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Leliel
2009-01-01, 12:42 AM
We all know the archetypal "barbarian tribe"-screaming, bloodthirsty marauders who exist only to conquer and pillage-the parasitoids of society.

However, we also all know that real life barbarians were basically decent people off the battlefield, sometimes to a surprising extent-the Vikings, that prime example of northern pillagers, thought of themselves as farmers.

So, I decided to bring that discrepancy to D&D-to create a "war" scenario where the PCs face off against rampaging barbarians intent on destroying their civilization-who, they discover, are actually just trying to make a home for their own civilization.

So how would you go about showing that the hostile tribes of angry raiders aren't really bad people?

Shades of Gray
2009-01-01, 12:47 AM
1) They (The Primitives) once had a war with the human empire. Eventually, there was a piece treaty with them, and were promised land. The land was terrible, no crops would grow, and their livestock died. Eventually, after living in horrible conditions for X hundred years, they turned to raiding and pillaging.

2) They (The Primitives) were once a regular peaceful farming nation, however one day a half-devil came and planted and artifact in the city. Eventually, evil radiated out of it, driving the citizens into a bloodthirsty rage and will to pillage and conquer.

Grail
2009-01-01, 12:48 AM
Q: Will you go to a lot of effort to do this and have your players not really care?

A to your Q: Instead of having the barbarians just launch a war, have them just move into areas and start setting up home. Only have the war begin when those who own the land start pushing back. This way you can introduce the barbarians first before the war begins as the characters can have interaction with them before the bloodshed.

Limos
2009-01-01, 12:52 AM
Have the Civilized people deport the Barbarians to some God-forsaken hellhole in order to get at some natural resource that the Barbarians weren't using.

Then have the disgruntled Barbarians take back the land that was there a few years ago and slaughter the people who stole their land. That way they have a real motivation and they were the injured party in the first place.

Lert, A.
2009-01-01, 01:05 AM
The barbarians, being illiterate, signed a pact in blood to demons. The demons have exorbitant interest rates (or something) and the barbarians must raid to pay off the debt.

Alleine
2009-01-01, 01:29 AM
Here's an idea, don't have them raping, pillaging, and burning everything? Make extra sure you don't make them sound like horrible demonic barbarians bent on the utter annihilation of everyone who isn't them?

Or get a couple captured who try to plead their case to the PC's. But depending on the PC's that may or may not work at all.

monty
2009-01-01, 01:37 AM
Instead of the pillaging and stuff, just make them a tribe of peaceful hunter-gatherers. Their barbarian abilities come from training, not to invade, but to overcome the fearsome beasts that they must fight to eat.

Skjaldbakka
2009-01-01, 01:39 AM
Look at real world cultures that the 'civilized' folk considered to be barbaric, and model it off of those historical encounters.

Europeans and Native Americans*, for example.


*which is a incredibly gross lumping together of a wide variety of cultures, btw. It is analagous to using Eurasians instead of English, Chinese, French, etc.

Now to completely ruin my credibility:

I recently started playing WoW, and while I don't know the backstory, I really like the way the Orcs are portrayed. It is very similar to the way I run orcs in my campaigns, although more centralized.

dariathalon
2009-01-01, 01:56 AM
I would have one of the first adventures post-war starting (before it gets too nasty) involve inflitrating the enemy to get some information. Make it a reasonably long-term mission (perhaps a few sessions of game time). Get them involved with the barbarian culture. Have them make friends there. Let them see the hardships and the joys of life with the other side. Maybe even introduce something unique to that particular tribe (be it a technological advance, a new type of magic, an interesting tradition, perhaps even a new character class or something). Then once they return with whatever information they were sent to get, the commanders of the military use it to make a raid on the culture, destroying it. Maybe allow rumors of some survivors as a future plot hook.

Berserk Monk
2009-01-01, 02:06 AM
You could show that these barbarians have family and kin: bonds that show they care for others. There are women and children and their war is only to support them. Fighting is all they can do. They've never had the resources to study magic so there aren't any casters. As for the other classes, they require too much training while being a barbarian is just smash-smash. They've always been nomadic so there were never any farmers. There food supply has diminished so they only pillage for food. This could also open up a possible quest for what happened to their food supply.

