One of the things I’ve learned since I began DMing Dragon Age is just how good placing moral conundrums in front of your players is. The Dragon Age adventure philosophy, by design, encourages this approach to story-telling, and I’ve found that it really makes players become more involved in the story you are all trying to tell.
So as I’ve been trying to develop adventures and stories in this fashion, I’ve thought of ways to introduce these concepts at the table. It requires you to put on a storyteller cap, rather than an “encounter designer” one, but it’s a pretty rewarding thing to see players scratching their heads trying to figure out what the right course of action is in certain situations, or what the moral thing to do would be.
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One of the ways to approach this is to introduce your players to NPC’s early on in the adventure, and then place those npc’s in danger. That way, a relationship is built from the get-go, and the choices involving those npc’s are all the more harder. I’ll give an example. In the Amber Rage adventure for Dragon Age, the village the party is in is invaded by these savages infected with a poison that makes them rage. One of the scenarios has the players faced with a decision involving children. Two kids are being attacked by the ragers, one is running away, chased and about to get caught, the other is under a wagon fighting off some ragers. Both kids are pretty screwed either way, and the party is faced with the decision of which kid to save. Now, as written there really is no real connection between the kids to the party, and the drive to save them is really just the fact that they are children. But by introducing them early on in the adventure, the party had an emotional attachment to the kids. At my table, these weren’t just kid A and kid B, but rather they were the kids whom the party met in the festival celebrating the construction of a fort nearby. The kids were helping in booths, and interacted with the characters a bit during the celebrations. The choice of which kid to save suddenly became harder and had more meaning just by adding this little touch.
Another way to do this is to tap into your players’ own humanity. Yep, not the characters, but the players. Now some might say that doing it like that is a bit too metagamy, but as a DM, you need to know where and how to hit your players emotional notes so that they have impact at the table. I have a player who is all about honor and respect, so I set up a situation for him that I knew he’d fall right into-as a player. The party was investigating a tomb, they opened a sarcophagus, and a rogue stole some weapons that were buried with the body. The other player would have none of it. I sat back and watched the roleplay become a real discussion on honor and morals.
Don’t be afraid to steal. This is old DMing advice, but worth noting time and time again. Take existing stuff, and reflavor it. Spock said it best in Wrath of Khan: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. This is an excellent thing to dive into in your games. Used with moderation and skill, it can be reused a few times without your players crying foul. You can look at it at the micro level: the cure for the Amber Rage disease is actually the food of a group of fairy-like creatures that depend on it. You take it to save the town, you kill these few fairies. Or, look at it at the macro level, spanning nations or worlds: The Nation of Kalemar depends on the substance X from the small island country of Dirling–all the substance, which the island nation needs. If Kalemar goes, so goes the world they say. Kalemar must be saved. Now what? There are plenty of opportunities for morality-based storylines using Spock’s question.
Tough choices, tough decisions make for a better roleplay experience, as long as your players are willing to go along with it. Sometimes people want to roll dice and kill orcs, and to hell with morality choices. That’s fun too. Don’t force anything into your game that your players aren’t interested in either, as it may just backfire on you.
Some situations that may place PC’s in tough spots:
- The party stumbles upon the remains of a bandit attack, a woman and her children have been assaulted, their wagon set ablaze. The bandits are riding off in the distance with a scroll she carried containing a powerful ritual. There are only seconds left to decide, stay and save their lives, as they are badly hurt, or go after the bandits with the ritual that can unleash a tremendous amount of mad mojo in the area. What do they do?
- The source of water for a country is revealed to be a genasi kept in an elemental state as a punishment handed down many centuries ago. He was sentenced by the ruling magocracy to become a water elemental through a painful ritual, and left forgotten he’s now the main source of water. He was recently discovered, and communicating through the party’s wizard it is now revealed that he is in pain and begging to be destroyed. What happens?
- A bandit camp is made up of mostly mind controlled teenagers. The spell can be broken, but these guys are fighting to the death. Their parents are the adults in town that asked the party to both find their kids, and stop the bandits!
