In my next session my cell of acolytes will be sent to infiltrate a wasteland mutant community to gather some intel. One problem is, they have just been worked up into a "kill the mutant" frenzy by a high ranking imperial priest. While among the mutants (who are not chaos followers, just unfortunates mutated by generations of pollution) I'm going to try to make them see the humanity of the poor dregs. Just to see if they'll stick to the good old party line.

Then after I've made the muties as sympathetic as possible, I'm going to see if the returning acolytes join in the "kill the mutant" crusade or try to stop it. If they decide to go along, then at some point I'm going to stick them facing a room full of mutie non-combatants (old people and little kids). If they're good Imperials, they'll just toss a grenade in or flamer the place. If they're decent human being they won't.

No particular goal on my part other than to see which way the characters go on this, and which ones make what decision.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like the kind of hard decision that has to crop up in DH from time to time. I just hope when the dust settles your players had a good time. I think it's entirely possible that some of them won't make it out of this alive.

I like that idea, it would be interesting to see how things go. I think the imperium is so dehumanizing and demoralizing (by our standards anyway) that most citizens, particularly the kind picked by the Inquisition, would not be overly sympathetic. Then again, the Inquisition is also known for recruiting free thinkers and rebels, so it could go either way depending on the players and how they see their characters.

In my campaign the party's assassin found a mutated child chained up in a basement in a small agri-village. Being a good imperial citizen and a sociopath, he killed the child, it's family, and half the village before being brought down. (He wasn't the stealthy kind of assassin).

Heh, reading that just made me want to misquote Dwight in Sin City:

"It's time to prove to the Emperor that you're worth a ****. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people."

Excellent idea! It's those kinds of ideas that form the heart of almost every idea for my sessions and, in my opinion and to my tastes, what roleplaying in 40k should be all about. Granted, over the top insanity is right up there as is senseless violence and crazy gory weapons but such things can also be explored and enjoyed through the video games and the TT game. What can only be achieved through good old fashioned roleplaying is really getting into the warped mindset and viewpoint of the Imperium, to really explore this idea of doing almost anything, no matter how monstrous, to insure the survival of the Imperium. It's easy when all you have to do is worry about your own skin and getting all righteous hatridy on some slobbering tentacled thing that eats babies and ***** old men, quite another thing to have to violate most everything we believe is right and decent against things that, to us, are in need of a bit of mercy as opposed to heaps of cruelty.

Good luck and let us know how it goes (especially with your nut-ball 1/3rd corrupted already group I do like hearing about their odd exploits.

If I'm remembering the players in your game right then the noble among them is going to be weeping one way or the other. I wonder if he'll be able to look his adoptive daughter in the eye after it's all finished.

Well, the adopted daughter is currently hospitalized due to the noble taking her along when chasing paramilitary forces who'd kidnapped a bunch of folks. When their plane got shot down (due to his deciding to take a second flyby over the target) she was nearly killed (would have died if the thug guardsman hadn't taken medicae recently and made a spectacular roll) of course in his arrogance, he feels he bears no part of the blame for her injury, in his mind taking a seven year old into a war zone had nothing to do w/ it.

I think he might be as crazy as the rest. The one I think will have the hardest time with it strangely is the guy who sold his soul to chaos.

DocIII said:

No right-thinking Imperial is going to believe such pseudo-sicentific hogwash. ALL mutations are born from the taint of Chaos, and so ALL mutants are marked - through intentional dabbling or unfortunate exposure - by the Dark Powers. If allowed to live, they could reproduce carrying their taint further and desecrating the holy image of Man even more. Still, there is a place for such unfortunates that actually wish to atone through service and ultimately in death, for only in death - rid of the tainted body - can a mutant's soul hope to find the favour of the Emperor and return to the flock of Man. Until then, forced labor is a suitable pennance, so no real need to kill them all right away.

