GM Morals and Roleplay

How much GM morality is bad? Do I have That GM on my hands?

Let me lay out the situation and maybe y'all can help.

Three person game of Seventh Sea plus the GM. For whatever reason, GM takes us out of the interesting politics of Seventh Sea Europe and to a remote island in Not!Caribbean to steal a valuable golden idol from the natives. Two of us are roleplaying pretty hard and we've been told that colonization/trade with the New World has already begun. In addition, we're told the local natives on the island worship a demon and commit human sacrifice. They've attacked other crews who have ventured onto the island.

Me and the other player are roleplaying and realize neither of our characters give a shit about the natives. We say, 'fuck it,' let's round up some of the NPCs we've met on our journey who the GM told us are nearby, including pirates and greedy rapscallions, and besiege the native village with our superior firepower and genocide the demon-worshipping locals so we can take their idol. We're 17th century Not!Europeans and they're filthy savages.

Immediately, the other player (a chick who hasn't been roleplaying much during the game) puts on a face and says she doesn't want to do that. The GM seems aghast at our plan.

FrenchBro (he's playing a Not!Frenchman) and I say we're willing to do whatever rolls are necessary and accept failure if the NPCs cannot be convinced. But as all of the NPCs have been less moral than ourselves (they're pirates and explorers) and also expressed interest in the island (want treasure), I figured it was possible.

GM proceeds to place roadblock after roadblock. Says we'll take 'corruption' for an immoral act. We accept that. Says we should try out Chick Player's plans. She proceeds to come up with fuck all. GM hands her a plan by mentioning the Chieftain's lovely daughter seems interested in one of our companions and miraculously the natives don't attack us when we land. Puts us through FOUR FUCKING HOURS of the chick player trying to sign-language with the chieftan some complicated plan of marrying his daughter off and making the idol the dowry. GM eventually just lets her introduces telepathy from his ass to move things along.

Eventually, me and Frenchy get bored and say we'd like to contact one of the most friendly pirates. We do, and GM says he doesn't want to genocide the tribals. Even though he's fine killing and robbing his fellow man. So we contact the less friendly, more mean pirates. They're "too drunk."Chickplayer complains that we're ruining her plan and she doesn't want to genocide the villagers 'cause it's mean (literally).

At what fucking point should I have just stood up and told the GM he's being a jackass by injecting his morality into the game and ruining the roleplaying?

Also have a free Awkward Celebrity for reading this much.

And I should add my character was a German Monster Hunter (hired on as muscle in this treasure hunt) who felt their entire religion was insidious bullshit and would have killed their gods and all their priests if he could.

TTRPGs are a social activity, not a simulation. I think people are well within their rights not to want their group to play at fantasy-genocide.
that said, the GM and concerned player probably should have brought it up OOC rather than fucking up the game and being passive-aggressive IC, and the GM should've thought this was a possibility when setting up the scenario. so I'm not really trying to lay blame at your feet, and I'm not trying to claim that nobody should be allowed to play that scenario out, just that you shouldn't be surprised or upset when people reacted that way to your obviously socially repugnant plan.

We knew it was socially repugnant. We just thought that if we were roleplaying imperialist fantasy Europeans coming upon a demon-worshiping, human-sacrificing primitive tribe that had something they wanted... it'd kinda be a go-to solution. We didn't think we'd get such push-back.

And the chick player's eventual push-back that it was mean was OOC, so you've got that. After all of the passive-aggressive stuff. It just seemed to me that if two out of three players want to do something, that's what you should do. Not come up with convoluted shit to satisfy the one other player.

bump

DM should have compromised and created a rival faction of tribals that were justifiably murderable while the peaceful plot hook resides in the tribe of nice friendly tribals that you don't have to kill to succeed. That way everybody gets what they want.

Here's a solution: enslaving/genociding the natives will cost a lot. Camps for them to be kept in, loss of lives of your crew, food/water rations, extra hands on guard duty to make sure no one escapes. Sure, you have the advantage in tech, but they know the land, and you really don't know how many there are. There might be 500 in the tribe you're talking to, but there could be 25,000 more in other tribes deeper inland. And all it would take to have them wreck your shit is one escapee.

Marry the chieftan's daughter. You don't have to love her, or really do much with her. But, like in Europe, it will establish good relations between your crew and the tribe. Then you can swindle the hell out of them. Convince them one gold coin is worth 100 gems. Hell, gold is worthless anyway, give them some food in exchange for taking bits of that golden temple off their hands. You've met the gods, and they prefer iron to gold in their shrines. Just don't make the mistake of taking their land.

You win by taking advantage of the natives, and the GM/female player win because there's not a genocide.

Would have loved if the GM said half of what you said. But he told us exact numbers on the village and said it was the only one in the island. It was just... he didn't want to give us the option.

Though, having a marriage within a day of meeting the tribe seems a bit drastic.

Point still stands on keeping more of your crew alive and with all their limbs.

I had the opposite problem. Ran a manifest destiny/heart of darkness campaign, and the party went all Dances with Wolves on me. Turned into their favorite game ever though, so whatever

Frenchy and I were kinda rolling solo with the chick. That's why we went about trying to recruit our piratical rivals.

Our pitch was "Hey, help us kill the natives and we'll split the profits!" With the assumption that many of the pirates would die trying to fight the natives. We were gonna Treasure Island. "Don't gotta split something eight ways when five of your partners end up dead, amirite?"

bump before bed

>not flipping over the fucking table, punching the bitch in the head, then the chick, and walking out

I quit after that.

I would've too. Hopefully you can find a better GM. A good GM will not go against reasonable desires of the PC's, though he may make them pay a price for their actions.

