Cannibalism among PCs, take two

[Hand of Evil]

There are a number of types of cannibalism.

One where you eat only part of your foe as part of a right, such as the heart to gather their courage. In game terms this could be pluses in combat, to the gaining of hits points, even saying the player will not go up in level until it is done.

Then there is the eatting of everyone that is not of your tribe/race. This normally has to do with your gods and your belief. This could effect your afterlife, and your place in it.

Then there is the eating of your dead. This is done in lands that have been depleated of stock. Meat is meat, the body is only a shell and the spirit matter.

Just 2 cents of babble.

 

[Gizzard]

> Did they want to consider it an evil act automatically?

Actually, we got into a big philosophical discussion about this when our Paladin used D-Evil on a group of approaching savage tribesmen who were indeed cannibals.

My view was that evil was not an absolute, but instead determined by the Paladins god. So the cannibals would register as evil to the Paladin. The catch here is that two Paladins of different gods could scan the same person and reach different conclusions. Like the old Abbot and Costello skit, "He is evil!" "Who is evil?" "No, *he* is evil, Hu's on first!"

Some people argued that D-Evil ran off an absolute scale; that evil was a miasma that gathered around someone who committed evil acts; something like an aura. The catch here is the reverse - all Paladins detect the same people as evil, but then some Paladins may be puzzled as to *why* they detect Evil in certain cases.

Other people argued that it had more to do with the peoples perception of themselves. If everyone you know is a cannibal and its an accepted part of your society, then there is no evil because there is no evil intent. Sort of a Garden of Eden form of innocence; no one has tasted the fruit of knowledge yet. This one gets very strange because two people performing the same actions (but with different intents) will be judged differently.

Anyway, I think when you untangle the answer to this particular question, you'll have a more general rule for handling unconventional situations. I welcome opinions on the subject. ;-)

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I suppose people expected some kind of post on this thread from me.
Well, here it is.

I played a character named Trillirra once.
She was an elf.
Or rather, she was the kind of elf that would have made Forrester do a double-take.

She was frivolous and flighty, like elves should be.
Considering she has Agnakok immunities to the environment around her, could eat leaves and thus had an endless supply of food, could drink swamp water and not get sick, could stand in the sun without overheating or burning, and could stand in the night and not freeze to death, it was easier for her to be flighty and frivolous.

Did I mention she loved war?
No, I didn't. Yes, Trillirra loved war. She loved it to death. She would have been miserable without war to contemplate, make decisions over, and fight in.
Now, the FACT that old Delrune is gone, the elven people massacred, and Haldendreeva is the last hold of elves on the entire continent, that Vecna made constant war on her and her people, that the illithid made constant war, that the sahuagin made constant war, that assorted monsters, undead, unseelie ran around making war, might play a factor in this ... but again, it might not, for Trillirra wandered around, got around, and adventured in many peaceful places.

Trillirra never considered anyone an enemy, until they decided to be one.
This tended to happen from time to time.
When this happened, Trillirra became very evil.
Very evil indeed. Trillirra went after those who were her enemies and killed them. She hoped to kill them all, hunt them down and exterminate them.

However, this was all fun and games.
Trillirra tortured her enemies, before eating them alive, but she was merry about it (now, you see, you tried to kill me, but did it rather incompetently ... for I am alive, no? Now, you must pay ...)

Trillirra was not serious about this because, if she had been serious, she would long ago have gone insane and killed herself.
Along with the rest of her people, who could not otherwise have hoped to psychologically survive a hundred years of constant war (those who tried to be tough and strong Fremen style died long ago.)

Did I mention Trillirra was tortured and killed a couple of times herself?
Well, she was.
She didn't care for that. But she accepted it as a necessary part of the game. The great magical might of Haldendreeva made Resurrections the norm, and all it's people desired to stick around and not gallavant off to the Afterlife.
It is worth noting that Trillirra's foes did their best to leave nothing to Raise, but they failed.

Anyways, if you discard the fact that Trillirra loved the torture and murder by eating alive (if she could ... often, they died before she could start eating) of her enemies, she was actually a pretty nice girl.

Trillirra was a brilliant luminous green, with dark flowing black hair and cherubic ears.
Her eyes were large and blue, her mouth small, her features that of a fragile young lady, and her voice was lyric soprano.

Trillirra typically ate leaves, since enemies were not always around to eat.
She thought of insects and worms as delicacies (as opposed to Yours Truly, who does not), and these could be found aplenty and to spare.
She did have good table manners, except for the fact she enjoyed chewing on wood (and, the occasional cleaned bone of a slain enemy.) This kept her teeth clean, she would say.

Trillirra never liked cooked meat, and ate it reluctantly as a gesture of compromise to the others around her.
She did what she could to fit in among the alien peoples and elves of other worlds besides her own.

Trillirra never killed and ate animals, realizing that they were not enemies. They lacked the ability to consciously decide to be enemies, generally, and just followed their instincts (from this, one could deduce the elves of Delrune had been in the Renaissance, once.)
Trillirra never killed, much less ate, anyone who didn't try to kill her, or plot to kill her.
Trillirra never ate anyone who was not freshly killed, or still in the process of dying.
Trillirra did not care for rotting meat, which was fatal even to her.