Then after I've made the muties as sympathetic as possible

BTW, this is a terrible idea. Don't intentionally place your leanings on a group and make them 'sympathetic' - just make them real people that are good, bad, and ugly all at once. If the 'sympathy' feels forced upon the players, it'll likely backfire. I know that, as a player, if I'm being force-fed to feel sympathy towards a group I'm more likely to want to blast them to hell.

Flame on.

Bloody stupid min post limit.

When I played Baron Hopes, our entire cell was itching to kill Ulbrexis the whole time. We hated that mutie-sypathizer so much.

Warning: Somewhat longish!

Moral dilemmas are always a very personal affair in the real world. For the maximum impact I would try to isolate the players when they make their choice. If a whole group stumbles upon a room of helpless twists there will be group pressure to look cool etc. Don't laugh, that's how atrocities happen (or a at least not prevented) in our world.

But what happens if only *one* character stumbles into this room? Even better, when the other players are not present? That way no player can say that he was infuenced by the others or didn't have a chance to get his point across. It will be a personal decision. And if you want to *really* hose them, make them suffer for it either way: If a player choses to clean the room by killing the people, have parents shield their children, old people trying to buy times for the others and men fight a senseless fight. And make sure to describe burning flesh and hair, the moans of the dying etc. Don't overdo it, take your pick

And if he spares them? Well, they're mutiess. They are twisted. It doesn't matter whether it was the warp or pollution. If the cleansing has already begun and the muties are fighting for their lives it might well be, that the children will hug the merciful character. And then detonate a grenade.

The problem with "moral choices" is that there's often a bias on the metalevel. First of all, the players sometimes smell when a choice is "socially expected" or in game terms: which choice will be rewarded. Most often (though WH is a little bit greyer than most) the good choice earns you some points. I don't like this, because it takes away the focus from "morality" to "maximizing my XPs".

There's no such thing as karma in our world and bad deeds can be rewarded and good deeds punished. In the WH Fantasy RP I like to contrast moral choices with the game world's reaction: No one give a *bleep*.

Some players like it, because it fits the grim and gritty amosphere, others think it takes away the fun from being a better person in the little escape from reality called RPG.

My 0,02 thrones

I'm not trying for any particular outcome. I just want to counter-balance the pre-existing imperial pressure to kill the mutants with the chance to see that they're people. That way the characters have justifiable motivational pull in either direction. I mean "kill the monster" is easy when its just presented as a monster.

My goal is to present both sides and then just see which way the characters jump.

If they kill the mutants or save the mutants, either one is fine with me and each will have its own independant in game consequences.

HappyDaze said:

I think you misunderstand his intentions. He's making the mutants the type of characters that any reasonable person from our world would be sympathetic to, and then seeing how the players handle the situation in game. He's not forcing the group to do anything.

Basically he's giving them just enough rope to play tug of war and/or hang themselves and then sitting back to see what they actually do with it, which in my book makes for a compelling situation.

Mark It Zero said:

Couldn't have said it better myself

DocIII said:

Did the players buy into the 'kill the mutant' rhetoric? Not all Imperials are so fervent zealots and it might even be against their Inquisitor's beliefs. It is also stated in the RAW that several hives are dependant upon abhumans/mutants in the lower reaches for labor as normal people would die from the toxins, radiation, etc. You could even go one farther and have the priest include psykers as mutants which is not that unheard of.

So in the end there are other possibilities for interaction with the Ecclesiasticy and the factions therein and not just a more bloodthirsty interpretation of the Creed.

They've actually swung back and forth on the "kill the mutant" bit. They're all for it when talking to people, but when they got trapped in a canyon by mercenaries that were trying to kill them and ran into some mutants (who were escaped prisoners of the mercs) they made common cause with the twists pretty quick.

Of course next time they were back in civilization and a imperial priest went on a kill the mutant rant, they didn't just pay lip service, but got all worked up to join the kill the mutie crusade.

They have no idea what their inquisitor's position on mutants is (they've never asked him, and see him rarely enough that it hasn't specifically come up).

