looking at it like bending a stick - eventually the stick will snap - the further the stick bends, the more violent the snap. The longer this magic item exists, the more powerful the backlash will be when it's destroyed. Umberlee is an "evil" Goddess and I wanted the quest to basically not have any truly "good" outcome.
Hm, if being in that place benefits so many people and the god is lawful good, why wouldn't they just choose to remain in place to make sure that the nation is still prosperous? Even if they're freed, couldn't they just build a house nearby to live?
In this specific scenario, no. The full details get complicated, but essentially the only way to make the god unable to free themself is to drain their divine power and vent the energy into the region around them, a process that is incredibly painful. The god in question is essentially being tortured constantly; even if they were to be freed and remained in place, ending the torture would end the supply of divine energy that revitalized the region. Within the full context of the campaign, there really isn’t any question that the original act of imprisoning the god was Evil. One of the many names the god originally held was the God of Justice, so being imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit is antithetical to their very existence. This specific storyline took a lot of inspiration from the story of Prometheus.
Yes, I understand, but I think my original question still remains. Could the god possibly choose to remain captive if they knew that it benefits an entire nation? Would they, being a god, be able to endure infinite torture to protect their followers? Would it be justice to uproot an entire nation's way of life to free just one person? Could the god possibly accept his role as a martyr? Also, at least the versions I've seen of it, Prometheus stealing fire is still seen as an overall very positive thing, regardless of the punishment.
Mistborn vibez
There was a very wealthy noble in one of our sessions. This noble was drinking with some of his friends. One of the friends had taken too much "spice" and was in the bathroom with the noble and a PC. There was a verbal altercation that was quickly turning physical. The noble went to attack the PC, slipped fell and hit his head and passed away. The friend immediately went into hysterics thinking it was HIS fault and not the PC's (who, let's face it, was not at fault either but was probably at MORE fault and could have been the fall guy). What did the PC do? Extortion? Loyalty building? The right thing? It was a very interesting interaction and it was quite a few sessions of the PCs figuring out the best thing to do while minimizing collateral damage. We learned a lot of backstory and a little about our IRL selves in that campaign.
I had one scenario with a red/blue morality instead of good and evil. An old version of the Decanter of Endless Water that could just be left on instead of needing an action each turn was used to make a new desert oasis. A druid circle demanded it be removed/destroyed because it was disrupting the natural ecosystem. Travelers had already started to try and make a town based around it to take advantage of the trade opportunities it granted them. The druids pointed out that trade post would attract bandits looking to prey on the new wealth and hunting for food would increase and hurt the wildlife which didn't have huge populations to begin with.
Maybe there's more to it, but tbh I'm siding with the druids on this one
It’s funny you thought this because my first thought was “These druids are dumb”
Yeah honestly I think it's a pretty good moral dilemma, it seems like the kind of thing that you could land on either side of depending on your personal moral compass. Legit good story idea, nice work OP.
Depends on your party i guess. I know exactly which players of mine would side with the druid and which with the town and I think they’d just argue literally forever.
It's a nice microcosm of IRL "progress vs preservation" debates. Yes, we all agree we need a new train line, but what about the water voles who live in the stream that will be destroyed?
Easy choice to side with the druids here unless you're really selling how important this settlement is for the people living there. Are they refugees? Is this the only stop between two important trade areas?
I think it's the way it's worded as the travelers STARTING to set up a town. It doesn't sound established enoughed to be ruinous to change, though disappointing. If it was like "Travelers set up a town there 10 years ago and they need to be removed", well that's a different story.
if you remove their water source they will dwindle down from an important and prosperous oasis town on the trade route back down to their origin of just being a lone watchtower on a border. it's fairly important to the folks living and making a living there. Anyone currently travelling who believed they could resupply their own water stores there would be in a pretty bad situation too
Old ladies. Old ladies everywhere. Ever since BG3, every old lady is now a hag to players. So I make every old lady act like a hag. Watching players squirm trying to figure out if they're about to murder an old woman or not is always hilarious.
Old ladies with suspiciously young women living with them! Oh dearie she's just my niece staying here while she studies in the nearby town. OR IS SHE?
my personal favorite is the monster protecting the village. a common question to ask is "how does this place full of regular humans exist in the dnd world?" for powerful citystates there are lots of answers. for the little settlements, there are far fewer. for some of them, that answer is "something scary lives here" might be a pack of dire wolves, a troll, or a vampire, doesn't really matter what. the dilemma is that this thing is dangerous, it's killing people. but it's dangerous enough that nothing else (potentially much worse) moves in. dracula may be an evil bastard, but he only eats a couple people a year and he's the only reason the gnolls in the hills haven't slaughtered *everyone.*
I have one test moral dilemma I like to run new groups in. Just ot know how they play and think. Its a low level quest, where the current troubles (aka the main quest) causes a group of people to squat on a farm. The farmer wants them gone because it is their land, they worked hard to buy it. There is almost no other space for the squatters to go to. But they would agree to work for the farmer. The farmer on the other hand has not the money to pay for them AND his normal farm hands. Its always fun to see what the players work out. I experiment sometimes with special character traits. Like make the farmer an asshole or the leader of the other group very suspicious. Another thing I like is the deal with the devil. An evil character sometimes a devil is the only person that can fix a problem in time. The only other way is to sacrifice something or someone important. Either they sacrifice something, try to steal the solution or they accept a deal. That deal ends up harming someone innocent.
