Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
People don't play games to get jerked around. They play them to build and experience stories for themselves and part of that requires having some idea of the direction they want those stories to go.
You want to make choices hard, give them material weight with different benefits and drawbacks. Don't do Sophie's Choice bullshit.
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
This is the dumbest thing I've read all week and I've read some *shit* these past few days. Good job, anon.
https://i.imgur.com/mGG8Nx5.png
Whats a cool moral dilemma I can give my players in my homebrew 5e game? One where there is no easy answer?
A pretty standard moral dilemma you can go for is the Robin Hood-esque thief; someone who steals from the wealthy to distribute to the poor. This is a situation where the players have to weigh what's right with what's legal. By itself though, this isn't much of a dilemma since only lawful stupid characters would turn the thief in, so I like to throw in a curveball. For instance, the thief steals items of significant cultural or religious importance to the town and sells them for profit he distributes to the impoverished. Then the question becomes what the village wants vs what they need. Of whether their short-term survival is worth the community's long-term cultural well-being.
>if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
lmao
To be fair, you can kind of get what he's saying
The morally CORRECT answer should be easy to get and perform, relatively (i.e. save the peasants you want to protect from the rampaging dragon)
However, there would be no point in doing anything otherwise if that were the case, given that people have a tendency to go for the easier option that makes you feel good, so there has to be an incentive to do anything else (you get a b***hin' +3 fire sword if you let the dragon eat the people but everyone hates you, you get noticed by the mages' guild and offered an invite after you take a hail mary, transform the dragon into a fluffy bunny, and slay it, or run the risk of causing an upheaval in the powers of the kingdom by convincing the stupid mud farmers to arm themselves and take on the dragon themselves)
Just simply making your players choose between 2 unavoidable bad choices (like in OP's pic) is going to make the players feel like there isn't any real point to the choices they make
>The morally CORRECT answer should be easy to get and perform
No, the evil choice is the easy one, the morally correct choice is the hard one. You want to save the people? You fight a fricking dragon, and probably die doing it. You let the people die and loot the place as you leave? You avoid the dragon entirely.
This is only not the case when the evil choice is harder and offers greater benefits. You want to sacrifice all the villagers to a demon for a b***hing +3 sword of decapitations? Better get to killing all the local defenders big boy.
By your logic, anyone running from the dragon instead of trying to fistfight it is evil. By default you have no responsibility to "probably die" for someone else.
>The morally CORRECT answer should be easy to get and perform
No, the evil choice is the easy one, the morally correct choice is the hard one. You want to save the people? You fight a fricking dragon, and probably die doing it. You let the people die and loot the place as you leave? You avoid the dragon entirely.
This is only not the case when the evil choice is harder and offers greater benefits. You want to sacrifice all the villagers to a demon for a b***hing +3 sword of decapitations? Better get to killing all the local defenders big boy.
but his example is wrong because you'd be excused for protecting your own life.
If I had to twist it: >easy but evil choice: don't warn people of the incoming dragon, they don't trust you, so you can loot the place and say "meh, not my fault" >hard but good choice: convince people of the incoming dragon, they don't trust you, so you might still be here when the dragon attack
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
Remember that whenever you get into an argument over some inane skub, This is the kind of person you are arguing with.
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
This, but the morally correct answer is the hard one.
if it's based on morality there's usually an obvious 'easy' answer and it is 'be evil'. This is probably the best way to craft a 'moral dilemma' for a character, you can be evil and it's easy, or you can do the hard bullshit because it's the right thing to do. If you're putting players in a situation where every choice sucks, that's not a moral dilemma, that's the DM making bad things happening and going 'you get to decide which bad thing happens', e.g., playing a Telltale visual novel. Usually this doesn't actually have an important impact on the story because bad shit was going to happen regardless, so putting the lever in the player's hands is just cheap pathos.
I think this is what was trying to say, but he failed.
Strictly speaking if there is a "right thing to do" it isn't a "moral dilemma". It's just a dilemma.
Also strictly speaking, you don't actually have to make the evil choice easier. You can make the good choice easier if, for example, you're dealing with people RPing evil characters. That is if you want the dilemma to be "get a reward" or "change how your character acts".
However you don't actually have to limit only one choice to having a reward. Both choices can hurt or help the RPer. You can even make how they will hurt or help obscure. Hire a guide or buy extra supplies is a proper dilemma. The point is choices should be of unequal value so RPers have to think about what they want things to play out in. Moral weight for RPing purposes should just be a part of that calculus.
Choose between 2 equally shitty things to do/have happen is and will always be dumb. There is no incentive to do either thing and no reason to be invested in the choice. But if one choice is obviously less shitty than the other, to reiterate, it isn't a moral dilemma.
Okay but which track
The pre-set course against the 5 people, or the alternate track that only has the one guy?
What if the one guy is actually the guy who put the other 5 people on the track?
Which relieves the burned of murder more? The belief that it wasn't your choice to make, or the justice of killing a bad person.
That is you're dilemma OP, make you're character's choose what type of killer they are. There is no dilemma
Bro, the answer doesn't matter by itself, it matters because your character is chosing one or the other, and this tells something about them that enriches the roleplay.
Nothing enriches role/roll play.
Writers rooms have more soul than any rpg in reality. Spreadsheets and DM Fiat is no panacea for the autism of the socialy inept.
Yes, many writers rooms are shit now adays, but they are less shit than most rpg tables. Your not going to ever try to claim, dice, and spreadsheets improve that.
I have literally played an rpg, and then with the same group just wrote a story without dice and spreadsheets, and the story was better.
Where do you think I got this revelation?
You can literally see how rpg podcasts fake the dice and spreadsheets to trick fools into thinking its the game to make them buy useless splatbooks.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Why the frick would I believe a story you made up when you have every motivation to say positive shit about your stance. It essentially boils down to trust me bro
7 months ago
Anonymous
Don't trust me.
Try it.
Get your rpg group to write a single episode of one of thier collective fictions.
You'll see.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>Get your rpg group to write a single episode of one of thier collective fictions.
I'd end up with odd bastard of Mein Kampf and Oscar Wilde's pornographic prose.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Sounds cool
7 months ago
Anonymous
>listening to podcasts expecting quality
Might as well say books are shit after soely reading YA novels
7 months ago
Anonymous
Relative quality.
Better than a rpg session.
Reading comprehension.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Don't trust me.
Try it.
Get your rpg group to write a single episode of one of thier collective fictions.
You'll see.
“Trust me bro”
“My opinions are truth”
7 months ago
Anonymous
>literally say: don't trust me >mocked for saying: trust me.
Try it you scared butthole
7 months ago
Anonymous
>do your own research
It’s amazing how you can know someone browses /misc/ simply by how they talk
7 months ago
Anonymous
I was an empiricist before Ganker, or /misc/ existed. You will be one before you die.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>doesn’t deny it >still jacking himself off
Buddy if this is even somewhat close to how you write stories I can sleep easy knowing you’re so far up your own ass you can even read with how dark it is
7 months ago
Anonymous
You would never accept any denial, and might use it as proof anyway. You have no standard by which I could exonerate mysrlf in your eyes.
Even madmen are correct sometimes.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>You would never accept any denial, and might use it as proof anyway.
Man /misc/ really is just third world esl’s high off their supply now
7 months ago
Anonymous
That's not a /misc/ thing, thats what you're doing
7 months ago
Anonymous
>not a /misc/ thing
Who the frick are you expecting to believe this?
7 months ago
Anonymous
Who's will it be when /misc/ is gone in 100 years?
When any leader uses the same stats to make decisions are they just copying /misc/?
You're being silly.
7 months ago
Anonymous
You really aren’t helping your case of being able to write stories when you make up shit like that
7 months ago
Anonymous
>consipracy theorist >can't make good stories
At least remain consistent.
7 months ago
Anonymous
That's not a /misc/ thing, thats what you're doing
Congrats you created a believable schizophrenic, I’ll give you that.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>stupid discord meme >claiming victory in a fricking conversation >personal story as stone fact
This is what being terminally online does to one’s ability to debate
7 months ago
Anonymous
Anon the fact that you keep calling them spreadsheets is just making it obvious you have no idea what you are talking about
7 months ago
Anonymous
Have you read past that point? I’m not even sure he knew what he was typing anon.
>it matters because your character is chosing one or the other, and this tells something about them that enriches the roleplay.
Except it doesn't because it's an artificially construct situation with artificially limited choices designed to force your character to transgress their normal behavior. It doesn't matter what you do, they will break their morals. It's railroading. There isn't some third option that your character would easily take, or if there is, there has to be a terrible punishment if you do to incentivize opting into the moral dilemma.
Asking a player whether they'd like to be kicked in the balls or have their character ruined is dumb as frick.
In fact, to emphasize just how fricking railroady and dumb it is, I'd like to point out that IRL moral dilemmas are often fricking resolved with fricking lotteries. People would rather let decisions like that be random than make a choice.
Moral dilemmas at best take agency away from people and at worst make them want to give it up willingly because they can't find investment in which choice is made. That's not enrichment. You don't learn anything about people put through them because forcing someone to make a choice means a shitty outcome is a foregone conclusion.
If someone IS invested in a particular outcome, they'll just do that shit. There's no dilemma. Those are the situations where you fricking learn about characters. Where choices matter. Where roleplaying is enriched.
