GM/Player Style: Grey Areas & Red Lines

[Raellus]

Recent discussion in the Child Soldiers thread got me thinking about other moral quandaries, grey areas, red lines, etc. that I've encountered as both a player and GM. I'm curious about your approaches/responses to difficult moral/ethical dilemmas, both as a player and as a GM.

Post-apocalyptic fiction tends to address the question of what one might encounter when civilization breaks down. How will people behave- especially, how would basically good people react to bad situations. As a GM, I like to challenge my players' expectations and decision-making, but there are limits to how far I will push things. As a player, I want to be challenged. I want to be forced to make difficult decisions, and then RP through the fallout of those tough choices. I don't want everything to be Grimdark all the time, but for me, if it ain't gritty, it ain't T2k.

That said, I tend to play "good guy" PCs, and I prefer running games for same- i.e. people that try hard to do the right thing, who err on the side of mercy and altruism, even if it might cost them personally or professionally. That said, as a student of war, I know that soldiers through the centuries have fought primarily to preserve the lives of their buddies, so if the choice is between saving a friend, or a foe, or an innocent bystander, I am OK with the choice to save the friend.

As a player, I have a few red lines. One is executing unarmed prisoners. I'm not interested in sharing space with bloody-minded people. Another is rape. If another player attempted to rape a character (it doesn't matter if it's a PC or NPC), I'm out. I don't want to play with rapists, even pretend ones. If I was the GM and a PC attempted rape, I would boot them without warning. Torture is also something that makes me uncomfortable as both a player and a Ref.

In the first T2k I ever played in- a PbP Refed by KC Dusk- a fellow player wanted to execute an unarmed prisoner. My PC protested, and the other player (old timers on this forum probably wouldn't be surprised if I mentioned his name) pistol-whipped my PC. An online argument ensued and the game ended shortly thereafter. I still feel bad about it, but I wasn't going to play with someone who killed unarmed prisoners as a matter of course, and was willing to assault a fellow PC who tried to stop him.

A couple of years later, I started Ref'ing a Pirates of the Vistula game. The PCs captured a marauder (former ZOMO). He was cuffed and did not present a threat. One of the PCs pulled out a pistol and, without warning, shot him in the head. Another player quit the game immediately, and several others were close to doing so. I had to do serious OOC damage control to keep the game from dying just a session or two in. It was a serious test for a novice GM, and one that I barely passed.

What are your red lines? What grey areas have you explored, as a player and/or as a Ref? What are some ethical tough choice scenarios that you've encountered as a PC or run your players through?

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[pmulcahy11b]

Child abuse and child sexual abuse is a red line for me. Rape is another red line (in college I had a girlfriend who was raped and she was never the same,) Child abuse and rape may be something that happened in the past to a PC or NPC, but won't happen in a game.

A gray line is the injury or death of a pet or working animal. It may advance the plot, but Ii'd prefer it didn't happen. Another gray line is the torture of an animal.

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Child abuse and child sexual abuse is a red line for me. Rape is another red line (in college I had a girlfriend who was raped and she was never the same,) Child abuse and rape may be something that happened in the past to a PC or NPC, but won't happen in a game.

A gray line is the injury or death of a pet or working animal. It may advance the plot, but Ii'd prefer it didn't happen. Another gray line is the torture of an animal.

I understand these lines and would say it's something I would handle similarly. Though I would exclude it from narration - i. e. not play it out - I would make it part of the telling, i. e. it could be reported to have happened in a handout or hearsay.

But actually describing details would still sicken me.

[Southernap]

Originally Posted by Ursus Maior

I understand these lines and would say it's something I would handle similarly. Though I would exclude it from narration - i. e. not play it out - I would make it part of the telling, i. e. it could be reported to have happened in a handout or hearsay.

But actually describing details would still sicken me.

I think in most of these situations we could do the Noodle Incident style of story telling. Where a good GM can lay out some things and let the PCs come up with their own version of the big bad scary incident. I am surprised that more folks don't know how to use the Noodle Incident type of story telling in either adventures or GMing.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Well, I don't bother using the Noodle Incident style of story telling because it wouldn't work for my Players. They want answers and would not be satisfied with the GM using that type of technique.
The other reason I don't use it is because I don't think it really translates that well to role-playing games. By that I mean that the impact is typically lost. Many Players won't remember all the details of some event that's narrated to them, they'll remember a few points that they feel are important to them and the rest is forgotten. So in that sense, it's not worth the effort to give them lots of detail but you can't afford to keep things hidden because they won't find the hook to get them interested in the event.

