Ello all! I'm DMing for a morally questionable group of characters and got the idea to throw them a bit of a curve ball. They've been placed in the middle of an undead uprising and I've have figured out most of the details for what I'm planning. What I'm having trouble with though, is coming up with some interesting moral quandaries for them to interact with while their in the city. So far I have the following:
1. Encountering a group of survivors who are trapped on a large statue and surrounded by various undead. The group has the choice to try and help or sneak past.
2. Stumbling across a group of misinformed individuals in the middle of a human sacrifice who believe that the only way to end the undead rising is with sacrifices to Urgathoa.
And,
3. Running into a group of looters the middle of robbing a shop. The shop keep has tried to stop them but instead is now being beat up and crying out loudly. The pc's are aware that this is likely to draw undead to their location soon if something isn't done.
Ideally I'd like to come up with 3 more and I am more than open to suggestions regarding the 3 listed up above.
First, while I like moral choices in games, bombarding several of them rapid fire in a session gets tiring for the players (10x moreso if the players don't all agree). I'd slow down a bit, hit them with some straight up battles and a small number of moral challenges. You probably have enough.
But if you want more, here's a few additional ideas.
They find ind the source of the uprising and it's an innocent child having a nightmare from which he cannot awaken. They cannot find any way to easily cure him or wake him, but killing him will certainly end the uprising. Alternatively, they can leave him to his nightmare and go looking for the necromancer/demon/random bad guy that caused this magical nightmare, but the uprising might continue for days while the PCs investigate.
They find some undead who have retained part of their former selves - they're still trying to kill people and eat brains and such, but they beg the PCs to lift the curse on them and insist that if they die in their current state their souls are condemned to eternal torment, but if they can be redeemed (uncursed) before the PCs kill them, they can have peace in their afterlife.
Have the bad guy who caused the uprising send a messenger and offer lots of gold or magic items or other valuable stuff if they would just go far, far away and leave the city to its fate.
These are going to be spread out a bit between combat and travel since the group has to make approximately a days/two days worth of travel to get the major plot points. I'm probably going to use 4 but I like brainstorming encase something better pops up or would prove better for the story.
I feel like I could do something with the second option and maybe the first with some modification. Ghouls are pretty prevalent throughout the city and a lot of people have died to what's happening meaning new ones could have risen up already.
I'm trying to avoid big plot encounters though. I've got my Big Bad figured out, the plot, and the PC's part in quelling this so I'm really looking for small conflicts that would be likely to happen in a city gone mad.