You are conflating shit GMs and moral dilemmas. Just because you (or your past gms) can't think anything more nuanced than the trolley problem, it doesn't make your opinion true.
He made very valid points against shit gms not being able to handle moral dilemmas.
But we were discussing moral dilemmas , not shit gms, so i either let him derail the point or dismiss everything that is off topic.
7 months ago
Anonymous
To be fair the topic is pretty stupid and the only ones here now are you, me a scizo from /misc/ and a guy who gets off to animal cruelty
7 months ago
Anonymous
And with this answer you're definitely not contributing anything better than all the others, so welcome home i guess?
7 months ago
Anonymous
Oh I never cared anon, it’s all shit here, your shit too, why else would you be here? It’s all the same ritual posts and thread ad infintium with the same tired responses chasing after that dopamine rush from the first time you saw the thread.
7 months ago
Anonymous
You can’t even insult fricking asiatic moot or the mods anymore, they made that a banable offense, it truly is a fricking dump
In fact, literally the only reason the trolley problem even seems like it could be a moral dilemma is the literal railroads.
If you were on a bus heading towards a crowd, it was too late to miss entirely, but you could still swerve towards the less dense edges, 10/10 people would fricking turn the wheel.
The Trolley dilemma is a terrible psychology tool, but it does work as a grit and intelligence test. Someone who is used to actual struggle will refuse either choice and find another solution.
The moral dilemma of ditching the 5e group to play an actual game, but will likely be left by themselves, or sticking with the 5e group and being posed with moronic bullshit like this instead of playing a game.
Have a classic: Every year a blind pilgrim walks through the land. He always walks the same path, he knows the path by heart. One year a man living in the land digs a well, he digs it because he needed water for himself, his family, and their cattle. The next time pilgrim makes his annual walk he's walking to the well, by chance it was dug right in the middle of his usual path. A woman standing nearby sees pilgrim aproaching the well, but says nothing. Pilgrim falls into the well and dies. Who is to blame for pilgrim's death?
The woman. b***h just had to say three fricking words, not even move. The well owner is partially responsible for just apparently digging a big fricking hole with no barriers or anything, but it's not his fault.
Did it really never cross the pilgrim's mind that the land might change over the years and that he can't take the same route every time? Like, sucks to suck my dude, but you should've seen this coming.
It's a theoretical core of a dilemma, putting it in a game practically shouldn't be too difficult.
a) You can have party come to the scenario that just played out and need identify/punish the culprit.
b) You can alternate it to have party become involved directly - whenever they make some alternation to the terrain - dig trench around campsite, cut rope bridge to escape pursuers, fell trees to make boat, etc.- the annual pilgrim walks into it shortly after.
No, it's fricking awful in every way.
a) Makes no sense that they would be moral adjudicators, and even less sense that they would give any sort of a frick.
b) Puts them in the role of the well digger, means they're either not still there when it happens or can trivially prevent it.
Besides which the problem with the story is that everyone in it is absurdly stupid for no reason. Well guy digs a hole in the middle of a path and calls it a well rather than actually building a fricking well, blind guy relies on his eidetic memory and the assumption that the world never changes. The woman is just fricking useless. No one's actions make any sense, so why would you give a frick about the morality of it?
You have found out all of this after a thorough investigation.
By the laws of the land, the person found at fault (or their next of kin in the event of posthumous blame) must pay a fine.
The Pilgrim's family, the man who dug the well, and the woman who said nothing are now standing in court and awaiting your decision, as you are the judge. To whom do you assign the blame?
>To whom do you assign the blame?
As the king is responsible for maintaining the roads, I order everyone involved executed for lèse-majesté. How dare the frauds claim the king's roads aren't safe to travel. It's a conspiracy against the crown.
>law specifies a fine for the person "at fault" >law does not specify what it means to be at fault
Why is this my (character's) problem? Why would I give a frick? Everyone in the story is to blame for being fricking moronic, and it doesn't matter to me who gets fined. It is a stupidly contrived non-issue.
Whats the dilemma here? Someone made an unsafe structure where he knew the disabled would be walking, with no safety measures? That's just cut and dry criminal negligence.
That's easy: I kill the man for digging an unsafe well in the middle of the street, and his family for supporting such unlawful behavior. Then I kill the woman for not doing her moral duty in warning the pilgrim. Thankfully the pilgrim is already dead, so I don't need to think of an excuse to kill him, and so I loot the bodies and take ownership of these abandoned cattle. Finally I burn burn down the village and pillage it of everything valuable, because they didn't pay their taxes for the well water. It feels so good to be righteous!
Don't make them. Let them form on their own.
The best way a moral dilemma affects a player character is when it ACTUALLY affects them. >Solo kills random people during a job because "lol shouldn't have been there" >Solo's kid or friend dies because they were in a bad neighborhood. Solo goes on revenge quest and easily finds the ganger and questions them why they did it. >"Lol they shouldn't have been there"
What fuels you.
Is it people pointing out that you're a shitposting homosexual? Because that's a sad fuel.
Or do you genuinely think that your constant braindead shitposting will actually get people to stop talking about D&D here? Because, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all you've done is help lower the population of this board, which means that people who like less popular games have a harder time connecting with other people, making the percentage of D&D threads rise even as this board continues to decline.
You're killing this board, and ironically just increasing the percentage of D&D discussion in the process. Hell, look at the zombie generals for non-D&D games that people struggle to keep bumped nowadays because there's no conversations to be had in them because everyone has left this board. And, people are leaving this board in no small part thanks to you and your constant, endless "POPULAR THING BAD" basic b***h shitposting, the shit you do even in non-5e threads.
If your goal is just to kill /tg/, I guess all I can say is that the grand irony will be that the last thing that will be here will be people discussing 5e, and all because you can't stop obsessing about it.
That's ironic coming from you considering that you are the one causing the shitshow here trying to turn /tg/ into your perfect playground just because people don't like your low effort shitposts in your lame attempt to "save" /tg/.
Whats a cool moral dilemma I can give my players in my homebrew 5e game? One where there is no easy answer?
It's a game anon. Let your players make their own decision limited only by their imagination, not just from the options you desire to satisfy your perverse curiosity.
I'll start by pointing out that a moral dilemma, excecuted poorly, is a terrible thing to make your players experience. Most moral dilemmas are rhetorical devices, and don't hold up when actually used in play. Take the trolley problem as an example. There are a lot of things (especially in a game with wizards and magic) that players might want to do here outside of the binary choice of pulling the lever. This opens the scenario up to actual "good" solutions, which ruins the point of the exercise. Trying to eliminate these is usually shoehorned and makes players frustrated that they are being forced by the scenario into making a choice to which there is no good answer, mostly arbitrarily.
The second problem is that your players are, I hope, playing characters. Characters often will have defined morality, especially in a system plagued with alignment like DnD. This means that a lot of things which would be hard choices for us are going to be relatively easy for the CHARACTERS that your players are portraying. This makes most classic moral dilemmas pointless, as the characters will be able to solve it easily even if the player is conflicted.
For those reasons, I suggest instead trying to give your players what I'll call "hard choices." These are situations which may have an actual good answer, but still challenge the players to examine their characters morality in an interesting way, and may require them to actually USE THEIR CHARACTERS SKILLS AND ABILITIES to resolve the situation. Think something similar to the game FTL, where there's a moral quandary but sometimes you have an actual right answer, and sometimes the answer is obvious but you have to do something immoral for the sake of your own survival.
Cont.
One example of this in my own experience is when the party I was in was faced with an imprisoned god. He offered us nigh unlimited power and to destroy our enemies if we would just loosen the chains that bound him. Once released, which would happen eventually according to him, he would do terrible, unspecified things to the local region (which none of our characters had a particular attachment to). This would, he promised, happen far after all of us were dead if at all. Of the party, 3/5 refused to help, and 2 were interested in helping. This culminated in one of the "don't help the demon" characters shooting another who was attempting to release the chains without everybody's approval. This was a memorable enough moment for us that we all still fondly remember it 6 months later. Morally, this isn't that good of a choice. For our characters, this was a great choice.
Three things I recommend with any such scenario: >Some degree of uncertainty: don't give the players all the facts unless they search for them. The outcome of any choice should be open to some degree of chance or doubt. >Some way the party can intervene at great person cost. This can come in the form of losing considerable wealth, social status, or risking their person. >The party is personally involved in some way, rather than acting as an outsider looking in on the situation. Don't make them the guy who finds the lever, make them the trolley operator.
A final point. Most of the examples in this thread are scenarios which being roughly the same way: >the party, while doing general party stuff, encounters a scenario which they have no real stake in outside of having just walked up
While this is understandable, given the way OP posed the question, this is already dogshit writing and will turn off any player with a sense of taste. This isn't fricking skyrim, and random encounters shouldn't be dragging a hapless and unengaged party into their little settings completely separate from what they were doing before. The only person who can truly know how to integrate this kind of scenario is OP, and he hasn't provided any info about the setting, party, or anything else that could help us here. This is, as always, because OP doesn't play games and this is a bait thread.
>Take the trolley problem as an example. There are a lot of things (especially in a game with wizards and magic) that players might want to do here outside of the binary choice of pulling the lever.
Fireball?
Nobody said the wizard had a Lawful Good alignment.
This
A trolley problem with very strict and binary solutions often just ends up feeling like a railroad.
Worry more about presetting the players with problems and give them the freedom to interact with it. Is that cursed sword worth using? That's up to them.
