What could I do to help my players feel like their choices matter?

The last session I ran had my players presented with a choice: They leave a murderous doctor locked up, or they take him with them so that he can face judgement.

This currently soulless doctor is a host to a dangerous, powerful entity with an alien sense of morality. My players won't know about that until next sesh. They didn't know he was possessed at the time they arrested him and took him aboard their ship.

Had they left him locked up, the entity could have stayed locked up for centuries, and had they done that I'd have just moved on to another story for the duration of the campaign. Since they arrested the doctor, the entity can break free at any moment.

The trick is that my players don't know anything about this entity yet- it's a dangerous soul eating monstrosity... but it's not "Evil" in the traditional sense. In fact, it's fully convinced that what it's doing is for the benefit of the souls, which are not destroyed. The souls are in a state of eternal bliss once devoured. Pretty much the only thing the entity is directly responsible for right now is sucking out the doctor's soul, and he asked the entity to do it- to release the doctor from his own suffering.

My players could have a few options for dealing with it: They could try to kill it, difficult but not impossible. They could try persuading the entity to reconcile with its real family- its biggest motivation for devouring souls is that it wants to create a new family because its old family rejected it. They could also try imprisoning it again.

Now, a couple of my players feel like none of the choices they made last sesh were meaningful, and my guess is that this is because they didn't have all the information when they made the arrest. They knew the entity existed, but had no idea that the doctor was possessed by it, and had come to the conclusion that the entity was already free before they arrested him.

Sometimes you have to make a choice without knowing the consequences of those choices, or having all the information.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

The last session I ran had my players presented with a choice: They leave a murderous doctor locked up, or they take him with them so that he can face judgement.

This currently soulless doctor is a host to a dangerous, powerful entity with an alien sense of morality. My players won't know about that until next sesh. They didn't know he was at the time they arrested him and took him aboard their ship.

Had they left him locked up, the entity could have stayed locked up for centuries, and had they done that I'd have just moved on to another story for the duration of the campaign. Since they arrested the doctor, the entity can break free at any moment.

The trick is that my players don't know anything about this entity yet- it's a dangerous soul eating monstrosity... but it's not "Evil" in the traditional sense. In fact, it's fully convinced that what it's doing is for the benefit of the souls, which are not destroyed. The souls are in a state of eternal bliss once devoured.

My players could have a few options for dealing with it: They could try to kill it, difficult but not impossible. They could try persuading the entity to reconcile with its real family- its biggest motivation for devouring souls is that it wants to create a new family because its old family rejected it. They could also try imprisoning it again.

Now, a couple of my players feel like none of the choices they made last sesh were meaningful, and my guess is that this is because they didn't have all the information when they made the arrest. They knew the entity existed, but had no idea that the doctor was possessed by it, and had come to the conclusion that the entity was already free before they arrested him.

Sometimes you have to make a choice without knowing the consequences of those choices, or having all the information.

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Like in the last thread, I'd advise throwing out the hint that they are missing pieces of the puzzle. If you give them foreshadowing of some kind without giving the truth away, they'll have the choice whether to act on suspicion or proceed despite the warning in their gut.

It's a great way to make their choices feel meaningful, as long as you present it well. If it's too obvious, they can feel like you're voluntelling them what they ought to do. If it's too vague, it can feel like an impossible riddle lacking the info to solve.

In this case, I would hint at the doctor's alien morality, though not its relative strength. This gives them the suspicion that a common justice system may not be a good solution without outright telling them things are going to go sideways.

Also, I would hint at it, not openly demonstrate it. Players should be sure something is amiss, but not necessarily what it could be.

Invite them to investigate further. It's never too late to invite them to explore your story in greater detail.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Sometimes you have to make a choice without knowing the consequences of those choices, or having all the information.

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This is true, but most of the time in an RPG the players should have a good guess at the consequences and have most of the information.

More specifically, the players should have most of the information, but have not realized it yet or put it together: but they could at any time. It is generally a bad idea to hide information perfectly, and have it only be released when the DM specifically wants it to be done.

