Is it possible to explore complex themes in 5e?

[Beastrolami]

A bit of background. I started Gming with horror games. World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Eclipse Phase. I really loved these games because the goal wasn't to beat the big boss, and survive. But to beat the big boss and survive with your humanity intact. To face unimaginable hardship, and somehow, come out of it undamaged.

I'm not really trying to run a horror game in dnd, but I am running a grimdark setting, and I feel like the system of dnd is resisting any attempt on my end to create a world with complex themes and moral grey areas. First off, my party did not join the game expecting to play this type of game. But, as I force them to make harder choices, and suffer penalties for their actions, they have begun adjusting to the "path of least resistance". Without a system to gauge morality, I feel like this has caused a disconnect, and made the world less immersive instead of more immersive.

In my most recent session, the party ran into a priest who was leading a small flock of about 9 commoners. The priest was pretty obviously suspicious, dark robes, and thick hood covering his face except for a thick white beard. I let the party members with Darkvision know that his face (which is hidden under the hood) is actually a shriveled skull, and his beard are long thin worms (tapeworms kind of). It all seemed very suspicious, but when the party talked to the commoners, they seemed to be very desperate and willing to believe anything this man/undead said if it could make their lives better. The idea was to have a fight where the party is pitted against a bunch of peasants, and a priest, and they have to find a way to kill the priest and save the peasants. They cast shatter on the group, and instantly murdered all the peasants. Now, I'm generally fine with this. The party is allowed to play evil characters, and act as they see fit.

But, when it becomes clear that making a good decision will be more work, the party immediately reverted to evil because there is no apparent consequence. Because of this, I feel like there is no way to explore complex themes because a party that is not designed to make good characters, or told in advance that the campaign will explore dark themes, etc. will take the path of least resistance, be that good o evil.

I may be wrong. What are some ways you have tried to explore complex themes in 5e?

[N810]

Fifth Edition has very little role-play restrictions.
Also there is an optional Sanity stat.

Ps. I thought shatter just hurt inanimate things ?

[Beastrolami]

I know there's an optional sanity stat, and I guess the initial post was a bit of a ramble. Even with a sanity stat, I don't see DnD, especially 5e as a system that is conducive to roleplaying (out of combat). The system seem "harcoded" for grand adventure. You can certainly explore dark themes in grad adventure, but if you put a bunch of players in a world that is less grand adventure and more hardcore survival, they have no reason to explore themes. They just want to survive combat. Unless I'm wrong, and someone else has found a way to make it work. (obviously there are homebrew options like sanity that might make this work)

Also... Shatter definitely does damage to people. It's one of the best 2nd level spells for aoe damage. (especially on unconventional aoe/dps classes like tempest clerics and bards)

[Mortis_Elrod]

Well for starters, you should be more open to your party about what type of campaign you want to run, before they start. With those other games its a bit apparent that things will be more roleplaying and less combat orientated. I'm not sure about you but for me D&D is assumed to be more about the characters being adventurers in a fantasy world, very grand, high stake quests and such. Mechanically the game is more focused on the combat part, with little roleplaying restrictions or rules. The only Law in game is maybe in cities, and is very mortal unless you are a divine inclined character. Its common to think that rule 1 of the party is that the party comes first everything else can go burn in the 9th layer of hell. Murderhoboing has to be steered away from in this system, either through player actions or intentions or the DM adding those laws and morality to the game and enforcing them. D&D is THE murderhobo game and without guidance its very easy to just fall into that style of play.

This is not to say that its impossible to have more complex themes in 5e. Alot of Curse of Strahd is seeming about how to kill the big bad but there's also other things that lurk in ravenloft. Hags take children and presumably make pastries with their bodies. Level 1 its easy to run in to these guys. As good characters we want to stop this, but its also something we know we wont win. We could try to gather a force to kill the hags but there are other things that could be done in the mean time. Most players tend to say 'we'll just come back to kill them off later', condemning children to die in the mean time. Its almost encouraged to make this decision too. However no consequences unless the players want to dwell on it more in character (i instantly forget).

ANYWAY ramble ramble later D&D isn't INITIALLY designed to have complex moral themes involved. At least not in this edition. But with player and dm cooperation and awareness its possible. Its not inherent in design though.

[solidork]

This is almost certainly just because your players aren't interested in the themes you are.

[Clone]

While I don't have much experience with D&D long term, only been gaming on and off for about a year or so, I do know quite a lot about people work. An easy way for you to get your players to at least begin thinking about their actions would be how they're treated by the commonfolk.

Lets imagine that, after straight up murdering innocent peasants just because they were in the way or to avoid an annoying fight, someone in the distance saw them and runs to the nearest town. Now when they get to that town, either they aren't allowed in for being murderers or if they do get it not a single person wants to sell them anything or even talk to them. Consequences of their evil ways being used in how people deal with them, or don't deal with them, is a non-violent method to make them think about their actions. Of course there then comes Paladins and the like to bring the evil-doers to justice, but thats violence.

A DM I follow on youtube is Matt Colville and he is an amazing writer. One episode on his channel on DM Tips he spoke about how a simple farmer wouldn't look a young party of adventurers in the eye and just wanted them to leave as all adventurers did was cause trouble. The party proceeded to indirectly mock him by throwing money at him to get him to talk and by messing up his garden (this was a rogue doing the garden stuff, so take what you will) but eventually left when he wouldn't help them at all.

To the players, they hadn't done anything wrong. They just asked about problems happening and the unreasonable farmer was being difficult, even ignoring their offer of money to help them out.
To the farmer, it was a different story which the players didn't see. Matt then made a small diary entry which his players read to find out why he was acting the way he was, and they were horrified how offensive and out-of-line they were being. If you ever get the chance, try find it. Fantastic watch.

I guess what I'm saying is make it so that things get more difficult to progress socially with the characters due to them having little care for their consequences. Hope this helps somewhat, but you may have already tried this.

[Sigreid]

Yout problem isn't really the system. It's that the players want a different style of game than you do. Though I will ad the caveat that with WoD, it makes it very clear in the rule book that what you want is what the game is, so its rules force it.

[Beastrolami]

I definitely agree that WoD forces the rules. And I will admit that my players weren't prepared for this type of game. This wasn't session 1 either, we have done some adventuring previously, and they have killed innocents, but they were gnolls, and the party didn't directly kill them.

The encounter really caught me off-guard. I knew the party wasn't good aligned, but didn't expect them to kill their own people in cold blood. That's what threw me off. And like mortis said, dnd is kind of designed for murdurhoboing. Also, they were traveling on a long stretch of empty highway, and they killed all the witnesses.

I think it's just a slow realization on my end. Probably because I started with dnd, and because 5e really simplified the rules, I had this impression that it was an extremely versatile system. Now I finally realize it's not. It is optimized for a very specific type of game, and that's a bit disappointing.

[Fayd]

I'm running a Murder Mystery in 5e and it's working out just fine. I think it all comes down to being on the same page as your group and using the rules as guideposts, things to inspire and adjudicate the story, not define it.

[Cybren]

1) While a lot of people talk about how dark or complex or whatever world of darkness is, my limited experience has lead me to see that most people just use it for Kewl Powerz Gaming the same way they do D&D, and that's largely why it was so successful.
2) Why wouldn't D&D be good at exploring complex themes?
3) Once they're in a fight with the peasants and priest, you can't really judge them for using lethal force. That's what a fight is, and if anything, killing them just lends more to the notion of it being a "Girmdark" setting (after all, grimdark does not mean "morally complex" it means "over the top nihilistic/depressing"). If Killgrave had used his powers to have some random people on the street try to kill me, you can bet your ass I'll resist with lethal force once a fight actually starts and I can't reasonable escape the situation. Even if they're not mind controlled, that doesn't change that they are fighting the players. If anything, a lack of mind control would make it more morally justified to take their lives in a self defense situation.

[N810]

5th edition just puts more on the hands of the DM and less on the way of rules.
So if you want them to pay for their crimes, start having deceives start investigating
all the murder they leave in their wake, eventually they will catch up to the party,
and then there will be a reckoning.

ps. When you drop an enemy to 0 HP you always have the option of knocking them out instead of murdering them.

[Sigreid]

Greek mythology accomplished what you're talking about with the furies.

[Beastrolami]

1) While a lot of people talk about how dark or complex or whatever world of darkness is, my limited experience has lead me to see that most people just use it for Kewl Powerz Gaming the same way they do D&D, and that's largely why it was so successful.
2) Why wouldn't D&D be good at exploring complex themes?
3) Once they're in a fight with the peasants and priest, you can't really judge them for using lethal force. That's what a fight is, and if anything, killing them just lends more to the notion of it being a "Girmdark" setting (after all, grimdark does not mean "morally complex" it means "over the top nihilistic/depressing"). If Killgrave had used his powers to have some random people on the street try to kill me, you can bet your ass I'll resist with lethal force once a fight actually starts and I can't reasonable escape the situation. Even if they're not mind controlled, that doesn't change that they are fighting the players. If anything, a lack of mind control would make it more morally justified to take their lives in a self defense situation.

1. I'l admit, I'm a huge nWoD fan. I think that nWoD fixed some of the issues the original had. But generally, I agree, every player has a type.
2. It is more a question of how do you put complex themes in your game, and I got multiple answers. I think it a problem of narrative perspective on my part.
3. Just to clarify. They weren't in a fight. It was an rp encounter. To be fair, the cleric did cast command on one of the party members, and got him to join the peasants (just temporarily walk over to the peasants and sit down with them). But there wasn't an attack, and the shatter was cast during a surprise round because no one expected it. I think that the famous murdurhobo chart of talk to it for quest or kill it till dead (tl;dr) is a trope of dnd, and makes roleplaying complex themes difficult.

Edit: Also, thinking back to the other 5e games i've played, (There were some good moral dilemmas in 3.5) I haven't felt like my characters ever grew, or evolved as people unless it was self-imposed (and the party was very much against that character's journey to self discovery). But, maybe i'm a bad player/haven't had the right DM/run the right adventure.

[Unoriginal]

A bit of background. I started Gming with horror games. World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Eclipse Phase. I really loved these games because the goal wasn't to beat the big boss, and survive. But to beat the big boss and survive with your humanity intact. To face unimaginable hardship, and somehow, come out of it undamaged.

I'm not really trying to run a horror game in dnd, but I am running a grimdark setting, and I feel like the system of dnd is resisting any attempt on my end to create a world with complex themes and moral grey areas. First off, my party did not join the game expecting to play this type of game. But, as I force them to make harder choices, and suffer penalties for their actions, they have begun adjusting to the "path of least resistance". Without a system to gauge morality, I feel like this has caused a disconnect, and made the world less immersive instead of more immersive.

In my most recent session, the party ran into a priest who was leading a small flock of about 9 commoners. The priest was pretty obviously suspicious, dark robes, and thick hood covering his face except for a thick white beard. I let the party members with Darkvision know that his face (which is hidden under the hood) is actually a shriveled skull, and his beard are long thin worms (tapeworms kind of). It all seemed very suspicious, but when the party talked to the commoners, they seemed to be very desperate and willing to believe anything this man/undead said if it could make their lives better. The idea was to have a fight where the party is pitted against a bunch of peasants, and a priest, and they have to find a way to kill the priest and save the peasants. They cast shatter on the group, and instantly murdered all the peasants. Now, I'm generally fine with this. The party is allowed to play evil characters, and act as they see fit.

But, when it becomes clear that making a good decision will be more work, the party immediately reverted to evil because there is no apparent consequence. Because of this, I feel like there is no way to explore complex themes because a party that is not designed to make good characters, or told in advance that the campaign will explore dark themes, etc. will take the path of least resistance, be that good o evil.

I may be wrong. What are some ways you have tried to explore complex themes in 5e?



I know there's an optional sanity stat, and I guess the initial post was a bit of a ramble. Even with a sanity stat, I don't see DnD, especially 5e as a system that is conducive to roleplaying (out of combat). The system seem "harcoded" for grand adventure. You can certainly explore dark themes in grad adventure, but if you put a bunch of players in a world that is less grand adventure and more hardcore survival, they have no reason to explore themes. They just want to survive combat. Unless I'm wrong, and someone else has found a way to make it work. (obviously there are homebrew options like sanity that might make this work)


Yes, it is perfectly possible to explore complex themes in 5e.

I would in fact argue that games like Call of Chtulhu or World of Darkness are inherently less complex *because* they have those "morality" hardwares forcing the players' hand.