Behold_the_Void
2009-01-01, 02:52 AM
I had a concept where I was setting the Viking-styled tribe up as the protagonist, with the imperialist culture displacing them and taking their land and them having to strike back to reclaim it.

Sergeantbrother
2009-01-01, 02:53 AM
I think that the main thing to do is to give the barbarians a reasonable motivation for attacking the way they are.

As Skjaldbakka suggested, look at real world historical examples, you'll see that in virtually every case its not a battle of good versus evil but that real world conflicts involve shades of gray with good and evil people on both sides.

So depending on the exact nature of the barbarians and the civilized side, you could probably come up with any number of non-evil reasons why the barbarians might attack.

Perhaps the barbarians have suffered a horrible attack from the civilized nation in the past, perhaps they were driven into barbarism as their lands were conquered. Maybe this happened in the past and the civilized nation doesn't really think about what their historians consider minor skirmishes with another country generations ago, but the barbarians still have a strong memory and consciousness of their humiliated defeat and subjugation. That is just one example, I am sure you can think of many others. The way many people view conflicts, both sides may view their enemies as the aggressor and themselves as being on the defense.

DoomHat
2009-01-01, 03:25 AM
Another two real world history ways to play it are that the “barbarians” are in fact, victims of propaganda by near by larger “civilized” nations.
In the case of the Vikings, they had a perfectly well adjusted civilized society not unlike everyone else in Europe. They got a bad rap because most of the written history from that age was written by Christian monks. Monks living in monasteries with religious iconography… religious iconography made largely of gold.
The Viking’s, not feeling particularly reverent to Christ and pissed off with the Norman’s in general, relieved them of their gold.
The surviving monks weren’t very impartial. Thus the Vikings are remembered as animalistic blood hungry savages.

Earlier still, the Romans were self-obsessed jingoistic monsters who felt that anything not slavishly serving their interests was barbaric and beneath notice. Because they were so successful at burning almost everyone-else's account of things (while they plundered the world around them) today its well known that Rome was the heart of all civilization and everyone else was barbaric and beneath notice.

Sergeantbrother
2009-01-01, 03:32 AM
In the case of the Vikings, they had a perfectly well adjusted civilized society not unlike everyone else in Europe. They got a bad rap because most of the written history from that age was written by Christian monks. Monks living in monasteries with religious iconography… religious iconography made largely of gold.
The Viking’s, not feeling particularly reverent to Christ and pissed off with the Norman’s in general, relieved them of their gold.
The surviving monks weren’t very impartial. Thus the Vikings are remembered as animalistic blood hungry savages.

Well, killing people because they have gold and are of a different religion is pretty savage. Maybe a better way of looking at the ancient Norse in a good light is to realize that the entire culture wasn't based around such violence.

Ravyn
2009-01-01, 03:37 AM
Speaking of real-world history, why not set it up rather like what ended up leading to the fall of Rome?

Out far in the lands beyond where people are looking, some group gets expansionist, starts working outward. Those in the way of their expansion can't exactly resist, so they start moving outward in order to get out of the way. And the people after them move out of their way--

--and it basically all turns into Tribal Dominoes until your area is reached and just going somewhere else becomes unfeasible.

Aquillion
2009-01-01, 03:43 AM
You can start by not describing them as a 'barbarian horde'. :smallwink:

...seriously. Both words are fairly heavily weighted, and if you introduce them to the players like that to begin with, it's not likely that they'll listen to much else you have to say. Even the fact that you're conceptualizing them as a Barbarian Horde is odd... the actual Mongols, say, were not anything like we would consider a barbarian horde (they were not nearly as barbaric as they're made out to be, and far from being a 'horde', they were organized with extreme, ruthless efficiency in military matters, far better organized than any other military in the world at the time.)

I would go for that. If you don't want the players to dismiss a group as a 'barbarian horde', go out of your way to show that they are neither barbaric, nor a mindless horde. Show that they have reasons to fight wars, and that these reasons are not particularly worse than anyone else's in their day and age.

KevLar
2009-01-01, 03:55 AM
So how would you go about showing that the hostile tribes of angry raiders aren't really bad people?
Are you above cheap (but effective) tricks? If not, there are two very easy methods.

