The votes have been tallied and our latest Patreon poll has a winner. It was Witch in a landslide! She and her spiky little buddy Brutus are the latest additions to Handbook-World! (Better luck next time, Psion!)

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but when I’m running a game, watching little old ladies burn for the PCs’ crimes is exactly the sort of thing that makes me go, “Huh? You do what? I… OK.” Evil and selfishness are part of the game, but when it’s the protagonists of the story doing the dirty deeds… I dunno, man. I tend to freeze up.

Just last week my intrepid crew of Starfinders took down a bunch of gangbangers in their nightclub hideout. It was a nasty fight, but in the end the good guys triumphed. Or at least I thought they did.

“Most of them are unconscious right?”

“Yeah. You guys used nonlethal pulsecaster rounds. They’re just sleeping it off.”

“We can’t risk them reporting back to their boss. We shoot ’em in the head and finish them off.”

“You do what? I… OK.”

I had to pause for a minute and recalibrate my expectations. In my mind these PCs only had to call station security, hand over the proof they’d uncovered of the gang’s nefarious doings, and then collect their hard-earned attaboy from the local quest giver. All very paragon, you know? Apparently that wasn’t the kind of crew my guys were rolling with. And as much as that can be jarring to my personal white hat style of pay, I think you’ve got to give the players room to be as bad as they want to be. No moralistic tutting or sudden karmic reprisals from the GM. It’s their story, you know? I’m just there to facilitate.

How about the rest of you guys? Have you ever encountered unexpectedly renegade behavior from a fellow PC? Was it a matter of characters not seeing eye-to-eye, or a clash of player expectations as well? Let’s hear it in the comments!

GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure hall will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!