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Sorry, if I get longwinded...
as I am about to start Red Hand of Doom I need some help in stuffing things out.
What I need are scenes to describe, in case my players are travelling to a village which has already been assaulted. My RHoD will have a very dark and desperate atmosphere.
Buildings burning, dead bodys all over the place and so on...
But what I search is something, which is more shocking (I know, in real life the above things are shocking enough...), something which makes the characters go like:"We HAVE TO stop this onslaught. This Horde has to be defeated!".
In a recent novel I've read, the above mentioned soldiers found a still living baby in his dead mothers arms, who died while nursing her baby. The enemy had cut off the mothers head.
Ok, this scene is very brutal but things like that might happen in a war-torn world. I need such scenes just to get the characters to WANT TO stop the coming of the Horde.
Any ideas what scenes might do this trick...
The best advice I can give you is just do a bit of research. There are thousands of real world examples of the cruelty of humanity that are far more grotesque than the imagination might come up with.
WW2 is a good starting place. You might be better served with looking at King Edward I "Longshanks" for the right feel to your disturbing scences.
- Neomorte
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Sorry, if I get longwinded...
as I am about to start Red Hand of Doom I need some help in stuffing things out.
What I need are scenes to describe, in case my players are travelling to a village which has already been assaulted. My RHoD will have a very dark and desperate atmosphere.
Buildings burning, dead bodys all over the place and so on...
But what I search is something, which is more shocking (I know, in real life the above things are shocking enough...), something which makes the characters go like:"We HAVE TO stop this onslaught. This Horde has to be defeated!".
In a recent novel I've read, the above mentioned soldiers found a still living baby in his dead mothers arms, who died while nursing her baby. The enemy had cut off the mothers head.Ok, this scene is very brutal but things like that might happen in a war-torn world. I need such scenes just to get the characters to WANT TO stop the coming of the Horde.
Any ideas what scenes might do this trick...
To continue on the path with the mother, instead of her being beheaded while nursing her child, imagine that she still had the child in her before her belly was ripped open and the unborn child was battered against the cobblestones of the road still attached to her. But the mother had not yet died seeing this and they are both found dead with the mother cradling her dead baby that was almost to term and trod over by boot, horse, and wagon.
Another horrifying thing can be the survivors. Imagine a young child, perhaps 6 walking around on a crutch as a mangled leg trails behind him, every bone shattered in the leg making it worse than useless and he only has one arm to clutch to his crutch with and when the wind blows his hair out of the way, you can see that an eye has been torn out of the socket, but not torn off and it hangs rotting. His ears too have been ravaged, now nothing more than holes on the side of his head.
Or for something a little less bloody, have your players coming upon a group of children in thin rags digging graves in the winter for the rest of their village
Maybe it doesn't have to be grotesque to be effective. Maybe things like finding a large garden that has been trampled to compost, and there is an old 80 year old woman with gnarled, fingers, crying over the ruin of her life's work,. Yet in her grief and shock, she is on her painful,decrepit old knees, trying to plant again with shaking hands.
Or perhaps a storage area where the children were left alive and unharmed. However, their parents are gone, and little 8 and 9 year olds are talking about picking up swords and taking revenge. When they are found, one of boys is grimly carving a stickball bat to a sharpened point.
Or maybe there's a large clearing, and the PCs discover that the village was celebrating a wedding at the time of the attack. They find the remains of a wooden trellis covered in picked wildflowers, now broken and burned for soldier's firewood. Near the fire they can find a single petal of a rose that survived.
Would your players respond to stuff like that?
There are classic scenes of civilians during war that need not be gruesome to be effective:
- still burning/smoldering buildings
- meeting a group of dirty, dowtrodden & injuried survivors/refugees
- a nearly naked infant walking, crying and covered in blood that is not her own (mother's?)
- rescuers franticly, and unsuccessfully, trying to dig-out people trapped under a collapsed building
- dead livestock left up-stream from a village to poision the drinking water
Ok, so I'm getting graphic & gruesome now too, but all you need to do is look at the nightly news and you can find ideas.
Set the farmlands on fire. Sounds like such a "duh" thing at first, but then there's the long-term effects. Many medieval lands relied heavily upon a good harvest. One invading army burning your land and you've got famine for at least a year, moreso if the area in question is poor to begin with and doesn't have any reserves, then you might not know when you're going to recover.
From what I've read of Red Hand of Doom, it is well within the scope of the adventure to create an environment of fear. Nothing would scare the commonfolk more than not knowing where your next meal was coming from. Some might be reduced to scavenging, grave robbing, highway robbery, all depending on their level of desperation.
