I had a good time having a colonialist settlement on a large island that was otherwise populated by goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, and orcs, and let my players discover for themselves that the “evil” races were just fucking defending themselves and trying to survive against the invading “good” colonialists.
Without me directly suggesting it, they buddied up with the locals and eventually drove out the colonialists and had a big party afterward.
I love players do the good thing without my prompting. I DMed a campaign once where they fought a company the whole time, kinda based on “The Company” in Heroes, then a bad guy appeared who could appear as one of the players and was killing off company members. The company proposed a temporary truce so they could team up and take this person down who was ruining both their teams’ lives, but the players said F that, we’re taking this person down, and then we’re taking you down. I had plans for the future of the campaign for both directions, but I was sooooo proud they went that route. It was such a badass moment.
I don’t try to “moralize” with groups as much as I present evil intentions as just that: fucking evil. Sometimes all it takes to get players (and their adventurer characters) to do the right thing is for them to have a pleasant interaction with a character then see that character threatened by someone else.
Sometimes I’ve done classic Faustian bargain offers to players, where the villain offers (and really means it) power and the like in return for service, but it lightens my heart that more often than not, the players will say, basically, “no, fuck you. We saw what you did with our goblin friends back in the day!”
I had a good time having a colonialist settlement on a large island that was otherwise populated by goblins, hobgoblins, ogres, and orcs, and let my players discover for themselves that the “evil” races were just fucking defending themselves and trying to survive against the invading “good” colonialists.
Without me directly suggesting it, they buddied up with the locals and eventually drove out the colonialists and had a big party afterward.
I love players do the good thing without my prompting. I DMed a campaign once where they fought a company the whole time, kinda based on “The Company” in Heroes, then a bad guy appeared who could appear as one of the players and was killing off company members. The company proposed a temporary truce so they could team up and take this person down who was ruining both their teams’ lives, but the players said F that, we’re taking this person down, and then we’re taking you down. I had plans for the future of the campaign for both directions, but I was sooooo proud they went that route. It was such a badass moment.
I don’t try to “moralize” with groups as much as I present evil intentions as just that: fucking evil. Sometimes all it takes to get players (and their adventurer characters) to do the right thing is for them to have a pleasant interaction with a character then see that character threatened by someone else.
Sometimes I’ve done classic Faustian bargain offers to players, where the villain offers (and really means it) power and the like in return for service, but it lightens my heart that more often than not, the players will say, basically, “no, fuck you. We saw what you did with our goblin friends back in the day!”