What would you have done?

[Voadam]

I would have not docked xp. If I was as offended as you were I would have changed their alignments from good to neutral and commented on how evil I thought their actions were in the game and (if true) inappropriate for the heroic characters they were trying to play.

I find it odd you were offended by the good characters doing this but not by the neutral one.

Good characters can fall, that seems to be more offensive to you than the evil actions on their own.

 

[twofalls]

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.

This is an interesting take MoonZar. For the sake of the game group, and due to the bad feelings the situation engendered on the part of all parties involved, dropping the whole situation was the most appropriate action at the time. A lot of good advice has been offered here, as well as some blame and finger pointing. In my own defense I'd ask that I be granted the benefit of the doubt with regards to the way things were handled. I freely admit my reaction was inappropriate. I've been running games for a very long time (nearly as long as roleplaying has been a hobby) and I've enjoyed a lot of success as a GM. I run two games in which 13 of the finest roleplayers (and friends) I've ever known play, and it's extremely rare for me to ever loose a player even when life throws curve balls at them. I consider that to be the highest compliment a GM can be offered. My typical style is to present a situation and then sit back and let the players hash it out without interferance, and then decide how the world reacts to what they do. Often, I find myself adjusting the game I had planned because a clever PC came up with a neater idea and I decide to run with that instead.

Moral and philisophical quandries are interesting to educated adults, and I'm not going to stop adding them to the game on account of some folks opinions here on Enworld that D&D is an inappropriate vehicle for them (though I do respect their personal opinions). I've laced all my campaigns with them since my late teens, and only this once did it inflate into an explosive issue between the players of the game, and that was of my own unintentional making. Usually they are simple black or white issues, but as I get older I find more entertainment in making them subtle and twisted. I can't explain in exact terms why this particular situation set me off. Perhaps it was the avid defense of the actions of their PC's and through them my closest friends. I was told quite up front during their defence that if they personally were in that situation (not just their characters) that they themselves would have acted the same. Perhaps that is what bothered me so much about it. I ended up trying to use the game to punish my friends for what I considered to be abhorrent behavior, and thats not appropriate at all. Or mabye that wasn't it either, I just can't exactly pinpoint the cause of my reaction, only explain what did happen.

Again, thanks for the thoughtful commentary.

 

[MoonZar]

Moral and philisophical quandries are interesting to educated adults, and I'm not going to stop adding them to the game on account of some folks opinions here on Enworld that D&D is an inappropriate vehicle for them

Hello,

BTW you was still right to do something, this could be worst to simply do nothing when good people execute prisonner.

I think you're right to add these features in the game. Moral, Politic, Philosophy, Relationship is all thing we have in my campaign world for more then 10 years now and we're happy with it. This great if people is enought mature to handle it our players have all more then 24 years.

But some people prefer to exclude this from the game to avoid conflict, complication that we have enough in the real life.

I think also that alignment should be respected, that make the difference between good roleplayer or people who just play what is the most conveniant way to resolve a situation.

But when u play with all these thing (morality and more) you should be ready to handle many situation that you won't agree with. I have two campaign running and i mostly don't agree to what the people do, i just say nothing, but i make sure they feel the consequence of their action.

 

[John Morrow]

In other words as long as you're fighting for what is right and good then the ends justify the means

The details of the BBC's arguments and assessments of how common or rare this is aside (and I really am not trying to make this discussion either political or religious), I think it points to the fact that people who are not trained to treat captives properly or negotiate with hostage takers at least sometimes do get frustrated by their inability to get results through negotiation and even otherwise good people will consider torture and violance as effective ways to get results, especially when the target of the interrogation or violence is considered to be a bad guy and part of the problem.

They need to train real soldiers and police officers not to do these things. It doesn't suprise me that role-players, most of whom have no such training, go down that road because plenty of real people do in the same sort of situation in the real world. If you don't want your players to do nasty things to captured bad guys, then either don't let them capture bad guys, give them an alternative to avoid the frustration that leads down the road to torture, or be ready to get into a lengthy and potentially heated debate about morality if you object.

