Plot Hooks Based on Real Politics

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 8:20 pm

Yeah, the overlooked tragedy of Naziism is that the vast majority of actual Nazis were not sociopaths bent on modernizing genocide, but were instead just normal young men buying into the ideology that was most popular in their society at the time and joining their military to demonstrate their virtues of patriotism and service.

That ideology happens to be utterly reprehensible from my own contemporary standpoint, but pretending that each and every soldier fighting for Germany under the Nazis was irredeemably evil to the point of inhumanity instead of merely complicit in following a lawful (at the time) yet horrific command structure and political movement hampers understanding and probably increases the risk of similar atrocities being committed in the future.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 10:25 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:Yeah, the overlooked tragedy of Naziism is that the vast majority of actual Nazis were not sociopaths bent on modernizing genocide, but were instead just normal young men buying into the ideology that was most popular in their society at the time and joining their military to demonstrate their virtues of patriotism and service.

That ideology happens to be utterly reprehensible from my own contemporary standpoint, but pretending that each and every soldier fighting for Germany under the Nazis was irredeemably evil to the point of inhumanity instead of merely complicit in following a lawful (at the time) yet horrific command structure and political movement hampers understanding and probably increases the risk of similar atrocities being committed in the future.

You're absolutely right.

Every time something horrific happens, say, a school shooting, people will say 'he is a monster. You can't understand people like that'.

The fact is, you can understand people like that. Everybody has a dark part of their soul that suggests doing evil things (though usually not seriously). I'm particularly fond of wishing death on people that are rude while driving (for example, cutting me off). I first of all assume that they did it on purpose (sometimes I'm 100% certain - but often I probably assume in error) and I think that them suffering a horrible death is somehow justified by their behavior.

But the world seems nicer if only 'monsters' do terrible things, and most people aren't like that. But yes, a well-organized group of nice-seeming people can do terrible things. Bosnia is one of many post-WWII examples.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Jun 11, 2014 11:18 pm

It's also why it's imperative to ensure that you frequently examine your own actions and your own motivations, to check whether you are currently the bad guy. Indeed, I am of the belief that all the worst acts in history were committed by people who were fervently and unquestionably morally certain of themselves*. Once you start questioning, it gets much harder.

---

* Exception: J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was fully aware of what he was doing and did it anyway.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Jun 12, 2014 1:12 am

Laertes wrote:* Exception: J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was fully aware of what he was doing and did it anyway.

In Mr. Destroyer of Worlds defense, in his situation I'd do the same. With technology and a total war being what they are, the chances are that if you don't create the doomsday device first, your enemy will.

And in the end, killing 100,000+ people by burning / crushing / sickening them is horrible, but it's still a lesser evil than having many more people dying via more conventional shootings or stabbings (check the expected losses for the Japanese home islands invasion).

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 3:49 pm

The normally mockable Thomas Friedman gives us an awesome D&D adventure seed in his latest column:

As a result, the Kurds massively deforested their hillsides to burn wood for energy, wiping out the native Kurdish oak and the food chain that sustained megafauna like the Persian leopard.

That’s why, said Azzam Alwash, president of Nature Iraq and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for his efforts to save the Iraqi Marshes, the one place where the Persian leopard still survives today is on the Iraq-Iran border, which is still forested with land mines, “so hunters can’t go there.”

So turning Land Mines and Leopards into a D&D adventure: You have a big and marshy forest which is the last habitat of a dangerous, yet recently found to be a source of something precious beastie. That habitat is full of traps and blast glyphs left from a prior war. The PC's job is to go in and clear the traps and glyphs and mark the pits of lightning sand to create "hiking" paths through the area to turn it into a passable preserve, while also preventing poachers from hunting it to extinction.

