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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 2553877" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>I used to have these types of problem a lot - more in high school/college than since, but it still comes up occasionally. The using drow as bait and torturing kobolds thing comes, I think, from the "certain races are just evil" mentality that various settings and editions of the game has encouraged. Players playing "good" characters think that their characters have a "free ride" with doing bad things to evil creatures, so using a drow as bait or tormenting a helpless kobold is okay by them.</p><p></p><p>That problem has been fairly easy to solve for me. When I start a new campaign now I lay down some ground rules about "good" and "evil" in the game. I let them know that alignment in my games is ALWAYS fuzzy, and that it more describes how a character acts than something inherent in the character. There are no free passes - just because a target has an evil alignment that doesn't excuse evil acts by the players against that character. I still have some creatures that are just plain evil - mostly fiends, undead and some dragons, but in general most of the "evil" creatures in my games are as likely to be neutral as they are evil - they're just at odds with the PCs. What has really helped is letting a player play a normally "evil" race - a kobold or an orc in a couple of instances. The rest of the party realized up front that things were different on this world (and, amusingly, the players in BOTH of those instances helped me out by pointing out how unfair the other PCs attitudes were IN CHARACTER during the sessions).</p><p></p><p>The Neutral Good thief that steals from the poor innkeeper needs his hand smacked, though. That's not the act of a "good" thief. A "good" thief would be like Robin Hood - taking from the rich guy to do good with it, not taking from someone just because he's a thief. I'd suggest some advice from the DMG II, actually, and make sure that you throw some folks into the adventure that the thief CAN steal from with impunity, since that may be why the player is playing a thief in the first place. If he insists on stealing from anyone and everyone, though, his alignment should shift to Neutral or Chaotic Neutral instead of Neutral Good, at least IMO.</p><p></p><p>As for the second question - sometimes its a maturity issue (and I've seen enough of those to last a lifetime), but sometimes not. I personally find it distasteful when people who are supposed to be "good" use torture or threats against foes in-game, but others don't have a problem with it. In my games, I warn players up front that any use of torture (and other acts commonly considered "evil" by modern morality) are alignment infractions for good characters REGARDLESS of who they are using them against. Torturing a demon to get information out of it is still not a good act, even if the demon is irredeemably evil, and could cause an alignment shift and a loss of Paladin abilities. A lot of times things like this are just mis-communications between players and DMs over expectations.</p><p></p><p>If you're having problems with the alignment system, you might want to try an Honor system like a previous poster mentioned. Another idea is that the new World of Darkness game has a Morality system built in that ranks a character's Morality on a simple 1-10 scale. When they commit an act that is not compatible with their current level of Morality, there's a chance that the character's Morality will drop (the higher the level, the more likely it will drop - and the less it takes to lose it). This gives a very mechanical, in-game way of tracking a character's "fall from grace" from "good" to "evil". Its similar to the Honor system, but I think it hits more of the Good-Evil axis of the alignment grid instead of the Law-Chaos axis.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 2553877, member: 19857"] I used to have these types of problem a lot - more in high school/college than since, but it still comes up occasionally. The using drow as bait and torturing kobolds thing comes, I think, from the "certain races are just evil" mentality that various settings and editions of the game has encouraged. Players playing "good" characters think that their characters have a "free ride" with doing bad things to evil creatures, so using a drow as bait or tormenting a helpless kobold is okay by them. That problem has been fairly easy to solve for me. When I start a new campaign now I lay down some ground rules about "good" and "evil" in the game. I let them know that alignment in my games is ALWAYS fuzzy, and that it more describes how a character acts than something inherent in the character. There are no free passes - just because a target has an evil alignment that doesn't excuse evil acts by the players against that character. I still have some creatures that are just plain evil - mostly fiends, undead and some dragons, but in general most of the "evil" creatures in my games are as likely to be neutral as they are evil - they're just at odds with the PCs. What has really helped is letting a player play a normally "evil" race - a kobold or an orc in a couple of instances. The rest of the party realized up front that things were different on this world (and, amusingly, the players in BOTH of those instances helped me out by pointing out how unfair the other PCs attitudes were IN CHARACTER during the sessions). The Neutral Good thief that steals from the poor innkeeper needs his hand smacked, though. That's not the act of a "good" thief. A "good" thief would be like Robin Hood - taking from the rich guy to do good with it, not taking from someone just because he's a thief. I'd suggest some advice from the DMG II, actually, and make sure that you throw some folks into the adventure that the thief CAN steal from with impunity, since that may be why the player is playing a thief in the first place. If he insists on stealing from anyone and everyone, though, his alignment should shift to Neutral or Chaotic Neutral instead of Neutral Good, at least IMO. As for the second question - sometimes its a maturity issue (and I've seen enough of those to last a lifetime), but sometimes not. I personally find it distasteful when people who are supposed to be "good" use torture or threats against foes in-game, but others don't have a problem with it. In my games, I warn players up front that any use of torture (and other acts commonly considered "evil" by modern morality) are alignment infractions for good characters REGARDLESS of who they are using them against. Torturing a demon to get information out of it is still not a good act, even if the demon is irredeemably evil, and could cause an alignment shift and a loss of Paladin abilities. A lot of times things like this are just mis-communications between players and DMs over expectations. If you're having problems with the alignment system, you might want to try an Honor system like a previous poster mentioned. Another idea is that the new World of Darkness game has a Morality system built in that ranks a character's Morality on a simple 1-10 scale. When they commit an act that is not compatible with their current level of Morality, there's a chance that the character's Morality will drop (the higher the level, the more likely it will drop - and the less it takes to lose it). This gives a very mechanical, in-game way of tracking a character's "fall from grace" from "good" to "evil". Its similar to the Honor system, but I think it hits more of the Good-Evil axis of the alignment grid instead of the Law-Chaos axis. [/QUOTE]
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