In Call of Cthulhu, if your PC see or do too much things that bend the natural laws or just horrifying things, they become mad and stop being playable (often by either being reduced to manageable asylum patient or to another mad cultists others will fight). In World of Darkness (as far as I know, as I'm not really familiar with it) if a PC commits horrible acts, they start losing their humanity/personality and ends up as near-mindless, bestial things governed by their instincts.

How is that complex? Granted, it can be an interesting mechanic to have to manage something else than your character's HPs to keep them in the game, but how is that morally complex?

It just means that all those characters operate under a system that is similar yet way more codified and strict that the oft-mocked "Palading Falling" mechanics of DnD 3.X and a few other editions, as all of them are under a "If you stray too far from what is the acceptable behavior, you lose your character" condition.


5e is a different beast. As long as the players and the DM are willing to go somewhere, the game allows it. No stone left unturned, no mystery unsolved, no act left undone, unless the people around the tables wish for it to not happen.

In 5e, the only consequences for an act are the ones mortals and gods are willing to impose. A lich attacks a kingdom? It is up to the PCs or others to retaliate and fix the damages. The PCs kill commoners? It is up to NPCs, assuming they find out and care to do something about it, to try to stop them.

So, what would have happened, if PCs had met that undead priest and those commoners, in a Call of Cthulhu or a World of Darkness session? In CoC, they probably would have rolled for SAN when they realized it was an horrifying worm-filled undead they were talking with, and maybe another SAN check if they had to kill the humans. In WoD, they would have progressed toward losing their characters if they had savagely killed the humans. Both are methods that give incentives to not stray away from the "appropriate PC behavior"

Now, let's get back to your situation. You said that the world you created was grimdark, which generally means that little things like altruism, heroism, benevolence and doing the morally right thing are not rewarded. Then you say that you forced harder choices and harder choices, again and again, on your players, and made them pay for their choices.


You took two men, beat them up for days until they were certain no mercy and no rescue would come, threw them in a deadly desert, stripped them naked, then gave one of them enough water to allow one single person to reach civilisation and handed the other a loaded gun, and act surprised when the one with the gun shoot the other to take the water?


I've got a quote for you, from Quark of the show DS9:


"Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D2SHNqkjbY) They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes."


You have put the PCs in a grim, dark world, were goodness was not rewarded. And they took the path of lest resistance. Congratulation, they now fit perfectly in this world. They are just as desperate, disillusioned and ready to kill than the commoners that followed the undead priest. The only difference is that they had the power to impose their will, their survival in this unjust world, while the commoners couldn't.

Just like the man with the gun, in the desert, can impose his survival. Certainly, he could have asked to share the water, even if it meant both men were more than likely to die before either reached safety. Or he could have accepted to die to give the other man his chance. Don't get me wrong, I do wish that altruism and benevolence won, in this situation.

But how many man, how many living, breathing individuals, pushed to the brink, with only one chance to escape their suffering, would look at some random person, some guy who's the last thing standing in front of their liberty, and for all they know will kill them when given the opportunity to make sure they're the one who'll survive, and not press the trigger?


This is what an actual world, grim and darkness, of shades of gray and hard choices look like. Not some crafted system saying you can only handle so much horror before being removed. Not some arbitrary karma system.

Only the raw, complex essence of humanity.

[Knaight]

It absolutely can be done. With that said, there are specific sorts of games where the system is working with you, and others where it is somewhere between a hindrance and an irrelevancy. D&D is well suited to games that feature people growing into personal power through participation in violence. There are all sorts of complex themes that can fit that, but it's not the same set of themes supported by WoD, which isn't the same set of themes supported by Eclipse Phase, which isn't the same set of themes supported by Warbirds, which isn't the same set of themes supported by REIGN. Games have specializations, and trying to force 5e to play well with the specific themes that exist in the overlap of WoD, Eclipse Phase, and CoC isn't a particularly good idea. Use it for the themes it's good for.

[Mortis_Elrod]

1. I'l admit, I'm a huge nWoD fan. I think that nWoD fixed some of the issues the original had. But generally, I agree, every player has a type.
2. It is more a question of how do you put complex themes in your game, and I got multiple answers. I think it a problem of narrative perspective on my part.
3. Just to clarify. They weren't in a fight. It was an rp encounter. To be fair, the cleric did cast command on one of the party members, and got him to join the peasants (just temporarily walk over to the peasants and sit down with them). But there wasn't an attack, and the shatter was cast during a surprise round because no one expected it. I think that the famous murdurhobo chart of talk to it for quest or kill it till dead (tl;dr) is a trope of dnd, and makes roleplaying complex themes difficult.

Edit: Also, thinking back to the other 5e games i've played, (There were some good moral dilemmas in 3.5) I haven't felt like my characters ever grew, or evolved as people unless it was self-imposed (and the party was very much against that character's journey to self discovery). But, maybe i'm a bad player/haven't had the right DM/run the right adventure.

Others have said it, but i agree and will reiterate. The issue here is that everyone playing has to want that style of campaign for it to work in 5e, or at least have to be aware that thats what's happening. Otherwise it might not have any impact. Its very common hat players will have a 'unless its for the group we don't care' mindset. I'm not saying what you want is impossible. I'm saying it doesn't appear to be Inherent. You could totally keep trying and get it right in 5e, and many people have no probably portraying these themes, so doable. just don't expect it to be Cthulhu styled unless you copy that style and adapt it into 5e.

[solidork]

I mean, did you ask them why they killed the villagers? We can (and probably will) fight over what they might have been thinking, but this is a question with an actual answer.

[Unoriginal]

I definitely agree that WoD forces the rules. And I will admit that my players weren't prepared for this type of game.


I'm not sure to understand what you mean about "this type of game".


and they have killed innocents, but they were gnolls, and the party didn't directly kill them.


Innocent gnolls? In a grimdark world?



The encounter really caught me off-guard. I knew the party wasn't good aligned, but didn't expect them to kill their own people in cold blood. That's what threw me off. And like mortis said, dnd is kind of designed for murdurhoboing. Also, they were traveling on a long stretch of empty highway, and they killed all the witnesses.

Nothing to do with the game.

Also, using mind magic on someone is definitively demonstrating you're hostile.


Just to know, what did you expect them to do?


I had this impression that it was an extremely versatile system. Now I finally realize it's not. It is optimized for a very specific type of game, and that's a bit disappointing.

You can explore complex themes and different types of game with 5e.

[Hrugner]

You can explore more complex themes in 5e, you won't get much support from the rules, but you can do it. If you'd like to urge the party to take more moral actions, and the party always goes for the path of least resistance and avoids those moral actions, then there may be a problem with the tasks being generally too punishing or the reward for morality too meager. If you want a natural way to promote morality, you need to tie the world together more tightly by ensuring that none of your potential victims are just random nobodies who disappear after the encounter. Your players are choosing to kill or rescue people with families and jobs. If the players fail to engage in a rescue, or fail to investigate a minor problem, continue laying clues back to that encounter as they continue their travels.

In the instance of your commoners and skull worm cultist, put up lost and reward signs along the road near the next village perhaps even having an important business closed or short handed due to the loss of some important person.

[Beastrolami]

I think that part of the surprise was the player's personality up to this point. I also think there is too much of a focus on why they did it, and not the actual question of how to represent complex themes in 5e.

My love of horror games and their built in sanity/morality mechanics isn't even part of the argument anymore. I acknowledge that 5e has a sanity mechanic. It probably works pretty well. And, to be honest, when I GM horror games I often tweak their sanity/horror mechanics to allow the party more leeway.

For me, the biggest problem is that in most cases, skills take a backseat to combat. As a system of balance, dnd cannot let you save the world by rolling 1 die. Or broker peace for an age old feud with 1 good roll. 3.5 had ridiculous DC's for these checks, and by the time you could make the DC you were dealing with otherworldly forces like gods and demons maintaining the chaos. So dnd makes you take quests, and fight monsters to resolve these problems. Which leads to my issue. At its heart, it is still a roleplaying game, but the actual rp takes a back seat when it is always easier to just kill everything, loot it, and move on.

I'm not even mad that the player killed the commoners. They're filthy commoners, I was going to kill them and turn them into undead. It just completely changed the dynamic of the combat, and seemed to be a calculated decision to do just that, instead of a roleplay decision.

[Beastrolami]

I'm not sure to understand what you mean about "this type of game".

I just meant that the players were not necessarily prepared, or on-board with playing a complex game in advance. As the DM, I see two options for dealing with unprepared players. I have been ramping up the difficulty as they go so they have to learn or die. I guess they learned, lolz.


Innocent gnolls? In a grimdark world?

One of their earlier moral dilemas was they killed off a gnoll camp, and there were some gnoll cubs. Their npc recommended putting them out of their misery. A swift death is better than being starved and hunted in the wild. party threw them out into the wild.


Nothing to do with the game.

Also, using mind magic on someone is definitively demonstrating you're hostile.

Just to know, what did you expect them to do?

I think that is inherit in the system. Just because you rolled a saving throw does not mean roll initiative. If someone casts charm person on you as you enter their tavern to lighten your mood it does not mean they are evil. (not that you can't use charm person for evil) I think that a spell like command, which is mostly usefull in combat, shouldn't be considered an act of aggression when used out of combat to force a character to do something mildly disagreeable.

To be fair (and honest) the initial plan was to have the party realize he was evil, and either A. fight, and attempt to stop him (he would use the peasants as meatshields/buff them) and if the party decided not to harm the peasants it would be a rather hard fight. or B. decide he wasn't a threat to them, and head off on their quest. Again, I'm not blaming the party for doing what they did, it was basically part of plan A. I just didn't expect them to say (metaphorically) "roleplay, boring. I shoot my bazooka at them".


You can explore complex themes and different types of game with 5e.

Can you give examples. The best I have seen in this thread is the hag in CoS. She eats kids, but right now, you are too weak to do anything about it, and when you get strong enough to stop her, there are bigger things to worry about.


Edit: This isn't a dig at D&D. I have played some very fun 3.5 games that challenged me, both in combat, and with hard rp decisions. I just feel like 5e can't do this. Maybe it's because they took away all the skills, maybe it's because they took too much from 4e. I just want advice on how you would present a complex theme, or moral dilemma on your players.

[solidork]

Complex themes being explored/discussed in character in my current Princes of the Apocalypse Campaign:
- Is it possible for an intelligent being to be innately evil?
- Is it ever justifiable to kill or imprison someone/thing based on what they have the capacity to do, but have not done yet?
- Should you ally yourself with someone evil against someone who is even worse?
- The nature of faith in a world where the gods manifestly exist.
- When different cultural norms clash, how do you determine what is right?
- At what point do you have to let your friends make their own mistakes? How do you help/protect someone from themselves without belittling them and condescending to them?
- Overcoming prejudice.

I'm sure there are more.

[Beastrolami]

Complex themes being explored/discussed in character in my current Princes of the Apocalypse Campaign:
- Is it possible for an intelligent being to be innately evil?
- Is it ever justifiable to kill or imprison someone/thing based on what they have the capacity to do, but have not done yet?
- Should you ally yourself with someone evil against someone who is even worse?
- The nature of faith in a world where the gods manifestly exist.
- When different cultural norms clash, how do you determine what is right?
- At what point do you have to let your friends make their own mistakes? How do you help/protect someone from themselves without belittling them and condescending to them?
- Overcoming prejudice.

I'm sure there are more.

I hate to be "that guy" but could you give examples. Not an example for each one, but some of these seem like they deserve a story.

I also think that for most of these the party has to be prepared to/strong at Role-Playing to pull it off. I think my argument is that when you boil down the game to mechanics, the only reason to interact with anything is to either, A. get quests for money for loot, or B. buy some time to figure out if you can beat this thing and take its loot, or run away and fight other stuff (or get stronger, come back and kill it later).

Obviously, with good role-players, who want to explore their characters, and the complex issues of a campaign, you can have complex themes in any system.

I think overall, the issue has been resolved. I think this would be a cool thread to post stories about the tough decisions your characters made.

[Mortis_Elrod]

One of their earlier moral dilemas was they killed off a gnoll camp, and there were some gnoll cubs. Their npc recommended putting them out of their misery. A swift death is better than being starved and hunted in the wild. party threw them out into the wild.

Seems to me like they thought gnolls had a fighting chance and didn't have to kill the younglings. It may not be what you wanted or expected but thats a pretty good moral dilemma. Don't force only one right answer to these things, usually there aren't any.



