Slavery, Rape, Madness and War!

[Kibo]

Two bits (four and a half bits canadian)

I did a mad wizard once. That was pretty fun. It was more fun when the party killed the mad wizards only friend and ran away. Oh the party came back. The mad wizard was animating his dead friend, and was a suprised. The party killed his only and now undead friend in the suprise round and ran away. And to top it off the main instigator narrowly escaped being killed by the wizard, by a single point of initiative (everything rolled out in the open too). He just kept getting madder and madder. Made for a decent reoccuring villian until he was finally killed.

But rape? Nope. My villains don't kill children either. It comprimises their villainy. I like my villains to be powerful, forceful, dangerous, not cowards who hurt people just to feel powerful. Things like that make it too easy to dismiss a villain. Their just roaches to exterminate, not foes to be bested. Only the fodder enemies would stoop that low, and they'd typically be killed before they got far. (Perhaps thus drawing the ire of the actual and dangerous villain.)

Slavery, I suppose. I've certainly done it in darksun even if I don't remember other instances. Again, it's not something I typically deal with directly, pc's might free the slaves. But I'd be unlikely to base any adventure around the pcs being slaves as they be so likely as to ingenously escape it or die resisting it, it would make for a short and lame game.

War: frequently. It makes a great backdrop, allows for a lot of plot development and allows the players to shape the fate of nations swiftly and dramatically. Should the war extend beyond such limited temporal concerns their roles and heroism are so much the greater.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Re: Two bits (four and a half bits canadian)

My villains don't kill children either. It comprimises their villainy. I like my villains to be powerful, forceful, dangerous, not cowards who hurt people just to feel powerful. Things like that make it too easy to dismiss a villain.

The act of killings children and other defenseless people is not cowardly. It's callous but it's not cowardly.

It's an act that may be commited by cowardly people, but these people aren't cowards because of that particular act.

For example, a man who kills your only son in order to draw you out to a duel to the death that you've been avoiding can hardly be called a coward. Ruthless, demented, obessessed with his own twisted conception of honor, most likely. But never a coward.

Cowardice: lack of courage or resolution

Sorry, just a pet peeve.

It's like calling terrorists who commit suicide bombing attack cowards. A lot of things can be said about such people. Demented, deluded, ruthless... But sadly they were not cowards or else we wouldn't be talking about what they did.

 

[Dinkeldog]

And we're not going to talk about anything like motivations for real world terrorists any more, right?

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

Your "Sisterhood of The White Rose" sounds quite intriguing! Would you care to post the prestige class that you talked about? That sounds very cool. Your wife is a social worker, heh? I imagine she knows a lot about the darker side of humanity. How long has she been playing D&D with you? How does she react to the mature themes that you include in your campaigns? She sounds like a good player, too!

I'm at work right now but when I get home I'll put the PrC up on the House Rules forum.

As far as my wife knowing the darker side of humanity, whooo boy. When she needs to deprogram from a day of counselling guess who's up for that duty. I got her into playing D&D after we married and it's really interesting because all of the women we play with (we have a majority of women in our group) engage with the npcs really well, but Rachel doesn't hesitate to take 'em down when they cross the line. And of course, being my wife, she's a fantastic player!

Another thing I forgot - madness features a bit in our campaign. I co-DM with a friend and the last scenario I ran the PCs were shipwrecked on an island where a mad mage had tried to use the soul of his apprentice to power a kind of super iron golem. The golem went mad and slew the mage, trashing his laboratory in the process. When the party arrived they had to piece together the clues as to what had happened and free the apprentice's spirit in order to find where he'd hidden the boat he had planned to escape on. It was kind of the Island of Doctor Moraeu meets the Terminator. Loads of fun, though the other DM's carefully crafted gnome theif/illusionist fumbled too close to the golem and became just so much golem toe-jam. Ouch!

 

[Darkness]

But rape? Nope. My villains don't kill children either. It comprimises their villainy. I like my villains to be powerful, forceful, dangerous, not cowards who hurt people just to feel powerful. Things like that make it too easy to dismiss a villain. Their just roaches to exterminate, not foes to be bested. Only the fodder enemies would stoop that low, and they'd typically be killed before they got far. (Perhaps thus drawing the ire of the actual and dangerous villain.)

I'm afraid that's wishful thinking.
You know, it really ain't that easy - at least in reality and in fiction that's more complex than, say, most Hollywood movies.

