If soemone doesn´t like moral questions far enough.
But here you jhave soemone explicitly asking about this kind of question and what we now have is a kind "should someone even ask those questions" instead of discussing the question itself.

Similar kind of situation in game:
The children are in the game and thus now part of the problems the characters face. If you don´t like it, then it is the wrong game/adventure for your current tatse.
If the proposed theme of the game was not including moral questions the fitting question would probably not be "is killing children evil" but "why put children in a  hack and slash game at all".

Regarding storygamer/teller:
It is story gamer shit only if you can´t avoid the "dramatic" consequences for meta/ setting inapprobiate causes. (which some kind of alignement systems already are).

Quote from: Maarzan;914232IThe children are in the game and thus now part of the problems the characters face. If you don´t like it, then it is the wrong game/adventure for your current tatse.

Yes. And the way to let the DM know that is to


and the DM can adjust his adventure designs in future to avoid this commie thespy nonsense.

as sig says,

"the ultimate object of all this is for everyone to have fun, not to recreate some form of high dramatic art." - Dungeoneer

Quote from: Bren;914228On the other hand, you could have visited the dwarves, only to find that in the meantime, the goblin cave complex was wiped out by dwarves.

Hey this looks like those wooden flutes we traded to the goblins. I wonder what the dwarves gave them in exchange? Hey, since the dwarves seem to like our wooden flutes, maybe we can trade directly with them. :eek:

That would be the Gnomes who massacred a tribe of friendly Kobolds we'd worked out an agreeable trade with after a really bloody first encounter. Thus began the groups grudge against Gnomes who in that campaign were neither funny nor nice at all. They came across like the dwarven equivalent of drow.

Quote from: Omega;914241That would be the Gnomes who massacred a tribe of friendly Kobolds we'd worked out an agreeable trade with after a really bloody first encounter. Thus began the groups grudge against Gnomes who in that campaign were neither funny nor nice at all. They came across like the dwarven equivalent of drow.

Yeah, well, they are Gnomes. If there was ever a race to despise and heap bigotry upon, it was the Gnomes. Rotten little half-breed Dwarf  Halflings is what I say. Save the goblin whelps, but kill all Gnomes! The only good Gnome is a dead or enslaved Gnome!

So speaks the village idiot.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914202If the DM has put goblin babies there, then he is trying to pull an "oooh MORAL QUANDRY!!!" on us. Don't pull that storygamer shit on us.

When I've put noncombatant orc women/children in my games, it was nothing of the sort, for I give no fucks for moral quandaries nor "story".  They were there because, in a naturalistic world, they clearly must exist.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914235Yes. And the way to let the DM know that is to

kill them all

and the DM can adjust his adventure designs in future to avoid this commie thespy nonsense.

as sig says,

"the ultimate object of all this is for everyone to have fun, not to recreate some form of high dramatic art." - Dungeoneer

Sorry, have to disagree wth sig. Goals of each group vary. It's a personal thing. I can't even conceive your "kill them all" adversarial attitude.

Quote from: rgrove0172;914250Sorry, have to disagree wth sig. Goals of each group vary.

Yes, but those other people are wrong and stupid. This is gaming. It is not srs bznz.

QuoteI can't even conceive your "kill them all" adversarial attitude.

If the DM is offering moral quandries in Dungeons and Dragons, the DM has already set themselves up as the players' adversary. The DM started it. Tit for tat.

Right now an old Bond film is playing. I take moral quandries in D&D about as seriously as I take Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist. Both fine and good things, but they don't fit together.

Quote from: Omega;914245So speaks the village idiot.

Yes, because every time Dungeons & Dragons is played it can't just be a game, it has to be serious business.

These games are supposed to be social and fun. Sometimes people have crap days and don't want to get all thespian about something that is supposed to be fun, they just want to kill some monsters with their friends. There will be time for their characters to have gut-wrenching moral quandaries to mope over as well, but for those to have any meaning then there must also be the times when they just kill things and take their stuff.

If common sense makes me the village idiot, then you just need to put me on your ignore list.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914251Yes, but those other people are wrong and stupid. This is gaming. It is not srs bznz.


If the DM is offering moral quandries in Dungeons and Dragons, the DM has already set themselves up as the players' adversary. The DM started it. Tit for tat.

Right now an old Bond film is playing. I take moral quandries in D&D about as seriously as I take Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist. Both fine and good things, but they don't fit together.

It's about what game have you choose  to play?  Hack and slash or moral quandries?  That social contract stuff.  Either is fine but they can't go together.  

About 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.

I also don't buy the "kill them for their own good" agrument.  They still have a chance to make a life.   Actually I think a pretty cool campaign should be to play the survivors of the KOTBL raid and make a life.

Sorry if I keep going on about it.  But this strawmans bad philosophy is triggering me.

"You're running a goblin kindergarten," sounds like a good premise for a silly game.

Quote from: Headless;914263Actually I think a pretty cool campaign should be to play the survivors of the KOTBL raid and make a life.

A tranny storygamer already made that game.  It sucks exactly as hard as you think it does.

Well, maybe not you. But everyone else.

QuoteSorry if I keep going on about it.  But this strawmans bad philosophy is triggering me.

As much as it shocks me to say this, I'm with Kyle Aaron (and danbuter) on this one.  They're not real; they're not even fictional humans.  Slaughter them all and make a palanquin out of their bones.  Whiz on the Grand Wizard's cloak and mouth off to the King in front of his court.  It's all made up.  It just doesn't matter. If this shit is "triggering" you, you've had an awfully sheltered life.

While I think alignment is pants on head stupid (and Always Chaotic Evil dumb by association), I think the answer is, as always, talk to your players, and players, talk to your GM.  Find out if the game is likely to be something you want to play.  If someone then hits you with a switcheroo, hit them with "fuck off, I'm outta here."  That said, my Saturday night (online) groups purpose is to give us a reason to bullshit with each other and remember when we gamed as teenagers thirty years ago.  Which has led to pretty much anyone who didn't game with us then having to be willing to tolerate a LOT of talk about the past while we incidentally, and occasionally, move the game forward, as each new game bit reminds us of something from the past.  So it's NOT a lot of fun for outsiders without similar stories or an interest in our past (my wife plays from time to time and though she didn't play with us, she did play back then with other people, so she understands and can join in).

Also, are we sure goblins have children?  Maybe those "children" are animals they raise for food that just look disturbing like them..  Orcs and goblins in the Warhammer settings don't have children and  aren't "Evil" either, they just like to fight and it's how they are biologically wired to organize themselves.  They are essentially alien to our views.

While I do like some moral depth to most games I run or play, I'm far from bothered if people just want to get together and slaughter some orcs.  GMs or players who insert morality into a game of kill-the-orc are playing the wrong game, and should either get with the program or fuck off until the others are done playing.  Ditto for the player or GM who tries to play kill-the-orc in the game of lets-explore-morality issues.

Hey look, a sandbox campaign setting. After adventurers clean out Keep on the Borderlands, only the child populations are left. The PCs start as some of the kids.

One thing that gets left out of many dungeon settings is the survival drive and plan of the monsters. Ok so the goblins have their kids there... do they maybe have some escape routes and plans? At what point do even the male goblins realize they are likely going to lose, and therefore do something to escape rather than be all killed? Maybe they even thought of that possibility in advance, and so have some plans for that, chose where to be that made escape possible, and/or embellished the place they live with traps, door, rockfalls, escape paths, decoys, etc to facilitate escape? Maybe some of them have some ideas of things to say to buy time or negotiate something other than a total extermination?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914251Yes, but those other people are wrong and stupid. This is gaming. It is not srs bznz.

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