How to override a player's logic > principle / humanity

[cmastah]

Here's my problem, very soon the PCs will be involved in a quest where they have to try and find the original child of a couple who for a while were unwittingly raising a changeling (fey switched the babies around). It hasn't happened yet, and you might believe I'm overthinking this but I fear 1-2 of the guys might simply suggest killing the baby or harming it to bring the fey running.

You might believe I'm overthinking this, but this group tends to have a logic > humanity bent in gaming.

I'm a guy who also believes that the logical choice should receive priority but I still believe there ought to be limits (harming children would certainly be a limit).

[Kazaan]

Well, you can do this a priori or a posteriori; forethought method or afterthought method. Forethought method involves giving them some significant motivation or reason to not just flat out kill the child. This typically involves reward but could also involve a forewarned punishment (ie. whoever harms the child is cursed).

Afterthought method is allowing them to kill the child if they so please but doing so triggers some undesirable event to occur. Do this at random intervals, and they'll eventually get the picture that bad things randomly happen when they entirely discount subjectivity in favor of hard objectivity.

[Nylissa]

Use the reality of the game world.
If players insist on killing children to expedite their quest, that's pretty evil. Have the local paladin's club invite them to a smiting party.

[meabolex]

Logic would suggest that if they kill the object of the quest, they would essentially fail that quest. If they want to fail the quest and not get the inevitable reward, OK.

[thejeff]

Are we talking about harming the actual baby or the changeling?

[Weirdo]

See, in some mythologies harming or threatening the changeling is a perfectly valid course of action.

Wikipedia wrote:

Putting a changeling in a fire would cause it to jump up the chimney and return the human child

Source

Scandinavian Changeling Legends wrote:

The mother was directed to build a fire in the bake oven three Thursday evenings in succession, lay the young one upon the bake shovel, then pretend that she was about to throw it into the fire. The advice was followed, and when the woman, the third evening, was in the act of throwing the changeling into the fire, it seemed, a little deformed, evil-eyed woman rushed up with the natural child, threw it in the crib, and requested the return of her child. "For," said she, "I have never treated your child so badly and I have never thought to do it such harm as you now propose doing mine," whereupon she took the unnatural child and vanished through the door.

Source

If you're going with the classic changeling then the "baby" isn't actually a mortal child, it's a fey creature / goblin / troll, probably evil and possibly as intelligent and aware as the PCs. In this case harming the changeling might not be evil at all since it's not exactly an innocent.

However, if you don't want them to harm the changeling, one idea is to have the foster parents object. They might want their own baby back, but they don't want to see the false one harmed.

[Thornborn]

"It is said that in Ulthar, no man may kill a cat."

[Wriggle Wyrm]

While not as extreme, I’ve seen this sort of thing before and found it’s not to be so much a matter of the player’s logic being greater than their humanity but them being divorced from the magnitude of their actions. Anyone can roll a dice, killing another person much less a defenseless baby is another matter.

My advice is don’t let them take the easy way out, make it “real” for them. If they want to kill this changeling, make them describe how they do it. How do they pull this baby out of its mother’s arms? Where do they put the knife as its crying helplessly? What do they do about the mother as she tries to interfere and desperately pleads for its life? What do they do with this tiny corpse now that they’ve committed the deed? How do they explain it to horrified villagers and the authorities? Was it really a changeling?

What you do is up to you but above all don’t let them get away with saying “I kill it”. If you really want put your players in a moral quandary you can even make this changeling one of a set of twins, with no clear way of telling which is which.

While this sort of thing does have the potential to cause inner party strife, it is the sort of thing that should. After all, the PC’s should be the heroes of the story not some heartless baby killers.

[thejeff]

And then after they break and can't do it, have it turn back into the fey creature and start killing other local babies or something. No good deed unpunished.

Actually no, that would be horrible GMing. Do make sure that the players are on the same page as you about the changeling though. If they're thinking "it's a fey creature / goblin / troll, probably evil and possibly as intelligent and aware as the PCs", and you're thinking "helpless little baby", the game will go badly.

