The less the story is about good versus evil, the more real it becomes and the more complicated and less simple and just plain fun.
I dunno ... Stormtroopers was allways humans (except that part where they was clones) ... so they kinda allways had families, life, and their own dreams ... they were just serving, wich was not even a choice by the way ... we just ignored it for whole time. :-/ Doesnt seems so hard to me to ignore it once again ... but i would personaly feel like im passing out significant part of the story.
Sure there still can be simple story about "good versus evil" ... All you need to do is artificialy create an army ... in Star Wars, it would be clones, or droids ... in DnD i can think about Draconians from Dragonlance ... But once you use any "regular" race, you just get moral dilema about some soldiers who were just doing their job ... no matter wich race you pick, even between Lolthsworn Drow there is chance (small one tho) to meet someone who dont necesarily agree with the way their society works, but cant do anything about it.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
But my point is that by leaving the goblin kids element in the game, you are going to have a more complicated moral dilemma that you are putting your players in. Naturally, there will be players who feel guilty about killing goblin kids just because their kids. If you do that, then you need to expect that there are going to be players who are not only uncomfortable with it, but they straight up hate it.
Maybe that is the purpose? To kinda force player to ask himself such deep question. (In that case i failed btw)
I mean as far as i know, you dont *need* to kill litteraly even a single kid ... they are insignificant NPCs, so you can easily knock them out and still have quest complete.
IM not sure about this, but i think that you dont need to kill litteraly anyone (i believe quest completed for me when i knocked out Minthara). But havent tryed on last patch, so even if i remember that corectly, this also can allready be changed.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
So, in my mind, wouldn't it be better to just remove the children from the equation so that players don't have to make that moral choice, just like with the tiefling children? That was the main reason I was bringing up this whole thing about the more gray you make everything the less fun it is. I am speaking in generalities.
I believe the problem here isnt that Goblin kids are mechanicaly killable ... But that Tiefling kids are not ... so you kinda cant do any moral choice there.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
Of course there are going to be some people who think that such a moral dilemma is actually really fun. Those people are going to like the realism of it, and they're going to justify the killings the way I did by saying kid goblins are going to grow up to be flesh eating adult goblins who prey upon people. I don't really have a problem with it myself. Do I like killing kids of any race in the game? No. That is not really fun to me. Do I accept it because they are monster evil kids who are going to eat people when they grow up? Yes.
Phylosophicaly speaking ... It seems much more interesting question to ask if leaving only kids alive is acutaly act of kindness, or more like cruelity.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
The main point I'm trying to make is that part of what made D&D so fun when it first started, and Star Wars, was that you didn't have to make such moral dilemma choices. It was more black and white, good versus evil, and you didn't have to worry about whether the monster, Imperial, you were killing might actually be a good person. I wasn't necessarily criticizing the game. Just trying to make a point that the more you make things gray the more you're going to have people upset about it, and rightly so.
Nah, you would just aswell make the other group of people upset if your story would be too black and white ... You just need to pick your target group thats all.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
All this having been said, do I think leaving the kids in the story fits with the rest of the story? Yes. This game is full of these kind of moral choices. Even the hag sub story is full of moral dilemma. If you really think about it, are you really the good guy for going in and killing the hag? Did she really do anything to you? The entire subplot is really about you invading her home and budding your nose in to other people's business. Did anyone even ask you to help? Not a single person asks you to help, and the entire time they tell you to get lost in mind your own business. So are you the good guy?
From pure moral perspective? Yes.
If you would be looking for real life example here ... i think that domestic violence would be perfect example. Many persons (at least in my experience) dont want to report it and are even upset if you find out, since as you said "you poke your nose in someone else business and nobody asked for your help" ... but that is not the question here, important part is that you know that someone is being harmed and therefore morally you should at least try to stop it.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
The point is that it fits with the rest of the game. If you want to start chucking elements because of morality, because you feel guilty, you'd have to start chucking a lot of other elements that are just as, or more so, morally ambiguous.
The funny thing about morality is that if you feel bad about your choices, you should reconcider making them. It would be indeed bad if all choices you get offered would be morally questionable ... but this isnt the case.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
