Why am I so surprised when two of my PCs turn out to be evil?

Game night tonight, and two of my players, both reasonable adults, did something, in-character, that I really found disturbing.  I've been playing rpgs since the 70s, and I can't remember ever being shocked by something like it.

Tabernacle, the players hardhold, was under serious pressure, at war with Big Rock, another settlement.  It started when Big Rock got caught stealing women from a third, small settlement under Tabernacle's protection.  Big Rock demands submission and tribute.  Tabernacle refuses, hits hard at Big Rock's farms with two gangs (one from the hold, another a biker gang).  Big Rock strikes back by picking off Tabernacle scouts, implicating Tabernacle in the poisoning of Junktown's well, setting a wildfire that threatened Tabernacle on one side while attacking from the other.

In the midst of it all, a teenage girl with visions of a better world leads a third of Tabernacle's people, and almost all from the third, small settlement, maybe a hundred men, women and children away to the west to find safety and peace. They don't get far before Fang, Crater (the PCs) and Crater's bike gang track them down... and shoot them down in cold blood. 

Yikes.  On one level, in game, I can see it happening post-apoc and I'm sure similar atrocities are probably easy to find throughout history.  On another level, it really blew me away. 

Ever had that happen?

Not quite to that extreme, but yes, I've had PCs do horrible things that I really didn't expect. It made sense, like you say, in the scope of the setting, but man, what a grim and unfortunate chain of events! And what the hell will they do now?? They just blew away a major resource (people), and left themselves even more vulnerable to Big Rock, from within as well as from without. Whatever happens, it will not be boring!

In my experience my players has been really impressed by total anarchy of apocalypse world  setting, and they liked to exploit it.

One of my first session was with a Hocus that had a cannibalistic cult. No one player had any issue with this.

Codex, how many sessions into the game was this?

Third session.

So going on my own experience, that means the PCs are sort of flexing their muscles, seeing where their own boundaries are. And you probably have a good lot of stuff that was part of the 1st session that's now either irrelevant or sorting itself out into proper fronts. Take stock of what they just gave you, and re-focus your fronts etc. based on that. It's pretty cold-blooded, but also a great opportunity for intermittent fuckery. Bring on that water shortage, 'cause nobody's manning the pumps anymore!

In our game of Apocalyptic Detroit, the Silver Gate Holding (based out of a mall) crushed one of the satellite holdings of the Grey Scrapers.  The Gunlugger Duke (a PC) personally murdered somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 people, running down a few of them on a stolen pickup truck.  Lang (another PC), the Hardholder of Silver Gate, directed his gang to gun down the rest of the rival holding after some looting.. 

All told, I think they took out 60 people, including women and children.

Duke's also took out an entire teenage gang.  This led to another 15 or so dead.  He put their heads on spikes around his holding of Guilty Mills.

As a result of Duke's murders, several gangs banded together to wipe out Guilty Mills.  Unfortunately, Duke's gang, his fortifications and defenses (plus several very good rolls) led to a complete rout.  The death toll was estimated at about 40-50 people. 

So that this point, 100 people are dead, in only a handful of days.  When we looked back on that, we began to discuss humanity as a form of scarcity.  When there aren't enough people, what happens then?

The MC has begun describing the blasted city as eerily empty of human life. The consequences of these mass murders are starting to take their toll.  It's been really intense stuff. 

100 dead.

What were their names?

  point?

I think John is asking if the players felt that the world was real, that the murders were more than just a move and a roll. Make them own that shit. Have a hold-wide wake by sympathizers, have desperate folk come to the characters based on their reputation to perform similar bloodthirsty, unemotive slaughter - perhaps of folk the characters know and care about?

Ask provacative questions.... 'So Farantz is refusing to do what you want. He's mad and bad and unassailable. He knows that you solve problems by killing innocent folks, just like with the pilgrims and condemns you for it. What do ya do?'

Its almost llike the PCs acting like a gang of Fucking Hyenas - but did the players sit back and take stock after as you did?

Connect them to the dead, make triangles that involve relatives, friends, lovers with the murdered ones and the characters. Have the ghosts of the dead appear everytime the players open thier brain....

^Yes,what Noofy and John and Glen said. Make those people human, make the consequences real.

Ask provacative questions.... 'So Farantz is refusing to do what you want. He's mad and bad and unassailable. He knows that you solve problems by killing innocent folks, just like with the pilgrims and condemns you for it. What do ya do?'

Its almost llike the PCs acting like a gang of Fucking Hyenas - but did the players sit back and take stock after as you did?

This seems a little heavy-handed, but maybe it's just the phrasing of some of it. Remember that the MCs job is not to punish the players, or oppose them, or pass judgment on them through NPCs. Not that NPCs will not pass judgment, of course, but not all of them are going to be shocked or dismayed -- and very, very few of them are going to be morally indignant. I think the key for me would be to make sure any reactions are very specific -- because of personal grievances or connections, as John's comment about their names suggests.

I like the idea of focusing even on the simple logistics. They just killed an entire settlement of people -- presumably, that settlement did something. It provided resources, or guarded against danger; maybe they sold surplus food, or that was where all the good whores were. Now all of those people are gone; that's probably not a net win for the community on a purely sustenance level, even ignoring the military, social or moral consequences.

This seems a little heavy-handed, but maybe it's just the phrasing of some of it. Remember that the MCs job is not to punish the players, or oppose them, or pass judgment on them through NPCs.

Yeah, Daniel you're right, heavy handed tends to be my MC style, I'm a drama queen. But hey, that's making the world not boring right? If that's an extreme end of the scale, well I guess its stakes ripe for the picking. I wasn't trying to foist a sample punishment for these players, just give a couple of extreme emotive threats that could be extrapolated from the fiction.

I like  the logistical consequences you pointed out too - which I guess means we're all on the same page. Make the consequences real, and tie them back into the situation at hand.

I wonder if CoR could enlighten us on the postgame chatter amongst the group? Did they dig it? Were they suprised at their choice of moves and actions? Did they enjoy the session? Were they as disturbed as CoR was?

I wonder if CoR could enlighten us on the postgame chatter amongst the group? Did they dig it? Were they suprised at their choice of moves and actions? Did they enjoy the session? Were they as disturbed as CoR was?

Post-game, the chatter was mostly focused on game mechanics.  The two PCs behind the massacre shrugged that move off as something their characters would do.  And I mean that literally.... shrug... "I was just playing my character."  The other player's response was "if there is no law or obvious repercussion, I will generally default to the most violent (i.e. quickest) option to resolve a given situation."  

I was, as I think may be clear already, rattled by the massacre.  And rattled by being rattled, if that makes sense.  I have no doubt that the reality of a post-apocalyptic world would be terribly savage and brutal.  The forward of one of the post-apoc survival books I've recently read makes it clear the greatest danger in that environment will be humans shorn of the trappings of civilization and society.  And you don't have to look hard to find real examples of that in our world today.

[I wrote a whole lot more, and then pared it back to this.]

AW has given me more, beyond the scope of rules and plots, to think about than any game I've played.  That's a good thing, but boy do I have a headache. :)

EDIT: The hardholder player tells me he found it disturbing as well, that "he roleplaying was getting a bit close to all the bad behavior of power and fear" and "if we are just going to shoot people and take their stuff, let’s play Munchkin, at least."

http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=551.0

Yup, it totally happened in my game.  I was lucky in that at least one of the players really showed how it was grinding at his character.  Other characters just didn't seem to give a shit at all but that one guy showing remorse made me feel better about the whole thing, otherwise, I dunno, it would have really bothered me.