Morality playing

[nadriel]

I was doing some LARP today, playing my evil wizard (who is reasonable, helpful and competent- thus making it a lot harder for most goodly characters to justify killing him).

Anyway, for his latest head game to give the goodly types in the party a headache, he presented the following situation as handled by a predominantly goodly party and a predominantly evil one.

Situation: Party has been hired to rescue some innocent villagers from being sacrificed by an evil cult. The cult is guarded by some innocent dupe guards.

Goodly: Spends time talking their way round the various guards without harming them, as they're not the enemy. Gets to the sacrifice room too late to prevent the sacrifice, kills the resulting demon and associated cultists.

Evil: Kills the innocent guards, gets to the cultists before the sacrifice is done, kills them too, rescues the innocent victims, gets paid, goes down the pub and celebrates another successful mission.

When asked which of those two was more wrong, the goodly types could only come up with "the evil one, because they're evil", thus losing lots of kudos with the neutral party members (which was the plan on my part anyway).

So, can any of you do better?

Comments

[sutekhian.livejournal.com]

I'd say the first is in a way more evil. After all the cultists succeeded in killing total innocents and summoning a daemon (no guarantee they didn't get something else that escaped...) Whereas in the second one yes innocent guards die, but they were working for evil and the party do save the innocent victims and prevent daemonic evil being pulled into the world.

But hey I have an odd morality apparently ;)

[lokean.livejournal.com]

The second is clearly the more evil, primarily due to the intentions of the parties.

Team Fluffy Bunnykins probably undertook the mission in order to save innocents; Team Hellfire wouldn't have even attempted the mission unless they were going to get paid or otherwise benefit themselves personally.
Team Fluffy Bunnykins avoided killing innocents even to the point of their overall detriment (the avoidable deaths of other innocents, the failiure of their mission and a big bastard demon turning up). Team Hellfire, on the other hand, freely killed 'innocents' to further their own ends (vis a vis, payment).

Team Fluffy Bunnykins, as you have outlined it, are less successful but more goodly, they fail, but they fail due to their philanthropic desire not to harm innocents. Team Hellfire are more successful but perform the actions they perform with no objective more laudable than personal gain and are unconcerned for others.

What should have happened, though, was that Team Pious Templar got sent. Team Pious Templar scare the dupe guards away with illusions, beat them unconscious or dupe the dumb schmucks into buggering off. Team Pious Templar's stealthiest member, meanwhile, goes in to scout and discovers a difficult situation, the cultists are preparing for the sacrifice after hearing the commotion outside. However, he also learns that the cultists must ritually cleanse themselves in the blood of a lamb before the sacrifice. Putting nasty and debilitating contact poisons in the lamb's blood proves quite simple, allowing team Pious Templar to sweep through and slaughter the cultists with little or no risk to themselves. The innocents are rescued and allowed to return to their families, Team Pious Templar gets paid and puts the money into the group coffers after providing living expenses for the team. Team Pious Templar goes from strength to strength with this firm financial footing...

Yay Team Pious Templar!

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Heh, but remember, this scenario was deliberately being set up to make the goodly types look bad if they couldn't come up with an answer like yours, which they couldn't :-)

[iamseph.livejournal.com]

Isn't poisoning generally considered an underhand and deceitful tactic? Something generally looked down upon by your hardcore do-gooder types?
Of course, once you've snuck past/illusioned/knocked out the guards you can just go in and beat the cultists to a bloody smear anyway, albeit with slightly greater risk than poisoning them first. Well, except that you're dealing with a contact poison so touching the cultists might get the adventurers weakened anyway.