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

[Fayredeth]

I am of the belief that a very large majority of humans are neutral, and very few people are actually good or evil. I would also say the same is true for your soldiers. Neutral soliers probably would go ahead and do a lot of bad stuff, because there wouldn't be much consequence to the soldiers and war has a tendency to make people less virtuous and clearheaded.

In a campaign world that I am codeveloping, we've thrown out your typical races, sparing humans. I'd like to potray them as neutral, just like humans, so you don't have "good" races, and you don't necessarily have "evil" races. In the real world, we have plenty of conflict with everyone being "neutral" humans, so in this world I would have the conflict between the races with no true "good" or "evil" side.

The races will be significantly different from each other, and this will make conflicts between them (which would probably be common) pretty nasty, as they don't see each other as something worth living. The pillage and plunder part will definately be up, but the raping part probably wouldn't, considering that it would be going outside their species. A good real world analogy would be a conflict between us and a bunch of monkeys. Would you go raping?

Now, intraracial conflicts, between two human domains, would probably be a lot tamer. With different races, there would be an us/them mindset, and all the humans would be under "us." So, humans vs. humans would be cleaner, but not too terribly much.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Depends on the campaign tone.

In a heroic tone in an army that the players are in? Nope.

In an army that the players are fighting against to showcase their vile ways? Maybe. Depends on how gritty the game needs to be.

In some ways, you may be underestimating D&D economics though. After all, a few magic items can provide most of what a small army needs to survive and the gold distribution is much higher in D&D. A 10th level fighter with gold to burn could probably pay a lot more gold to 1st level warriors than they'd see in a year watching the town gates.

 

[Gez]

Soldiers are not good people.

I can't remember who said that, but an officer to which someone presented an army by saying that the men were ready to die in combat replied "I don't want men ready to die, I want men ready to kill" or something like that.

And, in essence, that's the crux of it. Soldiers are people that must kill others or be killed.

IMC:

Lawful good armies tend to have good logistics and discipline, which slows them down a bit. They don't need to use requisition too often in allied cities, and while they can plunder taken enemy cities, raping and pillaging is small in scale -- the result of a few rogue elements, that can risk court-martialed in the worst case.

Chaotic good armies have lesser logistics in exchange for greater mobility. They use requisitions a lot more. Discipline is less kept and in enemy cities, war crimes are more frequent than with a lawful good army.

Chaotic evil armies plunder more than they requisition. Allied cities fear the arrival of troops (except as reinforcement when the city risks to be under siege in the close future), because those are bad boys that bring troubles. Troopers behave in thugish ways when not in service, doing the usual stealing and raping or, at best, starting mere bar brawls. They have poor logistics, and even when properly approvisioned, will prefer to loot what they need in order to keep what they have. To maybe sell it later...

Lawful evil armies have better logistics, but no compunction against requisitionning anything they need, the means being justified by the end. In captured cities, unless the commandment wants to keep the place (rather than destroying it for the example and to crush opposition), soldiers are let to "unwind" from discipline a bit. Tight control can't be kept at all time, otherwise you got rebellion in your own rank. That's why you need to allow period of "regulated anarchy" to act as safety valves (the original role of carnivals), and using the enemy, rather than your own cities, as the victim of this necessary measure is good planning.

Among the various races:
Humans rape, pillage and plunder like a bunch of medieval grunts.
Bugbears are usually elite shock troops for hobgoblin centurions, but when they're on their own, they behave as expected from CE soldiers... And they deserve their name of bugbears, or the use of bugbears to mean bugaboo.
Dwarves, even evil dwarves, are little on raping, are reluctant on destroying well-crafted buildings during the pillaging, but they have not such compunctions on the plundering part.
Elves have three very different cultures. The barbaric elves (CN) are rather guerilla fighters. they would not attack a city, as they don't want to even enter one. Raping and pillaging in thorps and hamlets is not impossible, though. The civilized elves (CG) try to avoid war if possible, resorting to it only for defense. They would be quite liberal with requisitions, though, as their mindset is often at odds with the concept of property. You really owns what you wear, all the rest is for whomever needs it. Finally, the decadent elves (CE) are monsters that enjoy cruelty. They rape, pillage and plunder even their own cities.
Gnolls seldom gather in number large enough to be an army, but when they do, and they are successful in taking a city, they rape/plunder/pillage, then light the city on fire, and throw the survivors in the flames to "cook them" because they are now hungry.
Gnomes find rape abhorrent, and don't like pillage. They may use requisition, but that's about all.
Goblins are nigh as bad as the decadent elves. As they resent their physical weakness, they enjoy particularly "avenging" themselves of their relative weakness on vainquished taller foes.
Halflings are like humans, but smaller. They like plundering even more, though.
Hobgoblins are the typical LE army. After the troops are relieved from their stress, the survivors are taken as slaves.
Ogres are, well, ogres. It's a rare occurance you get an ogre army, although they don't need to be as numerous as the smaller races, and you can expect plenty of raping, pillaging, and plundering from them. As well as eating, of course. Like bugbears, there's a reason their name is associated with a particular meaning.
Orcs are, well, orcs. The only reason an orc commander may try to limit the rape/plunder/pillage/burn part is because at this time, internecine quarrels increase the casualties far more than needed.

