OMG! The PCs are murderers! Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

[Vegepygmy]

I love it when folks try to apply modern, civilized mores (and legal constructs) to D&D.

A closer analogy would be the lawless frontier towns of the Wild West. Those with power set the rules. Life is cheap.

Not every D&D campaign is set in Lawless Frontierland. Some are set in Civilized Places. Some are set in worlds that have both kinds of places.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Not every D&D campaign is set in Lawless Frontierland. Some are set in Civilized Places.

It doesn't have to be a lawless frontier for the society to be "he with the biggest weapon makes the rules". I think Wulf mentioned the Wild West because that is the best example modern Americans are familiar with.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Oryan77 wrote:
It would be funny to have the PCs here from a friendly NPC or something about how he has to go to his cousins funeral, "My cousin was working his security guard job the other night and someone broke in to the building and murdered him. I feel so bad for his wife & kids...he was working 2 jobs and they were barely scraping by". I'd love to see how my players would react to a situation like that

Ya know, I might just do this.

 

[Rel]

For those unfamiliar with the original module, I strongly recommend it. One of my favorite modules of all time and I've reused it in almost every edition of D&D I've ever played.

 

[Celebrim]

A whole nation? Seems a touch excessive for a case of attempted murder. I'd have the town watch come after them, certainly, but if they had the sense to skedaddle and not come back to that particular burg, that'd be as far as it went.

I'm assuming that the problem escalates because someone who kills a drunk in a bar fight probably isn't thinking as far ahead as 'Run away'. The town watch intervenes. The PC's, not wanting to be arrested and tried, decide to fight the town watch. Any party 3rd level or above can probably make mincemeat of the town watch. But if that happens, now the town's major NPC's are drawn into the fight, Northfield, Minnesota style. If the PC's survive that, their crime has escalated to the point that the regional government intervenes, and so forth. If the PC's kick too hard on the edifice of civilization, the really big guns start coming out and the PC's learn why humans, elves, drawves and the like haven't gone extinct.

If they tried to stand their ground and make a fight of it, they'd soon be fighting the whole town. If they slaughtered the town, then it would start escalating...

Yes, that's was my assumption.

 

[Merkuri]

This thread reminds me of a time in our Eberron campaign when I was playing a knight with a less than moral background aspiring to be a paladin because she was "cursed" by the Silver Flame into feeling physically ill when she committed (or even considered committing, in some cases) an evil act until she had redeemed herself (an act left purposefully vague). So even though her alignment on paper was Lawful Neutral she committed good acts not because she felt like they were deserved, or that it was the right thing to do, but because she was trying to find the act that would finally break her curse so she didn't vomit at the idea of stowing away on a lightning rail.

The party were members of the King's Blades (an arm of the Citadel) in Breland, and I always envisioned the Blades as an arm of the CIA or FBI. Eberron struck me as being a relatively modern setting in terms of feel, and Breland clearly seemed to be based on the real-world USA, so I equipped my character with a few sets of manacles and prepared to play an enforcer of law.

Early in the campaign we were traveling in a rural area and managed to subdue several bandits who had been trying to kill us. This was more accidental than intentional - the fight happened on moving carriages and horses with the PCs leaning out of carriage doors or standing on carriage roofs, and we managed to quickly take the bandits out of the fight with a few well-placed Grease spells at the horses' feet. The DM ruled that this knocked the bandits off of their horses and disoriented them long enough that we could round them up, alive.

I insisted on manacling or tying up (when I ran out of manacles) the bandits and bringing them into the nearest city or town to face justice, while another PC said we should just hang them as bandits right here in the middle of the woods. At this point we broke into a long out-of-character discussion about the rights of a Blade, and whether they were allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner or if Breland was more "modern" than that and allowed bandits a trial.

I honestly forgot what we had decided, but it was an interesting discussion. I think in a more traditional fantasy/medieval setting I would have been fine with a hanging, but we were an arm of the law in a setting that has been compared to the real-world 1920s or the cold war, and hanging somebody in a tree felt like something a CIA-analogue just shouldn't do (at least, not to a character who was reluctantly aspiring to be good).

 

[Janx]

I saw a good cleric PC lethally attack and kill 2 city guards just because they thought he "murdered" the dead guy the PC just killed (the guy tried to rob the PC and he killed him). The guards told the PC if he pays them to overlook the situation, they won't arrest him. Instead, the PC drew his weapon, and the guards tried to grapple him (for an arrest), they failed, and the cleric used his magic to kill them both in 1 round.

Ignoring that this event came from a preoblem player, here's how a player probably looked at those events:

Guy tries to rob PC, PC kills guy as act of self defense. Fully justified under Texas' Castle Law which allows for use of lethal force in defense of life or property for yourself or another.

Then 2 cops try to take a bribe from him at the scene and try to arrest him. This was illegal, so the PC went all Castle Law on them, too. The cops should have brought him in for questioning, "we just need to bring you to the station, make sure you're all right, and ask you a few questions, standard procedure in a situation like this, you know..."

Under general terms, one is only allowed to use a minimum level of force to stop the bad guy. The Castle Law brings it up a notch. The crooked cop reaction is a bit grey.

The problem is, players assume D&D justice runs under the Castle Law all the time. DMs don't assume that. Players are seldom told the laws of the land that their PC already knows, thus complicating matters.

The GM chooses whether to make a big deal over law infractions. Yiu can make the PC a criminal, you could make this a minor blip on his record. You could make it go away with a bit of gold.

The cops who came on the scene could have known who the PC was, saw the dead guy, and agreed he had it coming. The DM chose to make an issue out of it.

What all this matters is, because the DM is effectively choosing to escalate the severity of an alleged crime, he's choosing the direction to take the campaign.

Sure, it'd be nice to have the PCs not kill NPCs on a regular basis so they can continue on being heroes of the people. But you don't have to try to nail them with the law in every encounter where the NPC acts against the PC first.

Save law enforcement for situations where the PCs started doing something illegal. Like robbing people. Or breaking into buildings. Or attacking random people. The good guys get a pass on using lethal force when the NPCs try to do bad against them. Just like most action hero movies.

Thus, if you don't want the PCs killing people in town:
make sure an explanation of the basic local laws is part of the hand-out for the campaign. Covering use of lethal force is mandatory.
make sure you don't attack/do crime against the PCs, unless you don't mind some dead NPCs

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Not every D&D campaign is set in Lawless Frontierland. Some are set in Civilized Places. Some are set in worlds that have both kinds of places.

If the local authority (regardless of its size) lacks the kind of power necessary to contain the PCs, it's still Frontierland, and the PCs are the law. And as I said, there's not really much question whether they are on the side of "right" or not, regardless of whether they happen to properly Mirandize the local bandits.

Certainly there is no shortage of campaigns where the PCs are not the biggest fish in the pond, but I don't find them particularly compelling or fun.

Such campaigns have their own set of problems: "Well, why don't YOU just handle that orc problem?"

It doesn't have to be a lawless frontier for the society to be "he with the biggest weapon makes the rules". I think Wulf mentioned the Wild West because that is the best example modern Americans are familiar with.

What he said.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, so? My PCs are pretty much always amoral murderers and worse. I think it's like a convention of the genre.

 

[Crothian]

My PCs are in a mostly lawless pirate cuity of Freeport and they haven't even killed let alone murdered anyone. They've had fights but kept the foes alive after they were defeated. Different players do different things.