Also, I would not have said army kill everybody. While it is a common theme, depending on the level of depravity you want to portray, leave a few to suffer through the aftermath. The survivors could be used as leverage, or as another method of conquering the area ("Surrender or you'll end up like them - broken, homeless and hungry.").
A more sinister method that I've found (the lawful evil approach, if you will) is to have the army seize control of an important resource and extract a heavy ransom for the locals to use it OR (and this was something I could see Romans doing for some reason) have them burn said fields and import their own food at a high cost to the locals.
Some ideas - your mileage may vary.
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as a former soldier, one of the greatest scenes of autrosity
I can call to mind is still the death camps of WW2, dig up some of the scenes of starved, beaten, and dirty intered Jewish people, convert it to your campaign, and if that dosn't get them into action then your players have somthing wrong with them...
oh yeah or scenes from Bosnia just about 9 or so years ago(when I was serving), they had concentration camps there as well...
game on, respectful of the honored dead
You can check out Goya's Horrors of War (not sure if that's exactly the name) drawings from the library for inspiration. They are pretty terrifying. Also, picking up on the idea with the children, you may draw a party cleric (or anybody) into role-playing encounters with children traumatized by the goblinoid army and occupation. For instance, Anna Freud worked with children that survived concentration camps in WWII and found that the children had learned to function completely as a kind of unit: if one child finished eating, they all finished eating; everyone followed the eldest child's lead, etc. Though many had repressed a lot of their memories of what happened, they were apprehensive around dogs, distrustful of outsiders and especially wary of adults. Remember that kids naturally repress traumatic things in order to take care of their psyches, yet these things still manifest in their behavior. So the children of this occupation may have all kinds of fears and neurosis developed. Make dealing with them frustrating (because it is) but ultimately rewarding (maybe these kids have some vital information that can only be gained after a character builds trust with them). Also, since these kids function already as a unit, attacking them (frustrated or evil PCs, or NPCs) would be kind of futile, since they would know how to avoid harm better than most adults (after all, they survived a goshdarn occupation). Good luck, I hope your players have a great time!
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a bit off subject perhaps, but it kind of ties in...
a story from WWII that I heard somewhere, in the last days of the European campaign an American unit had liberated a concentration camp, after rounding up the Nazis and the regular German soldiers, the G.I.s turned their attention to the prisoners themselves, not only did these battle hardend warriors weep openly, one of the men saw an old collage friend of his, the first thing he did was get the gates open the next...he found the officer in chargr of the camp, and as the story goes in a blind rage beat him to death...
Director of Narrative
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Bring nature into it as well (even if you don't have a nature-type character in your group). Large scale Medieval warfare tore up the land around it not necessarily from the troop's boots and horse's hooves, but from the supply lines that followed them.
Some of the larger troop movements had the equivalent of a small town following them. In that group were the cooks, cleaners, smiths, ferriers etc. These supply lines would strip the surrounding countryside clean of anything usefull to the effort - cut trees, over-hunt, forage for fruits, nuts, herbs (edible and medicinal). It was a free shopping day for them when they crossed paths with villages.
The surrounding countryside always became more dangerous when these large troop movements came through. Wolves would roam further than they normally did to search out more rabbits and deer that were over-hunted by the supply lines. Sometimes water sources were tainted resulting in fewer fish and thirsty sick animals.
Think gaunt packs of wolves out in the daytime, a pair of shakey mountain lions challenging a gaggle of vultures feasting on hastily skinned then discarded deer carcasses, or a small pond in a forrest clearing littered with a broken bucket and un-repairable bits of clothing, bobbing with dead fish amid a soapy film.
there've been some excellent suggestions here, and one of the ongoing themes is, and should be, presenting the severity and harshness of the aftermath of conflict....of course, this is balanced by the reluctance to just overdo 'gross' in the process. i would like to pop just a few suggestions that in and of themselves don't cross the line, but suggest the enormity of such a raid on a town.
a blood spattered doll or stuffed animal. no indications as to the source of the blood, but a disturbing simple image.
A wounded surviving youth talking about his girlfriend being dragged off by humanoids for unknown purposes while he was immobilized, noting with growing depression that his girlfriend was still alive when they took her away.
an improvised altar to a dark diety with some indications that a hasty sacrifice was performed on it.
How about three young children pulling a wagon with the body of thier dead mother, asking for help fr their sick mother.
Maybe a string of destetue refugees.
