DM Advice: handling 'he can't talk to me like that' ~cuts NPC throat~ players.

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

No, he's actually wrong. He's correct that dueling was common. He's incorrect that dueling and other brutal activities were ever considered moral or good. One only has to look at the writings left to us by the wide variety of religious leaders condemning dueling, killing peasants, and other nasty behavior to figure this out. It is common for people to think "hey, many knights were murderous thugs, so that must have been considered "good" in their day". The problem is, this is completely wrong. Many knights were murderous thugs. They were roundly criticized as being evil, vile, and sinners as a result.

That's odd, I found plenty of writings by the Catholic Church proclaiming that God strengthens the winners, and that Trial By Combat or Dueling was in fact endorsed by the church.

I suggest you reread wherever you read your information. I suggest many of the easily available college textbooks available from Amazon (some of them even resales, and thus much cheaper) as you are in error across the board.

 

[Storm Raven]

What?! That's absurd. Preferred by whom, exactly? The original poster (DM?) The players? Or you?

preferred by a Dm who is dismayed that his players seem to want to be murderous thugs and still be considered "good".

No, that's not the real key at all. The real key is talking to your players out of character and getting your expectations on the same page. In game aligning amounts to nothing more than "you better toe the line, or you're going to be consistently punished for not doing things my way." That's 100% the way to absolutely SUCK as a GM. I guarantee it.

No, in game consequences, as long as they make sense, are the best way to go. They reinforce that the actions of the PCs have consequences, and that the players are free to choose one option or another, so long as they are prepared to live with the result.

Maybe you should make a list of acceptable and unacceptable actions in game. Surely, your players won't want to do anything that's not on your list.

Players in my games are free to choose any option they want, so long as they are prepared to deal with the potential fallout that results. Turning to evil has consequences, and those are made pretty clear from the outset, with plenty of options for turning away from that path. Of course, being aligned with good often means not being able to do the expedient thing, but no one ever said being "good" was always the easy option.

 

[Storm Raven]

The players in the game we're discussing have more facts available to them. Let's assume, for the sake of being nice, that they aren't unreasonable players. So why did they do this?

But the evidence we have is that they are not reasonable players - they turned a fistfight into a murder spree after all.

Sure: There's no other way for the players to reliably resolve conflicts without resorting to violence.

So, "expedience" = "good"?

And I'd dispute that there are no other ways to reliably resolve conflicts. There are lots of other ways to resolve conflicts than violence and murder. Pretty much the same options you have in th real world in point of fact.

 

[Storm Raven]

That's odd, I found plenty of writings by the Catholic Church proclaiming that God strengthens the winners, and that Trial By Combat or Dueling was in fact endorsed by the church.

Trial by combat somethimes, but dueling for honor sake pretty much never. In fact, one of the first things missionaries usually did when they set about converting an area was to try to get practices like honor dueling condemned as wrong. And plenty of ecclesiastical texts are out there condemning the practice, with only a handful endorsing it, and those only endorsing it under controlled situations.

 

[Kraydak]

Yeah, because the nonevil response to someone flipping you off is to kill them.

Seriously, killing someone who annoys or insults you because you are powerful enough to get away with it is pretty much a textbook definition of "evil" as described in the game books, and through most of western morality. You may want to play a "might makes right" kind of game, but that doesn't mean that you aren't evil.

The alignment system is supposed to proviede a check on the murderous rampages of the players, to prevent them from wantonly killing peasants, city watchmen, and merchants. Saying "those merchants better be polite because we'll kill them otherwise" basically tags the PCs as being on the "evil" end of that spectrum, with all the attendant negative consequences such a choice might incur.

Well, flipping someone powerful off is stupid unless you have the power to back it up. It is also a threatening act: because it is stupid unless you are strong, it implies strength, and as such is a direct threat. Direct threats in DnD, because of the dominance of offense, should be met with submission or attack. It is unfortunate for the arbitrator that his bluff got called.

Further, if *you* had (accidental) custody of a child, and someone you were warned about asked for him and wouldn't give a reason, would you turn it over unless forced? We are also running into whether paladins are obliged to follow unjust laws. Sure, an arbitrator's word may be law, but paladins aren't required to obey evil laws... and a law that can't justify itself isn't itself justified.

Whether or not the DM intended it as such, the arbitrator picked a fight he couldn't win. I weep for him. Next time, try answering the party's questions unless you *are* strong enough to laugh at them. It is the sane and reasonable thing to do, unless your request of the party isn't reasonable...

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Trial by combat somethimes, but dueling for honor sake pretty much never. In fact, one of the first things missionaries usually did when they set about converting an area was to try to get practices like honor dueling condemned as wrong. And plenty of ecclesiastical texts are out there condemning the practice, with only a handful endorsing it, and those only endorsing it under controlled situations.

If you read your texts fully, there was only one reason that the church condemned dueling, and they were not so much condemning dueling as they were condemning what the duel was about.