Remember, D&D (and most other role-playing games) are structured to expect the players to resort to violent means to solve problems. That's why the combat systems are so large and the weapon lists are so long. And that's why Paladins carry swords, not daisies.

Edit - A couple of posters have said that torture was not involved - I disagree completely. That young soldier was tortured in being forced to watch his comrades being butchered and knowing that he was next. Torture is NOT just physical

Let's just say that this is an issue that is currently being debated in real world courts and while you may be certain about that (and you are entitled to your opinions), the boundaries of what is or isn't torture is hardly universal. To say any more would probably go someplace that the moderators don't want this to go.

 

[Storm Raven]

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...

No, I am implying that if you want to play a good-aligned character, don't be surprised when evil actions change your alignment. Characters who want to retain their "good" alignment should not evolve into evil.

You seem to be missing the point of the post: the characters behaved in an evil fashion, the DM pointed this out and their actions had consequences (since he has said he is using an alignment violation system, he docked them xp), and the players got themselves worked into a tizzy and tried to assert that clerly evil acts were, in fact, good.

'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.

Or who try to argue that evil acts are, somehow, actually good.

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.

I'm not sure he was so offended over the acts, but that the acts were perpetrated by supposedly good characters, directed by players who didn't see any kind of contradiction between their actions and the alignment written on their character sheet.

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).

I don't see the DMs response as being the problem. They made a choice, it had consequences, the players whined about those consequences. The problem isn't the DM here, its the players. If you take an action, expect consequences.

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.

Which is perfectly in line with how he has said he was running the campaign to that point: using an alignment violation system. Personally, I would have simply shifted the PCs alignments towards the evil axis of the scale, and then they would have made a good target for a good-aligned NPC party to hunt down, noting, of course, that a collection of 4 5th level PCs is an appropriate challenge for a party of 9th level NPCs.

 

[John Morrow]

I can't explain in exact terms why this particular situation set me off. Perhaps it was the avid defense of the actions of their PC's and through them my closest friends. I was told quite up front during their defence that if they personally were in that situation (not just their characters) that they themselves would have acted the same. Perhaps that is what bothered me so much about it. I ended up trying to use the game to punish my friends for what I considered to be abhorrent behavior, and thats not appropriate at all. Or mabye that wasn't it either, I just can't exactly pinpoint the cause of my reaction, only explain what did happen.

Did you read the article I provided a link to on brain activity and moral decision making? It discusses the role of viceral disgust in moral decisions, which seems to have been a factor here. I'm honestly interested in whether you think your empathy for the interrogated prisoners (playing them as NPCs and getting into their heads) versus the players lack of empathy for them (they were simply bad guys) played any role in your different assessments of the morality of their tactics. In effect, their response seemed coldly utilitarian while you seemed to be disgusted and offended by it.

By the way, I'm asking this for a practial reason related to my session last week. The PCs were going to execute a group of Evil human guards in their sleep. In my campaign, I differentiate redeemable and irredeemable Evil. Many Evil humans are potentially redeemable (while some other Evil sentients are not). I drew the line last weekend at for a Good character at convenience killing (the Evil human guards were asleep and could easily be captured), though I stopped it before it happened. And I'm honestly wondering whether this bothered me because of the morality I've set up for my setting or because I was empathizing with the guards. Is the issue here really a moral equation or simply a matter of empathy, and are good characters obliged to feel empathy even for NPCs that are evil to the core? This is something I'm going to have to talk to some players about before next session.

(In fact, the selfish reason why I've been involved in quite a few alignment discussions recently is to help me clarify and test my own views on the subject, to improve on what I have when I revise my setting.)

 

[jim pinto]

three cents

I typically try to keep my gaming opinions to myself. And I rarely, if ever, soapbox online, because as a game designer, I have a reputation... good or bad... that I must recognize, if nothing else. Albeit, I'm still an honest person, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell you that Room B65 in the WLD could have been better, but I just didn't want to be bothered.