1) Show the barbarians experiencing loss.
For example, perhaps the party is on a scouting mission and arrives stealthily at the enemy camp - by a staggering coincidence - at the exact moment the tribe is about to mourn their dead. The ceremony should include strange (barbaric! :smalltongue:) customs, but grief is universal, and it shows. The chief would make a solemn speech, detailing every hardship the tribe has suffered trying to find a home, praising the bravery but also hard work and self-sacrifice of the warriors, grieving for their loss, and declaring his determination to honor their heroic deaths and never surrender. The women would begin a chilling lament. The orphans would wail. Definitely add a crushed parent carrying the dead body of a child just killed by "the good guys".

2) Show a damsel in distress.
Dirt cheap, I know. For example: The party bumps into a young barbarian girl, lost and terrified. Already captured and beaten "by the good guys", and having escaped at some point. She's clutching a knife and threatens to kill anyone who comes near her. If there's a chance for talk, she'd make clear what has befallen her and her own feelings about the war, as well as the tribe's point of view. (No need to make a speech here, simple statements and emotions will suffice.) If there's no chance for talk, because the players do something rash and probably stupid, she despairs, tears up a bit, shouts something defiant and kills herself on the spot.


Of course, the above are insultingly obvious. :smalltongue: Before getting there, see if a subtler approach works. For starters, you can have the players hear all sorts of ugly rumors about how merciless and inhuman the barbarians are, but when they actually come face to face with them, describe them as normal people - only less advanced technologically, and perhaps more passionate. Don't have them foam in rage for no apparent reason. Even in combat. In combat, be sure to describe them fighting bravely, despite their inferior weapons - not in reckless abandon. A sense of honor is usually paramount to the iconic barbarian. Show that. Think what kind of customs and taboos they have, what they consider honorable and what dishonorable, and have them follow all that to the letter.

Out of combat, show them pause and think, show them laugh, show them show kindness to one another or a random creature, show them care about their own etc. Scouting missions are, again, a good way to do that.

Also.
While being attacked first is a good way of showing that the barbarians are "right" to wage a war, I wouldn't recommend it - because (from what I understand) it's not what you're after. It's more interesting (and more difficult and challenging) to show that even if the barbarians attacked first, even if they hadn't been wronged in the past, they are not "eeeeevil". They are just people trying to make a home, the only way they can.

And if you give some more details about what sort of barbarians they are, and what sort of "civilized people" the players are (culture, historical counterparts etc), we would have even more to say. :smallbiggrin:

PS - I'd also like to know if you're using alignment, and how.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2009-01-01, 04:44 AM
Building off BtV's suggestion, DnD good guys are generally reactive, and the bad guys are generally proactive. If the barbarians are invading passive civilized territory seemingly "just because," the heroes will see them as the bad guys, at least as a first impression. An easy way to show the barbarians in a better light is to make it obvious to the heroes early on that the barbarian's attacks are reactions to a recent wrongdoing. To this end, the barbarian's attacks should focus on the groups that did the wrongdoing, though any barbarian horde worth its moniker will pillage a few innocents on the side.

Wulfram
2009-01-01, 07:30 AM
Have them be running away from the Orcs, who are running away from the Ogres, who are running away from the Giants, who are running away from the Dragons, who are hungry.

Michaelos
2009-01-01, 08:13 AM
Let me give you an example of everything you shouldn't do, by detailing a plot where the attackers got practically no sympathy, despite running away from even meaner attackers.

In the campaign I was running, A Lawful Neutral Feudal Society with some Eastern Components were running away from a fight of Lavawights vs White Dragons which had been being barely held at bay by Pelor clerics. They decided to take over A Neutral Good Society of Arcanists, and started off by unleashing an Epic plot of timing their attack to match the release of an Atropal, where all of the Arcanists were distracted by trying to Teleport the PC's friendly townfolk out of the way. Their attack then had the following strategy:

A. Cause Massive Explosion at top of Antimagic mountain in the middle of Arcanist society, blanketing area in Antimagic field.

B. Cast Aerial Bombardent attacks that could go through Antimagic field (Things like Dropping Walls of Stone summoned from outside the Antimagic) to force people underground.