But the kingdom is radically unstable since the armies of New Rome have ceased backing the regime they had installed after their overthrow if the prior dynasty. And the country is broke and desperate, so the PCs will likely get their charter pulled when the current Regent flees, and villains who were "poachers" in one of the early session will come back as "the king's hunters" with a license to bag as many of the beasties as possible for sale abroad.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:43 pm

corrupt government that ignores its people and only serves and protects its most wealthy and its merchants while enslave the common man to a life of servitude just to be able to live in the city of Cantor.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 5:52 pm

If the USA was losing to the point they got atom bombed, would American citizens accept surrender?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 6:04 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:So turning Land Mines and Leopards into a D&D adventure: You have a big and marshy forest which is the last habitat of a dangerous, yet recently found to be a source of something precious beastie. That habitat is full of traps and blast glyphs left from a prior war. The PC's job is to go in and clear the traps and glyphs and mark the pits of lightning sand to create "hiking" paths through the area to turn it into a passable preserve, while also preventing poachers from hunting it to extinction.

But the kingdom is radically unstable since the armies of New Rome have ceased backing the regime they had installed after their overthrow if the prior dynasty. And the country is broke and desperate, so the PCs will likely get their charter pulled when the current Regent flees, and villains who were "poachers" in one of the early session will come back as "the king's hunters" with a license to bag as many of the beasties as possible for sale abroad.

That does look like a pretty awesome adventure seed.

Interestingly, the Demilitarised Zone along the North Korea / South Korea border is also supposed to be a wonderful wildlife reserve for the same reason.

Tumbling Down · Post by **Tumbling Down** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 6:20 pm

OgreBattle wrote:If the USA was losing to the point they got atom bombed, would American citizens accept surrender?

If Jesus and George Washington told them to do it, they probably would.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:24 pm

OgreBattle wrote:If the USA was losing to the point they got atom bombed, would American citizens accept surrender?

Not all of them.

I was gonna put a link there to one of the various groups that believes the CSA is still a thing and is just being occupied, but the first one I found was a forum and I don't know how the linking to other forums rule works exactly.

Point is, there are Americans who haven't accepted the end of the civil war. If 150 years of occupation isn't enough, why would an atom bomb be?

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:56 pm

OgreBattle wrote:If the USA was losing to the point they got atom bombed, would American citizens accept surrender?

No. We're very vengeful when American lives are lost, even if we don't actually like those particular Americans. If you drop a nuke on Texas (a group of Americans I pretend to dislike being a native Californian) I will join up to kill you and yell 'Remember the Alamo'. Now, if there's a real threat that you will continue nuking America and I think that there's a real chance for peace and all we lost was Texas, that would drop it to 50/50.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:04 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:No. We're very vengeful when American lives are lost, even if we don't actually like those particular Americans. If you drop a nuke on Texas (a group of Americans I pretend to dislike being a native Californian) I will join up to kill you and yell 'Remember the Alamo'. Now, if there's a real threat that you will continue nuking America and I think that there's a real chance for peace and all we lost was Texas, that would drop it to 50/50.

Remember that once the Viet Cong had killed enough Americans, the response of the remaining Americans was just to say "okay, you win" and stop fighting. Same in Iraq, same in Afghanistan. America has a breaking point like any other; just from the examples I can think of that breaking point seems to be when their self-image of themselves in that war changes from "yeah, we're going to be big and stomp someone" to "ugh, this is just a slog. Who wrote this lame-ass module anyway? All we're doing is grinding monsters while losing tiny men and we have no obvious win condition."

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:08 pm

I grew up when MAD was still a thing and Regan was doing his Evil Empire rhetoric.

While I was pretty sure that Nuclear Armageddon was probably going to happen some day soon, I never for once considered the possibility of not going all in. The idea of not nuking the Russians back was sort of absurd to a kid growing up in that era.

Of course, I was also sure that I'd eventually live in a cool radioactive post-apocolypse wasteland where there were no rules and I could do anything that I wanted. With mutants and cyborgs.

