Moral Choice Dilemmas

Introduction: What Is A Moral Choice Dilemma And Why Should I Care?
Alignment has largely fallen out of vogue as an aspect of Dungeons & Dragons in recent years; the 5th Edition rules all but do away with it, replacing a paladin's Smite Evil ability with a Smite against extraplanar beings, since there's far less ambiguity about a creature's place of origin than about its moral virtues. However, even if playing strictly with 5th Edition rules, a Whiteleaf game needs to pay attention to alignment as a concept, as the questions of Good vs. Evil, Right vs. Wrong, Right vs. Correct, Freedom vs. Security, the Lesser of Two Evils, the Tragedy of the Commons, and all matter of other such philosophical quandaries are the bread and butter of this setting. As games in the original Greyhawk setting tended to be mostly about amoral adventurers looking for treasure and power, while games in Forgotten Realms were more about would-be heroes setting out to write their own story, and Dragonlance was founded on actual heroes taking a role within one overarching story, Whiteleaf aims for still another slice of the D&D milieu; adventurers on Whiteleaf aren't just interested in being heroes, but in deciding what a hero actually is, and distinguishing between those who say they're fighting Evil and those who actually do Good.

In real life, a person's moral compass is largely formed of the reactions they have during split-second moments of crisis, and they generally don't have an awareness of the fact that they're making an important decision that will shape the rest of their life; at the time they see matters from a narrow and specific viewpoint, and only later will they understand the full consequences that arose as a result. Unavoidably, telling a person that they're being tested will change how they act during the test, and ultimately roleplaying is a hobby where perform a fictional "other me" for fun, so nobody who's just playing a character in a game can fully understand or replicate the reality of moral choices, as they occur in our actual lives. But to do a good job of playing a well fleshed-out character, you should try to get as close as possible, and that means understanding alignment properly. Thusly, a character whose alignment is not painfully obvious should frequently be subjected to a Moral Choice Dilemma, an experience which allows them to PROVE what kind of a character they are.

Moral Choice Dilemmas come in two types, which serve very different purposes. An Alpha MCD is designed around the intersection between two of the four "alignment forces", one of Good or Evil as well as one of Law and Chaos, and it is meant to be a relatively straightforward assessment of whether the character fully cleaves to one or both of those two aspects. If it is unclear whether a character should be Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral, subjecting them to one of the Law Vs. Good Alpha MCDs will help work that out; there are also Good vs. Law Alpha MCDs, though they tend to differ only subtly from the first group, as there is generally less need to tell whether a character is Lawful Good or Neutral Good (since Evil is corruptive and actively destroys Good, while Law and Chaos are somewhat more balanced). The second type are Beta MCDs, which are designed around a particular combination of two alignment forces, that is to say one of the nine actual Alignments (and yes there are Beta MCDs devoted to True Neutrality, although they are somewhat less likely to prove necessary, since only a few prestige classes and the like are actually devoted to strictly balanced neutrality, with no allowable deviation toward even one alignment force). A Beta MCD is inherently more subtle than an Alpha MCD (and more difficult to write, which is why fewer of them are presented; even coming up with two for each alignment would be a massive undertaking, whereas fewer Alphas are needed but more can be easily manufactured); it is essentially a "purity test" that can be applied to a character whose alignment must never deviate at all, and can be used to test whether the character is comfortably settled within that alignment, or if they're struggling and threatening to fall out of it. While nobody's Paladin character should ever lose their healing and evil-smiting powers just because they got a bad result on a Beta MCD, it will serve as a warning sign that their behavior is "out of alignment" (pardon the pun) with what the Force of Good Itself expects of them, and that they may have to begin correcting their course before they are checked far more severely.

== The Moral Choice Dilemmas ==

=== Alpha MCDs ===

==== Law Vs. Good ====

===== MCD-A-LG 1 =====

You hear a scream and rush to the site, finding a man lying in a large pool of blood with an obvious stab wound, and spot an obviously nonhuman figure with a sword in its hand fleeing the scene. You have only seconds to either bind the man's obviously mortal wound and perhaps save his life, allowing his attacker to escape entirely, or to pursue the attacker and try to stop it from getting away, in which time the man will certainly expire. If you let the monster go, it may kill again, but it also may not; for all you know, perhaps this was just a tragic misunderstanding, or the man may even have attacked the monster out of bigotry and forced it to defend itself (though this seems unlikely, given the odds of an own-business-minding monstrous humanoid, normally encountered in the wild where it could likely be slain on sight, instead being within a civilized city for legitimate reasons). Ultimately, you have no way of knowing what the consequences of either action may be; the only thing that's clear is that if you wait, the man will die and his atttacker will escape. You must decide now, without stopping and thinking to debate; what do you do? (If "save the man" is chosen, the player is more nearly Good; if "pursue the attacker" is chosen, they are Lawful. While justice is important to both alignments, ultimately Good's priority is on preventing suffering and protecting fragile things such as life; allowing the victim's death just so you can avenge him is not a Good act, though it is not Evil either.  Law is interested in preserving social systems, so it believes in doctrines such as retribution and deterrence theory; its ultimate objective is to ensure that the existing order is maintained, so while it would prefer that the man lived, its priority is on punishing the current attack and preventing future such attacks, potentially an unlimited number of future attacks that could occur if no consequences exist to deter them.  The man's death is tragic, but he was only going to live so long anyway; justice is eternal, and a nation endures for centuries as long as its laws are strong, so allowing him to die and then punishing the one who actively caused his death is what's important, even though it also makes you passively a contributor to the death happening.)