C. Cut off escaping Wizards by using Ground Troops, and Isolate them from the PC, who is fleeing with her retinue of Townsfolk/Guards from her town, The Arcanist Princess, and her Bodyguard.

As you can see, I was not trying to play up the Sympathy angle. Now, a list of things you shouldn't do, based on that plot.

1: Do not have the Friendly Society of Arcanists that the PC's were trying to help develop so that +2 Magic items could be sold in stores be the first victim. At the very least, attack a Neutral/Unfriendly Town First.

2: Do not time anything that The Barbarians do with the release of some Big Dark Evil. Regardless of whether the events are connected or not, the PC's might think the two are related.

3: Do not have the Barbarians engage in plots to cause wide area Antimagic for a tactical advantage against casters. Whether or not they need the advantage to have a chance, they shouldn't do that kind of damage if you want Sympathy.

4: Do not have the Barbarians attack anyone who can't fight back. Double Sympathy kill if the PC's are part of the group that can't fight back.

5: If the Barbarians enemies are escaping immediately after helping the PCs, do not have the Barbarians round them up for any reason. It might be perfectly logical to do so, but a PC will not take kindly to hearing that the people who JUST helped her evacuate her town have been captured.

Post-Man
2009-01-01, 08:20 AM
Speaking of real-world history, why not set it up rather like what ended up leading to the fall of Rome?

Out far in the lands beyond where people are looking, some group gets expansionist, starts working outward. Those in the way of their expansion can't exactly resist, so they start moving outward in order to get out of the way. And the people after them move out of their way--

--and it basically all turns into Tribal Dominoes until your area is reached and just going somewhere else becomes unfeasible.

Have them be running away from the Orcs, who are running away from the Ogres, who are running away from the Giants, who are running away from the Dragons, who are hungry.

This. Because I see it being used so seldomly, instead most GMs favouring the hackneyed old "Noble Savage" story. Yeah, they're bad for raiding your farms as they pass through, but they're doing it for a respectable reason at least. Heck, they could even be integrated into the Kingdom in order to help fight against the descending Otherhorde.

bosssmiley
2009-01-01, 08:47 AM
Read up on the history of the Goths.

They were running from something (overpopulation at home, the Huns, etc.) rather than going on a generations-long sacking spree.
They admired Roman culture and wanted to be part of the Empire.
They were hired, used and abused by the Byzantines, before being set on the West under false pretences.

The keynote is to make the barbarians sympathetic people. Play up the 'refugee' aspect of their lives, rather than the 'nomadic horde' aspect.

zeruslord
2009-01-01, 10:51 AM
The chief would make a solemn speech, detailing every hardship the tribe has suffered trying to find a home, praising the bravery but also hard work and self-sacrifice of the warriors, grieving for their loss, and declaring his determination to honor their heroic deaths and never surrender.If you go with this, I would recommend pulling from Vergil's Aeneid, specifically the landing after the storm in Book 1. It's very well written in the original, and if you can find a decent English translation should go over very well with your players.

Saph
2009-01-01, 11:25 AM
We all know the archetypal "barbarian tribe"-screaming, bloodthirsty marauders who exist only to conquer and pillage-the parasitoids of society.

However, we also all know that real life barbarians were basically decent people off the battlefield, sometimes to a surprising extent-the Vikings, that prime example of northern pillagers, thought of themselves as farmers.

So, I decided to bring that discrepancy to D&D-to create a "war" scenario where the PCs face off against rampaging barbarians intent on destroying their civilization-who, they discover, are actually just trying to make a home for their own civilization.

So how would you go about showing that the hostile tribes of angry raiders aren't really bad people?

Why does it matter whether they're 'bad people' or not?

The English didn't hate the Vikings because they thought they were 'bad people'. They hated them because the Vikings were invading their lands, taking everything they could get, and killing everyone who got in their way.

Everything suggested in this thread so far feels like real GM heavy-handedness. "Yeah, these guys are killing your friends, stealing your stuff, and raping your women, but you shouldn't be too hard on them." If I was a PC playing in a scenario like that, I wouldn't be particularly sympathetic to the GM's efforts to convince me what nice guys the barbarians were.

- Saph

Kurald Galain
2009-01-01, 11:35 AM
So how would you go about showing that the hostile tribes of angry raiders aren't really bad people?
The easiest way is probably to put the players in some kind of kingdom or empire that is decadent, corrupt, and full of political backstabbing.

