How can I make a "Good vs. Lawful" dilemma feels emotional impactful to the players?
A lot of times I see the GM made the mistake of unequal exchange when it came to this matter – The PC usually lost personal things such as (stats notwithstanding) perks, honnour, job, etc if they choose to be Good, things that actually matter little if you see the way people playing Good-aligned PC. They have little qualm doing so.
How to handle the "Good vs. Lawful" thing?
Lesser of two evils?
Make the choice complicated or some shit.
Kill a child to save the village, something like that maybe.
Push them into a grey area.
"Lawful" does not mean "Law Abiding"
It's a difficult choice. Paladins are hard to play in this regard if the other party members are less morally just. The way I play it is that there is a greater evil at work, so I overlook their smaller misdemeanours for the moment because they are useful in our fight against the greater evil.
As I understand it, you're asking for meaningful consequences of chosing Good over Law.
Going against Law means becoming a pariah
Brand them with a stigma, making guards chase them, kids stone them and merchants refuse their gold, where they have to hunt their food and sleep in a leprosery.
Location varies depending on how much you want to fuck with them : Chest or palm are easy to hide, cheek not so much.
Take Zorro and Robin Hood: Both have to escape authorities constantly.
Someone post the screencap
Yeah, this is mostly what can be done.
But I think user here is asking for emotional impact (as in crafting a good narrative that indulge the players) instead of just a gameplay persepective.
The things you just listed will not make your players think more when presented with that kind of problem - they do not experience that kind of stigmata directly.
>emotional impact (as in crafting a good narrative that indulge the players)
It takes the kind of a player that can both understand the moral ambiguity behind it and show it through character's actions.
People used to working with the "classic" 3x3 alignment grid will usually not be that kind of a player.
emotional impact would mostly be created by opposing the results, i.e. a LN and a NG society.
Because making the player's choices durably impact culture and result in a less prosperous but ultimately more moral society is beyond the scope of most campaigns.
Have a reasonable authority figure become a potential enemy if the player chooses good over law.
Work with incomplete information, so that from the POV of the authority figure, they are making the right choice.
And make the PCs care about his or her approval beforehand.
No force in this world hurts more those trying to be good that dissapointment.
Give them a dilemma with no "good" outcome and make sure that whatever they choose, the paladin falls, because that's what creates good drama.
Also be sure to give them a plain and explicit binary choice like in Mass Effect: Will you save that mine full of precious ore or that farm with a couple innocents in it?
Generally, the best way to do it is to put them up against someone they love who is on the other side of the arguments.
See, you can't make PCs suffer. Players do not care about the suffering of their PCs. The loss of, say, ten years of their life does not matter to the player, even though that would be really traumatic to a PC.
But if an NPC they like suffers instead, that means more.
Read Antigone
People that think you can describe morals in 9 retarded categories from terrible tabletop setting are as bad as people who judge politics in ''right'' and ''left'' categories
By not being retarded, have you tried that. Lawful good doesn't mean you are lawful and good, but rather a combination of both. Something more. You cannot push a lawful good character to choose between each, because for him there's no divide
throw the 9-point alignment axis in the trash where it belongs
Make sure to colour code the choice so your players aren't confused.
don't play D&D?
Even better, have one choice being offered by an angelic looking being, and the other by a scarred demonlich. And the players slowly take the physical traits of their patrons