I think that is inherit in the system. Just because you rolled a saving throw does not mean roll initiative. If someone casts charm person on you as you enter their tavern to lighten your mood it does not mean they are evil. (not that you can't use charm person for evil) I think that a spell like command, which is mostly usefull in combat, shouldn't be considered an act of aggression when used out of combat to force a character to do something mildly disagreeable.

I kinda disagree. magic is a very powerful thing, and any use of it on an unwilling subject is only going to naturally be viewed as hostile, or at the very least in very poor taste. Shouldn't need magic to lighten my mood im going to the tavern to do that, run a better tavern.


To be fair (and honest) the initial plan was to have the party realize he was evil, and either A. fight, and attempt to stop him (he would use the peasants as meatshields/buff them) and if the party decided not to harm the peasants it would be a rather hard fight. or B. decide he wasn't a threat to them, and head off on their quest. Again, I'm not blaming the party for doing what they did, it was basically part of plan A. I just didn't expect them to say (metaphorically) "roleplay, boring. I shoot my bazooka at them".

Don't plan out PC actions to much. They usually screw up your plans. Not sure if this is applicable in the other games you played but its definitely the case with shadowrun and D&D and some others(in my own exp). Also i know you don't want them to always take the path of least resistance but alot of times thats also the path to survival. Ask your players to have their characters reflect on their decisions more. Do a recap through someone else's perspective each session. See if these things help.


Can you give examples. The best I have seen in this thread is the hag in CoS. She eats kids, but right now, you are too weak to do anything about it, and when you get strong enough to stop her, there are bigger things to worry about.


Edit: This isn't a dig at D&D. I have played some very fun 3.5 games that challenged me, both in combat, and with hard rp decisions. I just feel like 5e can't do this. Maybe it's because they took away all the skills, maybe it's because they took too much from 4e. I just want advice on how you would present a complex theme, or moral dilemma on your players.

1. Tell he players beforehand you want a morally challenging theme or what have you.
2. Have players discuss and recap in character at the end of every session (like at the campfire before bed).
3. design encounters with open ended solutions, all of which are questionable to super duper bad in terms of morality or consequence.
4. Make sure to have fun.
5. ????
6. Profit.

[The Aboleth]

While I don't have much experience with D&D long term, only been gaming on and off for about a year or so, I do know quite a lot about people work. An easy way for you to get your players to at least begin thinking about their actions would be how they're treated by the commonfolk.

Lets imagine that, after straight up murdering innocent peasants just because they were in the way or to avoid an annoying fight, someone in the distance saw them and runs to the nearest town. Now when they get to that town, either they aren't allowed in for being murderers or if they do get it not a single person wants to sell them anything or even talk to them. Consequences of their evil ways being used in how people deal with them, or don't deal with them, is a non-violent method to make them think about their actions. Of course there then comes Paladins and the like to bring the evil-doers to justice, but thats violence.


Exactly this. If your players are taking these actions because they view them as the "path of least resistance," then you need to put things in place to ensure future actions like them will end up being the path of MOST resistance. 5e gives the DM a lot of power and discretion to alter the nature of the campaign. As Clone mentioned in the quoted post, make villagers fearful of the adventures because they've heard through the grapevine that the PCs are unnecessarily heavy-handed in their tactics; also, have shops refuse to sell them items and weapons because one of the peasants they killed ended up being the shopkeeper's brother-in-law. There are many things you can do to discourage the type of behavior you are trying to curb, you just have to think "outside the box" a bit and not rely on the rules to give you a clear cut consequence.

[Cybren]

I mean, 5e gnolls _are_ intrinsically evil demon spawn that rapidly reproduce, which doesn't necessarily mean it's less morally complex as a whole, but it's not like coc or wod lack for moral objectivity when they want it


I kinda disagree. magic is a very powerful thing, and any use of it on an unwilling subject is only going to naturally be viewed as hostile, or at the very least in very poor taste. Shouldn't need magic to lighten my mood im going to the tavern to do that, run a better tavern.
it's also worth noting that there's no universal mechanism for identifying what spell was cast. Someone casts a spell on you, and you roll a saving throw, but you don't necessarily know what the spell is.

[Steampunkette]

Yes.

...

...

...

I feel like you want me to elaborate... Let's start with Morality.

Even in a world with Black and White Morality (Where doing X thing is always evil and never good) there are issues with moral underpinnings. The classing railcar problem, for example. In a world with the -most- black and white reality the only moral thing to do is stand back and let the people on the track die since any other action would be actively choosing to kill someone. But most DMs aren't going to run that world...

Many DMs chafe, to some degree or another, at the whole Alignment system. And so ignore it, implement their own, or use their own moral compass to determine what actions fall under what alignment.

Moral complexity is definitely on the table.

How about issues of social injustice and the conflicting forces tied into it? No problem! D&D handles that one -great- by providing you with a series of different cultures, races, and social presumptions to play around with. Most settings treat half-orcs as evil, regardless of their actual nature. Expand on that situation to get a greater understanding of the sociological issues that should arise from a culture of violence toward members of green-skinned races. Maybe study some texts on racism (and don't forget to look into racism and it's intersection with sexism) to form a fuller view of the social structure.

Social Justice is also there.

How about issues of existentialism? Most settings fairly clearly explain that a soul is X and it goes Y when you die and this that and the other. But what about the personal impact on reality and the endless orbit of the world about the sun until all life eventually fades in the ever-expanding corona of said sun and all is laid barren and destroyed, no evidence of one's accomplishments or great works left in reality after the planet they called home is gone...

Could be a great basis for a villain who wants to destroy the World! "The world will be destroyed by time or by the actions of men and gods. Why not, then, make it my hand that sunders the world and destroys it, utterly? At least , then, I will have done something which will impact eternity!"

[Beastrolami]

I mean, 5e gnolls _are_ intrinsically evil demon spawn that rapidly reproduce, which doesn't necessarily mean it's less morally complex as a whole, but it's not like coc or wod lack for moral objectivity when they want it

I guess it may help to say that this is a homebrew setting. Gnolls in this world are a primitive species like neanderthal. they clearly have intelligence, but cannot grasp complex sociological systems, and use savage tribal societies. They do reproduce faster than humans, but the cubs would be between 3-8 yrs old if they were humans.


it's also worth noting that there's no universal mechanism for identifying what spell was cast. Someone casts a spell on you, and you roll a saving throw, but you don't necessarily know what the spell is.

You are right. However, the party was getting suspicious, so I let them roll arcana, and the member who cast shatter made the check, and let loose a shatter instantly killing all the peasants in the area (they were too weak to survive a succesful saving throw) and kind of dinging the undead priest, who was a mid tier enemy.

[Unoriginal]

One of their earlier moral dilemas was they killed off a gnoll camp, and there were some gnoll cubs. Their npc recommended putting them out of their misery. A swift death is better than being starved and hunted in the wild. party threw them out into the wild.

...you know 5e's gnolls are horrible beings with the only reason they're not demons is because they're from the Material Plane, right?

You might have changed that, but did the players knew that?


I think that is inherit in the system.

It's not. It's inherent to the scenario/setting.


Just because you rolled a saving throw does not mean roll initiative.

What does it have to do with anything?


If someone casts charm person on you as you enter their tavern to lighten your mood it does not mean they are evil. (not that you can't use charm person for evil) I think that a spell like command, which is mostly usefull in combat, shouldn't be considered an act of aggression when used out of combat to force a character to do something mildly disagreeable.

It's like putting drug in your drink against your will. Definitively an hostile act. Not the same as evil, but you should expect people to react badly.

To be fair (and honest) the initial plan was to have the party realize he was evil, and either A. fight, and attempt to stop him (he would use the peasants as meatshields/buff them) and if the party decided not to harm the peasants it would be a rather hard fight. or B. decide he wasn't a threat to them, and head off on their quest. Again, I'm not blaming the party for doing what they did, it was basically part of plan A. I just didn't expect them to say (metaphorically) "roleplay, boring. I shoot my bazooka at them". [/QUOTE]

Did you make that situation interesting for them?




Can you give examples. The best I have seen in this thread is the hag in CoS. She eats kids, but right now, you are too weak to do anything about it, and when you get strong enough to stop her, there are bigger things to worry about.

When I ran a 5e campaign that sadly was discontinued, I made the PCs start in a city near the border, with the prince deciding that he was going to start a war with the neighboring Empire, for glory, profit and because he thought his country would win due to the current geopolitic.

The administrator of the city was an ex-adventurer who had taken the job only because his friend the king (the prince's father) had convinced him to, as the ex-adventurer was never interested in ruling or politics. Yet, he fought the prince's decision all he could, because he thought the whole city was going to get destroyed if the war started.

One of the PCs, who had the Noble background, decided to talk with the administrator, and learned about part of the situation, and decided to try to convince the prince to not start the war. Except she wasn't high nobility enough to meet him now, so she accepted to do a mission for someone who would get her an invitation to a party where she could talk to the prince.

Later, she tried to talk with the administrator, only to learn that he was leaving the city for good. Talking with a young, full of fire adventurer had re-awaken his life's passion, and thanks to the subjects the PC talked with him, entirely unwittingly from her, he decided that ,since he couldn't change the prince's mind, he would go back to adventuring.

So, with a simple conversation, the PC had significantly changed the pieces on the board, without even thinking it'd have that kind of consequences.




Edit: This isn't a dig at D&D. I have played some very fun 3.5 games that challenged me, both in combat, and with hard rp decisions.

...How did 3.5 did that? Hard RP decisions aren't rule-based.




I just feel like 5e can't do this. Maybe it's because they took away all the skills, maybe it's because they took too much from 4e.

What does skills have anything to do with it, I thought you wanted rp? And what is supposedly missing from 5e's skills that make it unable to do it?



I just want advice on how you would present a complex theme, or moral dilemma on your players.

Doesn't depend on the game system.

[Fishybugs]

And like mortis said, dnd is kind of designed for murdurhoboing. Also, they were traveling on a long stretch of empty highway, and they killed all the witnesses.

I think it's just a slow realization on my end. Probably because I started with dnd, and because 5e really simplified the rules, I had this impression that it was an extremely versatile system. Now I finally realize it's not. It is optimized for a very specific type of game, and that's a bit disappointing.

That's....the most wrong thing I've read in a long time. Just because it doesn't do what you want it to do doesn't mean that it's optimized for a very specific style. It really does boil down to the players. I've been playing almost 35 years and not once have I had a 'murderhobo' game. I would say you need to find players more willing to play your style of game and it won't be such a problem.

[Cybren]

I mean, D&D is definitely biased towards murderhoboing, but I'd argue that murder hobos are by their nature morally gray, even if they aren't complex

[pwykersotz]

It's definitely possible to run a dark world in 5e and to explore complex themes. The game I've run for the last year has been incredibly dark. Basically, there's a single "utopia" city left that's protected by the mysterious Iron Gods and the rest of the world is dark wastelands filled with aberrant horrors and terrible evil.

The first quest my party went on was to root out some cultists in the city. They were warned not to kill them, they were to be captured and held for trial. The party encountered them in some caves in the middle of a bizarre summoning ritual. One character threw his trident straight at one of them. It killed the cultist (12hp) instantly. You should have seen the player's reaction. He was completely caught off guard. "I thought he would have more HP..." He had been expecting a murderhobo sort of game, even with that warning, and he had been completely wrong.

The party restrained the others and took them back, and the council of the city held a trial. The character was found guilty of murder and sentenced to his choice of a year of hard labor or banishment from paradise. He chose the hard labor. It turns out the cultists were all being mislead and were actually pretty stand-up people, but had been deceived. The survivors hated the character for killing their friend, and the character had to deal with the judgement that had been passed down upon him. His parents, his friends, his neighbors all saw publicly that he had been entrusted with a task and fulfilled it through killing. It was an incredibly complex situation (I'm skimming over a lot of the detail) that has sent ripples through the rest of the campaign.

All those things that happened had a profound effect on the theme of the campaign. One of the players grew dark and resentful of the city and their ways (it wasn't the one who killed the cultist). The others doubled down in their efforts to do right by these people who they felt had fair laws and worthy goals. And going forward there were a lot more difficult questions to which the party has given wonderfully interesting answers.


Complex themes are very possible, it just sounds like you want the system to do the heavy lifting instead of coming up with the bulk of the logical fallout of the character's choices yourself. Which is fair, but I find it far less meaningful as others have said. No kind of "morality point" system or somesuch would have been nearly as interesting as that opening adventure alone.

