I've been having trouble inserting moral dilemma into my campaign as well.

3 issues have come up: 1) my acolytes tend to function on a self preservation first, morality second pragmatic mode; 2) they often tend to act w/o taking time to get complete information resulting in the only moral question left afterwards is: do I feel guilty?; and 3) most recently they accidently by-passed the moral dilemma.

1 - should be self explanatory w/ no need for examples;

2 - One of my acolytes is an arbitrator, and in a recent session he temporarily was granted command authority over a wing of thuderbolt fighters loaded out for ground-strike capability. The cell was aboard an aircraft near a ground engement in which a noble's private army was exterminating a thousands strong bandit faction (in the bandits home-territory). The acolytes needed to talk to the noble, but he was commanding in the field and though it was clear his forces would win due to better numbers, training and gear, the best estimates was that it would take all day and into the night to finish up the battle. The acolytes didn't want to wait that long, so the arbitrator ordered the fighters to attack the bandits. Two bombing runs (each fighter carried 4 bombs) and a strafing run later, the battle was over except for mop up. The acolytes landed and went to talk to the noble. Watching his men pile the corpses of the enemy they discovered that the noble's army had been attacking the bandits main home-settlement. There were neatly sorted piles of women, children, old folks and pets to go along with the dead fighters, more than half of which were wiped out in the airstrikes. Looking at piles of dead children's arms and legs made the arbitrator feel guilty about ordering the bombing, but by then it was kind of late to make a better (or any) moral decision.

3 - I set up a scenario where the acolytes would run into some mutants in a massacred settlement in the wastelands. The idea was the acolytes would tangle w/ the mutants thinking them to be the bad guys, then find out that the mutants were escaped prisoners from the real villians the cell was after (who were human mercenaries) and have to decide whether side with or kill the mutants anyway. Well, the characters unfortunately decided to do extra fly-bys over the site they were investigating and as a result got shot down. Due to injuries, they then decided to hide and wait while sending one scout to look around. This resulted in most of the cell tangling with the returning mercs before they ever saw any mutants, and by the time they ran into the muties the acolytes were in full flight from overwhelming force and willing to take whatever help they could find no matter how many eyes it had. (see 1 above) so no moral dilemma of thinking someone was enemy then finding out you were wrong. They basically stumbled around having to make the choice.

So as I said putting moral dilemmas into the game has been tricky so far.

If it were me, my inquisitor would get them wasting downtime between missions, filling in paper work for the use of the bombers killing innocent civillians, rather than let them persue their own actions in free time, thus limiting their access to elite advances, as they are too busy writing letters to the governments of the world, explaining their actions.

That would probably prevent them using extreme force again, while keeping it relatively realistic, and not really shafting the players for playing that way, but instead giving them the idea that they would be better to make at least some investigation before utilising maximum firepower.

Crimsonsphinx said:

Good idea in theory. Won't work for my crew for a couple of reasons:

1) the civilians they bombed were part of/dependants of a bandit society living outside/preying on main human population on planet. As such the government doesn't give a **** that they were killed. The consequences here are purely moral, no real legal problems.

2) They weren't on a mission for the =][= at the time. Their interogator had other business on planet and told them they could either stay in orbit or come down to the surface per their preference while he was busy. (They were told it would be 2 weeks to 2 months depending on how his business wnet) The PC's got involved in this one on their own time. The only authority they are operating w/ is that of the Arbitrator in the group. (No one on planet knows they're w/ =][= except their interrogator and they don't know where his is or what he's doing.

3) Unless the bombing interfered w/ his plans, their inquisitor wouldn't care. He'd just file it away as one more bit of knowledge about the acolytes and what their strengths or weaknesses are so he can decide how they are most useful to him. Now maybe if they'd bombed one of the settlements that isn't a bandit hideout it would be different, but they didn't so no caring by their boss one way or the other.

DocIII said:

I think our Inquisitors are both quite different individuals

Mine cares for the lives of all the people in the system and bandits are not under the remit of the inquisition and so will be treated as normal civillians, and would have penalties for bombarding the bandits into oblivion. I actively encourage my players to ignore regular crime like bandits are involved in, that is a job for local law enforcement, not agents of the inquisition. Killing hundreds of civillians would be corruption points and/or insanity points.

If they were not on inquisition duty, and killed hundreds or thousands of civillians, even those who happened to be related to bandits, they should be expected to be dragged through the courts for the actions, much like any other unauthorised use of force Again, at least thats how I am playing my games.

