From: moonman@camelot.bradley.edu (Craig Levin)
Subject: Re: Ethical Dilemna (GURPS Fantasy - LONG)
Organization: House of the Moss Rose
Date: 24 Jan 93 19:47:19 GMT

kerr@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (Shane Kerr) writes:

>Okay, the campaign is set in Cardiel, which is basically religiously tolerant,
>even though the ruling nobles are mostly Christian.  While walking back from
>a typical make-work task Baron Leo gave them (they all did it for their own
>reasons), they encountered a group of pagans in the middle of drunken 
>ectasy.  The Templar, in typical D&D fashion (no flames please) charged 
>into the middle of the scene with broadsword hacking and hewing.  

>Of course, they slaughtered the naked and untrained worshippers in record 
>time.  They DIDN'T bother to stop the ones who ran away.  So of course the
>local lord showed up and is a bit upset because somebody just slaughtered
>all of his peasants.  Yikes.

>So now they're on the way to see the Baron.  Now, as I see it the law is
>clear - they're gonna fry.  But should I allow them to get off with paying
>a werguild.  Or maybe trial by combat?  Or perhaps just deportation?  I 
>COULD enslave the party.  Hm.  The worst part is that everybody but
>the fencer took honesty.  The Jesuit tried to stop the rest, but how
>do you stop a Templar on his warhorse with stern words?

	Wergeld is perhaps the most logical solution, but make it a
hard wergeld-they did, after all, kill off someone's much-needed labor
force. Some sort of artifact might do the trick. 

	Or, make them _hire_ people to replace the dead peasants-in a
feudal society, this is nearly an impossible task...But they did sort
of ask for it.

>Anyway, another option I thought about is a time shift.  We talked about
>the massacre afterwords and apparently the Templar thought his was 
>supposed to be playing a fanatic pagan-hater, because that's what good
>Christian knights DID for a living, right?  I think he's changed his
>mind.  And the rest of the party probably wouldn't have just mindlessly
>charged into battle if blood wasn't already drawn (hm...visions of tiger
>sharks dance through my head).  So perhaps we could go back to the 
>"scene of the crime" and replay it.  Anyway, I'm definitely going to see
>what the party wants to do with it.  

	Yes, I suppose that's nice for the party, but all they'll do
is just let them pass by; that's sort of coddling them.

>Then the issue of character points arises.  Nobody but the Jesuit knew
>that they were breaking the law by killing them (they didn't even suspect,
>but they probably thought they were summoning a demon or something).  But
>afterwords when the Jesuit told them, they all tried their Will rolls
>to not turn themselves in.  That's fine with me, but they should at least
>be acting GUILTY.  Should I just not give any out for that session?  Make
>them spend the next 10 points buying off their Honesty?

	Make 'em feel guilty. A knight is expected to protect the weak
and the peasants from those who would seek to kill them, and what's he
done? The Jesuit ought to feel even worse; he'd no doubt been taught
at one point that people should be converted, not killed. And so on
and so forth.

--
The SCA is not an experiment in self-government; it is a Constitutional  
Monarchy/Syndicalistic/Corporate/Anarchy with delusions of something-or  
other.  
                                               -Master Michael of Moria  
 
Craig Levin/Pedro de Alcazar, Illiton, MKdm moonman@camelot.bradley.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc