What would you have done?

[Dr. Harry]

I wrote an email to the group explaining that every good character in the game was in alignment violation, and that I was only going to award 1/4 xp for the fight they had worked so hard at during that session.
What would you have done?

With regard to the situation itself, I wouldn't provide an XP penalty, per se, but I certainly wouldn't have given any XP bonuses, which usually provide a noteworthy percentage of experience.

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you address any problems with your players (or anybody, for that matter) face-to-face. You really need to provide the visual cues to convey exactly how you mean what you are saying, especially when you are saying something negative. Additionally, when you speak face-to-face then you can show regard for the person that you are talking to in minor but important ways: by waiting for them to actively provide you with their attention, for example. They can also see any difficulty you have choosing your works; this effort is also a measure of respect. In the case of an email, not only is this invisible, but it has a more invasive quality. Consider coming home after a tough day, opening your email to see an email from your good buddy twofells only to get dumped on!

The end result is that you feel that you have to apologize for something that doesn't require an apology.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Based on past interactions with the authorities and various hints I had dropped ("The mayor happens to mention that there's been a rash of murders in the streets lately. Apparently someone's taking vigilante justice and we need to put a stop to it!"), they would know. Also, they were told to "peace-bond" their weapons upon entering town, so they knew that, legally, they shouldn't be using them. Yeah, yeah, I know. "But, you said the character was CN! He doesn't have to obey the laws!"

Oh, right, so the players shouldn't have been infiltrating the place in the first place, being the happy little citizens that they are. They should have left everything up to the town guard, because obviously that's what adventurers should do. No vigilante justice at all.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. They were trying to infiltrate someone's palace to find a clue to a murder mystery they were trying to solve. That was the objective. To get into the palace, the sorcerer character used his sleep spell on the guards. They all failed their Will saves and fell asleep. The characters started to go into the palace to search for clues when the CN Rogue character stops and starts slitting the guards' throats.

Yup. They fell asleep. For all of, what, less than 10 minutes?

Sleep is 1 min/level.

So, leave the guards just snoozing, and what's going to happen? They're going to wake up before you're done.

And can you honestly take the time to tie them up (if, given 3e's rules for rope use, you can tie them up effectively at all...).

I suggest some DM's here go and rent a movie titled "Breaker Morant". Rule 303 has a lot going for it when there aren't any viable alternatives.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I'd like to present the idea that you called him a Nazi in the campaign log. Unless OberFuhrer is something typical amongst Kender that I'm not aware of, you deliberately insulted him in a fashion you did not do to the other two people.

It's not the experience penalty, it's the personal remark that was outside the game in your campaign log. You mention and that is not quite what you did, in my opinion. I suggest you delete that remark [edit for clarity: the oberfuhrer word] and offer an apology to the player.

Uhm.. no. I did not call *Dan* a Nazi.

I called his character, Tobbin, a Nazi in jest - because that was the way he was being played during the interrogation scene. It was that very "over the top" element to the character portrayal during that session which was objectionable and earned him the penalty - and it was to that characterzation to which I made reference in the log.

Here's what happened (From Knights of the Lance Session IX Recap) @page 44

To Do what has to be Done…

The march of the party took perhaps another hour, but there were increasing signs of habitation in the caves and paths beneath the mountains.

The path broke off at certain points and there was little doubt that they were now passing through old mining areas. Gawgower pointed out certain veins in the rock where iron ore and even small amounts of silver and lead could be seen.

The goblins had been thorough in their excavations and even the dwarf voiced a grudging respect for their mining methods. It wasn’t pretty, but the mineshafts were serviceable and thorough.

As the smell got stronger and the floor less dusty, the heroes advanced more slowly.

Gawgower stopped, then held his hand high motioning for silence. In a moment, he had the lantern hooded. Some whispering between the dwarf and the half–elf followed and then Preston was off down the tunnel creping forward. Tobbin or even Roland might be a better sneak, but neither of them could see in the dark like Preston could.

“We’ll sit tight for a bit. Keep it quiet”, Gawgower whispered.

Preston crept forward up the tunnel silently, his colour shifting elven cloak helping him blend against the rock. From somewhere forward, he could hear mutterings in a guttural tongue.

