[mpipes]

I agree with SCC as well.

This is a game of the nuclear apocalypse. It is not going to be a "moral" setting by any stretch of the imagination as you can plainly see in the various published modules. You are going to have cutthroats, rapists, smugglers, slavers, drug dealers, gangs, war criminals, and criminals of all sorts running around and causing all sorts of chaos and at times establishing the only order available. You are going to make all kinds of friends and all kinds of enemies, and both categories are likely going to include devils.

Real world case in point, after Quantrill's Raiders broke up, Cole Younger ended up as a CSA Captain commission and became a commander of militia troops in the area I grew up in. Both sides of my family served under him and one of my great-great-great uncles became good friends with him. Long story short...the feds were foreclosing on local plantations for back taxes - including our family's - and the local Klan persuaded that uncle to travel to Missouri and recruited the Younger-James gang - yes, THAT YOUNGER-JAMES GANG - to rob a federal gold shipment to pay the back taxes. They did. I know where the gang camped as well. In later years, the gang used our family plantation as a base to carry out a number of daring robberies, including a double stage robbery robbing one stage heading east to Monroe, La and another going west to Shreveport, La. I've confirmed my family's story with published historical accounts to the best of my ability.

The point is, my family members became VERY good friends with the likes of Cole Younger, Bob Younger, Jessie James, and Frank James and were at least complicit in many robberies in north Louisiana. This going on with my great-great-great-grandfather complicity at least, and he was a prominent leader in the local Presbyterian Church!! I even suspect some ones of my uncles rode with the gang on their robberies.

So swinging back, it is up to the GM to exercise a certain level of control, but not to the point of dictating how each and every character acts or conducts himself. The D&D group I was part of in college had a few dubious PC members including a cutthroat and worse. One time, we were on the run as a revenge seeking lords chased us after one of us seduced his 15 year old daughter. We robbed another lord to benefit a group of wronged peasants. One of my PCs tried to assassinate another PC (that happens with cursed daggers now and then). We even had a botched rape attempt by a PC against another PC - well, it involved a love potion and the players in question were dating - that turned into one of the most hilarious gaming situation you can imagine as the attempt went awry, because the dosed ale ended up getting poached by the half-ogre side-kick of a very accomplished rogue (accompanied by his group of mercenary swords for hire)! The campaign was all fun, lasted 4 yrs, and was fueled by quite a bit of beer. I still miss those guys.

All that said, you don't need to dwell on details and you as the GM can frame the plot without resorting to the gruesome details, especially with younger teens and tween as players. But things happen in war, and I for one do not believe in a "Disneyland" campaign. Just as MASH captured some of the horror of war, your campaign should as well. One of the PTSD-effected ex-grunts in my VA therapy group opened up on a string of civilians with a M2 on a HMMVW after an insurgent walked up behind their Lieutenant and shot him in the back of the head, triggering an ambush and starting a short-range highly chaotic battle in a small town. Yes, the army wanted a court-martial at first, until they final realized that if he was court-martialed, they would have to do the same for all the surviving members of the squad/platoon involved as they all SHOT unarmed civilians trying to fight their way clear of the ambush. It was the only way they could fight their way out, and except for the civilians, the M2 guy would have likely received a Silver Star at least. He was credited with actually clearing a retreat path and killing at least two guys with RPGs. The civilians were actually blocking their way out and shielding the RPGs - whether forced or voluntary - and he was the only one with the presence of mind to realize that and act. That, guys, is war!

I've actually inserted a wacked out PTSD-suffering NPC that the PCs had to deal with (drunk or high as much as possible and prone to violent outburst). He eventually committed "suicide by combat" saving the PCs. I have had them having to deal with a child sex slave trafficker (later killed), drug smugglers (they were moving heroin AND anti-biotics from a partially destroyed pharmaceutical plant), bootleggers, marauders, etc. At one point, they fell in with another group that included a NATO and American straggler that were marauders - a fact brought brutally home as they captured a group of travelers, robbed them, and separated several females to rape. The resulting shootout was quite vicious. They have also hunted down rapists/murders and even worse. One ongoing unsavory Polish contact ran a brothel and gambling den, as well as a smuggling operation, and the PCs acted as muscle on occasion in exchange for ammo and fuel. No one was traumatized or offended.

If you want to run a "Disneyland" campaign where the PCs wear nice white hats and the "bad guys" are just G-rated "misguided" souls, then fine, that is your business and your campaign choice and all that. But you are really cheating your players out of a richer gaming experience. All that said, I DO NOT believe you should allow things to devolve to the point where your PCs are little more than a gang of organized rapists, mass murderers, slavers, ultra-violent marauders, or the like. I don't think that is healthy mentally or otherwise, but if you don't find unsavory acts about in abundance, that is just unrealistic to the extreme.