Ethical problems for good PCs

>NB4 another Paladin falls thread
This isn’t about paladins falling or negative consequences for alignment shifts, this is about ethical problems you can put players through.

Example. Your character is generally a good guy and is ethically apposed to killing a person without a trial. His former apprentice turned into a mass murderer. Every time he’s been captured he just escapes and kills more people. You now have him captured and know from past experience his allies are planning to use magic to rescue him. Is it more moral to try and haul him back to civilization so he can stand trial or to kill him now to remove the change of him escaping again?

Basically it’s a ends justify the means probably with extra moral baggage. I’d like to hear your takes on this and your favorite moral questions for games.

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  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Why does a mass murderer have allies? Are they all part of the Bad Guys Club?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I mean bad guy mini boss squads are pretty common. It’s a stock trope

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Because mass murder has never been committed by an organized group before. Nope, that's never happened! That'd just be ridiculous!

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    This is pretty cut and dry, more of a law vs chaos issue.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I mean, in many ancient societies if you kept fleeing from punishment they'd just break your legs. Like obviously the law has goals to achieve but also you have to accept when a dude is taking advantage of the system and you should just drumhead and chop his head off.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      This.

      It is entirely within the remit of agents of justice to pass judgement if need be, as is trial in absentia by an agent of the law and courts.

      There is no moral question here, unless you're operating entirely on 21st-century first world cartoon logic, which has no place in the fantasy milieu on account of being shit and gay.

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >haul him back to civilization
    If you're in the middle of nowhere, and the authorities have proven incompetent already anyway, why the frick would you still be opposed to killing someone without trial?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Sort of moral absolutism I guess, kinda like how batman never kills joker. Stupid but at least you’re sticking too your guns

  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >ethical problems you can put players through.

    Players do not experience ethical dilemmas. Not only would a player execute a criminal immediately after torturing them for plot hooks, they would fire a fusion missile into a crowded orphanage to do so if it happened to be the easiest way.
    I've personally had a party save (half of) a group of children from slavery, only to use the children to smuggle drugs through customs and then abandon them all in the desert.

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Prophecy states one of the villagers will destroy the world
    >Villager of prophecy turns out to be a 6 year old girl
    Wat do?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      If prophecy was unchangeable, then killing her would not change the outcome.
      If changing prophecy is possible, then the moral choice is to be present in her life and protect/guide her to prevent it from happening.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        That’s a interesting point actually. If you can’t change it then trying to kill her is going to make her destroy the world. If you can change it then convincing her not to destroy the world is just as if not more effective. Huh

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        This. Smart anon.
        If the prophecy is fixed then killing her might just trigger the apocalypse early.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        But presumably whether or not prophecies are changeable is not something characters would know, right? Which is what makes it a dilemma, a gamble on "can we avert that future"

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          Except the argument is that whether or not the prophecy is changeable is irrelevant, the correct choice is to help the girl either way.

          • 10 months ago
            Anonymous

            The argument becomes whether or not you think you can raise the girl in such a way that she will not destroy the world. As stated here, there's not enough details to know why, how, or when she gets the power to do so. Maybe it's three weeks from now when she's playing with a strange coin you just looted from a dungeon and accidentally summons an army of demons. Maybe it's 150 years from now when, distraught at your death, she turns to necromancy to bring you back and floods the material plane with negative energy.

            Even with your best intentions, you can't make sure her actions don't lead (directly, indirectly, inadvertently) to catastrophe. If you think prophecy can be changed (which you must if you are considering 'raising her right' to avoid it) then you must also face the limitations of your own foresight.

            • 10 months ago
              Anonymous

              >The argument becomes whether or not you think you can raise the girl in such a way that she will not destroy the world.
              If I do not think I can than I should endeavor to find someone who would.

              >Maybe it's three weeks from now when she's playing with a strange coin you just looted from a dungeon and accidentally summons an army of demons. Maybe it's 150 years from now when, distraught at your death, she turns to necromancy to bring you back and floods the material plane with negative energy.
              And maybe a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet. No parent can be 100% certain they aren't raising the next dark lord or demon king, thats hardly a compelling argument for killing children instead of trying to raise them right.

              >If you think prophecy can be changed (which you must if you are considering 'raising her right' to avoid it) then you must also face the limitations of your own foresight.
              If we're arguing that my lack of perfect knowledge should factor into my decision than literally any action I take could conceivably lead to the girl being evil. In which case all else being equal I might as well choose the moral action, which is to not murder an innocent child who has committed no crime. If there's no way to know what sequence of events and choices will lead to this specific future than I might as well disregard the prophecy entirely and act as I would normally.

              • 10 months ago
                Anonymous

                Yes, that's one way to approach it, but the whole reason it is a 'dilemma' topic is that some people will say "we can't take that chance" because they value the likelihood of the prophecy or don't believe that such fates can be avoided. It's fine that you would act in that way, you just have to remember that not all players will, and if the party doesn't have an aligned stance, THAT'S where all the arguing and dilemma-ing comes about.

