You have a point: an ethical dilemma is an ethical dilemma even if it is entirely imaginary. But when you discuss the trolley car problem in freshman philosophy you are, I assume, trying to imagine that there are real lives at stake, and that it would be a tragedy for them to be lost. In other words, you are analyzing the problem as if it were real. I don't think you would answer the trolley car problem with, "Can I kill them all, and take their stuff?"
You are right I wouldn't answer it like that, and when play tabletop I generally don't roleplay like that either. I know the murderhobo is a common trope, but generally most players I know have progressed beyond that pretty quickly, but occasionally revisit it, because it can be fun from time to time.
If so, that seems to conflict with the sentiments you express about RPG violence: that since it is make-believe violence it doesn't really matter.
I didn't say it doesn't matter, just that it isn't real. So we shouldn't have a problem with it. Like the Trolley Car problem, what you decide matters at least to you, in the fictional world it matters to the people the trolley runs over, but in the real world it has no consequence if you decide to save the five and sacrifice the one or not. It doesn't matter if five make-believe people die or not.
Similarly it doesn't matter if a family of hobgoblins die to the real world as a whole, but it does and should matter to you personally. Because it influences how you play that character you are emotionally invested in.
Honestly, I haven't seen that adventure since the early 80's so I don't remember the specifics. Is it like the trolley car, in that there is no answer that avoids killing innocents? Or can you choose to put your character at risk to save the innocents? If the latter, that's usually what I'd do. To a much greater extent than I fear I would in real life.
Well it's an RPG, there are almost always more than just option A or option B, even if the GM presents it as such. That's part of what makes them so much more fun than CRPGs. And another part of what makes RPGs fun is you can be more heroic than you might be in real life, since there is no danger of you actually dying, only your character at worse.
It was your comment about not playing evil characters, I see DM'ing as playing a character, and they are often evil.
Again, a fair question to ask. As DM, though, I don't feel that my NPCs "are me" in the sense that a PC is.
Ah I rarely have a sense that the PC I am playing is an avatar of me in the game world. I recently heard a great quote from Robert de Niro,
"One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price."
To me roleplaying is about trying out being someone other than myself, obviously I can't help but bring something of myself to a character, but I make a conscious effort to avoid it when I can. I will frequently play characters that have motivations very different from my own.
I have no more trouble portraying evil NPCs (to be slaughtered by the heroes) than I would putting an evil villain in a story I might write. But I can't imagine writing a story in which the protagonist/hero is evil. Struggling with inner conflict, and as a consequence doing not nice things or making unwise decisions? Sure. But slaughtering innocents, no.
Cool. When you said you had a issue with roleplaying evil characters I thought in general.
So I find your question "are you not roleplaying your character?" odd. It's precisely because I am roleplaying my character that I find in-game violence disturbing.
Right so because your character is an avatar of yourself to some extent. When you roleplay the character in game murder has an emotional impact on you as they are an extension of yourself, hence it matters in the real world.
Where as when I roleplay a character they are often very detached from myself, how my character reacts to a situation matter to me because it influences how I see that character and who they develop and react to future situations in the game, but it only matters in the game not the real world, as it isn't me. Obviously it has some impact in the real world as I try to understand the motivations of someone who has a goals and drives different than myself.
I read a good article recently on what is referred to as
Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character, about the real world emotional impact of some roleplaying experiences. It refers to LARPs but I think you would find it interesting, and equally applicable to tabletop. I suspect I build a stronger "alibi" to use the term from that article.
