Depends on your game but I think even pretending to massacre younglings or other noncombatants is just lame.  I wouldn't waste a minute on it as a player.  

Most players (in my experience) have an intuitive understanding that if the orcs/goblins/whatevers aren't hostile towards them right off the bat, it's not okay to go full murderhobo on them.  If they start shooting at you first, you are not a badguy for wiping them out.  Like Caesar said, never leave an unconquered foe in your rear.  Also I just don't like using goblins/kobolds/other small creatures as enemies because it's kind of.... pathetic?  Like your level 1 fighter emerging bloody but triumphant from a pile of massacred three-foot tall corpses is just not the kind of awesome heroic scenario I want to depict.

Quote from: Harime Nui;914331Also I just don't like using goblins/kobolds/other small creatures as enemies because it's kind of.... pathetic?  Like your level 1 fighter emerging bloody but triumphant from a pile of massacred three-foot tall corpses is just not the kind of awesome heroic scenario I want to depict.

Considering that those "pathetic" little guys can and will totally massacre even mid level parties if given a chance. And lets not even get into the whole. "He was killed by a cat" debacle. Small does not = harmless. Just ask that Sauron fellow. :cool:

Quote from: Omega;914333Considering that those "pathetic" little guys can and will totally massacre even mid level parties if given a chance. And lets not even get into the whole. "He was killed by a cat" debacle. Small does not = harmless. Just ask that Sauron fellow. :cool:

This.. I was just about to post but you beat me too it. I can imagine, terrifyingly, some really nasty ass little buggers that size. Sharp teeth, banded muscle and with a really bad attitude. Just because your warrior/wizard/cleric/rogue advance to the point they are only a nuisance doesn't diminish their ability to spread misery. Ask the farmers and other low level non fighters that fall like chaff when the damn things invade.

As to this whole moral dilemma, my opinion is that the GM provides every other bit of info and detail in his world (types of drinks they serve at the bar, the type of crops they grow in this area, the type of game available in the woods and on and on) why not just throw down what the general moral view is on the subject and let the players decide.

"Around here and where your from Goblins are seen as animals, their young a promise of more bloodshed in the future. No harm at all Mr. Lawful Good Knight to mercy kill these blasphemies of nature."

Or...

"They are hated sure, but seen as fellow beings and creations of nature. To torture one, slay it if undefended or slaughter its offspring would be considered act of evil, if you value your vows..youll lay off."

Easy enough, I don't see the problem. Perhaps a Knight of another culture might feel differently, its up to the GM and I suppose maybe the player, as to what ethical standards they follow.

It's not that goblins/kobolds are "weak" opponents, far from it I think I've taught my players over the years that if they see a Kobold it means ten more are taking aim at them from cover somewhere and it's Time To Run.  

With goblins though, there's generally three ways I put them into a game:
1) they are riding something that does most of the actual fighting (worgs, giant spiders).  Usually these mounts are intelligent and the goblin rider is really more like an extra appendage than an enemy in their own right.  Kill the Worg, the goblin is going to run off, he's not stupid enough to keep fighting dismounted.  
2) they are being bullied by some bigger monsters (Hobgoblins, Bugbears, a Barghest maybe) and need the PCs' help
3) they can be guides or give vital information if the PCs help them with X (usually refers back to item 2).  

As opponents in their own right goblins are little too.... I dunno.  JUH NAY SAY QWAH.  Maybe they are too deeply embedded in the 'cute' category for me to use them as villains.

Kobolds are always assholes though; fuck those guys.  I always imagine Kobold warrens are like these mini-North Koreas where the elderly are mulched into chow for the Dire Weasels and everyone grows up with a mining pick in their hand FOR THE GLORY OF THE DRAGON-QUEEN.  Must be something about lawful evil I always imagine it getting way insane.

I'm playing B2 right now.

All I'll say is that it seems every lair in Keep on the Borderlands (written by Gary Gygax) this dilemma crops up, because there's always that room with the "non-combatant females and helpless young."

This is in addition to the standard issue of what to do with victims of the Sleep spell once the fight is over.