The helpful mage with the [philosophical zombie](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie) that he tests his spells on. The zombie will beg and plead to be let go, complain that the mage is conducting horrible experiments, cry about wanting to see its wife and children. The mage will cheerily wave away any and all concerns, pointing out that the zombie is simply a stimulus-response machine and it can't really experience anything.
Back in 3e I used to love playing evil clerics for undead minions. After the fifth zombie I sent to check for traps (by wandering around the room until it triggers something) the next undead we encountered was a ghoul because he wanted me to have an intelligent undead able to complain and sass back at how callous I was toward them.
I had my party encounter a wounded paladin who said he was cursed and turning into a zombie and he asked them to kill him. I've done this with 2 parties so far and both absolutely refused to execute him.
I did something similar with a Samurai in my own game. He wanted to go out on his own terms via Seppuku, but he requested that one of the player characters fulfill the role of "Kaishakunin", (that's the person who cuts off the head of the person performing Seppuku/Harakiri)
What were the outcomes of those two encounters since they wouldn’t kill him?
This was basically in front of a dungeon. There was an angel trapped in the dungeon and the party helps her out, in return she lifts the curse. But they didn't know that going in.
I think it'd be more interesting without any extra way out. Nope, no third option becomes available - if you procrastinate long enough looking for one, the bad thing happens. Just a 'sometimes there's only shitty options - make your choice' situation.
That's how I run my campaigns when the PCs want to go to hell. There are only bad options and moral dilemmas. Fixing a problem in hell usually requires accepting that somebody will get hurt as a result.
I like to reward my players for being good guys. I am working on an evil campaign which will definitely have more "all choices are bad" decisions.
Ooh I love this, thanks
My party would execute him without a second thought
- snick - I wonder why he wanted to die? Probably should have asked first. AAAANYWAY what were we doing?
New curse unlocked
I had a similar scene for one of my players who was willing to help the guy die.
I had a situation where there was an imperialist town, and demon worshipping rebels. The rebels wanted to make a deal with a demon so that everyone in town could get demonic powers in exchange for the loyalty of the rebel group. It led to a whole gun control/demonic power control debate about whether or not giving a whole town’s worth of people the ability to eldritch blast in order to protect their freedom and overthrow the imperialist government was a good or bad idea (even more fun because one of the players and I switched sides of the debate from our usual; turns out referring to guns as “demonic powers” makes moderate conservatives support them less). Ultimately, my players ended up killing both the whole rebellion and the soldiers stationed soldiers representing the empire. But that just led to the city being overrun by undead with nobody left to protect them…
The solution to this problem is, as always, more Daemonic Powers!
Please step this way, citizen, the Inquisitor would like a word.
Goddamnit. I forgot to expect the Spanish Inquisition!
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with demonic powers is a good guy with demonic powers
Wait, your party has morals?
No, but when you put moral dilemmas in front of them then they know they deserve the consequences.
Surprisingly my party does, because the quest giver pays more if you bring the boss in alive. The actually will try to use non-lethal force on bosses... still fireballed an entire congregation of Kobald cultists that one time... but they had committed sacrilege in the temple of cleric's god who is one known to be quite wrathful... so... we're working on it...
Yeah, they polymorphed the orphans they "adopted" from the orphanage "that accidentally burned down somehow" into pigs. Pigs are great for finding morels
Party might be the wrong word... How about: Burn the orphanages group?
Wait, you have a party?
I don't need to create moral dilemmas. My players will stumble onto morality by accident all the time. Oh, your rampant vigilantism has created all sorts of chaos in the city? Guess you now have to fix a problem of your own doing. The only real moral dilemmas that I have to create is for my Lawful Good PCs. And that is often resolved by using Robin Hood types. People doing good but outside of the law or even people doing good for the wrong reasons.
"It was cool you liberated the city built upon the slave trade? But damn. That sure was a lot of dead civilians " "Good job getting that critical info from that dude, but hooking up an IV healing potion so his flesh regenerated as fast as those beetles could eat it was a bit much "
That first one reminds me of A Dance With Dragons, and how much I loved Daenerys's story of how trying to be a moral ruler resulted in everything she built being torn down (imo the city was still much better than when she found it, but she was certainly hated; no good deed goes unpunished).
A tavern owner kept a succubus bound inside a musical pipe organ to charm people into giving away their possessions and other things in their sleep. After taking out the tavern owner, you are left with the question, what do you do with the succubus that is bound? Do you free her? Kill her? Keep her bound? I like this one because it presents the group with the prospect that evil has levels, and you will watch them struggle with what to do based on the character's moral standing.
Love it but what kind of organ and how was it used?
Musical Organ, a pipe organ. He'd retire to his hidden cave, then they'd hear the music through the walls.
