Piracy And Other Malfeasance

[Argyle King]

There have been a lot of comments on how much evil is too evil.

What about the other side of the spectrum?

How little evil is -for you- not evil enough for an antagonist?

 

[Reynard]

Not to mention, one nation's privateer is the victim's bold pirate...

Which said, most privateers were also part-time pirates proper. With all the dark shades of grey that have kept me from running a privateer campaign... it's too slippery a slope.

Sanction has literally no bearing on whether the activities are evil. Slavery has been sanctioned many times throughout history. Is it not evil?

 

[aramis erak]

There have been a lot of comments on how much evil is too evil.

What about the other side of the spectrum?

How little evil is -for you- not evil enough for an antagonist?

Good men can make bad choices that hurt many others.
Some, it's habitual... some not.
I've often had the bad guys be fully justified in their own minds; sometimes even sympathetic. And sometimes, even in the right.

I don't need the opponent to be evil. Especially not in my favored settings of Dune, L5R, Star Trek...

Star Wars is a series of morality plays, too...

If I'm running D&D or T&T, yeah, most of the opponents will be evil.

 

[MGibster]

Not to mention, one nation's privateer is the victim's bold pirate...

I think most societies have differentiated between how you're expected to treat outsiders and how you're expected to treat others in your group. There's a scene in the Iliad where Hector returns from battle and spends some time with his infant son Astyanax on the walls of the city. Hector voices his fears the Acheans will destroy his city, kill his son, and force his wife to work the loom in another man's home (both literally and figuratively I think). He also has hope for his son'd future, that he will grow up to be an even mightier warrior than even Hector himself. i.e. He wants Astyanax to grow up, destroy other cities, kill the sons of other men, and force their wives and daughters to work the loom in his home.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How do you -- if you do at all -- square protagonists who would be the villains in a different genre? What do you do with the crimes they commit? Are all your criminal heroes "thieves with hearts of gold" like Han Solo, or do you indulge in the grittier side of these stories? And if your "heroes" are rough, how do you make the villains stand out?

The biggest thing for me is to just not run the game in a way that rewards “profit motive”. Every campaign I run has one or more premise that inspires PCs that care about things, feel the call to heroism, and go do something about it.

If the power groups in the game are oppressive, then violent revolt is morally right in the face of that, so when that is the case, there’s nothing to square unless a PC starts hurting innocent people.

Like Han Solo wasn’t any less a good guy when he shot Greedo first. Greedo was there to either kill him or take him to be killed or enslaved. You shoot that guy before he can make his move. Kenobi’s dismemberment of the guy picking a fight is harder to justify, but he was threatening Luke’s life and we have no reason to doubt he’d follow through.

It should be noted that there were historically also plenty of pirates who were decent people. Just because a person lives a life of crime, does not make them a villain.

Right. Between the escaped slave pirates and the people who mutinied against violent psychopath captains and people who committed acts of piracy but weren’t committing atrocities, there’s a lot of room to play good people living bad lives, doing their best to do right by the people they care about. (Which is still true of criminals in general, but this thread gets pretty close to a depth of ethics discussion that can get problematic fast)

And under certain conditions, pirates could even commit their acts of piracy "legally" on behalf of a nation.

I've ran a pirate campaign for many years. The first thing I told my players as they were rolling their characters was: You may be pirates, but at the end of the day, you are also heroes. Not perfect people, but generally the good guys. Like Han Solo; a smuggler, swindler, gambler, scoundrel. But when it really matters, he does the right thing.

This.

It is pretty easy to come off looking like Han Solo when the major antagonist is up for murdering entire planets. Shooting up a few minions isn't a big deal if you are saving the galaxy in the process.

I’d say shooting up a few minions that are trying to kill you or take you to be killed or enslaved or that are space fascist foot soldiers, just isn’t ethically a big deal.

 

[Reynard]

The biggest thing for me is to just not run the game in a way that rewards “profit motive”. Every campaign I run has one or more premise that inspires PCs that care about things, feel the call to heroism, and go do something about it.

I don't think this is the great moral solution you think it is. You forcing PCs to act within an arbitrary set of acceptable responses is just railroading by another name.

 

[aramis erak]

Sanction has literally no bearing on whether the activities are evil. Slavery has been sanctioned many times throughout history. Is it not evil?

Privateering is a very different thing from slavery in it's purposes and processes. The direct comparison of the two is disingenuous and a classic fallacy of false comparison.

 

[Reynard]

Privateering is a very different thing from slavery in it's purposes and processes. The direct comparison of the two is disingenuous and a classic fallacy of false comparison.

naughty word. Privateers used their "freedom" to murder, pillage and rape just as much as pirates. To believe otherwise is to have a completely fantastical view of history. It is legitimately insulting for you to suggest that privateers treated their victims with kid gloves. They were quite literally pirates with immunity to prosecution.

 

[Umbran]

I’d say shooting up a few minions that are trying to kill you or take you to be killed or enslaved

Well, it depends on why they want to kill you. Like, if you are threatening innocent civilians, then the minions trying to kill you might have a point.

or that are space fascist foot soldiers, just isn’t ethically a big deal.

(emphasis mine) Well, yes, exactly. That's part of making the antagonist worse.

You forcing PCs to act within an arbitrary set of acceptable responses is just railroading by another name.

Hey. Please don't mis-state the point, especially hyperbolically. It is one of the least constructive things you can do here.

He said he had, "one or more premise that inspires". Last I checked, inspiring and forcing are not the same thing.

 

[Umbran]

naughty word.

Language.