Captives, Shadow Points, and You

[Otaku-sempai]

PLAYER: If we let you live, how do we know that we can trust you?

ORC CAPTIVE: I swear to you on my honor as an Orc!

PLAYER: No good! I've known too many Orcs.

Sometimes, being a good person means that you just have to take a chance.

[Stormcrow]

Player: "Know this, orc: if I see you in these parts again, I will not hesitate to kill you in the name of King Bard. Now go!"

Orc: Leaves, but returns with friends next season and attacks.

Player: Recognizes orc and kills him immediately. No shadow points.

[doctheweasel]

(as long as it's not being deliberately set up as a gotcha by the GM).

What do you mean? The GM's job is basically to string together a set of gotcha moments that force the PCs to make hard choices.

A) You let the orcs live, they went on and killed a lot of people, take 3 shadow points.
B) You killed the orcs, take 3 shadow points

While there are games and groups and genres where a damned if you do, damned if you don't setup can make for an interesting narrative, it's something which is easy to handle in a clumsy manner.

Well when you make it a false choice, then yeah.

The whole point of hard choices is that the character must choose which consequence they will have to live with. When the consequences are the same then why bother?

Also, the orcs killing those other people isn't the characters' Misdeed, it's the orcs'. Maybe they have to test against Anguish, but I think the PCs' guilt is enough.