Hi Folks,
Firstly: i'm back into D&D 5th edition after a dozen years (or two) of not doing any RPGing at all and traditionally being more of a Warhammer / Call of Cthulhu guy, so congrats to everyone involved in making this D&D so bloody accessible for me and my players.
I have a scenario called 'Port Wither' which is essentially Casablanca, on the knife edge between an Erathian cult operating beneath an 'Erathian College' that is obsessed with the destruction of all half casts in the name of some kind of civilisation and a Slaver/Pirate organisation that finds half orcs to be the easiest prey for the greatest profit.
It's designed to challenge the players morality and pragmatism, but I find myself at a loss when two of my players whose character sheets say 'Good' on their alignment (and one of whose sheet says 'stick up for the vulnerable') allow a naked and very damaged Erathian priest to be tortured at the hands of the slavers without intervention. I may have failed to indicate that all Erathians aren't necessarily ALL racist, just the ones from this particular cult, and generally messed up the mise en scène as a DM, but even so.... good shouldn't allow torture right?
I don't particularly want to rules lawyer or mess with XP or whatever, but would like to talk to fellow DM's about how to handle people playing out of alignment?
Cheers (also, sorry, new to here, please direct me to appropriate threads or locations if this isn't it or if i'm saying something best addressed elsewhere).
PxT
paulxthompson wrote:
If you set up the slavers as an overwhelming force who are spoiling for a fight, that would deter me from interfering, too - and I play a Paladin. (I would take mental notes of who deserves to die, later when the odds are in my favor, due to the eyewitnessed guilt.)
I have to question your premise though. Why do you want to challenge morality and pragmatism when you just recently got back into the game? This sounds like an invitation to hurt feelings and confusion over the goal of play. If you have already muddled into a situation where somebody wants to yell "GOTCHA - You broke your Alignment !" then you need to review your background assumptions with your players.
The 3e Players Handbook spent several pages discussing the difference between Lawful Good, Neutral Good, and Chaotic Good. Alas it does not also discuss Stoopid Good, which seems to be an alignment commonly inflicted on other people's character(s).
Nice one Iserith - rewarding but not punishing seems to be so in keeping with the whole nature of what I understand so far of D&D5E - which seems entirely based on the idea of giving people choices rather than restrictions. I still do wonder how story wise, (rather than rules wise) I might feed their decisions back into the game though... I suspect a levelled up survivor of torture could become a formidable opponent in a few sessions time 
Did you have a discussion with the players about the internal monologue their characters felt when they witnessed this torture? Motive and action both account for a character's alignment, but as DMs, we mostly only get to witness the action part. Perhaps they felt horrible about the torture, but powerless to stop it. This doesn't make them not-good (just a little craven). Even if they could have stopped it and chose not to, their motivation for inaction is probably not cartoonishly evil, "I want to watch the Erathian scream."
Yeah, BRJN I think they've made those mental notes too, so I expect them to return to the scene of the crime with that in mind. You're right to question my ambition with trying this kinda thing on my first go back in the rodeo, but I would never be doing that kinda 'gotcha' thing though - it's not that kind of group, but if I didn't feel i'd got in a bit over my head i'd not be here.
I would be interested in hearing of your experiences with Stoopid Good mind, as it seems like a concept I can learn from before experiencing it too hard first hand :-)
To clarify: my question isn't so much how to rules up the situation, but maybe more about how to storytell and DM the transition of a player into another alignment if it's more suitable for them.
Nevvur - yeah, very tempted to ask those questions of them, but am worried that if I get involved in too much meta discussion it would reveal too much or change the direction of the game: I sort of want to encourage a feeling of 'we are masters of our own destiny' type of game, and feel that too much talk about it would change that. I guess all game designers have this tension between open world and railroaded story.
You can encourage the players to be curious about each other's characters and engage in directed interaction with each other, again, by offering Inspiration or XP. I refer to these as "transition scenes." When the action has died down and there are a few moments for planning and introspection (often during a short or long rest), you or a player can just pose a question you'd like to see answered about one or more characters by way of the characters talking about it. If the players engage on the subject and answer the question you pose, offer a reward for everyone who participated. When the question is answered, the scene is over and move on to the next scene of action and conflict.
iserith, I like your idea of 'directed' transition scenes and I'm now wondering if I can bring into play an NPC to encourage them to talk to each other and play this kind of conscience and act as the director in directed scenes rather than me as DM. A sheriff or a tavern owner who they respect - I do have a couple in my back pocket from previous sessions I can maybe reuse including a trader in fake magical items who may have some of the real stuff too...
Sometimes players can also get into what I call "Boxed Text" mode where they feel like their characters can't do anything even if they want to. I don't know the details of your group, but this will be particularly true if in the past they've played a lot of canned adventures or in a living campaign.
The other advice though is good. Use inspiration as a carrot to reward RP. The stick isn't normally necessary (unless the acts are pretty egregious) and should always be used with plenty of warning.
I'd also throw in the NPC directed conversation to try to get a better feel for what the player's were thinking and to encourage action in the future.
You may also just want to discuss it with the group offline. Getting a feel for a DM and a group can take time, in certain cases it's just best to take it on directly. In addition, how much you value alignment as a tool is pretty much up to you and your group.
Yeah, it's been very helpful joining this forum already and this is only my seventh post :-)
I don't want to have sticks at all and am all about the carrots, my problem isn't with my players at all. I'm not about lawyering it and all about the storytelling: which I think I got wrong.
It's with my design of a scenario that went astray - clear that it could only really work with an expectation that people would go a particular way according to what their character sheets said and implied. As it was they didn't so I kinda had to fudge things which felt a bit unnatural, but next time I want someone rescuing, I think i'll have to rely on multiple types of motivation rather than just "I kind of assumed they'd do that, because they're meant to".
I'm sure they'll be back to kick those slavers asses though - we'll see on Monday :-)
paulxthompson wrote:
He wasn't a bad guy FrogReaver, he was just a guy who belonged to the wrong club being tortured by the real bad guys. It wasn't that they failed to kill him it was that they weren't interested in saving him :-)