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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5825185" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's one thing to run a medieval world in which slavery, extrajudicial execution, torture for heresy, status-based law, etc, are the norm.But it's another thing to expect the players to embrace that norm. The GM can invite them to, but I don't see how she can oblige them to. And if they don't, and there is no compromise, then the sorts of experiences you are describing will occur.For example, if a player in fact thinks that extrajudicial execution is tantamount to murder, and is not interested in pretending otherwise, no amount of the GM yelling "But what the cleric did was lawful good" is going to help. The player isn't objecting to the use of a bit of game terminology (although the player may express her/his point that way - yet another reason why I think alignment is a huge headache that the game would be better off without). The player is refuding to endorse the proposition that murder is permissible, even in a pretending sense.Mabye the player is being too precious. Maybe not. I mean, everyone has their limits. I can't imagine many people would want to play a game set in 1930s Ukraine where they are expected to pretend that murdering middle class peasants is lawful good. Maybe your player sees extrajudicial execution of heretics by a priest in a similar way.And I find it hard to say that there is anything wrong with people not liking such things.In my current 4e game, which is not very gritty, we tend just not to focus play on this sort of stuff (although the PCs are somewhat committed to redeeming and ransoming slaves). In an earlier campaign, one of the PCs was a freed slave who was committed to fighting against slavery, and also against racial prejudice in the wizard's guild. In another campaign, the PCs (who included samurai, priests and a fallen god) led a secret mission against the gods (allying with a dead god and an exiled god in the process) in order to change the gods' plans for the world, because they thought the gods were too hung up on propriety and status and order and didn't care enough for the suffering of ordinary people.I think if you want a successful campaign in which the moral practices and commitments of the past are going to be front and centre, then it is better to let the players work out their own attitudes towards and responses to those things, and then play their PCs accordingly. If this produces some conflict between PCs, in my experience that is not a problem among mature players who are otherwise friends and willing to compromise. If conflict among the PCs will be a problem, then I think the only solution is not to put the controversy-inducing material front and centre.I guess I don't really see the problem in players playing their moral vision.I don't think it's about ignorance at all. It's about repugnance.I tend to agree with Bernard Lewis that there can be a type of pointlessness in morally judging the distant past. (Although in some cases, the past - even the quite distant past - lives on, and then moral judgement may well make sense.) But it's one thing not to judge the past; it's another thing to be expected to pretend, in play, that in fact it was all OK.Even if one's grasp of the past is only partial, you might feel repugnance. And the problem the OP has is not in identifying with one's repugnant PC. It is in tolerating the repugnant behaviour of another character in the game.</blockquote>

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