D&D General Too many cultists

[Jd Smith1]

Brown was attacking in the wrong places.

Instead of having a whole mess of men in one place shooting people what he should have done was sent them around to different towns and then had them all sneak out and torch the local cotton fields on a predetermined day (the coordination of the times would be circumvent the widespread security increases that would no doubt come about if they set the fires one at a time)

EDIT:
More to the point the Union accomplished the same thing Brown was trying to using similar tactics to Brown. Now, this isn't particularly relevant to discussions of the real civil war since brown only had a few guys, but in a fantasy setting like we're discussing a few guys could be equal to the army of a large nation.

There has been exactly one successful slave revolt in history, and the only reason it succeeded was because local diseases crippled the troops, and the owning power had bigger problems.

You don't burn cotton in the field, you burn it after it is gathered and baled. All that would have accomplished is to further discredit the abolitionist movement. They had already suffered because of Bloody Kansas, and if Brown, a nutjob, had embarked on a program of destroying private property, it would have tarred the abolitionist movement with the same brush. As Celebrim noted, slavery was not a huge issue in the north, and Brown's historical nonsense only hurt the movement.

The key to slavery is that it is an economic institution. Slaves in the USA were expensive, and many large plantation owners had to take out loans to purchase them. The abolitionist movement make a very smart move when they got the importation of slaves banned (Jim Bowie got his start smuggling slaves in, on a side note); but they they made a very stupid one when they pushed for rendering slavery illegal, because would strip away a vast amount of capitol investment.

The smart move would have been to campaign to render slavery illegal, while providing the (now former) owners of slaves with compensation for the loss of their investments; some sort of tax deferment possibly. The British used a similar system with considerable success.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Google 'Human Trafficking' and go to any one of several organizations' sites. Very useful reference material available.

Yeah...i dont trust google on this one. Or many of the major organizations involved. Pretty sure they distort the numbers massively but i cant say why openly because that would be well beyond flame war level political. So i guess my search will have to end for now.

Just an example of weirdness to show what i mean without really going far into it (because if i go much further than this it will get flamey):

Saudi arabia + human rights committee + endorsements by google and various big name organizations = ring a bell?

Thats where ill leave it. Because if i say much more i feel like itll start a flame war and i honestly dont want to cause that.

 

[ad_hoc]

This thread has gotten very political.

I just want to talk about imaginary baddies.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

This thread has gotten very political.

I just want to talk about imaginary baddies.

I run ponty pool zombies sometimes ever since the one time i involved them in a campaign plot involving hastur.

Very rewarding idea. Really fit with that sort of cult too what with hastur's tendancies and associated superbatural manipulation of minds and information. Spreading like a plague. Good example would be the yellow sign.

 

[Bohandas]

The key to slavery is that it is an economic institution. Slaves in the USA were expensive, and many large plantation owners had to take out loans to purchase them. The abolitionist movement make a very smart move when they got the importation of slaves banned (Jim Bowie got his start smuggling slaves in, on a side note); but they they made a very stupid one when they pushed for rendering slavery illegal, because would strip away a vast amount of capitol investment.

Well my thought was to tip the scales of the negotiation by destrpying the possibility of that investment seeing a return. You're right though that it would lead to retaliation if done the way I proposed. Perhaps, instead of using fire, some kind of blight or pest could be surreptitiously introduced. Provided that the initial release wasn't caught that would be hard to trace. It would look like an act of god.

 

[Celebrim]

Well my thought was to tip the scales of the negotiation by destrpying the possibility of that investment seeing a return. You're right though that it would lead to retaliation if done the way I proposed. Perhaps, instead of using fire, some kind of blight or pest could be surreptitiously introduced. Provided that the initial release wasn't caught that would be hard to trace. It would look like an act of god.

That wouldn't have worked either. Economic hardship always falls hardest on the poorest, and since the slaves had no rights slave owners would have just lowered their wages and demanded more from the task masters. The slave owners would have probably taken out yet more loans, and then they would have been even more reluctant to part with the slaves.

Only the opposite would have worked without bloodshed. But it tells you much of what you need to know about humanity that the Union alone was willing to raise and spend $5.2 billion dollars to fight a war to plunder, pillage, and destroy one half the country, but would have never been willing to raise the same amount of money to buy and liberate the 3 million slaves in the first place. If the same money that was used to fight the war had been used to liberate the slaves, the might have been freed without blood and there might even have been some money left over to provide them the land and mules that they never received.

There could have been a compromise. It would have been ugly. The slave owners wouldn't have received all the economic compensation they felt they deserved. Slaves probably wouldn't have been freed all at once in a grand gesture. People in the north and south who weren't responsible for the problem and who had never benefited from would have had to have pay for it. The freed slaves wouldn't have immediately received the rights and privileges that they were due. But a half million Americans need not have died, and the economy of the South need not have been wrecked for 80 years.

Honestly, if the South hadn't been arrogant and hadn't fired a shot, people probably would have kept kicking the ball down the street for decades. But, that's not the way people think.

 

[Bohandas]

And that said, were the PC's as buffoonish and murderous as John Brown - something altogether not hypothetical - I'd not expect a great outcome even in a fantasy world.

That depends on what class and level they are, their playstyle, and the power level of the setting

 

[Jd Smith1]

Well my thought was to tip the scales of the negotiation by destrpying the possibility of that investment seeing a return. You're right though that it would lead to retaliation if done the way I proposed. Perhaps, instead of using fire, some kind of blight or pest could be surreptitiously introduced. Provided that the initial release wasn't caught that would be hard to trace. It would look like an act of god.

You would be doing an incredible amount of harm to a lot of people, including the slaves themselves. Destroying the economy of an entire region in the hope that it would bring an end to slavery is a very poor method; even if worked, which I doubt, it would also strand the ex-slave population in a region without jobs or the hope of feeding themselves.

Keep in mind that the cotton industry in the South was hardly the only use of slaves, and that the institution of slavery was older than the USA itself. I'm not defending the practice, but the major slave owners had, for the most part, inherited family businesses which required slave labor. The abolitionist movement was demanding that these people throw away their livelihood without compensation.

Also keep in mind that half of the slave population was owned by small businesses, farms, and families.

The only peaceful path to individual freedom would be through some sort of compensation scheme such as the UK used.

The great tragedy of the abolitionist movement is that after freedom was secured for the slaves, they then abandoned the ex-slave population in a region which blamed the ex-slaves for the economic devastation, and consigned them to the better part of a century of economic slavery. Like so many failures on social modification, the abolitionists foolishly set a singular goal, with no follow-through plan.

 

[Bohandas]

That depends on what class and level they are, their playstyle, and the power level of the setting

Oh, and also game edition and the table's tolerance for rules abuses. In 3.5e, plat9ng by the rukes exactly as written rather than as intended, you could definitely take on the south and win with just one 15th level wizard

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Oh, and also game edition and the table's tolerance for rules abuses. In 3.5e, plat9ng by the rukes exactly as written rather than as intended, you could definitely take on the south and win with just one 15th level wizard

Even with an rai standard (even without raw) you can still do that. You just have to build your wizard really well.