Tim Nutting
10-18-1998, 09:55 PM
Well, one of the most classic examples in D&D of this stereotype bending is
Drizzt Do'Urden. Salvatore managed in the space of one book to give every DM a
massive headache as fully 3/4 of his players then wanted to be good drow.
Sure, I like evil humanoids too, but let me share with you all a little event
in a Greyhawk game I have been playing.
The DM, very good at his job, has been compiling a large collection of old 1st
edition adventures. We were playing one who's title eludes me at the moment,
but the events do not, in essence our characters were hired by the neighboring
lord of Hochoch to go to the town of Oerlane and reopen the trade routes to
Bissel through the Dim Forest.
Tehre were a great many troglydytes in this adventure, and in many cases we
were attacked on sight by them. Our leader was a paladin of St. Cuthbert,
while I, being nearly his second in command, played a CG ranger from the
Welkwood. The stuff of our debates in camp was fantastic and tremendous fun.
We really clashed heads over what happened in the dungeon.
In the midst of a swamp we found a carefully dried section surrounded by a
dyke. The thought was that after we finished inside we would break the dyke
and allow the swamp to come in and destroy the dungeon forever. Yet in the
midst of the game I was faced with what I felt to be a moral crisis. I did not
feel that killing the young of the trogs was the right thing to do, it was
murder, and yet, as we had killed their parents and left the eggs defenseless,
we had allready killed them.
The argument spawned that these things would just grow up to be evil and so we
should just let the swamp kill them. I asked if we were going to kill them,
why not face the facts and kill them, and yet these folks were too lilly
livered to do the deed. Either way we would kill perhaps 25 trog young that
would die with or without our further action. In my rage at their cowardice,
or rather their willingness to commit murder if they didn't have to get messy
doing it, compelled me to make it messy for them, and I proceeded to crush a
few eggs, much to the outrage of the paladin. We had engaged the trogs because
they served a power that was using innocent folks for food and servitude, and
had they chose to flee I would probably have let them, but they chose to stand
and fight when we came to rescue the people of the village. That made them our
enemies. That they tried to take our lives made them dead. When someone
attacks you with intent to kill, you either wind up looking at a dead corpse or
being the dead corpse.
In short, we moved on and never solved the issue. Having not found any way to
justify the deed satisfactoraly, I turned my back whilst the party busily
demolished the dyke.
Now, while we all got a little upset with one another, in the end result the
added role-play made the game all that much more enjoyable. The event has
become a major character building point in this ranger's life.
Tim Nutting
Drizzt Do'Urden. Salvatore managed in the space of one book to give every DM a
massive headache as fully 3/4 of his players then wanted to be good drow.
Sure, I like evil humanoids too, but let me share with you all a little event
in a Greyhawk game I have been playing.
The DM, very good at his job, has been compiling a large collection of old 1st
edition adventures. We were playing one who's title eludes me at the moment,
but the events do not, in essence our characters were hired by the neighboring
lord of Hochoch to go to the town of Oerlane and reopen the trade routes to
Bissel through the Dim Forest.
Tehre were a great many troglydytes in this adventure, and in many cases we
were attacked on sight by them. Our leader was a paladin of St. Cuthbert,
while I, being nearly his second in command, played a CG ranger from the
Welkwood. The stuff of our debates in camp was fantastic and tremendous fun.
We really clashed heads over what happened in the dungeon.
In the midst of a swamp we found a carefully dried section surrounded by a
dyke. The thought was that after we finished inside we would break the dyke
and allow the swamp to come in and destroy the dungeon forever. Yet in the
midst of the game I was faced with what I felt to be a moral crisis. I did not
feel that killing the young of the trogs was the right thing to do, it was
murder, and yet, as we had killed their parents and left the eggs defenseless,
we had allready killed them.
The argument spawned that these things would just grow up to be evil and so we
should just let the swamp kill them. I asked if we were going to kill them,
why not face the facts and kill them, and yet these folks were too lilly
livered to do the deed. Either way we would kill perhaps 25 trog young that
would die with or without our further action. In my rage at their cowardice,
or rather their willingness to commit murder if they didn't have to get messy
doing it, compelled me to make it messy for them, and I proceeded to crush a
few eggs, much to the outrage of the paladin. We had engaged the trogs because
they served a power that was using innocent folks for food and servitude, and
had they chose to flee I would probably have let them, but they chose to stand
and fight when we came to rescue the people of the village. That made them our
enemies. That they tried to take our lives made them dead. When someone
attacks you with intent to kill, you either wind up looking at a dead corpse or
being the dead corpse.
In short, we moved on and never solved the issue. Having not found any way to
justify the deed satisfactoraly, I turned my back whilst the party busily
demolished the dyke.
Now, while we all got a little upset with one another, in the end result the
added role-play made the game all that much more enjoyable. The event has
become a major character building point in this ranger's life.
Tim Nutting