What is your gaming like? Forked Thread: Was V's act evil? (Probable spoilers!)

[dmccoy1693]

Currently playing a character that took a vow to never inflict lethal damage. That is difficult considering we're playing in a Realms altering campaign where all that is good and civilized is being overrun by all that is infernal and shodow-tainted.

 

[Arnwyn]

So what was the motivation for your good pcs doing their killing in YOUR last session?

As well as what creatures were killed and what assurances you had that you were doing "right".

- Enemies attacked them first, and the PCs defended themselves.

- All constructs.

 

[Krensky]

Last lethal combat in the game I'm running was the players fighting their way out of an enemy (in the military sense) base after sabotaging the Macguffin and stealing the other MacGuffin. It wasn't anything personal, but the old man in the part blew a sneak roll and the team had to fight their way out. Had he not rolled a one, they would have sneaked out without engaging in combat at all.

I realized that I didn't actually answer the questions in that scenario.

Motivations: The team had a mission to complete involving sabotage and intelligence gathering. The enemy soldiers were the guys on the other side who happened to be in ear shot of the unlucky PC when he tripped on a 'badger' and rolled down into a gully.

Opposing Forces: A squad of SS troops and an Oberscharführe, along with 2 dogs.

Luckily the rules of engagement were changed recently in the game so they don't have to demand surrender before the fight starts.

 

[haakon1]

Generally speaking, my PCs have killed monsters / NPCs because...
... they were iredeemably evil (undead, demons, devils, etc.)
... they attacked us first
... they attacked NPCs the PCs were obliged to protect, or who other NPCs engaged the PC's services to protect
... they were at war with the PC's country

Ding - ding - ding. Pretty much all that applies in the current adventure (sorry, over email, so no last "session") in my campaign.

The PC's were tracking and found a group of werewolves (in my campaign and in 3.5 RAW, ALWAYS Chaotic Evil).

The werewolves are a mix of orcs, half-orcs, and human barbarians. Together, they are a band of mercenaries serving a foreign country, and they came to the PC's country on essentially a terrorist mission -- attack a small village and kill everyone, to draw back troops from the frontlines.

The PC's were sent to area by the central government, because the local baronet wouldn't send his troops to the front when ordered to, claiming trouble with orcs and wolves. The PC's (5th-7th level) scoffed at such puny issues and vowed to clear it up quickly and shoo the Warriors to the front.

The next night of the full moon, the werewolves attacked and burned a village. The local militia forces managed to cover the civilians escape and kill a lot of orcs, with some losses of their own, until the one mounted PC and some mounted NPC allies arrived and drove off the werewolves. (All done round by round, since it's email you can do a lot of NPC action in little game time.)

The second time, the werewolves tried to storm the baronet's tower (where the civilians were sheltering), thinking they were just fighting the one PC and militia again. They split up their forces to try and get the baronet and bite him, but they got pwned as the baronet succeeded at bull rushing his attacker out a window, and the PC's blasted a lot of spell power and some elvish archery at them. The PC's killed one and captured (and turned over to the local lord) two of the leaders.

With a sergeant from the local lord's militia, they've been tracking the last remnants of the mercenary force, and just found them. Their mission is to kill or capture them all, to prevent spread of the plague of lycanthropy and to find out where they came from and how they slipped into the country. Which lead to big, knock down, drag out fight.

They take prisoners because they want info on who the attackers are and how they got here, and because it seems to be the good thing to do to them. As DM, I'll likely have the werewolf prisoners hanged for brigandage by the local authorities, but I might do something more interesting like an escape or a prisoner exchange, who knows?

 

[Toben the Many]

To answer the OP very easily the PCs are part of a special forces team for their army. And their country is at war.

One thing I do like about staging the entire campaign around a war is that the PCs basically have an excuse to do whatever it is that they have set out to do. Whether it be to break into a prison or blow up a garrison, they are completely justified because they have been given orders.

As far as taking people's stuff - that's how it was in Medieval societies. You were expected to loot the battlefield for anything useful and it was first come, first serve.

 

[Jack7]

To me there is only one reason to kill, in game or real life. To avoid the need for more bloodshed in the future. All other forms of pragmatic killing are merely variations on this theme (self-defense, defensive warfare, pre-emptive strikes, assai of cultic personality-leaders who seek to invade or start wars or kill for pleasure, etc). You kill because if you didn't then you or innocents would die and the adversary has no interest in negotiation, they only want to kill you, for whatever reason(s). You don't negotiate with Columbian drug cartels, you destroy them. Before they get to you or intimidate and assassinate all of the legislators in the capital or gun down 50 or 60 little children in the slums. Similarly you don't negotiate with an unrepentant dragon who burns villages, and eats babies and livestock, you kill it. While it sleeps.

Then again my players rarely "loot." So that's out for them. They work for the Emperor and so they get paid for their work. Most things recovered from bandits, pirates, monsters, enemies, etc. go to the Imperial Treasury. There are exceptions to that rule of course. And likewise players are not allowed without consequence to loot anything from anyone else either, because they are a special paramilitary band of operatives. They represent the Empire, even if only secretly, and so they are not allowed to steal or confiscate by force unless in emergency. So they can forage off the land, but not take from others without (re)payment.

Of course in game as in real life I try to assure that choices like this are never easy to make or easy to understand (that is it is not easy to understand exactly what is going on and if there are factors you cannot know about beyond what you personally know of the situation).

So I try to assure in my games that players can have an assurance of the intention of doing good without an assurance of actually always achieving good. Sometimes intention and action mesh well, and sometimes intention and action are at odds.

But as an example the players were recently in a fight with a group of guerillas holed up in the mountains of Eastern Europe. The players had been told that they were disaffected bandits (which they were) that had attacked Rusmen (Russians) friendly to the Empire in an attempt to start a war between Constantinople and the Russians (which they had). The guerillas though were a band of Goths who felt they had been betrayed and used badly by the empire (and they had been) and so were seeking to start Orthodox in-fighting so that they could claim an area of their own and make a deal with the descendents of some Huns for supplies and protection. In the middle of that the Goths had been attacked at night by a monster leading to heavy casualties. So the Goths tried to parley for terms and protection by joining with the party, who then had to decide if they would let the monster finish them off or further weaken them, and then fight the monster, or if they would join with the Goths to try and work together to kill the monster.

but we kinda like this -- killing, even assault, is comparatively rare and has great moral implications (as well as gameplay mechanics).

If only it more often worked out this way...

 

[Hussar]

Hrm, well, last couple of sessions have been:

Giant Constrictor snake
A pair of very pissed off sea serpents
The Mother of All (a sort of demonic plant thing that was trying to kill them)

So, yeah, morality doesn't enter into it very much.