Do armies in your campaign go around raping, pillaging, and plundering?

[MerakSpielman]

Back in medevil times, rape was probably much more common than it is now. Largely, women were considered property more than they were considered people. I think the Bible records an old law whereby if one man raped another man's daughter, he had to pay him a few dinars for the loss. No compensation for the daughter, or even recognition of her ordeal or ongoing pain.

Also, back then when you were a cruel person with a desire to cause pain, you didn't become a criminal - you became a soldier. Even if your army had specific rules against pillage and rape (which was rare) you'd get little more than a warning if you killed and raped a few innocents in every village you plundered.

Wars were not faught for moral reasons for most of history. It was usually something economic. There were no "good armies" and "bad armies." Once they got on the field, they all acted more or less the same (with the notible exception of extremely disciplined armies, like the Romans, but those are in the tiniest of majorities).

Even in our own United States, until very recently it was extremely difficult to convict a man of rape. There had to be witnesses. The victim had to prove beyond a doubt that she fought the man tooth and claw for every instant of the rape. Her reputation would be dragged through the dirt - every immoral thing she'd ever willingly done would be dragged up as evidence that she must have wanted it. To some degree this still happens.

In many parts of the world rape is not considered a crime. It's just something men do for fun. They brag about it openly.

Rape is no small thing. Women have had to go through a lot over the millenia, and there's no getting around that.

That said, I don't know that a focus on the horrors of rape is what I want from my D&D games. I know ignoring it isn't the solution for a progressive society, but shoving it into the background of a D&D game doesn't mean I don't think it's a major issue in real life.

 

[drothgery]

Nope they were two neutral nations trying to find a balance between defeat and victory

Also I personally don't think that mass infantry would be the stock in DnD warfare. Instead small scale elite skirmish forces (aka parties of adventurers) will be the dominant force

... mostly because in a D&D world, parties of high-level adventurers can destroy armies of low-level characters without much difficulty.

 

[kigmatzomat]

First, I am of the opinion that very large, mostly infantry, armies would probably be the dominant military force.
....
I'd say that the same is probably true for D&D settings. Yes, there is battlefield magic, but that's what the other guy's battle magicians are there to neutralize. In the end, it's grunt against grunt--a nasty, unpleasant, unhappy business.

Not sure I agree entirely. Yes, the core military will be infantry. They are cheap and plentiful and in a world without a significant separation between military & police, infantry will be ubiquitous. Infantry will always be used to control the ground.

Initial encounters will be dominated by Adventurers (special forces/High level PC classes) that make forays on both sides of the line to wreak as much havoc as possible. If they can destroy key resources (assassinate commanders & casters or anhiliate supplies), the infantry will be moot.

Now luck will eventually run out for all but the most powerful characters on both sides as the infantry finally mobs them or happens to have one of the few high-power weapons (a.k.a. botched save vs. Hold person) that can hurt them. Like the Nazi's few super-tanks and jet fighters, once the adventurers are gone it becomes a matter of manpower. Brutal, slugging it out, manpower. But the early battles will be spectacular and terrifying to behold.

As for ordinary plunder and pillage, as late as the American Revolution, common soldiers would protest if an officer restrained them from pillaging.

The amount and type of plundering, pillaging, and raping depended on the leadership.

IIRC, Roman/Greek armies usually resulted in the generals becoming local governors over their conquered lands. Their soldiers were rewarded with land or riches from the outed nobility's coffers. While the commoners were taxed, they were usually left alone.

More barbarian tactics expected individuals to get what loot they could. Strong clans could take over areas and become the lords; less organized groups whould take what they could carry.

Some generals would hang all soldiers who committed unsanctioned violence; incidents of mayhem were far less common but these were also generals that tended to make sure their soldiers were compensated reliably other ways to avoid unrest in the ranks.

Some of those same leaders would also threaten an opponent with lifting the sanction: "Open your gates or when we do get in I will give my army 3 days to do as they will without fear of repurcussions." It was the "Hiroshima" logic of its day. Performing one incredibly brutal act that would traumatize the region while offering a reasonable alternative. Having a record of keeping their end of the bargain helped those generals' reputations.

 

[frankthedm]

Kills the soul... o_0, nah those are death spells, i think it best falls under phys. and psych. torture.

Humans; raping, pillaging, and plundering? on the most part yeah. some are above those sorts of things, but if you don't let the troops entertain themselves moral may drop. A Good hearted commander may find human troops instructed not to enjoy the spoils of war may find the lower bulk of his unit more of a risk than normal.

Dwarves: Greedy, but not big on raping due to low libido. They probably think it is a waste of dwarfpower too. They often wonder why some citys of humans keep thier females so woefully untrained with weapons.

Elves: most purged from my world, typicly feltorganized armies a waste of effort and raping a humanoid as lowly as bestiality and less clean. Dark/drow/Evil elves are creativly cruel in such matters.

Orcs: Hell yes with a double helping of the rape.

Gnolls: thier victims who are killed first are the lucky ones.

 

[Orius]

I'll add that overall alignment considerations apply here.

As people said above, lawful armies are less likely to rape, loot, and pillage because they're better supplied and organized. That includes rape, because some of the better equipped armies will bring along camp followers to take care of the soldiers' urges.

Also lawful armies may be less likely to loot and pillage, because rich farmland, cities, and stuff like that would be considered valuable resources to be captured, rather than destroyed. If the lawful army is likely trying to expand the dominion of its parent nation, capturing and using resources over the long run has more strategic value than taking what you can and destroying what you can't. Even lawful evil armies will do that, but of course, they're more likely to enslave the native population or otherwise subjugate them. A lawful army may also crack down on rapes, because that sort of thing tends to outrage the conquered, and cause uprisings. Disipline is also an issue, because some soldiers might end up fighting over women and loot, and a lawful army will likely try to avoid that.
Now if the lawful army is out there to destroy the enemy instead of simply conquering it, yes there will be plenty of raping, looting and pillaging, but there's probbly going to be more organization of it.

