Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 596597" data-attributes="member: 891">An absurd ethical moment from last night's game:We're moving north and see wome Wargs feasting on an Orc carcass. We take out the Wargs after a failed debate on the idea of just circling around them (failed when the DM got bored and just had them charge us <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=";)" /> ).Then members of our group get it into their heads to track the Orcs companions, three by their tracks, and kill them as well.I briefly argue that there's no point, we have no ill against those Orcs. The argument ends when we realize those tracks are going where we were going anyway.We come to a ruined Elven city (Elven Port in FR) and have reason to assume it is Orc infested. We begin to scout out a stone fortress on the edges of this city and find Orcs in it. We proceed to take them out.At the end of the battle we have 4 to 5 of them sleeping thanks to my spells. A debate ensues on how to deal with them.The very people opposed to killing prisoners want to slit these guys throats. Some of us want to wake them and question them about the area and the strength of it's local communities. But if we wake them, we know the very people who simply want to kill them now will suddenly be advocating for keeping them alive.This is one of those moments when D&D ethics -or rather the ethics I witness from D&D players- confuses me.To me, it's a natural assumption that I will wake an Orc, question it under duress, and then kill it unless I see it as a means to making peace with the larger community and getting what I desire out of Elven Port without needing hostilities.I'm operating largely under that 'semi-special forces' mode of thought for my PC. I have some people who see this line of thinking, and others who see the other angle.This sort of situation is what led me to start this thread, and I am still confused by the ethics of the other side. Ethics which I see as not being consistant or based in logic. But I assume they have the same problem when trying to see my ethics. At least, those of them who even bother analyzing ethics do. I find most people never bother to do that, and thus have extreme reactions when they face off against ethical systems other than their own. As they don't even understand their own ethics, they are fully incapable of even grasping or validating some other ethical system.That doesn't specifically apply to the group I game with, it's more a general statement.</blockquote>

Verification