This one goes back to the days of MERP.
3 PCs in a dwarven jail, I think it was in Erebor but it could have been the Iron Hills, the exact location is not important. We had been tricked into killing the dwarven queen, as you do. You know what it is like, these things happen some times.
Anyway the original offense, whilst we were actually guilty, we did kill her and a lot of her body guard was not our fault. They had been covered by an illusion as we thought we were killing some orcish leader and its honour guard.
As a PC party we were incredibly powerful, so much so that once we realised our mistake I think we still killed a few of her body guard accidentally just using the flat of the blade trying to subdue them.
So once we realised out mistake we gave ourselves up and hoped to prove ourselves the victim of a deception and we didn’t really mean to kill her.
The trial did not go well.
There was one point where I think I said “We didn’t mean to kill her but to use she looked like and orc.” Her grieving husband didn’t take that too well.
Anyway the end result was we were sentenced to death the following morning.
So the 3 PCs are sat in a cell debating whether to escape or not. Our execution was to be quite unusual but the dwarves were under attack by a dragon so we were going to be thrown to the dragon.
So if we escape we would be hunted men, guilty of regicide and generally not very heroic.
If we didn’t escape, to be honest I would pity the dragon. I was in favour of not escaping and trying to prove our innocence by turning our execution into a trial by combat or of situation. One PC was all in favour of busting out and to hell with the dwarves. PC number three was suffering from a curse that meant he would believe anything that was told to him as a fact.
So the tricky situation was trying to resolve an important turning point in our characters lives with two completely different points of view while NOT saying anything that sounded like it was factual. The choice was just as important to the middle player’s character and we needed him to voice his actual opinion. So there was no saying “If we can beat the dragon they will have to accept that we are innocent.” because the other PC would then completely agree with you because you just told them that they would have to find us innocent.
This argument ranged back and forth for a long time.
The really funny thing was that the dragon was attacking the dwarves because it was trying to get to us. One of the PCs owned a sword that was +50 vs dragons but attracted all dragons within 100 miles to his location. By the time I won the argument there were three dragons outside but the dwarves accepted the argument that against those odds that if we could slay all three dragons and save their city from three dragons then we probably were the fated heroes that we claimed to be. We also said that once the dragons were dead, if they could find their lairs then the dwarves could have their hoards.
The dragons didn’t really stand a chance, as I said we were a powerful party. The worse wound I suffered was when a dragon fell on me and broke both my legs. It did rather cramp my style but I was rather good at healing magic so we all walked away at the end of the day.
So the tricky situation was trying not to unduly influence another player and that characters fate when they were doing their best to play ‘in character’.