Impaled soldiers on the road into town
When I was running my eberron campaign with my friends, the PCs came across huge remnant of a battlefield destroyed when Cyre was obliterated in the last days of the last war. It was foggy, dark, and full of skeletons, dead warforged, and weaponry used in the last war. I actually made new machines not existing in the campaign that were destryed in the mysterious cataclysm of cyre. All in all, it was pretty much a hellish scene where the PCs realize the last war was MUCH more gruesome than it was seen as. Not to mention the giant corpse crab that attacked them as they were on route to the next part of the adventure (I enjoyed that beast >8]). I was sad though none of them excpet one really took an interest in the campaign setting. I was going to add more mystery on what happened to cyre and and the next war was to be.
Sorry to blabber, just be very descriptive in the situation od when they stumble accross a battlefield and make it stick to them.
The best visual of Medeval war aftermath IMO was shot in the movie "the Mesenger" The story of Joan of Arch with Milia Jovovich. The battles were carnage even exceeding Braveheart in brutality, but it also showed the treatment of prisoners and the looting of the dead, the murder of prisoners for their teeth, and the crows feasting on the dead. It was awesome.
there've been some excellent suggestions here, and one of the ongoing themes is, and should be, presenting the severity and harshness of the aftermath of conflict....of course, this is balanced by the reluctance to just overdo 'gross' in the process. i would like to pop just a few suggestions that in and of themselves don't cross the line, but suggest the enormity of such a raid on a town.
a blood spattered doll or stuffed animal. no indications as to the source of the blood, but a disturbing simple image.
A wounded surviving youth talking about his girlfriend being dragged off by humanoids for unknown purposes while he was immobilized, noting with growing depression that his girlfriend was still alive when they took her away.
an improvised altar to a dark diety with some indications that a hasty sacrifice was performed on it.
Great replies. But I think this stuff is a lot more powerful then just describing bloody scenes as they leave a lot unsaid and, if nothing else, gamers imaginations and the common shared experiences create a story by itself.
All of these are pretty solid ideas. Here's one thought that might help you get a little bit more milage out of your upcoming atrocity sceene. I think the situation you are describing would be a lot more potent if the characters knew the people in the viliage. Let them go there as a waypoint between adventures, or even go through a couple of adventures that involve the towns people. Go through all the standard techniques to make fun and interesting NPCs that the players like and care about. That way instead of a nameless mangled corpes, each body has a name. Let them sift through the rubble and find the charred body of the boy who always listend to their adventure stories, or the raped and mutilated corpse of the barmaid who had a crush on one of the adventures or whatever else you can come up with. This should put them on a warpath to send whoever was responsible to the 9 hells.
Alternatively, you could let the PCs find evidence that some of the vilagers were taken off to be enslaved or something, thus giving the PCs even more reason to hunt down the people who destroyed the vilage.
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To continue on the path with the mother, instead of her being beheaded while nursing her child, imagine that she still had the child in her before her belly was ripped open and the unborn child was battered against the cobblestones of the road still attached to her. But the mother had not yet died seeing this and they are both found dead with the mother cradling her dead baby that was almost to term and trod over by boot, horse, and wagon.Another horrifying thing can be the survivors. Imagine a young child, perhaps 6 walking around on a crutch as a mangled leg trails behind him, every bone shattered in the leg making it worse than useless and he only has one arm to clutch to his crutch with and when the wind blows his hair out of the way, you can see that an eye has been torn out of the socket, but not torn off and it hangs rotting. His ears too have been ravaged, now nothing more than holes on the side of his head.
Or for something a little less bloody, have your players coming upon a group of children...
I know you were asked, but c'mon - try not to enjoy it quite so much!
try some of the sword of truth novels by robert jorden his newest one called phantom has a part where this one woman tells a story about what it was like living under in a city occupied by a savage horde.
I like the idea about stirring the players´ imaginations best. You could easily turn the scene into a splatter scene worthy of the bloodiest horror movies, but it is much more effective to leave the details to the players imagination - just like it is done in the good thriller movies. Let them find the barmaids´ golden charm of good luck she wore at her neck amidst the ruins of the inn, besides the tatters of her apron. An overturned and smashed crib, with a torn-apart toy besides. The remains of a large fire - was it just the midsummer bonfire, a funeral pyre or even a stake where the villagers were burned alive ?
The village smithy - a burned-out shell, everything remotely usable taken away. The church or chapel is desecrated, the holy altar obviously used for unspeakable dark rituals - it is chipped, burned, bloodstained, the holy items defiled.
