Conflicting Disads - Cannot Harm Innocent's and Honesty

[hal]

Originally Posted by Godogma

Hal, as the GM I must say that the player stripped all context of the game scenario from it except the most pertinent facts. Here's some context.

There's His side, there's my side, and then there's the truth (some Babylon V quote I believe).

A lot of the problem stems I think, in the issues that you've alluded to in your post. First, the character is a Knight, and dealing with law enforcement issues versus other issues.

Secondly, the issue of what causes an NPC or Character to lose their "innocent" status needs to be clarified. For instance, if I come after you with a knife, are you entitled to believe that I'm coming after you with a lethal weapon? What if I came after you with fists upraised and I looked strong enough to kill you with my bare hands? (Remember, in real life, men have gone to prison for accidentally killing people with their fists). What if you knew how to kill a man with your bare hands, are you expected to believe that someone else who comes at you with bare hands does NOT know how to kill with their bare hands? Oddly enough? Honest people can disagree as to what constitutes legitimate use of lethal force, such that they don't see eye to eye. That however, is a philosophical question that I will not attempt to answer within this thread (especially since I can get long winded at times, and with my typing speed, I can punch out a LOT of verbiage!)

In any event, some guidelines you might want to consider:

A) If a lethal weapon was used against the player character, said player character is within their rights to deem the NPC as a non-innocent.

B) If the player character is obligated to define anyone the crown (ie the laws) as "non-innocent", then the player character is obligated to go with that assessment, unless they deem such an assessment as wrong (ie the character can attempt to violate that aspect of always obeying the laws).

C) If a player character has "Sense of Duty to Friends" and someone goes after a friend with lethal weaponry, does not the player character have the ability to define said "foe" as a non-innocent simply on those grounds?

D) As an adjunct to C, is not a battlefield subject to the definintion that all combatants not deemed a friend or part of your force, by necessity, deemed to be a non-innocent?

From my perspective, All elements come into play (ie A through D) such that the slaver can not be deemed to be an "innocent". But, that's just me.


As a final thought - something I've learned as a GM over a time span of better than 20 years (I've GM'd since 1980 by the way).

What YOU see in your head for any given scenario in your gaming group, may not be seen in the same manner by your players. It can be frustrating to discover that what you could see in your head, and thought you were describing to a T what was going on, might not be seen the same way by all of the players in the group, let alone one of them. Confusion will occur, and sometimes, even how one person thinks might "flavor" their interpretations of the same GM discription differently for each player. That is one reason why it is possible that three people might see an incident in a store, but describe the incident to the police in a manner that one might wonder if they were even there, or if they all saw a different incident because they don't all agree on all points!