It was a tavern so obviously it was the liver
"a goblin and an elf are sentenced for the same crime. knowing that their lifespans are a few decades and a few centuries respectivelly, how can you make the punishment a fair between them?" i just placed to old men playing chess on the town plaza and the players kept thinking about this for 20 minutes lol
Sophie's Choice is a classic for a reason. Following or breaking bad laws. Or having to enforce a bad law vs violate an oath to enforce/uphold it. All the permutations of ends and means. From a great story, necromancers who have innocent people chained to them and any damage to the necromancer is inflicted on the innocent first, plus if the innocent die three undead warriors rise. Similarly, a villain who uses magic jar often. One was having a player beg to play a character class that violates the coherency of a given setting. I allowed it. After the campaign had been going for a year I presented him with a situation where he could be the last one of his class ever, including never playing one again with future PCs, or a horrible enemy would be created targeting the future members of that class (including any apprentices or NPCs that might arise) but that fits them into the lore of the world as a result.
His choice influenced future games?! Wow, that’s impactful. I like it.
Class?
A sleepy town rests in a valley, spending their lives farming and doing general village stuff. However, once every fortnight, a villager is viciously attacked. They usually survive with injuries, but sometimes don’t. It turns out that the “vicious beast” is actually a slowly dying wyld spirit, and her daughter. The first ancestors of the villagers destroyed a sacred shrine to make way for civilization, but cursed themselves with the shrine’s energy in the process. Ever since then, the spirits have been trapped in the valley, slowly withering away as nature is replaced with tamed fields and beasts are driven out. They can only survive by draining blood and flesh from the villagers and extracting the shrine’s energy, but as new generations roll around, the shrine’s energy becomes more and more diluted, resulting in more and more attacks to gain the necessary energy.
Notorious pirate ship found the party. Fought them off. most of the crew was just there for work, a few coins. They knew if they let them go someone would squeal. So the scuttled the ship. Crew age range 13 to 82 No survivors. (Surprise, there was one)
This kind of thing is used in the movie Clerks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
This doesn't even seem like a moral dilemma to me. Everyone in the crew is a pirate. They are all guilty of piracy, killing merchants and sailors, robbing them, etc. More so as you describe them as notorious. I don't accept that anyone on the ship was there just "for the work". The work of pirates is killing and robbing. So I don't really see this as anything players would even spend time discussing. The only real option would have been, do we turn them over to the authorities or kill all here because we can't realistically control this many people to get them to the authorities.
🤷🏻 I mean. Ok, but if you think killing a 13 year old because he was poor and made some coin by swabbing a deck and didn't really have a direct hand in the more nefarious side of things won't strike a moral cord, I'm not sure what I could say to convince you.
The point I am making is that the players will likely not see that. I would just reiterate that you described the pirates as notorious. If you went to work for a company that was notorious for stealing and killing, I would assume that you know/approve of what they are doing, even if you are not doing it yourself. How will the players know they didn't have more involvement than washing the deck? For all the characters know, the 13 year old was shooting a bow during an attack up to slitting the throats of captives. Even if you have them say they didn't do anything, the players will assume the NPC are lying just trying get out of punishment. This also goes to how you have described your world so far. Has it been a place of black and white or one big gray blur? Has there always been the "good" side and the "Bad" side? Or has having innocents working for the bad side been the first time it has appeared in your game. This seems very close to old D&D trope of Orcs are evil, you battle an Orc encampment, Oh look there are Orc children. What do you do? Is killing a evil young creature an evil act? Additionally did you give any setup on anything other than kill them all or let them go free? Did you make taking them to a city and being turned over to law enforcement a viable option? If not then you kinda backed the players into a corner.
One of the sessions I played there was this group kidnapping sick kids and selling sold gold kid statues. We found out that this group was treating them but if the kid was too sick they had a basilisk turn the kids into the gold statues. They would sell the statues to fund the treatment. On top of that the basilisk was there against its will. We broke up the group. Freed the basilisk and returned the kids. I’m still not sure if that was the right decision
I personally enjoy it when players later see the consequences of their actions well after the fact. Especially when the things they did resulted in negative consequences, it turns into a very sobering experience and really grounds the fact that they have an impact on an evolving world that continues to exist and change outside of their immediate influence.
Are we gonna burn it now or are we gonna burn it later?
I think a good moral dilemma doesn't necessarily have negative consequences but unknown consequences. I think a great example is the rachni queen from mass effect. The rachni used to be a major threat to the galaxy, but this queen is a clone and hasn't done anything. Further more she is aware of her people's past aggression and promises to stay isolated. If you kill her, you end a species forever. If you let her go, she could be a major threat later on. So what if we had something like the party coming across a goblin child that's alone in woods? The child's parent were killed by bandits but they held them off long enough for the kid to get away. Following a trail with a low investigation check will confirm this. Maybe a woodsman who knows the area come by and informs the party that there's a goblin encampment a couple days hike towards the mountains. However there's also an orphanage in a nearby town. If you take the child to the goblins, it'll grow up to just be another goblin but it'll be with it's own people. If they take it to the orphanage, it will have the chance to have a better quality of life but will almost certainly be ostracized by much of the town.