 

[Tonguez]

My setting is not medieval europe and the culture is more neolithic

There is a saying amongst my people which translates something like "In good times be good, in bad times be bad" and thats pretty much how I have armies behave. War is definately Bad times and so armies will pillage, plunder and occasionally rape (though rape is still considered abhorent in most 'good' cultures, exactly because it kills the spirit (and the spirit is viewed as the divine part of a person)

Of course the whole issue of provisions is taken care of IMC by the reality of cannibalism- all Barbarians imc are cannibals (rage is a blood frenzy) - so neutral armies and definately evil ones will collect the bodies of their slain enemies and eat them. Any slaves captured are also available as food (ie the food moves itself)

 

[the Jester]

Heh... mmadsen, when I saw the subject of the thread I assumed it was posted by SHARK without even checking... only when I actually started reading the thread did I realize my mistake!

Anyway, in regards to the subject of this thread, armies in my campaign do indeed rape, loot and pillage. Not all armies, and not all the soldiers in any given army; but the army has the right to the spoils of the city they take. More chaotic armies tend to more of this sort of behavior; but even a LG army can break discipline in the heat of the moment.

If you've ever been part of a large group of people and you know what it's like to fall into the hivemind sort of thing (where everyone in the crowd feeds off each other's excitement and energy), it's really easy to fall into a sort of 'group thinking' where everyone follows each other's lead like lemmings. Armies fall into this sort of thinking all the time, so when a bunch of soldiers start raping and killing civilians, the rest often follow suit unthinkingly.

To speak to the issue of rape, of course it's a horrible thing. So is killing- especially invading someone's home (dungeon) and killing them in order to take their stuff. So is sacrificing humans to demons. So is being able to kill with a word. >shrug< I don't take those out of my campaign either. (Don't misunderstand me- I don't mean to downplay the horrors of rape. But rape is but one of the myriad horrors of war.)

 

[Treebore]

I gloss over the raping in my campaigns, we read enough about that in the papers. Most players and myself, would rather avoid certain realities in a fantasy game. Rape is one of them. The dead bodies of the infants and children is another one of the things I avoid.

Certain things about reality are horrible to contemplate and i leave them out of my games, unless I can think of a meaningful moral story to make out of it. I have only done that twice in 19 years of gaming. As of now, I have no intentions of ever using those issues as story elements ever again.

Heck, even when i read the aforementioned books, i automatically skip over the ugly sections of the story. It is not something I want to think about when I am reading or playing something for the sake of escapism.

Soldiers are usually killed in relatively fair battle, victims are defenseless. The imaginary death of something or someone who dies in a more or less fair manner is OK with me. The unfair slaughter and demoralization of innocents is something that I will intentionally avoid in any work of fiction. I see and hear far more of it than I want too in real life.

 

[dulsin]

Armies of good-aligned countries seldom do.

Often, yes, but it depends on the army.

Yes. How else could they be supported? That's just a fact of life. Sun Tzu and all that.

When an evil army does it, it is called Plundering.

When a good army does it, they call it Foraging.

Pretty good Walter. You managed to forage 7 cows and the farmers daughter. You might make Sergant.

I think the final tally on wether a army is good or evil isn't decided on if the soldiers stripped the countryside and raped. It is decided on, did any of the men be punished for the rape and were any of the villiagers left alive after the army was gone.

 

[Endur]

Armies actually consists of large numbers of different types of troops.

Some troops are in organized formations and some troops are scouts that are not in formation.

Organized formations march from place to place. They never get the opportunity to rape, pillage, and plunder, except after a siege.

Loose formations include scouts, foragers, etc. They are the troops that will take goods from a farm or a homestead. They do the majority of the pillage and the plunder. Its possible they might commit rape, but they are in more interested in scouting or foraging.

After a siege, though, its typical for the victorious medieval army to spend several days raping, pillaging, and plundering the defeated city. Then the regular troops are rounded up into formation again.

Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits would never engage in such things, although they might plunder a defeated enemy.

Do armies in your world pillage and plunder wherever they go? If not, what supports them?

 

[Gez]

If it were a shark topic, the thread title would have been all caps, and got three !!! at the end.

 

[megamania]

Yes but I leave that up to the players to decide. I don't really like to make that the center of the story. It's just not me.