Not that fiction necessarily needs to be so complex; it's just that I prefer it to be.

So if you are more comfortable in portraying it this way in your campaign, more power to you.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

And we're not going to talk about anything like motivations for real world terrorists any more, right?

Well, no. But D&D villains with this kind of motivations have been around for decades so I don't know what's so hot about it.

Drow trying to overthrow the decadent surface elves, anyone?

 

[Kibo]

And we're not going to talk about anything like motivations for real world terrorists any more, right?

No I think we're still dealing with the hypothetical machinations of virtual terrorists that might concievably show up in a role-playing game.

I originally wasn't going to respond to M&M (but if I respond to you, I've got to respond to him). I must say the degree and absolute zeal with which you guys approach your hair splitting in search of anything that might actually approach a topic that's nearly ancillary to a discussion that might have political or religious factors would be almost comical if it wasn't so earnest. (And that demands a reply.) It's not even that I think keeping things on track is a bad idea. But sometimes it certainly appears that people end up acting to justify their function rather than perform it. (Ever hear of an accountant trying to trim fat by eliminating his own job?)

Terrorism or fear as a political weapon is the fodder of a lot of movies, and certainly has some relavence in the discussions surrounding role-playing games, esspecially in the general forum. I myself have run adventures where terrorists were the primary antagonists (primary disaffected ex-military ala The Rock, something not even unknown to Rome). How out of bounds would an adaptation of True Lies to any d20 system really be? Is it out of bounds to discuss Star Wars at all? I mean think of all the bread winners wiped out by the brutal, sensless reble attack on the second death star. I suspect that more than a few children post-ROTJ will always remember their birthday as the day rebles murdered their fathers.

Can I now assume we're done with your hijack? I'd like to return to M&M's hijack and nitpicking. (In the future I'll kindly ask that you refrain from trolling me.)

After all it seems quite obvious to me he was making a reference to Major Walter König(IIRC), Sasha, et al, characters from Enemy At The Gates.

Sasha was a cowards target. Why? He couldn't face Vassili Zaitsev. He wasn't strong, fast, or smart enough. To face his enemy squarly with any shred of dignity, was death, he was the lesser man. He knew it, and quit. His actual death was a footnote to his suicide. Incidently I don't think it really advances the story of the movie. Does it make Ed Harris seem more villainous? No, it makes him a smaller, weaker, terrified little villain. More a cretin than a threat.

He couldn't face the man he wished to kill, because he was afraid and weak, so he had to incite that man to come kill him. Weak villains make for more modest heroes. At best the murder of little Sasha in story terms can make Vassili a more human hero. A scared sheperds son, versus the son of germany who's fear was only outmatched by his PR machine. I suppose that makes for a pretty decent character and story.

However, I prefer a little more grandure with my heros, and so I throw a little more into my villains. A son might die and set a father on the path of retribution, but that son would most likely be an adult, and if not, just part of the high cost of war. One of many, perhaps thousands or even vastly greater numbers, whos blood indirectly stains the hands of my MacBeth. All this is doubly true for fantasy. At least for me.

Darkness, the world is filled with small people, and petty, grasping tyrants. So what. They don't make good villains either, minor villains at most. They are weak, and they know it. A villain that knows he's powerful, knows his opponants are powerful, and stacks the deck wisely doesn't need to resort to pointless acts which would undoubtably undermine his power base. It's a cheap, emotional ploy that crappy story tellers sometimes use instead of more lasting emotional content. If you can't evoke any real feeling, just be shocking. It's the MTV's Jack@** of drama. I think better of myself. (It might not always be true, but I DO think it.)

I don't see anything other than cowardice in someone machine gunning a schoolyard waiting for the cops to come and do what that person lacked the conviction to in the first place. Attacking people who can't fight back because they can't fight back, even if it costs you your life, that's a coward, the smallest, snivelling, grovelling waste of life. Killing them isn't a triumph, it's pest control.

 

[CCamfield]

Well, no "Red Herring" at all, really. War is a dramatic backdrop wherein much of the aforementioned topics take root, and it also serves as a springboard for a great deal of trauma and the perpetration of horrendous atrocities and barbarities.

Well, sure. The question is, though - are people really saying that war is too evil and horrible to have in their game?

