[IW] Even darker Reich?

[Flyndaran]

Murder is murder. Why should I care what someone does with my corpse? I would be more concerned with what they do with my living self.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Murder is murder. Why should I care what someone does with my corpse? I would be more concerned with what they do with my living self.

Of course we are all more concerned with what happens to us while we're alive.
But as to what happens afterwards, if I had been in Auschwitz, for instance, it would have annoyed me to know that my body would be used as fertilizer in their fields, by the same guys who were working me to death.

I'd even venture to say that your view is not only different from mine, but probably also in the minority. Otherwise, we wouldn't have laws of war concerning the respectful treatment of human remains. During WWII, it was crucial for Japanese families who had lost a son in war to receive a small box with ashes in it. The Japanese armed forces usually provided it, even when chances were that they had not managed to retrieve a body.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It's actually rather difficult to make the Nazis look *darker*.

Quite. Once you've got mass-murdering racist warmongers, well, any attempt to make them "darker" just looks petty and adolescent. It's just slapping on a superfluous extra layer of black paint. You might find a few more squick triggers on a few people, you might end up making them look more or less plumb crazy or cold-bloodedly manipulative, you might generate a few different scenario plots or invalidate a few - but you're not going to make any group of vaguely sympathetic PCs any more likely to oppose them. You're just rearranging details.

If that helps you set up a game you find interesting, well, okay, I guess - but you're playing with recent real-world history, so don't be too surprised if you manage to annoy or offend some people along the way.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Quite. Once you've got mass-murdering racist warmongers, well, any attempt to make them "darker" just looks petty and adolescent. It's just slapping on a superfluous extra layer of black paint. You might find a few more squick triggers on a few people, you might end up making them look more or less plumb crazy or cold-bloodedly manipulative, you might generate a few different scenario plots or invalidate a few - but you're not going to make any group of vaguely sympathetic PCs any more likely to oppose them. You're just rearranging details.

If that helps you set up a game you find interesting, well, okay, I guess - but you're playing with recent real-world history, so don't be too surprised if you manage to annoy or offend some people along the way.

A glamorous hero needs a glamorous villain.

The Nazis may have been evil, but they were also banal. Each individual was bureaucratically doing his duty, never seeing himself as responsible and it would have made little difference to the scale of the atrocity if any one (or a dozen) of them were defeated by intrepid heroes. In a WWII game with magic and drama, perhaps there is a need for foes with suitably grandiose schemes that can be fruitfully opposed by the heroes.

If the Nazis mean to call Fenris-wolf to savage the allies, but the PCs learn that this will unleash Naglfar, manned with Hel's pale host, to come bring Ragnarök, that makes for a dark ritual that the PCs can try to stop.

In real life, nothing short of winning the war faster was going to change anything. Many players find that less than satisfying, from a dramatic point of view.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Quite. Once you've got mass-murdering racist warmongers, well, any attempt to make them "darker" just looks petty and adolescent. It's just slapping on a superfluous extra layer of black paint. You might find a few more squick triggers on a few people, you might end up making them look more or less plumb crazy or cold-bloodedly manipulative, you might generate a few different scenario plots or invalidate a few - but you're not going to make any group of vaguely sympathetic PCs any more likely to oppose them. You're just rearranging details.

Yeah, the whole "the devil made me do it" thing really cheapens it.


Now an interesting alternative to making them more eviler than evil, is to make them apparently good; have some of the Nazis be sympathetic, church-going, civic minded people who are just caught up in a bad situation, and for some reason just don't understand why everyone is so butthurt over the humane removal of the unfortunates who are obstacles to the eugenic destiny of the human race, and who couldn't participate in it or appreciate even if they weren't obstacles. And they can point to the *real* atrocities, like the Japanese reign of terror in Manchuria. And aren't you Americans allied with the Russians? You know they starved everyone in the Ukraine to death, right? Bullets and gas are a mercy.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The Nazis may have been evil, but they were also banal. Each individual was bureaucratically doing his duty,

You are right. And that makes them as "dark" as possible in my view.
I mean, if they were actually aliens in disguise, vampires, or possessed by demons, well, they would have been different from me. Evil, evil demons or vampires or aliens, OK, monsters and all. But actually they were ordinary men, like me.
The "banality of evil" may make evil less grandiose, but, at least to me (as always, someone else's mileage may vary), it makes it the most repulsive.