But I'll say it again - know your Players. This storytelling technique doesn't usually work for my game group but that doesn't mean that every Player will be that way.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

As a Ref, I am quite willing to include black, white and grey moral areas for the PCs to encounter. I try to run games with the caveat "No restrictions, only consequences". That's a very brief way of telling the Players, this is a game and so you can try anything, obviously some things are impossible (like making a computer out of a microwave oven for example) but if you do something that negatively impacts others, there will be consequences to your actions.

I recently read a discussion on another site for a different game where the GM believes that if you have to explain what behaviour is expected/acceptable from the PCs then you probably have the wrong Players.
I understand what he was getting at but I don't particularly agree with it. Sometimes Players want to try things that they won't do in the real world, at low levels this is akin to letting of steam or being a little naughty for the thrill of it.
I'm fine with that, a brief dalliance can be accepted as the Player testing the boundaries. If it goes beyond that, then their PC is going to find that life can be tough for evil characters.

I try to start each campaign with a brief overview of the gameworld to show that it has laws and punishments for malefactors (basically, this is the "what behaviour is expected" speech) but there's only a couple of hard and fast rules for any games I run: -
1. No restrictions, only consequences
2. as GM, I reserve the right to modify rules to benefit the story (rules lawyers can suffer in silence or they can leave, their choice)
3. I'm running the game, my word is final and I will retcon events if they screw up the game (especially if they were a deliberate attempt to screw the other Players or the GM)

Having said that, I am not interested in going into graphic detail when anything illegal, evil, abhorrent or morally reprehensible occurs. Taboo topics are not off limits but I'm not running the game to provide somebody with cheap titillation.
The event can occur but it's given only enough information to allow for impact and to form the foundation of the consequences of that act. if a PC does something evil, I want the Player to properly understand that their PC has committed an evil act so that when the consequences occur, they know why it's happening.
Information about the act can be relayed to the Players, but I don't see any reason to provide detail on the act (practically a "fade to black" sort of thing).

I've dealt with situations in the past where one PC was going to kill another PC and more recently where one PC actually did shoot another PC in an attempt to kill that PC.
The first situation was resolved by having all the other PCs become aware of the situation (Merc: 2000 game - it was in the back of a transport helicopter, you couldn't hide the event). The other PCs stepped in to prevent the murder attempt.
The second was in a Dark Conspiracy game and it was resolved by stopping the game and explaining in greater detail, all the events that lead to the situation the PCs were currently in, so that the offending Player understood all the circumstances and the options. We came to a consensus that killing the other PC was not an action his PC was likely to initiate after all because he, the Player, had misunderstood some of the earlier events. The shooting was retconned.

I also had a situation where one Player in a D&D game, who had a Cleric did not bother to heal other PCs because in the Player's words. "The Gods will look after them".
I resolved that by having his Cleric lose his spells, the Player was playing for themselves and not the team. His actions caused the unnecessary suffering of other team members and made me as GM fudge some dice rolls so the PCs that were injured did not die from the neglect the Cleric was showing.
The consequence for his actions was that his Cleric was no longer able to cast spells and would have to atone for their actions.
The Player left the game. No tears were shed at his departure.

I mention that incident because the Player was exactly the type of person that I imagine would have no hesitation in executing prisoners, torturing people and so on. If he had done any of those actions, there would be consequences that impacted the entire player group - not just negative reputation with NPCs, but NPCs actively seeking to punish the PCs for the misdeeds of one PC, losing favour with the gods, losing favour with the local authorities and so on.
The game is a group experience, for all the group to enjoy. So if you want to be a selfish arsehole, there's the door, hurry up and leave because the game will become a whole lot less fun for you as all those consequences start to kick in.

