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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jedavis" data-source="post: 5752017" data-attributes="member: 35933">A theme in a game I played in over the summer was "You reap what you sow."  We killed the half-dragon bandits on the road, rather than trying to parlay.  Then their (high-level) human cleric mother came for us.  Then the ghosts of the bandits came for us... (we killed their draconic father in the interim, or else I expect he'd've come after us too). So when later in the campaign, we had an enemy more-or-less by the throat and they offered surrender, we took them up on it right quick (I wasn't in favor, actually...  illusionists are tricky creatures, and untrustworthy.  But it worked out well anyways).Give positive actions positive consequences and negative actions negative consequences, unless there is a compelling reason to make things otherwise, preferably one known to the PCs.  Letting an enemy known for betrayal live is probably a bad plan.  If you've established that orcs are sly, treacherous creatures and not to be trusted under any circumstances, then freeing them might reasonably have negative in-world consequences.  If, on the other hand, orcs fill the "noble savage" archetype in your world, then you might expect Chewbacca-style life-debts or later boons for freeing them.  Do what makes sense within the gameworld, and reward players who pay attention to the nature of things in that world.Better yet, have a mixed outcome.  If they free the prisoners, maybe most of the orcs go back to their pillaging ways eventually, and the PCs have to deal with them, but one 'sees the light', so to speak, and becomes a recurring allied NPC (or henchman, squire, &c).  That's how things tend to turn out in real life; morally interesting actions have mixed consequences, rather than being purely good or purely bad in their outcomes.</blockquote>

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