Exactly right. That is the entire point. No hurt is being inflicted on an unwilling person in the process of fictional murder, torture, or any other atrocity. That is the important part, the only part that matters.
Your reasons for accepting one set of dead kids but not the other are your own, I don't think anybody is contesting that. A lot of people would even agree – dead kids are a sensitive subject to many, and most people play good characters. Still, as someone who prefers playing evil characters when given the option, I can't help but lament the inconsistency. It's a small moment in the grand scheme of things, but devil is in the details, and I'd rather Larian not half-ass it, even if none of my characters would go murderhobo on the kids.
Larian, as I said, are free to draw the line wherever they want. "It's okay to kill evil and good adults, as well as evil kids, but not good kids" is already more of a zig-zag than a line in my opinion, but it's not even that, is it? Because the tiefling kids are very much mortal during the goblin raid. What is it about the goblin raid that moves the line, and what good is a line if it can be moved at will? Your character can slaughter the entire grove without notifying the goblins, but it's tattling to Minthara that makes them so irredeemable that good kids become okay to kill? It's not even a zig-zag, it's one of those cat's cradle figures. If Larian are drawing the line at good kids, I expect them to apply that standard consistently, and if they aren't, why block the option at all?
Originally Posted by GM4Him
Anyway, bottom line is, and my point is, that when you don't draw a line, you start to slide to a very dangerous place bordering on the criminal. Aside from employees at Larian maybe feeling guilty about things they are forced to do because some people might want to be a bit over the line, I have seen how not drawing the line often ends up. Cross the line too many times, and you fall off the edge of a cliff.
It's strange to see this rhetoric when discussing a DnD game. DnD was, after all, once a victim to much the same kind of moral anxiety, when various "concerned parties" thought that rolling dice and pretending to kill monsters would turn people into devil worshippers.
But please, elaborate what it is you have seen, I am curious. This used to be a very politicized topic (it still is, although to a lesser degree), and as such, there have been numerous studies dedicated to it. Numerous studies trying to link violent fiction in general and videogames in particular to criminal behavior, and they never found anything. It seems humans are, fortunately, capable of distinguishing between fiction and reality. So I am curious what convinced you none of that is worth your trust.
