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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7972970" data-attributes="member: 18">It still looks very much like the PCs are the aggressors and behaving in an essentially amoral way, though, because they're attacking a settlement full of non-combatants. And there's kind of vibe to the module that it doesn't think the non-combatants are non-combatants because they're Giants, but it is ambivalent on the issue.My players came up with a horrific but extremely effective plan that got the giants out of the hall and separated the combatants from the non-combatants, though I'm pretty sure even medieval types would have considered it akin to a war-crime (specifically they caused, then attacked, a funeral). Pretty sure most ways this adventure turns out, the PCs are just "perpetuating the cycle of violence" (including the one I saw). Sure, they'll kill a lot of Giants, but I think most cases, the non-combatants and some others will escape (there are really a LOT of Giants in there!), and even if the Steading is burned down, they're going to either become a roaming band, or set up somewhere else with stories of the horrific violence inflicted on them for their traditional ways, and so on. It's not going to end well.Also the quasi-medieval setting is I think too convenient an excuse a lot of the time. I'm not accusing you personally of doing this, you just reminded me, but we very frequently see this argument used by people in a way that is very inconsistent and appears to be based on whatever works right at that moment. If it's convenient to excuse D&D not being like the middle ages, well, it's only quasi-medieval, but if its' convenient for D&D to be like the middle ages to excuse some dubious element, it's quasi-medieval. You know what I mean?EDIT - Kind of an aside here but one thing I really like about the campaign I'm playing in right now is that oaths, such a huge part of early medieval and some other earlier societies, actually mean something. Swear a formal oath and break it and you get cursed and not in a remove curse kinda way. I feel like a lot of situations in D&D-as-medieval might work better if oaths sworn formally to the gods and so on reliably had consequences. I think any new setting I came up with that was even quasi-medieval would include that sort of thing.I think your approach works well for a lot of situations, indeed the vast majority of them but if followed in a completely dogmatic way, can quickly be campaign-ending, basically the moment the DM "gets it wrong" for the majority of people in the group, and in my experience usually it's not that the DM will claim something is Evil that isn't, it's that he'll claim something is Good that's horrific and morally abhorrent. I've literally seen that end a campaign. I mean, a lot of groups I saw early in my D&D days, the players had a better grasp on alignment than some of the DMs, and they also often had a better grasp on morality, contrary to stereotypes re: murderhobos.Also, is it a cop-out for the DM to answer directly? I mean, if we could look up to the sky and say "Yo god dis Evil or what?" and get "Wait, one sec checking the alignments page... Yes my son that is Evil!" "Okay god thx won't do!", the world would be an entirely different place.</blockquote>

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