When D&D Players PIck a Side

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#inspiration #Adventuredesign

[@razorboy251]

I don't try to go out of my way to create moral dilemmas - my players usually create them all on their own!

[@BanditsKeep]

I hear that 😊

[@kontrarien5721]

"Not all problems are solved by the paladins; sometimes they're solved by the rogues. " Gonna lift that line for my own group. Though . . . I think for most the opposite advice is what's needed!

[@satsebeli]

Definitely the opposite for most of my groups 😭

[@SusCalvin]

The secret police in the lawful barsoomian city-state my friends created are thief-classed. They are the ones who sometimes break parts of the rules to preserve the greater system. Their mandate is to seek out vampires, enemies of state, conspirators against the satrap etc. Their big honking fortress is more visible than their agents.

[@BanditsKeep]

Ha ha, true - works both ways

[@SpiritWolf1966]

I enjoy all of Bandit’s Keep videos

[@BanditsKeep]

Why thank you!

[@funwithmadness]

I love creating problems where the players have to make hard choices that, regardless of how they choose, they know it'll come back to bite them.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure

[@solomani5959]

Same. But I don’t do it EVERYTIME.

[@funwithmadness]

@@solomani5959 Me either. It's too hard to come up with good conundrums. Plus, as it seems you are implying, it gets repetitive.

[@chrisragner3882]

The joy of role playing. I convinced the players to join the BBEG because I shared a backstory that sounds plausible. It was full of half truths. It got what he wanted and the party has an adventure to embark upon that will take on an evil. An evil the BBEG had a loose alliance. If they eradicate them then he isn’t concerned. And if the party proves useful then he’ll keep on finding ways to manipulate them.

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice

[@justinblocker730]

I'd love it for the party to recruit the bandits and have them work for the party, they can clear an old fortress and expand their highwaymen empire. Start bribing guards and smuggling slaves. Eventually become the shadow rulers of the whole kingdom if they wish. I had many characters offer the party to join them instead of killing the party, they're better than the minions they killed after all. Seeing Luke move toward Vader after he cut off his hand isn't likely, but would get a party out of that air tunnel.

[@BanditsKeep]

Could be interesting

[@AZOTkirill1]

After playing B2, I got a sense that alignments are very symmetrical. Given reaction bonuses for character alignment, players might as well live in the caverns of chaos, raiding the keep on the borderland with other monsters. The adventure is structured perfectly for this kind of campaign.

[@BanditsKeep]

That would be a twist!

[@chrisragner3882]

My evil foes and villains are grey in the spectrum of black vs white, evil vs good. Everyone has their reasons for being, wants and desires.

[@BanditsKeep]

So reasons justify the means?

[@chrisragner3882]

Yes. Evil for evil’s sake is no longer justified. Maybe when we were kids, not anymore. So I make painstaking efforts in developing NPCs. My players think I shouldn’t go to such an extreme. But if I make a simple encounter of a troll living under the bridge, eventually they will begin asking questions as to the how’s and why’s. I have become able to create a simple answer in a few minutes and develop deeper reasons later. So, the troll wandered through a path in the shadow realm to this world. He found this watering hole that he’s made home. It’s good fishing. Locals who encountered him may have gotten off on the wrong foot causing enmity. But left alone he is harmless. However, maybe a hag befriends him and sets him out on jobs that pays him in food and shiny things. Then there may be cause in the future. If the party befriends the troll then he could lead them to the hag or to the path to the shadow realm where some kids may have wandered off. Gosh, I just came up with an adventure with this simple exercise! Grey is good!!!

[@zubbworks]

@@chrisragner3882 Sounds cool, is way more depth than, the troll noticed humies often go over the stone path, they taste good.

[@TheMarvelousmike72]

I have a very well developed omniverse, with a single benevolent diety and a host of Immortals (similar to Mystara) that either serve him or are rebellious. This sets up a really good law vs. chaos dichotomy, with law being defined as the 'natural law' and good, so there's not a lot of moral ambiguity. Clerics (and Paladins) that aren't in step with their alignment find that they can't call upon their power source. The origin of all the monsters and races are well defined, and most "monsters" are the souless corruptions of the chaotic immortals, so there's no hand-wringing about whether they should be killed or not. Like Tolkien and CS Lewis, I believe that actual good and evil are important parts of the story. If my pcs want to be villains, I'm cool with it, but they know they're being evil, and we dont dance around with concepts like a gray area.