>Whats a cool moral dilemma I can give my players in my homebrew 5e game?
There isn't such thing as a 'cool' moral dilemma. Moral dilemmas, by their nature, always fricking suck- that's why they're DILEMMAS and not "Moral funnies :)".
But, sure, here's a moral dilemma:
The party crosses the borders into a smallish kingdom that has known nothing but splendor, providence, bounty, and ever-lasting prosperity. The lands of this kingdom are fertile, there exists no diseases or parasites, love, peace, and happiness abound, and it is truly a land of milk and honey for all. A paradise made real.
The party eventually finds out that this societies' culture has adopted the tradition of Sin-Eating. What this basically entails is they draw lots and every 15-35'ish years (mileage varies of course, you'll soon find out why) a baby is chosen who will only exist to be locked up inside a dungeon and experience all the suffering and misfortune that would normally fall the kingdom and its' people. Everything bad is ritualistically redirected to this child: famine, pestilence, canker sores, injuries, even malicious desires and suppressive emotions like murder, hatred, rape, depression, anxiety, etc.
The party can choose to do something about this (the kingdom is only a few thousand people with basically no military): they can either let it slide (for as long as they're in the kingdom they too feel the effects/benefits of the act and it does objectively feel amazing) or they can save the child and 'doom' the kingdom (the sin-eater isn't actually catatonic or vegetative- if they were they wouldn't be able to suffer. They're very much aware of every awful thing that happens to them) to wither and die of withdrawal from reality.
the prisoner you rescued from the dungeon was actually a succubus that was summoned and bound to a circle, and willingly revealed herself as such to you upon her release. she was actually quite nice, helping you defeat a group of dangerous and hostile beastmen that were threatening the nearby village, and thanked you afterwards for your heroic rescue with a non-draining smooch on the cheek before you went your separate ways on friendly terms, going as far as to tell you her true name that you might summon her again if you need her help
three mornings later, that punkass douchebag that shows up at the tavern every night to spit on the floor and be too loud was found as a desiccated husk on his bed. the townspeople are worried and fearful, for a succubus stalks the night, and could kill another man at any time
you have the power to deal with her any way you choose, because she trusted you with her true name. however, she does need to eat human life force, and you must keep your own strength up that you might continue to adventure
right now you're presenting me with a pretty incredible one
I could either not post in the thread again when you clearly aren't looking for an actual engagement about the OP topic (good, but hard), or I could make this post and get another non-response (evil, but easy)
Summon her, invite her for dinner and drinks. Laugh about how the dickface deserved it. Offer to travel together, as she's much less likely to draw attention that way than staying in one town, and there should be plenty of bandits and other unsavory characters along the road.
And if she's up for a bit of theater maybe put on show of "slaying" the threat so the villagers don't try to bring in someone to hunt her down.
In one of our games, after cleansinga room of kobolds, we found a baby kobold. The paladin killed it because it was an evil race. He got his alignement reduced.
Bahamut would have rebuked the Paladin, and if the paladin tried to sass him about kobolds always being evil he’d have brought up Meepo, a *lawful neutral*, canonical kobold who’s appeared in 3e, 4e, and 5e. Nothing, Bahamut would say, is born evil.
Gael Glittergold would probably just mumble something about how you shouldn’t kill babies, even kobold babies, because yeah they’re an evil race (although if pressed he’d be forced to admit that they’re not born evil) and we hate them but we’re also supposed to be better than them.
There's this one manga I read once called instant bullet. One of the characters backstories was that she made a drug that made people want to be good and kind. Unfortunately, it had the terrible side effect of being lethal long term. Of course this is pretty stupid in a normal world, but in fantasy world's where creatures are naturally disposed to good and evil? Makes for a fun dilemma. On one hand, if you let them live they'll be evil, but if you let them die, you'll be letting good creatures die.
The party's home base town (or other area they're connected to and have friendly npcs in) falls victim to a horrific plague die to magical curse bullshit. As they're trying to fix it they come across a limited supply of cure. Do they hoard it to protect themselves and ensure they're in shape to defeat the curse, or give it to afflicted NPCs? If they give some away, who do they choose to save?
This also works in other situations with limited resources. Maybe they get trapped in a besieged city, what do they do with any stockpiled food they have? You dock on a crippled larger spaceship about to fall into a sun, who do you take off and what do you give up to make room for passengers?
In the second level of the Dungeon, an invisible stalker stays locked in a cage.
If you free her, she tells you in a soothing voice that she will help you out in exploring these floors before she leaves the dungeon, killing your foes.
All she wants in return is to be free to hunt, the purpose of her life, when the debt is paid
If you free her, npcs might be found dead. But also, the damned flesh golem roaming the corridos, too, will be easily felled.
The key is right by, and you might just free her if you wish. If you dont, some other party might.
You misunderstand the question. You are Batman. The fact that you're going to save both the innocents and the Joker is a foregone conclusion. How do you justify it?
The massive construction delays aren't a problem that can be solved simply by throwing money at it. If an ambulance doesn't get to a patient in time because the trolley got fricked up, did you really make the best choice. What about all the commerce that has been impacted? How many innocent people were fired from their job for being late and thus consigned to poverty because you didn't let an butthole clown commit suicide by bus?
Simple. The manager asks the guests at the hotel to move to room 2n+1, where n is the name of their current room. This leaves ample room at the hotel for Sisyphus and his boulder. To apologize for the delay, the manager makes sure the minibar in Sisyphus' room is well-stocked and gives him a 100 dollar credit that can be used towards any other hotel services, including the hotel restaurant and on-demand video rentals. This ensures Sisyphus is happy for the duration of his stay at the hotel.
The people are not bound to the track, they are lying there willingly. It might be dangerous for the trolley to roll over the larger group, but if it's going at the speed to derail, the sharp turn onto the other track would derail it as well. The cow catcher on the front should keep it safe. I would let the 5 die, and then exact justice on the one at the top for illegally trespassing.
Frick asiatic moot and his little dicked mods I WILL insult you as no no amount of bans will stop me, I don’t care how much you want his tiny Asian dick he’s a shit owner
Who's will it be when /misc/ is gone in 100 years?
When any leader uses the same stats to make decisions are they just copying /misc/?
You're being silly.
Laying it on way too hard with the Scizo babble dude hiding behind it because you can’t make a point is pathetic and just ruins any valid points you may have had.
All you’ve been doing is repeat yourself before you started Scizo babble and now pretending to be someone else. Is this seriously what you think being clever is? Jesus Christ no wonder the west is getting lazy if this is the intellectual level the rest of the world sits at
"nature asserting itself" is a funny way of saying "the rogue taught them to do crime"
But what if they just want someone to die?
Save Everyone Involved. Which was Superman's take. Granted it might be missing the point to try that but heck, you gonna tell Superman he can't save everyone if he's on the scene?
I like putting trapped or injured horrible beastes in my game. Stuff like "You see a Catoblepas pinned to the ground at the neck by overturned wagon. Her breathing is ragged and with each breath more of the grass around her dies, what do you do?" as a roadside encounter. I think it's good. So far the parties have euthanized several animals, but it's been a tough choice thats way more memorable as a 'random encounter' than an easy combat with goons. None of these ancient creatures needed to die, they could all have been saved, and might never have seen another human or harmed anyone (or might have slain the PC that saved them). Add some juveniles for bonus points, a Catoblepas pup crying tears of deathsmoke next to their mommy.
I also just like any roadside encounter where moving past without interacting is an obvious option, since doing so strengthens engagement since the players themselves decided their destination is urgent, and not doing so IS engagement.
Oh no I made my players choose to kill a monster oh wait thats literally every fantasy game except mine allows for the possibility that they players want to help the monsters instead because the monsters might have roles in nature. Aaah help I'm thiiinkiiing
All I wanted was to be railroaded into lazy trolly problem bullshit where I have to pick one of two evil things instead of deciding myself what is good and what us evil aah
You are Tarquin the Human Bard. You spy a mountain lion on your way to the Dungeon of killing one hundred nameless goblins. it is clearly badly hurt. (you have healing word available, however, you can assume that it's probably been unable to hunt and is hungry. A healthy hungry mountain lion is obviously dangerous. you also have a well-stocked pack of usual adventuring tools, several other typical spells, a simpleminded but brave barbarian friend who is growing to trust you, and a diadem of truesight). The dungeon is less than a day away, so any spells you cast will be unavailable in the dungeon unless you delay an extra night. the path is safe to continue.
what do you do?
A shame. You had the opportunity to play a rpg gaem and refused. You could have shared a screenshot with the next person to call you nogaems and had irrefutable proof that you had played once. who knows when you'll next find a Samaritan willing to GM for the likes of you.
7 months ago
Anonymous
What a bizarre post, I feel sorry you need to do this shut to stroke you ego pointlessly, especially considering it doesn’t even make sense
Nature is a b***h like that sometimes. If it looks like it'll heal on it's own I leave it be. If not I grant it a death more merciful than dehydration or gangrene.
I mean, you're pretty much always playing some sort of serial killer in rpgs: they're just called "adventurers". And if you're the GM, you're controlling whole groups of things trying to kill people.
Your villain is a killer who has haunted the region for years. Many of those he kills are evil, but just as many are obvious crimes of opportunity.