There are probably some corpses propped up as warnings - look for Vlad Tepes, he wasn´t called the impaler for nothing. Research realistic recountings of warfare - atrocities unthinkable in normal circumstances were (and are) commonplace to every war. And just have a look into torture techniques - I once visited a torture museum (in San Gimingiano, Italy), and just the thought of the exhibits gives me the creeps even today. And the perpetrators were humans...
Describe not only the visuals. The sharp smell of burned wood, the sickly smell of rotting flesh, the crunching of burned remnants (of what ?) underfoot, the cawing of the crows, a window shutter banging in the wind, the PCs horses shying away from the scenery. They can notice early on that something is amiss: The animals are eerily quiet (apart from the crows), and avoid the area. The fields start from being not well tended and go to trampled down, to razed the closer they get. An outlying barn has its gates torn asunder. The village idiot has somehow survived the carnage and is found sitting catatonic, rocking back and forth gently, babbling and drooling, at the mill stream outside the village.
The humanoids probably have a goal: They want some of the villagers to survive to tell the tale (I haven´t the details of RHoD memorized, so I may be wrong here), to demoralize the troops gathering and defending their homeland. People defending their home are normally fanatic about it, so breaking their morale is important. Showing no mercy and committing the vilest atrocities is a great way to undermine morale - if somebody lives to tell the tale.
Stefan
What's up with all the children?
I can understand the psychological impact of the stock "baby crying in the background to illicit emotion" that is used in cinema so much - but c'mon... lay off the children.
Next time you are watching a movie and the "something must be done scene" comes up, listen for the crying baby.
The old lady trying to fix her garden is good.
Temples of good gods completely removed - only evidence that they were there was the fact the PCs saw it earlier last time they were there.
Children in the militia/guerilla groups. Armed and armored (ill-fitting) but lacking skill - ready to go though.
Villagers in RHoD conscript units; Forced to fight against the PCs and allies.
Not knowing what makes up the armies of RHoD - villages may still be standing. If the RHoD is occupying, they need the resources from the surrounding villages to upkeep an offensive/occupation. They may not need leaders, elders, local militia and clergy - but they need the villages and the folks to work them to keep grain, lumber and "basic services" for the occupying army.
There are some distinct reasons to destroy a village or local population (IRL) and a few more open up in a medieval fantasy world.
In that context - are troops from RHoD "evil" humanoid? If they are - instead of "goodly races" bodies lying about or mass graves, how about the PCs coming across an abandoned enemy camp. They search around and find the remenants of "the mess hall" and the refuse pits nearby. In the refuse pits are the remains of gnawed on bones in which a track or heal check reveals are bones of human, elven and halfling origin.
I agree- you don't have to make it a general gorefest to strike a nerve with the PCs. From my experience, those types of things typically border on disbelief, and trying to over emphasize them pushes beyond that boundary and it can just get silly.
Also, you don't have to just have encounters with children to make the scene a truly hellish one.
Dead burned bodies are too commonplace? Since when?! Yes, if you just say, "Okay, so like, thre are all these dead people around, and they're burned," then yes, your party will miss the emphasis.
Instead, you can deliver just one or two good bouts of descriptive text to set the whole tone. Until you describe something different, the party should keep in mind what you've already told them. I haven't read the Red Hand of Doom, but try a scenario like this:
Instead of, "so, you get to Hearthwell, and the whole place is on fire and destroyed!", try something more along these lines:
"As you crest the familiar knoll to Hearthwell, you immediately notice the thick column of black smoke rising into the sky. Soot and ash falls around you like black snow, covering the ground. As you approach the village, the usual sounds of church bells, children playing, smithies' hammers rinnging, wagons creaking and horses neighing, cattle lowing, and people talking in the streets... are all strangely gone. Total, unearthly silence hangs oppresive over the land, save for the dull roar of fire within the walls, and the harsh cry of the carrion crow in the trees."
Extrapolate from there. See, you don't need to telve into the world of the bizarre and outlandish to impress your party. Just develop narrative, descriptive speech and it should all work fine.
I love good horror--and if I read you right, that's kinda' what you're looking for here. Good horror seems to come from a number of different things. One thing IS excess. Seeing death, particularly in a game like D&D happens all the time. If you have a fight scene, chances are someone or something is gonna' die. So there is a place, I think, for awful death and gore if you're working toward an effect. Now granted gore alone isn't horror. You also need ambiance, and reading over these posts they seem to have given a lot of good clues there. Good ambiance is enigmatic at the same time it's forboding, full of striking visual forms that are evokative and creepy--like a wicker tailor's maniquin upstairs from a scene of carnage, still wearing part of a wedding dress that was being made. Images that are packed with emotion are a good place to go--think of the bodies as people rather than just display pieces.