True or not, its my place to make gaming better, not hamstring it with negative opinions about dungeon tiles, weapon-size classes, and useless feats (Endurance).

That said, I feel in a moral discussion, such as this, I can take part, however slight, to
say what I think about alignment, evil NPCs, torture, murder, and risks and rewards.

Enough prologuing.

First off, killing someone that is tied up is murder. That's it. End of story. Look up the definition if you'd like. But politics aside, things in wartime get brushed under the carpet of "we didn't know" or "stress" or whatever. Murder is wrong. And even if it were Hitler that was tied up, no LG character who calls himself LG, is going to sit back and let that happen. LAWFUL means adhering to laws. If the laws of his country say murder is okay, then he's fine. But, I'm guessing this paladin came from a more orderly society.

NG and CG characters have a little leyway here, but not much.

Now, killing the mage was not only acceptable, but necessary. Who knows what spell would have gone off. But the murder of the Vet was just vindicative. It was prideful. "He called my bluff. Now I have to kill him."

Threatening to use torture is an acceptable Intimidation tactic. No one does it anymore, because modern interrogators know it doesn't work, but in a fantasy setting and a game table, most PCs aren't qualified Hostage Negotiators, so I can't see them doing anything but this tired old trope of waving a knife or cutting off a finger.

Now, here's the problem. Even a paladin can threaten someone with violence, and maybe even carry them into the woods to scare someone into thinking that they are going to die. Heck, stringing up the VET would have gotten the other soldier to talk in seconds. But murder, in a group that has never condoned it is wrong.

And here's why.

The DM is the moral compass of the game table. He establishes, through example what CE, NE, and LE are through the villains he creates. He establishes what LN, N, and CN are through the NPCs, barkeeps, farmers, and contacts that the PCs must encounter. He establishes what LG, NG, and CG are through his holy orders, heroes, leaders, and what he does and does not punish the PCs for.

The PCs are a microcosm of the rest of the game world. If they murder in cold blood and are LG, what do CE people do? And why should they expect help from the LN peasant in the next village? If the PCs are not bound by ethical (law, chaos) and moral (good, evil) rules/guidelines, no one is. If the PCs kill the bad guys while they are tied up, they should expect the same or worse from the villains.

Not only is an XP penalty warranted here, its the equivalent of a swat on the nose to a puppy who pooped on the rug. "Don't do it again, rosco." It let's the PCs know this is unacceptable, and it won't happen again. If it does, the rules of proper treatment go out the window.

Now, if you don't like the alignment system. Don't use it. Cut away the silly good-evil, law-chaos spells and just play a morally grey game. In fact, let all the PCs play Neutral all the time and reduce the effectiveness of holy healing because the gods don't placate to mercenaries or something like that. See. Now all you weekend warrior power gamers can do whatever you want. No questions asked.

But twofalls has taken time to build a rich gameworld with characters, rules, and challenges.

Yes, sometimes challenges are hard. Sometimes the answer isn't as simple as slitting a throat or rescuing a princess. This isn't Super Mario Land. This is D&D. Go play Final Fantasy if you want cut and dry morality. Heck, that game even tells you what your character says.

And if the DM is responsible for writing a story, building a world, and "entertaining" the group every weekend, he has a right to be upset when his work is trounced on. PCs always believe that whatever they are doing is in the right. And everytime I hear that tired argument, I want to put them behind the screen for just one session, where I play a character as asanine as they played.

Let's see your patience threshold now.

(aside... i like the fact that all 3 npcs had distinct personalities... good DMing)

Was an e-mail the right course of action?

That's a tough one. I game with some pretty "wimpy" people who hate confrontation and who ignore half of what anyone says to them anyway. So my impression is, get it on paper, so your thoughts are clear. Being mad in your e-mail, though... is probably a bad call. Bees and honey and all that.

