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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