[Weirdo]

thejeff wrote:

Do make sure that the players are on the same page as you about the changeling though. If they're thinking "it's a fey creature / goblin / troll, probably evil and possibly as intelligent and aware as the PCs", and you're thinking "helpless little baby", the game will go badly.

This. Do not assume that the players will be on the same page as you are as to the nature of the changeling. Have them make Knowledge checks or just flat-out tell them (possibly through an NPC) what the local legends are if you want to make sure that they're aware that the changeling isn't an evil thing merely disguised as a baby, or otherwise an "acceptable target."

Generally I can see three tactics here; you could use any or all of them.

1) Establish that the changeling's foster parents either aren't aware that the changeling isn't their child, or else that they still feel for it and will resist any attempt to harm it. This could make use of Wriggle Worm's crying mother situation.

2) Establish that while the changeling may not be a human baby, it's still a baby and thus innocent. It's not the changeling's fault that its fey parents switched it for a human child. (I've seen some folklore suggest that changelings are adult fey, but other tales suggest that the changeling is itself a fey child. The latter are generally more sympathetic.)

3) Warn that regardless of the ethics of harming the changeling, the other fey might not be too pleased with anyone hurting one of their own, and they might be inclined to take revenge on the PCs or on the stolen child.

Doing something unusual such as boiling empty eggshells can also be a folkloric way of exposing a changeling without actually harming it - the changeling may exclaim in surprise at the sight when a human infant would be unable to speak. (Not that the changeling in this case revealed himself to be 150 years old - not exactly a candidate for helpless infant status!)

[cmastah]

Just to clarify on one point: the baby is actually just that, a baby. It's not evil per se, but the evidence of it not being human start to show up soon after the switch is made.

@Kazaan, that's actually a good idea, I think I'll go with something similar to them being attacked for harming the child (probably by more than fey as well).

@Nylissa, I originally wanted to avoid the players feeling like there's only one path and all others are reprimanded but I do agree that paladins (generally almost anyone of faith), and even people who are parents would all take shots at them or even attack them for stuff like this. The reality is that no one like people who harm children, only hardcore racists would even be okay with harming children from a race they don't like.

@meabolex, I'm worried they'll take to the idea of harming the changeling to get the fey to come running (which the fey actually would, but this move is downright vile).

@thejeff, it's the changeling they'd harm.

@Weirdo, the idea of switching babies (for the fey) is in the spirit of (relatively speaking) fun, the child itself is just merely a baby. While this was the practice in folk lore, I don't believe (or at least I hope not) that the woman would literally dump the child into a fire even if it isn't her own, the PCs would most likely take the next step and start cutting flesh.

@Thornborn, I just wiki'd ulthar and read a bit about it, it certainly sounds fitting to have fey make appearances to attack the ones who directly harmed the baby.

@wriggle wyrm, one of the players has gone out of his way to laugh at dying enemies and in two cases to have a few of them strung up for the heck of it (not to scare other enemies, just merely for the sake of doing so), he even drew a sword and threatened a tied up suspect who I think he would've even tortured if he honestly believed the guy was guilty (he wasn't). The disconnect is already registered quite well in the mind of the one most likely to harm the child. I won't deny that I wish the players were more heroic, I LOVE a dark world with dark villains but I like my heroes heroic (and human).

@thejeff, weirdo and wriggle wyrm, I think the players will probably be on the same page because much of this folk lore is unknown to them (it was unknown to me as well until about a month or so ago), so I doubt they'd assume it's evil. I DID notice that they probably feel the weight when NPCs start acting in nasty ways, for instance one thought that cropped up was that the foster family want knowledged people getting their baby back but they themselves are pretty much white trash. The idea is that the parents themselves come up with the idea of torturing the baby to draw out the fey (and the PCs can hear rumors from people that this family is a bad bunch), it does seem as though when the NPCs are bad it gets very real for the players (especially for the one who'd usually be first to suggest harming it). I'm not sure I want to go down this path because a part of me would rather the NPCs in need not be nasty people.

I think I may make it that creatures like fey and generally even most people would forever hold something like this against them.

Thanks for the tips, any further ideas would be much appreciated.