At last he spied the source of the noise. Three hobgoblins appeared to be on sentry duty. One was half-sitting on a rock protruding from the wall while his two comrades sat on a bench. They were talking in the deep, throaty, goblinoid speech of their tribe. While Preston couldn’t speak goblin, he knew it when he heard it for what it plainly was. Preston waited to see if there were any more of them further down the hall. After a few minutes, satisfied that there were only three of them, Preston crept backwards.

In a few minutes, Preston returned and whispered his report on what he had seen:

“Not goblins but hobgoblins. Twice as tall and ten times as bad. Slavers and murderers.” Preston spat on the stone and made it clear what he thought of their foe perhaps 100 yards or so up the tunnel.

“So what do you propose we do?”, Petronius whispered.

Preston stooped down on the tunnel floor and used the tip of his dagger to sketch out the location of the hobgoblins he had seen in the dust. “There are only three of them,” he whispered. “You and I and Roland sneak up here, he said pointing to a spot on the floor as he drew little circles representing the foe. “Maybe Tobbin too. They are in a part of the tunnel which is not too far up from a corner. I know a chant, like the lullaby I used on that big bear back in Lemish, remember? This one is stronger. It may be sufficient to put them all to sleep. If not – one or two at least are likely to nod off.”

Scratching out X’s in the dust over the circles Preston continued on with his plan: “We wait to see how the chant works, then we step out here, and feather any that don’t fall asleep.” Pointing at Petronius, Preston continued “You scorch any that are still up after the arrows hit. If we are lucky, there will be nothing left awake that is still alive. Then we drag one back here, wake it up and see what we are facing and how to get into the fortress.” Preston stood up from the map he had drawn on the floor.

“And after that?”, Draigen asked pointedly.

“After that, then we’ll do what has to be done,” Preston replied, meeting the questioning gaze of the squire evenly as he sheathed his dagger. “Look. We are in a hobgoblin mine under a mountain in Nightlund, over a hundred leagues from Solamnia. There are not going to be any prisoners here Stormblade. We have no choice.”

Neither Draigen nor Lucius had much to say which could refute the half-elf’s logic, but both of them looked uneasy.

“You two are too loud in that armour anyways,” Roland added softly as he clapped Lucius on the shoulder. “Wait here.”

And so the Squires waited with Gawgower as the rest of the heroes crept forward.

As is turned out, the bard’s chant worked without a hitch. In a moment, all three hobgoblins collapsed where they were, caught in magical slumber.

Approaching them, Preston didn’t hesitate as he drew his dagger and cut the throats of the two asleep on the bench. The other hobgoblin was quickly gagged and bound with Roland’s help.

Whispering to Petronius for him to go and get the Stormblades to fetch the corpses, Roland and Preston dragged the living Hobgoblin back down around the tunnel.
A few moments later, Draigen and Lucius were carrying two dead bodies and hiding them as best they could behind a boulder near a curve in the tunnel wall.

Soon enough, the hobgoblin captive was awake and there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes. What the party didn’t expect was the hint of contempt the hobgoblin’s demeanour showed as well.

“What now?”, Draigen asked guiltily, knowing the answer he would receive.

“Now, we get Tobbin to talk to him and see what he knows”, Preston replied.

“And what if he doesn’t want to talk to Tobbin?”, Lucius asked with a grim look.

“To tell you the truth, I was getting kinda bored anyways”, Tobbin piped up cheerfully. Dropping his voice to a bare whisper, Tobbin continued on “he’ll talk Preston, if that’s what you are sure you want”. Preston nodded curtly to the kender and then knelt down on the hobgoblin’s arm, motioning at Gawgower to hold down the other arm. The kender then sat on the hobgoblin’s chest.

“Grenach!” The kender said “hello” to the captive in a nasty whispery voice as he began his questioning.

Lucius glanced at the kender perched on the hobgoblin’s chest and bending down over its face as he whispered in the hobgoblin’s ear. Lucius Stormblade had little trouble in discerning how this would end up.

The aspirant squire had a sudden urge to be somewhere else. “I think I’ll go back and make sure no one has noticed the blood.” With that Lucius got up to walk back to where the three hobgoblins had been attacked.

Draigen met his brother’s knowing stare as Lucius departed and nodded quietly. “Just as well, I don’t think there is anything honourable that is about to transpire here over the next little while.”