[@mykediemart]

Chaos, we have blood and skulls cmon over I like framing the struggle between the two, that said I don't run evil groups

[@elgatochurro]

Law and Chaos arent evil, nor good.

[@BanjoSick]

In B/X they are

[@SusCalvin]

WFRP used a variant of Chaos-Law alignment with more stops along the way. It's still a line but there are more dots along that line than three.

[@SusCalvin]

@@elgatochurro Stormbringer/Elric! went with that. It also meant most ordinary peope and animals do not have a strong alignment. The champions of Law and Chaos are rare exceptions. They're described as alien. It is hard for humans and elementals and creatures of the world to grasp this vision of the cosmos and the rules in place. In game mechanical sense, a character can rack up points in Law, Chaos and Balance. All at the same time if so happens. You will likely not start with a lot. It measures both where you tip towards, and how strongly you tip.

[@elgatochurro]

@@SusCalvin Its a shame but yes, the damn copying of it without doing it justice made me think it was boring... it was just never worked on to the same extent as the inspiration they stole from.

[@vincentmiller9555]

Always thought provoking! Love the videos Daniel

[@BanditsKeep]

Thanks!

[@tonyb9290]

I run the gamut of good evil etc at the table, including monster babies, which usually the players try to raise to be “good” if sentient or useful if not. One of them took owlbear cubs, raised them, took the bulk of her gold and hired a bunch of people to help her capture or bear cubs (usually killing the parents because cubs were easier to train, but didn’t waste the parents carcasses either). Founded a village based on owlbear ranching, they are a mounted society which is a cultural feat you get from being from that village now, with a high or low chance depending on class of starting with an owlbear, and alternate chance of a warhorse. Other times they almost got a pair of gnol cubs to adulthood, and once a pair of kobold hatchlings (though they had a straight up fight about killing the babies), who became their characters apart of a legacy campaign. They’ve made deals with litches, devils, elementals, it’s always a guess as to what they will do next

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool

[@underfire987]

Great video as always man great concepts, I always aim to create situations and problems for players to problem solve and overcome, though making a more sandbox world its highly rewarding when these come into the game naturally.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure, thanks!

[@freddaniel5099]

Very interesting and thoughtful topic. Makes me think back over my own D&D games which started with running episodic location based adventures that began when the PCs arrive at the entrance and end when they return to the surface loaded down with gold. I have run sandboxes, hexcrawls, adventure paths and urban crime settings and those all presented more "problems" and therefore were less fun for me to run than the location episode adventure which I have returned to as my prefered style.

[@BanditsKeep]

I do enjoy a nice dungeon crawl

[@stevefugatt7075]

I don't deal with murder hobo types. Actions have consequences.

[@BanjoSick]

If you are traveling in a dark age type of society you can get away with stuff.

[@BanditsKeep]

True

[@SusCalvin]

@@BanjoSick In points of lights settings there is no effective law outside a few regional hubs. The PCs enforce any code they want. People who leave a hub are outside the law, they can banish you from entry or send bounty hunters but little else. This goes both ways. If they meet 20 ogres asking for a toll or get crumped, they can't fall back on any far-off authority. Here and now, those 20 ogres are gonna enforce their rules on you.

[@BanjoSick]

@@BanditsKeep even though it can help to employ the positional modifiers from AD&D 1E to make the PC’s feel consequences of their actions against simple villagers. +2 on attacks from behind (+ no shield- or Dex-bonus) can really elevate a mob of level 1/0 adversaries.

[@SigilWizardClassic]

We didn't even get through session 0, and my group has already chosen chaos. lol This'll be fun.

[@BanditsKeep]

Have you run a chaos focused group before? How did it go?