I love the kids pulling their dead mom in a handcart begging for people to help them. That's just wrong.
I like the idea of the army taking cowards who won't fight them and disfiguring them horribly and setting them loose, with faces that are no longer anything but overlapping weeping bloody clawmarks and a gash of a mouth.
One of the creepiest serial killers I've heard of would snip parts off of his victims and collect them. He had a bag of ears, a lampshade and mask made of human skin, noses, fingers all separated out and sorted.
One of the most awful things about savage humanoids is that they often eat humans. I can think of lots of ways to use this to good horror effect--like big cauldron cookpots and barbecue spits. The best image though would be to find some human limbs, fire cooked, with the skin pulled back, meat gone to the bone like chicken drumsticks.
Horror imagery should have hardcore visceral appeal, should speak to deep emotions and fears, should evoke pity and create good atmosphere. All of these things will hopefully work for you when you try to make these scenes of atrocity as memorable as possible.
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It depends. I personally think the mutilated children mini-thread says rather more about the people posting that about warfare or even roleplaying games. I don't really believe that the scenes are particularly appropriate for a warfare scenario either - what are all these kids doing milling about? Most wars involve adults, and there would be a reasonable sprinkling of families about caught up. But kids with no ears? I don't really believe that excess is also a key component of horror - if it is, it more the comedy-horror genre than anything else. What are you trying to do with a description of that kind - make them appreciate the horrors or war, gross them out or make them laugh?
And "horror" isn't really what the war thing is about anyway, in my view - the main thing should be to point out the poignancy and pointlessness of mass slaughter, the tragedy of lives lost needlessly, the loss to those left living at the end. That is the "horror" of war, and runs a little deeper than scattered body parts.
Moreover, I'm not too sure about posting stuff like that on a public board. While I'm pretty sure no one of any age is going to be deeply emotionally scarred by it, I'm not convinced loving descriptions of mutilation are appropriate in this forum. If I wrote an explicit description of sexual activity here, assuming it didn't get banned I would imagine I would get a fair few complaints. I'm not entirely sure why sadistic violence is OK, in this context.
Find a burned church - the the PCs divinity - smoking the town was herded in the doors chained - the church burned.
A flock of crows taking flight at the parties approach 1,000s of them.
If there are no survivors -
packs of ghouls picking through the corpses
bloated hell hounds feeding
thick cloads of flies
Pick up the scent miles away
brick colored mud made from blood not water
Exactly, Aubrey. People (and probably not goblinoids, either) don't go out of their way just to mutilate people beyond belief. At least, not on a mass scale. There may be some incidents here and there, but it would be unusual. And you don't need to constantly have bereaved children everywhere to appeal to the emotions of the PCs.
Yes, death is a common thing for adventuring parties, but it's often non-human creatures, and when the victims of the sword are humanoid, they're typically evil. Also, the DM generally doesn't spend a great deal of time describing the wretched way the villain's corpse lies there on the ground, his lifeless eyes staring out as if eternally wondering what he did to deserve this, etc., etc.
In other words, there's no impact there because none is placed by the players or the DM. If you change the corpses to peasants in a village, burned by marauding hobgoblins, it takes a different feel. And you don't have to make every scene a paragon of the bloody brutality of war. Even adding just a little emphasis, but keeping it up everywhere the party goes, is probably enough to appeal to the emotions of a mature person.
Even if the corpses they are viewing are those of soldiers on a field of battle, you then have the moans of the injured and dying, and hacked limbs, spilled organs, blood everywhere, the stench of rot, carrion crows all around, burned bodies, and the rare scene of individual brutality, such as some "survivors" who were crucified or impaled on the field by the victors.
Again, you don't have to go to rediculous extremes to impress the horrors of war. The party shouldn't come away going, "Wow, those guys are really brutal!" They should come away with hollow eyes, asking, "Why? Why did they do this?" But, don't be too concerned if you don't get the exact result you want. Afterall, this is a game, and their emotions aren't likely to be as strong as they would if they actually saw this! Also, the adventurers are adventurers. They DO deal with death and destruction on a regular basis. They ARE somewhat more resistant to this than other people. They aren't likely to be struck dumb or speechless or break down wailing. Rather, most players would rather have their character grit their teeth, mutter, "Those bastards will pay for this!", and then go off and kill some goblins and feel unsually good about it.