He is cursed by a sacrifical dagger he found long ago. By sacrificing a human he gets a charge. If he runs out he is sent to a hell where subjective days of torture pass for him, before resurrecting. Every day of the week he is given a description for the next sacrifice, skip a day and next will be more specific. 'Innocent', 'Drunkard ex-soldier', 'Just this guy' etc.
A sacrifice gets him a charge, reaching the end of the week without any loses everything and sends him back to hell for a while. Other abilities he has also use up charges; change appearance, teleport etc.
Part of the curse is that if he can get to a set number, he is freed. He has been trying very hard to use his power in as moral a way as possible but has repeatedly fricked up (or been messed with by the powers that be) before he's managed to succeed.
He is half mad with PTSD and guilt and would happily accept death, but can see no escape from his curse.
Your party gets involved in the quest when he is once again close to freedom, hired to stop him by a gentleman who seems oddly knowledgeable about him. If they choose to stop him they can enact a ritual which will permanently bind him to his hell. Naturally he will blow every charge he has to try to escape this as well as begging to be free of his torment: people he kill just die, he just suffers.
Incidentally if he does reach the goal he is congratulated by the dagger and transformed into the worlds most depressed demon; powered by trapped souls he's basically immortal but will submit if you *can* work out a way to kill him. If spared will dedicate himself to trying to do some good.
Scenarios like this is how you get a party of "murderhobos" who are desensitized to all NPC suffering and don't care how awful their own actions are. Big deal burning down an orphanage, last session we helped a guy murder people to become a suicidal demon. How about this moral dilemma: >you have to torture 10 million people to death or else Hitler comes back and he's invincible and on fire >Htler will probably torture 10 million people to death, but it might be more or less and you can't kill him
Or this one? >a trolley is hurtling toward half a dozen people but you could pull the lever and send it towards six people
If you don't get involved, little changes. There's no point in caring about being righteous or getting attached to anything, it all ends in mud and shit.
The villagers want you to help them burn down a farmstead where there is a family suffering from an unknown malady.
The family themselves is innocent of any particularly egregious sins, and think the other villagers are crazy.
If you help the villagers, you murdered innocents.
If you don't help the villagers, the sickness spreads to the rest of the village and everyone dies.
You can potentially cure the family but to do so, you have to ID their illness and create a cure, possibly getting sick yourself and possibly being unable to complete the quest before the disease spreads.
The disease has about a 25% mortality rate, concentrated among young children and the elderly. They have already lost a grandmother and a toddler. there are 6 remaining family members and 100 villagers total.
Yeah, usually you burn down farmsteads while on the way to rescue a dragon from the damsel, so actually being asked to burn one down is just too weird.
Honestly, it's pretty hard to have something like this and have it feel good.
The only example I can think of that I've used was in a Fallout 2d20 game I played recently.
They were in a farming town where due to increased taxation and demand from the NCR to raise for the war-effort at Hoover Dam. The town is under a food shortage and having to start rationing to make it through the winter. The Mayor, after consulting the Wasteland Survival Guide puts together a posse to try some of the advice to try and boost the towns food reserves.
One small interaction comes up fairly quickly, Mrs. Palmer one of the town ghouls, a farmer who helps organise a several of the town crop fields has an objection to how much of the food is being rationed. Most of the purified water and well preserved tinned food and supplies for cooked meals are going to the human residents, where the ghoul residents have been given old, irradiated pre-war junk food, tins of dogfood and other less agreeable produce. They recognise the pragmatic nature that they aren't vulnerable to radiation like the other townsfolk, but even if they are immune to radiation, they are not immune to the terrible taste and texture of that pre-war shit. They are still people who deserve the same as what everyone else has and want the party to convince the Mayor to arrange a more fair rationing scheme.
Naturally, if the party bring this concern to the Mayor, he explains that of course they have to give the ghouls the slightly irradiated food, if the normal townies eat too much they might become sick. The town is limited in what they have in supply and eventually someone is going to have to eat the irradiated junk and it's just sensible and pragmatic that the ghouls start on it, leaving more "fresh" food for the human townies, and he asks the party to convince Palmer to accept a more pragmatic rationing scheme.
Both sides have valid opinions, neither side is objectively wrong.
What makes this an outsiders job? Like what kind of shanty town, with a mayor, is asking random passers to give input on their food rationing system?
It's also not a dilemma because it's not urgent, no one's gonna die, they just want to eat less crappy food sometimes. I dunno, go vote about it.
Publicly shame Mrs. Palmer because she is willing to endanger the health and safety of her neighbors because she wants tastier rations. Either she stands her ground and is ostracized or she recants her objection.
Constructing a dilemma intentionally is irritating for players. It would be better to flesh out the setting world to give them meaningful choices among actors with ambiguous intention and ethics.
Players don't want to pull a lever to decide whether or not one or 5 random peasants die; but they'd be happy to investigate who the hell keeps tying them to the rail line, and if somehow he has a good reason, that starts to be a novel and interesting narrative.
Maybe he's got beef with the rail company; maybe he's tying them to railways to find people willing to save them, maybe the people he's tying to the railways aren't random and there's a reason he thinks they need to be snidely whiplashed.
Leave the straight philosophical hypothetical for your university courses, debate club or blog. People come to your table because they want to roll dice and play a game.Some of them want a story, but the trolley problem isn't a story.
The game is Chronicles of Darkness
You're alone in a room, you've not eaten in hours and are getting hungry. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a defenseless child, with a set of delicious shoes.
Do you fight the child to eat his sweet leather booties, or starve and 2 points of aggrivated damage + lose 2 dots of willpower.
Damn, outsmarted again.
Next dilemma:
You're alone in you're room at night, on the verge of falling asleep in a super comfortable bed, when suddenly you see see a figure standing in the corner of you're room.
It's the same child you ate before, but this time he has even better shoes (they seem maybe even magical)
Do you leave you're bed to steal the shoes but mess up your path to slumber, or accept the loss and continue on for what may be the best night of sleep of you're life
I posed my players a dilemma recently that I was proud of.
They were playing evil characters in a one-shot where their objective was to clear a town of its inhabitants within 24 hours, but there was a catch. The demon that ordered them to do this was a pedophile, so he specifically mandated that the lives of children were to be preserved as much as possible.
When they snuck into the town, they encountered a candlemaker running out of his shop, screaming that there was a fire. Unfortunately, there was an orphanage next door, and the only exit was blocked by a broken down carriage. The players then had to, as a group of very evil nasty people, save a bunch of children from a burning building so they could be raped later.
Everyone enjoyed it a lot!
Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
People don't play games to get jerked around. They play them to build and experience stories for themselves and part of that requires having some idea of the direction they want those stories to go.
You want to make choices hard, give them material weight with different benefits and drawbacks. Don't do Sophie's Choice bullshit.
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
This is the dumbest thing I've read all week and I've read some *shit* these past few days. Good job, anon.
A pretty standard moral dilemma you can go for is the Robin Hood-esque thief; someone who steals from the wealthy to distribute to the poor. This is a situation where the players have to weigh what's right with what's legal. By itself though, this isn't much of a dilemma since only lawful stupid characters would turn the thief in, so I like to throw in a curveball. For instance, the thief steals items of significant cultural or religious importance to the town and sells them for profit he distributes to the impoverished. Then the question becomes what the village wants vs what they need. Of whether their short-term survival is worth the community's long-term cultural well-being.
To be fair, you can kind of get what he's saying
The morally CORRECT answer should be easy to get and perform, relatively (i.e. save the peasants you want to protect from the rampaging dragon)
However, there would be no point in doing anything otherwise if that were the case, given that people have a tendency to go for the easier option that makes you feel good, so there has to be an incentive to do anything else (you get a b***hin' +3 fire sword if you let the dragon eat the people but everyone hates you, you get noticed by the mages' guild and offered an invite after you take a hail mary, transform the dragon into a fluffy bunny, and slay it, or run the risk of causing an upheaval in the powers of the kingdom by convincing the stupid mud farmers to arm themselves and take on the dragon themselves)
Just simply making your players choose between 2 unavoidable bad choices (like in OP's pic) is going to make the players feel like there isn't any real point to the choices they make
Oh, hey, someone got my point in its entirety.
>The morally CORRECT answer should be easy to get and perform
No, the evil choice is the easy one, the morally correct choice is the hard one. You want to save the people? You fight a fricking dragon, and probably die doing it. You let the people die and loot the place as you leave? You avoid the dragon entirely.
This is only not the case when the evil choice is harder and offers greater benefits. You want to sacrifice all the villagers to a demon for a b***hing +3 sword of decapitations? Better get to killing all the local defenders big boy.
By your logic, anyone running from the dragon instead of trying to fistfight it is evil. By default you have no responsibility to "probably die" for someone else.
I agree with
but his example is wrong because you'd be excused for protecting your own life.
If I had to twist it:
>easy but evil choice: don't warn people of the incoming dragon, they don't trust you, so you can loot the place and say "meh, not my fault"
>hard but good choice: convince people of the incoming dragon, they don't trust you, so you might still be here when the dragon attack
You could also spice up robin hood by having the rich person be a kind, charitable, and honorable individual instead of a raging butthole.
Then it isn’t Robin Hood you fricking neo-ape it’s just a fricking highway man
Fricking autistic moron.
>if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
lmao
If the decision is equally shit either way it's unreasonable to feel bad about your choice.
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
Remember that whenever you get into an argument over some inane skub, This is the kind of person you are arguing with.
