Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Moral dilemma's in RPGs

If you leave the path of just good/evil and confront the player with more complex moral dilemmas, you should take great care to explain the moral conceptions of your game world. Many RPGs simply use the modern ideas of what is good and what is evil, but moral conceptions have changed a lot throughout history and have often differed in different places of the world. In a game world that looks medieval, ideas from the time of the Enlightenment don't need to have spread yet.

Voluntarily killing someone else who has not personally acted against you, for example, is not necessarily seen as evil - there have been times where it would have been seen as good as long as that person was "an enemy to your country" (or tribe) or "an unbeliever".

Especially when using something like Karma Points, you need to make the moral standards clear according to which they are awarded. In the examples you have given, which choice would cause you to gain Karma Points, which one to lose them? If the game features more complex options than a "clearly good" and a "clearly evil" path, it shouldn't act as some kind of "moral overseer" by evaluating the character's actions, unless it's pointed out that someone (the gods, society in general) would have wanted the character to act in a certain way.

In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, it's quite clear what is good and what is evil, so it's fine to evaluate actions with points. Your game could have different moral standards and feature choices that aren't as easily categorized as good or evil, right or wrong, so I'm not sure whether having Karma Points makes sense at all.

Situations where you have to choose between options you don't necessarily like can be intriguing, but I wouldn't overdo it. It can be very frustrating if a solution comes to mind you'd like to go for, but the game doesn't offer it. In the example with the bridge, a true hero might opt for jumping from the bridge himself, hoping to survive though maybe getting severely hurt. If you can only choose to push the fat man down or to watch the other five people die, many players will probably complain. In a role-playing game, it's fun to act like you imagine your character would act - not being able to act that way is somewhat less satisfactory and might lead players to avoid such quests. It's fine if decisions you don't fully like come up now and then, but I'm skeptical if they contribute large parts of the game.

When you wrote "moral dilemmas", I rather thought of something like the vampire cave (the vampire has kidnapped a boy and you can choose to sacrifice some of your own blood or to watch the boy die), where it's a matter of personal gain vs. common good, possibly with some options in between.

Another dilemma I'd find interesting: Enraged citizens want to hang a trader because they accuse him of a serious crime, but he hasn't confessed. You don't have time to investigate, and you can't pacify them with words alone. Will you allow them to kill him, ruining a valuable trade post for the rest of the game and taking the risk that someone else did it who remains free? Will you suggest that they just destroy his trade post, but let him live? Will you simply point at someone, telling them that your supernatural powers have allowed you to see he's guilty, and they have another scapegoat? Will you defend the trader against the crowd at all costs, since his guilt isn't proven, possibly even killing some attackers and taking the risk that later on, you're hunted for murder? Will you try to make him invisible, so he can run, possibly fleeing yourself as well if you're accused of helping a criminal and taking the risk that the trade post is destroyed nonetheless?

If the possible consequences are outlined like this and there are several options to choose from, such situations could help to create a very intriguing game, even if there is no "perfect choice" available, meaning an option that allows you to solve everything the way you'd like best.

In my eyes, complex moral choices will also require a gaming environment that doesn't focus too much on the action-RPG style. Examples like the ones you have mentioned wouldn't go well with killing hundreds of orcs, lizard folk and imps (after all, intelligent beings that even have a seat in the Council), as well as bandits and the like ... it's a bit cheap to say that anyone who is hostile towards you is evil and deserves to die, and the next minute you ponder the moral details of a situation where either one person or five people have to die.