One more thing- Look at the Gray Wastes of Hades. This is the pinnacle of evil, but does it have fire and brimstone, cavorting demons or torture rooms filled with the wails of the damned? No. It's just bleak apathy upon the soul for eternity. The loss of hope, of energy, of caring, exerted by some abstract, smirking force that sits back and enjoys watching your eventual ruin at the slow, creeping hands of subtle corruption. That's the pinnacle of pure, supernatural evil in the D&D game.
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I would be careful here about how far you, as a DM, can go with this before it stops feeling like a game for your players. Alluding to the atrocities of war can be a good motivator for characters. Describing them in vivid detail can turn the game from fun to unsettling.
Perhaps the timbre of your games is different from my experiences, but hearing a description of a dismembered child would be likely to douse the excitement and camaraderie that are part of my gaming experiences.
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remember, you have 5 senses. of these, sight is the most used, but scent is the most apt to elicit emotional responses. (be careful with this ingame)
sight: bodies burnt, groups of commoners in rows, pierced with arrows; crows swarming in murders over an entire town
sound: eerie silence over an entire village; crackling of flames from the nearby fields; a single, soft sobbing, from somewhere beneath a burnt-out-building
touch: radiant heat from the charred buildings, crunching of bones trampled into the mud, palpable tension arising from nearby scavengers (that ones a bit of a stretch)
taste: ashes floating on the air; food takes on a flavor of rot
smell (here's where you gotta gauge your players most intently):
rotten bodies; voided excrement and urine; blood, both fresh and stale; vomit; mud, mixed with the above; animal filth; carrion birds and other scavengers; mold, fungus, and other rot; the undead; gangrene (sickeningly sweet and horrible)
the trick is to intersperse sounds, smells, and tactile sensations with the visual descriptions, and let the players fill in the missing parts as much as possible.
blood splashes what's left of the bar-top, and the scent of old dead and woodsmoke wafts into your nose.
your boots crunch into something thin, half-buried in the black mud. looking down, you see the splintered white ends of bone.
crow-calls and wing-rustling fill the air ahead, as clouds of the black scavenger birds fight over their fill of the recently slain.
keep it simple, direct, and try not to use too much in your delivery. when the have to complete the scene in their heads, they're gonna be slightly more uncomfortable than if you hand it to them all packaged up neat.
also: think about lowering the temperature where you game by a degree or 2. a chilly room makes for a creepier atmosphere.
don't forget to let them break the tension occasionally, too. a bard, jester, or good old "where's the mountain dew" joke at the right time can make everyone feel a lot better about themself.
-the hamster
I personally think the mutilated children mini-thread says rather more about the people posting that about warfare or even roleplaying games.
Whoa, easy there big guy. Everyone has a different tolence levles for things like violence, sex, strong language, etc. That's fine, and if something is making you feel uncomfortable go ahead and let us know (I'm sure nobody was trying to offend anybody). However, this sounds a lot like a personal attack, so if tempers are rising than maybe we should all take a step back before feelings get hurt.
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(...)However, this sounds a lot like a personal attack, so if tempers are rising than maybe we should all take a step back before feelings get hurt.
I never intended this with starting the thread and I apologize if someone got me wrong of feels personally hurt.
I am not the person who loves horror-movies, or revels (spelling) in bloodshed! Far from that.I also didn't want exact descriptions mutilated people and my player would throw me a strange look if I'd come up with a dismembered child.
However, even the poster of this "idea" isn't fine with such things. I asked for strong war-scenes and never imagined some things which had been posted. But I don't think someone here wanted to get personal or loves thinking about such scenes.
For me it was just a way to get some ideas what might happen when a town is run over or how it looks like in the aftermath!
So, again - I hope no ones feelings got hurt, which wasn't my intention at all!!!
- Tom
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My comment was more alomg the lines that some of the posts were in extremely dubious taste. I don't think that is an especially unfair comment. We all need to excercise self-censorship from time to time in a public forum. That was all really.
Also, bear in mind that a non-gamer (say, one of those intolerant Christian types) could read something very different into a fairly "innocent" attempt to provide the original poster with some vivid imagery to take away and use in his game. No one was trying to upset anyone, I am well aware. Any offense, which was minimal, was accidental. No harm done.
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My comment was more along the lines that some of the posts were in extremely dubious taste. I don't think that is an especially unfair comment. We all need to excercise self-censorship from time to time in a public forum. That was all really.
Also, bear in mind that a non-gamer (say, one of those intolerant Christian types) could read something very different into a fairly "innocent" attempt to provide the original poster with some vivid imagery to take away and use in his game. No one was trying to upset anyone, I am well aware. Any offense, which was minimal, was accidental. No harm done.
Now I am relieved!
What you said is true, could'nt have put it better! Thanx!
