Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Inca

[Carnifex]

In the real world, human sacrifice made by cultures like these is seen as a pretty vile thing, since while they may have thought that their sacrifices were stoppin the world from ending (or whatever bad thing from happening), we know that this isn't the case.

But what about a fantasy setting where the world really will end if the sacrifices aren't made, and with a similar situation where many of the sacrifices are volunteers in one fashion or another. Is this to be seen as evil too? I don't believe so.

"Yeah Bob, I kill helpless people with a knife on an altar. But if I didn't, you don't want to know what the consequences would be."

 

[fusangite]

Elder-Basilisk says

Well that makes a lot more sense then. I agree with you that D&D uses good and evil as a mechanic for making a lot of myths and stories work in the context of the game. However, I don't think that D&D dissociates good and evil from the real-world meanings of the words.

On an instructional level, D&D does clearly couple good and evil with right and wrong. However, on a mechanical level, it doesn't. Thus, when we decouple good and evil from right and wrong, there are no implications to the game mechanics.

(And, since most D&D players have vaguely modern notions of the meanings of those words and apply them to D&D societies, D&D societies tend to end up looking like modern "enlightened" societies with some ancient window dressing).

I agree. I find this a colossal headache. I'm exhausted by people's constant efforts to turn medieval principalities into modern liberal-democratic states.

What you're suggesting is dissociating good and evil from our (the players' and DM's) understanding of their meaning and attaching a pseudo-Aztec meaning to them. I'm not certain that's possible or desirable. Despite relativist claims to the contrary, good and evil--especially evil--are pretty securely ensconced in our language as objective terms.

But when I do games in medieval settings, people do, to some degree, embrace values outside their culture in order to play. People do suspend their judgements about slavery, despotism and torture far more easily than I even want them too, often, as long as I give them a well-documented culture. Often, I expect the characters to become disgusted at certain point by such practices and yet, because I give them a functioning society of people with pre-modern values, they adapt its values with less effort than one would expect.

Consequently, I think that doing as you suggest would probably result in more confusion and misunderstanding than it's worth.

That might be generally true; I was just suggesting what would work if I were doing it -- I guess some gaming groups might not adjust to it very well.

It's one thing to acknowledge that the Mexica thought human sacrifice to be good. It's another entirely to call it [good] myself--or to try and adopt view of good in the game that allows for it even though my real views don't.

My players so consistently choose the values of their character's society over their own values, I guess I didn't realize the magnitude of the problem you describe. But now that it's been clarified to me, I can't really disagree with you.

In that context, I think it would be easier to jettison the good-evil axis of D&D alignments (which seem to be quite strongly based on an act-ethic) and, instead begin with a little discussion of how good people (people even we moderns would tend to think of as good) might participate in Aztec society. Alternately, once could try to switch D&D's good-evil axis to accomodate a virtue-ethic. Moral value would be located in people rather than in actions and the ethics would be virtue based (courage, justice, wisdom, piety, moderation, etc.=good; cowardice, injustice, foolishness, impiety, immoderation, etc=bad). The alignment based spells, might be shoehorned into that schema (although I doubt they would then serve their purpose well) or simply converted into (The gods' Protection (Prot evil), Magic Circle against spirits/magic (evil), Holy Smite (effects enemies), etc).

Why not just use a game system designed for such things -- 3E may be good but it's not actually good enough to justify extensive rule changes rather than throwing it out in favour of a better system.

 

[RingXero]

Speaking of sacrifices,

Does anyone remember the name of the civilization that pre-dated the Incan, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec and Aztec? I remember watching a history/discovery channel show on them once, and man, where they sick.

As soon as I saw that I made notes on creating it for my campaign, but the notes are gone now.

Skinning and deboning while the person is still alive. Massive multiple sacrifices, 10-20 at a time. The initial thoughts of the civilization where that they worshipped three gods, two male one female, but then they recenlty uncovered the remains of these people with the paraphanalia of those three individuals in the wall paintings.


anyway, back to searching google.

EDIT: got it the 'Moche' Indians. sick buggers
a basic site
it doesn't have the newer info/finds that the program had though.


RX

 

[Kichwas]

What if you spun it that only the elderly were sacrificed?

Like Logun's Run.

Anyone else remember that movie?

I think there was something similar in Brave New World as well. It's been 18 years since I read that though.

 

[Kichwas]

Skinning and deboning while the person is still alive.

The Iroqoi and Huron used to skin each other alive. About the only people they didn't skin much were the French - the only Europeans to make mostly peaceful mutually benificial relations with the Natives.

Never heard of the Moche before, if the theories on sacrifice are true then the scary thing is that those people are probably among my ancestors.

However, I looked over the site you linked to and it noted that there are alternate theories behind all the artwork that some are using to argue for the presence of human sacrifice:
http://members.tripod.com/~Moche/Moche_Rel.html#Human Sacrifice

 

[Aaron2]

While reading this thread I kept wondering why no one brings up the Neutral angle. If something isn't good, it doesn't automatically become evil. Human sacrifices to save the world (as well as any of the various kill one to save another scenarios) are neutral events. Any god that demands blood to keep from destroying the world is, at best, Neutral. As long as the guy doing the sacrifice isn't enjoying himself or the god doesn't demand blood just for grins (forex: he needs the soul energy to use his divine powers) then it isn't evil. In most campaign worlds, big time nature gods are Neutral anyway so this fits in with already.

I don't think it would be much of a stretch for players to play in a base-neutral culture.

Back to the topic, I heard one historian theorise that the huge cities in Maya times were supported mainly by vast corn crops and often lacked the necessary protein to survive. Thus the sacrifices were eaten as a way to allow the main body of the population to survive. If this were true, the "sacrifice to save the world" scenario could actually be true; this might take some of the sting off of living there.

These are a few of my favorite topics.

Aaron

 

[Kichwas]

The problem with the protein theory is that beans and corn are both native to that region -and when combined they form a complete protien.

I'm starting to wonder if this thread could explain why me and my father (who's the half-Incan) took to vegitarianism naturally... I'm told that as a baby I used to spit out meats, and while my mother was pregnant she had constant cravings for granola bars.

Of course we're a bit south for this region, and the place today is a mecca for beef and pork eaters thanks to Spanish Rancheros.

I've heard the Aztec hailed from the north -which could mean anywhere from Alaska to five miles our of Mexico city - and brought their religion with them. If they had come from perhaps the great plains then a lack of protien was certainly not a part of their ancestral tradition.

 

[Benben]

Skinning and deboning while the person is still alive.

The festival of Xipe Totec did this too.

This page indicates that they are dead first, but I've heard of other accounts:
http://home.freeuk.com/elloughton13/xipe.htm

 

[Aaron2]

I'm starting to wonder if this thread could explain why me and my father (who's the half-Incan) took to vegitarianism naturally.

Well, the Inca never performed human sacrifice on the level the Aztec did, nor did they make the famous arm&leg stew. The Inca had the llama which they could not only eat and milk, but they could use to transport the abundant fish to inland regions. The only animals the Aztec had were dogs and guinea pigs.

It doesn't matter if modern nutritional science can develop a valid diet free of all animal protein, its certainly a plausible enough explanation to float a fantasy campaign.


Aaron

 

[Kichwas]

Not a quesiton of modern nutritional science.

All you have to do is eat beans and corn and you've filled out your protien needs.

All my life I've been hearing people say vegitarians need to do this or that, take special care here or there, and know all this or that nutritional science. But I just eat whatever doesn't run away and I do just fine.

Buddhist monks have been doing it for 2500 years. Most of the world has historically had very low protien diets - meats were for the wealthy, fishermen, and Eskimos.