I was wondering if any other people have had this issue where our modern ethics on things like slavery, treatment of prisoners, all people created equal come into conflict with a game set using a more medieval culture?
In the game I play in this has caused a little conflict between players and the DM. Some of the players have no issue getting into this mindset others can't seem to do it as easily.
The DM made it clear when she started her game that it was medieval style world.
<snip scenario>
The DM supported the player saying in no way did he violated his lawful good alignment. That as a good character he stopped an evil and as a cleric of a good god he followed his code and the law that allows him to act as judge, jury and executioner.
Some of the players disagreed and called it murder and dishonorable. It has changed the way the cleric gets treated by some of them.
<snip more scenario>
At this point the DM backed me up saying that she had the guards mouth off to me as a clue that something was hinky and that I had acted totally in character and I was right that even if they had been city guards because of the way they talked to me they would have been in trouble.
In these discussions/arguments one things seems to be the cause of it all and that is the players who have the most issue seems not to be able to let go of their modern ethics.
<snip>
I am just curious if other groups have had this kind of issue. Also how you handle modern ethics VS more medieval ethics in your games?
It's one thing to run a medieval world in which slavery, extrajudicial execution, torture for heresy, status-based law, etc, are the norm.
But it's another thing to expect the players to
embrace that norm. The GM can invite them to, but I don't see how she can
oblige them to. And if they don't, and there is no compromise, then the sorts of experiences you are describing will occur.
For example, if a player in fact thinks that extrajudicial execution is tantamount to murder, and is not interested in pretending otherwise, no amount of the GM yelling "But what the cleric did was lawful good" is going to help. The player isn't objecting to the use of a bit of game terminology (although the player may express her/his point that way - yet another reason why I think alignment is a huge headache that the game would be better off without). The player is refuding to endorse the proposition that murder is permissible, even in a pretending sense.
Mabye the player is being too precious. Maybe not. I mean, everyone has their limits. I can't imagine many people would want to play a game set in 1930s Ukraine where they are expected to pretend that murdering middle class peasants is lawful good. Maybe your player sees extrajudicial execution of heretics by a priest in a similar way.
The issue comes in with people not liking prisoners to be killed or for wizards to get to cast spells like dominate or baleful polymorph on people who annoy them and get away with it as long as those people are not high rankings member of society.
And I find it hard to say that there is anything wrong with people not liking such things.
In my current 4e game, which is not very gritty, we tend just not to focus play on this sort of stuff (although the PCs are somewhat committed to redeeming and ransoming slaves). In an earlier campaign, one of the PCs was a freed slave who was committed to fighting against slavery, and also against racial prejudice in the wizard's guild. In another campaign, the PCs (who included samurai, priests and a fallen god) led a secret mission against the gods (allying with a dead god and an exiled god in the process) in order to change the gods' plans for the world, because they thought the gods were too hung up on propriety and status and order and didn't care enough for the suffering of ordinary people.
I think if you want a successful campaign in which the moral practices and commitments of the past are going to be front and centre, then it is better to let the players work out their own attitudes towards and responses to those things, and then play their PCs accordingly. If this produces some conflict between PCs, in my experience that is not a problem among mature players who are otherwise friends and willing to compromise. If conflict among the PCs
will be a problem, then I think the only solution is not to put the controversy-inducing material front and centre.
In my Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign, one of the players was a noble and threw away thousands of years of cultural upbringing and social acceptance to do things like "power to the little people" and so on.
Essentially, the player was playing their character with a modernist vision when in reality such envisionment didn't exist.
I guess I don't really see the problem in players playing their moral vision.
It's very challenging to enforce a "cultural viewpoint" onto players who 1. don't understand it, or 2. don't want to understand it, or 3. think they understand it, but differ with the DM's understanding of it.
Yes, this is a perennial problem with RPGs.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." - L.P.Hartly
This is usually due to ignorance on the part of the players.
I don't think it's about ignorance at all. It's about repugnance.
I tend to agree with Bernard Lewis that there can be a type of pointlessness in morally judging the distant past. (Although in some cases, the past - even the quite distant past - lives on, and then moral judgement may well make sense.) But it's one thing not to judge the past; it's another thing to be expected to pretend, in play, that in fact it was all OK.
You might have a perfect and complete understanding of a medieval mindset and be uncomfortable or unwilling to assume one while in character because it may be simply repugnat and evil to your sensabilities.
<snip>
I find it best, in circumstances like that, to find a sympathetic goal for or facet to such a charatcer that will let me ease into thier shoes without vomitting.
Even if one's grasp of the past is only partial, you might feel repugnance. And the problem the OP has is not in identifying with one's repugnant PC. It is in tolerating the repugnant behaviour of another character in the game.
