Slavery, Rape, Madness and War!

[Xeriar]

So now you're arguing that somehow someone who kills a person with no ability to fight back, like a child, has any measure of courage?

They may or may not - it is not an action in the face of danger, so it cannot apply to courage. Their is no point here - the act of killing someone who cannot fight back is neither courage nor cowardice.

If there was a legitamate choice involved - kill the child, or risk losing your life/future, then sure, that would be a matter of courage, but not the example given, not in most examples.

My dictionary says courage is the capacity one has to counquer their fear and or despair.

And this has what to do with:

I'm certainly going to cower at the sight of all the horrible villains who choke back their crippling fear of toddlers so that they might follow through with their grizzly task.

This? Most who did this type of thing did it for one of a few main reasons:

1: They were in the way
2: To provoke fighting
3: As part of many other brutalities to subjegate the populace
4: Genocide

Are all of these acts act of cowardice?
You are descended from people who did this, you realize, no matter who you are.

And by my logic, one would observe that the enemies the US has faced in recent years were weak, and could have put of a serious fight, but lacked the conviction to do so.

After months of starvation, and drastically outmaneuvered, outgunned, outfed and outskilled. What army has the US faced in the past 20 years that could deal with night-vision technologies?

It's not like they didn't have the hardware, or training.

In the case of Iraq, only the Republican Guard had any respectable training, and they numbered only 30,000, compared to the 400,000 American troops stationed there.

Iraq did not, and does not have a single tank or weapon capable of facing the M1. Period.

Iraq had no satellites, and very limited radar technology.

They lacked one thing, to the last man, personal conviction. The Iraqi army in 1991 was the 4th largest standing army in the world, battle hardened,

Yeah, right. Again, after being starved out, ("We had to eat grass!?!?!?!"), and facing the world's 3rd largest, and by most everyone's estimates the best-trained and best equipped, also backed by the joint forces of twenty-five other nations.

and in possesion of 3rd generation air craft vs what might be called the 3.5 generation F-15, and modern main battle tanks.

This is laughable. The Iraqi army had nothing to scratch the M1.

Their best jet was the MiG-29, of which they had all of 18. The US alone had over 500 planes in the entire theatre capable of handling the MiG-29.

Iraqi had all of 250 jets, period. This is before we decided to take out their air power first.

They lacked leadership and resolve.

Leadership, maybe. But resolve? Against an army that can see in the dark, and have near ideal communication over the battlefield?

The Gulf War was not a war, it was a technology demonstration.

(One might note to two things I think a truly great villain needs) A professional, motivated, volunteer army in action.

Volunteer armies are pretty recent. Coordination and feeding your troops is more important.

The weapon that ultimately wins wars has never been anything other than the guy in the uniform.

Depends on how you look at it. Macedonia would not have invaded -INDIA- if it weren't for Alexander the Great. There is a reason he got that title, you know.

There were no statues of Buddha before that. Seriously, through him Greece has impacted the entire planet.

I try to keep that aspect, of viable professionalism, and real leadership alive with my villains.

What is 'real leadership'?

Tell me why I would follow you, seriously.

It explains why their henchment are motivated, and strong rather that villains off somewhere with their own grand scheme.

Doesn't that depend on each henchman's own goals and desires, and reasons for serving said villian?

Do you have -NO- CE or NE bad guys in your campaign?

It just doesn't follow that the man on the line follows out of fear alone.

Usually the ones following out of fear are actually being pushed - ashiguru in Japan, prisoners in Europe - whatever. Those being driven by fear were going to die anyway.

The actual army is considerably better fed, and an instrument of that fear, not a subject of it.

A rule of fear by itself would breed treachery, and waste.

Nor do you have any Nero's in your campaign, I imagine. I know there are many stereotypes of the 'honorable villian' that can be used, but how can you run a game like that for long without it getting repetitive?

Are there no necromancers in your game, either?

How could any organization be effective if it had to devote the bulk of its resources to policeing itself?

In a word with magic, this gets easy fast, doesn't it?

How could that man on the line be trusted to fulfill his duties.