Good and evil to some extent play a role as well. An evil army isn't going to have any moral compunctions about their actions, whereas a good army would. But I would say most armies would likely fall into a largly neutral area with lots of shades of grey, especially in wars that involves political cuases and such. Of course we're talking D&D here, so yeah, there's confrontaions of good versus evil as well.

 

[Wombat]

To quote Henry V (the king, not the play): "A war without arson is like a sausage without mustard."

Draw your own conclusions from that

But, yes, armies in my games rape, pillage, murder, pull cons and protection rackets, and all the other things that standard medieval armies did. Since I have no alignment, per se, in my games, that doesn't even factor in. Usually commanders had a very hard time (right up through the 18th century) if a "No Plunder" order was given.

Sorta hard to work out of the system, so I just leave it in the games.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

A bushel of your enemy's wheat is equal to ten of your bushels Sun-tzu was so wise.

I've read Romance of the Three Kingdoms - great book. Soldiers routinely plundered and raped, but it usually depended on the general. They were jerk generals on the "good guy's" side (Zhang Fei, killer of several families, I'm looking at you) and virtuous people on the "bad guy's" side (I think Yu Jin fit this category, but don't quote me on that).

Cities would get flooded, all the rich people would be put to death (after "donating" their wealth), and the money and ladies would be "shared amongst the soldiers".

The Prime Minister took his opponent Jia Xu's aunt as a spoil of war in one chapter. He told her that he let Jia Xu survive because of her. If it weren't for her he would have killed Jia Xu "root and branch" which is a shorter way of saying "sleep with me or I kill you and your entire family ... and I've got the power and personality to do so without a second though."

Man those dictators could be evil!

Even worse, everyone was paranoid and had a massive ego. Getting people to kill off their own commanders was so easy.

 

[med stud]

IMC:

Elves dont go on offensive wars. Their homelands are so well protected that they dont have the need to use preemptive strikes and they have no interrest in conquest.

The dwarves fight their wars underground against the blackbloods (orcs, goblinoids, ogres and trolls) and those wars are about extermination. So no raping, but pillaging and going Mongolian black earth on the blackbloods.

The blackbloods pillage, rape and enslave and they do much of all three. They treat their slaves the way the prisoners in GULAG were treated so they dont last for long. As blackbloods hate to work, they soon attack again for new slaves.

The customs of humans vary much with culture and leaders. Barbarian cultures or "civilized" cultures doing raids pillage, kill, rape and burn whenever possible. This is the usual way of doing it; sometimes they only pillage or burn, but mostly it goes like that.
In wars in the civilized lands it may vary. Many generals use a organised form of pillaging where they put heavy "taxes" on the locals but dont steal all the food they can get, for example. This makes sure (often) that the locals dont starve or run away from their homes and so makes it possible for an army to stay longer in an area then it would otherwise be possible. If the army needs it though, they will starve the local population. This is for food.
Pillaging for valuables is another matter. Generally it is seen as a payment for the soldiers (and officers) and it is seldom a leader would stop his men from looting. The exceptions would be if a leader in exile returns to his homelands to take them back; in that case, the leader wants the goodwill of his former subjects and tries to avoid looting.
Rape, though, is something that is done in three circumstances; 1) the leader wants to break the local population and "rewarding" the soldiers at the same time. 2) The leader dont care about the population and just lets the soldiers do what they want. 3) The leader has a weak control of his soldiers and arent able to stop them.
The moral of the individual leader is an important part of the loot, rape and burn routine; some leaders consider themselves men of moral standing and therefore impose strict rules on their soldiers. Others are bothered of the faith of their souls and therefore impose strict rules.

If someone would rape, loot or burn despite the order of a leader the punishment involves a sufficiently high tree and some rope; an army of thousands of men are dangerous to the leader as well to his enemies and if he doesnt uphold strict discipline his days are counted.

 

[Dogbrain]

I think its a mistake to base the likely outcome by any single period in history. Fantasy setting have a wide variety of conditions that did not exist IRL, and to assume that all such settings will follow the course of medieval history would be folly.

A historical counterexample that sticks out in my mind was that of Mao in China.

Mao was probably the most modern general active in that location at that time.

 

[Dogbrain]

Mass infantry is defeated by light cavalry in most cases

Oh, yeah, right.

The Swiss mass infantry slaughtered all cavalry, light and heavy.
The light cavalry at Balaclava were slaughtered to a man by massed infantry (charge of the light brigade).
Light cavalry has never won a major battle against steady professional heavy infantry or equivalent. Never. Not once in all of history.

I challenge you to produce a single instance to the contrary.

Remember, you said LIGHT CAVALRY. That does NOT include hobilars (which includes US cavalry). It does NOT include heavily armed firearm cavalry (who are actually hussars, dragoons, etc). If you say "light cavalry", I hold you to your claim of proper light cavalry.

No knights--that's heavy cav.
No cataphracts--even heavier.
No hussars, dragoons, or other mounted heavy shock troops.

Likewise, if infantry was so utterly and totally inferior, why did Wellington's infantry destroy Napoleon's cavalry. Yes, I know why--but YOU claimed that cavalry is 100% totally superior to "massed infantry". Therefore, according to you, Mahon's charge succeeded and Napoleon won Waterloo. Funny, I don't think that's what happened.

Likewise, if cavalry is 100% the end-all and be-all against massed infantry, why were the Swiss Pike so feared by cavalry?