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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 873109" data-attributes="member: 259">Heh!  Grendel's a great book (although it's been about a decade since I read it).I kinda wonder whether it's my reading tastes that lead to my views on games.  I tend to like books like Grendel (which is told from the point of view of a human-eating monster), like Perdido Street Station (in which none of the characters are really heroic), like A Song of Ice and Fire (good old rollicking fantasy with incredibly grim and bloody scenes scattered throughout).  I enjoy lots of Orson Scott Card's novels, in which characters commit heinous acts in order to avoid greater evils.  Stories with easy moral solutions don't really grab me all that much.Rigamortus said,I wonder if this is part of the difference.  When evaluating whether to commit a CdG, are you taking into account only the life of your CdG victim, or do you also take into account the lives of those that your victim might otherwise kill if he goes free?I tend to think that "respect for life" means respect for everyone's life.  If I decide to let Mr. Khan go free, knowing that he's likely to return to his horse-riding, city-pillaging ways, then sure, I'm showing respect for Genghis' life.  But I'm NOT showing respect for the lives of those he's going to kill.Again, I think we use different standards.  Where you're concerned about whether your enemy is going to get up and keep whaling on you (i.e., is immortal by normal standards), I'm more concerned about whether they're EVER going to get up and whale on any innocent person.If, for example, I'm in a civilization (or just in an area) that lacks prisons, and if I don't have a means to convert a baby-eating hill-giant to the worship of the Fluffy BunnyGod of Mercy, then my options really are limited.  I can engage in a course of action that results in the giant's death, or I can engage in a course of action that results in the giant continuing its babymunching ways.  Unless the campaign has really bizarre circumstances (e.g., I can regularly and easily trick giants into believing that I've cursed their shadow such that next time they munch a baby, they'll die horribly), I've got an excluded middle.  Kill the giant, or let babies get et.Indeed, circumstances like this pop up all the time in my game.  Kill the dragon, or the town gets enslaved.  Kill the illithid, or the town gets sacrificed.  Capture the assassins (resulting in their certain execution), or the evil noble gains control of the city council.I don't think this is due to a lack of creativity on my part:  on the contrary, coming up with interesting and complex villainous groups and motives is, I think, one of my strengths as a DM.  And my players' tendency to resort to violence isn't a lack of creativity on their part:  in fact, although they often try to avoid killing, I equally often throw them in desperate, live-or-die situations, in which they don't have the luxury of fighting with less than their full force.Again, I can recognize that a less-violent game can be fun.  In such a game, villains will need to have different sets of motives than in the games I run.  But if it's your scene, it's a valid way to play.However, what constitutes "good" behavior in that kind of game and what constitutes "good" behavior in my kind of game will necessarily be different.Daniel</blockquote>

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