"I believe in those values"...
"I'm making money and a successful career"...
"I love that spiffy uniform"...
"I'm only doing my job"...
"I cannot disobey orders"...
"The authorities say so and they surely have good reasons to"...
"I'm but a small cog and somebody else would do it anyway"...
"I'm doing it so that I stay away from the frontline meatgrinder"...

I find all of that all the darker because I am not 100% sure I wouldn't be tempted by at least some of those lines, if I had been in the wrong place (Germany) at the time. While OTOH I cannot feel sympathy with demons/aliens/vampires.

In a WWII game with magic and drama, perhaps there is a need for foes with suitably grandiose schemes that can be fruitfully opposed by the heroes.

...

In real life, nothing short of winning the war faster was going to change anything. Many players find that less than satisfying, from a dramatic point of view.

Yes, but all of that is magical, grandiose, cinematic etc., not necessarily darker. I don't know what you think of the Indiana Jones tropes, but my take is that while they make good examples of what you describe, the Nazis in those movies aren't "darker" than in reality. They are hatching magical and dramatic plans that have no parallel in actual history, of course, but they are just as bad as their historical counterparts, no more and no less. Interestingly enough, while they are certainly wicked, they are also, at times, stupid, ...banal... little men with their own weaknesses.

[Corwin]

I had thought about doing something similar but I came to some of the same conclusions that were mentioned in Weird War 2.

So I thought about running the campaign the same as if the Nazis where using the death camps for a ritual. The Allies discover that magic is real, that the nazis plan on using a ritual to win the war, etc. The players rushing about trying to find how a spell like that would work. Doing everything in their power to stop it from happening. Finding the death camps coming to the conclusion that this must be how they plan on powering the ritual only find out that there was no ritual. The reasons for the camps are the same horrible reasons that they existed in our world for.

I also toyed with the idea of having the Nazis actually performing the ritual but with "suitable" sacrifices like the children of the ruling party or even members of the ruling party themselves. You know an actual "sacrifice". This being the ritual that the Allies caught wind of.

Never got around to running a world war 2 campaign though. Good luck to you.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by Michele

I mean, if they were actually aliens in disguise, vampires, or possessed by demons, well, they would have been different from me. Evil, evil demons or vampires or aliens, OK, monsters and all. But actually they were ordinary men, like me.
The "banality of evil" may make evil less grandiose, but, at least to me (as always, someone else's mileage may vary), it makes it the most repulsive.

[/snip]

I find all of that all the darker because I am not 100% sure I wouldn't be tempted by at least some of those lines, if I had been in the wrong place (Germany) at the time. While OTOH I cannot feel sympathy with demons/aliens/vampires.

That's exactly the point. The banality, the factory-like division of labour, the removal of the instigator from their actions, the bureaucratic euphemisms used, all these can generate real horror and revulsion. Not that I would want to see it in my game, but using real (translated) document that talk about "merchandise" (victims to be executed) and such things would probably be darker than adding a supernatural dimension that feels tagged on. Another way to add darkness would be to have the PCs see how things turn out all over the world. Manchuria and the Ukraine have been mentioned, but there are many smaller atrocities that can make a contemporary PC feel as if the human race has lost all its moral guidelines wherever you go.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Michele

"I'm doing it so that I stay away from the frontline meatgrinder"...

I would mentally throw up at hearing anyone use that as an excuse. As a confession I might feel differently, but as an excuse?

Besides I remember reading somewhere or other of an SS camp guard who actually volunteered for the Russian Front on learning what his job actually was.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I would mentally throw up at hearing anyone use that as an excuse. As a confession I might feel differently, but as an excuse?

Besides I remember reading somewhere or other of an SS camp guard who actually volunteered for the Russian Front on learning what his job actually was.

The instinct for self-preservation makes many do horrible things in its name. Fortunately, I have never been put in a situation to see exactly what it could make me do.