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Old 11-16-2015, 02:54 AM   #47
Icelander
 
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Location: Iceland*
Default Re: [Mass Combat] Discipline, Law, Order and Preventing Atrocities

Quote:
Originally Posted by SRoach View Post
I'm new to GURPS, and not well practiced at roleplaying in general.
That said, I'm pretty well read on the 3.x Forgotten Realms books. At least for Western Faerun, (less so for eastern and southern areas, including Unther.)
The PCs come from Cormyr and Sembia, but are now citizens of Ravens Bluff. They recruit the bulk of their mercenaries from Chondath and the Blade Kingdoms, principally from the city of Reth. Sailors are recruited from Ravens Bluff, Telflamm, Lyrabar, Procampur, Tantras and the countryside of the Vast, and from the Wizard Reach.

Now that they are involved in large scale operations, they also recruit replacements in Unther. They are building several units of Free Unther troops, but so far, the only ones they take into combat are the Artisan Guards* and a battalion of strong rural slingers who deliver incendiary and explosive ordnance (and their wives, who prepare fuses). The Artisan Guards are the only ones in the PCs' forces who are intended to function as MPs exclusively, as they are experienced guardsmen and, in modern terms, riot police, but they are neither armed nor trained to contribute much to kinetic combat operations.

*Full- and part-time guardsmen from Messemprar's artican district, grown into a hardened civic militia over fifteen years of de facto independence for Messemrar, which for most of that time has been a very lawless city, in that the 'authorities' were an uneasy allegiance of several disparate groups cast in the role of rebels and they had no resources or political capital to enforce laws over powerful gangs in various parts of the city.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SRoach View Post
I'd guess any of your troops who are Chaotic Neutral and worse are likely to commit atrocities, if they think they can get away with it. Any that are Lawful, are probably going to obey the Commander, at least to the letter if not the spirit. This is assuming you kept that element when you ported FR over to GURPS.
There are alignments, in that Gods can be classified into them and grant spells related to them. On the other hand, most people cannot be meaningfully described using alignments and would count as Neutral.

Everything I've read about modern atrocities in war*, as well as my experience as a defence attorney, leads me to believe that atrocities and 'evil' acts are predominately committed by normal people with grave psychological issues or trapped in situations beyond their control. Soldiers who shoot prisoners after the battle because many of their friends died, who massacre civilians while fighting partisans or who loot, rape and murder in a conquered city are rarely uniquely monstrous. Many of them may never commit a crime in civilian life.

Most people are not moral because of abstract ethical convictions, they are moral because their social environment taught and constantly reinforced a certain set of norms for accepted behaviour and conformance to social norms is one of the strongest motivations for humans. Remove that social structure and throw people into a situation where they are expected to follow radically different rules and many will have difficulty adjusting.

Expose these men to a whole host of negative experiences and emotions, which their officers would rather they blamed on the enemy than their own side, and it shouldn't surprise anyone if otherwise perfectly sane and rational men behave in a savage manner toward the nominal 'enemy' and perhaps even everyone not part of their unit.

*Which is a surprising number, as my MA dissertation was on the Law of War and Crimes Against Humanity.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SRoach View Post
Your world has magic, and presumably a Detect Truth spell, so certainly proving the guilt or innocence of a suspected rapist or murderer is easier than in our modern age.
Theoretically. In practice, military justice needs to be swift and a trial using magical means would mean depriving the army of several useful spells that day. For the same effort from a priest or wizard capable of ascertaining whether someone is telling the truth, the army could rather have a wall of wind protecting a unit from arrows, a fireball that breaks a squad of enemy at a crucial time or enough healing to keep 5-10 seriously wounded soldiers from bleeding out after a battle.

Even discounting using that magic on the battlefield, where it might save even more lives, it's hard to justify denying healing to and thereby sacrificing 5-10 wounded soldiers to give a better trial to one accused criminal. What makes the life of the accused more important than the lives of soldiers wounded in battle? If a mistake is made and the wrong person executed, that still means 4-9 people on your side who live but would otherwise have died.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SRoach View Post
An army marches on its stomach, but I suspect magic probably helps clear that particular logistical hurdle. Did you follow General Hooker's example? That may have helped a tad, too.
The logistical organisation of the army is superb. Set up with Administration skill 27, for a CiC with Administration ca 22, and managed day-to-day by several officers with Administration around 20. As the PC with Administration -27 has TL5 for his financial skills and they are using ships that are fully as advanced as anything of the 18th century*, I guess that the logistics count as being TL4+1.

*Not to mention that magic mimics higher navigation and each transport technology fairly well. Tell Position spells are better than TL5 chronometers and sextants for navigation out of sight of land (though the ships also carry all TL4 navigation gear as backup). And each ship belonging directly to the PCs' organisation has weathermages onboard, who use a Ring of Wind to ensure that there is always a favourable wind, no matter in what direction they sail.
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