For your example, I guess the players just thought the Doc went crazy? They knew the alien was ''there''? And they made no connection?

So this make me think of the questions of: Did the Doc 'act possessed' or in any way 'act alien' ? Or was he acting like a crazy human? Was there any hit of possession like glowing eyes or fudge burning or such? Is the alien detected in some way? Is their a time line like 7:00 alien comes to location A and meets Doc...7:05 Doc goes crazy and eats a soul ?

See a lot of this could of happened to give the players clues to what is going on. Sure, they might have missed them all, but they had the chance to notice them.

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As for the meaningful part, I have found the best things to do are:

1.Tell the players often how meaningful their decisions are...
2.Go full OOC and tell the players everything behind the scenes(like they are an audience).
3.Alter the game reality to fit the players whims of what they think is meaningful.

The Doctor doesn't even know he's possessed. He does know something is wrong with him, because he killed someone and didn't feel anything afterwards. But basically, what we have here is a Driver (Doctor) in a town he's unfamiliar with, and no Passenger (Soul) to guide him- there's a Stowaway (Entity) in the trunk that the driver doesn't realize is there.

The players saw from a recording that a vault opened, the doctor and captain stepped into the vault chamber, then the doctor stabbed his captain to death. The doctor claims it was because he was curious what it would feel like. The moment the doctor and captain stepped in, the doctor's behavior changed. This is because in that instant, he gave his soul to the entity in the vault. The entity stowed away in the doctor's now soulless body, but has not taken control of his actions.

One of the players was able to cast a spell that revealed both the doctor's soulless condition, and the entity hiding in his body.

In addition, one of the other players has been able to telepathically communicate with the entity even before the spell to detect her was cast. She told the player that she found a host and is currently possessing someone, that she would never possess or hurt said player(thus he's not possessed), and wouldn't suck out his soul unless he asked her to(thus he still has his soul). I figured it would be in character for her to reach out to the only telepath in the party. She wanted the party to set her free, and now that she's out of the vault she's grateful. She wants the players to know that she means no harm, that she only wants to build a family. Just so happens that she builds this family out of the souls she devours.


I feel like I've made missteps. I've been dming since 2012, but I still make a whole bunch of mistakes.

Given they've made a choice with consequences (but limited information).
Perhaps give the players an informed choice which plays into the other choice (such as the entity giving them the options you give fight/family/evasion/friendship) and then sure enough interacting with them according to their choice (albeit with the secret of the doctor to be revealed slowly through that choice).

The player who cast the spell already learned of the doctor's possession at the end of last sesh, and next sesh he plans to tell the others- however, they don't know the nature of the possession yet, and how this would differ from a typical ghost or demon possession.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

I feel like I've made missteps. I've been dming since 2012, but I still make a whole bunch of mistakes.

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I think your misstep is: Too complex of a story for your game play.

You are setting up this complex ''not evil'' entity...hopefully just as you like this sort of complex gray conundrum and not as you want to mess with your players. But to do a full 'reality is not what you know it to be' type plot, takes A LOT of time and a LOT of slow, slow game play.

So you might have jumped too quickly from 'mad doc' to 'ok, players you are now on the spot: what do you do?'.

It's why you don't see 'complex' stuff in movies and TV shows....they simply don't have the time to show it all.

You might also have a bit of a misstep with words and word play. Like guess you are going for the Supernatural type no soul thing where the person is unhurt and just can't 'feel'. And you say the entity is a host and possessing someone, but they are not 'hurting them'..or something. And sure the entity thinks it is awesome...but if it's killing people it's evil.

The feeling I've got here, and it's only a feeling, is that you're trying to run a morality play in circumstances where the players' particular morals thus far haven't made a lick of difference to them personally.

What were their choices at the point of freeing the doctor? They could either leave a weird possessed person they knew next-to-nothing about in his cage, or they could remove the guy from his cage and take him back to face some form of justice. He's not their counsellor or an associate of the party, he hasn't killed anyone they know, he's basically just some possessed guy. There was no indication of any personal risk they took in freeing him, it's just a "Ha ha, you know that decision you made around a complete stranger you just met and had no idea what to do with? Guess what, your coin toss came out wrong, he's going to destroy the world."