No, he is the kind of person backing me up (I am a moron)
nu uh, you're smart
I'm the moron
holy shit anon please
>Moral dilemmas are dumb as frick because if there isn't an easy answer, the choice is fricking meaningless.
This, but the morally correct answer is the hard one.
if it's based on morality there's usually an obvious 'easy' answer and it is 'be evil'. This is probably the best way to craft a 'moral dilemma' for a character, you can be evil and it's easy, or you can do the hard bullshit because it's the right thing to do. If you're putting players in a situation where every choice sucks, that's not a moral dilemma, that's the DM making bad things happening and going 'you get to decide which bad thing happens', e.g., playing a Telltale visual novel. Usually this doesn't actually have an important impact on the story because bad shit was going to happen regardless, so putting the lever in the player's hands is just cheap pathos.
I think this is what was trying to say, but he failed.
Strictly speaking if there is a "right thing to do" it isn't a "moral dilemma". It's just a dilemma.
Also strictly speaking, you don't actually have to make the evil choice easier. You can make the good choice easier if, for example, you're dealing with people RPing evil characters. That is if you want the dilemma to be "get a reward" or "change how your character acts".
However you don't actually have to limit only one choice to having a reward. Both choices can hurt or help the RPer. You can even make how they will hurt or help obscure. Hire a guide or buy extra supplies is a proper dilemma. The point is choices should be of unequal value so RPers have to think about what they want things to play out in. Moral weight for RPing purposes should just be a part of that calculus.
Choose between 2 equally shitty things to do/have happen is and will always be dumb. There is no incentive to do either thing and no reason to be invested in the choice. But if one choice is obviously less shitty than the other, to reiterate, it isn't a moral dilemma.
the proper solution to the trolley problem is tie anyone who tries to present you with a hypothetical moral dilemma to the railroad tracks.
Okay but which track
The pre-set course against the 5 people, or the alternate track that only has the one guy?
What if the one guy is actually the guy who put the other 5 people on the track?
Which relieves the burned of murder more? The belief that it wasn't your choice to make, or the justice of killing a bad person.
That is you're dilemma OP, make you're character's choose what type of killer they are. There is no dilemma
you have to be eighteen to post on Ganker.
Bro, the answer doesn't matter by itself, it matters because your character is chosing one or the other, and this tells something about them that enriches the roleplay.
Nothing enriches role/roll play.
Writers rooms have more soul than any rpg in reality. Spreadsheets and DM Fiat is no panacea for the autism of the socialy inept.
>Writers rooms have more soul than any rpg in reality.
Yes, many writers rooms are shit now adays, but they are less shit than most rpg tables. Your not going to ever try to claim, dice, and spreadsheets improve that.
What a pointless hill to die on
But I'm not dying, and you gave up.
I have literally played an rpg, and then with the same group just wrote a story without dice and spreadsheets, and the story was better.
Where do you think I got this revelation?
You can literally see how rpg podcasts fake the dice and spreadsheets to trick fools into thinking its the game to make them buy useless splatbooks.
Why the frick would I believe a story you made up when you have every motivation to say positive shit about your stance. It essentially boils down to trust me bro
Don't trust me.
Try it.
Get your rpg group to write a single episode of one of thier collective fictions.
You'll see.
>Get your rpg group to write a single episode of one of thier collective fictions.
I'd end up with odd bastard of Mein Kampf and Oscar Wilde's pornographic prose.
Sounds cool
>listening to podcasts expecting quality
Might as well say books are shit after soely reading YA novels
Relative quality.
Better than a rpg session.
Reading comprehension.
“Trust me bro”
“My opinions are truth”
>literally say: don't trust me
>mocked for saying: trust me.
Try it you scared butthole
>do your own research
It’s amazing how you can know someone browses /misc/ simply by how they talk
I was an empiricist before Ganker, or /misc/ existed. You will be one before you die.
>doesn’t deny it
>still jacking himself off
Buddy if this is even somewhat close to how you write stories I can sleep easy knowing you’re so far up your own ass you can even read with how dark it is
You would never accept any denial, and might use it as proof anyway. You have no standard by which I could exonerate mysrlf in your eyes.
Even madmen are correct sometimes.
>You would never accept any denial, and might use it as proof anyway.
Man /misc/ really is just third world esl’s high off their supply now
That's not a /misc/ thing, thats what you're doing
>not a /misc/ thing
Who the frick are you expecting to believe this?
Who's will it be when /misc/ is gone in 100 years?
When any leader uses the same stats to make decisions are they just copying /misc/?
You're being silly.
You really aren’t helping your case of being able to write stories when you make up shit like that
>consipracy theorist
>can't make good stories
At least remain consistent.
Congrats you created a believable schizophrenic, I’ll give you that.
>stupid discord meme
>claiming victory in a fricking conversation
>personal story as stone fact
This is what being terminally online does to one’s ability to debate
Anon the fact that you keep calling them spreadsheets is just making it obvious you have no idea what you are talking about
Have you read past that point? I’m not even sure he knew what he was typing anon.
>it matters because your character is chosing one or the other, and this tells something about them that enriches the roleplay.
Except it doesn't because it's an artificially construct situation with artificially limited choices designed to force your character to transgress their normal behavior. It doesn't matter what you do, they will break their morals. It's railroading. There isn't some third option that your character would easily take, or if there is, there has to be a terrible punishment if you do to incentivize opting into the moral dilemma.
Asking a player whether they'd like to be kicked in the balls or have their character ruined is dumb as frick.
In fact, to emphasize just how fricking railroady and dumb it is, I'd like to point out that IRL moral dilemmas are often fricking resolved with fricking lotteries. People would rather let decisions like that be random than make a choice.
Moral dilemmas at best take agency away from people and at worst make them want to give it up willingly because they can't find investment in which choice is made. That's not enrichment. You don't learn anything about people put through them because forcing someone to make a choice means a shitty outcome is a foregone conclusion.
If someone IS invested in a particular outcome, they'll just do that shit. There's no dilemma. Those are the situations where you fricking learn about characters. Where choices matter. Where roleplaying is enriched.
You are conflating shit GMs and moral dilemmas. Just because you (or your past gms) can't think anything more nuanced than the trolley problem, it doesn't make your opinion true.
Amazing you’ve completely dismissed everything he said without even trying to actually debate anything
He made very valid points against shit gms not being able to handle moral dilemmas.
But we were discussing moral dilemmas , not shit gms, so i either let him derail the point or dismiss everything that is off topic.
To be fair the topic is pretty stupid and the only ones here now are you, me a scizo from /misc/ and a guy who gets off to animal cruelty
And with this answer you're definitely not contributing anything better than all the others, so welcome home i guess?
Oh I never cared anon, it’s all shit here, your shit too, why else would you be here? It’s all the same ritual posts and thread ad infintium with the same tired responses chasing after that dopamine rush from the first time you saw the thread.
You can’t even insult fricking asiatic moot or the mods anymore, they made that a banable offense, it truly is a fricking dump
The trolley problem isn't a moral dilemma. You pull the lever. Don't be a frickwit.
A moral dilemma is how to decide who gets eaten first on a lifeboat.
In fact, literally the only reason the trolley problem even seems like it could be a moral dilemma is the literal railroads.
If you were on a bus heading towards a crowd, it was too late to miss entirely, but you could still swerve towards the less dense edges, 10/10 people would fricking turn the wheel.
The Trolley dilemma is a terrible psychology tool, but it does work as a grit and intelligence test. Someone who is used to actual struggle will refuse either choice and find another solution.
The moral dilemma of ditching the 5e group to play an actual game, but will likely be left by themselves, or sticking with the 5e group and being posed with moronic bullshit like this instead of playing a game.
Deliberately constructed moral dilemmas are always moronic, and the only sensible response is to break them by doing something stupid.
Moral dilemmas do not exist. Morality is objective, clear, and simple.
Have a classic: Every year a blind pilgrim walks through the land. He always walks the same path, he knows the path by heart. One year a man living in the land digs a well, he digs it because he needed water for himself, his family, and their cattle. The next time pilgrim makes his annual walk he's walking to the well, by chance it was dug right in the middle of his usual path. A woman standing nearby sees pilgrim aproaching the well, but says nothing. Pilgrim falls into the well and dies. Who is to blame for pilgrim's death?
I'm surprised only one person died if the guy made an open pit and called it a well.
The woman. b***h just had to say three fricking words, not even move. The well owner is partially responsible for just apparently digging a big fricking hole with no barriers or anything, but it's not his fault.
Did it really never cross the pilgrim's mind that the land might change over the years and that he can't take the same route every time? Like, sucks to suck my dude, but you should've seen this coming.
he didn't see anything coming
That's not a dilemma, you can't fricking do anything. Do you not understand this concept at all?
It's a theoretical core of a dilemma, putting it in a game practically shouldn't be too difficult.
a) You can have party come to the scenario that just played out and need identify/punish the culprit.
b) You can alternate it to have party become involved directly - whenever they make some alternation to the terrain - dig trench around campsite, cut rope bridge to escape pursuers, fell trees to make boat, etc.- the annual pilgrim walks into it shortly after.
No, it's fricking awful in every way.
a) Makes no sense that they would be moral adjudicators, and even less sense that they would give any sort of a frick.
b) Puts them in the role of the well digger, means they're either not still there when it happens or can trivially prevent it.