Maybe it was frustration at the way the day’s march had gone; perhaps it was the pressure of the hobgoblin’s confused stare as Tobbin tried to wring the information from him as to the location of the path up to the fortress. Whatever the case, during the questioning, Tobbin lost his patience and reached over to Gawgower’s belt, to draw the dwarf’s serpent blade. Tobbin placed the Dagger of Venom on the monster’s cheek just below the hobgoblin’s eye and whispered something in the creature’s menacing language. A more vile looking dagger would be hard to imagine. A hint of real terror crept into the hobgoblin’s eyes after that. Bit by bit, the kender wrung the information from the captive as Gawgower and Preston held him down, while Preston held his own dagger hovering near the hobgoblin’s throat.

The hobgoblin was brave enough and Draigen was very relieved that it didn’t plead for its life. The hobgoblin had a sense of honour to it - an honour that the knot slowly forming in the pit of Draigen’s stomach indicated might be the only honour in that cave on that particular day.

Nodding that he had received what he needed to know, the kender got up off of its chest. Preston cut the bonds around the hobgoblin’s feet as Gawgower stood up.

Getting up off the hobgoblin’s arm, with a flat stare and a toothless grin, Preston threw down a falchion on the floor at the hobgoblin’s feet. The bard drew his own sword and waited as the rest of the “heroes” backed away to give the two a wide birth. It was as much mercy as the bard would permit the monster and the bard knew that death for the hobgoblin was a certainty. Still, at least the show of a trial by battle would satisfy the Solamnics guilty consciences.

The hobgoblin narrowed its eyes as it understood what the half-elf intended. With a snarl it bent over to retrieve the weapon.

It was over in a few moments. The hobgoblin’s blood flowed on to the floor, seeping towards Preston’s boots as its lifeless eyes stared upwards, accusingly. Preston wiped his blade on the hide cloak the dead hobgoblin still wore and stepped to the side so as to avoid the pooling blood.

“Well?” Preston said, looking at the kender impatiently.

Tobbin the kender got a BONUS of XP for the earlier session discussed above where he slipped the hobgoblins a cold chisel (before the rest of the party agreed they were going to do that ) and saw that the ranger was up to no good. He foiled the execution of hobgoblins by using wire to foul the lock (well - he tried to stop it).

It was an especially kenderlike thing to do and, the way he was playing the character it was to a "T" - he handled it very well.

 

[twofalls]

Well, thank you for all the thoughtful commentary on the situation, and I'd like to remind everyone that this happened a bit over a year ago and everyone is still playing now who was playing then in my campiagn. I'm very lucky in that its incredibly rare for me to loose a player from my games for any reason, though I came uncomfortably close to loosing a whole group over this. I posted this because it still niggled at the back of my head and I wanted other folks take on what happened.

I'd like to further observe that I was completely confrontational with the entire group over this event, utterly outraged, and certianly put everyone involved on the defensive. I handled it very poorly, and I've been dealing with small group politics for over 2/3 of my life. I can't explain why I was so personally affronted by this, but it struck a deep chord with me. There wasn't a single person present who hadn't gamed with me for 6 years minimum, and my stance on actions like this was well known. That said, the group was under a lot of pressure from an intense roleplaying session that lasted all weekend (our annual game retreat) to rescue a Gnome village (that they were all very attached to) from an evil sorceress and felt that their prisoners were a liability they couldn't afford... and frankly given the circumstances I still didn't care. Killing them was wrong. To the poster who asked me if it was the manner or the fact of the murder that bothered me, my answer is both.

I appreciate those of you who supported my position, particuarly the Dragonlance story. I also appreciate those of you who disagree with me and offered well thought out counter arguements because it helps me consider my stand on the issue. I admit that I was wrong to react the way I did, I simply went overboard. These guys are my closest friends and the next game session was opened with me apologizing and a conversation about how each of us felt about what happened. However I apologized for my reaction, not my positon. My positon remains the same, murdering incapacitated foes is an evil act. You can sing the old Monkeys song "Only Shades of Grey" all evening, but killing a tied up foe in cold blood is just wrong and I wont tolerate it in characters who claim high moral qualities. I dropped the xp penalty because I had over reacted the way that I did, but I made it clear that future violations of that nature would carry such a penalty, and eventually force an alignment change.

