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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4727830" data-attributes="member: 54707">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.If only it more often worked out this way...</blockquote>

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