Moral Dilemma/Decay in Ravenloft

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Five
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Moral Dilemma/Decay in Ravenloft

Post by Five »

I'm taking a break from writing RL riff-raff for a bit (though my notebook remains ever-handy) but an idea popped into my head just the once and I'd like to put it to you all as a community sound-off sort of thread. The title says it all: do you highlight moral dilemmas in your RL? If so, what sorts of dilemmas do you focus on? Is moral decay a thing that you as a DM track, maybe as a precursor of sorts to Powers Checks? Or maybe its for spits and giggles, just to see which way the DPs blow your PCs...;)

Either way, this thread is not meant to grind down as a "Powers Check or not?" kind of debate thread; it's meant to be a community tool to probe, plunder, and provide ideas for the topics at hand. My examples will be more rhetorical in nature, but as always feel free to buzz in and drop your coin on the counter, if you feel the need. It's all good.

I'll start things off with a simple example, and I'll probably pop in now and again and hopefully provide more complex ones in the future.



Example 1.



You and your mates, all guests at a relatively secluded country estate, are just about convinced that your eccentric (at best) benefactor and Lord of the Manor is something other than normal. One of you has taken it upon yourselves to look into his comings and goings and it appears that A) he frequents the lower level of the estate, B) it is during all hours of the night, and that C) its entrance is exhaustively singular. Yet that is the sum of the equation before you as any attempt to investigate further is blocked by the lord's mentally-retarded servant, who seems to a guardian of sorts in regards to this particular area of the estate. By day there is too much pedestrian traffic in the form of the other servants' hubbubbery to garner enough time to get in undetected.

Mindful of your employers, and more importantly of the grief-stricken families of the missing children, this could be the break you need to blow this case wide-open.

Do you attempt to force your way past the simpleton, subduing him as is necessary? Do you pollute him with alcohol from his master's stock in the hopes that he'll pass out for the duration of your proposed investigation? He does seem to enjoy the drink, given his ever-present pungent odor...

Or, is it better to just demand an explanation of Lord Jeandisse himself during daylight hours? The element of surprise may be lost, but what if you're wrong? It's unseemly for guests to skulk around their host's home, and a Lord's of all places!, yet to make such demands requires a social acumen that may be beyond your group's current skillset...


Risks: breaking various laws, jail/dungeon (and premature end to critical case/investigation), becoming social outcasts (beating up/"poisoning"/taking advantage of a mentally-challenged man), becoming marked persons (wealthy antagonist), blowing cover on a critical case/investigation, ...

Rewards: possible suspect or clue in critical case/investigation
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

- Jean Pierre Sarrasin, "The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville"
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High Priest Mikhal
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Re: Moral Dilemma/Decay in Ravenloft

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Standard Recommendations: A group should agree on a common idea of what's considered good and evil before the first play session. There will always be things that come up during play that weren't considered and even what's considered acceptable may not stay that way once it happens in-game. It's also a good idea to let the players explore their ideas, no matter how odd or silly they might sound, so long as everyone is comfortable with it and it doesn't ruin the mood.

There are those of us who have players who just love to buck traditional ideas and go off on some truly bizarre paths that games like D&D don't really touch on, leaving it to the individual groups to adjudicate. Thankfully I'm a fan of other RPGs, which do touch on themes like my two examples just love to act out. The Mormon Corridor isn't as conservative as the Bible Belt, but our collective experiences have inspired some outre ways of exploring morality.

One player in my group is notorious for her character's prurient behavior, things that can and do make many NPCs uncomfortable in more "conservative" domains like Mordent, Borca, and especially places where the Lawgiver is the dominant religion. The things she does can certainly push the limits given that she's a wilder and loves to use her powers to cause some well-intended mayhem, but she knows where to draw the line and actually actively pursues good in her own bizarre way, even if it's not what many might consider "good." In her case it really boils down to intent. Her antics are meant to help people break out of their rigid thinking and reconsider what they believe about the world. Especially if they're blinded by things like social class or personal biases. She certainly lives up to the ideals of "chaotic good" and I'll leave it at that.