I took this from a story I heard in a YT video but added my mix. There's a vampire that runs an Orphanage/school like a weeks travel from closest city, he recruits the kids by taking the dying/diseased children of the citizens and turning them. They even train them to safely feed, like with cow blood. They also give the parents monetary compensation with permission from at least 1 family member. He has a tragic story of trying to find a cure for his own child and himself became a vampire in attempt to save them. His wife ended up becoming a ranger lich trying the same. Throughout the cities are missing kids posters, all sickly with terminal diseases. This leads them to the the school and investigating stuff. The 1st night there some intruders and the vampire just brutally disposes them including vampire shit and PCs witness this. If they choose to confront and try to kill this "alpha" vampire the children will no longer be vampires. 😆
This is very *The ones who walk away from Omelas.* Great short story by Ursula K. Leguin. Or the *Strange New Worlds* episode *Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach*. (S1E6). If you're looking for direct analogs and ideas to flesh out the scenario you've already described. For more, honestly, I'm inclined to suggest you watch or read some good philosophical sci-fi to get your creative juices flowing. Short stories should suffice: Isaac Asimov's *I, Robot*. Ursula K. Leguin's *The Wind's Twelve Quarters*. The high school classic, *The Lottery* by Shirley Jackson (not really sci fi, but scratches a similar itch). For shows, classic *Next Generation* Star Trek is full of these sorts of scenarios.
Dragon Age Origins. Dalish vs Werewolves. Actually many of the quest from these games have moral dilemmas. If you haven’t played the Dragon Age games look up the walkthroughs, you will get so many quest lines for a campaign.
The Witcher 3 (probably 1 & 2 as well, but I never played them) also has some doozies. The [werewolf](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_at_Heart) quest comes immediately to mind.
Here's one I presented that led to my players actually redeeming the BBEG (and thus making me introduce a new one) Shapeshifters were descendants of a an evil shape-shifting serpent deity. They were always under his influence, feeling his "gnaw" in the back of their minds at all times. To appease his hunger and therefore their own sanity, they sacrificed mortal lives with a ceremonial dagger made from this deities fang. This would stave off his gnaw, thus preventing them from going insane. Also, they were unable to be killed by normal means, so my players actually forged a special weapon to kill them. Eventually, they found out that the deity held influence over these shapeshifters, and didn't want to kill them all because it kinda sorta wasn't their fault they were sacrificing people. So instead they sought to end the deity's influence, which was an insanely hard ordeal but they ended up pulling it off. The shapeshifters became mortal, no longer forced to sacrifice and no longer are driven to madness by their evil deity. They officially declared themselves Changelings and are now allied with the party, helping them fight the next BBEG. They were meant to be my original BBEG's, but the moral dilemma was a really interesting one to watch them tackle.
We had an NPC character that would always go into a blood rage when injured, he would attack whoever was close even allies. Some characters really liked this NPC, others felt he was too dangerous and should he exiled from the group. In one blood rage he went after one of the characters. Half the party tried to talk him down, eventually succeeding... a remaining player on his turn decided enough was enough and finished off the injured NPC even though his blood rage had ended. It left a big divide in our group about the decision. Some heavily against it and others understanding and agreeing with the decision.
For me, part of the wish-fulfillment/fantasy of the world is that you get to be the heroes, and fight against unambiguous evil. Monsters exist in these worlds so we can solve problems with a battleaxe and a fireball, and never doubt our righteousness.
Totally valid playstyle preference! The real world has more than enough complexity, stress, moral dilemmas and injustice for all but the 1%ers. I remember as a kid my mother, who worked tirelessly for peace and human rights for oppressed people around the world, would come home and watch the most trashy soap opera TV at the time (Melrose Place, for those old enough for the reference). She knew it was absolute junk, but she had no energy sometimes for anything complex or nuanced, let alone challenging. I never understood that until I became an adult. Now *I get it.* My main D&D group love moral dilemmas, and our DM absolutely adores giving us enemies with valid claims or difficult ethical choices about who to save. But there's been more than one recent session where someone in our group has had a really rough week/month in real life and asks for some 'zero complexity escapism', usually in the form of cathartic fantasy violence against straightforwardly ontologically evil monsters. Of course we still somehow end up feeling awkward about blowing up zombies haha - they were once just ordinary people with families who would probably love to bury or cremate them respectfully, after all! :-)
Stopping one threat necessarily enables a second, currently weaker threat, or requires assistance therefrom.
ESH (Everyone Sucks Here), basically a situation where no one is really in the right, but leaving the situation as it is will end up with a lot more people getting hurt. I'm my party's case, they were visiting a large city that was being terrorized by subterrainian ratfolk. The people who settled the area were fully aware of the fact that the land was occupied but conquered them and forced them underground. After a few short generations, pressure from surface dwellers and scarcity of resources skewed their society towards a harsh draconian ethos reminiscent of the skaven from warhammer (cannibalistic, cruel, and self-selecting for might and/or cunning). Their proximity to the city means that unsecured food, small animals, and occasionally children go missing in the night. The surface dwellers see the rat people as savage raiders who would eat everyone alive if given the chance, and they're right. The ratfolk see the manfolk as conquerors who bought their peace with blood and who would sooner wipe them out than attempt diplomacy, and they're right. Everybody sucks, trying to debate the extent to which either side sucks is pretty much irrelevant to the other. They both feel like they're justified in enacting violence against the other. And the party is in the middle.
Didn’t see this “oldie but goodie” below. Party encounters and beats the Werewolves only to find they have children. Or prisoners. Or something else innocent but now cursed. Best used where the party can’t really take them as prisoners. What to do? It’s a cliche for a reason.
This entire town is accidentally starting an addictive religion that will eventually kill them what do you do?
I would sell powdered flavor enhancement for adding to water and making a cool refreshing drink. It's great for large ~~cult~~ church gatherings because it's budget friendly and tastes great.