[Laserlight]

It's possible OP has taught the player to that "Being a murderhobo is what works". I had a DM who wanted us to poke things, take the jeweled eye from the statue, read the runes written on the wall, and so forth...but the things we interacted with turned out to be Save or Die, so we very quickly stopped trying things. She was disappointed that we were missing all the cool lore and such, but it was entirely the DM's fault.

tl;dr People respond to incentives

[Hrugner]

It's possible OP has taught the player to that "Being a murderhobo is what works". I had a DM who wanted us to poke things, take the jeweled eye from the statue, read the runes written on the wall, and so forth...but the things we interacted with turned out to be Save or Die, so we very quickly stopped trying things. She was disappointed that we were missing all the cool lore and such, but it was entirely the DM's fault.

tl;dr People respond to incentives

I've had something similar. A DM that loves politics, social encounters, and intrigue but all of the political stuff is set in stone, the intrigue happens regardless of our actions, and the social encounters have mysteriously high DCs leaving us all dupes. He seems surprised that we try to skip all that stuff and get straight to the murder.

[Knaight]

That's....the most wrong thing I've read in a long time. Just because it doesn't do what you want it to do doesn't mean that it's optimized for a very specific style. It really does boil down to the players. I've been playing almost 35 years and not once have I had a 'murderhobo' game. I would say you need to find players more willing to play your style of game and it won't be such a problem.

Of course not. The selection of classes being a list of different flavors of mages and combatants, dedicating literally a third of the core rules to monsters to fight, an experience system designed for overcoming challenges where the only specified rules are for dealing with monsters and other potentially violent opposition where the reward is based on their capacity to do violence, two thirds of the equipment list being dedicated to the implements of fighting, and various other things like that indicate that it's optimized for a very specific style - and that's only looking at one of the ways in which it is highly specific.

[solidork]

I hate to be "that guy" but could you give examples. Not an example for each one, but some of these seem like they deserve a story.


Most recently this came up when we encountered two hill giants deep within the base of the cult were were attacking. Our sorcerer approached in a friendly manner and managed to prevent them from immediately attacking with charisma checks and gold. They were being payed by the cult, but not true believers. Once we were done exploring the current floor, we got into an argument about what to do about the giants. A few sessions previously, an NPC Paladin that was journeying with us had told us the story about how the leader of his order became famous by slaying a hill giant that had ravaged the surrounding area, characterizing both the amount of threat that a hill giant posed as well as their character: they had no real motives besides taking what they wanted by force. Half the party felt that we couldn't risk the giants escaping out into the wider world, and the other half thought that since we didn't have to fight them that we shouldn't.

So, my character is a war cleric of Tempus and is from the thunderbeast Uthgardt tribe. They participate in ancestor worship, and regularly undertake pilgrimages to specific sites where notable tribesmen were interred. My character's hook into the campaign was that he was tracking down a cousin of his who had desecrated the family tomb and stolen relics from it. The point is, as far as the uthgardt are concerned, if you mess with their tombs then your life is forfeit.

We emerged from an underground complex in the middle of a farm owned by a couple of halfling families. Our sorcerer had managed to find some exceptionally well hidden treasure in the complex, but had triggered a trap and been poisoned. My magic was able to stave off but not entirely cure the effects. While interacting with the halflings, it came to light that the treasure belonged to them and that they had a cure for the poison. We exchanged the treasure for the antidote (with some reluctance on the part of the sorcerer) and received a tip that there was a tomb on a nearby hill, and that all of the plant life around the tomb had been burnt to ash mysteriously. We arrived at the tomb, discovered it was of uthgardt origin (a different tribe than mine) and upon entering encountered the spirit of the interred warrior who explained that two halflings had broken in and taken relics from there. Once the spirit regained full strength, he was going to go on a killing spree, starting with the halflings... unless we go and kill the ones responsible and return with the stolen items. I was taking point, since it was related to my culture, and immediately agreed and exited the tomb. We got into a debate on if the grave robbers truly deserved to die, but were interrupted when a whole troop of barbarians showed up on horses and their leader entered the tomb. The barbarians would almost certainly kill every halfling at the farm and not just the thieves. One of our players is playing a home brew dragon class, so he and I flew back to the farm ahead of the barbarians, using Sending to let the halflings know to hide, but that there would be dire consequences if the thieves were not there when we arrived. I convinced the thieves that their deaths were the only way to save their family and their home, and executed them cleanly when the barbarian war party arrived. The barbarians set fire to the houses before leaving, but we were able to douse them before there was any serious damage.

After returning the items and placating the spirit, we got into another argument about killing the living for the sake of the dead and if it was ethical to not destroy the spirit to prevent this from happening in the future. We compromised by using Stoneshape to fuse the door with the rest of the tomb and leave an extremely dire warning to any future grave robbers.

[Kane0]

Most recently this came up when we encountered two hill giants deep within the base of the cult were were attacking. Our sorcerer approached in a friendly manner and managed to prevent them from immediately attacking with charisma checks and gold. They were being payed by the cult, but not true believers. Once we were done exploring the current floor, we got into an argument about what to do about the giants. A few sessions previously, an NPC Paladin that was journeying with us had told us the story about how the leader of his order became famous by slaying a hill giant that had ravaged the surrounding area, characterizing both the amount of threat that a hill giant posed as well as their character: they had no real motives besides taking what they wanted by force. Half the party felt that we couldn't risk the giants escaping out into the wider world, and the other half thought that since we didn't have to fight them that we shouldn't.

So, my character is a war cleric of Tempus and is from the thunderbeast Uthgardt tribe. They participate in ancestor worship, and regularly undertake pilgrimages to specific sites where notable tribesmen were interred. My character's hook into the campaign was that he was tracking down a cousin of his who had desecrated the family tomb and stolen relics from it. The point is, as far as the uthgardt are concerned, if you mess with their tombs then your life is forfeit.

We emerged from an underground complex in the middle of a farm owned by a couple of halfling families. Our sorcerer had managed to find some exceptionally well hidden treasure in the complex, but had triggered a trap and been poisoned. My magic was able to stave off but not entirely cure the effects. While interacting with the halflings, it came to light that the treasure belonged to them and that they had a cure for the poison. We exchanged the treasure for the antidote (with some reluctance on the part of the sorcerer) and received a tip that there was a tomb on a nearby hill, and that all of the plant life around the tomb had been burnt to ash mysteriously. We arrived at the tomb, discovered it was of uthgardt origin (a different tribe than mine) and upon entering encountered the spirit of the interred warrior who explained that two halflings had broken in and taken relics from there. Once the spirit regained full strength, he was going to go on a killing spree, starting with the halflings... unless we go and kill the ones responsible and return with the stolen items. I was taking point, since it was related to my culture, and immediately agreed and exited the tomb. We got into a debate on if the grave robbers truly deserved to die, but were interrupted when a whole troop of barbarians showed up on horses and their leader entered the tomb. The barbarians would almost certainly kill every halfling at the farm and not just the thieves. One of our players is playing a home brew dragon class, so he and I flew back to the farm ahead of the barbarians, using Sending to let the halflings know to hide, but that there would be dire consequences if the thieves were not there when we arrived. I convinced the thieves that their deaths were the only way to save their family and their home, and executed them cleanly when the barbarian war party arrived. The barbarians set fire to the houses before leaving, but we were able to douse them before there was any serious damage.

After returning the items and placating the spirit, we got into another argument about killing the living for the sake of the dead and if it was ethical to not destroy the spirit to prevent this from happening in the future. We compromised by using Stoneshape to fuse the door with the rest of the tomb and leave an extremely dire warning to any future grave robbers.

I like your games/group. Got any other stories?

[Slipperychicken]

It's possible OP has taught the player to that "Being a murderhobo is what works". I had a DM who wanted us to poke things, take the jeweled eye from the statue, read the runes written on the wall, and so forth...but the things we interacted with turned out to be Save or Die, so we very quickly stopped trying things. She was disappointed that we were missing all the cool lore and such, but it was entirely the DM's fault.

tl;dr People respond to incentives

That in turn is influenced by a poisonous notion long perpetuated the roleplaying community: that being anything resembling a decent person must necessarily be far more difficult than the alternative, and requires frequent painful sacrifices and extreme danger just to avoid falling into moral depravity. Also that goodness must always be totally selfless, and finding any kind of benefit from compassion and mercy necessarily stops it from being "true" goodness. This extends to many GMs' tendency to shamelessly abuse any hint of PCs' social attachments or ethical boundaries as fuel for cheap drama at the player's expense.

I think that if people could just let go of those ideas and focus on some of the benefits of kindness, generosity, and mercy instead of punishing it, they might someday find their players a little more predisposed to roleplaying as decent people.


And then you have traditional RPG reward mechanics that strongly encourage behavior-patterns that are really quite horrifying. When the only way to see in-game benefits is to be an unattached murderous drifter who hurls himself into ever-increasing danger, never allows any opponent to survive, and steals from the dead for no purpose but to finance more extreme violence, then you should rethink the incentive structure you've set out.

And finally most RPGs often discourage certain behaviors by simple omission: When there's no clearly defined benefit to maintaining good relations with others, then it's hard to justify a player putting effort into it. For an example of an RPG that avoids this pitfall, I think shadowrun does a decent job at making relationships with NPCs crucial to player success.

[Zman]

In my campaign that just rapped yon Sunday, the part had lots of moral type questions and often debated their actions, after the fact.

At one point they found themselves on a mission to assassinate a lord, who was, well, a good guy. They chose loyalty to London at that point. Now, they got kngithted by the kingdom working as forced allies of the Zhentarim, but they were loyal to a fault. I declared they all lost their good alignment, and became neutral at that point.

What really forces their moral compass to spin was when they were tasked to stop the heroes assembling to kill the black dragon that was ravaging the neighbor kingsom's lands. Faced with the idea of having to battle a trio of powerful heroes with the likes of Telluy, The Fist of Torm, Defender of the Innocent, a good Paladin, they had a change of heart and started working against the Zhentarim from the inside. They allied with the heroes and defeated the black dragon together. Then convinced their lord to turn his back on the Zhentarim. Then marched at the head of their armies aiding neighboring cities against the oncoming Zhenatim army.




Given your scenario, I'd punish them with guilt. They get back to the town and a weeping woman pleads with them to rescue her poor innocent son who was brainwashed during hard times by the priest, etc. make them feel the moral weight of their actions. Alignment isn't black or white, but they can feel the weight of their actions.

[Sigreid]

That in turn is influenced by a poisonous notion long perpetuated the roleplaying community: that being anything resembling a decent person must necessarily be far more difficult than the alternative, and requires frequent painful sacrifices and extreme danger just to avoid falling into moral depravity. Also that goodness must always be totally selfless, and finding any kind of benefit from compassion and mercy necessarily stops it from being "true" goodness. This extends to many GMs' tendency to shamelessly abuse any hint of PCs' social attachments or ethical boundaries as fuel for cheap drama at the player's expense.

I think that if people could just let go of those ideas and focus on some of the benefits of kindness, generosity, and mercy instead of punishing it, they might someday find their players a little more predisposed to roleplaying as decent people.


And then you have traditional RPG reward mechanics that strongly encourage behavior-patterns that are really quite horrifying. When the only way to see in-game benefits is to be an unattached murderous drifter who hurls himself into ever-increasing danger, never allows any opponent to survive, and steals from the dead for no purpose but to finance more extreme violence, then you should rethink the incentive structure you've set out.

And finally most RPGs often discourage certain behaviors by simple omission: When there's no clearly defined benefit to maintaining good relations with others, then it's hard to justify a player putting effort into it. For an example of an RPG that avoids this pitfall, I think shadowrun does a decent job at making relationships with NPCs crucial to player success.

Starting the characters with a home town and people they have known for a long time has, for me at least, gone a long way towards players considering their actions. Object permanence, so to speak, changes the focus of the game quite a bit.

[TripleD]

...How did 3.5 did that? Hard RP decisions aren't rule-based.



I've got to second this: how did 3.5's skill system encourage role play? If anything mapping every social interaction to a CHA skill made "roll play" a far more likely option.

[Steampunkette]

I've got to second this: how did 3.5's skill system encourage role play? If anything mapping every social interaction to a CHA skill made "roll play" a far more likely option.

Eh... Depends on how you handled it.

