I love consequences, and like that they not always be made obvious at the outset.
Killing a bandit and finding a baby's bottle on her body. Did the bandit kill the baby and take the bottle? Or did you just kill a mother?
Symbiotic relationships are always good: if you cut off the "evil" bit you harm the "good". In the Eragon book and movie, killing an evil dragonrider killed its dragon too. No idea if that was carried on to a moral dilemma in the game, though. Another good example: Jeckyll and Hyde.
Then there's the
conflicting interests one. Someone has a wasting illness. They want to die. Someone else cares extremely deeply about them, and is desperately working on a cure, with a very low chance of success, but at least it's a chance. Do you let the person die?
One of the conflicting interests can be you: you and someone who can't swim are on a boat. Boat sinks. You can't carry both your pack of equipment,
and the non-swimmer to shore.
Who's more important? Do you betray one friend or a thousand strangers?
Do the ends justify the means? Do you torture people for information, or do without?
Do the ends justify the risks? Do you allow a faction to remain neutral, or assassinate their leader so that the second in command, who is more amenable, will ally the faction with your cause? Is it worth the risk of getting found out, and having the faction go over to the enemy?
I was just following orders! You are told "take Snow White into the woods and kill her." Do you kill her? Refuse? Let her go but lie about it? Flee with her? You are told "torture this man" - do you? (in real life experiments, people would obey the authority figure) Your colleague, told to help you, objects strongly and refuses to take part - do you side with him, or your employer? (in the tests where the subject sees a peer standing up for what's "right", people are able to break from the "obey authority" mindset far easier).
Who do you save? A town with a population of M has a well infected with a fatal disease. You have N doses of a cure. N<<M. Who do you allow to die? If you see and speak with them as their health fails and they die, how will you feel? Will you give up your own dose, and hope that your high health and stack of stimpaks will see you through? Will you give all your stimpaks the dying, even if it will only stretch out their time a little? Will those you give the dose to give their dose to others? If you give it to them in a way that they cannot, will they hate you? Either way, will the survivors feel deep guilt in themselves that they survived?
Who do you spare? Someone with an infectious disease is trying to break out from enforced quarantine for emotional reasons: to be with her dying daughter perhaps. How far are you willing to go to prevent her getting out of quarantine? She might not even be infected!
Bandits, to me, should be a moral dilemma. They are not simple, evil killable mobs. They are people driven to rob from others. Not "attack and fight to the death" - that's just retarded. Why are they so desperate? What are they trying to preserve? If they take the time to explain their situation, would the player help instead of fighting?
Moral conflicts don't need to be purely inside you. You can
morally conflict with other people. The paladin in the awesome
Goblins comic is a good example: he is sworn to obliterate all goblins, and sees them as irredeemably evil. If he met any goblins from Underworld2, he'd massacre them down to the last baby. But, he's acting out of a strong moral code, to protect what he believes in. Is he evil? Should you fight him?
The
Ultima character generation moral dilemmas are interesting. Stuff like:
"You and your friend battle a dragon. He thinks he slew the beast, but you know that you are the one who struck the telling blow. Do you Honestly correct him when he claims the glory for himself? Or Humbly allow him to take credit?"
Its very important, when considering consequences, to remember that
the player can lie too! If I say "sure, I'll go kill Bob" I mean "I want the character I have spoken to, to think that I intend to kill Bob", not "when I meet Bob, and talk to him, automatically launch me into a fight to the death with him".
It is also very important to remember that if you make the player take an either-or choice, then even if you have done everything in your power to ensure they don't find a way to make them choose "both!"... you have to be very aware that they might just do so, and you need to code that in as a possible result anyway. "You found enough vaccine for the whole village? That's incredible, I didn't think there was that much in the whole of the wasteland! What did you do, find a cloning bug? ZOMG HAX!"
