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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2145942" data-attributes="member: 27012">Murder: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethoughtI'd argue that the label "murder" isn't very useful in many role-playing contexts, where the characters are either vigilantes or the equivalent of partisans or a commando squad attacking Nazi targets during WW2, attacking an enemy on their turf.  The question of "malice aforethought" is also fairly important with respect to differentiating murder from manslaughter and other forms of homicide.  So as a legal term, it's problematic.  And a moral term, "murder" simply means "unjust killing", which simply begs the question.I'll also pointed out, above, that legal court-mandated executions are generally performed on people who are tied up or are in some other way helpless.  It's generally called an "execution".  You may feel free to believe that all executions are murder and that all executioners are doing something Evil but I'm trying to point out that it's hardly a universal or settled opinion.  If you do think that all executions are murder and insist that your good characters send any captured bad guys off to the equivalent of Arkham Asylum like a four-color superhero, then I think you should make that clear to your players up front.  And I've played in enough four-color superhero games to know that this sort of morality doesn't mesh very well with any sort of real world moral problem. Paladins have the class ability to Detect Evil.  Why?  There are spells that let you Detect Thoughts, Discern Truth, and create a Zone of Truth.  With all of those factors in play, it's unlikely that the demands of justice or the criminal justice system would look anything like what we are used to, since they can often determine guilt or innocence with complete accuracy and seperate the good guys from the bad guys with a sweep of their hand.  Look at how things like breath tests for blood alcohol that instantly assess guilt effect the criminal justice system (i.e., you cannot refuse to take a breath test without essentially admitting guilt and you won't be able to drive away if the test says you are drunk).  Why would we go through the motion of trials if we didn't need that sort of process to determine guilt?On top of that, we can add the fact that D&D settings are usually quasi-Medieval (where justice was often swift and brutal).  The Medieval world had a very different sense of justice and due proecess and I think it's easy to understand why a lot of players don't expect their D&D setting to follow modern guidelines for due process.  I keep thinking of the old Woody Woodpecker cartoon, where a narrator repeats over and over, "If Woody had just gone to the police, none of this would have ever happened."Suppose the paladin captures the NPC equivalent of Hitler.  Rather than executing the villain on the spot, who the Paladin knows with 100% certainty is guilty, they cart this Hitleroid back to their home land to face a Crimes Against Humanity trial.  The trial simply confirms what the paladin already knows -- the NPC is guilty.  So the government takes the bound Hitleroid out to the gallows and hangs him.  What's the difference?  What could have changed during the trial?What purpose do Paladins serve in a D&D society.  Why are they armed, armored, and given the ability to Detect Evil?What were the alternatives?  Do the PCs just let them go?  Do they cart them around until the adventure is over?  Do they abandon their adventure and head for home and a formal legal system?  And if they do keep them tied up and cart them around, isn't that unlawful imprisonment and kidnapping if they aren't the authorities?And there are people who would argue that such treats are torture.  Where is the line and who gets to draw it?Fair enough.You mean if PCs execute helpless Evil prisoners, what do CE people do?  They kill people wether they are innocent or not, regardless of alignment.  They don't just slit their throats but torture and abuse them first, perhaps for days.  Those that they don't kill, they break, humiliate, and enslave.  And they enjoy every minute of it.  The CE person would threaten to torture someone if they don't talk and then torture them anyway, even after they tell them everything they wanted to know.I see plenty of room for contrast in there.Because the PCs aren't executing innocent LN peasants.  They are executing Evil soldiers working for an Evil organization that would ruin the LN peasant's whole day if they came into town.  Why should the LN peasants fear the PCs?Of course they are bound by ethical and moral guidelines.  Were they killing random peasants for sport?  Did they spend hours torturing their captives?  Heck, they even let one of the evil guards go as promised.Of course, unless you are talking about Saturday Morning Cartoon villains that tie the PCs up, put them in a giant Frosty-Freeze with all of their equipment, and give them an hour or two to escape before they freeze to death.  But then we aren't talking about settings with any moral depth.  If the bad guys don't do horrible things to the people they capture, then what makes them the bad guys?  Do they just sit in the basement thinking Evil thoughts and never act on them?You may role-play with players who you think so little of that you treat them like puppies in need of a smack on the nose.  I role-play with friends.  And frankly, if a GM treated me with the sort of contempt that you seem to have for players there, I'd find another game to play in.  GMs can go excercise their delusions of grandeur with someone else.Oh, I like the alignment system just fine, which is why I want both Good and Evil to mean something more than a fairly useless team label.Then what is an acceptable answer?  You are in the middle of the wilderness.  You have three Evil captives that won't talk.  What do you do with them?  Can someone who thinks that what these PCs did was wrong please provide a detailed description of what they should have done instead?  I offered some options above.If a DM wants full authorial control over their setting, story, and all of the characters they should be a novelist, not a GM, IMO. The majority of my group both plays and GMs.  Many of us have been on both sides of the "screen" (when we even bother to use one) plenty of times.  No, our PCs don't always believe that whatever they are doing is right.  But the players do sometimes disagree with the GM over what is or isn't morally acceptable for the characters.  And, no, I don't believe that a cardboard screen automatically makes someone right and everyone else at the table wrong.  We work it out.I have pretty much infinite patience for this sort of thing because I don't take it personally.  I also can and do adapt my game to what my players want.The question, of course, is still whether executing a bound prisoner is murder.  I can understand why some people (yourself included) think it is but I can also understand why others might disagree.  And I can also understand why some people might get upset if they are called Evil for disagreeing.</blockquote>

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