I would roll my Deception Check -before- I started lying and start telling a lie based on how well, or how badly, I rolled. Rolled a 2? I was up there with Eddie Izzard "Did I see anything? Uhhh... no... no, I was dead at the time."

Rolled a nat 20? Well here comes a well researched lie that expresses a completely reasonable set of circumstances that may or may not have caused me to (verb the noun).

Sure, there's plenty of people who just roll the dice and say "That's how well I lied!" but the same can be said of any game which has a charisma-equivalent stat (Or stats).

[Beelzebubba]

It's possible, just not as probable, due to the focus of the rules.

IMO unless the rules have actual mechanics that give players feedback on the theme in some way, then you can pull that stuff off, but you're not supported or taught by the rules, so it's much more likely to fail or to feel really unsatisfying.

For example: Gumshoe.

Gumshoe is a system that makes the investigation part of a game much deeper and more mechanically complex, and an encounter structure that is completely different from D&D - it plays out like a Noir film. Combat is super duper simple, lethal, and has almost none of the modifiers, statuses, effects, or tactics you see in D&D.

So, investigation takes up 95% of the game, it feels really satisfying and fun, and the players do everything they can to avoid combat.

Could you make that game combat-focused? Sure, but it'd be tough. It just doesn't support it, and you'd be taking on much more of the burden without rules to support it.

[War_lord]

A bit of background. I started Gming with horror games. World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Eclipse Phase. I really loved these games because the goal wasn't to beat the big boss, and survive. But to beat the big boss and survive with your humanity intact. To face unimaginable hardship, and somehow, come out of it undamaged.

Actually I'd argue that the goal of World of Darkness games is to maintain the thin shroud of humanity over your inherently inhuman nature. And that the goal of Call of Cthulhu is to discover the truth, a truth that, if one is being true to Lovecraft, will inevitably drive the play characters to madness and ruin. You don't beat the boss in CoC, you escape temporarily, ideally with enough of your wits intact that you don't end up being committed.


I'm not really trying to run a horror game in dnd, but I am running a grimdark setting, and I feel like the system of dnd is resisting any attempt on my end to create a world with complex themes and moral grey areas.

Grimdark doesn't have "complex themes and moral grey areas". The term Grimdark comes from the Warhammer 40k tagline "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.". Grimdark isn't morally complex, it's cartoonishly bleak misery that borders on self-parody.


First off, my party did not join the game expecting to play this type of game. But, as I force them to make harder choices, and suffer penalties for their actions, they have begun adjusting to the "path of least resistance".

If your campaign setting is totally and irredeemably pessimistic and bleak, why would they bother trying to act like Heroes in a setting that's tailor designed to force them into bad situations, and then penalize them for trying to do good?


Without a system to gauge morality, I feel like this has caused a disconnect, and made the world less immersive instead of more immersive.

If you want your campaign to be "shades of gray" and "immersive", why do you want a "morality" system? In the real world if I do something wrong, a God doesn't float down from the heavens, smack me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and subtract "morality points" from me. If I do something wrong, it has personal consequences, because I feel guilt for wronging others, and social consequences, because society will look down on my decisions. A world with an objective morality indisputably originating from a divine figure is not "shades of gray". Gray areas exist in real life because morality is not objective, good thing happen to bad people, and bad things to good people, all the time.


In my most recent session, the party ran into a priest who was leading a small flock of about 9 commoners. The priest was pretty obviously suspicious, dark robes, and thick hood covering his face except for a thick white beard. I let the party members with Darkvision know that his face (which is hidden under the hood) is actually a shriveled skull, and his beard are long thin worms (tapeworms kind of). It all seemed very suspicious, but when the party talked to the commoners, they seemed to be very desperate and willing to believe anything this man/undead said if it could make their lives better. The idea was to have a fight where the party is pitted against a bunch of peasants, and a priest, and they have to find a way to kill the priest and save the peasants. They cast shatter on the group, and instantly murdered all the peasants. Now, I'm generally fine with this. The party is allowed to play evil characters, and act as they see fit.

By labeling the players as evil over that, you are not following the concept of your own campaign. They where attacked by an obviously dangerous form of Undead and 9 of his cultists. They did what they had to do to eliminate the clear threat to their group. That's not an evil act in a "shades of gray" setting.


But, when it becomes clear that making a good decision will be more work, the party immediately reverted to evil because there is no apparent consequence. Because of this, I feel like there is no way to explore complex themes because a party that is not designed to make good characters, or told in advance that the campaign will explore dark themes, etc. will take the path of least resistance, be that good o evil.

If the Good option is always punished, why would the characters constantly run into that brick wall? In the real world that's what most people do, they take the path of least resistance. The reason we hold people who stood up to injustice in high regard is because it takes a special kind of person to stand up for your beliefs when no cavalry is going to come riding over the hill to save them from the consequences.

[solidork]

I like your games/group. Got any other stories?

Sure. Minor spoilers for Princes of the Apocalypse.

So, we are pushing deep into the fire cults base with the intent of finishing them off for good. We come across a circular room that has hundreds of small alcoves that are all filled with humanoid skulls that are enchanted to burn with non-damaging flames. In the back of the room is a vertical shaft that descends into darkness, with a rope ladder curled up near the top. When we investigate the shaft, we hear faint cries for help coming from below. Our highly paranoid and stubborn dwarven wizard suspects a trap and spends a long time deliberating. I am just about to offer to cast Augury when he gives in and decides we should investigate and help.

I go with him, for backup and because the (probably) prisoners might need healing. There are three prisoners down there; the one who had been calling for help and two others who are either unconscious or dead. The guy who can still talk is too weak to move, and immediately expresses fear for his friend who had stopped responding some time ago. I go over to check on him and discover that he has died, and communicate this silently to our wizard with a solemn head shake. Neither of us particularly want to be the one to break this news to the prisoner, and after a long awkward pause the wizard lies and says that his friend is still alive. I facepalm but don't contradict him. We get the story of how he came to be a prisoner of the fire cult and decide that we need to escort him to safety before going deeper into the dungeon. We rig up a rope to pull him out of the shaft, but decide to lift out the dead friend first. Once the body reaches the top, the three flameskulls who were hiding among the other skulls in the room (and instructed to attack anyone who tried to free the prisoners), animate and attack.

The silver lining is that the dead body got hit by a fireball, so we never actually had to explain to the prisoner that his friend had been dead all along and we had lied to him out of social awkwardness.

[LordCdrMilitant]

So, first off, something bright and happy can explore complex themes just as well. And, of course, just being all grim and dark where the totalitarian theocratic fascists are the good guys and everyone else manages to be worse doesn't automatically make it morally complex and emotionally meaningful. [For the Emperor!]

Second, D&D works just fine for exploring moral dilemma and the consequences of actions. It's not a moral dilemma if there's a "right answer".

Third, D&D is entirely adequate for a grimdark world.

[Coffee_Dragon]

I agree with the people saying "exploring complex issues" can be done in 5E in spite of or regardless of the system, but not thanks to it. It's very much geared towards player agency in the gamist sense - total control over your character's feelings, actions and formal abilities - as opposed to agency in the narrativist sense of having a say in where the story goes. The ways the system allows the DM to "get at" the players are reducing their HP and slapping them with conditions. At high enough levels even death ceases to be an existential threat as far as the mechanics are concerned. But yeah, you can ignore or rework that.

[furby076]

, and I feel like the system of dnd is resisting any attempt on my end to create a world with complex themes and moral grey areas. First off, my party did not join the game expecting to play this type of game. But, as I force them to make harder choices, and suffer penalties for their actions, they have begun adjusting to the "path of least resistance". Without a system to gauge morality, I feel like this has caused a disconnect, and made the world less immersive instead of more immersive.
. What are some ways you have tried to explore complex themes in 5e?

First, let your group know there are actions and reactions beyond whats at the tip of their sword. So they killed 9 peasants and the, potentially, evil undead priest. Maybe they did the right thing in the eyes of their gods (assuming divine characters are in the group), but does the law see this? With the exception of some places, your players are probably in an established country. Maybe the local tax collector stops by once a fortnight to get the kings taxes from these peasants...wait they are dead? The local lord may not be happy he lost some people who pay taxes, that goes to the king. He investigates. By itself he finds nothing (he may not have access to speak with dead), but as the players travels they can hear rumors of reports of those dead peasants....and the warrant for any details. Maybe the players ignore this and do more murderhoboing....oh look, a pattern emerges...then a trail...before your players know it they are being hunted by the law. Now they cant enter towns. If they want forgiveness ot may cost $$$$ or having to perform a quest....for free.

You dont need to use the sanity rules, but you dont have to give them a free ride. There are consequences for being evil or doing evil. Make it happen....and dont feel the need to let the characters know they have run afoul of the law until it makes sense.

Then, implement consequences of time. You can do X adventure, but you lose the chance to do Y adventure. Beyond the ramifications of losing that adventure, what happens? So you went after the raiding band of trolls and killed them. Great, you saved the town. But during this time, some vampires were harassing a local village. And now there is a large horde of undead causing other troubles....time is not your friend

[Saeviomage]

I agree with the people saying "exploring complex issues" can be done in 5E in spite of or regardless of the system, but not thanks to it. It's very much geared towards player agency in the gamist sense - total control over your character's feelings, actions and formal abilities - as opposed to agency in the narrativist sense of having a say in where the story goes.

How would 'roll the dice to see if you are upset' make a more narrativist game?

Agency over narrative is basically up to the DM in most RPGs. If the DM has bought a module, and it's got a fixed plot and he's sticking to it... you've got no agency. It doesn't matter how many times you spend your story points to change outcomes: if the DM wants to choo-choo you, you're chewed.


The ways the system allows the DM to "get at" the players are reducing their HP and slapping them with conditions. At high enough levels even death ceases to be an existential threat as far as the mechanics are concerned. But yeah, you can ignore or rework that.
Those aren't ways for the DM to 'get at' players. They are ways for the DM to get at characters.

Death and character destruction through other means have always been the weakest tools in a DM's toolbox for doing that. Killing or destroying characters just leads to characters feeling disposable.

If you want to get at your players, let them get attached to characters, give them ways to integrate their character into the world... and THEN take some of those things away from them.

To the OP:
You presented a group of 9 cultists and a disgusting undead cult leader, then had the cult leader engage in mind control against one of the PCs, after a prolonged campaign to wear down your PCs and make them see that life is cheap and their own survival is paramount.

Of course they killed them all.

The fact that they did that IS shades of grey. If you want them to feel bad about it, you need to actually do something to make them feel bad. Right now: they defended themselves against unknown hostiles. Case closed.


"I roll to contemplate the futility of existence. 20!"
"You succeed!"

[War_lord]

First, let your group know there are actions and reactions beyond whats at the tip of their sword. So they killed 9 peasants and the, potentially, evil undead priest. Maybe they did the right thing in the eyes of their gods (assuming divine characters are in the group), but does the law see this? With the exception of some places, your players are probably in an established country. Maybe the local tax collector stops by once a fortnight to get the kings taxes from these peasants...wait they are dead? The local lord may not be happy he lost some people who pay taxes, that goes to the king. He investigates. By itself he finds nothing (he may not have access to speak with dead), but as the players travels they can hear rumors of reports of those dead peasants....and the warrant for any details. Maybe the players ignore this and do more murderhoboing....oh look, a pattern emerges...then a trail...before your players know it they are being hunted by the law. Now they cant enter towns. If they want forgiveness ot may cost $$$$ or having to perform a quest....for free.

You dont need to use the sanity rules, but you dont have to give them a free ride. There are consequences for being evil or doing evil. Make it happen....and dont feel the need to let the characters know they have run afoul of the law until it makes sense.

In a world that's oh so grimdark, morally ambiguous, and various other things on the checklist of 90's edgyness, who is realistically going to care about the fate of 9 peasants?

Here's the problem with both you and the OP. You can't drop a group of players into a crapsack world where decay and evil are the norm and no good deed goes unpunished and then complain when they actually act to ensure their survival and that of their companions. A cult attacked them, the party was not under any obligation to protect the lives of their assailants. You can't set up the world to be all grim and ambiguous, and then smack them down when they refuse to act like a Paladin.

[Coffee_Dragon]

How would 'roll the dice to see if you are upset' make a more narrativist game?

Very good question?


Agency over narrative is basically up to the DM in most RPGs. If the DM has bought a module, and it's got a fixed plot and he's sticking to it... you've got no agency.