I would love to read how you guys introduce these concepts in your game, as I find it to be a challenging exercise to do so.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Anthony Laffan
March 17, 2011
What do you do if the party just splits up and tries for both?
I mean, why can’t 2 people go save the kid running away, and the other 2 help the kid under the wagon? Granted, that’d make doing both harder, but it is possible.
You also want to remember one of Angry GM’s rules when introducing people early to set up emotional resonance. Never aim at something you’re not willing to destroy. Try not to get attached to these NPCs while making the PCs attached, it may make things harder for them.
Wolfie
March 17, 2011
I did something similar to your first bullet point which involved two sets of baddies going in opposite directions – one set with a cart full of valuable supplies, the other chasing two helpless NPCs. Players had a split second to decide which direction to pursue and no time for their characters to discuss, so I had everyone write down their choice of action secretly on a piece of paper. Simple but fairly effective (and playing into some of the character backstories).
It’s always fun to get your players going in a situation and watch them role-play for a bit, without having to do anything. That’s when you know you’ve hit the mark with your story in a campaign.
newbiedm
March 17, 2011
@anthony: in my case, the party did attempt that, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out. There were just too many ragers for the two different groups to tackle alone. But yes, the choice was made to go after both.
@wolfie: i like secret notes at the table, although many people see it as a negative. Good idea.
Daniel M. Perez
March 17, 2011
In Kobold Quarterly #14, Jeff Tidball has an excellent article on moral dilemmas in Dragon Age. Anyone interested in exploring this more should check that out.
Also, joinks.
wrathofzombie
March 17, 2011
Very awesome post Newbie.
It is very challenging to put in moral choices.
In my Firefly game (using AGE) I had a miner hire the party to find his daughter who ran off to another planet. They were being paid top dollar for this as well. When the group finally found her an argument ensued and it was discovered that the father not only whore’d his daughter out, but had raped her.
Now some of my players who were portraying more of the money is everything kinda just sat there uncomfortable 🙂 I knew that they were being true to their character but the player wanted to smash the fathers face in.
My girlfriend, who is playing an honest Companion, pulled out her pistol and shot the father in the leg and told the girl to get away. It was a great moment!
A question for you- Now that you’ve played more DA are you and your players still really enjoying the system?
I know I am (I’ll have a post on that tomorrow).
Geoff
March 17, 2011
My players often run into this issue when faced with environmental matters. I am running a 3.5 campaign, and one of my PCs is a cleric of Ehlonna, the nature goddess. I drafted up an alternate paladin’s code for her, which forbids the unnecessary destruction of natural life (i.e. only in self defense, defense of her pack [the PCs] or to get food or clothes).
Well, I’ve milked the restrictive nature of the code a couple times. Once, the group’s ranger was being strangled by an assassin vine. Another PC used a defoliator potion on the vine. It dealt massive damage to the plant, but also killed all the plants around it. Empassioned PC interaction/debate ensued.
Last week, the PCs were exploring an ancient elven museum which featured dinosaurs trapped in stasis. The group was torn about whether to release the dinosaurs from their imprisonment, because while an unnatural display, they were safe. The area around the ruined museum was a desert wasteland which would likely kill the dinos… albeit naturally.
newbiedm
March 17, 2011
@wrath: Enjoying it? Dude, I don’t think they’d go back to D&D anytime soon. Yes, they’re enjoying it. 🙂
Sentack
March 17, 2011
The problem with the concept of ‘tough choices’ is that I notice that 50% of the time, a player comes up with a clever idea that doesn’t make it a tough choice at all. 40% of the time, they go one route and decide the after effects are manageable anyways (And a lot of times, they are sadly right or they think it’s part of the greater plot, so they don’t feel like it was a choice at all), and finally 10% of the time, you actually have a good tough choice.
Let’s look at the 3 examples and how I, as a player, would review them.
Situation 1: Save the woman, get the bandits later. PC’s always expect that whatever the bandits unleash, they’ll deal with. They are the heros after all. This is part of the plot.
Situation 2: This one actually has some real tough choices, if the DM enforces “The source of water has lead to a vast increase in population in the area. Lose the water, bad things will happen.” concept. The problem is, you might unleash a bad president on how water elementals work and then things go crazy.