Just finished my rough guide to myself of my first two sessions. Im pretty much a plan basic details and wing it type of GM, but even so its taken me about 12 hours to do that. I am very keen to get across just how limited the powers of the acolytes are. They only have absolute authority when they are acting with their inquisitor, the rest of the time, their powers are limited by their cover stories. In part of my campaign I have them acting as munitions inspectors. They are limited to their legal rights as one of those, as for all intents and purposes thats what their paperwork [or indeed futuristic equivelent] says they are.

I have a slightly different approach to how players deal with their own morality over their characters....

This is after all, a role play, so they should be role playing, and in character. If the players continually take actions that deviate from their character then I will gradually corrupt and/or alter their character to more closly match how they act.... Granted the players never like it... but thats what happens when they role play out of character.

Of course, if someone goes against their inquisitor and refuses to complete their mission.... well the penalties can be fun, and not always the bullet in teh head as most people would expect.... Im more fond of the suicide mission they get sent on.... alone.... Never had anyone survive... yet...

I think that 'moral dilemmas' are the probably the hardest thing for a GM to present to roleplay group, especially in the universe of 40k. Most players could quite easily justify killing 'innocent' civilians 'just in case' and get away with it. W0k is not a universe that punishes psychopaths, on the contrary they tend to thrive.

I've found that most players start a character with an idea in mind of whether they want a character to end being corrupted or not. They will play a guardsman or whatever who will not break under any circumstances and will do whatever they need to to 'win the game' (an unfortunate truism amongst my group, who tend to see DH as a live action computer game some times). And this often means meta gaming without any real moral thought from their character.

For example one of my group usually plays 'warrior' stereotypes. They can be morally neutral assassin types or noble soldier blokes, but you can guarantee that he will always be the first to bump off the survivors 'just in case', as he's far too aware as a player that they are likely to be a trap from the GM and the Insanity points be damned. Once, just once I'd like him to consider as a player how difficult it is as an individual to bring yourself to shoot a baby or whatever, even if you know it might grow up to have tentacles etc.

Of course the other end of the scale are those who set out to be corrupted, and first chance they get they grab books of forbidden lore and demand to fight Xenos so they can loot their weaponry. These guys are just as hard to deal with as you never get a 'gradual insiduous corruption', but rather a Inquisitorial nutter with a death wish.

To combat this, particularly the first type, I have devised a cunning plan. I'm simply going to offer them extra XP at random times if they want it. The greedier they are, the more i assume that their characters are greedy for power. And i shall secretly allocate them corruption points. So I will let them execute kiddywinkles if they so wish, and give them XP for it. And a few D10 corruption points that they don't know about until they sprout a few extra limbs and i point out that the dark gods are very pleased with their minion for slaughtering innocents...

thoughts?

That approach could work, it would be interesting to see how the rest of the group handles this... will the player try to hide their mutations, or willl they be discovered....

In the same vein i'm considering putting a kibosh on looting by toying with the characters without the players knowledge. They could easily pick up a cultists lasgun to use, and i wouldnt make a big deal out of it. then at the end of session ask the player to make 3 willpower checks, without any explanation or reference to the lasgun. If they fail, start racking up the hidden corruption points.

It only has to happen o0nce, and i'm sure the other characters will start be wary about nicking dead guys stuff

Arbitrator: 'Put that sword down!'

Scum: 'Why? its nice and pretty innit?'

Arbitrator: 'Because you don't know where its been!'

Inquisitors reasons to destroy items:

1. Its got the Taint

2. It was carried by one with the Taint

3. It could have been near the Taint

4. It smells kind of Taint-y

5. Cos I said so.

Thats more or less what im intending. It really annoys me when people loot because they think they are playing world of warcraft or something.

Ive seen players cart off 10 or so poor quality autopistols to sell, even nobles who think its a good idea, when it clearly is out of character to do that.

So now instead, I will have tracking devices on certain expensive bits of kit, so if they rob them they might get unwanted attention from people trying to reclaim them.

My take on morals is killing innocent people is wrong, even in 40k. No form of justification like "just in case" will wash, and indeed it hasn't ever done in any of the books I have read.

Looting the dead, unless you are a reclimator, scum etc or a similar type of character [as opposed to character classs] should also not happen. I have one gamer who has bizare ideas that you are okay to kick in someones door to investigate in a RP but not steal anything from the persons home.