Hi, I need some ideas for a few "the best of bad choices" situations, like:

"You need to get a special vaccine for the population of an outer rim planet, but the only one selling it is a brutal slaver. The amount of vaccine needed would cause the slaves, who gather the resources for the vaccine, to work even harder. But if the PCs will not make the deal, the population of the planet dies"

Oh, that's easy I think. just from te top of my head:

1) PCs need credits badly to save their friends/family from losing their land/being killed. the only way to get the credits in time would be to sign up for a clearly unethical job (deliver guns to bad guys/smuggle hard drugs/steal supplies from rebellion...)

2) a cruiser full of passengers is set on a crash course with a planet. PCs can take it down or risk boarding and changing course to save lives on the ship but endanger a whole city planetside. look up Riders of Maelstrom adventure, which can lead up to this.

3) Batman Dark Knight movie has some nice plot ideas that can be used

4) or even more easy - Firefly "Train job" episode. bad choices at its best!

"My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy, until..."
Check out a show called 'Burn Notice'. You can find it on Netflix, and more than a couple episodes are the of the 'damned if you do...' type.

Don't have access to netflix, and not willing to pay for it

This site : http://www.quose.com/category/dilemma-questions/ regroups dilemma posted by users.

These are nowadays stuffs and not all of them are great ideas, but it can certainly helps for inspiration.

Have you seen Firefly? Most of their stuff is what you are looking at. Try the train heist. You are hired by a Crime Boss to rob a train of a certain cargo. Heist goes fairly well, but before delivery you discover you stole the vaccine for a town. Do you deliver it to the Crime Boss, who you know will sell it on the black market at a hugely inflated price, bankrupting the town? Or do you return it so the town can have their medicine, and risk the wrath of the Crime Boss? Or sell it yourself, risking the wrath of both?

A plot that has appeared in a few variations: the party is hired to deliver a bride (or groom) for a politically arranged marriage. The marriage is vital to end a long running conflict between two planets that has resulted in millions of deaths. The betrothed is in love with someone else, or falls in love with a crew member. There is a version were the bride-to-be is in stasis (which fails) and is engineered to fall in love with the first person she sees.

6 hours ago, O the Owl said:

A plot that has appeared in a few variations: the party is hired to deliver a bride (or groom) for a politically arranged marriage. The marriage is vital to end a long running conflict between two planets that has resulted in millions of deaths. The betrothed is in love with someone else, or falls in love with a crew member. There is a version were the bride-to-be is in stasis (which fails) and is engineered to fall in love with the first person she sees.

oh this one is really gonna resonate with some of my players. thank you!)

Or if you really want to screw with their heads, both were meeting in secret, both disguised as someone else, and were actually in love with each other, but thought they weren't !

(Have actually run that one as a LARP game and worked remarkably well - We had some players who'd never written a game before and we let them come up with all the ideas)

1 hour ago, Darzil said:

were actually in love with each other, but thought they weren't !

That's practically Shakespear!

11 hours ago, O the Owl said:

A plot that has appeared in a few variations: the party is hired to deliver a bride (or groom) for a politically arranged marriage. The marriage is vital to end a long running conflict between two planets that has resulted in millions of deaths. The betrothed is in love with someone else, or falls in love with a crew member. There is a version were the bride-to-be is in stasis (which fails) and is engineered to fall in love with the first person she sees.

Star Trek-Next Gen: Season 5, Ep 21. "The perfect Mate"

Star Trek: Season 3, Ep 13 "Elaan of Troyius"

6 hours ago, ThreeAM said:

Star Trek-Next Gen: Season 5, Ep 21. "The perfect Mate"

Star Trek: Season 3, Ep 13 "Elaan of Troyius"

Totally had these eps in mind, but don't forget the twist that Clone Wars gave us in the episode "Bounty" (Season 4, Ep 20). Here we see the expedition to deliver the unwilling bride attacked by her brother and his group of compatriots.

This Halloween, our group will be finalizing a deal with a Hutt to deliver a requested treasure, free a compatriot held hostage by said Hutt to ensure our compliance, and pick up a holocron as payment for working with the Hutt.