Also, have them spend some time with the barbs (e.g. by being captured) to show that they have a strong code of honor and so forth.

And also, have the empire claim that the barbs are rapists, cannibals, and so forth, without these claims having basis in fact. Being a "feudal serf of the empire" really isn't all that different from being a "slave to the barbarians", except that the former sounds nicer. If, say, the latter treat you reasonably well as long as you work, and the former invoke Ius Primae Noctis, then the barbs are probably an improvement to everything but pride.

Jarawara
2009-01-01, 11:56 AM
How does one portray the Barbarian Horde in a sypathetic light?

By having the PC's be the Barbarians.

Start the PCs off as travelers from the outlands, the 'barbarians' compared to civilized life (even better if you can run a game in the 'wastelands' for a time before traveling to the big city). Or alternatively, you only need one of the PCs to be the outsider, and make sure you've helped prep that player on the connections he has with the supposed 'Barbarians'.

Remember, the people of the Barbarian Wastelands aren't all going to be Barbarian Class - they will have farmers, merchants, priests, shamans, the rich and the poor, the insiders and the outsiders, and the occasional oddball. They will have towns and countrylands, just like the 'civilized' land has, but of course the 'civilized' people won't recognize that. You could play any of the traditional PC classes in an otherwise traditional small-town campaign, but upon traveling to the big city, 'more advanced' areas, the PC's will be treated as being a bit of an oddity.

Then run the in-city campaign for a bit, get them used to life in the big city, get them dependent upon the advantages of modern living, and get the local populace to accept them (either as the heroes of the people, or at least as 'acceptable folk' in the eyes of the locals).

Then comes the Barbarian Invasion! Hordes of the unwashed masses strike south into the civilized lands, threatening the lives and property of us worthy folk. Of course, use all the same tricks presented above in this thread, as surely something set off the barbarians into invading, but most of the good civilized folk won't see that. It's up the PC's to look for that information themselves.

And... when they find their own countrymen, their old friends and neighbors, maybe even their own brother, in the barbarian horde... well, they should really stop and think about both perspectives in the fight.

Just make sure you don't make the brother vs brother fight into a kind of PC nemesis thing. You want both brothers (cousins, friends, whatever) to be unwilling to fight the other, so they will stop to think of options on how to undo the war - or at least to give the PC's the mental fodder in which to reconsider which side they really should be on.

*~*~*

If you have the campaign already running, and none of the PC's are from the barbarian lands... well, you could introduce an NPC from there, establish him as a useful friend in a series of adventures and plotlines, then have the rift occur as the barbarian invasion begins. But they might just consider the NPC a new enemy, and not think beyond that - so it's less likely to work as having the PC's themselves be from the wastelands.

kamikasei
2009-01-01, 12:07 PM
Why does it matter whether they're 'bad people' or not?

Agreed.

If the "barbarians" are antagonists, do your players automatically assume that all antagonists are evil monsters to the marrow who are incapable of any good behaviour?

A group "intent on destroying your civilization... to make a home for their own" don't sound like good people to me. They sound like bastards with motivation instead of bastards-just-because. And probably the majority of their population are not directly involved in any invading or genociding, as the military arm of any society is likely a minority. What does that change? It just means there are noncombatants, as there would always presumably be noncombatants, among your enemies.

Now, if you don't want to make this all just a pointless sideshow while your players have to defeat the invaders anyway, you could try constructing their motivation for invading so that it can be defused and a peaceable solution arrived at. Maybe they invaders are being manipulated or misled. Maybe the force driving them from their homes can be defeated; maybe the dark god, evil priest, or third nation using them can be exposed and turned against, and the invaders gifted empty lands in exchange for alliance.

MickJay
2009-01-01, 12:21 PM
Read up on the history of the Goths.

They were running from something (overpopulation at home, the Huns, etc.) rather than going on a generations-long sacking spree.
They admired Roman culture and wanted to be part of the Empire.
They were hired, used and abused by the Byzantines, before being set on the West under false pretences.

The keynote is to make the barbarians sympathetic people. Play up the 'refugee' aspect of their lives, rather than the 'nomadic horde' aspect.