So I think the average American of my generation would chose to end human civilization rather than surrender. But we'd also be totally sure that we'd be kings of the radioactive ashes and that there's be promiscuous girls with three breasts and it would be awesome and we'd still have most modern conveniences somehow, too.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:08 pm

Our tolerance for lives lost is extremely small for a war that we started (ie, Vietnam) and very large when we feel that we were attacked (ie, World War II).

Pearl Harbor and later the World Trade Centers got a lot of people willing to enlist the way announcing our involvement in Bosnia never did.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:17 pm

Our tolerance for lives lost is extremely small for a war that we started (ie, Vietnam) and very large when we feel that we were attacked (ie, World War II).

Pearl Harbor and later the World Trade Centers got a lot of people willing to enlist the way announcing our involvement in Bosnia never did.

True. And yet, thirteen years later, the war that started with the World Trade Center is ending with Al-Quaeda still in Iraq and America gone; and Al-Quaeda still in Afghanistan and America preparing to leave. Even when the US feels attacked, they're eventually willing to admit defeat. The outpouring of patriotism and outrage back in 2001 eventually burned down to a "well, we gave them a bloody enough nose I guess, and we killed their old leadership, so now we can leave their new leadership to carry on doing their stuff as long as we blow something up occasionally."

One could speculate that it was the passage of time that broke American will to resist, and if so a nuclear war would be a truly nightmarish affair since a decade is a horribly long time during total war; one could also speculate that it was the realisation that an easy victory was impossible that broke American will, and if that's the case then the first nuke that falls will end the war.

And I've thoroughly derailed the thread, for which I apologise.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:35 pm

Iraq would be an example of a war that America started and not an example of a war that started with America being attacked. On account of Iraq being in no way associated with any of the people that did the 9/11 attacks. It's beyond Vietnam in how bullshit that war was, because there wasn't even a fake attack like the Gulf of Tonkin. It was just will working by the Bush administration all the way down. Frankly, I'm shocked that the American people put up with it as long as they did. If there wasn't the general grumbling feeling that Afghanistan (which was based on the US being attacked) was a more legitimate war, I don't think they would have.

As for Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden is dead and the entire Taliban government was deposed long ago. America won, and the war is over. The Taliban movement is still strong in some places (most notably: Pakistan), but that's neither here nor there. All the mission objectives claimed at the start of the Afghanistan war have been achieved. The war is over. And the fact that people would like to bring our soldiers home now that the war is over and has been over for some time is not particularly weird.

-Username17

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:59 pm

That's bullshit three times over, Frank.

Firstly, I agree with you that Iraq was a war that America started; however, that's the viewpoint that historians will take. You and I both remember the American media at the time, however, and it sure as fuck wasn't the viewpoint they took at the time. That war was declared with the stated war goal of "Make Iraq not be a safe haven for international islamist terrorists." That war was declared as "The global crusade on Islamic terrorism, part two." That was the task America set itself with that war, and instead all they got was a pile of white corpses, a larger pile of brown corpses, and a country which definitely is harbouring militants now regardless of whether it was beforehand. They defined the terms of the war when they invaded, and by those terms they lost.

Secondly, I also distinctly remember the American people being pro-war to the point where it was political suicide for congressmen and senators to openly criticise the war. It was the same in this country: pre-war there was a lot of protesting, post-war everyone suddenly remembers that they were against it all along, but during the war? During the war it was pretty popular.

Thirdly, as for Afghanistan, the war goals weren't "kill Bin Laden and topple the Taliban." They were "destroy Al-Quaeda in its place of refuge, so that it can never again emerge to strike back, and while we're at it let's put a friendly, pro-Western warlord into Afghanistan to permanently prevent it from being a running sore on the planet's politics." That war goal was also never met.

Post-hoc moving of goalposts so that people can say "Yeah, well, we would have won if we had gone in with the goals that we've accomplished now, so that means we won" is dishonest bullshit and I honestly expected better from someone with your intelligence.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:29 pm

Lets be honest here. The goals in both Afghanistan and Iraq were revenge. Smash the evil regimes. We did that, thoroughly.