Besides which the problem with the story is that everyone in it is absurdly stupid for no reason. Well guy digs a hole in the middle of a path and calls it a well rather than actually building a fricking well, blind guy relies on his eidetic memory and the assumption that the world never changes. The woman is just fricking useless. No one's actions make any sense, so why would you give a frick about the morality of it?
You have found out all of this after a thorough investigation.
By the laws of the land, the person found at fault (or their next of kin in the event of posthumous blame) must pay a fine.
The Pilgrim's family, the man who dug the well, and the woman who said nothing are now standing in court and awaiting your decision, as you are the judge. To whom do you assign the blame?
>To whom do you assign the blame?
As the king is responsible for maintaining the roads, I order everyone involved executed for lèse-majesté. How dare the frauds claim the king's roads aren't safe to travel. It's a conspiracy against the crown.
>law specifies a fine for the person "at fault"
>law does not specify what it means to be at fault
Why is this my (character's) problem? Why would I give a frick? Everyone in the story is to blame for being fricking moronic, and it doesn't matter to me who gets fined. It is a stupidly contrived non-issue.
Whats the dilemma here? Someone made an unsafe structure where he knew the disabled would be walking, with no safety measures? That's just cut and dry criminal negligence.
I will use this as a pretext for going to war with the neighbouring kingdom.
The pilgrim should be checking his path as he walks, it wouldn't surprise me if a blind ape used a stick the same way blind humans use canes.
That's easy: I kill the man for digging an unsafe well in the middle of the street, and his family for supporting such unlawful behavior. Then I kill the woman for not doing her moral duty in warning the pilgrim. Thankfully the pilgrim is already dead, so I don't need to think of an excuse to kill him, and so I loot the bodies and take ownership of these abandoned cattle. Finally I burn burn down the village and pillage it of everything valuable, because they didn't pay their taxes for the well water. It feels so good to be righteous!
Don't know if he was blind but he couldn't see that well
Don't make them. Let them form on their own.
The best way a moral dilemma affects a player character is when it ACTUALLY affects them.
>Solo kills random people during a job because "lol shouldn't have been there"
>Solo's kid or friend dies because they were in a bad neighborhood. Solo goes on revenge quest and easily finds the ganger and questions them why they did it.
>"Lol they shouldn't have been there"
baby orc problem. Done, now frick off and figure shit yourself.
>homebrew
>5e
The only moral dilemma here is why your players haven't left you to to play a better game.
What fuels you.
Is it people pointing out that you're a shitposting homosexual? Because that's a sad fuel.
Or do you genuinely think that your constant braindead shitposting will actually get people to stop talking about D&D here? Because, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but all you've done is help lower the population of this board, which means that people who like less popular games have a harder time connecting with other people, making the percentage of D&D threads rise even as this board continues to decline.
You're killing this board, and ironically just increasing the percentage of D&D discussion in the process. Hell, look at the zombie generals for non-D&D games that people struggle to keep bumped nowadays because there's no conversations to be had in them because everyone has left this board. And, people are leaving this board in no small part thanks to you and your constant, endless "POPULAR THING BAD" basic b***h shitposting, the shit you do even in non-5e threads.
If your goal is just to kill /tg/, I guess all I can say is that the grand irony will be that the last thing that will be here will be people discussing 5e, and all because you can't stop obsessing about it.
That's ironic coming from you considering that you are the one causing the shitshow here trying to turn /tg/ into your perfect playground just because people don't like your low effort shitposts in your lame attempt to "save" /tg/.
Far from a perfect playground, I'd settle for a living board, and even that's a high ask at the current rate of population decline.
Then you’ve done nothing but make things worse you piece of garbage
Frick /tg/.
You find out the Truth, but if you expose the Truth Society might Collapse
"It is the duty of the paper to print the news and raise hell." - Wilbur Storey
Pic related isnt. Kill ome to save five!
what if the one guy's your bro and the five people work in health insurance
Whatever helps you sleep, murderer.
It's a game anon. Let your players make their own decision limited only by their imagination, not just from the options you desire to satisfy your perverse curiosity.
I'll start by pointing out that a moral dilemma, excecuted poorly, is a terrible thing to make your players experience. Most moral dilemmas are rhetorical devices, and don't hold up when actually used in play. Take the trolley problem as an example. There are a lot of things (especially in a game with wizards and magic) that players might want to do here outside of the binary choice of pulling the lever. This opens the scenario up to actual "good" solutions, which ruins the point of the exercise. Trying to eliminate these is usually shoehorned and makes players frustrated that they are being forced by the scenario into making a choice to which there is no good answer, mostly arbitrarily.
The second problem is that your players are, I hope, playing characters. Characters often will have defined morality, especially in a system plagued with alignment like DnD. This means that a lot of things which would be hard choices for us are going to be relatively easy for the CHARACTERS that your players are portraying. This makes most classic moral dilemmas pointless, as the characters will be able to solve it easily even if the player is conflicted.
For those reasons, I suggest instead trying to give your players what I'll call "hard choices." These are situations which may have an actual good answer, but still challenge the players to examine their characters morality in an interesting way, and may require them to actually USE THEIR CHARACTERS SKILLS AND ABILITIES to resolve the situation. Think something similar to the game FTL, where there's a moral quandary but sometimes you have an actual right answer, and sometimes the answer is obvious but you have to do something immoral for the sake of your own survival.
Cont.
Cont.
One example of this in my own experience is when the party I was in was faced with an imprisoned god. He offered us nigh unlimited power and to destroy our enemies if we would just loosen the chains that bound him. Once released, which would happen eventually according to him, he would do terrible, unspecified things to the local region (which none of our characters had a particular attachment to). This would, he promised, happen far after all of us were dead if at all. Of the party, 3/5 refused to help, and 2 were interested in helping. This culminated in one of the "don't help the demon" characters shooting another who was attempting to release the chains without everybody's approval. This was a memorable enough moment for us that we all still fondly remember it 6 months later. Morally, this isn't that good of a choice. For our characters, this was a great choice.
Three things I recommend with any such scenario:
>Some degree of uncertainty: don't give the players all the facts unless they search for them. The outcome of any choice should be open to some degree of chance or doubt.
>Some way the party can intervene at great person cost. This can come in the form of losing considerable wealth, social status, or risking their person.
>The party is personally involved in some way, rather than acting as an outsider looking in on the situation. Don't make them the guy who finds the lever, make them the trolley operator.
A final point. Most of the examples in this thread are scenarios which being roughly the same way:
>the party, while doing general party stuff, encounters a scenario which they have no real stake in outside of having just walked up
While this is understandable, given the way OP posed the question, this is already dogshit writing and will turn off any player with a sense of taste. This isn't fricking skyrim, and random encounters shouldn't be dragging a hapless and unengaged party into their little settings completely separate from what they were doing before. The only person who can truly know how to integrate this kind of scenario is OP, and he hasn't provided any info about the setting, party, or anything else that could help us here. This is, as always, because OP doesn't play games and this is a bait thread.
>Take the trolley problem as an example. There are a lot of things (especially in a game with wizards and magic) that players might want to do here outside of the binary choice of pulling the lever.
Fireball?
Nobody said the wizard had a Lawful Good alignment.
Thats more my second point but yes.
This
A trolley problem with very strict and binary solutions often just ends up feeling like a railroad.
Worry more about presetting the players with problems and give them the freedom to interact with it. Is that cursed sword worth using? That's up to them.
A trolly is literally a type of railroad.
Carry the princess out or carry the gold out.
A puppy & a black man are in two separate chambers. If they want to get the treasure they have to drown one
What breed is the puppy?
Beagle
we drown the other
Can I get more treasure for drowning both?
No, in fact drowning both seals the doors
The moral dilemma is supposed to be about difficult choices, man.
The actual trick would be to mark the puzzle with some evil god's sign.
So when you do the right choice, you actually don't get the treasure.
>Whats a cool moral dilemma I can give my players in my homebrew 5e game?
There isn't such thing as a 'cool' moral dilemma. Moral dilemmas, by their nature, always fricking suck- that's why they're DILEMMAS and not "Moral funnies :)".
But, sure, here's a moral dilemma:
The party crosses the borders into a smallish kingdom that has known nothing but splendor, providence, bounty, and ever-lasting prosperity. The lands of this kingdom are fertile, there exists no diseases or parasites, love, peace, and happiness abound, and it is truly a land of milk and honey for all. A paradise made real.
The party eventually finds out that this societies' culture has adopted the tradition of Sin-Eating. What this basically entails is they draw lots and every 15-35'ish years (mileage varies of course, you'll soon find out why) a baby is chosen who will only exist to be locked up inside a dungeon and experience all the suffering and misfortune that would normally fall the kingdom and its' people. Everything bad is ritualistically redirected to this child: famine, pestilence, canker sores, injuries, even malicious desires and suppressive emotions like murder, hatred, rape, depression, anxiety, etc.
The party can choose to do something about this (the kingdom is only a few thousand people with basically no military): they can either let it slide (for as long as they're in the kingdom they too feel the effects/benefits of the act and it does objectively feel amazing) or they can save the child and 'doom' the kingdom (the sin-eater isn't actually catatonic or vegetative- if they were they wouldn't be able to suffer. They're very much aware of every awful thing that happens to them) to wither and die of withdrawal from reality.
As a Paladin, I'm obviously a deontologist and this is wrong, frick the kingdom
how is the party going to find out a secret like that?