...and the Byzantines themselves were trying to survive by any means necessary, usually by using the old Roman "divide and conquer" (or in their case, divide and survive) rule. Just because some "barbarian horde" might not be primitive nor savage doesn't change the fact that it might well be capable of demolishing your cities and enslaving your citizens as it passes.
---

War tends to remove inhibitions from people, to the point where making distinction between the "civilised" and "barbaric" becomes impossible, especially when atrocities accumulate on both sides. Perhaps have your PCs consequently visit two massacre sites, each performed by one of the sides of conflict to give them something to think about (if that's not too realistic/harsh for your planned setting). Perhaps throw in some details about a dead little barbarian girl clutching her dolly to make the barbarians look more human and the defending side - less, if your PCs would not get respond to gentler hints.

I fully agree that you should avoid using word "barbarian" and "horde" as much as possible, try "nomads", "wandering tribe", "refugees" etc.

Also, no ruler or government really likes hundreds of thousands of people moving into their lands, regardless of reason. People will take pity on a small group of refugees, but masses of them will be seen as threat.

Thinker
2009-01-01, 12:47 PM
Why does it matter whether they're 'bad people' or not?

The English didn't hate the Vikings because they thought they were 'bad people'. They hated them because the Vikings were invading their lands, taking everything they could get, and killing everyone who got in their way.

Everything suggested in this thread so far feels like real GM heavy-handedness. "Yeah, these guys are killing your friends, stealing your stuff, and raping your women, but you shouldn't be too hard on them." If I was a PC playing in a scenario like that, I wouldn't be particularly sympathetic to the GM's efforts to convince me what nice guys the barbarians were.

- Saph
That is a very good point. One way I can see it mattering is if the PCs represent a third outside party that is looking to get involved in the misery of others.

KevLar
2009-01-01, 02:25 PM
Everything suggested in this thread so far feels like real GM heavy-handedness. "Yeah, these guys are killing your friends, stealing your stuff, and raping your women, but you shouldn't be too hard on them." If I was a PC playing in a scenario like that, I wouldn't be particularly sympathetic to the GM's efforts to convince me what nice guys the barbarians were.
That's not how I understood it.
I don't think (though I could be wrong), that Leliel is trying to convince the players that the barbarians are "nice guys". He's trying to convince them that they are guys, normal human beings with flaws and virtues. Not monsters. Not "bad people" collectively. I believe that's a valid goal for a DM.

Whenever someone is drafted or recruited or even forced to become a soldier, long before he reaches the battlefield, he is brain-washed to believe that the enemy is an abomination and nothing less. It's never enough to inform him that the invaders are, well, invaders, therefore they are wrong and we, the defendants, are right. Every display of cruelty from them is amplified and shown as proof of their monstrous nature, while every display of cruelty from us (because war tends to produce appalling behavior on both sides) is either hushed or justified. "Our soldiers killed their women and children because they were scared / for revenge / it's the only way to get rid of these people". This is all too easy to do when the invaders have a lower technological level, strange customs and clothes, tend to shout loudly and paint their faces, and have an alien (from our point of view) perception of what is "honorable". Easy tag: Barbarians.

However, in reality, when a nation/kingdom/tribe/whatever walks the war path (:smalltongue:), it doesn't mean that all its members automatically become evil monsters.

I like games that show that. What I found most difficult, though, is not the sympathy part. That's easy. The hard part is setting apart the players' modern, post Age of Enlightenment sensibilities (where every man should be equally respected regardless of race, nationality, religion etc) with the mindset of a generic D&D society (where orcs are evil because it says so in the monster entry) and the mindset of the medieval society (where equality hasn't been invented yet).

It largely depends on the setting and the use (or dismissal) of the alignment system. Dismissal would work best, actually...

Saph
2009-01-01, 02:57 PM
That's not how I understood it.
I don't think (though I could be wrong), that Leliel is trying to convince the players that the barbarians are "nice guys". He's trying to convince them that they are guys, normal human beings with flaws and virtues. Not monsters. Not "bad people" collectively. I believe that's a valid goal for a DM.