To the posters who commented on the Neutral character, I didn't penalize him, nor did I accuse him of an alignment violation (that particular player happens to be my best friend and he knew I wouldn't take that stand on a neurtally aligned character). I did however inform him that habitual slayings of that nature would turn him to the darker path of evil (which I don't expect of him frankly).

Someone asked where the Spiderhaunt Forest is located. If you know the Forgotten Realms campiagn setting, it is the dense forest between Shadowdale and Daggerdale that grows at the eastern base of the Desertsmouth Mtns. It's over run with giant spiders (naturally) and Ettercaps. The adventure was based on a very bastardized rendition of the module "The Sword of the Dales". As an aside, for those of you familiar with the classic adventure module series, the PC's were instrumental in freeing Daggerdale from Zhentarim control, assisting the Freedom Riders by capturing one of the gatehouses in Daggerdale and fighting a heroic battle against the garrison to keep the main gates to Daggerfalls open for the riders to attack through. Then later asisting with the defeat of a Zhentish mercenary army of Orcs hired to retake the town. Illthond became a recurring villian in the game for many adventures before finally being defeated by the party (now members of the Harpers) in Cormyr.

I continue to challenge my group with moral questions that have difficult answers. We have, as players, hacked and slashed enough though the years that what we crave is an in depth political story with themes and tough choices (as well as a bit of hack). Right now they are preparing to defend Ashbravn from an attack by the forces of a Temple of Bane after uncovering that the cause of the trouble is a plot hatched by the priesthood of Cyric... great fun!

Thanks again for the thoughtful posts.

 

[John Morrow]

You can sing the old Monkeys song "Only Shades of Grey" all evening, but killing a tied up foe in cold blood is just wrong and I wont tolerate it in characters who claim high moral qualities.

Out of curiosity, do you feel that the police officers and medical people who administer a lethal injection to a subdued prisoner who is tied down to a table to carry out a death sentence are wrong or in some way Evil?

 

[twofalls]

I don't wish to take this thread into discussions on the merits of the death penalty. I recognize that there are very strong opinions on the matter and don't feel this is the correct forum for that conversation. I just wanted other folks views on what happened in a RPG session that I ran a year ago. So no disrepect intended, but I choose to decline to answer that question.

 

[Sarellion]

Uhm.. no. I did not call *Dan* a Nazi.

I called his character, Tobbin, a Nazi in jest - because that was the way he was being played during the interrogation scene. It was that very "over the top" element to the character portrayal during that session which was objectionable and earned him the penalty - and it was to that characterzation to which I made reference in the log.

Probably the player didn´t got the joke.
I know that I personally would object if the DM would call one of my characters a Nazi even in jest on a public internet site.

It would be ok probably at the table if he is indicating that it´s a joke. Doing it in a campaign log on a public internet site is a big affront.

 

[Templetroll]

Uhm.. no. I did not call *Dan* a Nazi.

I called his character, Tobbin, a Nazi in jest - because that was the way he was being played during the interrogation scene. It was that very "over the top" element to the character portrayal during that session which was objectionable and earned him the penalty - and it was to that characterzation to which I made reference in the log.

Tobbin the kender got a BONUS of XP for the earlier session discussed above where he slipped the hobgoblins a cold chisel (before the rest of the party agreed they were going to do that ) and saw that the ranger was up to no good. He foiled the execution of hobgoblins by using wire to foul the lock (well - he tried to stop it).

It was an especially kenderlike thing to do and, the way he was playing the character it was to a "T" - he handled it very well.

I was referring to the kender, not to the player, in the comment "you called him a nazi" but that does show the weakness of the printed word sometimes.

I saw nothing jesting in that campaign log entry. You came across quite bothered by what had occurred. I think if you talk to the player you will find he did not take the oberfuhrer reference as a jest.

 

[John Morrow]

I'm not sure expediency is an excuse for killing and maintaining a non-evil alignment.

I'm not sure that it necessarily causes a slip into an Evil alignment, either. If you wanted to rule that repeated expedient killing makes one Evil because it becomes casual and shows a lack of compunction against killing as a first coarse of action, I think I'd agree.

No, not according to the rules, but within the context of my campaign the players knew that they were going to be playing heroes. I don't "limit" my definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, to what's written in the SRD and neither do my players. There's a certain amount of judgment, common sense, and life experiences that shapes our views on stuff like this which is why I talked about it with my players before the campaign started.