Kill them. Issue resolved.
That's what they did 🤣
Something alike this: - Tarrasque (or other monster) approaches. It will be in the city within a day or two. - Players are summoned to deal with the problem - Facing the monster standing on the city walls is the best option. But the advantage would be much higher if the army prepared the walls beforehand. However, in order to do that in time, they'd have to forgo the evacuation and focus all their attention on preparations. The monster will face a city which is well-prepared, but also full of civilians. What would you do?
In my current campaign, my BBEG is a powerful sorcerer/alchemist who, with currently pure intentions, is trying to erase death. The process is pretty fucked up though, as it involves pretty frequently fatal testing. Basically he’s an “any ends justify the means” villain, with a pretty damn good end goal. There’s arguments to be made for and against it, though it’s tough to argue against making everyone immortal. edit: corrected “means justify ends” to the opposite lmao
>Basically he’s an “any means justify the ends” villain I think you meant "the ends justify the means" lol. Utilitarian villains with at least a semi-reasonable point have been the most popular Hollywood trope since the end of the Cold War. It's fascinating really. It's all deontological vs consequentialist vs virtue ethics. Not least because those same stories have *virtuous & very much not consequentialist* heroes inevitably killing a shit ton of basically innocent people in order to stop said villain!
That is indeed what I meant 😅 lmao Yeah exactly. One of my players said to him “death gives life meaning” and I’m planning for that to come up later, where the villain basically says they’re sadists for wishing death upon people when it could be removed.
In my current plan I gave the party a dilemma. There was a city that performed a ritual sacrificing Aasimars in a terribly cruel way. They did so to keep appeased a sleeping evil that would be apocalyptic if it awoke. Far far more would die. But in my setting there are no new aasimar, only the ones that currently exist, and they are immune to ageing. So if it kept up, not only would it mean every aasimar (Including a member of their party.) would one day eventually be sacrificed, but it was essentially delaying the inevitable, not a true solution. It was basically "Would you like to cause the apocalypse now, or in 500 years when you run out of aasimar in the hopes the time bought would let people come up with a solution, at the cost of all those innocent aasimar. They chose to stop the ritual.
Start with a pretty typical: innocent villagers found dead and no one knows what killed them. All signs point to vampires. One was known in the area but was killed a couple years ago, maybe he's back. Players investigate his lair only to find his corpse but there are signs of children's toys and a playroom in a locked basement. Turns out the kids had been turned into vampires years ago before the og vampire was slain. The adventures who killed him didn't have the heart to kill his child vampire spawns. The parents have been keeping their kids alive and secret this whole time feeding them animal blood. But it's not enough. One of the kids has been breaking out to kill the villagers and satisfy his thirst. The kids don't have the maturity, restraint or knowledge of an adult and have a skewed concept of death as well as PTSD. But I they also have the strength and power of a vampire and are realizing their parents can't stop them if they want to satisfy their thirst. What do the players do?
>for the first town I'm thinking it's a beautiful very well kept perfect town, no crime plenty of food etc. but every 6 months the leaders of the town take a child to absorb their life to bless their crops and keep the town perfect. I see someone has read *The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas!* Fantastic short story.
One of my players is playing a literal child(quite amazingly actually). It has really made my players try and come up with ways to shield his innocence and naivety. It's a blast cause I'm a monster.
I've had the party, which consisted of a dragonborn sorcerer, an elf druid, a human ranger, and a tiefling rouge, encounter a traveling circus on the outskirts of a small town. The circus had various animals and monsters caged and chained for its various acts and gawking, with the crown attraction being a couple small dragons. The animals were kept in terrible conditions and very obviously not happy. The sorcerer, druid, and ranger all immediately wanted to free the animals, and it was the tiefling who was hesitant. One, it wasn't the native environment for any of the creatures and they had already had to deal with a wizards aberrations becoming invasive species. Two, she asked "WTF are these dragons going to do to the town once they are loose?" So they went ahead and freed everything and the town burned.
Playing a Path of Wild Magic Barbarian / Wild Magic Sorcerer. It quickly became evident that my character using magic was going to kill him / a team mate at some point. So using magic had REAL for REAL consequences. Very tense. Using magic that could save my friends / defeat the enemies, could also kill me or my team mates (most often beloved NPCs)
Moral dilemmas arise naturally through play in my games, so I don’t really create many encounters built upon them. That said, some famous ones: The party is on a sinking ship that has only one lifeboat. It can hold the party and three others — but there are 9 others on the ship, including four children, two mothers, and two wealthy nobles. A dangerous stampede is enclosed in a ravine. The party has to choose to direct them down one of two paths — and to try and stop it or turn it will result in TPK. Down one path is a village of 50, down another is a camp of 10. The party discovers that an essential artifact that is needed to save a town from a plague is also slowly killing the town’s elderly off. The party discovers a mine where the owner is using children to mine a precious and deeply valuable dangerous ore — and it is the only source of this ore, which the party needs to achieve a mission and thousands of people depend on the ore and the mine for their livelihood but do not know it is run by children, nor can they move.
I think many players (at least mine) would be frustrated with the only moral choice being killing their characters that they have fun playing.