I would simply walk away from Omelas.
This isn't a morale dilemma at all. It's a test to see if you're a communist bugman.
Save the sin eater. Nobody deserves to have the sins of others heaped upon them.
So you're the communist bugman, opposed to the central tenets of Christianity as you are?
As long as you're not trying to moralgay about it, all sorts of things can be done.
the prisoner you rescued from the dungeon was actually a succubus that was summoned and bound to a circle, and willingly revealed herself as such to you upon her release. she was actually quite nice, helping you defeat a group of dangerous and hostile beastmen that were threatening the nearby village, and thanked you afterwards for your heroic rescue with a non-draining smooch on the cheek before you went your separate ways on friendly terms, going as far as to tell you her true name that you might summon her again if you need her help
three mornings later, that punkass douchebag that shows up at the tavern every night to spit on the floor and be too loud was found as a desiccated husk on his bed. the townspeople are worried and fearful, for a succubus stalks the night, and could kill another man at any time
you have the power to deal with her any way you choose, because she trusted you with her true name. however, she does need to eat human life force, and you must keep your own strength up that you might continue to adventure
what do
Non issue.
that isn't an answer
It is. Try something more controversial.
right now you're presenting me with a pretty incredible one
I could either not post in the thread again when you clearly aren't looking for an actual engagement about the OP topic (good, but hard), or I could make this post and get another non-response (evil, but easy)
yes
Try making a actual dilemna next time (impossible)
"An intrinsically evil creature is stalking the night, but it's also hot" is not a moral dillema you fricking Black person.
I kill her
🙁
Sorry anon, you didn't specify what system. By default, succubi and incubi are demonic and thus ontologically evil
Summon her, invite her for dinner and drinks. Laugh about how the dickface deserved it. Offer to travel together, as she's much less likely to draw attention that way than staying in one town, and there should be plenty of bandits and other unsavory characters along the road.
And if she's up for a bit of theater maybe put on show of "slaying" the threat so the villagers don't try to bring in someone to hunt her down.
I return the cart
I return the cart.
The employees wouldn’t want me to take away their almost-break time of collecting carts. I leave it.
Their job is to wheel the carts from the return bay back to the store. Not pick up after lazy children in adult bodies.
Just because of this, I'm changing my answer and not returning the cart.
>Do you remove the need for the store to hire someone to return the carts, thus creating a job
Yes. Frick the poor.
>damn bro, that sounds complicated. Good luck
>party leaves
I don't care about this topic whatsoever. I'm just here to see people post funny trolley problem images.
>Whats a cool moral dilemma
It depends entirely on the characters and their morals. Are you a moron?
In one of our games, after cleansinga room of kobolds, we found a baby kobold. The paladin killed it because it was an evil race. He got his alignement reduced.
would Bahamut have supported or rebuked that Paladin?
What about Garl Glittergold?
Bahamut would have rebuked the Paladin, and if the paladin tried to sass him about kobolds always being evil he’d have brought up Meepo, a *lawful neutral*, canonical kobold who’s appeared in 3e, 4e, and 5e. Nothing, Bahamut would say, is born evil.
Gael Glittergold would probably just mumble something about how you shouldn’t kill babies, even kobold babies, because yeah they’re an evil race (although if pressed he’d be forced to admit that they’re not born evil) and we hate them but we’re also supposed to be better than them.
I prefer something with more depth.
We must imagine that the Ship of Theseus is the same ship
Stands infront of your Moral dillema. What are you going to do now?
Mating press.
The true champion of Mating press, frick your moral dilemmas I WILL SAVE MY STUDENTS
There's this one manga I read once called instant bullet. One of the characters backstories was that she made a drug that made people want to be good and kind. Unfortunately, it had the terrible side effect of being lethal long term. Of course this is pretty stupid in a normal world, but in fantasy world's where creatures are naturally disposed to good and evil? Makes for a fun dilemma. On one hand, if you let them live they'll be evil, but if you let them die, you'll be letting good creatures die.
The party's home base town (or other area they're connected to and have friendly npcs in) falls victim to a horrific plague die to magical curse bullshit. As they're trying to fix it they come across a limited supply of cure. Do they hoard it to protect themselves and ensure they're in shape to defeat the curse, or give it to afflicted NPCs? If they give some away, who do they choose to save?
This also works in other situations with limited resources. Maybe they get trapped in a besieged city, what do they do with any stockpiled food they have? You dock on a crippled larger spaceship about to fall into a sun, who do you take off and what do you give up to make room for passengers?
Make them decide if they would frick their dad to save their mums life.
In the second level of the Dungeon, an invisible stalker stays locked in a cage.
If you free her, she tells you in a soothing voice that she will help you out in exploring these floors before she leaves the dungeon, killing your foes.
All she wants in return is to be free to hunt, the purpose of her life, when the debt is paid
If you free her, npcs might be found dead. But also, the damned flesh golem roaming the corridos, too, will be easily felled.
The key is right by, and you might just free her if you wish. If you dont, some other party might.
Pocket the key, leave the beast to rot.
Moral dilemma: do you reply to every post in a Ganker thread or have consensual sex with an attractive adult of your preferred gender
Trolly problems inexplicably make me laugh
mass effect ending.png
Flick the lever back and forth fast.
this is now a trolley problem meme thread.
Flip the switch, obviously. Five innocent lives are far less important than your sweet car or the high you feel for fighting a murderous clown.
You misunderstand the question. You are Batman. The fact that you're going to save both the innocents and the Joker is a foregone conclusion. How do you justify it?
It's simple
I'M BATMAN
Bruce Wayne will pay for it, because frick that guy.
Bless you
>how do you justify
The massive construction delays aren't a problem that can be solved simply by throwing money at it. If an ambulance doesn't get to a patient in time because the trolley got fricked up, did you really make the best choice. What about all the commerce that has been impacted? How many innocent people were fired from their job for being late and thus consigned to poverty because you didn't let an butthole clown commit suicide by bus?
Simple. The manager asks the guests at the hotel to move to room 2n+1, where n is the name of their current room. This leaves ample room at the hotel for Sisyphus and his boulder. To apologize for the delay, the manager makes sure the minibar in Sisyphus' room is well-stocked and gives him a 100 dollar credit that can be used towards any other hotel services, including the hotel restaurant and on-demand video rentals. This ensures Sisyphus is happy for the duration of his stay at the hotel.
This was already posted earlier ITT
Bat answers this in a comic recently an elseworld but still
part 2
But what if they just want someone to die?
Wouldn't you want it to stay red, since that means it's going away from you? Changing it to blue would kill more people.
The people are not bound to the track, they are lying there willingly. It might be dangerous for the trolley to roll over the larger group, but if it's going at the speed to derail, the sharp turn onto the other track would derail it as well. The cow catcher on the front should keep it safe. I would let the 5 die, and then exact justice on the one at the top for illegally trespassing.
Frick asiatic moot and his little dicked mods I WILL insult you as no no amount of bans will stop me, I don’t care how much you want his tiny Asian dick he’s a shit owner
A well meaning paladin started an orphanage to care for all the baby orcs his GM kept throwing at them.
Now they're starting to grow up and the city is facing a crime wave as their nature asserts itself.
I fall as an anti paladin and shit up the game, the gm clearly wants this
A wandering prophet offers you an opportunity to join the service of the God of ethnic cleansing, Ay-serb.
Laying it on way too hard with the Scizo babble dude hiding behind it because you can’t make a point is pathetic and just ruins any valid points you may have had.
You think his points are bad but all you do is repeat your rhetoric.
Truth doesn't need a mantra.
All you’ve been doing is repeat yourself before you started Scizo babble and now pretending to be someone else. Is this seriously what you think being clever is? Jesus Christ no wonder the west is getting lazy if this is the intellectual level the rest of the world sits at
>I’ve actually forced him to image spam
No. I just went to work
Haha gay
"nature asserting itself" is a funny way of saying "the rogue taught them to do crime"
Save Everyone Involved. Which was Superman's take. Granted it might be missing the point to try that but heck, you gonna tell Superman he can't save everyone if he's on the scene?
I like putting trapped or injured horrible beastes in my game. Stuff like "You see a Catoblepas pinned to the ground at the neck by overturned wagon. Her breathing is ragged and with each breath more of the grass around her dies, what do you do?" as a roadside encounter. I think it's good. So far the parties have euthanized several animals, but it's been a tough choice thats way more memorable as a 'random encounter' than an easy combat with goons. None of these ancient creatures needed to die, they could all have been saved, and might never have seen another human or harmed anyone (or might have slain the PC that saved them). Add some juveniles for bonus points, a Catoblepas pup crying tears of deathsmoke next to their mommy.
I also just like any roadside encounter where moving past without interacting is an obvious option, since doing so strengthens engagement since the players themselves decided their destination is urgent, and not doing so IS engagement.
Serial killer behavior
Oh no I made my players choose to kill a monster oh wait thats literally every fantasy game except mine allows for the possibility that they players want to help the monsters instead because the monsters might have roles in nature. Aaah help I'm thiiinkiiing
All I wanted was to be railroaded into lazy trolly problem bullshit where I have to pick one of two evil things instead of deciding myself what is good and what us evil aah
Stop justifying your fantasies of animal cruelty gay
You are Tarquin the Human Bard. You spy a mountain lion on your way to the Dungeon of killing one hundred nameless goblins. it is clearly badly hurt. (you have healing word available, however, you can assume that it's probably been unable to hunt and is hungry. A healthy hungry mountain lion is obviously dangerous. you also have a well-stocked pack of usual adventuring tools, several other typical spells, a simpleminded but brave barbarian friend who is growing to trust you, and a diadem of truesight). The dungeon is less than a day away, so any spells you cast will be unavailable in the dungeon unless you delay an extra night. the path is safe to continue.
what do you do?