1: Because he is a construct
2: Because he is a mindless undead
3: Because he is a zealot
4: Because he is otherwise controlled (Domination, etc)
5: Because he is surrounded by any, or all, of the above
6: Because he needs to feed and care for his family
7: Because he actually is well fed, and gets his chance at any woman he comes across in his adventures.

Magic alone doubles the reasons.

Fear just isn't enough. Even the tyrants that worked had to have something else.

8: Scapegoats are available.

To some extent this can be mitigated in fanstasy through thralls, undead, or some other mindless foot soldier (and they and their kin do play a part in maintaining whatever status quo I've got going).

Not all of the mentioned options are necessarily 100% mindless.

But their mindless, they don't adapt.

Despite being about as mindless as one can get, even diseases adapt.

Which while it does add a certain element of terror, it's also a little repetative, and still leaves the demand for an effective more motivated fighting force.

In D&D, a single 16th-level wizard is capable of smashing whole armies on his, or her, own. Doesn't really need -much- of a devoted fighting force, for sure.

Again my most typical way of getting over the organization hurdle is via a small group of villains with a plan. Or just villains that don't have interests on that level and are closer to forces of nature.

No war in your games, then?

It does ammuse me that you consider a despot's soldier with modern weaponry every bit as threatening as a small child.

He never said that, you are putting words in his mouth.

I, however, avoid such tenuous equivalencies.

No you don't.

I would appreciate it if you avoided attributing them to me.

You already equated him with being stupid, or put words in his posts to appear so.

 

[Darkness]

Kibo, my apologies if I wasn't clear enough in my previous post as to why we should be very careful with contemporary (by which I primarily mean WW2 and later, FYI) topics in this thread.

The main reason is that I want to prevent a flame-war - which it is awfully easy to get into with such topics. See, from the fictional "machine-gunning of teenagers," it's just one further step - and all of a sudden, we're discussing Columbine. And if somebody comments on the relative bravery of modern-day battle tactics (like Mal's rhetorical question about the US army), things can get out of hand real quick unless one is very careful (not to say that you and Mal weren't careful ).
So let's just (continue to) be careful (whether we're speaking about Alexander the Great or Ho Chi Minh) and try to use less recent examples whenever possible, and we should be okay.

(My other, less important, reason is that IMO medieval and earlier examples are just more relevant to D&D. *shrug* YMMV.)


Anyway: You made some interesting points in your latest posts, Kibo, and I'm beginning to understand better where you are coming from.
I'll be certain to comment on them later; it's 4:45 AM around here, and I have some work to do first (oh, and wake up completely).

Hi, I'm a little late to the thread, but I have something really, really interesting I've noticed. All the discussion about rape has been about <i>women</i> being raped. I'm not sure what that says, but it strikes me as saying something.

Chrisling, I certainly don't believe that it should be "restricted" to one gender.
Further, at least one other poster (AngelTears) mentioned, "[Rape] was also used during the middle-ages as a way of passing out sentence (not dependent on sex either)."

 

[Xeriar]

Hi, I'm a little late to the thread, but I have something really, really interesting I've noticed. All the discussion about rape has been about <i>women</i> being raped. I'm not sure what that says, but it strikes me as saying something.

Read it again, you skipped it ...

For obvious reasons, women raping men is pretty rare. It does happen, though.

Homosexual assault was, and is, more common. Typically in prisons, often intentionally, even (that is, wardens would arrange for the offending prisoner to be in a compromised position).

Apparantly it was pretty drastic in the Spartan army, too.

Magic (and even technology) changes everything, of course.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

Madness - Used it, always in a sort of fictionalized way (Hannibal Lechter style characters, for instance)... Not sure to whom this is really an untoucable issue.

Slavery - Haven't used it personally, played in games with it. Don't have a problem with it, can sort of see why some people would (possibly too serious of a topic for some campaigns)

War - Oh yeah, lots. Have even tried to make the horror of war a little tangible -- just to add a little weight to the campaign.