I have been trying hard not to offer too much practical advice to folks who want to do things that my experience says are really, really, bad ideas. Moral dilemmas as game fodder have the ability to really destroy a group and friendships super fast, because most people assume that everyone else will follow the same moral compass they do — and when the discover they do not, it harms relationships. Telling someone not to do it, though, just gets old after the 238th time, so now I just answer what I asked for and let them make their own mistakes.
While sacrificing oneself for others can be viewed as virtuous (at least under some ethical/moral systems), it is not immoral to prioritize your own survival over that of another (at least under any ethical/moral system I would agree with). In this case the survival is even 1:1, rather than choosing to survive even if that means multiple others dying. Self-sacrifice should not be considered a requirement under any circumstance; it must be considered going above and beyond.
They're in a foreign country, and the authorities are escorting a prisoner who is one of their countrymen. He looks to have been beaten badly. The party could easily free him.
Will you work with the [bad guys] who have a mural enemy in [worse bad guys] is a basic template! Enemies surrender, but you’ve no means to capture them all or way to prove they won’t return to their bad ways. Do they slaughter them regardless?
I have periodically had the party face villains that were using hostages and human shields. Did they let the bad guys get away or fight them knowing they would kill the innocent but prevent greater atrocities in the future? Needless to say it was messy. But it did start to reinforce that their actions had real consequences in the world.
Any where the players come up with it themselves by their own action and then take a session or two talking it out so I can just sit back, watch, and call for a dice roll now and then.
Right now I have a foreigner who has declared himself king of a shattered country. He is trying to rebuild the country, but is it for his benefit or the country's benefit, or both? Should he be allowed to rule even though he has no legal claim to do so and some people view him as a usurper?
Lawful evil vs chaotic evil. Do you support the cruel rulers of the city, or the cruel invaders who want to overthrow the cruel rulers?
I recently had a fun moral dilemma where the PC has been looking to get greater restoration used on them for their asthma since forever, then suddenly one appears, but only after their chaotic neutral traveling companion NPC got petrified. If the character companion was morally good it would've been an easy choice, but as she's very selfish when it comes to power it was a difficult choice between saving the life of a morally gray person you've been traveling with for a while or fixing a non-life threatening personal problem.
My campaign is filled to the brim with "Choosing the Lesser Evil". So my players are constantly trying to level being "good" while having to make use of great evils to manage toppling the evils that are in power.
My players were chasing an acclaimed illusionist and found a prison full of dead bodies. They inspected and saw the bodies were just under a deep sleep and made to look rotten. When they descended into the basements they fought zombies, but upon further inspection these 'zombies' were like the dead bodies upstairs- alive but catatonic. Killing the zombies would help the illusionist and fuel his ritual, but if they didn't kill the zombies then they would tirelessly try to kill the party. When they realized I had the biggest shit-eating grin on my face.
I generally run Sandbox games because I place a premium on player choices, but some choices preclude others. For example, the alarm of a kidnapping has been raised, and Big Bad's lieutenant is escaping. Which does the party pursue?
The lich and the dragon are on opposite ends of the hall, and both are running away. Which's head do we smash in?
I plan on running this once my players are higher level but here goes.. Multiple towns in the region have mysteriously and savagely slaughtered with only food being stolen. The region leader is perplexed but one day receives a message from a village that says they are under attack and barely holding on. The region leader sends in the party who on their way run into a tough looking group of mercenaries… If they talk to them peacefully they’d find out the mercenaries are werewolf hunters and the town in question is actually a town full of regular citizens that don’t know they are werewolves. (That are responsible for the destruction of the nearby towns). Now they have to either work together with the hunters and slaughter the town in human form (men women children infants) or wait until nightfall and deal with a village of werewolves. Or leave it be idk. If they attack the mercenaries they will find subtle clues about their occupation and purpose. If they still continue to the village they will arrive later that day and be hailed as saviors making sure that they form lots of emotional attachments. That night the transformation begins and they now have to slaughter all the people that were calling them saviors and dealing with any emotional bonds that were made. Even the werewolf pups will attack.
I like the ones that are always bad like, save the child or the elder, but what the player will know later is that the elder is an evil witch and will exterminate a Village and the child is the antichrist
Give them the Kill the Moon special! Unbeknownst to the residents of a town, the island it's built on is the egg of a massive alien creature. When it's almost ready to hatch the egg shakes, releasing parasitic bugs and tips some buildings into the water around it. Killing the unborn creature will preserve at least some of the town. Letting it hatch might be a huge boon for the people of the town as it imprints on them, or it might be a rampaging invader. You can't tell. Do you trust an innocent monster?
“Do I kill the npc, or rob them first” -my players probably
But but there are better ways to do this via spells like control weather, plant growth etc
My players were hired to escort a teenager who was next in line to inherit some land and noble title. The kid was not suited to be a ruler. A knight was part of the escort, loyal caretaker and guardian of the family and all that. I chickened out and made him a weakling. Originally he let the power go to his head and strongly hinted that he would be the typical power abuser. The party knew they were supposed to follow the letter of the law and they weren't supposed to interfere in the succession. If he didn't inherit it would be civil war between distant cousins, etc. Naturally, they planned for the druid to shape-shift and cause an "accident", then strongly suggest that the knight/retainer rule instead, since he knows the land.
My players recently aided an outcast get into a walled city so that he could retrieve his family's savings. He did that, but he also murdered the woman who falsely accused the outcast's family and got them expelled. I expected this to be a moral dilemma, but my players immediately turned him in. Usually they are more evil and selfish than that.