Agreed. But there are games that by virtue of the system do not work like this, or at the very least do not encourage it. We were talking system, right? If we're not talking system, there's no point in framing the question as "in 5e". As noted obviously every game has a base capability of "exploring" anything if you ignore what the rules are telling you the game is about.


Those aren't ways for the DM to 'get at' players. They are ways for the DM to get at characters.

And they're essentially the same in D&D as far as system is concerned.


If you want to get at your players, let them get attached to characters, give them ways to integrate their character into the world... and THEN take some of those things away from them.

To the extent that 5E has rules for any of that (faction points?), I would absolutely expect an outcry from a section of the Gitp crowd if you took away those things, framing it as a theft of player agency if you lose earned formalized mechanical advantages.

[blurneko]

The system is not at fault here. It is up to the DM to create a world with rules and consequences. If there no repercussions to killing, nobody would think twice about. It is then up to the players to RP their characters in the world. Mechanics have nothing to do with any of this.

[Beelzebubba]

How would 'roll the dice to see if you are upset' make a more narrativist game?

Interesting question, since explicitly narrativist games don't do that at all, and characterizing them like that is not helpful to learning what they do and how.

[GPS]

they have killed innocents, but they were gnolls, and the party didn't directly kill them.

Are you running gnolls differently from normal, as independent dudes or something? Gnolls are basically non-undead zombies. They're pretty much the only race that can't have exceptions to the evil alignment, as their minds and the minds of any gnolls they spawn are under the direct grasp of the demon dude, with pretty much no way to wrench this grasp. "Innocent gnolls" is an oxymoron, assuming you're running normal gnolls. Not saying you can't run gnolls different, just confused.

[Squiddish]

This is not to say that its impossible to have more complex themes in 5e. Alot of Curse of Strahd is seeming about how to kill the big bad but there's also other things that lurk in ravenloft. Hags take children and presumably make pastries with their bodies. Level 1 its easy to run in to these guys. As good characters we want to stop this, but its also something we know we wont win. We could try to gather a force to kill the hags but there are other things that could be done in the mean time. Most players tend to say 'we'll just come back to kill them off later', condemning children to die in the mean time. Its almost encouraged to make this decision too. However no consequences unless the players want to dwell on it more in character (i instantly forget).


We opted instead to go to their windmill, knock on their door, and lure one away with the old door-to door salesman trick. Unfortunately two came instead, but we managed to beat them all the same, all at level four. We lost our warlock, but he sold the souls the hags had on them in order to return to life.

Then we looted them for loads of money and leveled up, so it turns out that doing good does pay.

[Sir cryosin]

Ok first of all you should of had a session 0 and lay out the type of campaign you want to run. What's the tone of the campaign. Also How you Invision the PC'S, because is sounds like you complaining about your PC's not feeling bad about killing people. But you let them play more morally grey character's. And before you say I don't want to force them to play lawful good or any good. But that what systems with rules to corrupt do anyway.

What you can do is anytime your PC's do something morally wrong. Have them make a wisdom roll. If they fail the roll the gain a insane point. After they accumulate a set number of points they gain a insane flaw trait. 5e gives you the sand to build a sand castle. It up to you how to build it and with what tools to build it with.

[RipTide]

With D&D it is very important for the GM and Players to be on the same page. The Gm lays out the structure of the story but the players decide the tone, it doesn't matter if you you designed Dark Souls when your players are acting like its Saints row. So laying out the general idea you have and themes you want to cover before starting is usually a good idea.

Part of your problem seems to stem form the fact that D&D does not have set morality rules (save the alignment system but most people agree its not a very good system), but, at least in my opinion, that makes it perfect for actually exploring any theme you want. Where other systems have set this happened so you are affected in this way, with D&D you can decide what it means to each character when something happens, you can decide what the consequences of their actions are.

Take the given example of straight up murdering 9 innocent people. Did anyone object to the action? Note that down and bring it up at a later date to fuel some in party drama (to help RP between the PC's not an argument between players). Have them walk into town and run into a loved one of one of the people they killed searching for their missing wife or son. Maybe somebody stumbles onto the scene of the crime or even witnessed it happen and runs to warns all the nearby towns of the evil outsiders so they gut run out on site, forcing them to miss out on any Taverns to get a good nights rest, shops to restock supplies, or helpful information they may have gotten. These are just examples I came up with off the top of my head, but each one reinforces that they did a bad thing that had consequences without beating them over the head with it.

D&D, I will admit, is sold on high fantasy high adventure, but it is a pretty loose set of rules that can be applied to anything. Having strict rules can feel like, you did this bad thing which corresponds to this generic punishment, sure it is immediate reinforcement to not do bad things but it can feel like it lacks nuance and, in my opinion, can limit role play opportunities.

[Beastrolami]

Just wanted to address some of the common comments:

First Off: I am NOT saying the party was wrong for killing the peasants. As many people have pointed out, I threw them into a dark world, caused them to lose trust in everything but themselves, and then placed before them a suspicious group. It was supposed to be a moral dilemma of "do we let these peasants get killed by an obviously evil entity, or ignore them because it's not our problem." The players surprised me, and I talked to them after the game, and they told me they legitimately thought they were monsters disguised as peasants preparing to attack the party. They made a role-play decision in that moment, and that's ok.

My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.

My issue is that besides the player committing to rp, there is nothing to stop a Lawful Good character from going Chaotic Evil. Because of the gamist build of 5e, I feel like, with a group of random players who have no connection to the world or each other, 5e would seem to encourage a chaotic neutral alignment. "act because you can because this is a game, and it doesn't mater." Obviously there are ways I could have punished them as a DM, but in the grimdark world they are playing in, their actions didn't really matter to anyone, except the priest who's meal they stole, and they killed him.

Second: It's not that I want a morality system in 5e. And it is not just this one instance of weak roleplaying that has me disenchanted with the system. Everyone has their own likes and opinions, and I enjoy skill based games over level based games. I think games like WoD, where you can build a character for rp, who is almost useless in combat can still contribute to the party. I also like that they close the gap between max level and beginner so that if you are smart, and use all the resources available you can kill a god very early in the campaign. (Which my players did to my surprise). The morality isn't there to say "you did a no-no take a -1". It's there to remind the players that despite the fact that they are playing a game. They are supposed to be role-playing as people. And doing things like theft, murder and arson, even if they are for the greater good, take their toll on your morality. And eventually you see people as tools to be used, instead of people to be protected. That being said, I have run WoD games where the players disregarded these rules, and tried to be murder hobos. They didn't have happy endings, but they didn't really care, they got to murder people, and take their stuff, and that was fun for them.

minor comments:

I am using a home-brew setting, so although the gnolls were savage and attacked the party. They aren't irredeemably bound to an evil demon. I try to avoid any type of locked alignments in my game because I dislike forcing stereotypes on players/monsters.

If you claim you have been playing 5e for 35 years, you are wrong. I am not bashing DnD. I am merely making some personal observations about the most recent edition. I think that some of the changes they made reinforce the murdurhobo stereotype/mentality.

sorry for the rant and possible thread necro, just wanted to give y'all an update on how the party felt after I talked to them about it out of game.

[pwykersotz]

My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.

My issue is that besides the player committing to rp, there is nothing to stop a Lawful Good character from going Chaotic Evil. Because of the gamist build of 5e, I feel like, with a group of random players who have no connection to the world or each other, 5e would seem to encourage a chaotic neutral alignment. "act because you can because this is a game, and it doesn't mater." Obviously there are ways I could have punished them as a DM, but in the grimdark world they are playing in, their actions didn't really matter to anyone, except the priest who's meal they stole, and they killed him.

Having not played WoD, I'm curious. How would these other systems you're referring to have handled this?

Because you're not entirely wrong about D&D, there is no enforcement mechanism on behavior. And that can be a problem when the DM doesn't frame the situation properly, or when the players are ignoring that framing. But having that enforcement mechanism means the players are now gaming that mechanism instead of making character decisions, at least as far as I can tell.

[Waterdeep Merch]

It's definitely possible to do complex. I find having a specific mechanic in place for morality to actually be limiting. Instead, I enforce complexity through interactions, offering the possibility of doing things right or wrong and having consequences built-in for EITHER scenario, not just the one I might want them to take as DM.

I had a campaign almost self-destruct because it got too morally complex, with half the party resorting to a Machiavellian kill-em-all approach, and the other half adamantly refused to keep resorting to killing anything that even remotely resembles a threat. Both sides were trying to protect a caravan of people, which represented their entire world essentially (all shops, major NPC's, everything they needed). I made many of their foes fairly complicated to deal with- some could be reasoned with, some would lie about being reasonable, some would present themselves as allies at first and then prove to be more dangerous as friends than they ever could be as corpses.

It got so bad that I had to remove alignments from the game and start introducing fewer nuanced enemies, after the party got into a shouting match about killing the last in a family of cursed lycanthropes that had attacked them (a child, whom the patriarch offered his own life to save just moments before). A session later, a player character killed himself in game after being tricked into murdering a man who had been manipulated by a dark force, but who had, himself, never done anything wrong.

TL;DR It might sound fun, but in my experience morale complexity in a grimdark setting is extremely unpleasant. And it certainly doesn't need dedicated mechanics, just circumstances.

[Sir cryosin]

Just wanted to address some of the common comments:

First Off: I am NOT saying the party was wrong for killing the peasants. As many people have pointed out, I threw them into a dark world, caused them to lose trust in everything but themselves, and then placed before them a suspicious group. It was supposed to be a moral dilemma of "do we let these peasants get killed by an obviously evil entity, or ignore them because it's not our problem." The players surprised me, and I talked to them after the game, and they told me they legitimately thought they were monsters disguised as peasants preparing to attack the party. They made a role-play decision in that moment, and that's ok.

My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.

My issue is that besides the player committing to rp, there is nothing to stop a Lawful Good character from going Chaotic Evil. Because of the gamist build of 5e, I feel like, with a group of random players who have no connection to the world or each other, 5e would seem to encourage a chaotic neutral alignment. "act because you can because this is a game, and it doesn't mater." Obviously there are ways I could have punished them as a DM, but in the grimdark world they are playing in, their actions didn't really matter to anyone, except the priest who's meal they stole, and they killed him.

Second: It's not that I want a morality system in 5e. And it is not just this one instance of weak roleplaying that has me disenchanted with the system. Everyone has their own likes and opinions, and I enjoy skill based games over level based games. I think games like WoD, where you can build a character for rp, who is almost useless in combat can still contribute to the party. I also like that they close the gap between max level and beginner so that if you are smart, and use all the resources available you can kill a god very early in the campaign. (Which my players did to my surprise). The morality isn't there to say "you did a no-no take a -1". It's there to remind the players that despite the fact that they are playing a game. They are supposed to be role-playing as people. And doing things like theft, murder and arson, even if they are for the greater good, take their toll on your morality. And eventually you see people as tools to be used, instead of people to be protected. That being said, I have run WoD games where the players disregarded these rules, and tried to be murder hobos. They didn't have happy endings, but they didn't really care, they got to murder people, and take their stuff, and that was fun for them.

minor comments:

I am using a home-brew setting, so although the gnolls were savage and attacked the party. They aren't irredeemably bound to an evil demon. I try to avoid any type of locked alignments in my game because I dislike forcing stereotypes on players/monsters.

If you claim you have been playing 5e for 35 years, you are wrong. I am not bashing DnD. I am merely making some personal observations about the most recent edition. I think that some of the changes they made reinforce the murdurhobo stereotype/mentality.

sorry for the rant and possible thread necro, just wanted to give y'all an update on how the party felt after I talked to them about it out of game.


Dude your sending mix Signals. You said you don't play with alignment but you want to play with moral dilemmas. You aslo say you don't want a moral system in 5e but your compaining about 5e can't have complex store because you cant punish or make your PC's feel bad with mechanics of the game. Those other games force PC's to pick morally good choices other wise they have to pay a consequence. In dnd they leave that up to the DM to his/her own way. What you should be asking how can I get my players more invested into there characters and how to pull of morally grey encounters.

[Beastrolami]

Having not played WoD, I'm curious. How would these other systems you're referring to have handled this?

Because you're not entirely wrong about D&D, there is no enforcement mechanism on behavior. And that can be a problem when the DM doesn't frame the situation properly, or when the players are ignoring that framing. But having that enforcement mechanism means the players are now gaming that mechanism instead of making character decisions, at least as far as I can tell.

