In a home game I GM, I'll be running my PCs through part 3 of The Quest for Perfection. It's a PFS module, if you don't want mild spoilers stop reading.
So, does anyone have any suggestions for good moral dilemmas to confront my PCs with over the preparation period? Or any other encounters that could help develop my PCs' ability to roleplay and develop a character? The party is generally Neutral Good.
Cheers.
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My only advice here is not a suggestion of situations, but rather ask your players if they're interested in soemthing like this. Not everyone find being given moral dilemmas a fun situaiton. Especially not when the examples start to get much worse than "Do you let the old people fight."
I figure the most likely response from the players is "The village needs your wisdom, tend to those inside, blah blah blah, diplomacy check." No intention to force a no-win scenario on them. I'd rather not ruin the surprise of how the mod plays out by asking the PCs; I figure that if they really don't like the first one or two, I'll just drop the rest.
Also note that doesn't just have to be moral dilemmas, just anything else that could come up and preferably would help my PCs develop their roleplaying skills. One of my current ideas is someone remembering a magic item they had in the attic, unlockable by some riddles they haven't figured out, which could aid in the defense.
Well, if that's the case you could also make sick and injured people crop up in the battle. Make them lame, or blinded, lost a limb. So forth. The PCs can then decide how they want to deal with it. Do they have the power to heal them up? Do they care enough to? Do they journey to get a cleric to heal these people?
The only healing they have is a Wand of Infernal Healing, and the nearest decent-sized town (with a cleric) is quite a way away. For the wounded after town, I imagine the town will be making a pilgrimage off away.
Though healing by wand of infernal healing does raise its own moral questions, particularly if they don't tell the injured before using it.
Maybe a village elder remembers an old statue that will allow him to barter his soul with a demon / devil for a favor -- in this case 'saving' their village. His only child has previously been killed by the bandits, and between the need for vengeance and the desire to protect his village, he's desperate enough to try anything.
It's not a no-win scenario, but you would have a chance for some decent roleplay with the elder, and what they do about the statue/shrine.
Another fairly classic one is having a villager sneak away one night to barter for his (and his family's) life with the bandits. He promises to help the bandits, if only they will spare his family's lives. Either the party or the villagers might catch wind of this (or might not, in which case it will complicate the village defense), and then need to determine the traitor's fate.
Cool idea with the old statue, particularly if they end up RPing with the devil/demon.
The villagers have caught him and the village council asks for the PC's thoughts on his punishment? Only advice, the council is still meant to handle this.
We just had a Nice moral dilemma in my group. We found some loot and freed a wizard of unknown power from a magic mirror. Some of the loot belonged to her. Some group members wanted to keep her around without equipment because they thougth her knowledge of the place we are exploring usefull. Some wanted to let go with out her stuff and some wanted to give her what was hers and ask her for help and let her decide for her self.
There was no doubt that her stuff belonged to her and no one trusted her very far.
This was a Nice dilemma for me and my, unsympathic good guy character.
The villagers have caught him and the village council asks for the PC's thoughts on his punishment? Only advice, the council is still meant to handle this.
Or the council doesn't ask for advice, and sentences him to death.
Or the villagers get wind of it as he's being brought in and form a lynch mob.
Or the council has leniency and some villagers decide to take matters into their own hands.
Or he's scared to talk, and the council decides to "encourage" him to divulge more info about the bandits.
Your PCs do not have to sit in the judgment seat to make decisions about what to do in these scenarios. Inaction is as much of a choice as action. Just make sure if you're running the NPCs, that you have good "reasons" for what you're doing. Don't just roll over and change what you were going to do immediately when the PCs show up. ;-)
Love the ideas for the different ways it comes forward, thanks.
Deeeeeffffiinnnately going to make sure there are reasons.
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Given that this scenario is basically seven samurai/magnificent seven you could do worse than borrowing from those movies
Hint that there is a treasure the locals have
Give the PCs a choice of eating well or giving food to the villagers. If they eat poorly, give them a MINOR penalty.
Make it clear that the villagers are NOT completely morally pure
Introduce potential love interests, ones with no desire to leave the village
Have some kids adopt a PC and then need saving
Etc
Given that this scenario is basically seven samurai/magnificent seven you could do worse than borrowing from those movies
The same thought had occurred to me.
And me, though I confess I also thought 'Three Amigos'
Thus far I've hand-waved rations, doesn't seem terribly fair to have them suddenly run low, particularly when they're only going to be in the village for another week or so.
The session is a Pathfinder Society session so there's no real plan for them to put down roots- next session, they're off in Absalom doing something completely different. That said, I was thinking of starting up an AP, isn't there one set in Tien? Would some rural village be a decent base for it/point of return or is it strictly locked elsewhere?