Take your chat gtp garbage and leave
A shame. You had the opportunity to play a rpg gaem and refused. You could have shared a screenshot with the next person to call you nogaems and had irrefutable proof that you had played once. who knows when you'll next find a Samaritan willing to GM for the likes of you.
What a bizarre post, I feel sorry you need to do this shut to stroke you ego pointlessly, especially considering it doesn’t even make sense
Nature is a b***h like that sometimes. If it looks like it'll heal on it's own I leave it be. If not I grant it a death more merciful than dehydration or gangrene.
I mean, you're pretty much always playing some sort of serial killer in rpgs: they're just called "adventurers". And if you're the GM, you're controlling whole groups of things trying to kill people.
I’m meant the poster, obviously most characters are yeah
Okay, yeah clearly, but then aren't we all?
No
Your villain is a killer who has haunted the region for years. Many of those he kills are evil, but just as many are obvious crimes of opportunity.
He is cursed by a sacrifical dagger he found long ago. By sacrificing a human he gets a charge. If he runs out he is sent to a hell where subjective days of torture pass for him, before resurrecting. Every day of the week he is given a description for the next sacrifice, skip a day and next will be more specific. 'Innocent', 'Drunkard ex-soldier', 'Just this guy' etc.
A sacrifice gets him a charge, reaching the end of the week without any loses everything and sends him back to hell for a while. Other abilities he has also use up charges; change appearance, teleport etc.
Part of the curse is that if he can get to a set number, he is freed. He has been trying very hard to use his power in as moral a way as possible but has repeatedly fricked up (or been messed with by the powers that be) before he's managed to succeed.
He is half mad with PTSD and guilt and would happily accept death, but can see no escape from his curse.
Your party gets involved in the quest when he is once again close to freedom, hired to stop him by a gentleman who seems oddly knowledgeable about him. If they choose to stop him they can enact a ritual which will permanently bind him to his hell. Naturally he will blow every charge he has to try to escape this as well as begging to be free of his torment: people he kill just die, he just suffers.
Incidentally if he does reach the goal he is congratulated by the dagger and transformed into the worlds most depressed demon; powered by trapped souls he's basically immortal but will submit if you *can* work out a way to kill him. If spared will dedicate himself to trying to do some good.
Pic not really related.
I punch the GM in the balls
I cast remove curse! What's the next quest GM?
Scenarios like this is how you get a party of "murderhobos" who are desensitized to all NPC suffering and don't care how awful their own actions are. Big deal burning down an orphanage, last session we helped a guy murder people to become a suicidal demon. How about this moral dilemma:
>you have to torture 10 million people to death or else Hitler comes back and he's invincible and on fire
>Htler will probably torture 10 million people to death, but it might be more or less and you can't kill him
Or this one?
>a trolley is hurtling toward half a dozen people but you could pull the lever and send it towards six people
If you don't get involved, little changes. There's no point in caring about being righteous or getting attached to anything, it all ends in mud and shit.
>bring Hitler back in space
>no oxygen for fire
>he lacks propulsion in a vacuum
checkmate gaytheists
This kind of thing is called "torture porn". It's about as good taste as scat and gore, which are not uncommonly part of it.
The party comes across a starving, sad vampire child. "Please sir, I'm so thirsty. No sir, not water. *Indicates fangs*"
Well, it ain't gonna suck itself.
Give them this one.
Communist America would be gigakino, THOUGH. The United States Socialist Republic would have unmatched bad guy aesthetics.
The villagers want you to help them burn down a farmstead where there is a family suffering from an unknown malady.
The family themselves is innocent of any particularly egregious sins, and think the other villagers are crazy.
If you help the villagers, you murdered innocents.
If you don't help the villagers, the sickness spreads to the rest of the village and everyone dies.
You can potentially cure the family but to do so, you have to ID their illness and create a cure, possibly getting sick yourself and possibly being unable to complete the quest before the disease spreads.
The disease has about a 25% mortality rate, concentrated among young children and the elderly. They have already lost a grandmother and a toddler. there are 6 remaining family members and 100 villagers total.
I ID the sickness, and then make it worse and help it spread to the village and other nearby villages. For the glory of Nurgle!
Why would burning down the farmstead necessarily contain the illness?
The farmers' livestock has also taken ill and the villagers suspect the cause of the sickness may be something on the farm.
>The villagers want you to help them burn down a farmstead
Not a quest, come back when you have a dragon or a damsel or something.
Yeah, usually you burn down farmsteads while on the way to rescue a dragon from the damsel, so actually being asked to burn one down is just too weird.
Honestly, it's pretty hard to have something like this and have it feel good.
The only example I can think of that I've used was in a Fallout 2d20 game I played recently.
They were in a farming town where due to increased taxation and demand from the NCR to raise for the war-effort at Hoover Dam. The town is under a food shortage and having to start rationing to make it through the winter. The Mayor, after consulting the Wasteland Survival Guide puts together a posse to try some of the advice to try and boost the towns food reserves.
One small interaction comes up fairly quickly, Mrs. Palmer one of the town ghouls, a farmer who helps organise a several of the town crop fields has an objection to how much of the food is being rationed. Most of the purified water and well preserved tinned food and supplies for cooked meals are going to the human residents, where the ghoul residents have been given old, irradiated pre-war junk food, tins of dogfood and other less agreeable produce. They recognise the pragmatic nature that they aren't vulnerable to radiation like the other townsfolk, but even if they are immune to radiation, they are not immune to the terrible taste and texture of that pre-war shit. They are still people who deserve the same as what everyone else has and want the party to convince the Mayor to arrange a more fair rationing scheme.
Naturally, if the party bring this concern to the Mayor, he explains that of course they have to give the ghouls the slightly irradiated food, if the normal townies eat too much they might become sick. The town is limited in what they have in supply and eventually someone is going to have to eat the irradiated junk and it's just sensible and pragmatic that the ghouls start on it, leaving more "fresh" food for the human townies, and he asks the party to convince Palmer to accept a more pragmatic rationing scheme.
Both sides have valid opinions, neither side is objectively wrong.
Anon... Ghouls in Fallout don't need to eat food at all.
What makes this an outsiders job? Like what kind of shanty town, with a mayor, is asking random passers to give input on their food rationing system?
It's also not a dilemma because it's not urgent, no one's gonna die, they just want to eat less crappy food sometimes. I dunno, go vote about it.
Publicly shame Mrs. Palmer because she is willing to endanger the health and safety of her neighbors because she wants tastier rations. Either she stands her ground and is ostracized or she recants her objection.
Save the world but the campaign ends anti-climactically vs let the world suffer but continue to have adventures.
WMD’s. Someone has one, is building one, or wants to use one, and your players are presented with the choice.
If you don't go into a large area and shout the world "Black person" over and over, the evil Lich will kill 500 orphans.
Can I shout Black person as he kills them?
yeah, that'd be kino
Are the orphans nigglets?
Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)?
Constructing a dilemma intentionally is irritating for players. It would be better to flesh out the setting world to give them meaningful choices among actors with ambiguous intention and ethics.
Players don't want to pull a lever to decide whether or not one or 5 random peasants die; but they'd be happy to investigate who the hell keeps tying them to the rail line, and if somehow he has a good reason, that starts to be a novel and interesting narrative.
Maybe he's got beef with the rail company; maybe he's tying them to railways to find people willing to save them, maybe the people he's tying to the railways aren't random and there's a reason he thinks they need to be snidely whiplashed.
Leave the straight philosophical hypothetical for your university courses, debate club or blog. People come to your table because they want to roll dice and play a game.Some of them want a story, but the trolley problem isn't a story.
Sadly, this is probably the best hat on /tg/ right now.
Did the wizard do good?
The game is Chronicles of Darkness
You're alone in a room, you've not eaten in hours and are getting hungry. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a defenseless child, with a set of delicious shoes.
Do you fight the child to eat his sweet leather booties, or starve and 2 points of aggrivated damage + lose 2 dots of willpower.
I eat the child and sell his sweet shoes.
Damn, outsmarted again.
Next dilemma:
You're alone in you're room at night, on the verge of falling asleep in a super comfortable bed, when suddenly you see see a figure standing in the corner of you're room.
It's the same child you ate before, but this time he has even better shoes (they seem maybe even magical)
Do you leave you're bed to steal the shoes but mess up your path to slumber, or accept the loss and continue on for what may be the best night of sleep of you're life
I posed my players a dilemma recently that I was proud of.
They were playing evil characters in a one-shot where their objective was to clear a town of its inhabitants within 24 hours, but there was a catch. The demon that ordered them to do this was a pedophile, so he specifically mandated that the lives of children were to be preserved as much as possible.
When they snuck into the town, they encountered a candlemaker running out of his shop, screaming that there was a fire. Unfortunately, there was an orphanage next door, and the only exit was blocked by a broken down carriage. The players then had to, as a group of very evil nasty people, save a bunch of children from a burning building so they could be raped later.
Everyone enjoyed it a lot!