There's also an important aspect of gaming that should be examined before any of this gets included into a campaign - know your Players.
As mentioned above, taboo topics are not off limits but I am not going to provide a scenario for some Player to play out some debased fantasy they may have.
In practical terms, if I get a Player who is a jerk, I reduce the in-game opportunities for their PC to screw over other people or if they do something evil, harmful etc. etc., then they definitely get to see consequences of their act (e.g. the Cleric mentioned above).
If they want to be arseholes, then I will punish their Characters. If they continue, then I will tell the Player that due to their anti-social attitudes, I no longer have room for them in the game - again, actions and consequences.

But that also brings up what the Players are comfortable in dealing with. One of the people in my current gaming group is absolutely against any form of abuse against children being depicted in a game. This person typically overreacts to the idea and it has stopped one of the other GMs from running a Call of Cthulhu scenario but as GM we have to realise and respect that some people do not want to deal with some things in their entertainment.
As such, I usually don't put those sort of events into a game and if anything, it fires up the imagination to come up with an event that will challenge the PCs and Players but without using elements that the Players don't want to deal with. However I will use the rumour of such events occurring if the storyline requires it - again, no detail, just the minimum information necessary to convey a background event.

Well, this post certainly got longer than I expected. I'll stop waffling on now...

[Gunner]

Some great GM/Referee philosophy, most of which I had already unconsciously adopted, but maybe I will make more explicit in my future games...

I especially like the idea

As a Ref, I am quite willing to include black, white and grey moral areas for the PCs to encounter. I try to run games with the caveat "No restrictions, only consequences".

I will be the first to admit that many of my T2K games have been mostly black and white. I'm sure I need to include more grey in my games.

I also agree with the concept of excluding graphic detail of events.

[Raellus]

One thing I learned the hard way, as a GM, was that players seldom handle a situation the way you think they will- even with a group you've been gaming with for some time. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took several busted scenarios for this lesson to really sink in. As GM, you may present Grey expecting the players to choose a lighter shade when they may end up choosing a much darker one.

In an incident with potential hostile child soldiers, I was certain that my players would opt to negotiate, even at a material loss, in order to avoid pitched battle. I was wrong. They decided to attack. In fairness, it was a decapitation strike, but given that the adult warlord leading the child army was in a well-guarded fortified cathedral, the odds weren't very good. Sure enough, after a couple of failed stealth rolls, they were found out, and the battle began. At that point, I had a choice as Ref, RETCON the scenario and railroad the party into changing their minds, pull a deus ex machina (Soviet troops arrive! As the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the party and child soldiers must team up to defeat the dreaded Soviets), or end the campaign. I chose to play it out. I thought that after a couple of descriptions of kid combatants getting shot up, that the party would back off and seek another route to conflict resolution, but they pressed the attack. It was a massacre.

So yeah, it's always a good idea to go through all of the potential outcomes of a particular scenario, however unlikely, before presenting it to the players. Focus on what the players can do, not what they will do (because the latter can't be accurately predicted all of the time).

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[Legbreaker]

I'm 100% with SSC here. Consequences are the correct answer, not restrictions on possible actions.
On occasion I'll thrown in a morale dilemma, but only to make the point of consequences. If the players have been acting in such a way as to invite retribution or retaliation, then it WILL happen.
Rape, murder, child abuse, etc is all on the table, however the details will absolutely be glossed over where possible except where absolutely necessary to describe the "wrongness" of the situation and (hopefully) encourage the players to seek another path.
I've gained a reputation with players for "mindfucking" them, but really it's them that have caused the situation nine times out of ten. There's ALWAYS an "out", it's their choice to continue down that route...

I've played characters over the years who have committed some "questionable" deeds, but never done lightly and always with a thought towards the possible consequences. Executing prisoners is probably the most common thing, but again, only ever done when there's no other viable choice which won't result in worse problems later (such as the wounded person reporting who we are, what strength, etc to a force capable, and likely willing to wipe us out).

The youngest child soldier I've included as a Ref was a 13-14 year old girl who the PCs shot during a thunderstorm. At the time it would have been difficult to see more than a human figure approaching stealthily in the darkness, illuminated briefly by lightning flashes.
It was only later, in dawns light they found the girl was as young as she was, and also about 3-4 months pregnant. The weapon laying next to her bullet ridden body helped mitigate some of the horror. The player who's character fired the fatal shots did well roleplaying the horror of the situation and was extremely careful to check their targets from that day forward. The other Players in the game also took note and there was no more indiscriminate tossing of grenades around blind corners and so on...