This, to my mind, is bad roleplaying. "Sometimes you have to make a choice without knowing the consequences of those choices, or having all the information" is fine as a principle in real life, because in real life we really are often put in a situation where we don't have complete knowledge or a sense of the consequences -- but real life is not roleplaying any more than a MMA tournament is an actual streetfight. Both are abstractions, approximations of reality at best.

In roleplaying, my view would be that principle should be rephrased as: Sometimes you have to make a choice without knowing the consequences of those choices, or having all the information, but never both at the same time.

You can have all the information pertaining to the choice but not know the consequences of that choice, or you can know the consequences of your choice but not have all the information pertaining to that choice, but players really are left in a meaningless spot if they don't know the consequences of their action and they don't have all the information by which to make the choice ... because they have no real agency. Whichever way they go, they had no way of making any sort of informed decision on the choice, so the choice means nothing. It is DM railroading because they can't see down the alternate timeline that might have been had they gone down the other path - not without breaking suspension of disblief, i.e. by the DM saying "Good job, if you'd gone through Door B you would have destroyed the world". In that situation, from the players' perspective it's no different than if you'd just said "Right, you choose Door A, the world blows up". No agency, no real choice.

In a roleplaying game, you can't (EDIT: shouldn't) expect people to make a choice unless they fully know the consequences of their actions. Moral choices are choices out of our value systems, and unless you have a solid chunk of information to place against your values, the choice is meaningless, and certainly not moral.

Moreover, in a roleplaying game, moral decisions are never going to come out unless you balance a decision against actual risk to their character. I see no evidence the characters have actually risked anything personally in dealing with this potential threat and/or the moral issue he represents. The players have no idea that they have unleashed a SuperDemon with an ECL several multiples higher than theirs. Again, no agency, no choice.

It might be a different story if SuperDemon says he just wants to restart his family and announce he's going to set off and murder a family of farmers, and will "deal with" anyone who gets in his way. Then you have the characters making a moral decision if they decide to intervene, because that will require them to consider their characters' (which is to say, the players') moral values: is that paladin going to at least stand in the demon's path and say no, even if it means the death of SuperDemon's innocent family or whatnot?

In this case at least, both choices can have good or bad consequences- the fact that they took the doctor in means that they'll be able to monitor his behavior and react as they see fit. I listed some possible solutions but ultimately how they choose to address this should be up to them. They know that the thing trapped in the vault was something that the people who trapped it went to a lot of trouble for. They witnessed the doctor stab his captain, and they took him prisoner because the organization they work for plans to extradite him so that he can face judgement.

They now know he's possessed, and could, if they wanted, prevent the extradition. They now know that if the creature possessing the doctor is permitted to escape, it could be bad.

At the moment, this creature is in a weakened state- it's recovering its strength while hitchhiking in the doctor's body. If cornered in its current state, it would probably lose the fight.

In the future, I can make sure to make the information more readily available.

You can get away with choices that only have long-term effects by including choices that have immediate effects as well. They need to stop some slavers, or village raiders, or some such.

What I don't quite get is how your players feel that their choices don't matter. They've just spared a madman's life instead of killing him and they've taken him rather than leaving him tied up. That surely must affect the story somehow. What kind of effect do they want their characters' actions to have?

I agree with what most of SaintHeart said. However, there is something else that you might want to consider, OP. Where the players aware that taking the Doctor with them was a True choice? If I was playing in an adventure, and at the end of a dungeon I'd find some gold and other loot, and this doctor-dude (and nothing else plot-related), I'd kinda assume that he doctor is a plot-coupon that we need to interact with to further the adventure, and any choice related to leaving him behind or not being a false choice with only one right answer.

I don't know a lot about your campaign, so I don't know whether this was the case or not, but it might be worthwhile to ask your players if they understood that leaving the doctor behind was a completely valid choice.

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Originally Posted by Randuir

I don't know a lot about your campaign, so I don't know whether this was the case or not, but it might be worthwhile to ask your players if they understood that leaving the doctor behind was a completely valid choice.