The post-victory occupation and cleanup was not something that the American people actually wanted. We just wanted to kill the bad guys, full stop, and then let the locals sort things out on their own.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:35 pm

I don't even know what the fuck you're trying to argue at this point. The proposition was that the American people are very willing to continue fighting despite large numbers of casualties in wars triggered by being attacked, but were much less willing to continue fighting in wars that America had chosen to become involved in for some other reason.

Regardless of how popular or unpopular the war in Iraq was at any particular time, it is demonstrably true that that war was a war of choice. As such, it would fit in the second part of the proposition and not the first. So if people soured on the war in Iraq, that would not in any way be a point against the proposition under discussion.

Second, you know pre-war hyperbole has fuck all to do with when wars end, right? The fact that there has ever been wars since 1918 doesn't mean we still have to keep fighting the Kaiser. The war on Afghanistan was over as soon as a government of Afghanistan came into existence that we were not at war with. From that point on, we had a military cooperation pact with the government of Afghanistan that lasted as long as both parties agreed that it should. Afghanistan had a democratic transfer of power from one president to another, and the new President doesn't want American troops performing combat operations in his country, so that's that.

Al Qaeda is still a big noise, especially in Pakistan where they just did that big airport attack, but I don't know what you think continuing to fight the non-existent Taliban Afghanistan Government is going to do about that. But I would also point out that the most successful Islamic Terrorist groups active in the world today are ISIS, Boko Haram, the East Turkestan Islamic Party, and Abu Sayyaf. And none of those groups are in Afghanistan. Also, none of them are Al Qaeda.

Yes, Bush made various crazy rants about a global "War on Terror" and shit, but the actual war on Afghanistan ended a long ass time ago when Afghanistan surrendered.

-Username17

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:13 pm

I don't even know what the fuck you're trying to argue at this point.

I was taking issue with your claims that a) when America declared the war in Iraq, it was presented in the nation's internal dialogue as being a war of choice and a war of aggression; b) that it's in any way shocking that the American people put up with it as long as they did, given the extent to which they were in favour of the war even after the Haditha massacre; and c) that the war in Afghanistan ended either when Kabul fell or when Bin Laden died. These things are not true, not even a little bit, hence why I took issue with them.

None of this had anything to do with the earlier discussion about nuclear weapons and whether American morale would hold up under them. Your post didn't, my post didn't. We both understood that it was a derail of the discussion about nuclear weapons, which was itself a derail of the morality of people being knowingly or unknowingly evil, which was itself a derail of the thread.

Therefore, what the fuck am I arguing? I'm arguing whatever the latest twist of the discussion is, because both you and I enjoy arguing for its own sake. Would you like me to get the thread back on its original topic? Fine. Done.

Discussion point: What would a fantasy world with a Keynesian welfare state look like, and would the modern-day objections of the super-rich be modelled by the objections of adventurers and other high-level types?

Alternatively, if you'd like to stick with the discussion about what "winning a war" means in the age of 4GW and amorphous armed non-state actors, we can do that too. Let me know. Either's good.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:16 pm

Laertes wrote:I was taking issue with your claims that a) when America declared the war in Afghanistan, it was presented in the nation's internal dialogue as being a war of choice and a war of aggression

Ah. So the reason it looks superficially like you are ranting incoherently about things that don't make sense is because you are "taking issue with" something that you believe I said that I did not actually say. Hint: the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war were separate wars declared at different times against different countries.

-Username17

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:19 pm

Ack, brain fart. Typing and retyping posts does that, alas.

Amended.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sat Jun 14, 2014 1:18 am

The war in Iraq was presented as a preemptive strike on a mentally unstable dictator who was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction in violation of terms of the First Gulf War in order to stop the regime from using those weapons sometime in the future (especially considering they had shown a willingness to use the weapons on their own people).

There was no attack by Iraq against the United States. The immediate objective of deposing Saddam Hussein and establishing a more 'democratic' government was accomplished. Occupying countries after those objectives have been accomplished is not popular with the American people.