I'd find that rather patronising, honestly. "Hey, I know these people are trying to kill you, but what's really important is that you don't forget that they're normal human beings." WTF? If someone's trying to stab my character in the face I do not want to hear a long justification about how they're 'not bad people'. My attention is going to be focused entirely on the face-stabbing.

There's a sort of implication in all this that 'understanding the barbarians' is somehow supposed to be more important than my character's friends/country/family/beliefs/life. I don't think I'd react well to that in a game.

- Saph

Kurald Galain
2009-01-01, 03:04 PM
"Hey, I know these people are trying to kill you, but what's really important is that you don't forget that they're normal human beings." WTF? If someone's trying to stab my character in the face I do not want to hear a long justification about how they're 'not bad people'. My attention is going to be focused entirely on the face-stabbing.

Obligatory BTVS quote,

Spike: I just can't take all this namby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians.
Buffy: Uh, the preferred term--
Spike: You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do. It's what Caesar did, and he's not going around saying, "I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it." The history of the world isn't people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story.

KevLar
2009-01-01, 03:15 PM
There's a sort of implication in all this that 'understanding the barbarians' is somehow supposed to be more important than my character's friends/country/family/beliefs/life. I don't think I'd react well to that in a game.
Doesn't that depend on how it's done exactly? :smallsmile:

I have participated in games that used (more or less) what Leliel is suggesting, and it didn't feel like "it's more important to understand the barbarians" at all. It felt more like "y'know, these people have a point, too..." - though it should be noted that, in all cases, the barbarians proved to be on the defense. Quite a difference there. And in most cases (except one, which is a long story), the players kept on fighting the barbarians, they didn't miraculously change allegiances and defect to the other side. It just made us pause and think and question things. Isn't that a good thing?

And I have run something similar (along with other twists), where it felt like "So, you thought you're with the good guys, huh? Newsflash, buddy: there are no good guys". Worked pretty well. It's definitely not for everyone, but the group loved it.

Of course, I can imagine a game where it's NOT done right, and does indeed feel like the DM is dictating what the PCs should feel. Yes, that would be bad. But I believe it can be avoided.

Dacia Brabant
2009-01-01, 03:39 PM
We all know the archetypal "barbarian tribe"-screaming, bloodthirsty marauders who exist only to conquer and pillage-the parasitoids of society.

However, we also all know that real life barbarians were basically decent people off the battlefield, sometimes to a surprising extent-the Vikings, that prime example of northern pillagers, thought of themselves as farmers.

So, I decided to bring that discrepancy to D&D-to create a "war" scenario where the PCs face off against rampaging barbarians intent on destroying their civilization-who, they discover, are actually just trying to make a home for their own civilization.

So how would you go about showing that the hostile tribes of angry raiders aren't really bad people?

The average Northman would have been a farmer, yes, but the Viking was a distinct warrior class separate from the farmers of his day, and they would have thought of themselves as warriors or explorers.

As said by kamikasei, it's the distinction between combatants and non-combatants that you're looking for, rather than "monolithic bloodthirsty horde," so when you show the ordinary tribesmen and women of the barbarians they can just be seen as normal people with different customs. You could even try turning it into a situation where your players can find a solution that doesn't involve wholesale slaughter, such as working with the invaders to fight the force that had expelled them from their lands, or trying to find another place for them to settle where they wouldn't have to conquer anyone, or maybe even brokering a peace treaty.

None of that mitigates the destructiveness of their warrior class though, and you can have as many reasonable explanations as you want of why they're destroying the players' civilization, it doesn't make what they're doing to them any less bad.

Satyr
2009-01-01, 03:52 PM
The First Rule of every conflict: Everyone is a forcifer, and deserves a cruciatingly painful death. The ones wit an advantage will win, and they deserves it, because they granted themselves an advantage; those who loses are weaker and therefore desvers to be beaten because they failed to overcome their weakness. The people lammenting about good and evil and morals are normally those in a weaker position who try to instrumentalise a code of conduct to gain a felt moral superiority to counterbalance the real military, social or infrastructural disadvantage they have to cope in the conflict.
There is no difference between a good fictional description of a conflict and the way those conflicts work in the real world. Everyone's a bastard, everyone claiming something else is either stupid or has an agenda.