            • 10 months ago
              Anonymous

              Or maybe, terrified by this party of adventurers coming to attack her, she calls out for any power to save her and in so doing allows awakens an elder evil or some shit. In this case your attempt to kill her directly lead to the prophecy coming to fruition.
              If the prophecy is simply that this innocent 6 year old girl will destroy the world then either
              >You can alter the future and stop her from destroying the world BUT you have no reason to think that killing her will be any more effective than just raising her differently. Why would you make the assumption that her murder is the most effective means of preventing the prophecy?
              >You cannot prevent the propphecy from coming to fruition (but maybe you can alter the circumstances). In which case killing her can only trigger the prophecy early (because presumably she can't end the world after you've killed her), good job cucking the world out of however many years of life they might have potentially lived before the end. If you think this is the case then the solution is to try and in-game rules lawyer a way of satisfying the prophecy with minimum cost to the world (maybe she's slated to end the world so that everyone can ascend to Heaven or some shit).

              • 10 months ago
                Anonymous

                But I WANT to kill her, because killing children is based.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Wait until she hits legal age then murder her

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      If it's a prophecy, then there isn't anything to do. If I try to avert it by killing her, or raising her right, or interacting with her in any way, then my actions are more than likely going to end up being what sets her on her path to destroy the world.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        The real answer is to force the prophecy to come true on your terms. Make sure to fulfill the letter of it with a more desirable result.

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    For ethical problems in general, I think that the game master should collaborate with players to devise interesting problems for their characters to confront, rather than just springing by-the-book dilemmas on the party without considering the context of their situations.
    For the specific situation in the OP, there are more actions available to the party than just turning him into the authorities or killing him. These include leaving him exposed to the wilderness and leaving his life up to chance, forcing him to repent his mass-murdering ways through mundane or supernatural means, or using him as bait to lure out and capture or kill his allies.
    Ah, shit, I must sound like a third-rate ChatGPT right now.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      You sound exactly like an AI. I suspect this is an AI response

  9. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I liked this post about them, maybe it will help

    https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-5-types-of-ethical-dilemmas.html

  10. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    The best ethical questions for good PCs are not moral 'gotcha!' moment, but rather to let them do good and then have them deal with the consequences of the good thing they did. Not to be grimderp, but really rather to make them take responsibility for the situation they have created.

    If you overthrow the evil king and end his reign of oppression... now what? Who is in charge? Is it you? Is it the next guy in succession? What if you don't like them, are you going to kill them too? How is the kingdom to be stabilized and rebuilt? What about all of the people locked up in the king's dungeons, some of them will have been freedom fighters but there are genuine bad dudes in there too, you can't just throw wide the gates and let everyone out. What about the soldiers in the evil king's army, who carried out his wicked commands... what is to be done with them? Are you going to undo the king's heavy taxes? If so, how will you finance the kingdom? And so on.

    Being good is HARD. Its why we admire anyone who can pull it off. If you want to challenge a good player, you don't trick them into killing orphans by accident so you can wag the finger at them. You give them a situation that can't be resolved by just killing their way out of it, and see how REALLY committed they are to doing good and helping people.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Hi George

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous
        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          A reference to GRRM and Aragorn's tax policy.

          It's a good point, and one that is well expounded on in Godbound. Most of the GM advice is about how your PCs will probably be strong enough to bulldoze through obvious opposition, so here's how you make challenges that can't be solved through brute force. The cult management rules are basically for making a hydra of endlessly spawning chains of problems that mechically are never erased, only replaced.

  11. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Is it more moral to ... kill him now to remove the change of him escaping again?
    Yes. Obviously.

  12. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    >ethics
    I roll to rape

  13. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I actually liked this thread and I don't want it to die.

  14. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I’ve always wanted to do a sort of twist on the ol’ “lesser of two evils” situation. The PCs are dealing with two diametrically opposed groups, both of whom could be considered good. The issue on which they disagree may be a seemingly inconsequential one but neither is willing to back down or compromise. Conflict and death are inevitable. The PCs are forced to side with someone and make peace with the fact that they’re going to be killing good people, or they walk away and clean their hands of the whole mess with the knowledge that it will be far bloodier than had they gotten involved.

    Only issue is, I can’t really think of a good Two Groups for such a conflict.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Easy one is land dispute. People fighting over a contested homeland is a easy source of morally grey conflict. Baring that you could rip off the church vs church thing, cops had to be called after a fight between priests happened when someone moved a chair in a temple owned by multiple religions

  15. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Personally, I don't find moral dilemmas or questions of ethics and morals that interesting. Like, they don't really matter when I'm trying to play a game about killing monsters and getting treasure. Also "Story" in my game is gay as frick. The story is that I get a bunch of gold and buy cool shit and level up and get stronger. That's all.

  16. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    My only course of action is
    >ask what would be the right thing to do
    >do the exact opposite cuz that's based

  17. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Belief in procedural due process is a "law" belief far more than a "good" belief. It would have been completely "good" to kill him immediately. Does your Paladin follow the Oath of The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure?

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