Afghanistan fits a similar pattern, but they directly attacked the United States.

So, I maintain my contention that is American lives were lost in a major attack, especially if the number were in the 10s of thousands, Americans would have a high tolerance for additional casualties in pursuit of 'teaching a lesson' to the aggressor.

America has a problem with American casualties on behalf of other countries .

A war like Korea or Vietnam is hard for Americans to accept because the rest of the world hardly registers in our consciousness. Why risk valuable American lives in a conflict where only a minority ethnic group in a country we can't find on a map is in danger?

America tends to get involved in wars (for clarity - often an existing war where we opt for 'peace keeping') for idealistic reasons and a single graphic casualty is enough to turn popular opinion.

We like the idea of helping others, but we don't care about them equally to American lives. Save 10,000 poor villagers - that's worth no more than 10 American lives - maybe less.

America seems 'inconsistent' and 'unreliable' to some nations, but we're extremely predictable. If we're 'helping you' it better be easy or you better be vocally grateful.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sat Jun 14, 2014 6:02 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Afghanistan had a democratic transfer of power from one president to another, and the new President doesn't want American troops performing combat operations in his country, so that's that.

The current government in Afghanistan will be lucky to survive long enough for the US to complete withdrawal. I could be wrong, but I expect that by January 2017 there will again be a Taliban government in Afghanistan. That might or might not amount to al Qaeda, we'll see.

Al Qaeda is still a big noise, especially in Pakistan where they just did that big airport attack, but I don't know what you think continuing to fight the non-existent Taliban Afghanistan Government is going to do about that. But I would also point out that the most successful Islamic Terrorist groups active in the world today are ISIS, Boko Haram, the East Turkestan Islamic Party, and Abu Sayyaf. And none of those groups are in Afghanistan. Also, none of them are Al Qaeda.

The attack on the Karachi airport was claimed by the Taliban, though there is a lot of overlap between the Taliban and al Qaeda.

ISIS (aka ISIL) was formerly usually referred to as al Qaeda in Iraq, following their pledging allegiance to ObL in 2004. It's had a bunch of different names, starting as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad "Unity and Jihad" (usually known as JTJ), then became Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn "al Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers" (normally known as al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI). Then they started claiming attacks in the name of the Mujahideen Shura Council. Then it became the Islamic State of Iraq, who claims they formed the Jabhat al-Nusra (also known as Tanzim Qa'edat Al-Jihad fi Bilad Al-Sham - normally called Al-Qaeda in Syria). Then they merged (at least partially) and the combined organization became known as ISIS or ISIL (depending on who is writing about it). But they are very much still on the al Qaeda program, though like most affiliates they don't pay a lot of attention to the old Egyptian who is nominally in charge.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sat Jun 14, 2014 6:18 am

deaddmwalking wrote:The war in Iraq was presented as a preemptive strike on a mentally unstable dictator who was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction in violation of terms of the First Gulf War in order to stop the regime from using those weapons sometime in the future (especially considering they had shown a willingness to use the weapons on their own people).

Yup. Everyone, including all the other western intel services and the corps and divisional command level of the Iraq military was sure that they had large stores of chemical weapons. Every Iraqi senior officer knew he didn't have chemical weapons, but they were certain that other nearby units did have them. Though the chemical weapon issue was pretty much the lowest common denominator for the USG, everyone could agree on that so they didn't have iron out all the other assorted disagreements about Iraq and what they were or were not doing.

So, I maintain my contention that is American lives were lost in a major attack, especially if the number were in the 10s of thousands, Americans would have a high tolerance for additional casualties in pursuit of 'teaching a lesson' to the aggressor.

A friend of mine has suggested the grizzly bear would have been a better symbol of the US. The voters (not so much the leadership of either party) essentially want the world to leave us alone, and if you succeed in making them angry they will kill you. Then we lose interest and wander off.