I don't think we need to get any scarier than that! (Thank you VERY much). By George, we're dealing with a slimy Hutt!

Heck, have the PC's visit Nar Shaddaa . . . for ANY reason.

I'm a bit late to this party, but the original poster's scenario got my juices flowing and I came up with something that I might run at some point. Decided to post it here in case some else finds this amusing also

As a GM I love to bring morality plays on to the gaming table and it has become kind of a my way of GM'ing. I try to build my games so that the greatest adversary in the end are the character's values and morale to see how desperate deeds they are willing to take to save the day. I have also learnt that to make morality choices matter, the factions involved will need to a bit of depth and some solid motivations through which players can evaluate the factions.

Expanding on the sick population and vaccine produced by slaves example I came up with this:

Sick colony: These are rough but righteous people who have strict laws. There is also a gang of no-good youngsters who stole / destroyed some non-critical resources, maybe mugged someone. The colony people managed to capture some of these no-goods. After a very unjust trial they were sentenced to death by hanging. Just before hanging the remaining no-goods came in with some guns to rescue their friends. During the fight a large pressurised pesticide gas silo was punctured, which is the source of the sickness. The no-goods escaped, but colonists fell to the sickness as they tried to clean their colony from the poisonous stuff.

Slavers: Imperium supports them lavishly, they enjoy torturing and working the slaves to the brink of death harvesting medicine. They have money and luxuries. They have new slaves coming in every month so a death of a few don't really matter. You could also add a bit of blood sports on an arena or something like that for the enjoyment and extra income for the slavers. All the medicine produced is sold exclusively for the Imperium to be refined to entertainment drugs. When the players learn of the situation, the latest shipment of medicine has just left the planet/installation, leaving storages empty.

Slaves: The slaves are actually the worst scum in the galaxy: Murderers, rapists, child-killers, cultists etc. Really bad people who deserve their slavery and punishment. They have been captured by the Imperium and bounty hunters and given over to the slavers to harvest the medicine.

Some player options:

• Defeat the slavers by force and somehow force the murderer-criminals to gather the medicine. They could hire the no-goods gang from the sick planet to enforce the medicine collection, but what is their price for helping the colony that was sentencing them by draconian laws? Will the players or no-goods become the next slavers or are the murderers let loose in the same sector where the colony is? How will the imperium react when an Imperium Sanctioned penalty facility is destroyed?
• Buy the medicine from the slavers: They alredy have money, instead they want more slaves from the colony as payment. They will select say 10% of the population for slaves. Make it a scene: The slavers in their posh clothing and armed security forces land near the colony with the players. The colony's sick people are assembled in rows where the slavers inspect the colonists while players follow. Maybe one of the players are given the task to keep book which colonists are selected by the slavers. Break the families and leave orphaned children in front of the players.
• Capture the medicine freighter protected by Imperials: If it fails, players themselves will be sold to the slavers as prisoners. If it succeeds, the Imperium will follow and declare the colony as rebels for stealing Imperial medicine transport. The colony will have problems.
• Buy the medicine from the Imperium. Buying is not an option: surrender the colony to the greedy sector moff.
• Go to the dark side: Sell the colonists to the slavers and make some big bucks. Colonists are weak and cannot defend in their current condition. They are ripe for picking. Players get a hefty sum of credits, slavers get easy slaves (a bit sick, but slavers already control the medicine). But what sinister plots the slavers will device when they learn of the specific brand of pesticide that causes illness which can only be cured by a medicine to which they have the monopoly...

To make this more spicy, add a single NPC to each of the groups who have completely different views than his/her faction in general: An innocent slave who just wants freedom to return to his/her family. A slaver who actually despises the torture and blood sports and only wants to run a humane but beneficial medicine production facility which would rehabilitate the criminals. A colonist who wants to forgive the no-goods gang. A no-goods gang npc who wants to help the colonists. They are all single NPCs and can't make a difference on their own but give some contrast to the groups.