Aquillion
2009-01-01, 07:12 PM
I'd find that rather patronising, honestly. "Hey, I know these people are trying to kill you, but what's really important is that you don't forget that they're normal human beings." WTF? If someone's trying to stab my character in the face I do not want to hear a long justification about how they're 'not bad people'. My attention is going to be focused entirely on the face-stabbing.

There's a sort of implication in all this that 'understanding the barbarians' is somehow supposed to be more important than my character's friends/country/family/beliefs/life. I don't think I'd react well to that in a game.The barbarians don't have to be constantly threatening the player's friends/country/family/beliefs/life. And understanding them and their motives -- and giving them motives, beyond 'these are big scary barbarians who want to kill you because they're evil savages' -- can open up new options in the campaign, whether the players want to fight the barbarians or deal with them in another fashion.

For instance, if the Barbarians are fleeing from someone else, or if the wars are happening because of a misunderstanding, the players can try to resolve that. If the barbarians are being whipped up or held together by one evil leader, killing that evil leader might resolve things. If the barbarians are attacking to get some specific resource or item or holy ground or whatever, the players could either use that knowledge to anticipate attacks, or (if the item/goal has only symbolic significance) try and figure out if it's worth just giving it to them, or destroying it so the Barbarians can never get it, or whatever.

Basically, I think it's less about making the player's hearts bleed for the barbarians, and more about giving the campaign world depth. Cartoonishly bloodthirsty barbarian hordes who exist solely as CR-based opponents with no background or reason for wanting to kill you are fine for some campaigns, sure, or if they're just backdrop for more important stuff; but there's nothing wrong with wanting to do more than that, too.

The players don't actually have to feel sorry for the barbarians, or like them, or even care about any of these things. But giving them a detailed, sane motivation rather than just random bloodthirstiness still makes for a better campaign, since it lets the players interact with them in more interesting ways (even just in ways related to fighting them militarily, if that's all the players want.)

kamikasei
2009-01-01, 07:47 PM
The barbarians don't have to be constantly threatening the player's friends/country/family/beliefs/life. And understanding them and their motives -- and giving them motives, beyond 'these are big scary barbarians who want to kill you because they're evil savages' -- can open up new options in the campaign, whether the players want to fight the barbarians or deal with them in another fashion.
...
Basically, I think it's less about making the player's hearts bleed for the barbarians, and more about giving the campaign world depth. Cartoonishly bloodthirsty barbarian hordes who exist solely as CR-based opponents with no background or reason for wanting to kill you are fine for some campaigns, sure, or if they're just backdrop for more important stuff; but there's nothing wrong with wanting to do more than that, too.

The players don't actually have to feel sorry for the barbarians, or like them, or even care about any of these things. But giving them a detailed, sane motivation rather than just random bloodthirstiness still makes for a better campaign, since it lets the players interact with them in more interesting ways (even just in ways related to fighting them militarily, if that's all the players want.)

See (and I think Saph might agree with this, but speaking for myself at least), I would view "enemy forces having motivations and goals beyond 'be fodder for PCs'" as the default state of a halfway decent campaign and the situation you're describing of "cartoonishly bloodthirsty barbarian hordes" as a failure, not the base from which you build up. And the impression I got from the OP was either "make the players feel sorry for the bad guys" (annoying, needless) or "make the players realize the bad guys aren't just threat-generating automatons" (don't they realize that already?).

Saph
2009-01-01, 08:20 PM
See (and I think Saph might agree with this, but speaking for myself at least), I would view "enemy forces having motivations and goals beyond 'be fodder for PCs'" as the default state of a halfway decent campaign and the situation you're describing of "cartoonishly bloodthirsty barbarian hordes" as a failure, not the base from which you build up. And the impression I got from the OP was either "make the players feel sorry for the bad guys" (annoying, needless) or "make the players realize the bad guys aren't just threat-generating automatons" (don't they realize that already?).

Yes. Speaking personally, if I'm in an invasion-scenario game, I know that the barbarian hordes have got motivations and goals. I know that they think their actions are perfectly justified. I know that they've got good sides as well as bad.

They're just ordinary human beings - and that's the problem! "Human" does not mean "nice"!

- Saph

KevLar
2009-01-01, 08:25 PM
Um... I just wanted to say that I agree. Completely. :smallamused: