d&d and terrorism

[Munin]

In hindsight I should have been a little more specific in my definition of 'terrorist'. I was thinking of the modern stereotype. I know it's nothing new, but it is a particular scourge of the 20th and 21st century.

It is the sensational aspect of this form of violence that grabs my attention (which is exactly what it's supposed to do, I suppose). Hence, making things go Boom in as horrific a fashion as possible is the idea here. I've always found the suicide bomber type to be particularly terrifying to me. I tend to throw them up against my group in the very near future. Not directly, at least, not at first, but they will soon be in a metropolis that is about to experience a wave of terrorism my campaign world has never seen before.

I know the idea of tying in fantasy with something so close to home may rub some folks the wrong way, but it helps me to deal with the reality of it, if that makes any sense.

By golly, I think I've just come up with the seed for my next campaign!

Glad I could help!

Nazareth was not a town back then, it didn't exist yet

Actually, it did exist. Nazareth was situated in the low mountains just North of the Valley of Jezreel and approximately halfway between the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Coast. That would make it about 60 miles North of Jerusalem, or a three day walk. Most modern day scholar types identify it with En Nasira (Nazerat) in Galilee. The name means 'Sprout-Town' or some such.
Jesus couldn't have been a Nazirite (and thus no long-haired hippie Jesus, alas), that would have been more John the Baptist’s cup of tea.

Did I just hijack my own thread?

 

[DaveStebbins]

In an adventure I wrote once, I had a back story which included a D&D equivalent of suicide bombers. They were three commoners, each armed with a necklace of fireballs, who detonated them at the height of a local festival. A necklace with a single 5d6 fireball would cost 375 gp and 30 xp to make, and could be used by anyone. Double the costs and you've got a necklace with a single 10d6 fireball.

The act itself was just backstory, but it really drew the players in. These enemies were truly Evil (and quite possibly crazy to boot), and deserved the smack-down the players planned to bring to them. As part of a hook, it worked very well.

 

[Alzrius]

I think some of the previous posters were right to mention that, at lower levels, its going to be hard for a potential terrorist to achieve results that are literally explosive.

Using magic as a means to achieve the same effect as modern bombs is ultimately going to require either money (to purchase magic items) or talent (to have the necessary skills and/or spells) to pull off. As Henry noted, even with the proper magic items, a lower-level character just isn't going to be able to effectively use them that often.

Your best results for having terrorists in your campaign that simulate modern terrorists would probably be as follows: They should belong to some sort of organization, to help explain where the funding is coming from. The heads of the organization (or at least mid-ranks) should have some spellcasters who can create magic items that have fireball-like effects, and possibly cheap magic-items (potions would be best) that grant skill roll-bonuses for the inevitable Use Magic Device checks for the suicide bombers who use them, to make sure that they can activate the magic item correctly. It'd also be good if they had access, or could make, large quantities of smoke powder.

 

[Nisarg]

Actually, it did exist. Nazareth was situated in the low mountains just North of the Valley of Jezreel and approximately halfway between the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean Coast. That would make it about 60 miles North of Jerusalem, or a three day walk. Most modern day scholar types identify it with En Nasira (Nazerat) in Galilee. The name means 'Sprout-Town' or some such.
Jesus couldn't have been a Nazirite (and thus no long-haired hippie Jesus, alas), that would have been more John the Baptist’s cup of tea.

Did I just hijack my own thread?

Sorry, aparently you did...All archeological evidence points to the fact that Nazareth was not a town until 150CE, when it was founded by Jewish priests fleeing the Hadriatic wars. It wasn't known as "nazareth" until three centuries later, when catholic authorities "discovered" that this town must have been Jesus' hometown (this after not being able to find Nazareth on any maps).

There are several possibilities, as to the name "nazarene".. it could have been that Jesus was a member of the Nazorean sect, who later abandoned its core tenets in favour of a more moderate philosophy. It also could have indictated the term Nassorene, a hellenized form of the Hebrew "nachash" (literally "the serpent"), which may in turn have been either a reference to some kind of serpentine quality (he did once say that people should be 'wise as serpents'), or it could have meant he was known as a sorcerer or magician.

For reference regarding these facts, please see:

Robert Eisenman, "The dead sea scrolls and the first christians"
Robert Eisenman, "James the brother of Jesus"
Stephen Flowers, "Hermetic Magic"
Robert Funk & the Jesus Seminar, "The Five Gospels"

Those are all relatively readable for the layperson.

Nisarg
Religious History university professor, ex-assistant to the Jesus Seminar (the foremost legitimate academic authority on early christianity in the English-speaking world)

 

[Chimera]

This thread finally gave me a use for those potions of fireball

In my last campaign, the bad guys (intent on wiping out the human scum near their territory) captured and mind-controlled humans, then set them loose with potions of fireball. All they had to do was walk into town and over to a market stall or group of people and shatter the thing. Boom.

This tactic had been extremely effective for a month or so when the PCs came upon a big group of 60(!) of these suicide bombers headed towards a small village. Would have completely wiped it out. Took them a while to figure out what was going on. After all, it's just a group of people intent on going to this village.

They managed to get the last of them about 1 mile from the village. One of the PCs was killed by a considerable chain reaction of exploding fireball potions and subsequently raised.

Afterwards, the party walked into a larger town with a collection of about 20 fireball potions. The Innkeeper was quite alarmed when they came in and tried to sell them to the other patrons! ("WHAT??? Get those bloody things out of my Inn before you kill us all!!!")