It certainly warranted a discussion. I'm the last person to say that feelings in the 20th and 21st centuries need that amount of attention they get in today's post-feminist world, but I will say that anger is the last emotion you want at the game table. Address it. Tell people what mad you angry. And drop it. Don't ask for a 4-hour debate about what is right and wrong. Feelings and perceptions cannot be changed at the game table. Don't even try.

PCs need to realize that they are gaming together and they MUST compromise some part of themselves to get along with the team. We all want to play the antisocial, albino, drug-addicted rogue cursed to walk the earth alone with one-eye and who hates everyone and kicks puppies at every turn. But if everyone played that character, I'm not sure the team would last very long.

The alignment system is designed so that everyone knows where they stand, who they are with, and what to expect from a world where heroes are rare (or common in the case of FR). Its the guiding principle of the world.

Do people step out of alignment? Absolutely.

Do good people find themselves questioning their values? Of course.

Do paladins murder? um.... probably not.

In short. Yes. Something should be said. Yes. Something should be done before the next game session. And yes. DMs have a right to be angry about sloppy game-playing. Come ready to game or don't come at all. But, no twofalls doesn't need to lash out. He just needs to say, "Hey this isn't cool." We game with friends and hopefully, they respect the work a good DM puts into a game, even if, in their anti-social gaming nerdiness, they can't verbalize their appreciation for his/her efforts.

Okay. This soapbox is about to crumble under my weight and I spent more time on this then I would have liked.

Good gaming, friends.

 

[Pielorinho]

First off, killing someone that is tied up is murder. That's it. End of story. Look up the definition if you'd like.

Not to be smart-aleck, but on your advice, I went to dictionary.com and looked up the definition:

The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.

Note the word "unlawful."

In many fantasy settings, the laws surrounding the killing of outlaws are, to put it mildly, relaxed. In lieu of a well-trained standing police force, there's a sort of Wild-West mentality, in which a person who commits a crime removes themselves from the protection of the law. Furthermore, it's often real easy to become deputized as the enforcement branch of the law: if the local mayor asks you to deal with a problem, you gain an informal license to use lethal force.

If either of these conditions hold true in the fantasy setting in question (criminals remove themselves from the law's protection, or the PCs have an informal license to use force), then, by definition, they didn't commit murder.

That doesn't mean what they did wasn't wrong. And in some cases, committing by-definition-murder will be perfectly acceptable for a lawful-good character, such as times when a paladin participates in a raid to kill an evil wizard in her own kingdom (she almost certainly has passed laws making it illegal to kill her).

But if a paladin is operating in a world in which banditry or slaving is punishable by death, and in which the paladin is either specifically or generally empowered to carry out this sentence, then I think it's entirely in keeping with alignment rules for the paladin to carry out the sentence on captured bandits and slavers, as long as he follows the rules required by his country.

Daniel

 

[billd91]

<snip>There was also coverage of tests run by Yale to see how easily someone would undertake torture if ordered to do so (an experiment in administering what they thought were electric shocks to another volunteer) and the rapidly halted experiments in politics of power (TV show on guards and prisoners) that took place in the US.*

<snip>

I don't think I would have docked the xp... I like to think I would have just taken note of the actions and considered it in light of further actions. Of course if this behaviour became something they began to use regularly or look forward to then it's a very different matter, and alignment changes should need to be considered. And in game the fact should have got back to the Zhents - making them that much more interested in the PCs. And of course if they were ever captured by the Zhents then the treatment should have NO difference, and those that don't talk are rolling up new PCs (maybe even those that do... these are the Zhents afterall). It would also have been fitting for rumours of these actions to eventually make it back to the PCs allies... giving them real concern about the actions of the party and whether or not they can continue to associate with them (particularly if they are of Exalted status).

