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Message: <blockquote data-quote="twofalls" data-source="post: 2144391" data-attributes="member: 23718">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). <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> 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.</blockquote>

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