[@dking6021]

so I played a low tech (dark age style game, post zombie apocalypse) regular magic westmarches style game that ended a little while ago, I took a group from it and am running it in a higher tech (16-1700s) lower magic world (Only humans), which just discovered a new continent, they are exploring and the moral dilemma which I think will develop is that they now have two countries they as players are really invested with that will come to blows, I am getting them into a more compromised moral position by starting them with encountering nonhumans non traditional species/races, so orcs and beast people. As they push further and further into the unknown they will be lauded by their home country but at some point they will run into elves, dwarves, and eventually humans, and they will need to choose which side of history they want to be on. Colonizer, or colonized.

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool

[@Conan_Burns]

Always love your work mate. I feel that evil is always masked as a good. Trying to reconcile that with the modern players' morals is the challenge I face, for they often confuse the evil in the game as a good

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed

[@CaptCook999]

Some groups of characters I have played with have had to make deals with unsavory types. An Anti-Paladin being one of them. Most of my characters are neutral thieves. So I usually got the job of making the deals with them. Sometimes it does take a Rogue to smooth things out.

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed

[@keithkannenberg7414]

On one of your earlier points, I think it's entirely reasonable to send the town guards after the players if they're being murder hobos BUT it ought be telegraphed to them just as much as with a really deadly trap. Fifty high level guards shouldn't swoop down into a quiet, isolated village when the players kill an NPC, like they might in the starter area of a video game. But if the PCs are in town and there's an obvious presence of heavily armed guards patrolling the streets then having the guards appear make sense. Regardless, it's probably also a good to talk to your players (out of character) first.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure

[@DeadMarsh]

I’ve been playing the black sword hack solo, and it’s been an exercise in Law and Chaos. Great video and I am 💯 onboard with how you go about Law and chaos. I’ve played at some great tables that have that ONE guy….lol.

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool - I haven’t messed with black sword hack but I have it somewhere in my “to read” list

[@DeadMarsh]

@@BanditsKeep It’s probably the most well designed rules-lite game I’ve played. The new chaos edition has dedicated solo rules and Oracle. There is a usage die (D6) you can use for special combat attacks. If you roll a 1 or 2 you lose the die and become “doomed” (roll with disadvantage) The forces of chaos have noticed you. It’s very cool and the art is awesome.

[@QeepingItReal]

Great Vid. Your PCs are lucky bro.

[@BanditsKeep]

Thank You!

[@AuthoritativeNewsNetwork]

Going to have to re-read the 3-9 alignments.

[@BanditsKeep]

Each version if D&D seems to have a slightly different take

[@SusCalvin]

WFRP did a weird stretched-out three-point alignment. You could be a few more degrees towards Order or Chaos. It's still linear, but there are more dots along the line. Stormbringer/Elric! had an alignment system where you accumulate points of Law, Balance and Chaos. Most people have none, Law and Chaos is above the daily struggles of man. Some people have very high levels in one, sometimes both.

[@AuthoritativeNewsNetwork]

@@SusCalvin interesting. No my thought was more, people don't like "evil" characters because they feel its synonymous with "being an asshole" and not merely being on this side of cosmological chaos and evil.

[@88Grabarz]

In my group players generated ongoing moral dilemma by them selfs and it was: humans vs nature, but in an "eco" kind of way. Half of the group (two dwarfs and an elf fighter) was ok with chasing gold, personal gain and growth of the civilisation and the other half (gnome, druid, werecat) was in favour of protecting the wilderness. I remeber then debating if it was ok to attack trolls in their lair (treasure, reward and safty of humans VS killing "inocent" trolls just performing their role in the ecosystem). It was frustraiting at first, but I now appreciate the potential this conflict have for my group. I plan to center my next campaign around this civilization vs wilderness conflict doing my best to show the best and the worst of both sides. And trolls will be the big part of it xD

[@BanditsKeep]

I definitely like sone tension - as long as it is in good fun and you don’t reach the “why are we even adventuring together?” Stage

[@davidbrown9414]

What if the local authorities are evil? Lawful evil.

[@macoppy6571]

Then they clearly are puppets to a 1d6 1)Fey Lord 2)Mind Flayer 3)Aboleth 4)Devil 5)Mummy 6)Dragon

[@SusCalvin]

Then your paladin knows the mandate of Heaven has been rescinded. It becomes the duty of all paladins to revolt.