Rape - In the sense that it exists in the campaign world, implicitly (half-orcs, or half-tarrasques, for instance), yep, it's there. In the sense that it occurs in front of or to the characters, nope, will never use it, don't want to play in a campaign that uses it. I'm not against things being gritty and realistic to a point, but that's just too personal. Knowing people who have actually had the experience changes the whole idea for me, and I can't see ever treating the topic as appropriate to a game. The horrors of war, etc., are just as awful, but there isn't that same intimate, individual connection. I guess it comes down to the reasons you play a game... For me, it's having fun, relaxing, not dealing with serious subjects which I'm barely willing to confront in real life.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

On track

All right.
Three things.
#1-I apologize for the contraversy my post stirred up when I tried to post more things that can be considered evil for the characters to fight.
#2-Don't bring Desert Storm into it, and don't say it wasn't war. I was there, it sure looked like a war to me. Saying stuff like that is like trolling for me, and I want to aviod getting into a urination competition with someone over what I saw, and what they may have experienced or judged after the fact.
#3-I will give everyone here an enemy from my campaign, an enemy that has the characters blurring the lines between good and evil during thier fights.

During the latter part of the 2nd Age of Shtar, a power group arose. Using ancient and horrible magics, they awoke horrors of war, and using those, and fell necromancy, political maneuvering (including assassination) and threats, they soon (by the end of the Second Age) ruled over the ENTIRE WORLD! That's right, from the Elven Forests of the Sunkissed Mountains to the Lolth's Voice Caverns of the Drow.
Until the Fourth Age, when a rebellion began, these vastly powerful beings held ALL of the power in that rule. Iron was outlawed, steel a forgotten art, and magical power eliminated.
Let me give a few examples of things that happened in the campaign, and things that still go on in Lich King held Terroritories.

Outsiders are military leaders and enforcers, incorpreal undead serve as the spy orginization, mindless undead as slave labor, corpreal undead as the secret police. Monsters have more than citizenship, some of them are considered elite.
It is not uncommon for hundreds of slaves to die each day, only to be brought back into shambling unlife to continue working.
Demons have sucked the life force from children to heal the favored of a general or local lord, reducing that child, and all of it's potential into a pile of ashes.
One of the PC's was raped in the campaign. Despite numerous chances to escape, he insisted on fighting, and getting captured. (This is based off of the life of Alexander the Great, specifically what happened to his father's lover) As a mark of distain, the local militai captain turned the PC over to the stableboys, who raped him repeatedly, then had him crucified outside of town as a message, after breaking his legs.
The PC's got involved flirting with barmaids and other trivial stuff, instead of hurrying off to save the children kidnapped, so when they got over the hill, they got the unique pleasure of watching the (Anti-Paladin) Blackguard/Death Knight lifted from his grave by the necromancer, and returned to life. How? By the necromancer slitting the throat of each child and spilling the blood on the ground where the fiend (Known as the Butcher of the Buttercup Range) had been dismembered by the PC's and buried.
In rebel held territory, it is not uncommon for a delayed blast fireball, set by a mage who had long since escaped, to explode, injuring PC's, and forcing them to expend magic and psionics to save more innocents, and then track the rogue mage in hopes of busting up the terrorist cell.
On the other hand, I've played impartial moderator as the PC's kidnapped and tortured the information they needed out of one of the evil lords. I personally may not approve, but they save thousands of innocents.
The war has been going on for ONE HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS in this campaign, nearly 20 IRL, more than one PC has snapped, mentally, from hours of magical and mundane bombardment, from protracted sieges, from psychic dueling with the forces of the Lich Kings, or the brutal rulers that have sprung up in contested lands due to a power vacuum. Out of the 2.5 million members of the Armies of Light that went into Black Eye Pass, less than 30,000 escaped, and those who survived the Battle of the Stacked Skulls, never, ever forgot it. More than once, a ravaging ghost has had to been put down from a deceased veteran of one of the horrible wars that have ravaged the face of Shtar.
The hospitals are full of those invalided by the war, mentally or physically. The magical flow can inflict Arcane Burn that fries out the mind or the body.
The party has tracked, found, and slain horrible creations of the Lich Kings and thier minions that are designed to do nothing more than spread pain, misery and fear. What soldier wants to be on the front lines, knowing that a Child-Stalker is loose, and has not been caught?
A Child-Stalker is a creature that slithers into the rooms of sleeping children, then kisses them, blowing into thier mouth, inflating thier lungs, and in such a way, crushing thier heart so it cannot beat. The child dies, and the Child-Stalker sucks away the blood and leaves behind a dried and dessicated husk for the parent(s) to find in the morning.
If your PC's wouldn't want to track down such a creature, you need to seriously consider if they are heroes, or callous thugs with cool powers who can take what they want.
The Lich Kings COMPLETELY exterminated the Red-Rock Kobolds, a completely different species, and Gray Elves, Deep Gnomes, and Merpeople are extinct. Gone. Kaput. Slain and left behind, slaughtered and raised as undead allies, or slaughtered and used as spirit fuel for the armies of the Lich Kings.
My world is in a state of flux, with where the PC's can make a real difference. They can help bring it out of madness, despair, and try to get rid of the boot on thier neck, or condemn everyone to worse than death.
That's why I consider my game heroic, and why I wondered how you guys handled some of those same issues.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Kibo

