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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guilt Puppy" data-source="post: 1750317" data-attributes="member: 6521">I just want to point out that that capital punishment, anti-abortion rallies, and bullfighting can all be construed as terrorism by this definition.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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />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.</blockquote>

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