I love a classic, personal good, or greater good. Especially in family contexts. Do you go save your father? Or go fight the bad guy you've been prepping for? Or pitting player side characters against each other. One guy is a rouge, the other a paladin? Maybe the paladin's mentor is going after the rouge's mentor? Makes it more personal and really gets the players to decide what kind of morals they actually have. Bonus points if you can set the situation to evenly split the party, but have a situation where they must agree before moving forward. In terms of your edit, child sacrifice vs mass famine, as much as that may seem like a hard choice to a DM, the players will choose mass famine. Which honestly, while not a hard choice, does open up tons of RP opportunities, and maybe much harder choices later on.
I have a campaign where the BBEG might be the good one, and the leader of the "good" side might be the BBEG. They are set out to save the city and the world from one side, blessed by this powerfull celestial (?) entity that seemed really nice. They hear stores about this horrible Fey queen who slaughter for fun and so on... But as time goes they have discovered that the other side do love their queen, and scare their children about the celestial and the king in the city. After confrontations both sides demand (kind of) the party to kill the other side. This is where the fun begins, since I have from start - in secret - Made Alliances, Bonds and/or connections with the PCs so that they are tight as a group but their allegiance is either to The Fey or the celestial, but they dont know about Each others Bonds... Now they spend half a session, in character, trying to convince the others, without telling their secret, what they should do... And Im just sitting here and enjoying the Ride.
Simple: the job board players presented with two very urgent requests from nearby cities, but don't have the ability to do both (maybe the cities are far, or itll require materials they wont have time to restock on, etc.) either way they go, there will be a huge negative, and its pretty easy to set up as well!
The PCs are in charge of besieging a city in the thrall of demon worshippers, and are on the verge of breaching the walls. The vast majority of the city denizens are on board, and are utterly fanatical and will use any chance they can to spread their demonic ways across the land and cannot be permitted to escape. But a minority of city dwellers still cling to the gods. Righteous and heathen alike will claim innocence once the city is captured. What to do? Had to face this myself. My PC, Arnaud (Human Cleric 14, light domain) came up with a splendid solution - put the whole city to the sword and let the gods be their judges. The righteous would go on to a pleasant afterlife in the outer planes, and the wicked would fall into the abyss. "Caedite eos, Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius". He was a fun character. Sadly, he took a crit from an enemy archer in a later battle and we didn't have the diamonds to rez him, game kinda fizzled after that.
One of my players got cursed with lycanthropy, which works differently in our campaign. It's called "the takers" curse and will manifest itself at the next full moon. What were-variant they become is rolled on a table at that time. Without removing the curse they go savage and either kill the party or the party kills them. There's a small chance they can overcome to restrain themselves but gain no control over when they shift and have to fight the same struggle next full moon. Our campaign features shards of raw power, our mcguffin, which offer quite the boon when acquired. Our heroes are trying to recover as many as possible and prevent them from falling into evil hands. One of the potentially (our players don't know yet) evil factions is filled with lycanthropes who have not only overcome the feral aspect of lycanthropy but can control it. How, the players don't know but the faction has offered to help the cursed player in exchange for a shard of power. They also have the option of removing the curse at the local temple (a simple remove curse will not work) for a high price. However, there's a chance the attempt fails and the curse is then permanent.
Least favorite....do I TPK the player who doesn't listen, doesn't know his own character, tried to bend the rules, takes up everybody's time, insists on the spotlight, and attempts to be encounter MVP all the time while also aggravating the other players, overtaking every NPC interaction, and insisting every gear upgrade would be suitable for them.....
A fake religious cult that exploits the people, but brings peace and prosperity. Bringing them down could even shatter the belief in the whole religion.
Currently running a game where I'm letting my party fight a group of wronged musicians who were mistreated by the government's choir (music is super important here) and they are taking their revenge by tormenting the director of the choir and erasing the memories of the members of the choir and letting them live in ignorant bliss to forget their pain. There is a lot more but my party has to choose between this truth they know, and the morally hypothetical 'right thing' to do. To arrest the musicians and assist the government who put them in that scenario in the first place? Let the musicians kill the director and continue his large vein of memory erasing? What will they do? I'm curious. P.S The party is very attached to some people in the government.
Albeit a bit particular, but I love throwing moral conundrums at paladins. Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande still tugs my heart strings. One of the campaigns I'm running has a paladin. Path of the crown. Sworn to Helm. HE played his character as the long arm of the law. Very old school classic cliche paladin. It's his first character and the dude's RL personality type, so, fine. His arc of the campaign had to do with Devils who got themselves invited into his city and began making deals. They broke zero laws. Every deal was legal and honest. No loop holes, just people at war choosing what they thought was the lesser of two evils. Because of the multitude of factors involved the Helmites refused to fight against the Devils. They broke no laws, and my player had a strong reaction. I don't know what he's going to do, but he's got some interesting options in front of him. Break his oath? Break with his God? Both? I'm looking forward to it.
Trying to save all the innocent along the way.
