What would you have done?

[reanjr]

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. The neutral character didn't have a history of such behavior so I wasn't going to doc him xp unless it became habitual. I wasn't going to force alignment changes over just one incident, but the priest and the aspiring Paladin (wasn't a Paladin yet) needed to atone for their actions.

The only difference is I wouldn't have allowed the Paladin to atone.

The situation would not have bothered me, except on the level that metagaming bothers me. So it would have been like:

To: group
From: Me

So, yeah. Slitting the throat of a someone trying to silence his cohorts is mildly evil. Slitting a stoic soldier's throat because he refuses to talk in the hopes of frightening his young associate is patently evil. Letting the guy go after he talks in a dangerous area is Neutral at best.

Neutral guy: good work, make sure this isn't par for the course, though, or you might be slipping.

Good guys: Out of aligment, 1/4 XP. Sorry.

Priest: You let the guy go, so I'm letting you off on an atonement this time. You don't get any XP.

Paladin: Sorry dude, you're a fighter without bonus feats. Your mount kicks you before he leaves. (just kidding on that last part, he pokemounts out of there [on second thought, I just remembered you said 3.0, he walks away]). No XP for you, either. Perhaps you should try reading the 2nd edition Complete Paladin's Handbook for inspiration. Perhaps if you sacrifice your life, you can atone. But then you'd be dead, so what's the point? It would make a good story, though, you should look into it.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

They should have left everything up to the town guard, because obviously that's what adventurers should do. No vigilante justice at all.

That's the Game of Choices. That's being a rat-bastard DM. When I'm playing I want to run into tough situations that aren't ideal. There's a situation at a noble's ball; my fighter can't wear his armor even though he knows there will be a fight. Monsters attack in the middle of the night; they're not going to wait for the wizard to get his spells back. Towns that need help have rulers that are acting (knowingly or not) contrary to the town's best interests.

 

[Berandor]

IMC, I *love* the alignment issues with the players. We have LG, NG, CG, LN all assembled, and the treatment of prisoners and enemies who give up has been discussed several times. For now, they take the LN cleric of Tyr (god of law) as moral authority on what is and isn't right, but it's been very interesting to sit back and see them discussing.

FYI, they have decided to mostly kill everybody who is part of an evil scheme, no matter whether armed or not, since they brought it upon themselves and since the cleric can act as a judge. The last few enemies have been asleep, however, and the rogue simply knocked them out (being LG).

I note any alignment deviancies I detect (though killing prisoners who have been complacent in slavery and murder doesn't strike me necessarily as D&D-evil) and adapt spell reactions. The cleric started out as NG, but since Tyr has no problem with LN, not much has happened to him when he acted out of alignment (then). I also adapt NPC reactions - over time, opponents will be much more likely not to give up and coup de grace if possible since the group will earn a reputation of being merciless.

 

[Pielorinho]

Moderator's Notes

This thread is fascinating, but we need to watch the political comments. I may be editing out some of the stuff here in the next few minutes; meanwhile, I'll ask people not to respond to political posts, and not to post anything else political here. Please try to keep the discussion firmly within the realm of the fantastic.

Daniel

 

[Mallus]

The characters and the players should be ashamed in this situation. The characters, because they behaved in an evil fashion, and the players because, despite playing characters who are supposed to be "good"...snip

You seem to be implying that playing static characters = good roleplaying. Pick an alignment and stick with it no matter what experiences the character has. I think its more interesting to let characters evolve. Characters that start evil who play out redemption arcs, characters that start good and fall into cynicism and outright evil as they try to survive extreme situations, etc...

'Feeling shame' should be reserved for those players who are intentionally disruptive, innattentive, or go out their way to mess with the other peoples fun.

Hence, they arenot playing 'good' characters, and those characters should have their alignments shifted.

Yes. I agreed with that.

Responding with venom and anger when they were called on their actions is a problem.

I'd say the larger problem was the DM getting deeply and personally offended over the PC's course of action. In fact, the original poster admitted that.

There are right choices and wrong choices in every situation, sometimes the right choice is not the expedient one. If all choices were equally valid, then you would never have moral dilemmas, since the most expedient choice would always be the best one to make. Sometimes the "good" choice is difficult to adhere to, but that's the nature of "good".

And none of that is in question. This is all about the DM's response, not the players actions. DM's unwilling to explore moral dilemmas in-game shouldn't use them, period (and that's perfectly fine, its all about playing the game you enjoy).

Look at the actual situation: PC's choose evil course of action (under a fair amount of duress). Does the DM sieze upon this as a roleplaying oppourtunity? No. Does he play out the in-game repurcussions of their actions (remember, this is supposed to be challenging 'moral' situation). No. In fact he doesn't respond to the characters at all. He chooses to get mad at the players and then punishes them by docking their XP.

 

[MoonZar]

Alignment

Hello TwoFalls,

I just have a tought about this. I think that alignment is the general action of a character. After all they have a little good in evil and a little evil in good, this the ying and the yang thing.

Personnaly i would just take a note about this and if this happen again i just ask the player to change is alignment if his action seem to be toward more neutral or evil.

Xp penalty can discourage your players and that not good...

Also i think this a big mistake to judge what the players are doing. After all each DM should know that the player do what he want when he want. However he should feel the consequence of his action.

If you thought this was a big deal that they execute some NPC you could create a new vile NPC (1.5 x the level of the players) who is the brother of one of the prisonner they killed who'll seek revange. If he capture some of the PC that could be fun if he try the same thing on them. But you should give them a chance to escape, you don't want to kill PC without give them a chance. That how i'll deal with these kind of situation and this make a new opportunity for the development of your story.

 

[Pielorinho]

As for my personal opinion: I rather enjoy playing games in which I try to work within a morality with different starting principles from my own, and within a different context from my own. When we played RttToEE, we regularly performed triage on prisoners, by interviewing them. Some prisoners we executed; others we set free. Sometimes we took the severed heads of our slain enemies with us into negotiations with the living enemies, as a way of saying, "Look we're not to be trifled with!" We'd then negotiate the surrender of the living enemies and send them on their way, allowing them to keep all their treasure and sometimes giving them a bit of additional treasure to speed their journey. I never considered any of our acts to be evil, because:
1) We were not dealing with innocents, here--we were dealing with people who were knowingly defending a great evil; and
2) Our success was never assured, and if we failed, the world was gonna end. We needed to take advantages where we could find them.

In last week's session, my character used a combination of magic and bluffing to get a prisoner from a violent hate group to break his sacred vows and tell me (in writing) who his superiors in the group were. As the prisoner began to die under the curse of breaking his vows, I spat in his face and told him he was despicable.

Yeah, he was working to murder all members of my race. That was still a bit over the top.

But I would never penalize someone for a moral violation out-of-game.

Daniel

 

[Mallus]

The only difference is I wouldn't have allowed the Paladin to atone.

Right, because stories in which redemption is totally impossible are just so inherently interesting...

 

[diaglo]

Right, because stories in which redemption is totally impossible are just so inherently interesting...

no, b/c stories where the guy spends the rest of his life trying are.

sarcasm doesn't change the nature of the game.

 

[Mallus]

no, b/c stories where the guy spends the rest of his life trying are.

Point taken.

sarcasm doesn't change the nature of the game.

That depends on the players...