That Escalated Quickly

So the party became Murderhobos. Sort of. Well only one did, but the rest became gruesome corpse desecraters.

Let's backtrack. They came into town and dropped off the goods they were supposed to deliver. The Charismatic Dwarf attempted to flatter the Shopkeeper into giving them some more gold since they had a run-in with some Goblins. Alas he failed his persuasion roll. This is immediately followed by a successful intimidate roll from the Half-Orc barbarian.So, the shopkeeper is coerced/robbed while the party sits idly by. They then continue to try to talk with the shopkeeper who is quite upset at this time. The Half-Orc leaves but the rest stay behind. The Dwarf even tries to persuade the shopkeeper to be more friendly with him. A high roll from the Dwarf convinced the shopkeeper to relax slightly, but he was still upset at everyone else.

So they pissed off one NPC in town. No big deal. He didn't have anything more to offer our group anyways.

So through some further town exploits they learn of the local gang of ruffians who are running the town. The Half-Orc makes a failed attempt to infiltrate their hideout, the dingy bar down the road. Four of the toughs tell him to get lost. He decides to intimidate them. It was a high roll, but I determined that if they were threatened, these guys would draw weapons and fight. After all, they outnumbered the Barbarian. They strike first and do a fair amount of hurting on him. He cuts out of there mighty quick, another round and he would have been toast.

So he regroups back at the nice inn with the rest of the party. Their plan is to rally the town to drive the gang out. I had determined that the town doesn't want a fight, after all, these roughs have been pushing them around for awhile. But the Dwarf gave a nice speech and rolled well, so I allowed 3 tavern patrons to be roused into action.They head out the door only to see five of the bad gang waiting across the street looking to threaten the rest of them away.

The party wastes no time with words and chooses to fight. The Half-Orc and Gnome Monk kill 3 of the gang. The Dwarf Sorcerer put the other 2 to sleep. The Drow Cleric however is felled by their wicked slashes. He makes his rolls though and stabilizes on the ground, still unconscious. The Dwarf decides to take the sleeping thugs into the inn. The innkeeper tells him that there's a perfectly good cell at the town hall. (This is where things get bad)

While they are having their discussion the Player playing the Gnome asks me if she can slit the sleeping bad guys throats.

I tell her, well yeah she can. So she does.

The gaping townsfolk look on aghast at this. The Dwarf then decides to chop off their heads and put them on pikes, while the Half-Orc (angry that he didn't get to kill the baddies) proceeds to club the corpses into pulp. All the while the Drow is still laying unconscious in a pool of his own blood. Needless to say the townsfolk are terrified.

It was late in the real world so I called it for the night. Personally I was a bit disgruntled by their actions. Part of it comes from the fact that the rest of the adventure emanates from this town. Side-quests, info etc all come from the town who now want nothing to do with the party. The other part of it is my own shock at their actions. It being a long time since I was Dungeon Master I wasn't ready to handle a party of amoral bastards. I was taking their antagonism personally, which is something I should try not to do.

Still, I got some thinking to do on how to make this adventure work in lieu of their actions.