Quote Originally Posted by da newt View Post
Hypothetical:

A sheep farmer has one of his sheep killed and eaten by XXX. So the sheep farmer hunts down XXX and kills them. Then he goes home to celebrate his victory with a lice leg of lamb ...

The Farmer believes he is GOOD and justified in killing XXX who he believes is EVIL, yet he just killed XXX for killing and eating a sheep - which he does over and over again AND he has killed XXX for it as well ...




As to the question 'is killing always EVIL' - I do believe that there are situations where killing someone/thing is justified, but I believe those instances are rare. Most of the written campaigns I have played (mostly AL, and some hardcover) do a piss poor job of providing a justifiable motive for all of the killing they are designed around (in my opinion). When I play GOOD PC's I find myself often having to decide that they would do the thing the adventure wants them to do even though any decent person would not. You have to play as if your PC is the Tick - just stupid and delusionally heroic in order to keep the plot rolling.

I'm just fine with the premise of the game, and the tactical challenge of winning battles with monsters etc, it's the hypocrisy of GOOD PC's solving everything by violence that bugs me. I'm fine with the suspension of disbelief that is fantasy role playing, but the dishonesty of the white hat team grates.

Just my opinion. I was wondering if it was just me.
As a few others pointed out, if the thing that killed the sheep was a wolf or other animal, then yeah no problem killing it. If it was his neighbor, that's much more problematic. I've never played AL but my impression is that is more railroady and less role play heavy than most home games, so that might be some of the problem. But how hard did you try to solve the given problem with means other than violence? Was the rest of the group like alright let's go kill these guys and you said to yourself well I don't want to spoil their fun so sure. Or did you try to say wait can we talk to them first? Or sneak past them? When the violence did start did you try to force them to surrender? Or did you just say alright well I guess they die now? If the reasons given for the quest aren't particularly strong did you ask questions? Did you talk to the group about it? Did you try a non violent approach in any way? If I was playing in a game where the first and only option was violence and the reasons for it were pretty thin than yeah I'd 100% agree that doesn't sound morally right or good. But I've never actually experienced that. In my games we either have (or make) non violent options or the cause is truly just.