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<blockquote data-quote="Sammael" data-source="post: 3073323" data-attributes="member: 4475">Are you implying that there are no soldiers in fiction or role-playing games? Why would it have to have a real-world connotation? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused&nbsp; &nbsp; :confused:"&nbsp; data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> Many adventurers are mercs in disguise. They get their assignments, get the job done, and get paid (or fail and get killed, but I digress). They wonder very little about motivations. Being a merc is a state of mind on its own, and mercs can be of any alignment. What if their homeland is evil (or at least acts that way towards its neighbors), and brings war upon itself? Does their patriotism make them good? Patriotism is, like mercenaryship, sans alignment.That's probably the most typical fantasy soldier. Soldiers are trained to obey orders. If they don't obey orders, they can make life very difficult for their team-mates. There is no room for philosophical ponderings on a battlefield; hesitate for a moment, and you're dead. This is why officers have command-line responsibility; if they give an order, the soldiers are to fulfill it. If it turns out the order was bad in some way, the officer is the one taking the blame. Except in evil societies, of course, where blaming the underlings is the standard.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sammael, post: 3073323, member: 4475"] Are you implying that there are no soldiers in fiction or role-playing games? Why would it have to have a real-world connotation? :confused: Many adventurers are mercs in disguise. They get their assignments, get the job done, and get paid (or fail and get killed, but I digress). They wonder very little about motivations. Being a merc is a state of mind on its own, and mercs can be of any alignment. What if their homeland is evil (or at least acts that way towards its neighbors), and brings war upon itself? Does their patriotism make them good? Patriotism is, like mercenaryship, sans alignment. That's probably the most typical fantasy soldier. Soldiers are trained to obey orders. If they don't obey orders, they can make life very difficult for their team-mates. There is no room for philosophical ponderings on a battlefield; hesitate for a moment, and you're dead. This is why officers have command-line responsibility; if they give an order, the soldiers are to fulfill it. If it turns out the order was bad in some way, the officer is the one taking the blame. Except in evil societies, of course, where blaming the underlings is the standard. [/QUOTE]

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