[@BanditsKeep]

That would depend on what the PCs want to do. My group would figure out a way to remove the evil from power most likely.

[@UltraDonny5000]

The biggest moral dilemmas in my games tend to come up in the most unexpected places. I didn't think the party would question stopping the mass execution of slaves but they discussed it and walked away where other times i present a two doors scenario and they practically shoot the hostage without a thought.

[@BanditsKeep]

Players will surprise us that is the truth

[@rethix5955]

To me, murderhobos are always inherently out of control. Unpredictable, not exclusively evil. Opportunistic, without being vultures. They live in the moment, more often than chasing a lead for hours on end. They're ''oh, piece of candy''. Morally flexible has always been my personal go-to's, both playing and leading. In the game i'm currently playing in, half of the party's been arrested by the guard several times already. And, we've yet to even leave the city we started in.

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice

[@zubbworks]

Had a thought. If the players want to do whatever they want, if they can, let them. They pilliage the town, well, now it's bankrupt, and ruined. There are no more items in town to steal, let alone buy. All the people have left, or are crazy old ladies cackling in a field eating a turnip. IDK I've never DMed so IDK.

[@BanditsKeep]

That’s certainly a possible result. PC actions should definitely affect the world.

[@kaomera]

apropos of nothing but for years (and decades ago now, lol) I did try to instill in the players that NPC patrons would not be acting in the PCs best interests (think the stereotypical cyberpunk / shadowrun Mr. Johnson) as a way to encourage them to develop their own agenda and come up with their own plans

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed

[@israelmorales4249]

Great video! Those are great advices, the problem in my case is that my player doesn't trust in me any more...well that sounds dramatic, i man they are in state of paranoia becaiuse llways expect a villnous thing of my npcs....my b i use "Dracula" so many times..any way thx again

[@BanditsKeep]

Ah yes that can be tricky, my players are paranoid as well, though in over 10 years I think I once had a backstabbing NPC (and it was in a module - and they didn’t backstab the players directly)

[@aubreymorris9183]

Off video topic question: what is a decent outdoor random map generator that is capable of doing a large swamp area of say 200 square miles in a 1-5 mile per hex map? Google is being useless as usual and only shows me discussion boards that are not helpful either. I don't have a budget to purchase maps, neither do I have a computer, other than my phone. I do have someone who is willing to print out anything I can send to them. Maybe someone will be willing to help me out with a link or 2. Thanks very much.

[@BanditsKeep]

Hopefully someone will be able to help, I don’t have any resources for that.

[@scottmarsh2991]

Alignment is not a reliable predictor of character conduct.

[@BanditsKeep]

Is anything?

[@SusCalvin]

A space demon offered us treasure to leave it alone and go bother its equally awful rival on the other side of the continent. We huddled, counted its offer and thought "If this weirdo can offer this much up front, how much more do they got under the bed? With that we can easily fund an expedition to the other twat." Even hexcrawling around around a region gives them some connections over time. They will get to know people in the important hubs, other wanderers who are out and about and factions with a regional reach who will be around even if they move ten hexes away. Playing a one-off adventure after another makes connections harder. Player characters are effectively a faction in the making, or they start off as the trailblazers and vanguard of an off-map faction. The PCs are on the side of the PC faction. Others start to think of them as a faction, like "the danish" or "the feds" or "the chimneysweeps". They will grow a faction reputation, if NPCs see one dane doing something they might assume this dude represents the rest.

[@BanditsKeep]

With very high level PCs they definitely are a faction.

[@SusCalvin]

@@BanditsKeep I still think domain mechanics can be started early. Like a shared project the crew works on together. It probably starts small, like a mystery cult, a street gang, a detective agency, a free trader crew etc. You are a faction the same way a gnoll tribe with 40 members is a faction. How many allies you got and how well you have built a regional network matters more on a faction scale. More than simply your level. A crew of level 4 dudes who can unite the tribes and ally with the largest hive-city of the area can do a lot.