Situation 3: Do non-lethal damage to the teenagers and tie them up after every fight. Kill the Mind Controller afterwords. Done. Part of the plot.
In general, sometimes the problem isn’t coming up with a moral conundrums. It’s getting your characters to CARE about it that I find hard.
Then you have the problem about pitting party members against each other. My advice, Don’t do it! Why? Because the only thing it’s good for is to put the brakes on your game real fast. It can lead to debates that just slow things down and get the party nowhere. Good RP you say? I call it senseless arguing for 2-3 hours that don’t make the rest of the night much fun for the rest of the players. I don’t even see it as very good character development or growth. Often it’s just lost time. I try to avoid it as much as possible as a DM and a player because honestly, I’ve never found it fun.
newbiedm
March 17, 2011
@sentack: it certainly requires some player buy in to run games like this. They should expect it to come up, rather than be sprung on them out of the blue. It isn’t for everyone, there are players like I wrote, that would rather not deal with any of it and would prefer to kill orcs and take their stuff. That’s fine. I’ll tell you this though, I’m finding the adventures written with this type of plots built in, to be more entertaining to us than the standard dungeon delve hack and slash fare. But your mileage may vary.
The ID DM
March 17, 2011
Great article, and I agree completely after beating (finally!) Dragon Age Origins on the PC. The game does a wonderful job of forcing you to make decisions where the outcome – regardless of your choice – is not ideal. I actually think they take this idea a bit too far at times, because I felt like I wasn’t able to “control” things as well as I might have liked. Perhaps it’s my own preference, but too many “you’re screwed either way” decisions can turn off the party. I think that is something else to keep in mind when DMing, but your suggestions are terrific.
In my game, I introduced the group to a Dragonborn who was suspected to be a pirate. The party was charged with another NPC to find the pirate’s hideout. Several sessions later, the party was on a ship and surrounded by a huge number of orcs. The orcs captured the party, but did not kill them right away. The orcs were looking for help. During a break in the parlay, the Dragonborn showed up in the orc camp telling the PCs to come with him. My group spent the next HOUR debating what they should do – stay with the orcs and see how that turns out, or go with the suspected pirate. Not a life-or-death moral decision, but it drove a wedge between some of the party members. It was fun to watch play out. 🙂
mbeacom
March 17, 2011
This is great stuff and I try to include it in my 4E campaign as much as possible.
A recent example was when the group was in the woods. They heard wolves howling, like they were converging on prey. Their initial thought was that THEY were the pray. They steeled themselves for the encounter. But then, they heard the wolves converge in the forest not far away. Through a simple skill challenge, they were able to determine the wolves WERE hunting something. But what?
Then, through the tracks that they found and the sounds they heard, they realized it was some large but intelligent animal. Was the animal leading the wolves away from the party to save them? Did it need saving? Just as they decided they should perhaps help this animal, they heard the cries of another animal in the opposite direction. It was clear from the state of the hunt that they simply did not have time to help both. They could either help the hunted animal, or the wounded animal, but not both. It ended up being a mama bear and its cub (she was trying to lead the wolves away from her wounded cub). The party chose to help the mama bear because they didn’t know it was a cub that was making the crying noise. So the cub died. But the mama bear was saved and eventually helped them later in the adventure. Had they saved the cub, the mama would have died, but the cub would have played some part in the game later down the road.
These types of decisions play an important role in any good RPG IMO. I would also add that the use of skill challenges to help play them out is very beneficial and makes them have more “weight” than purely RP exercises.
Sentack
March 17, 2011
I might be surrounded by a large group of very cynical players then because I find among the groups I play with, nobody ever takes an NPC very serously, and this includes the game where the focus is roleplay and not so much combat. Emotional attachment rates seem to be weak at best and buy in can be non-existent. In my game alone, NPC’s get mocked constantly and often times are criticized for any reason good or bad. So a lot of times, I find that trying to make a memorable NPC hard. I’m running Scales of War, and the most memorable NPC is Kalad the Paladin and that’s only because they call him “Kool-Aid-Man” because his portrait in the module looks like he’s bursting through a wall. Now they can never take him seriously even though he’s a reoccurring character whom has done nothing to earn their mockery. If I were to kill the character off, I most likely would get more laughs then tears in response.