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The bandits are being forced to raid; their families will be killed if they don't bring back plenty of goods/gold. This can be revealed half way through the raid by a bandit who gets weak knees when he's about to die.
Just remember not to make a orc kindergarden!
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Nit sure I understand. Are you running a sanctioned society game? Or just grabbing a society
published scenario the same way anyone could.grab an old Living Greyhawk scenario, or an Eberron setting adventure and convert it to Forgotton Realms Setting.
Sanctioned PFS are not supposed to have extra stuff through in just because you want to.
If not, I loved some of what I read above and hope you like my addition below for NON-PFS sanctioned play.
In Seven Samurai, they decide not to defend a lone household outside of the main village. You can make a dilemma about the resident refusing to abandon his line home. Do the PCs: knock him out and drag him away the night before, or leave.him to die, or buy him some traps, or a potion of invisible to escape?
One adventure I read had the adventures come across a wagon with 5K go payment for mercenaries to protect the city. We had a choice, keep the money ourself or get it to the mer s to add defense value to the city. We were all at least level 6.I convinced them that splitting it up between the five.of us for only 1k each wad nit.going to buy us anything doe ial at that level, do we hot the.money to the.mercs and had extra help during the siege. Even just one appropriate level wRrior per PC(who could control one each quickly after their regular turn) might make a significant turn in events. To use this, you have to figure out the sweet spot between the extra action economy(most valuable currency of the game) or gold, what looks appealing vs actual pur hadi.g power. A group of levelPCs might think 5k hp is too much to turn down, but would they turn down the help if it was only 500(100 each after slit)?
The same adventure had an issue about it's healers. Should they all stay at a heavily defended church where wounded were brought, or distrbuted about the city far apart from each other with. little to protect them. The argument is they can do more good running down the line of defending soldiers with a wand of CLW, but would be obvious and weak targets. Versus soldiers dieing before they can get help or taking two soldiers out of combat to save one life. A wounded soldier cannot make it to the church by themself, it needs a friend to carry them.
The Romulans of Star Trek once sho ked the Federation and Klingons when they requestex to join them against a common enemy. Have a rival village send a dozen warriors who want to stand together now rather than be the next target. Rival village warriors might be feared as possible allies of the bandits. Insist their help requires entry past the defense walls. This makes it a tough choice. Do not let the rival village defend outside the walls, that would be too easy and no moral dilemma at all. They can say they require entry to the village for fear of being run down by calvary or shot down by arrows without a wall to take cover behind.
When the show Jericho had a small town intimidate away mercs/bandits from raking their supplies, the bandits raided a nearby big town. The town that was once an ally now became an enemy after not getting warned(among other stuff).
I would recommend you don't make moral dilemmas like this. If they become even more complex and controversial, the players will argue with each other about what to do. Things get even worse when they bring up alignment, and argue what kind of moral choice is good/bad lawful/chaotic.
I wouldn't risk it man, cause if you keep going down this route it can get ugly.
While moral dilemmas can be interesting, if they're a new-ish group then it might be worth taking the chance to just build up their characters a bit first.
If the group has a cleric, then the locals asking them to lead a prayer session might make them realise that the character is about more than just swinging a mace and casting cure light wounds. You could work this aspect in any number of ways, and get each character to roleplay it out - the bard gets asked to sing or tell tales to raise morale, the fighter is drafted into training up the militia and so on. Not everything is about stats and dice rolls, some of it is just losing yourself in the character and improvising a bit.
The most sage advice I can ever give a fellow GM/DM is "Know Thy Table", which loosely translated means if you know your players will like the moral subplots, then by all means make like Captain Kirk and fire away.
Sanctioned PFS still gives you a little leeway but you have less time to get to know your table. I had to run 7 players through and though it was still a fun time, I would've put more townsfolk in danger, like a kid running to his injured dad, and seeing what the players will do. Stuff like that can be fun.
This scenario is an excellent one because it's got alot of potential for a continuing storyline. You can stick around a be a member of the town afterwards. Maybe the leader of the
And the biggest hook of all for an AP out of this:
@Raymond- grabbing a society published scenario and slipping it on like a pair of starchy but good-looking bloomers. Excellent thought about the dude on the outskirts of town, I like it; rest are a little large-scale for this scenario, but I do appreciate the ideas, I might use later.
@Domestic- game went well, most of the moral dilemmas ended up coming from the players themselves ("He's not talking. Feed him to the tiger!" "No!"), but they enjoyed the few I put up. Added some extra difficulty into the resource-management aspect, just enough I think, without it would have been too easy and with too much it would have been tear-drawingly horrible.