[wolffhound79]

I really get an appreciation for DM when my D&D friends and I get together and talk about old games. Our DM create a sword that required one bad deed for one good one and vice versa. He thought it would be a great idea for some reason.
So what does my buddy do? He helps and old lady across the street in a busy city, the good side of the sword (looks like an angel|) gives him a thumbs up as the bad side (looks like a demon) gives him an angry look. So he uses the blunt side of the sword to knock the old lady down and rob her. Now the bad side is giving him the thumbs up.

I honestly think we gave our DM the worst time because we never made it easy for him, I was being chased by a dragon and about to die when I yelled out " I pray like hell!" So my DM said " ok 1 percent chance any god is listening." Boom he rolls a 1 and the god saves me from certain death all I had to do was devote my player to this god and had a 5 percent chance of praying to him in times of need that he would answer and help me. It work 8 more times. LOL.

I will say this, he gave more experience to us if we played our characters according to our alignment. I Have used that with certain player as I generally have players with goals and personalities. My bro has a charactrer that tries to help everybody out if possible, collecting refugees or sending them to safe areas or towns under his units protection to seek shelter or be employed. His officer that tries to shoot prisoners is played along that characters persona of seeking revenge , along the lines of patrick swayzes character in red dawn. It took a prisoner exchange and advice from a freedom fighter to sway him from his blood lust to exact revenge for the friends and family he has lost. I let him make his decisions but I told him it effects the morale of his men.

Now how about calibrators or traitors? In my game I have an american Captain that is helping the Mexican with intelligence and ambushing american freedom fighters. Anyone use something along these lines?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I freely admit to being a below average GM in the beginning and taking decades to get better.
I've been very lucky in that I've had some really good GMs (and I tried to emulate the things they did well), some really good players, some unimaginative players (that challenged my abilities as a story teller), some players who wanted to push the boundaries (that was a challenge to my abilities to run & manage a game) and very few bad players and I've been a long term member on a number of forums where I could learn from the experiences of other people.
Because I am not a particularly emotional person, I'm not particularly good at conveying emotions in a game (I usually just describe things rather than act them out), so I have a tendency to info-dump on the Players and that can be overwhelming for some of them at times. EDIT: Just look at my two posts in this thread, you'll see what I mean!

Regardless of all that, we're all in the game to have an enjoyable social event, to be in a situation were we can solve some in-game problems and see our PCs survive and thrive and so on. I firmly believe there's no value in running or playing if the game makes you unhappy.

I recall a situation Targan had with a T2k game he was running, it was making him quite unhappy at the time.
I am not sure how I would have handled that situation as a GM at the time but now I have a very good idea of what I would do.
If that means telling the Player that their actions are making other members of the group unhappy and that they need to stop, then I'm much more confident in doing so.
If it's the situation where it means killing off a problem PC to stop the problem, then I am going to do it.

I did have a very clear idea of what I would have done as a Player in that game - I would have done everything I could to kill off the problem PC because in my opinion, they had stepped over the line from being a bad person to being actively evil and they were dragging all the other PCs down with them into evil acts.
I'll allow taboo subjects as a GM (as described above) but as a Player I want to play good guys so I do have strong reactions against evil PCs.

No restrictions, only consequences rears it's ugly head again - I am now confident enough that if a Player screws up the game for other Players or me as GM, then I will give them the choice to fix their attitude or leave the game.

As for curveballs, oh my!
I also learnt the hard way that a group of Players can very often be far more creative than a single person (the GM). Their ability to think of 10 different solutions to a problem that you only thought of as having two solutions is absolutely amazing and terrifying to me as GM.
I've seen Players in D&D games I ran, use Light spells on pebbles, place the pebble in a cylinder and strap the cylinder under a crossbow to make ad hoc flashlights.
I've heard of Players in D&D games buying chickens and grain before going into dungeons because they would throw the grain down a passage and let a chicken loose. The chicken would go after the grain and act as an early warning device.
I've been in a ShadowRun game where the GM planned a specific situation for us to encounter but we decided to stop at fast food joint first because one of the PCs was hungry. The staff seemed unhappy to see us. We wanted to know why.
We had accidentally stumbled on a bunch of crims who were using the store as a front to find people with cyberwear, murder them and then sell the stolen cyberwear on the black market. This was something we were supposed to discover after the specific situation but we unknowingly triggered it early just because one of the PCs decided he wanted to stop and get some BBQ ribs. If he'd wanted anything else, we would have gone to another store and we would have missed the crims (and not messed up the order the GM had planned out!)