The long silence wasn't offense...per se, though the thought that my posts might be considered equivalent to pornography or that perhaps I sit around grinning to myself over photos of dead kids didn't exactly have me doing backflips of joy and appreciation. Moreso I think its that I'm wrestling with the issues behind all of this.
I know particularly in Europe that the offense level of violence and sex are reversed from what they are in the US, but hadn't really connected that bit of insight to the fact that readers here might be offended by my comments--and the apparent depth of outrage really stunned me.
That said, I am an officianado of horror movies. I see them as their own genre of moviemaking--one of my favorites. Anything that can drop my jaw or freak me out in that department I enjoy as much as action movie goers enjoy a good explosion, or western lovers like a good shootout. Now do I enjoy blowing things up? Starting neighborhood gunfights? Of course not. Likewise I don't love real life atrocity for the same reasons (real people getting hurt, lives shattered forever, and so forth). But in fiction you can explore those themes, which are powerful and shocking and interesting, and best of all no one actually gets maimed.
Now granted, will people unused to roleplaying be offended by descriptions of violence...sure. Will they be offended by the description of the worship of false gods and occult magical practices? Yep. Can't save people from themselves, and a lot of people are alarmists.
Now on the other hand, I like to think of myself as a tolerant and respectful person, and having realized that I have crossed some lines of what people consider good taste, I appologize and will try to keep my gore-mongering to a quiet minimum.
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The long silence wasn't offense...per se, though the thought that my posts might be considered equivalent to pornography or that perhaps I sit around grinning to myself over photos of dead kids didn't exactly have me doing backflips of joy and appreciation. Moreso I think its that I'm wrestling with the issues behind all of this.
I know particularly in Europe that the offense level of violence and sex are reversed from what they are in the US, but hadn't really connected that bit of insight to the fact that readers here might be offended by my comments--and the apparent depth of outrage really stunned me.
That said, I am an officianado of horror movies. I see them as their own genre of moviemaking--one of my favorites. Anything that can drop my jaw or freak me out in that department I enjoy as much as action movie goers enjoy a good explosion, or western lovers like a good shootout. Now do I enjoy blowing things up? Starting neighborhood gunfights? Of course not. Likewise I don't love real life atrocity for the same reasons (real people getting hurt, lives shattered forever, and so forth). But in fiction you can explore those themes, which are powerful and shocking and interesting, and best of all no one actually gets maimed.
Now granted, will people unused to roleplaying be offended by descriptions of violence...sure. Will they be offended by the description of the worship of false gods and occult magical practices? Yep. Can't save people from themselves, and a lot of people are alarmists.
Now on the other hand, I like to think of myself as a tolerant and respectful person, and having realized that I have crossed some lines of what people consider good taste, I appologize and will try to keep my gore-mongering to a quiet minimum.
I don't think I was trying to imply that the posters on this thread were a bunch of chainsaw-wielding maniacs. My experience of the individuals on this board is that they are polite, interesting people and there is nothing in this thread to change my opinion. I wasn't "offended" to the extent I was upset or shocked. I was more questioning the appropriateness of the content of the posts on a public noticeboard, where it could be seen by either kids (who probably surf this board to some extent, even if they rarely post) or those with a bias against D&D (OK, I wouldn't surf a board like this if I felt that way, but some people like to have their prejudices confirmed). To be fair, the latter I don't give a monkeys about, but I think it is reasonable to have some concern about the former.
In terms of content, it is true that imagery of this kind is freely available in the movies or books. But those are media where you are choosing to to experience that sort of stuff. On a free website which is devoted to RPGs rather than horror, it would be possible to stumble across this thread inadvertantly, and it is possible that rather loving descriptions of sadistic violence might not be appropriate for the viewer.
My personal view on the posts is that some were in quite dubious taste, but I was personally that bothered even if they were not my cup of tea. I own the Book of Vile Darkness, so it wasn't an issue of not being able to take this sort of thing (even if I dislike the splatter-y sub-genre of horror). But I chose to buy that, and knew what I was doing. I didn't really want to have stuff about mutilated kids on this website, which is normally a forum for geeky jokes and conversation.
I also wasn't trying to imply that the imagery suggested was "pornographic" in its description of violence. I was merely suggesting a genre which offends lots of people, and making a comparison with that and the possible offensiveness of some of the posts. It is interesting that the Europe v US comment was made. There may be a greater tolerance of violence to some extent v sexual content in the US, which is possibly a cultural difference, but the differences can be overemphasised.