In thinking about my "comic-book" comparisson, well, and this is important--do you think comic-book conventions are necessarily *bad*? In thinking about comic-book conventions, traditionally, they have embraced a lack of killing, the good guys always win, no mature themes, and so on. That is a traditional comic-book philosophy. From that, with many members commenting on BOVD, their philosophies seemed to parallel such comic-book philosophy, as might your own.

Are they necessarily bad? No, I suppose not. Do you? Why do you choose that label rather than, say, "high fantasy"? I mean, are we honestly talking about existing D&D games in which there's no killing at all, or almost none? That would be unusual... possibly quite mature in a different way, if the player characters themselves were not casually violent individuals and were trying to... hm, I don't know. Calm tensions between two nations, solve mysteries?

When the game centers chiefly on the mass slaughter and looting of other sentient creatures, and the pursuit of wealth and power almost without restraint, I find it mystifying how the inclusion of rape or slavery, or torture, as plot elements in the campaign and as character-development points, is somehow beyond the pale.

Well, you certainly have a good point there - trivialization of violence and all. As far as character development is concerned, well, if your players are all up to the challenge of playing rape victims for however long it should take their characters to deal with the issues involved, that's great.

Certainly, I'm not saying that "Slavery, Rape, Madness, and War!" are the be-all and end-all to plot development, but I do make the assertion that if you subscribe to rigidly sanitizing your campaign from virtually every kind of real human conflict and making sure that there is never any kind of potentially difficult or adult-themed element in the game, that that does, philosophically, have more in common with the cartoonish/comic-book philosophy, and does not usually have the same scope of depth and drama that a campaign might have that doesn't do so.

Well, if you take out every kind of real human conflict, I'd agree. But there are real human conflicts beyond the really dark ones.

There's not much I can think of offhand by way of slavery, rape or madness in The Lord of the Rings, but I certainly think it's got drama and has more depth than a cartoon. No?

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

The Thorn of the White Rose prestige class is now up on the House Rules forum. Comments are welcome!

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

After all it seems quite obvious to me he was making a reference to Major Walter König(IIRC), Sasha, et al, characters from Enemy At The Gates.

...

I don't see anything other than cowardice in someone machine gunning a schoolyard waiting for the cops to come and do what that person lacked the conviction to in the first place. Attacking people who can't fight back because they can't fight back, even if it costs you your life, that's a coward, the smallest, snivelling, grovelling waste of life. Killing them isn't a triumph, it's pest control.

1 - I want to assure you that I wasn't trolling you. My definition of Cowardice, which is basically the dictionnary definition, really differs from yours, that much seems obvious.

2 - Yes, this is in part a König reference and I had it in mind when I wrote it. I meant in a more general sense but I certainly thought about it. Sasha ain't vasili's son but for fictional purpose he plays the same role.

Now, how can you say König is a coward? There are a lot of epithet that can be attached to König and a lot of them are pejorative but I don't see cowardice.

Do you see him show fear even once in the movie? Even in this instant when he knows he's about to die he remains steadfast. He was ordered to leave Russia and yet he refused to do so. What more excuse than a direct order would a coward need to avoid a confrontation?

The crux of cowardice is that cowards seek to avoid confrontation. That can never be said of König.

And you have to admit that toward the end of the movie, it was Vasilli who was affraid of him. In fact he shows true courage by going out again and again against König despite his fear but toward but eventually it isn't obvious that he still has it in him to do it again. The news of Sasha's death reach him and forces his hand.

Your second example of killing defenseless people because they are defenseless is closer to cowardice, especially if the killer tries to flee the inevitable confrontations that will ensues from his actions.

But König didn't kill Sasha because he was defenseless. He killed him because it was useful to his purpose. He'd have killed any Russian soldiers if he'd thought/knew that Vassili's attachment to this soldier would provoke the desired reaction. Heck, he has killed several soldiers who were close comrades of Vasilli. But in the end only Sasha's death could insure the final confrontation he seeked.

I want to make it clear that I'm not glorifying König. He's cold and ruthless, most likely as a sideeffect of his son's death but he probably wasn't the warmest fellow to start with. He's obssessive and clearly doesn't have much to fill his existence beside the Hunt. It's probably why he wouldn't let go of Vasilli despite his orders. But he was NOT a coward. He never feared Vasilli even though he always understood he might die (There's no look of disbelief on his face when he his bested at the very end). He never tried to avoid the confrontation. He did everything in his power to make sure the ''wolf would come''.

He was a very resolute man which is the antithesis of a cowardly man.