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Rel, Yoink! A great idea - I was looking for some things to challenge a group of keep owning PCs.

Gee, and I had always thought you were celebrating the fact that he was discovered and stopped!

That's what everyone else does. Splitters.


When I was little, my uncle told me it was a celebration of a brave man trying to kill the government. I believed him.

While they may burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, they also set off a lot of fireworks... all those explosives make me think people wish he'd suceeded.

 

[Tonguez]

Gee, and I had always thought you were celebrating the fact that he was discovered and stopped!

Yep Guy Fawkes celebrates the deeds of a terrorist and his eventual demise - one of those strange quirks of British psyche where it is expected that the commoners will hate the government and loathe the nobles and celebrate that as part of their proudtradition...

 

[Guilt Puppy]

A quick definition of terrorism- Any politically or economically motivated action that makes a spectacle out of the death of a target.

I just want to point out that that capital punishment, anti-abortion rallies, and bullfighting can all be construed as terrorism by this definition.

1. The target is not a military target. [...]
2. The attack is done to promote fear and terror over a large number of people. [...]
3. The attack is publicized. [...]

This definition is a bit more robust, but I'd like to point out that by its standards, the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were more definitely terrorist actions than the attacks of 9/11. (Specifically, in that criteria 2 & 3 are equally satisfied, whereas criterion 1 is "more true" in the case of the atomic bomb... That is to say, a greater percentage of what was destroyed in Hiroshima & Nagasaki was "non-military" -- the Pentagon was clearly a military target on 9/11, and the World Trade Center may qualify as "a facility that makes war possible", certainly moreso than the schools, hospitals, et cetera destroyed in 1946.)

Now, I'm not going to argue whether or not these definitions really have "problems," per se -- I think they're both about as good as any you'll find for terrorism. It's a term that, by its nature, cannot be divorced from a political, or at least ethical context. I would say adding a "4. The attack is against the status quo" would bring Patlin's definition pretty close to the way the term is commonly used today (I'm of the viewpoint, linguistically, that the popular definition is inherently the correct definition, but it's a case to be argued.)

With that in mind, it becomes a bit easier to incorporate into the game... Naturally most DMs will want to avoid events which seem to parody modern day terrorism (read: kobolds figuring out how to explode, then running into your house and doing it), and instead try to find something which more resembles its principles. (read: kobolds sabotaging a major, long-awaited mining operation in a nearby Dwarven settlement, in an effort to pressure them to stop hording all the underground food sources.)

It doesn't mean you have to become a moral relativist about it -- nine times out of ten, what we disparage as terrorism is pretty damn worthy of disparagement. But you can play with the fact that the terrorists aren't quite as savage as they're made out to be, and the government isn't quite as Lawful Good as it tries to make itself seem... Oftentimes, in games, I've found that marginal differences of opinion are a lot more interesting than drastic ones (the "all orcs could be exterminated" guy can argue for a lot longer with the "orcs should be disarmed and pushed out of human lands" guy than he can with the "orcs should be respected and cherished, let's hug them" guy... polar opposites don't have any common ground to frame an argument within.)

Of course, you can go whole hog with the weird moral implications if you really want to. Say the party is trying to overthrow an Evil Empire -- four people trying to make decisions for a whole kingdom? Easy to turn popular opinion against them. Publicity doesn't have the same effect, but word does travel (I generally take the "no, there isn't a crystal ball in every city" approach to news, so while it's faster than medieval news, it still lags with the time it takes to travel or send fairly mundane or at least light-magic messages...)... Heck, if you do it right, the PCs can be trying to outrun the very publicity they're being accused of seeking out

Anyway, it's an interesting topic, by no means too taboo (it would have been, in the US at least, in late 2001 and most of 2002... now, with under thirty hours left until the three-year mark, I think we're more comfortable with it), so why not use it? Let's face it, it's part of our collective consciousness these days... Much like the "Good Kingdom / Bad Kingdom" dichotomy was big during the Cold War. There's nothing wrong with gaming within a culture -- trying to insulate yourself too much from it is just bound to result in, well, escapist weirdness which can often be fun but is rarely truly involving.

 

[Tonguez]

Gee, and I had always thought you were celebrating the fact that he was discovered and stopped!

Yep Guy Fawkes celebrates the deeds of a terrorist and his eventual demise - one of those strange quirks of British psyche where it is expected that the commoners will hate the government and loathe the nobles and celebrate that as part of their proud tradition...

 

[Joker]

Again, I think we need to clarify what "terrorism" means, because a lot of terribly cruel things aren't terrorism: total war (firebombing Dresden, A-bombing Hiroshima) isn't terrorism; chemical warfare (poison gas) and biological warfare (catapulting diseased animals over the wall) aren't necessarily terrorism; wanton cruelty (torturing prisoners) isn't terrorism; mass extermination (killing everyone in a city that fights rather than surrender) isn't terrorism; even guerrilla warfare (attacking soldiers with "irregular units") isn't terrorism.

Actually, according the current US regime, the indiscriminant killing of civilians would constitute terrorism. So firebombing Dresden and A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki would also constitute terrorism. Just because a sovereign state is doing it doesn't mean it's less of a terrorist act.

In our campaign we (as an "evil" party) are going to initiate a campaign of terror against civilian populations to undermine the authority of a church. We haven't yet discussed the methods in detail but I doubt it will involve suicede skeletons.

Though it would have a very unnerving effect. Probably moreso than the anti-tank dogs the Russians used in Stalingrad.