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Yes, and either way, if it's not an informed choice (which it sounds like), it's not enough that the decision ultimately matters. They had no way of knowing how.

Their Director told them that if it were possible, arrest the doctor. But the Director also told them that if they feel it isn't a good idea, it would be ok given the circumstances to leave the doctor behind. Ultimately, their organization doesn't want them taking unnecessary risks, either to themselves or to others.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Their Director told them that if it were possible, arrest the doctor. But the Director also told them that if they feel it isn't a good idea, it would be ok given the circumstances to leave the doctor behind. Ultimately, their organization doesn't want them taking unnecessary risks, either to themselves or to others.

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So they where encouraged to arrest him, and where not provided with obvious hints that this was a bad idea, correct? In that case, I wouldn't feel like I'd made a real choice here.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Their Director told them that if it were possible, arrest the doctor. But the Director also told them that if they feel it isn't a good idea, it would be ok given the circumstances to leave the doctor behind. Ultimately, their organization doesn't want them taking unnecessary risks, either to themselves or to others.

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Maybe the problem is too much direction from the organization they work for?

The players knew going in that they'd be working for this organization from the start of the campaign. I asked them in advance if that is the sort of thing they'd be interested in, which is why I went ahead with the campaign. We rotate every week on who's running Friday.

My philosophy on tricky moral choices is that the more informed the players are, the more powerful and interesting the choice is. So give stuff away. Spill secrets. Maybe not the whole thing, but don't try to be subtle. Give more information than you think is necessary for them to "get it", because your current level of information didn't work out. You want players to get to the good part, so don't bury it deep and expect them to dig. Start them with something solid that provokes curiosity.

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Originally Posted by MrSandman

Maybe the problem is too much direction from the organization they work for?

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I'd actually say the problem was too little direction. This is all 20-20 hindsight, but let's look at what they were told:

Their Director told them that if it were possible, arrest the doctor. But the Director also told them that if they feel it isn't a good idea, it would be ok given the circumstances to leave the doctor behind. Ultimately, their organization doesn't want them taking unnecessary risks, either to themselves or to others.

So in sum they were actually told "It's completely up to you and there are no consequences to you personally if you fail to arrest him." That is, they weren't actually given a choice to make at all, because it carried no consequence at least from that angle.

By contrast, let's say the Director had said something like "It is top priority that you bring this man in, and given your group's skills, we see it as very likely that you'll succeed, so you'd better have a damn good excuse if you don't bring him in. I can tell you that if you don't, your resources are very likely to be cut off completely." So not a "succeed or die" (which also is no choice at all) directive, but a major inconvenience to the characters if they don't carry out the directive. And let's say SuperDemon, being told of this, had said to the characters "Well of course they want me brought in. They've been hunting me forever. They want to examine me, pull me out, use me for their schemes that you don't know about. I know I seem to do bad things from your perspective from time to time, but all I ever wanted to do was start a family, be free."

Now you have a real moral choice: do you follow your orders despite the fact the guy is persecuted (Lawful Neutral) or do you free the prisoner to the exception of all orders and at some inconvenience to yourself (Chaotic Good)?

Want to add another vector to the choice, make it easier on the players? Say the above, and add one sentence:

"...And do you think they'll let you live once I've been brought in?"

Now you have a choice which brings in both trust and moral aspects: do you trust the Director, and even if you do, do you believe in your morals enough to override your orders?

Maybe. Or maybe the problem is that the players thought, "This guy wants the doctor alive, so it's how the story should go, so our choice to arrest him is not really meaningful because that's how the campaign is supposed to go."

Update! The player who previously worried that his choices didn't matter made a BIG choice today that pretty much altered the course of our campaign: He allowed the entity to possess him, protecting his crew and the rest of the party and ensuring they don't have to carry that burden. She agreed, in hopes that he would help her reconcile with the collective that previously expelled her, her real family. Once she regains her strength, she'll be able to manifest bodily. But she won't be an antagonist anymore (which is the biggest change of all- she was intended to be the primary antagonist for the whole campaign).