First of all, any system can be gamed. I have seen players game the morality system, and it does kill the immersion for me as a storyteller. The way WoD does it in the Mortal line of nWoD is you start as a normal human. Not an adventurer, not a hero, just a normal dude, or dudette. As you begin committing crimes such as theft, murder, etc. you begin to become more jaded (possibly gaining derangements as well) and desensitized to these actions. If you fall far enough, you end up killing people just for getting in your way, just like the monsters you were originally hunting. It doesn't always work, but having a system that emphasizes rp, and forces players to consider the cost of their actions helps drive them to rp their characters better.


Dude your sending mix Signals. You said you don't play with alignment but you want to play with moral dilemmas. You aslo say you don't want a moral system in 5e but your compaining about 5e can't have complex store because you cant punish or make your PC's feel bad with mechanics of the game. Those other games force PC's to pick morally good choices other wise they have to pay a consequence. In dnd they leave that up to the DM to his/her own way. What you should be asking how can I get my players more invested into there characters and how to pull of morally grey encounters.

Yeah. It's not that I think 5e needs a morality system. The main complaint is that because 5e has simplified the mechanics, it plays more like a videogame than a tabletop game. (especially since 75% of the mechanics focus on combat and the other 25% is getting loot after you win [not accurate numbers]). I'm not saying there should be a bar that says hey, you are sad now because your companion died. Just saying that with the streamlined nature, and combat heavy focus, I feel like it pushes players to rely on combat, rather than rp to solve their problems, and if they mess up, they will deal with it in a violent way, instead of an rp way.

Obviously a player can roleplay as they like, and a group of friends who play a certain way will have good chemistry and roleplay their characters together well. But, examining the system in itself, it seems to lend itself to murderhoboing in a mad dash to get the best loot and kill the biggest boss so you can.... win? (CONTROVERSIAL ALERT)

idk, I rambled again. There are things I like about DnD, and maybe I have gotten burnt out on the system. I think that it is impossible to make the perfect tabletop system, and although a lot of people like 5e, as I've delved farther down the rabbit hole I have begun to see what I consider flaws in the system.

[pwykersotz]

First of all, any system can be gamed. I have seen players game the morality system, and it does kill the immersion for me as a storyteller. The way WoD does it in the Mortal line of nWoD is you start as a normal human. Not an adventurer, not a hero, just a normal dude, or dudette. As you begin committing crimes such as theft, murder, etc. you begin to become more jaded (possibly gaining derangements as well) and desensitized to these actions. If you fall far enough, you end up killing people just for getting in your way, just like the monsters you were originally hunting. It doesn't always work, but having a system that emphasizes rp, and forces players to consider the cost of their actions helps drive them to rp their characters better.

Okay, I think the bolded is the heart of your point, please correct me if I'm wrong.

What is the cost of their actions? What do you want that cost to be? Take your above example, you wanted the Chaotic Good Bard to take murder seriously, but in your grimdark setting, society and deities won't be holding anyone accountable. Which seems to indicate that you want the character to be beholden to the player. The player should realize that they're doing bad and dark things according to societal norms, and to either embrace the evil path they are treading, or to think twice about what it actually means to kill these peasants who might be monsters. Your core assumption seems to be that the players want their characters to be, if not strictly good, then at least reasonably non-evil people.

I'm definitely not against bumper rails on alignments to make sure characters are contextualizing their actions properly. Whether that is because of GM prodding or a system of some sort, that kind of context is important for making decisions. But now you have a spectrum to deal with. On the one hand, you have D&D alignment (a very soft system) and the optional modules on Sanity and such in the DMG (crunchy, but limited). On the other hand, you have WoD, which from what you say is very much in depth. D&D emphasizes the freedom of choice and a lack of overt punishment overall, whereas WoD represents consequences to future decision making capabilities.

I think there is nothing wrong with saying another system did something better or that you prefer that system. But based on what you say, I don't think that's the problem. I think the softer D&D system just needs to be brought into the foreground a bit. For example, let players choose their starting alignment. Define the alignment system in your game (since everyone views alignment differently). Then, if someone deviates from that action wildly without provocation, ask the player if they've changed their mind about who their character is. If they have not, apply a short term madness. And if they perform enough actions of another alignment and they still have not changed their mind, give them a long term madness or flaw.

To revisit your Bard situation with this, you said they approximated to Chaotic Good. This decision clearly shows an utter lack of care for human life. So as the player narrates their decision, ask if they have decided to change to Chaotic Neutral. Or since you don't use alignments, if they believe they are doing the good and right thing here, since that's generally how they've been trying to behave. Remind them that they are committing pre-emptive murder, and verify that fits the character. If they say that yes, it does, then change their alignment or the generalization thereof in your mind and call it good. If it does not but they feel they should do it anyway, give them that brief madness to reflect the cognitive dissonance. Heck, let the player choose their madness to best reflect the decision.

Using this method, there's nothing really to game. You still retain complete freedom to make your decisions and change your character as you see fit. But it forces engagement with that system, and forces you to acknowledge what you've done. Penalties are light but present, and you haven't really deviated outside the core of 5e. Does something like this fill that hole that you feel is in the game?

Disclaimer: This system was an off the cuff example and might or might not have serious flaws as-is, I was just using it as a demonstration of the flexibility in adding something like this to 5e.

[RipTide]

The main complaint is that because 5e has simplified the mechanics, it plays more like a videogame than a tabletop game. (especially since 75% of the mechanics focus on combat and the other 25% is getting loot after you win [not accurate numbers]). I'm not saying there should be a bar that says hey, you are sad now because your companion died. Just saying that with the streamlined nature, and combat heavy focus, I feel like it pushes players to rely on combat, rather than rp to solve their problems, and if they mess up, they will deal with it in a violent way, instead of an rp way.

The books focus on combat mechanics because that is where you need the mechanics so things don't get to out of hand. If you put to many game mechanics into Roll Play it becomes harder to play the character you want to play because you have to weigh that punishment as a part of your decision. Even if people aren't doing it intentionally there will always be situations where people think "If I make this hard call, my character will permanently be changed from what I want it to be. So I'm gonna go the other way even though my character wouldn't want to do that."

D&D does require players to want to get into this, and as a gm it is hard to force your players if they don't want to. So I still think the more open system allows for better opportunity to RP but only if that is what the players want.

[Unoriginal]

I agree with the people saying "exploring complex issues" can be done in 5E in spite of or regardless of the system, but not thanks to it. It's very much geared towards player agency in the gamist sense - total control over your character's feelings, actions and formal abilities - as opposed to agency in the narrativist sense of having a say in where the story goes.

What. How does that hinder "exploring complex issues" ?



My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.

That means that those characters are shifting toward an evil alignment, as they're not having any remorse over avoidable deaths. One incident like that won't change their alignment, but if it becomes an habit, definitively.


My issue is that besides the player committing to rp, there is nothing to stop a Lawful Good character from going Chaotic Evil.

That's great! People have agency. It's one of those complex issues like the ones you claim you want to explore, right?


Because of the gamist build of 5e, I feel like, with a group of random players who have no connection to the world or each other, 5e would seem to encourage a chaotic neutral alignment. "act because you can because this is a game, and it doesn't mater." Obviously there are ways I could have punished them as a DM, but in the grimdark world they are playing in, their actions didn't really matter to anyone, except the priest who's meal they stole, and they killed him.

No, 5e's system doesn't encourage that. It's the RP you're giving the players/the players are doing that's pushing them that way.


They are supposed to be role-playing as people. And doing things like theft, murder and arson, even if they are for the greater good, take their toll on your morality. And eventually you see people as tools to be used, instead of people to be protected.

We call that "people becoming evil".


First of all, any system can be gamed. I have seen players game the morality system, and it does kill the immersion for me as a storyteller. The way WoD does it in the Mortal line of nWoD is you start as a normal human. Not an adventurer, not a hero, just a normal dude, or dudette. As you begin committing crimes such as theft, murder, etc. you begin to become more jaded (possibly gaining derangements as well) and desensitized to these actions. If you fall far enough, you end up killing people just for getting in your way, just like the monsters you were originally hunting. It doesn't always work, but having a system that emphasizes rp, and forces players to consider the cost of their actions helps drive them to rp their characters better.

It doesn't emphasizes RP, you admitted yourself it was just a game system that could be gamed, and was constantly so.

In DnD, PCs would become evil as they start being roleplayed as doing evil things.




The main complaint is that because 5e has simplified the mechanics, it plays more like a videogame than a tabletop game.

...are you trolling? Honest question. How is giving you MORE freedom to make choice and change the world "plays more like a video game" ?



(especially since 75% of the mechanics focus on combat and the other 25% is getting loot after you win [not accurate numbers]).

That's basically all the editions of DnD.



I'm not saying there should be a bar that says hey, you are sad now because your companion died. Just saying that with the streamlined nature, and combat heavy focus, I feel like it pushes players to rely on combat, rather than rp to solve their problems, and if they mess up, they will deal with it in a violent way, instead of an rp way.

Violence can be RP. And it's not a fault of the system. People react to the story, not to "here are commoners with 4 HPs".



Obviously a player can roleplay as they like, and a group of friends who play a certain way will have good chemistry and roleplay their characters together well.

Indeed. So, you admit that you know one can explore complex themes and have great RP in 5e




But, examining the system in itself, it seems to lend itself to murderhoboing in a mad dash to get the best loot and kill the biggest boss so you can.... win? (CONTROVERSIAL ALERT)

Just killing monsters is meaningless without a story. It's not up to the rules to give you a story, they're here to let you know how situations are resolved in the story.

The system does not "lend itself to murderhoboing in a mad dash to get the best loot and kill the biggest boss so you can.... win". It's pretty outlandish that you praise 3.X's versions of things, where that kind of scenario was way more pushed, yet blame 5e for it when it doesn't do it.

The system lends itself to help unfold a story. You can't win at a RPG, you can simply have successful characters and enjoyable sessions. 5e pushes the focus away from accumulating magic items and loot. And the only reason to get stronger is that you can have more awesome interactions with the world, be they combat or otherwise.

[Coffee_Dragon]

What. How does that hinder "exploring complex issues" ?

By giving you a hammer and telling you to go look for nails. Of course, you can ignore it or work around it, like you can ignore or work around anything.

[Honest Tiefling]

My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.

This makes me think that one of the core problems of this game is that not everyone is on the same page. I know that if I was plopped into a game without prior discussion and see a bunch of peasants worshiping a dude that looks like a Saturday morning cartoon villain with butt-worms on his face, I'm probably going to assume that this is a silly game due to several factors. Firstly, the over the top dress of the priest isn't putting anyone into the mind set. Thirdly, unless you have set up this world really well, they might as well be worshiping a hungry bear for all of the good it'll do them and might not seem logical (hence why I think your players thought they were monsters too. Thirdly, butt-worms. I'd try to avoid the scatological references until the tone is more set and everyone has reached a compromise.

Roleplay can be encouraged or discouraged, but it takes a lot of work for a system to completely kill it if the players are determined enough. Several posters here could probably roleplay a game of tic tac toe if they were bored enough.

I do have to wonder, have you provided many carrots to encourage RP? With a grimdark setting it is easy for players to feel like talking to NPCs is too dangerous or doesn't do anything but provided a cheap drama when they die horribly. I do have to wonder if the players just don't have a lot of ways to be invested in the setting.

[GPS]

By giving you a hammer and telling you to go look for nails. Of course, you can ignore it or work around it, like you can ignore or work around anything.
Well, as the DM who's making the campaign story and wants to explore these complex topics, isn't it your job to find the nails? If mechanics force complexity for you by making players unplayable when they step out of line instead of the DM RPing the results of evil actions, is the result really a well-played complex scenario? I'd argue that both can be complex depending on the situation, but that the roleplaying consequences makes for a much more interesting moral quandry than just say, "welp, you didn't pick the right option, lose a sanity point." Sure it might take a little thought and legwork, but if a mechanic makes your player's RP decisions for them, what's the point in challenging them with moral quandaries in the first place? You already know the result, as the result is required. That would be the game making RP decisions, not the players.