In short, I think no one was actually terribly offended, maybe just made to feel a little uncomfortable. I suppose Dryder, like me, possibly isn't into horror too much, which is maybe why he didn't have depository of horrific, war-related imagery at his fingertips and led to the initial query. I am absolutely certain no one was trying to give offense, merely trying to help. The game, by and large, involves characters killing monsters and NPCs, so violence is part of the landscape. So it isn't a big deal, more an issue of differing views on what constitutes good, clean fun.
After seeing Final Destination (which I hated) and the other things pumped out by Hollywood, I personally feel there is a huge discrepency between what is let into movies when it relates to blood, gore, and violence, and what is let in due to sexual content. The former is a thriving genre in which almost anything goes. Even the most horrid scenes are perpetrated and advertised as entertainment. On the flip side, while there is quite a bit of sex in American movies, anytime something proportional to the level of violence comes out, it gets shunned as pornography. It's banned in most places, the movie makers have to deal with the negativity (though in today's atmosphere, any press is good press, I hear), etc. Thus, few people rarely attempt to make an actual movie of that sort.
I'm not trying to promote pornography, but I don't feel a problem with saying that something seems a little out of whack when it's okay to let a fifteen year old watch a disembowlment (sp?), but not a demonstration of the intentional physical workings of the human body and (presumably) an act of love between two people.
That's my view from this side of the pond. I'm not really sure how much things differ in Europe.
Yeah, totally. It's wierd trying to muddle through my feelings about such things. Especially add to the fact that I'm pretty comfortable watching my disembowlings--enought to rate something as say a "good" disembowling versus a "cheesy" disembowling. Wierd.
Yet sex scenes make me really uncomfortable.
I try to think it through logically, and at its simplist chainsaw murdering someone will get you arrested and likely fried or put to sleep. Sex will get you a nice relationship, maybe some kids you weren't ready for...certainly not the death penalty (well depending on the country really).
I think it's that the sex is more "real". If you see parts you aren't supposed to, that's really the parts of those people. Whereas when you see someone's blood and guts, it's all just silicone and corn syrup.
I dunno. It's really kinda' dumb emotion without a good logical framework, and put under the microscope I guess it doesn't make a truckload of sense. Hmmm....
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We are all subject to our emotions and instincts much more than we care to imagine. I suspect that horror movies create a vicarious, safe thrill which acts on our fight/flight drives and gives a big adrenaline boost. Possibly, people who like that sort of thing have a high tolerance for the physiological reactions it engenders. I don't, I suspect (Ring, the Japanese version, gave me terrible nightmares, and there is absolutely no onscreen violence or gore in that at all) and so my preference to avoid such movies.
Also, horror movies can be a rite of passage (apparently, lots of teenage girls go in groups to watch them) and so serve a social bonding purpose. And, I suppose, you can take your girlfriend and she can cling to you in the scary bits (heh heh heh...).
Which brings me on to sex. I think sex is fundamentally embarrassing. I'm not sure why, but it seems to be a private matter in virtually all cultures, as far as I know, so witnessing it maybe just feels a bit odd. In western cultures, heavily influenced by Christianity, the prevailing attitudes (either in compliance of rebellion) are largely shaped by the maxims of the Church in its varying manifestations, and of course Christianity frowns on sex (original sin and all).
Maybe people dislike becoming sexually aroused in public, which could cause difficulties in ancient cultures with small tribal groups ("Oi, stop leering at my woman, Thog, or you'll cop this stone axe in your skull!"). Certainly, male jealousy can cause serious violence now, so walking round slobbering at every woman you see could lead to a relatively short life. And women don't want to look "up for it" with every man, since a woman needs to be selective of her mates, given that childbirth is dangerous and child-rearing onerous.
I suggest these as potential answers, based on a sort of evolutionary approach. Frankly, I have no idea. But I certainly wouldn't get worried if you like horror movies - I don't think it says anything bad about you. Saddam Hussein used to write poetry as recreation, apparently - go figure.
I read in a magazine before we invaded that he (Saddam) enjoyed fishing with his sons (monsters in their own right), writing poetry, and watching torture sessions. The article wasn't meant as a joke, but I don't even remember where I read it, so I have absolutely no way to validate that. I do remember that it seemed authentic at the time, however.
Refugees are always a good tool to show the horrors of war. These are people who were there, who've seen what the villains are up to, and fled as their homes burned. They can be sick, maimed, wounded, malnourished/dehydrated... the list goes on and on. Local priests are doing what they can to help those in need, but there's only so much one can do with limited resources. Most of the food/supplies are going to the army, so the refugee's are forced to endure while the war rages on.