>they worship an evil god, we genocide them
>oops, they were actually containing an ancient demon and you released it
>you're rich though

I'm GMing a game of Warhammer with Frenchie and the old GM now.

7th Sea just stuck with me

Fuck off with your whining and talk to your DM. Neither of you is fucking entitled to a particular game style, you have to work it out yourselves if you are compatible. If you're not, quit.
And fuck you, there's not three of you, there's four and DM has a right to have fun same as players. So no, he's not That DM.

I'm fucking sick of these threads.

Send them on an island with evil natives.

I think that it's totally okay for a GM to go "woah, okay, so I didn't sign up to run fantasy-genocide: the game, or... well... I would have run that. Maybe I helped steer us in the wrong direction, but could we either find a different solution, or fade to black into a different plot, because, at the moment, mathematically half the table is uncomfortable with this."

Granted, the GM probably should have spoken about this directly like an adult, instead of what you described.

Then again, we're only getting your side of the story, so maybe he tried to do that, I genuinely don't know.

>created a rival faction of tribals that were justifiably murderable
The natives are already demon-worshipping and human-sacrificing, how could the GM come up with something even more murderable?

That said, my personal take on this is that it's fine for the GM to not want to run that kind of campaign, not everyone is comfortable with genocide or whatever and that's fine. However I think that trying to prevent that kind of campaign from happening by bending the game world to his will through implausible coincidences or making NPCs act opposite to their established personality (bloodthirsty pirate suddenly become morally opposed to killing and looting natives) is bullshit.

He can either come up with reasonable and plausible ways to steer you away (in which case you wouldn't be complaining about this) or just talk about it OOC.

A GM and his players should explicitly agree on a shared vision for a campaign before the campaign. Are you going to be playing good Jedis or evil Siths or just opportunistic Scum &Villainy?

One could easily argue that blasting an island of demon-worshiping cannibals straight to hell is a very Good thing.

Moral relativism goes right out the window when you bring literal demon worship and human sacrifice to the table.

>though he may make them pay a price for their actions.

I'm reminded of the story where the party decides to ignore the lich that was gaining strength, so they could bring gay marriage to the dirt peasants of the fantasy kingdom. Then after establishing a fair and free society they got steamrolled by undead.

>literal demon worship and human sacrifice
Maybe they're the good kind of demons and only accept relatively evil people as sacrifice?

of course the GM is aghast, he's probably got a dungeon drawn up full of carefully tuned encounters set up to entertain you. and now has to figure out how to run a full scale battle, possibly a siege depending on how fortified they are.

also coming up and dealing with enough npcs to pad your forces enough that the natives won't simply overrun them with numbers and poison darts.

I'd just let you all die in the battle.

As stated, it really doesn't.

Was she engineering a marriage with one of your characters without your concern? Thats the most evil thing.

Get some towels infected with typhus ot some highly infectious disease. Give them the towels as a gift. Wait for the results. PROFIT!

Why would they ever give you the idol even if you married her? How do you know that you wont have to remain on that island for the rest of your life? How do you know the marriage is not part of the human sacrifice? Why would you genocide them to get the idol? You are here to steal a bloody idol. You dont need an overly complicated plan.

>your obviously socially repugnant plan.
>Killing a tribe of demon worshipers who have a history of brutally sacrificing humans who they come across "socially repugnant"
Lol wut?

>>Killing a tribe of demon worshipers who have a history of brutally sacrificing humans who they come across "socially repugnant"

They were told this IC, not OOC, and by the sounds of things it wasn't actually correct. Given GM's reaction and the fact that the natives didn't attack when the PC's land, I suspect he was trying to tell a story where the PC's are pushed into going rogue and helping the actually friendly natives fight off the explorers and pirates.

It's still not wrong to act in a way you believe to be rightly.

Also all this still doesn't actually make the GM's actions any better, trying to railroad his players and getting angry at them for NOT metagaming and assuming they were lied to when they would have no reason to believe so IC.

>The natives are already demon-worshipping and human-sacrificing, how could the GM come up with something even more murderable?
This is very easy. The majority of the tribals subject themselves to the demon religion purely out of fear, rather than willingly. Create an insurrection against the religious officials, and suddenly you've got a civil war on your hands instead of a flat-out genocide.

As the GM does so much work, I would say the GM gets 50% of the groups voting power.

If GM's playstyle doesn't fit with the players, then they maybe shouldn't play together.

>easy
>a plan that requires the PCs to; learn their language, disguise themselves, infiltrate their society, learn how their society feels about the official religion which they fear, then convince a large portion of this society covertly to rebel against the priesthood

Versus

>Kill em all and let god sort it out

Yeah, sure. Indiana Jones would do something like that - NOT.
It's not good, it's fighting evil with evil. And that is still evil.

This is why Hitler, besides having good points was waging war. Which makes him also bad, like Britons, French, Russians and Americans etc...

Take sulphur, extracted from volcanoes, and burn it to produce poisonous sulphur dioxide. Use this method on the belly of a cargo ship to create an improvised gas chamber. Efficient and clean.

You should do it now. The GM's a fukboi, the chick is probably blowing him on the side or something.

>worried.jpg
where did you learn this shit m8?

>trusting indy
>when he stopped nazis from killing most of their high command by opening the arc of covenant in berlin

Innocents as well, user. Indy would not kill innocents.

That is why he is good, and you are not.

Couple hundred thousand Berliners are small fries when compared to +30 million war dead in Europe + how many fucking millions died in Asia because Western powers were too busy with Hitler&pals to kick Hirohito's regime's ass.