I used to spend hours trying to think of every possible solution to any problems I put into the game. After a decade of doing that I finally got comfortable enough to stop overthinking it and start running with what the Players gave me - They didn't go down the path I expected so they missed the encounter I had planned? No problem, the encounter now takes place on whatever path they decided to follow.
So the lesson for me there was yes create encounters but do not hard-lock them in a specific location (unless it's needed for the story).
Players will very often think of something that I didn't!

[CraigD6er]

An interesting topic, and one that everyone will have strong views on. Similarly everyone will have their views on what crosses that line. This is very much up to the GM and that group of players; if they want to get into detail, within their own 4 walls, then that is their choice, but it has to be a group consensus. It is the same in miniature wargaming generally. Some people won’t countenance flamethrowers in a game, others won’t allow SS (look at figure manufacturers that term such sets as ‘elite troops’ rather than giving them their true title). This doesn’t hide the fact that such things existed. Unfortunately, nothing you as the GM can think of that crosses the red line will be original and it has already been done somewhere in the world, and is probably still being done (and if you truly think of something original, I don’t want to know). The world we game in, be it Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, Dark Conspiracy or any other, is going to be ripe for every sort of depravity and atrocity imaginable. The world order has been disrupted by war or aliens from another dimension. Things will be darker, more evil, just because of the setting. To pretend that it isn’t happening risks sanitising the background we strive so hard to make as realistic as possible (why else do we study rates of fire, armour penetration, fuel economy or how long tyres last on a LAV?). That said, I believe everything beyond the red line (whatever that may be for you and your group) should be treated in very abstract terms. Yes they happen, no the players don’t need graphic detail. A mention may be acceptable as background to the setting, but not as a major element in any scene setting. Leave the detail out and if players want to imagine it in glorious technicolour let them do it in their own minds.
If a GM wants to go into extreme detail I wouldn’t want to play that game, and if my players had ever wanted such detail I wouldn’t have wanted them in my game. Fortunately the people I gamed with were always very similar in attitude and it was never an issue.
It has happened in the UK, at a large show, and rightly the organisers clamped down on it as soon as they were made aware. Aside from being distasteful and disrespectful of the players, it does not convey the public image we want for RPG’s. It makes the D&D ‘satanic panic’ seem mild by comparison.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...0the%20players.

[mpipes]

OK, now that is beyond the pale!

You would not spring something like that on a batch of new players to put it mildly!!! Just goes to show you there is always some nut job that goes not just one step, but rather several steps too far.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by mpipes

OK, now that is beyond the pale!

You would not spring something like that on a batch of new players to put it mildly!!! Just goes to show you there is always some nut job that goes not just one step, but rather several steps too far.

Yes indeed, that action violates just about everything we've been discussing here. I appreciate that the GM was aiming to shock the Players, but doing something like that, without even considering the feelings of the Players, without considering the negative image it conveys about gaming.
To my mind, what that GM did is worse than the GM who deliberately kills off PCs to prove that they aren't afraid of killing PCs.
And more so because it was a public game, in an event where people are trying to showcase the positive aspects of gaming.

Gaming is a group activity, it's not meant to be played just for one person's enjoyment at the expense of the other people in the group, regardless of whether that person is a Player or the GM.
Again, I'll harp on about knowing your Players - my game group is a collection of friends, some I've know for a few years, some I've known for a few decades. I have a decent understanding of what they like and dislike, what's acceptable and what's not and also what sort of topics will derail the game. Like any friend would do, I try not to have events in-game that will actually upset the Players or the game (so for my group, real world Politics are left at the door, much too divisive to be discussed during game time)
The GM mentioned in the news report had a responsibility to be even more careful because the Players were all, potentially, strangers at the table.