If Gygax didn't intend Keep to be interpreted as a bunch of racists getting together in a bar to head across town to the projects and do some home invasion murder, I'd really like to know why his intro for the adventure basically says "You've heard stuff lives around this place, so you've come to kill it all, because people will think you're kewl if you do that."  And then he drops goblin babies into the picture.

If he didn't intend for this interpretation or situation to come up, he certainly had an odd way of showing it between the most useful low level MU spell and the published introductory module he wrote.  It pushes it into the forefront immediately, and becomes a mandatory question every group must immediately answer how they're going to roleplay around.

Quote from: Manzanaro;914317I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but I remember in the old Hill Giant Steading module, there was a hill giant nursery room that treated the youthful hill giants as ogres stat-wise and it seemed expected that the PCs would kill them with-out moral quandary.

Gary seems to have loved putting monster children in modules for players to slaughter!

I dunno, if you consult the AD&D PHB there's a lot of tables and rules on how "Racial Animosities" influence the interaction of "non-human troops."  e.g. if you wanted to turn those giant babies into a platoon of elite shock troops the game totally had rules set for that

Quote from: Harime Nui;914340I dunno, if you consult the AD&D PHB there's a lot of tables and rules on how "Racial Animosities" influence the interaction of "non-human troops."  e.g. if you wanted to turn those giant babies into a platoon of elite shock troops the game totally had rules set for that

I'm not sure that turning captured goblin babies into NPC shock troopers is any better than slaughtering them. Though it does sound fun from a world building standpoint.

No no no, the giants are shock troopers.

The goblins are your infiltration/sapper unit.  Obviously.  

Quote from: Harime Nui;914342No no no, the giants are shock troopers.

The goblins are your infiltration/sapper unit.  Obviously.  

My bad.

Quote from: Headless;914263About the goblin children.  It is always wrong to kill them.  Either they are people, I which case they are in innocent  children and it is always wrong to kill innocents who don't want to die.  Or they are irredeemably evil which means they aren't people which means you are playing hack and slash and the DM  is wrong to ask you about them.

In the D&D alignment system if you change alignments you lose a level. So in most cases everything is the way it is, and nobody can be redeemed. And you obviously don't know the story of Gygax's game where a paladin made some captured prisoners convert, and then slew them "to prevent any backsliding" - and faced no DM sanction from Gygax.

You''re also imposing modern secular humanism on a fantasy medieval society. I'm a secular humanist, I donate each month to Amnesty International. But that's not the world of D&D.

In my game, I essentially ignore the alignments; they inform but do not determine choices. But "evil" behaviour will tend to come back to you - people just can't trust you or work with you long-term. And non-"lawful" behaviour will piss off the authorities. The players thus have more than enough moral rope to hang themselves. But I don't put in goblin babies. If I did, I might want to complain about the players' choice about what to do with them.

Humanism is for humans. If you want humanistic moral dilemmas, just have humans. The whole point of having goblins is so that you have someone to kill and not feel guilty about it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;914312Orcs are a semimagical life form that spring up out of the darkness, a result of the world's ambient magic interacting with humans' fear of the dark.  That's why there are no noncombatant Orcs.

Heh.  I'd actually written up a bit about "...assuming you don't take the view that orcs are spontaneously generated in underground shadows", but then thought better of it, deleted that part, and instead settled for just specifying that I was talking about "a naturalistic world".

Quote from: Ratman_tf;914290What if the group thinks moral quandries are fun (or at least interesting)? Should we stone them to death with Toon RPG books?

No. But we should suggest to them that something like Dogs in the Vineyard would suit them a shitload better than D&D.

Quote from: AsenRG;914324And as a Referee, I'd just conclude our styles are incompatible and stop running for you and your group.

Thus, in your game there are no choices. You either do what the DM thinks is morally right, or the DM takes his book and dice and goes home.

Well, that sounds like fun.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914346You''re also imposing modern secular humanism on a fantasy medieval society. [...] But that's not the world of D&D.

I think part of the problem here is people getting confused over whether they're playing D&D or Dream Park.