[@BanditsKeep]

@@SusCalvin for sure - of course I would say the PCs lead the bandit faction. Just two ways to say the same thing. As 4 strong warriors they would need to be powerful to comprise a faction themselves in my world. 2 dragons are a faction - 2 goblins are not 😊

[@DiscoBarbarian]

Players will do what interests them. All the classics of this genre would be considered MurderHobos... Elric, Conan, Fafard and the Gray Mouser...so there is nothing wrong with this type of play. if you desire otherwise it is on you as the GM to frame better... or in the case of a player... acting more noble.

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed

[@SusCalvin]

Conan wanders around, every adventure starts out with why Conan is poor as heck or chased out of town. Then how and why he meets up with some new chums or a hook for adventure, and then pretty much right to the fun part. Elric has much more sense of his place in the cosmos and what ties him to act as the agent of Fate. Fafrd and Grey Mouser are holed up in a city. They very much do the adventure of the week of whatever fancies them. Cities become permanent hubs though, if you hang around there too long. Those blokes you mugged two wards away are not going to disappear.

[@Marcus-ki1en]

From the very early days, the game has always had a bias towards doing good. You are going to be better rewarded by killing the evil wizard in the world than by doing the same to the good wizard. I don't allow evil characters in my game simply because it is unlikely for a group to stay together and cooperate if every one is looking to steal and loot from the world and each other. They end is always the same - the destruction of the party. I don't mind a little moral dilemma now and then. Keeps the players on their toes.

[@TheAlwaysPrepared]

It can be a lot of fun. I had witch hunter and a empathic noble woman as part of my warhammer fantasy game. The noble woman confrontet the witch hunter and his Zealot friend, because they killed all magic using NPCs that didn`t cooperate with the colleges of magic. They did their job and upheld the law of the game world, regardless of personal circumstances. We had a cool duel and full on court drama with church and magistrate fighting over jurisditcion, favor trading, witness intimidation, etc. In the end one player made a new character and everybody had a good time.

[@SusCalvin]

@@TheAlwaysPrepared I guess retiring a PC who falls out with the group and making a new is one way, if the players think they can't reconcile their characters. You just need to figure out who gets to retire and who gets to stay. My rule of thumb for retired PCs is that they settle down in some hub and stop doing field work. You might still tap them as contacts and resources, and they will continue to act in the world indirectly. Players can decide to reactivate them. I have not considered a retired PC who is antagonistic to the current crop of bums. The only game where I was ready to do so was Cyberpunk 2020, where the GM is instructed to take over c-psycho PCs and play them as irritable, violent nutcases ready to maul their friends any moment now. WFRP courts are hilarious. There is at least 2-3 adventures with court drama somewhere. A couple of them feature legal champions, the dudes nobles pay to represent them in a legal duel.

[@TheAlwaysPrepared]

@@SusCalvin Yeah. Trial by combat 😁 I always try to play the story out the way it`s most likely in the world it happens in. My players tend to go along with cool stories and are open enough to hand over their character sheets when the time has come. Cvberzombies who attack their friends and allies sounds like a lot of chaos and fun, if everybody involved is on the same page. Underlying Mechanics and foreshadowing seem helpful to get anybody to play along.

[@SusCalvin]

@@TheAlwaysPrepared Trials are fun, like with any other challenge, when the whole crew are engaged in planning it out. We had a trial when the moon-men tried to ban foreign food and we got our danish hot dog stand classed as native food.

[@jacktrades867]

Personally, while I don't play, I'm tired of hack writers trying to make every antagonist be a "morally gray" character with a tragic backstory and good reasons for doing bad things. You can have amazing writing and characters like that but it's so overdone. If I were to run a campaign, I'd make the BBEG be comically, obviously, over-the-top evil.

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice

[@SusCalvin]

The primary antagonist to the occult-criminal weirdos in Esoteric Enterprises is the state. It has no real personality. You can meet individual representatives of the state and pull off escapes and befuddle them but the state as a whole is an unfeeling, unmoving force from your perspective. In their day to day struggle, the PCs are more likely to interact and feud and deal with other occult-criminal weirdos. They are much more colourful and more sociable. They have shifting rivalries, alliances and goals you can act on. A principle of using the state is that the state does not negotiate. It can only suppress.