russian civil war (osterns)

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

The basmachi might work.

Especially since the term migt cover anything from and bunch of bandits to the Khan of Bokhara's regular army. And Enver Pasha.
(AND they are the "Indians" of the Osterns. One would assume thar Red and White would be Blue and Grey for ostern-western purposes.)

Oh, and since this is a Russian Civil War topic:
Ungern-Sternberg.

[jason taylor]

Everyone is evil was in quotation marks. The point was that emphasizing the evils of all parties to the conflict is not really moral ambiguity, it is simply Evil versus Evil. Which is not necessarily a bad plot but not the same as ambiguity.
Real ambiguity comes when the issue of ends and means is done with a sympathetic eye to the one who faces it. For instance in The Spies of Warsaw by Allen Furst, Millitary Atache Mercier is a decent fellow but participates in a honey-trap. And in Stained-glass by Buckley, Blackford Oakes is ordered to assasinate his admirable but overenthusiastic friend to prevent a world war.
As far as "lesser of two evils" all war is at least the lesser of two calamaties. Whether it is the lesser of two moral evils gets into Just War vs Pacifism vs "General Sherman rides again", war-is-heck theory.
As for "Kind of like American politics", that is for general chatter. More to the point it is a cliche. Does everyone have to compare everything with Current Events?
And yes, I do understand that not all Whites were evil. I also understand that not all Germans were evil, not all Japanese were evil and so on. And that wasn't the point.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ramidel

Ah...yes it does.

Aside from the fact that you just ignored my statement that no, everyone is not evil (you tarred the whole White movement with the actions of individual units, which in a civil war really doesn't hold up; it's like tarring the Iraqi Government with the same brush as the Mahdi Army), if all sides have evil units, that makes for moral questions like the one I posted.

Are you going to choose the lesser of two evils, as you see it? Or are you going to make a stand and fight all the bad guys, knowing that it'll probably just lead to the real bad guy taking the whole pot?

Kind of like American politics, come to think of it.

Now that I think about it, that is a good point. One might want to take the White side in the hope that it won't be as bad as it could be if the Reds win.
I guess there was kind of a communication failure there.

[jason taylor]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw...lice&x=12&y=26


The Adventures of Paul Nazarrof also are a good sourse.

[Ramidel]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Everyone is evil was in quotation marks. The point was that emphasizing the evils of all parties to the conflict is not really moral ambiguity, it is simply Evil versus Evil. Which is not necessarily a bad plot but not the same as ambiguity.
Real ambiguity comes when the issue of ends and means is done with a sympathetic eye to the one who faces it. For instance in The Spies of Warsaw by Allen Furst, Millitary Atache Mercier is a decent fellow but participates in a honey-trap. And in Stained-glass by Buckley, Blackford Oakes is ordered to assasinate his admirable but overenthusiastic friend to prevent a world war.

Fair enough. Either means hard choices.

As for "Kind of like American politics", that is for general chatter. More to the point it is a cliche. Does everyone have to compare everything with Current Events?

Pretty much, yeah.

And yes, I do understand that not all Whites were evil. I also understand that not all Germans were evil, not all Japanese were evil and so on. And that wasn't the point.

Yeah. My point is that you can say that the Germans, the Japanese and the Reds were evil. You can't say that about the Whites, because there's no "the Whites" to speak of; "White" means virtually anyone who is pro-Russia and anti-Red. A German soldier deployed in Russia can't look at the Holocaust and say "I had nothing to do with that! Damn Hitler!" with a clean conscience, but a Socialist-Revolutionary in Kazakhstan can say "I had nothing to do with that! Damn those Pan-Slavs!" when looking at the massacre of the Jews in Ukraine. They aren't standing by or approving that action, but they're stretched to the limit in their own home front, and they're maintaining a truce with the little fish while fighting the Bolshevik juggernaut.

I suppose my point is that there is no White Army, only a White movement of a bunch of different groups with no central command and no agreement on anything besides "anything's better than the Reds."

[jason taylor]

I guess that is a reasonably fair point. Not all white factions were repulsive to one's sympathy.

[bennyj]

nice to see a couple of replies =O)

yes peter hopkirks books are excellent.

the idea was for characters without a real cause. rather than being in the white or red army a character could have beliefs but not be with his forces.
my idea for a character was an austro-hungarian sargent who helped the reds put down an uprising and now just wants to go home.

and i'm glad someone mentioned the mad baron!

[Xenarthral]

Looking for character ideas?
The Man With No Name works in English and Japanese, so he should work
in Russian as well.
My personal inclination would be an (ex-)Tsarist officer who wants to get out of Russia, but wants to do so with enough valuables that he'll neither just
starve to death outside Russia instead of in Russia nor suffer the impoverished indignities that many of the exiles did.

Tidbit that needs to be worked into the conversation:
Boris Shaposhnikov (unless I'm getting the names confused), eventually
Marshal of the Soviet Union, joined the Red Army because a friend who had
joined came over, pointed a gun at him and and told him to join or die.

Off on an Infinite Worlds tangent: Anybody considered displacing an Ungern-Sternberg into the American Civil War? Sure, it would likely just be a close
parallell unless you show up while he's still around, but still...

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Ramidel

. . . everyone is not evil (you tarred the whole White movement with the actions of individual units, which in a civil war really doesn't hold up; it's like tarring the Iraqi Government with the same brush as the Mahdi Army), if all sides have evil units, that makes for moral questions like the one I posted.

Some 35 years ago, when I was young, the co-worker of my father was a White veteran.

He himself had been a boy at that time and I doubt very much that he had been evil. IIRC he was with Denikin's forces. He said simply, "The Reds drove us into the Black Sea. I found my way onto a ship and where it stopped was the United States. Been here ever since."

So -- a campaign culminating with "Who do I have to kill to get onto that ship?" offers a LOT of promise -- and moral ambiguity.

I find that if your players are mature this adds a lot. "Do I kill an innocent to survive? or should I let myself die as a result?" does make them ponder.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by bennyj

nice to see a couple of replies =O)

yes peter hopkirks books are excellent.

the idea was for characters without a real cause. rather than being in the white or red army a character could have beliefs but not be with his forces.
my idea for a character was an austro-hungarian sargent who helped the reds put down an uprising and now just wants to go home.

and i'm glad someone mentioned the mad baron!

I know I mentioned The Mad Baron here

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=39418

but he is not in this particular thread.

He was a splendid villain though and a novelist couldn't have done better.