Piracy And Other Malfeasance

[payn]

I mean, how many of us like to think we're good guys but work for a mega-corp or government that's probably doing something awful? (Double-crosses in the form of layoffs or tax-cuts only for the wealthier than us and service cuts for us?)

IDK, those things are not great, but they are not evil either. Im assuming evil factions hiring a merc to fight for them is a bit different than working as project manager for microsoft or the IRS.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that it is interesting that the moral shift for most people seems to be effectively "make the bad guys worse."

Not everyone is on board with the PCs being assumed as heroes. The game has a lengthy tradition of that not being the case as much as it does otherwise.

 

[Cadence]

IDK, those things are not great, but they are not evil either. Im assuming evil factions hiring a merc to fight for them is a bit different than working as project manager for microsoft or the IRS.

I guess we hope so anyway! ;-)

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that it is interesting that the moral shift for most people seems to be effectively "make the bad guys worse."

Well, at a certain point with banditry and its kin, unless you're doing a Merry Men situation, there's only so good the heroes are going to be; even at they're best they're still thieves who will kill people in doing so. At that point the best you're going to manage is characters who are pretty morally grey, and if you want a stronger line of demarcation between them and the villains, that's your only likely option.

 

[Tonguez]

It's kind of interesting how pirates went from being the enemies of mankind to friendly kiddie fare. In Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the pirates were brutal, nasty people with the likes of Israel Hands trying to straight up murder 13 year old Jim Hawkins. Even charming old Long John Silver is a brutal killer. When we look at Peter Pan, not the Disney version, the pirates were pretty nasty there as well. They were trying to kill a boy!

That can be blamed directly on Erol Flynn and the Swashbuckler movies of the 30s and 40s. The dashing pirate-privateer is definitely a prominent heroic/romantic trope

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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?

It really does depend on the campaign and the characters.

One of the last 2Ed PCs I played was a NE human thief. His stats helped me figure out his personality:

Str15
Dex15
Con13
Int11
Wis8
Cha6

He was always looking out for #1- himself- but in a sneaky way. Generally, he was almost as much of a fighter as some of the actual warriors- a mercenary, enforcer and a thug. He was smart enough to not rock the boat on behavior, but unwise enough that he had occasional lapses in judgement. He wasn’t so much ugly as abrasive and bullying…especially towards the wizard.

In a way, he was a massive a*****e, but he was the party’s a*****e, so they put up with him. If he had gotten too out of line, they might have abandoned him. But he never quite did- even the wizard felt he was more useful to the group than turning him in for a bounty.

 

[Staffan]

Just last summer a group of players wanted to run a pirate adventure. And they were thinking "silly Disney pirates"....... and they were quite shocked when I was a lot more (beyond) "Black Sails".....

That seems like a session 0 problem.

 

[MGibster]

Both Treasure Island and Peter Pan were classics for children long before Disney.

Sure, but in both of those works for children the pirates were bad people not the good guys. In Treasure Island, Israel Hands straight up tries to murder 13 year old Jim Hawkins. But then Hawkins himself was no slouch.

One more step, Mr. Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out! Dead men don't bite, you know," I added with a chuckle.

hat can be blamed directly on Erol Flynn and the Swashbuckler movies of the 30s and 40s. The dashing pirate-privateer is definitely a prominent heroic/romantic trope

Yeah, Captain Blood in 1935 was about a dude who became a pirate due to circumstances and injustice rather than turning to a life of crime because he was unemployed.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, at a certain point with banditry and its kin, unless you're doing a Merry Men situation, there's only so good the heroes are going to be; even at they're best they're still thieves who will kill people in doing so. At that point the best you're going to manage is characters who are pretty morally grey, and if you want a stronger line of demarcation between them and the villains, that's your only likely option.

It's telling there that you used the word "heroes" where bolded, rather than "characters"; as if it's a baseline assumption that the PCs are always going to be heroes.

WotC (and before them, later-era TSR) market the game as "people playing heroes" because they have to, in order to avoid backlash from the ignorant public (cf Satanic panic, 1980s). That doesn't mean we who play the game have to pay any attention whatsoever to that marketing.

 

[Voadam]

Not sure how much of a good guy you were playing if they are working for evil factions as a merc.

Your call on how you personally judge the working for evil people aspect versus the fighting against evil.

I had been playing the only good PC in a mostly evil and neutral group and convincing the group to take jobs going after evil targets either because we were paid well to do so or because they were decent targets for loot we wanted. When I ended up in the drow city there were no shortage of jobs targeting other evil factions and I was happy to have evil pay me to fight evil.

I was looking for jobs that provided opportunities to fight evil or work against evil factions, Shadowrun type stuff, not taking jobs to kidnap enemy kids for torture or slave raiding type of things. The circumstances worked out and I felt fine thinking of myself as a good guy fighting evil in a bad place.