But again, your mileage may vary, true enough.
TheSheDM
March 17, 2011
I remember running one on my homebrew group that involved a city being captured by an evil dragon and his army of undead. The players had to choose between helping a large number of citizens escape the city – and most assuredly let the enemy gain control of the planar portal (the reason for which the city had been invaded) – or stay and defend the portal while the enemy razed the rest of the city and caused more casualties in retaliation. Only one character wanted to ensure the safety of the citizens, and he eventually persuaded the rest of the party to join him. They lost the city but the citizens were escorted safely away from the war zone.
I tried to do a morality test on my Dark Sun group, but it turned out to be a no-brainer to them – they’re a surprisingly ruthless bunch! 😀
DMLink1329
March 18, 2011
I have a question regarding this subject. To contextualize:
My party has never been the selfless-agonizingly-sacrificing type. For one, every player took unaligned without debating, even the cleric. Only the most recent member has any sort of moral code (he was procured from a military organization), though his general solution is to start shouting until his intimidate checks get the information (except when the much smaller Tiefling brandishes the fungus bottle the entire party is afraid of).
This combination has developed into a PC-HiveMind set on its own self-preservation and advancement, without much concern for the rest of the world. They have few motivations to obey conventions that aren’t enforced at swordpoint. In fact, their current major quest is to recover an artifact, and they were already indiscriminately considering murder before they learned about the cult keeping it.
To use one of your examples, when faced with the conundrum of what to do about the Amber Rage plague, they would immediately take the source, and then loot the fairy lands. If they took their time with this and the entire town died or they found something else to do, they would return, loots the smoldering ruins, and the Tiefling would find the remains of an infected villager and very carefully remove a finger, which he would then place in his fungus bottle, making it ever more dangerous. They would later sell the cure, and possibly the plague, to anyone who could supply them with a large sum of money/castle/ubermagic. Or, they would use it on every enemy they felt they could bargain with.
So, to ask the question the last few paragraphs have contexted:
What angle can be taken to present an effective moral choice to a party of sociopaths?
tmoney
March 18, 2011
It seems to me the answer to sociopath players, or ones with who expect to be able to “deal” with whatever bad things come from one choice or another is to make sure that the consequences are real, and have a lasting impact.
Allowing the baddies to get away with “big bad voodoo” scroll doesn’t just mean that a new enemy appears. Whole cities can be wiped out, supplies and resources can be destroyed. Not only that, but new enemies aren’t necessarily enemies that can be defeated. A PC death or two can go a long way towards making your players take the consequences of their choices seriously, especially if big bad also happened to kill all the local clerics that knew “raise dead”.
Same with the PCs on a murderous streak. A trail of dead bodies following a group of 5 or 6 adventurers in every city is going to get noticed. Eventually they won’t be allowed in, they might even have bounties on their heads. Your PCs might be a bit more subtle about their actions if suddenly, they can’t enter any cities and have to constantly camp in the woods, with the remnants of the Orc tribe they slaughtered last week.
It’s true the game isn’t You vs PCs, but at the same time, actions have consequences, and the world moves with or without the players, not just for the players.
mbeacom
March 22, 2011
Tmoney is right. If my players acted as the fungus finger group did, the entire campaign would degrade to the point where nobody would help them with intel. Nobody would want them around. Hunting parties would be on them all the time. It would be a giant pain to move around. As it should be for a group of no-good anti-heroes. Eventually they’d be living in a cave planning nastiness, just like the NPCs.
I’d say they need an NPC to manipulate them a bit. I’d write up a really nasty NPC who can “see them coming” and take advantage of their predictability, such that whatever anti-social behavior they engage in, it was part of his plan and ends up hurting their desires. Once they realize that they’re being predictable and, dare I say it, a bit boring, they may start to see the light…..or not.
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January 1, 2013
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