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<blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2165997" data-attributes="member: 30001"><p>I second the spirit of this. I brought up the idea of making a list but it was never my intention that the list was to be comprehensive (an impossible request), or even shared with the players. It's primary purpose was to help the DM organize his thoughts about what he wanted in his campaign, so that he wasn't bushwacked. Frankly, the issue of whether or not it's evil to kill captives is something that will inevitably come up with enough DMing. I remember it being discussed as far back as the '80s in a Dragon mag article (reprinted in a Best of - the article was about Paladins, but it's not hard to extrapolate). It's not hard to prepare for likely scenarios:</p><p> </p><p>use of poison</p><p>summoning demons to kill other evil creatures</p><p>killing captives</p><p>stealing from the rich to give to the poor</p><p>associating with evil characters in a friendly way</p><p>turning your back and pretending not to notice someone else doing something evil</p><p> </p><p>I suppose experienced DMs could help me with this list (and most of them probably have a story for each of these), and IMO it would behoove everyone who runs a game with alignment to be prepared, because it's hard to rule on anything on the fly that you have no experience with, especially if it's the first time in your game that a good character has tried to use poison. Why wait to figure out how you feel about that until it happens? </p><p> </p><p>That being said, there will always be situations that fall outside the scope of your list. You can mitigate this by:</p><p>1. using the closest matching item on the list</p><p>2. taking away players incentives to play an alignment poorly (ie. don't favor paladins over fighters of other alignments)</p><p>3. simplify things by choosing whether to define alignment in terms of *actions* or *results* (ie. summoning a demon is evil regardless of it's intended purpose vs. summoning a demon is ok as long as it doesn't do anything evil)</p><p> </p><p>And finally: realize that you must make a decision, it's your game, and simply remind players of that fact when they try to tell you how you should decide. For your part, respect that they have a right to their own moral compass (if you can) and confine your comments to the game characters only.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gizmo33, post: 2165997, member: 30001"] I second the spirit of this. I brought up the idea of making a list but it was never my intention that the list was to be comprehensive (an impossible request), or even shared with the players. It's primary purpose was to help the DM organize his thoughts about what he wanted in his campaign, so that he wasn't bushwacked. Frankly, the issue of whether or not it's evil to kill captives is something that will inevitably come up with enough DMing. I remember it being discussed as far back as the '80s in a Dragon mag article (reprinted in a Best of - the article was about Paladins, but it's not hard to extrapolate). It's not hard to prepare for likely scenarios: use of poison summoning demons to kill other evil creatures killing captives stealing from the rich to give to the poor associating with evil characters in a friendly way turning your back and pretending not to notice someone else doing something evil I suppose experienced DMs could help me with this list (and most of them probably have a story for each of these), and IMO it would behoove everyone who runs a game with alignment to be prepared, because it's hard to rule on anything on the fly that you have no experience with, especially if it's the first time in your game that a good character has tried to use poison. Why wait to figure out how you feel about that until it happens? That being said, there will always be situations that fall outside the scope of your list. You can mitigate this by: 1. using the closest matching item on the list 2. taking away players incentives to play an alignment poorly (ie. don't favor paladins over fighters of other alignments) 3. simplify things by choosing whether to define alignment in terms of *actions* or *results* (ie. summoning a demon is evil regardless of it's intended purpose vs. summoning a demon is ok as long as it doesn't do anything evil) And finally: realize that you must make a decision, it's your game, and simply remind players of that fact when they try to tell you how you should decide. For your part, respect that they have a right to their own moral compass (if you can) and confine your comments to the game characters only. [/QUOTE]
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