My point isn't that systems like nWoD are inherently bad for complex themes. Worse, maybe, but not bad. It's that you can definitely explore complex themes in 5e, the consequences were inside you all along. You just gotta believe in yourself and your ability to RP consequences. No witnesses? Well, there are a few fixes for that. If one of your players' characters is religious, might I suggest the d&d staple, "god appears in their dreams and sends them on some atonement quest," a classic prescription for an evil act from a good character. If you have a divine caster, this is an especially pertenant threat, as gods can cause paladins to fall or cut off cleric's powers if they really hate their actions. I'm not saying actually take away their powers (unless they're a paladin), as that would be the same as sanity points and such. I'm saying use the threat to make for a good quest hook and a way to make the party think twice about murderhoboing. No divine casters? Well, several other solutions have been proposed on this thread. You often don't need a mechanics's crutch, as there's usually an answer to an RP scenario that implements RP if you seek it out. Sure it might take a little thought and legwork, but in the end you'll end up with something unique, something you created, tailored to your campaign as a consequence for evil actions.

Edit: I agree with prior posters that say this is more a problem of the players and DM than of the game. If they're willing to kill a whole bunch of innocent commoners just for convenience, all a sanity or nWoD morality system is going to do is make them bored and frustrated with the game. It may sooner convince them to leave the group than to change their ways and embrace the moral quandaries from a moraly-good standpoint like OP wanted. If the players and the DM aren't on the same page about the type of game they want, system mechanics aren't going to make much difference in a positive direction

[Cespenar]

You can put plenty of consequences inside the battle and its aftermath to underline the action they took. Describe in detail how easily the peasants' heads exploded with the might of the Shatter spell, splattering blood and viscera on the clothes of the nearby characters. Have one of them survive (due to being out of the area), and run away in grave horror. Have another fall on his knees and hold his wife's shattered body, etc.

In the next town, people might be speaking about the "something" that butchered a bunch of peasants and a priest effortlessly. A group of kings men, led by a corrupt constable might be waltzing around the place and decided to investigate the deaths out of boredom or spite. A no-nonsense inquisitor might have been chasing the priest/creature, and upon seeing the location of the incident, believes a greater monster might be at work there.

[Orion3T]

I'm still not sure I understand the problem. I see 2 aspects that seem to bother the OP:

1. The PCs chose a path which they didn't expect, and the DM feels there should be some mechanism to discourage that.

2. The PC in question was supposed to be CG. So what? Giving the PCs an alignment is a RP aid for the players, not some rule they should follow or a stick to beat them with.

Also, I don't know how the OP defines Role Play. In what way was them choosing that option not Role Playing? They may not be playing the role the OP expected and/or wanted them to play. But making that decision is just as much RP as deciding to leave the priest alone or trying to take it out without killing the followers. Not following the alignment suggested on their character sheet does not mean they are not roleplaying. It might mean they changed their minds about the type of character they want to play, or it might mean they had a different understanding/perspectie on the scenario you presented them with.

I get the impression that if the PC who cast Shatter had been say Neutral Evil, the OP would have been OK with it? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

All that's needed here are:

a) Consequences for their actions. Sure, the system doesn't provide penalties for the way the players choose to play their characters. That's the DM's job in this game. Which might mean more work for the DM but it actually makes it more flexible, not less.

b) Possibly a discussion with the player about why they acted that way and whether they think it's in keeping with their alignment or if they would prefer to change their alignment. Not that it really matters - Alignment in 5E is just something to help the players get into character. At least, that's how I think of it.


In a campaign my son is DMing for me, I play a Drow. She started out Evil and I acted that way; she would torture, sacrifice members of the party (NPCs) if they were holding the group back (one NPC who had been making little or no contribution was the last one trying to climb a rope ladder and our captors were chasing us, beginning to climb it themselves. She started cutting the ropes, sacrificing the NPC so our pursuers couldn't follow. Not that it mattered as they shot him anyway, but she would have kept going even if he'd looked like making it.).

However she has gradually become more neutral - she learned that even those who appear weak can show bravery (a Kuo-Toa pacifist NPC she thought was useless, jumped from a boat to distract an attacking water creature with his fast swimming and pretty much saved the entire party). She has also lost NPCs she thought were strong to Orog and now hates Orog. She found that torture really didn't work very well and she didn't enjoy it, so now tends to use more subtle methods.

She can still be a bit merciless - she insisted on killing some baby basilisks because the adults had petrified an ally; they would grow up to be too dangerous. This might not be evil but it certainly isn't particularly 'good' either.

Am I now RPing her wrong, or not at all? I don't think so, I'm just changing the character. She has evolved because of her expriences. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

[Orion3T]

You can put plenty of consequences inside the battle and its aftermath to underline the action they took. Describe in detail how easily the peasants' heads exploded with the might of the Shatter spell, splattering blood and viscera on the clothes of the nearby characters. Have one of them survive (due to being out of the area), and run away in grave horror. Have another fall on his knees and hold his wife's shattered body, etc.

In the next town, people might be speaking about the "something" that butchered a bunch of peasants and a priest effortlessly. A group of kings men, led by a corrupt constable might be waltzing around the place and decided to investigate the deaths out of boredom or spite. A no-nonsense inquisitor might have been chasing the priest/creature, and upon seeing the location of the incident, believes a greater monster might be at work there.

This, very much.

OP said the PCs killed all the witnesses (were these passers by, which would be very much an evil act, or just making sure all the cultists were dead?) but unless they covered their tracks extremely well it's pretty trivial to have the local town send/hire someone to investigate the missing villagers. And that pursuer could become their main foe for a while. Perhaps they can realise there's some other powerful adventuring party after them and they will need to deal with that (either by defeating them, which might be considered also evil, or by clearing their name as they had intended to do good and thought the cultists were beyond saving).

It all depends on the details, but it's all up to the DM to come up with interesting consequences which will encourage the players to consider their actions in hindsight and question their own motives.

Also - make sure there are rewards for avoiding fights just as much as for winning fights. If I have the option to confront or avoid an encounter, thinking my character's progression will be affected by the choice can affect my decision even if I try not to let it. I would be in favour of awarding the same XP for an encounter no matter how it's resolved (unless it's effectively bypassed altogether, like if there's something to explore and they choose not to). I should get the same XP for persuading a group of bandits to stand down as I would have for killing them. OK, I won't get the loot, but then loot from bandits is likely to be trivial in 5E anyway. And it's likely a faster encounter so we get onto the next one sooner.

The way to avoid the players being murderhobos is to not make murdering everything the most profitable activity. If they can get just as much from a 1h RP session as they do from a 1h slaughterfest then the RP session becomes more appealing (and probably less dangerous). If the players decide they want to RP their evening's shennanigans in the tavern, telling stories to NPCs and playing games with them, that should earn them something I think.

[Beastrolami]

This thread is 3 pages in, so I guess I can give an update on my personal conclusions.

Yes, of course you can explore complex themes in DnD. You can explore complex themes in almost any rp system (and like someone mentioned above, you can rp tick-tack-toe if you're bored enough.... curse those X's). That being said, I think that having strong roleplayers or a system to measure morality/sanity can help emphasize some of these points. In the end, DnD 5e as a system doesn't support my style of game as well as I'd like it to. In a campaign where I'm a player, we had a tough fight, and afterwards, I mentioned that my character collapsed from exhaustion. immediately, one of the other players went over to try to heal me, and asked why I had exhaustion levels. I was hurt, but hadn't taken the most damage, and didn't have exhaustion levels, but I was forced to tank for the majority of the fight, and I am not running a tank build. As a roleplaying decision, my character was stressed out, and tired from being forced to fill a role he was not trained for. However, the system said there was nothing wrong, and other players in the party were confused as to why I was waiting back, and not immediately moving to loot our dead opponents. I'm not saying that DnD needs a morality system, fatigue system, etc. But, when you cram 5-6 fights into a single in-game day, and more combat is the DM's primary tool for challenging players, I feel more inclined to create challenging combat encounters for the players than trying to facilitate roleplay or character development.

quick side points: I'm not mad that the character killed the peasants, nor do I feel like they need to be punished. They were the lowest of the low, who understood that this creature would probably kill them, but anything was better than the horrible lives they were living, and so they took the small hope he gave them and followed him willingly into the unknown. It's a grimdark setting, no one cares when a bunch of nameless bums die.

Just a bit of extra story points: After they killed the peasants, the creature, who had yet to reveal his wormy face (to those without darkvision, he looked like a robed/wooded figure with a long white beard). The creature ran, his meal was gone, and these random travelers were obviously much more powerful than he was alone. The party hunted him down, killed him, and then were upset when he didn't have any loot on him. That's what frustrated me the most. The encounter was designed to be a roleplay encounter, and although I was ready for it to turn into a combat encounter, I was surprised that the party saw it as a walking loot drop. (Again, I talked to the players out of game, and resolved the issue).

Alignment shifting. I don't have a problem with changing your alignment over time. I think that when you rp it correctly, it can drive immersive, and interesting character growth and development. I'm not mad that the character's alignment changed over time. I am just frustrated that they had this near polar alignment shift and didn't rp. They didn't get realize that good deeds go unrewarded, or that the death of a few is greater than the death of many. They saw a potential enemy killed them, and then after realizing it wasn't an enemy, said, "oh well, people make mistakes." looted the bodies and started skipping down the road cheerfully. That isn't character development. To a certain extent, there needs to be mechanics. An exhausted character will roleplay they are exhausted, falling behind the group, performing poorly on checks, they will probably begin huffing/puffing in character, or complain that they haven't gotten a good night's sleep in a while. Again, not saying you can't explore complex themes, or engage in good roleplay in dnd, just saying it is beginning to conflict with my dm style which favors horror themed games for their focus on the smaller aspects of being the character, than the gamist aspects of which ability is better for killing bad guys.

If I didn't respond to your post it is because I'm trying not to start a flame war, but I have been trying to answer everyone's arguments. if you think I am avoiding your argument, feel free to post it again, or PM me, and I'll debate my opinions with you.

[N810]

Sounds like you and your players want to play very different types of games.
You seem to want a deeply role played character driven campaign,
and your players seem to want a basic dungeon craw with very little roleplaying.

[Orion3T]

Sounds like you and your players want to play very different types of games.
You seem to want a deeply role played character driven campaign,
and your players seem to want a basic dungeon craw with very little roleplaying.

Based on your last post, this is the impression I get also. The players aren't particularly into RP and there's no mechanism to push them in that direction.

It isn' that 5E is stopping you from doing anything - it has nothing to do with either the sysem or your choice of setting. It just doesn't have a mechanic built-in to actively encourage the players towards the type of game you want. Since your players don't seem naturally inclined to play the way you like, you feel like it's something 5e is missing.

This could (though perhaps less likely) have been someone asking why D&D seems too facilitate all that annoying character background stuff; all the DM wants is a dungeon romp into the unknown with exciting battles and reward the players with shiny l00tz while keeping the players on the edge of their seat scared of dying. But the players just seem to want to stay in the local library and tavern to research their long-lost family so they can return Uncle Bert's trinket and resolve their Mummy issues. And the rogue is scared of confined spaces so refuses to enter the DM's carefully crafted dungeon.

5e allows for both just fine but the players and DM need to be on the same page with expectations. Either talk to the players about it and compromise (they will attempt to get more into character, you will try to ensure they get rewarded in some way no matter what decisions they make) or house rule a mechanism which does the job for you.

[GPS]

Just wanted to address some of the common comments:
...
My problem is that the character who did that was chaotic good (i don't play with alignments, but based off previous actions, that is a pretty good approximation). After killing all those peasants, and the undead priest, the character immediately went to loot the corpses. There was no moment of what have I done, and I think only one other party member even cared, and he was too scared of the character to speak up. The character was also a bard, so immediately after killing the peasants and looting their corpses, they continued walking down the road humming a jolly tune.
...
My issue is that besides the player committing to rp, there is nothing to stop a Lawful Good character from going Chaotic Evil. Because of the gamist build of 5e, I feel like, with a group of random players who have no connection to the world or each other, 5e would seem to encourage a chaotic neutral alignment. "act because you can because this is a game, and it doesn't mater." Obviously there are ways I could have punished them as a DM, but in the grimdark world they are playing in, their actions didn't really matter to anyone, except the priest who's meal they stole, and they killed him
Wait a minute! If you don't play with alignments, how can you use the alignment system in your argument. Either don't play with alignments, or play with alignments! Don't try to approximate a character's alignment and act accordingly if they don't have an alignment! Don't blame the alignment system you're not even using for not preventing something! You took out the alignment system, and now you want to blame it for your problems?

I thought your characters were just RPing poorly. Nope, turns out you'd told them alignment didn't exist, then gave them a secret alignment anyway, then expected to use that secret alignment against them. That's just bad form. Not really helping your argument, as you can't really except PC's to adhere to alignments that for all intensive purposes they do not have.