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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5577409" data-attributes="member: 42582">Hussar, another good post!One way I try and deal with this issue is to use a lot of undead and demons. (Given that they're often still sentient, the issue doesn't go away entirely, but it casts it differently enough that other options/interpretations open up - for example, killing undead may release a soul to its proper resting place, and demons may not have souls at all.)And in my current game, nearly all of the violence against humanoids has been against soldiers engaged in what are recognisably military operations - be they goblin, hobgoblin or gnoll soldiers. Which still raises moral issues, but different ones from the killing of civilians.Some hobgoblin and goblin prisoners have been taken and released on their own recognisance, having sworn the appropriate oaths. Other hobgoblin prisoners have been slaughtered in acts of brutal (and arguably misplaced) revenge. This is part of what the game permits being brought out (like your example of terrorism in a modern RPG).In the first Rolemaster game I GMed, one of the players played a paladin who used a two-handed sword, but who abhorred killing. In RM this can work, because most fights end with a combatant unconscious or otherwise hors-de-combat rather than dead. It wasn't until something like 6 months into the campaign that the player rolled a death crit against a humanoid opponent, chopping off his head. The player had his PC go out into the wilderness, to fast and meditate in repetance. I rolled a random encounter, and it turned out to be a RM variant of the Barlgura demon.I had the demon start taunting the PC about his moral failings. I assumed that the player would reason that no demon can speak the truth, and hence that this was a sign that he should regard his penance as done, kill the demon, and rejoin the party. In fact, however, the player took the demon as a sending from his PC's god, and had his PC offer no resistance as the demon beat him to a pulp - at which point, getting bored, the demon moved on and left him for the other PCs to find and revive him.For me, this was one of several formative experiences which affirmed that, if you trust your players and open up a space in which they feel they can trust you, then things will happen which are more interesting than just making the players dance to your own interpretive or evaluative script. (And who was right about the demon - me as GM, or the player? We never needed to decide. The event was what it was. Would it have added anything to the game to have the demon move on to a village and massacre all its inhabitants? I don't think so - all that would have done, that I can see, is pointlessly punish the player, and shut down the roleplaying in just the sort of way that you have been talking about.)</blockquote>

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