Honor was seen as pride, which is a deadly sin, and to do away with the concept of personal honor, the church had to get rid of dueling, which honor duels were a way to increase one's honor and protect it. Once dueling was gotten rid of, it made stripping honor itself out of the society that much easier.

The church also condemned dueling by placing priests above the duel, making it so that they could not be challenged no matter what they spoke.

This increased the power of the church politically, and that is the ONLY reason they forbade the practice. Not out of horror of the duel, but rather by besmirching it and condemning it they could then remove personal honor (pride) from the society and make it more easily malleable by the church.

Once again: Do your research.

 

[Desdichado]

Trial by combat somethimes, but dueling for honor sake pretty much never. In fact, one of the first things missionaries usually did when they set about converting an area was to try to get practices like honor dueling condemned as wrong. And plenty of ecclesiastical texts are out there condemning the practice, with only a handful endorsing it, and those only endorsing it under controlled situations.

That catholic church wasn't the only source of "this is good and lawful" after all. Pretty much every medieval, Rennaisance (and later) country had a code duello which expressed in legal terms exactly how, when and why a duel could be fought.

Heck, even as late as 1800s in America, duels were still being fought. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, anyone? Guess what; the murder charges against Aaron Burr were dismissed, and that was at the very end of the socially acceptable duel period.

How about in the Old West? Was Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday considered a murderer? Was Wild Bill Hickok punished for murder because he gunned down Davis Tutt in the street? Oh... no, he was actually considered a hero, as were Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

Whoops. Storm Raven fails his Knowledge (history) check with a natural 1.

 

[billd91]

Huh. I never knew Teddy Roosevelt was Chinese.

He was fond of the West African proverb, but not Chinese.

 

[Storm Raven]

If you read your texts fully, there was only one reason that the church condemned dueling, and they were not so much condemning dueling as they were condemning what the duel was about.

No, there was plenty of condemnation of the practice in and of itself.

Once again: Do your research.

Oh I have. For example:

Trial by combat were common in the Holy Roman Empire from the 11th to the 15th centuries. Otto the Great in 967 expressly sanctioned the practice of Germanic tribal law even if it did not figure in the more "imperial" Roman law. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 deprecated judicial duels, and Pope Honorius III in 1216 asked the Teutonic order to cease its imposition of judicial duels on their newly converted subjects in Livonia. For the following three centuries, there was latent tension between the traditional regional laws and Roman law.

The Kleines Kaiserrecht, anonymous legal code of ca. 1300, prohibits judicial duels altogether, stating that the emperor had come to this decision on seeing that too many innocent men were convicted by the practice just for being physically weak.

As you can see, the practice was regularly condemned by the Church in the Germanic countries where the practice was culturally rooted, and usually disliked by the rulers, and often formally prohibited. It wasn't until William the Conquerer introduced it in a limited way that it was acceptable in any form in England, and then only in a limited sense that was entirely controlled by the crown. Private duels were forbidden by English law even at this point, even though they were carried out in secret, with only judicial duels being sanctioned, and then only for a handful of issues.

I've done my research. Plenty of it. It doesn't match what you are claiming at all. It was routinely condemned, and most, if not all of the moral writers on the subject (i.e. not Popes or Kings) condemned the practice.

 

[Elf Witch]

In part this is true. But DMs do need to remember that (I am borrowing from someone's sig here) so much as 5th level PCs are the equivalent of a flagless, paranoid, bloodthirsty *armor battalion*. NPCs should in general be *very* polite to PCs, and while you might think that silent and secretive (and effectively bullying) towards PCs is cool, in practice it amounts to wandering up to the commander of said armor battalion with a TOW negligently over your shoulder and flipping him off. *If* you have a whole ton of allies around (i.e. you are high level) you might get away with it. For awhile.

It isn't "cool". Unless you think deathwishes are cool. Remember that in DnD, offense trumps defense, so people who are threatened will tend to strike first. Be glad they so much as asked questions.

It is true that peasants would keep a low profile wirh someone who can take their head off with a single blow. But that does not mean that there should be no consquence for a PC that does this.

It really depends on how the world is built. In my world a PC who killed a peasant for insulting him would be in big trouble. He would have the clerics of St Cuthbert after him for breaking the law and committing murder. He would have the clerics after of Herineous after him for breaking the laws of honor duels.

In my world adventurers don't get to behave like thugs and face no consquences. I don't care how powerful they are I practice the Qui Gonn Jinn rule of there is always a bigger fish.

As I said before DMs need to make it clear from the start of the game how things work in the world.

I played in a game that had honor duels if someone insulted you, you could call them out but they had the right to hire a sellsword to duel for them.

I have played in games where peasants had no rights and could be slayed, raped, robbed by any knight but I have also played in games where no knight would sully himself by killing a peasant for insulting him flog him sure but kill no because there was no honor in taking the life of a person who stood no chance against you.