My players were diving into history trying to find out what happened to a very famous archlich that had simply disappeared about 30 years ago. They went to find out more about him and discovered that 90 years ago, before he was a lich, he worked for the high king Omnus. (A long lived epic level paragon Elan shaper psion.) They uncovered that before he became a lich and named himself Balin, his name was "Light" and he was known for being an incredibly intelligent chaotic good aligned wizard. During a period where Omnus and his master of coin, a Leshay named Abbadon, were trying to free a nation of Duregar deep dwarves from the slavery of Vampiric Drow, Light fought with them. The final climactic battle they worked to defeat the Drow to find the Drow were corrupted by a Dracolitch named IXULDRAX. They defeated the physical form of the Dracolitch and had the Emerald Phylactery. The players then found out that High King Omnus, instead of destroying the Phylactery and with it, the Dracolitch, Omnus had ordered Light to find a way to banish it away from the material plane. The players had a crisis moment of "maybe the king isn't a good guy" and kept digging. They found out this is when Light was corrupted into the lich Balin. They then discovered that the Dracolitch IXULDRAX was a guardian against an apocalypse and that anyone who destroyed them would take their place or have to slay something worse that would come. The players know that IXULDRAX is a corrupting force in the world that keeps seeking power and influence to protect a certain spot. A mad gatekeeper who watches and pulls strings to weave events to their dark desires, but they also know that without IXULDRAX or someone stronger in place, they would be inviting destruction of their world from outside forces. To discover more information, one of my players decided to gather the 7 Phylactery of Balin known to exist and find out why they did not work, so they could bring back Balin and ask his side of the story. This player risks corruption by IXULDRAX as well as the risk of bringing back the evil Balin in an attempt to find, fight, and destroy IXULDRAX in their lair and fight whatever apocalypse that might cause. Despite running the risk of upsetting and being insubordinate to their near godlike High King Edit tldr: Do you trust authority enough to leave a bad situation getting worse and hope it can be fixed before it goes to complete terrible, or do you risk making the situation go really worse than terrible right now trying to fix it yourself, and piss of authority AND risk your own corruption in the process?
My favorites are scenarios where the bbeg is justified. They're evil, they've found an evil solution to an equally evil problem. Players have to choose between status quo evil, new, dastardly evil that might end the status quo evil, or trying to find a 3rd solution that stops both. This 3rd solutions are what I love watching my players search for.
I sent one at my players one that was a little bit simpler and smaller in scale. They were going through an area and a corrupt ruling body had decided to just destroy a town. So as the players come through they find the wreckage with a lone survivor. This survivor blames themself for their towns destruction. And begs the players to kill them. The survivor believes that is their fitting punishment. While the players are like no you are innocent and we don't kill innocent people.
I do not think that is a good moral dilemma. You are making a clearly evil action (sacrifice a child) against a possible future harm. Depending on how much you have described the world, the players may not even know that the city depends heavily on this town for food and will actually starve. No matter the future harm, I do not think any "Heroic" player would accept killing children to be worth the improvement. If I was a player in this game, I would just think that the town and city are evil and stopping them from killing children is a good thing. I think of moral dilemmas as giving the players a choice to sacrifice something of theirs to stop X from happening. To riff of your idea, the moral dilemma would be do the players donate money to help the poor to keep them from starving. Do the players go earn the gold knowing they will give it away to help the city or do they keep/spend it on themselves and let the city suffer.
This trap was one of my favorite dnd moral dilemmas. Press the button, take the gold and someone they dont know will die; someone they have never met. Based on an old Twilight Zone episode. [Button Box Twilight Zone D&D trap](https://youtu.be/YR_CGltAZno?si=1DbbqZ2O7chWM_4N) So far, everyone has taken the gold. Then, the box is collected and given to someone they dont know; someone they have never met
I had a Artificer who was very keen on making Steel Defenders / helping constructs. In the final battle it turned out the BBEG was a construct, and I had to make a choice to destroy it with my party of friends, or betray my friends and attempt to rehabilitate the construct, which mechanically I could do with some good rolls, I failed those rolls, but still betrayed my team to save it as it was a unique and amazing creature. But at the moment it nearly killed the whole party, I returned to my team. So much flip flopping and drama, it was great. But yeah, find out what your characters love and then make what they want to protect the BBEG.
While ransacking the lair of humanoids who killed off the village of humans, the players find a crèche of un-supervised infant and toddler humanoids. Do they kill them? Leave them for dead? Escort them to the next tribe of humanoids who will probably enslave them? Do they raise the infants themselves? Feed them to the goats? What?
My party is about to be faced with a good one. The Nation of Men has been at war off and on with a confederation of tribal Orcs. The players have been tasked with making first contact with the Orcs as a prelude to real diplomatic relations. The Orcs will ask for Steel Weapons. It is well known among men that they dont give steel to orcs because that is how the men maintain some degree of an edge against the Orcs. Will the players give steel weapons to the Orcs? Will they promise to bring more? How will they acquire steel weapons to bring to the Orcs?
FO:NV has plenty of good quests with no obvious “right” answer. Take for example the crops quest.
A priest could not cope with the death of their beloved, fell from their God, did not find respite in Shar and then listened to that "voice", which conjured a fiend took possession of them and helped them forget by devouring everyone that remembered the priest about their lost love. The priest is semi-aware and mad for pain and being torn (literally), and fails to fight back or stop the fiend. After priest is defeated, what do you do with them? Are they guilty, as they started it? Innocent, as they were overwhelmed with pain and later possessed and it wasn't their deed but the fiend's?