@Corvino- For newbies who might have difficulty in coming up with a character concept to RP, I like the idea of giving them these moral dilemmas and then from their actions letting them work out who their character is and what he believes in. Best example was asking them to each give some inspiring words on the eve of battle. Wonderful RP, they each did it well. I don't think I provided enough scope for them to do the kind of non-mechanical free RP you're suggesting (sing, tell tales), but they were mostly interested in surviving so leave it for another day.
@jwes55- Not sanctioned luckily enough, so able to add much more flexibility. Re-built the boss, added a Divine Vessel effect to the Macguffin, added some encounters and moral issues to the resource-management game so it was a bit more interesting/challenging. I like your ideas for ongoing hooks; current plan is just to head to Sandpoint and start up RotR but I'll find out if the PCs are really loving Tien and ask if they want to stay.
The bandits are being forced to raid; their families will be killed if they don't bring back plenty of goods/gold. This can be revealed half way through the raid by a bandit who gets weak knees when he's about to die.
I would stay away from this. I think clear "bad guys" are part of pathfinder/DnD and if you start this you will sooner or later end up at the "good goblin tribe" or the "orc kindergarden" - not the best route... believe me
I know the game session is over, but here are a few more ideas:
I ran a game where a evil wizard with a McGruffian magic item mentally controlled a werewolf. The werewolf, a simple peasant woman who was bite by a werewolf months earlier, keep her good nature while in human form, but was controlled by the wizard to kidnap human and gnoll children of the surrounding villages and tribes. Eventually, the party faced the wizard, and defeated him, but the werewolf was still alive and captured (she didn't fight once the wizard was slain. A man of a very dark nature (registers as evil when detection spells are cast) shows up and offers to take the woman off their hands. He promises to teach her to control her other side, and to keep the beast at bay. He is also a werewolf- and freely admits it- and is not at all interested in his pack's existence brought to light.
So...do the heroes kill the woman, who is, perhaps, the only real victim in the whole mess? Or do they let her go with the definitely evil, self-serving werewolf who is very much interested in teaching the woman not to be a blood crazed monster?
Some posted about how, in their game, they found mortally wounded dragon, her hatchling, and her hoard. They scouped up the gold without hesitation, but faltered when it came to the dragon and her child. Should they killed them both? Kill the mother, and sell the hatchling, which may amount to slavery on top of matricide? If they leave her alive, she will surely come after her child, and her hoard...won't she?
No. No one asked what hurt the dragon in the first place.
And what of the hoard? If word gets out that there that the heroes are carting around that much gold, all kinds of people get interested. Every church, organization, guild (legal or not), government official and office, revolutionary, noble, king and nation, will know exactly the best way to spend that gold. They heroes will just have to trust them...
There is a black dragon in the hills. He has been collecting 'tithes' from the local town and villages for generations. Not too much; he apparently like a continuous flow of coin- but enough that is makes life difficult. But, before you kill the dragon, you get word of the necromancer on the other side of the hills, who doesn't want his army to tangle with the dragon so he has avoided those lands.
This can also work at any level, changing out the monsters as appropriate. The monster in the hills is a ogre, and she beats back the orc tribe. The orc tribe stands between the ogre and a troll family. Next to the troll family is a tribe of hill giants, who avoid the trolls because they take too long to beat up, but should that speed bump disappear, they will move in.
A paladin is the leader of a town, and she is in a spot of trouble. The town is thick with vampires, and worst, they make up the town's elite fighting force. She couldn't kill them, so she convinced them that they need to protect their easy food source, and make sure the town has everything it needs, out of pure self interest. In exchange, she won't hunt them down, and actually helps them, so long as they keep their existence a secret. For this, she has fallen, losing her paladin powers. But now a group of dedicated vampire hunters have entered the town, hunting for some vampires...
This works best with a setting with distant gods, but you can make it work in other places
The paladin is not a nice guy. He kills what he sees as evil without bothering to make sure, he butchers those some would call innocent, and purges even impure thought with fire. But he hasn't fallen; he still has all of his paladin powers. Could it be that he is actually doing the right thing?
You need help taking on the castle, but no human/elf/dwarf/halfling/whatever army is going to help you. Those hobgoblins offer their aid, and they a great military asset.
Hope some one finds those useful and fun. I know the werewolf one was awesome; one of the heroes had been bit during the brawl, but didn't know if he made the save. He was all for keeping the girl alive, but several people stood on opposite sides of the fence.
Another good RP opportunity is schisms in the people you're trying to help - think Hatfields and McCoys. You have to convince them to work together for the good of all, or figure out how to keep them apart and still defend adequately.