On the moral compass of D&D there is real good and real evil - and that (IMO) is not the case in the real world (oh dear venturing near religion now as well ). So in the D&D world there should be those that will never undertake this sort of thing - the Exalted. Then there are those that are fighting the good fight but are willing to be ruthless to save innocent lives - that's what your PCs did. It doesn't stop them from being good or fighting the good fight - it means they've forever cut themselves off from being Exalted. If you're running a Superman type game then your decision was the right one... if you're running Batman (and it sounds to me like you were) then the good guys are that bit less shining white, and their actions will reflect that.

<snip>

Interestingly, and this experiment is covered often in methodology classes, the Milgram shock experiment is notorious for being both interesting and unethical by current standards. The 1960s Milgram experiment found out that people were stunningly willing to inflict pain if they were told they weren't responsible. The poor guy they thought they were shocking was just a recording so nobody was really hurt, but the study is considered unethical by today's standards because the true test subjects, the volunteers pulling the switches, didn't know they were test subjects.

Anyway, back on the direct topic...

I guess I wonder what you expected back then (or would expect if you presented a similar situation again)? Did you expect them to actually take and keep prisoners in enemy territory? It may not be good to butch anyone you capture, but let's remember that good isn't stupid. If the stakes are high for failure, as it sounds like they were, there are greater goods that must be upheld (like the survival of the gnome village) to the point where individual lives and consciences have to be set aside. It may not be very idealistic, but it's closer to reality.
While there may be dispute about whether regular soldiers would truly act in this fashion (some say yes, some say no, I suppose it partly depends on your reading of history and how it meshes with romanticism/cynicism about the military), I think you can't really consider a group of adventurers in enemy territory as being much like regular soldiers. They nature of their organization, training, and mission would be far more like commandos, who often cannot afford the luxury of taking prisoners unless directly supported by a way to transport them without jeopardizing the mission.

While it's all fine and good to expect the highly moral PCs to uphold that morality when they can, I think you have to keep their ultimate goals in mind. One dirty little secret of life (and any campaign that has shades of grey or moral questions) is that the ends really do justify the means. It's just that good and moral people are very picky about which ends are important enough to jusify wallowing in dubious means.

Does saving the gnome village (that was the main goal right? This thread got pretty detailed and I hope I'm not mixing posts in my brain) justify not making prisoners out of 3 Zhent agents because of the risks of doing so? If so, just tell them their consciences twinge a bit and bring it up in future sessions about feeling bad and periodically dwelling on it until they do something to personally atone, and move on.

That's what I would have done. And as a player, had you harangued me about killing the prisoners, I would have said, yes, it wasn't good, but doing so wasn't the wrong thing to do under the circumstances and with the current stakes. Sometimes good may not have the luxury to be as good as it wants to be.

The crux of much of this is testing moral questions and not getting the response you expect. By putting up moral dilemas, you should make sure that you aren't setting the players up to fail before your own moral standards. You may not like what you see if you and your players don't see eye to eye on some justifications.

 

[iwatt]

Threads liek this is why my Dwarf paladin charges into battle yelling: Surrender or die!
Binary choices are your friend as a paladin.

When the NPCs surrender, we question them and then I release them weaponless. The Tiefling Rogue/Ranger argues abou this, but is usually silenced. Personalyy, I as the player think the Tiefling slips out of sight and kills these relesed prisoners when my back is turned, but since my Dwarf has has no inkling of this (damn Int of 8 ) i can't seriously use OOC knowledge.

Then there's the absolute EVIL drow, which by law my paladin is authorized to slay on sight.

But what really helps me play this paladin without ealing with too many problems is that I sat down with the DM and talked about what was acceptable behavior from my Pally. Once that was clear, it becomes easy.

Abou the original posters question: The onlything worng I can see with what you did was that you reacted over-emotionally. It happens to the best of us. Lately I've taken to biting my tongue and saying: "We'll discuss this when everybody has calmed down. I don't want to say anything in the heat of the moment that I'll later regret." Cause truth be told, abou the only things I've ever regreted in my life are things I've said or done in anger.