Trillirra did not hate those she tortured and killed. She was scolding and kindly to them as she ate them - rebuking them for their incompetence and their decision to try and kill her.

Alas, there was one enemy that Trillirra could not prevail against, or even defend against, and that enemy was ... the elves.
For you see, Trillirra was mind-blocked by powerful magics of long ago from harming other elves, and she magically recognized all such (the drow were excluded.)

Coming from a society that depended on caring and bonding, built upon the classic elven ideals of collective strength and collective altruism, where it was unthinkable to hurt another elf, and no elf need fear his own kind, Trillirra was unable to cope when the amoral and elitist elves tried to kill her.
They tried, and they succeeded. These elves denounced Trillirra as a false elf, and a savage, while they lived high on the hog with jewels and gold plundered from a hundred rightful owners.
As they whetted their swords to carry war to innocent peoples, working off the undefeatable justifications for massacre and conquest, they denounced her as an ignoble, debased scum.

When attacked, Trillirra could only defend, and could not attack.
And when the humans and the dwarves that Trillirra had befriended turned their backs, there was nobody to aid her.

After being slain twice by elves, Trillirra became so badly traumatized that she could no longer function, and she became very ill.
She was forced to return to Haldendreeva, where the general attitude was that the elves of other worlds were all rather creepy - if not insane maniacs - and best left to themselves.
Trillirra's testimony, after a Restoration healed her, did not improve that general consensus.

- - -

As for IRL ...

There were two kinds of players, regarding cannabalism.

There were those who laughed and icked and gagged and had a good time.
Then, there were those who said 'Play like this, and you'll get beat up, real bad.'
Or they said 'There is something wrong with you.'

I'm afraid the latter group won the day.

 

[kkoie]

All this makes me wonder if Monte's Book of Vile Darkness will cover cannibalism in any detailed way.

That and it's making me want to work up a cannibalistic cult for my upcoming waterdeep FR game... Hey it could happen!!

K Koie

 

[Sejs]

The only cannibal character that I've played was also an elf. He was the one I made to see what it would be like to play an evil character. EVIL evil. Seduced elven maidens, married them, then slew them on their wedding night. Drove nations with tense relations to war. Worshipped demons. Desecrated druidic groves, and sacrificed the priests on their own alters. Burnt down orphanages to see if he could smell burning children over the woodsmoke. The blackest soul that he could possibly be. He was smart, he was through, he covered his tracks, he was charismatic, and always stacked the odds in his favor. He also had no compunctions about eatting other sentients.


I retired him very shortly after realizing that, yeah.. while I can play an evil character and get away with it.. I didn't have nearly as much fun playing a villian, as I did playing a hero.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Then there is the eating of your dead. This is done in lands that have been depleated of stock. Meat is meat, the body is only a shell and the spirit matter.

Just 2 cents of babble.

Let's not forget Omophagia, a type of cannibalism that involves the eating of a member of your family when they die. This is done to preserve their life, so to speak. By taking into yourself their physical substance, it is transformed to the spiritual and lives on.
This is almost the opposite of eating them because they are simply meat, not spirit.

Incidently, the orcs in my campaign are good (mostly) and they will probably practice this form of cannibalism, though their half-orc brethren will most likely eschew it.
Since the players won't run into any orcs for some time, my concept of them may change before then, and the cannibalism could fall by the wayside.

 

[Black Omega]

I retired him very shortly after realizing that, yeah.. while I can play an evil character and get away with it.. I didn't have nearly as much fun playing a villian, as I did playing a hero.

This is one thing I've seen at times with evil PC's. As a GM I make villains the good PC's can stop. Evil PC's don't usually make mistakes like that, they try as hard as possible not to get caught. It makes for a very different dynamic.

 

[Voadam]

The D&D diablo supplement has barbarians who can choose a class power of turning the hearts of freshly slain enemies into healing potions (I think that is what they do, it has been a while since I read their class abilities). This fits into the eat the heart of your enemies for power tradition.

Many humanoids are considered canibals. In the First edition DMG I think it made a point that lizard men made bad soldiers because they would tend to stop fighting to feast upon the dead. An ogre's stew pot is not an unlikely place to find a small humanoid. So if you have monster PCs expect it.

In my ravenloft game it is discouraged because cannibalism leads to ghouling, as pcs have discovered in their investigations.

 

[alsih2o]

no cannnibalism in our group, but we do have a half-orc barbarian who is likely to take a taste of any non-humanoid foe we drop, his last endeavor was a manticore steak!

 

[frankthedm]

The D&D diablo supplement has barbarians who can choose a class power of turning the hearts of freshly slain enemies into healing potions (I think that is what they do, it has been a while since I read their class abilities). This fits into the eat the heart of your enemies for power tradition.

That ability is what the computer version's Barbarian "potion find" was based on. The Paper and dice game was taken from Diablo 2's early incarnations so after the paper and dice books were made Diablo 2 changed it to run of the mill potions. i would of really prefered diffrent colored organs for the potions gotten in this manner in the computer game. Can you imagine what a barbarian's Belt would of been like? Red heart of Heath ,Blue brain of mana, Spleen of full rejuvination.

Hmm i wonder how to work that into a feat? Or maybe a prc........YUMMY!