So long as you come to an agreement before the game, that's fine. But as I've stated in other alignment threads, I think alignment is designed to serve a specific purpose in D&D. It's designed to identify the "teams" and identify the good guys and bad guys. As such, an Evil alignment is like a black hat in an old Western, a Nazi uniform in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or a Stormtrooper helmet in Star Wars. If you've got a player who expects that approach and then toss them an innocent farm hand with a black hat, a reluctant Nazi who really hates Hitler, or a Stormtrooper with a picture of his family tucked in his armor, you are going to have problems. In most action movies as well as plenty of first-person shooters, guards are targets to be killed, not real people. If that's not the case and the players don't know it, one can run into problems.

1) Were the bad guys evil? Irrelevant. The group did not have the magical means available to determine this, but it's irrelevant. The alignment of the victim is not the driving factor here. The actions of the characters are what determines how I, as the DM, view them on the good-evil axis and the law-chaos axis. At least, that's how it is in my campaign.

I think it makes all the difference in the world. Most RPGs that I've ever seen have a vigilante element to them. That means that the PCs roam around and dispense justice. Whether the bad guys are evil is as relevant as whether the person in an electric chair is guilty of mass murder or not. It's the whole justification for vigilante justice.

3) Were they innocent? They were guards. Had they hurt people? Yes. Were they "just doing their job"? Yes. Is that an excuse for them to not be punished? No. Is that justification for slitting their throats while they are incapacitated? That's up to the individual character in question to decide, but I think there comes a point where, outside of the "self-defense" aspect of normal D&D combat, the systematic execution of helpless (remember, they are all magically asleep and unable to defend themselves or plead or beg for mercy or whatever) a person crosses the line toward what is "necessary" (defending one's self, one's property, or one's family/friends) and what is "expedient" or just easier to deal with (e.g., "It's too much hassle to spend the time to tie these guys up. I'm just going to slit their throats and leave the bodies here").

Remember that most of the people that criminal justice systems execute are helpless, whether they have their hands tied behind their back when they are shot or hung or they are strapped into an electric chair or a hospital gurney at the time they are killed. If their death is a foregone conclusion, then letting them defend themselves is a mere technicality, especially if the PCs are superior (see the example of the elf ranger and the hobgoblins). Letting them plead or beg only makes things more difficult if, again, their death is a foregone conclusion. So I'm not sure why any of that matters, though it might to an individual code of honor.

What does matter is whether they were evil enough to warrant a death penalty and whether tying them up was a viable option that would achieve a just resolution. In your example, as I know understand it, the answer seems to be no and yes and that does make killing the guards a problem. In the original example in the thread, I think the answers might be yes and no, which, for me, produces a different assessment.

Based on past interactions with the authorities and various hints I had dropped ("The mayor happens to mention that there's been a rash of murders in the streets lately. Apparently someone's taking vigilante justice and we need to put a stop to it!"), they would know. Also, they were told to "peace-bond" their weapons upon entering town, so they knew that, legally, they shouldn't be using them. Yeah, yeah, I know. "But, you said the character was CN! He doesn't have to obey the laws!"

Then why were the characters engaged in vigilante activity?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. They were trying to infiltrate someone's palace to find a clue to a murder mystery they were trying to solve. That was the objective. To get into the palace, the sorcerer character used his sleep spell on the guards. They all failed their Will saves and fell asleep. The characters started to go into the palace to search for clues when the CN Rogue character stops and starts slitting the guards' throats.

I got my examples crossed. In this case, killing the guards doesn't sound justified. It sounds casual and sounds like they didn't make any attempt to establish whether these guards were particularly bad. That does show a lack of compunction for killing innocents. But I think that example differs substantially from the one that started the thread.

I would accept an explanation of why this character thought it was necessary. I would accept, "These guards work for the lord who raped and murdered my kid sister!" I would accept, "I have a personal vendetta against these guys because of...[whatever]". Some kind of in-character reason to kill these guys. I could try to work with that. What I wasn't willing to accept was, "I'm chaotic neutral. I can do whatever I want." That's a cop-out. The character is using the description of the alignment to define his actions, and that's not what it was intended for.

Fair enough. And I agree with that, and I don't think "I'm Chaotic Neutral" necessarily means "I can do whatever I want" in the 3E SRD definition because both Chaotic and Neutral have boundaries.

