Story #1
What can make a generally "good"-aligned party do something evil and horrible? This will be a regular feature exploring the complicated moral decisions that a really great DM will make you face. (inspired from post on reddit by jayded777)Poor Poor Jeffery
This one is a personal experience when I was the DM,
The party woke up in a strange place, and each of them had been transformed into a child about the age of 7. They looked around and it appeared they were in an orphanage. A woman came in and told them it was time to go outside and play, but they demanded to know what was going on, so she slapped one of them, told them not to be rude, and sent them outside.
They found themselves in a small town with high walls right next to a single mountain, but having traveled most of the continent they had no idea where there was a single mountain. Confused, they attempted to start to gather information and figure out how they had been transformed.
They found very little important information. For example; some sort of celebration called "the festival of the Guardian", in honor of the Guardian who keeps the volcano from erupting, would be held 3 days after they initially woke up in the town. Other information included things like "the mayor is sick", or "the kids would be playing pirates on the 2nd day if they could get someone to build them a boat."
At the end of the 3rd day of them trying to figure this all out, the volcano erupted, and killed everyone in the village, including the child-party. They woke up back in the orphanage, the woman came in and told them to go outside and play, and again the festival of the Guardian was in 3 days. This time they tried to go straight to the volcano, but found out little kids weren't allowed outside the walls. So they kept watch every day until the 3rd, when the the gate was no longer guarded due to the festival.
At the base of the volcano there was an entrance to a cave. Inside they found a door and a wall with 10 levers on it. Above each lever was a question: What is Jeffrey's pirate name? What burned down the pet shop? etc. etc. They attempted to pull the levers but none would move. Figuring they needed the answers to pull the levers, they waited until the volcano erupted, (starting the time loop over) to go out and find them.
This was what I thought to be a fun side quest and puzzle, but I was wrong.
The players were mostly mad at the fact they couldn't figure out who put them there and rushed through most of the puzzles - some were fun, most were not. Each of the kids had stats based off their adult forms and had items to go with them being non-proficient with weapons. They each had something that they were proficient with; the spear-wielder for example had a long stick. None of them liked the idea of using the clever, kid-appropriate weapons I gave them, and stole real ones to take the -4 penalty.
Now they got the answer to almost all the questions, but they were stuck on "What is Jeffery's pirate name?" They didn't want to figure out how to get a boat so the kids could play pirate, so instead they kidnapped Jeffery, age 7, and took him into the woods to first interrogate him, then tortured him through various means, almost drowning him, cutting off fingers, skinning him, (you get the idea). They had multiple attempts at this because of the time loop; he would give them an answer, but it didn't work. What they didn't know is, if they played pirates Jeffery changed his pirate name to the name of the boat maker. In the end they ended up getting the boat made and got the name.
I was personally shocked this party of adventurers trying to save the world would torture a little kid. I shouldn't have been. They ended up adopting a "by-any-means-necessary mindset," but it led to a funny story and a good memory.
Well, that's the end for this one, if you have a good story leave it in the comments or send me a message on my Reddit I love reading these stories, and if you are fine with it I might share it in another post.
-Thanks for reading
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