Another player is playing an ex-paladin who's struggling to redeem himself and hide the fact his character is now a blackguard, portraying the pain of those who regret their evil but are ultimately doomed because of their own weakness. In his case, his character is gripped by religious zeal and lashes out at those he perceives to be immoral. He actually does some good but the evil committed can't be washed away so easily. It's actually an excellent way of highlighting how Ravenloft's obscuring of moral alignment through supernatural means can cause even the righteous to stray. The fact his character has hidden his fall for so long (going on two years of play) creates all sorts of dilemmas when he knows he should do one thing, but his religion calls for the opposite because people involved are "heathen sinners." The player knows his character will eventually become an NPC once he's failed five powers checks, and I've had to add up his chances of failure for each act because the dice just seem to favor low numbers when a powers check comes. Currently he's failed three and is turning into a faceless, voiceless monstrosity tormented by his unwillingness to follow his conscience when it conflicts with his religious views.

The other three players haven't done anything I can recall off the cuff. But they certainly do things that would turn heads regarding "traditional" ideas of good and evil actions every now and then. Especially if things have been particularly grim in the story (we recently finished a story based directly on the the deeper conflicts in the original Frankenstein story) and they feel a need to inject an element of the screwball to lighten things up. :?
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Re: Moral Dilemma/Decay in Ravenloft

Post by Cromstar »

I don't normally highlight the moral choices to be made for the PCs...but for my campaign in Gothic Earth, I try to make sure there's a some level of moral choice, explicit or implicit, in pretty much every adventure. Only the simplest of side-trek adventures allow the PCs to skate through without having to make some kind of moral choice. And then I let those moral dilemmas stand on their own. The players, even if they don't realize it, are constantly being forced to make choices, and I simply let them do it without any kind of interference on my part. On rare occasions I'll talk to a player or players after a session about why they did the things they did to better understand their reasons.

As an example, I'm currently adapting the Dungeon module adventure with the doppleganger plant (inspired by the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie/Robert Heinlein novel The Puppetmaster) for my campaign. The general gist of the story doesn't really have much of a moral choice: the plant is bad and there's no real way to justify NOT destroying it. But, there are other, less obvious choices to be found, such as:

-the corrupted pod people CAN be saved, but there's no guarantee and there's no way to know this for sure, so do the characters feel free to kill them?
-the burgomeister (mayor in my version) has been driven mad by radiation poisoning (and the plant). He's clearly insane and a victim of the events happening. But his family also murdered their servants and raised them as the undead and while he did not have a hand in that, he does keep the undead servants around still in the mansion...so what do the PCs do with the mayor when they finally encounter him?
-there are some very evil people in town who aren't doing a lot of evil stuff, especially during this adventure; they are, under other circumstances, thieves who rob people who travel through town, but there may not be any way to prove this, so if the PCs learn of this, what do they do?

None of these have 'right' or 'wrong' answers...and honestly, under the circumstances of Ravenloft and Gothic Earth, there are many moral dilemmas like this. Bad things happen, sometimes you have to make choices without all the information, and other circumstances that leave the PCs to make decisions where they can't fully control the outcomes are common. And I won't be surprised if the players never realize that these are moral dilemmas they'll be taking positions on. Which, honestly, is a lot like real life: we make a lot of decisions in our lives that we don't always realize ARE decisions. Or we underestimate exactly what it is that we are actually deciding on.

To me, its about putting the PCs in a position where they have to make a choice, regardless of what the choice is...the idea is to force the players to tease out the standards and morals their characters are living by. It takes an overt, deliberate, and usually premeditated (on the player's part) act for me to start getting into 'should I be looking into power checks or not?' territory. Mostly, I just wait and watch and try and set things up to test characters in the future. I take notes of things I think are interesting or important, especially if I notice a pattern of behavior I can exploit or explore.

Example:

One of my players is a New York City lawyer. In the first adventure, everyone was individually invited to a dinner by a mutual acquaintance they all shared. Upon arrival, the host was nowhere to be found. After meeting and having dinner with the others (and then a post-dinner run in with a killer), the lawyer's player realized his character had no reason to stay. He wasn't interested in this 'investigation' stuff and so headed for the train station. When his every attempt to head off by himself resulted in the killer attacking him, he reluctantly joined the investigation. Since then, his character has always been cautious, and has an attitude that amounts to 'guys, let's not get involved in this stuff. There are PROFESSIONALS like the police who do this thing, so please let us not stick our noses where they don't belong.' Its perfectly in character for him, so then the other PCs just drag him into each adventure over his protests.

So I've decided eventually he's going to have to make a choice (if he doesn't make it on his own before I can present it to him), and will wait until I can manage to finagle an adventure to the point the decision is thrust into his face: he's going to literally get handed an offer from something/someone evil to drop everything and walk away from the adventure and the party. He's going to have to quit...or commit. And if he quits, knowingly leaving the party to possibly die horribly...well, then I'll have a starting point for his path of darkness.
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