Was he cruel? I guess it depends on whether you think slitting someone's throat with a knife while they are asleep is cruel. It's quick, and therefore less painful than, say, burning him to death. Are there relative levels of cruelty? Can a person be "kind of" cruel?

Yes, I think there are relative levels of cruelty, especially if killing is justified or necessary. There are always humane and cruel ways to kill.

He got nothing out of killing them. Neither pleasure nor remorse. Just the emotionless slitting of their throats.

Did he go out of his way to kill them? Given that the guards were asleep and likely to remain so while the characters infiltrated the palace, got the info they needed, and make a quick escape, I would judge that he went out of his way.

Then I think it would be fair to call the player on having no compunctions against killing the innocent. Again, I got my signals crossed between the examples.

The "parameters" of alignments are relatively easy to explain in my game. We are playing a heroic fantasy game where actions dictate alignment. Do not use alignment as an excuse for your actions. Rather, we will judge by your actions what your character's moral and ethical alignment is.

Fair enough. I'm not advocating excuse making or abuse of the CN alignment. But the question remains whether the actions could fall within that alignment, independent of the excuse-making. That's what I'm trying to address. In my assessment, for Neutral to occupy a space between Good and Evil (rather than being a depthless dividing line), it needs to include characters that are "More good than absolute Neutral but still not quite Good" and characters that are "More evil than absolute Neutral but still not quite Evil".

Looking for a functional interpretation of the SRD definitions, I've drawn my lines at ideological rather than pragmatic behavior. The Neutral character works in a soup kitchen to feed the poor because they will be praised for it (a pragmatic reason). The Good character works at a soup kitchen to feed the poor because they want to help the poor and could care less about praise (an ideological reason). The Neutral character beats up or tortures a villain because it's the only way to get information from them (a pragmatic reason). The Evil character buts up or tortures others because they enjoy inflicting pain (an ideological reason). Because of that, my interpretation of Neutral seems to be a lot wider than a lot of the other interpretations here.

And, for me, that's a good thing because it makes Good and Evil the white hats and black hats that I want them to be while the gray morality of pragmatism has a home in Neutrality. And it lets me use alignment to simplify some of the moral complexity that, in my experience, just isn't a whole lot of fun to play out because it's just too unpleasant to have fun with (except, perhaps, in very small doses).

Certain characters (paladins, and to a lesser extent druids and monks) will have consequences if they fail to act according to their moral or ethical restrictions.

Given that my game has both a fallen Paladin and a Druid who needed to undergo an atonement, I certainly agree.

 

[John Morrow]

To this day, I don't know what our DM expected us to do in that situation. But, I do know that our enemies all fought to the death for the rest of the adventure and we were unable to capture any more prisoners.

There is a reason why guns tend to kill people quickly with a single shot in the movies even though they don't do that in real life. Dealing with the wounded is a messy and complicated affair. In fact, I've heard of military strategies based on the concept that it's better to wound an enemy soldier than kill them because killing an enemy soldier only removes one enemy combatant from the field of battle while wounding one will remove two, three, four, or even five as they stop to help their wounded comrade.

And people should probably take a good look at what happened on Medieval battlefields to the wounded after a battle.

I think it is important for the campaign, for the players to know what you(the DM) think is the "right" way to handle the prisoner situation. It is easy to send mixed messages if bad things happen no matter what the PCs do.

I think that happens because the world is full of messy situations where there is no neat and tidy solution that's 100% good. Is it better to let a hundred guilty people go free or to put one innocent person in jail? Is it worth killing one innocent person against their will to save hundreds? Life is full of these sorts of questions and people will give you lots of different answers.

By the way, there are some interesting studies into the Anterior Insula vs. the Prefrontal Cortex and moral decision-making that might be relevant here. See:

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/web_material/latimes050204.htm

What I think we might have happened in the original example is that the player was thinking with their Prefrontal Cortex because the bad guys were sufficiently impersonal while the GM was thinking with their Anterior Insula and feeling discust because the act of role-playing the captives made them very real and the feelings very personal.

That being said, I am very surprised that players that have been in your campaign for such a long time hadn't learned how to handle a situation like this before now.

I'm not. I had been playing with a group for about a decade when we ran into a hostage situation resolution that almost ended a game. It went so badly that we discussed why it went out of control and replayed the scene.

[Edit: Spelling]