First of all, by writing that I equate a todller with a soldier you commited a blatant extended analogy fallacy as well as an insult to my intelligence.

My bad, I guess. That's what I get for initiating a debate without invitation.

I'll write my position one last time as clearly as I can and will leave it at that;

Killing a child is ruthless. It is not cowardly or courageous. The act itself has nothing to do with either concept. Perhaps the motivation does, but that is beside the point. What I'm saying is that this act can be commited by courageous and cowardly people alike.

You asked in your post whether or not you should be affraid of a child killer. I don't know. Go ask him.

I know that if in D&D the said child killer is a Blackguard, you probably should be a little afraid.

(See, moderators? I did make a D&D reference somewhere down the line )

There you go; I'm done.

 

[Xeriar]

#2-Don't bring Desert Storm into it, and don't say it wasn't war. I was there, it sure looked like a war to me. Saying stuff like that is like trolling for me, and I want to aviod getting into a urination competition with someone over what I saw, and what they may have experienced or judged after the fact.

Please e-mail me, then. One of my uncles and two friends of mine were active in the Gulf War, and I worked with a number of others.

As a point, the Gulf War is a prime example of the kind of benefits darkvision and massive levels of clairsentience (and other forms of divination) can give an army.

 

[Darrell]

In my games:

Madness - Haven't dealt with it to any great extent. One PC went mad after watching a villain slaughter his family, but it wasn't explored into any further depth because the character became an NPC immediately thereafter (it happened in the last game session before the character's player moved to California).

Slavery - Slavery definitely exists in my games. In fact, hunting down slavers was one party's raison d'etre. The campaign began with the party chained in the hold of a slave-ship. There was a shipwreck, and the party were the only survivors. After they were washed ashore on an unfamliar coastlne, they decided to go after the slavery ring that had captured them. The campaign lasted for over two years (real time), with only three or four sessions not having something to do with the slavers.

War - All the frickin' time.

Rape - Not a common subject, but it has come up a time or two. Usually to NPCs, but once to a PC. (It was the player's idea. For some reason, she actually wanted her paladin to be raped, and to become pregnant as a result. She continued playing the character for three more years, and currently plays the paladin's half-orc son, the product of the rape, in my current campaign.)

Regards,
Darrell King

 

[GrayIguana]

It was a good thread for a while

I had to check a couple times to make sure I was reading the same thread that had been posted a few days ago. SHARK had a good thread going. It would be nice if we could keep on track rather than . . . well . . it should be obvious where this has strayed.

 

[Agback]

I like my villains to be a level of badass such that my players respect them after they're dead.

I like my villains to be such a 'level of badass' that the PCs are still confused when they are the only ones left standing.

"I don't think we ought to have killed Jasper. He was a hard-nosed son of a bitch, but I think he was a decent hard-nosed son of a bitch. I think Regikhord took us for a ride."

"Maybe so, but it hardly matters now that they're both dead. Let's just chalk it up to experience, okay?"

OR

"That King John was a devious little sneak. I still don't understand how he shafted us that last time."

"Never mind. He got his on Star Quiz."

Regards,


Agback