Then again, their interrogator is going to make them disguise themselves as mutants and infiltrate the wasteland mutant communities to try to gather intel. (He'd rather use anyone else for that kind of job, but he's a bit short staffed at the moment)

The senior-most ecclesiarchy clergyman on world is also about to gear up the masses for a purge of the mutants (which will come after the characters have done their intelligence gathering or while they're doing it depending on how long they take)

So what will the acolytes (who no one on world other than their interrogator knows they are w/ the =][=) do when the time comes? Who knows?

I'm running a similar sort of thread at the moment. The Acolytes are infiltrating a workforce that is known to harbor mutants, and they need to find them out and expose them. Naturally though, such a deep infiltration results in the Acolytes knowing their quarry personally, which it the trick to these moral dilemmas.

Essentially, the Acolytes need to be able to empathise with the muties, and the best way for that to happen is to know them personally. If you make them ordinary people trying their best to deal with a rough situation, then you will be doing well. You could also add fatalism and/or determination to the psychological characteristics of the muties, either they’re so used to persecution that they’ve essentially given up on life and wait for the mob to murder them. Or all they want to do is live, and they do anything, hide anywhere to do so. If it comes down to the purging and you want them to ‘feel’ the fact that they’re murdering(relatively) innocent people.

Things you could use in the assault to manipulate the PC’s feelings
• The father suicide-bombs the attackers in a effort to defend his wife and children
• The attackers **** and then execute young women.
• Pregnant women
• People hiding in cesspits
• The mother kills her own children and then herself to save them from your tender mercies
• The attackers spend hours rooting out the last of the mutants who are hiding in the compound, who scream a lot
• People begging and/or bribing for their lives or for the other of others “Take me, but spare my wife!”, “ I just want to live!”,etc
• Anything with babies
• Dragging the bodies of the dead and/or mostly dead to the giant pyre in the middle of the settlement. The smell of which is delicious.
• In general, to manipulate feelings men selflessly sacrifice themselves and women and children are helpless and innocent. (not that this is actually the case, but it’s a cheap way to manipulate the Players)
This is all pretty heavy handed, although far from unrealistic. If you’ve managed to get the Acolytes to know some of the muties, then include them (obviously), and this stuff will be so much worse.

Agmar's tactics are the kind of heavy-handed thing that would cause me to want to kill them even more. Call it bad roleplaying if you like, but the guy that knee-jerks against such things is no more disruptive than the GM that utilizes such tactics (yes - I do believe that a GM can be even more disruptive to the game than the worst player).

Some good ideas in there. I had planned to have them get to know mutants personally. Interestingly among the mutants there are various factions. Some just want peace and to be left alone. Others think war with the normals is inevitable. And yet other factions want the war b/c they're blood-thirsty.

The characters will get to know folks from each faction, the peace lovers, the resigned, and the vicious. However the "kill the mutants" crowd won't make such distinctions.

I'll probably use most if not all of your suggestions when the genocide starts.

HappyDaze said:

So, if the mutants are blood thirsty marauding monsters in the game, you'll kill them and if they aren't... you'll kill them even more? Just can't win with you, huh? ;-)

Granted, I have to agree that Agmar's tactics are heavy handed -he admitted it. But what if the GM dose any of the things that Agmar listed but not with the intent of emotionally manipulating the players? What if the GM were simply wishing to humanize a one dimensional "monster" and eliminate the crutch of an easily identifiable "bad guy" or "evil monster"? What if the GM simply wished to delve into what slaughter really is and what a complete purging of a community would be like?

Would that be disruptive to the game? Is any attempt by the GM to eliminate easy choices or humanize the populace of the universe disruptive?

Top each there own as it goes. I use every one of Agmar's "tactics" every gaming session just about (well, assuming there's killing, blood, and screaming... so, every other session then) as a matter of course. It's not that I consciously want to manipulate the players emotions; I just don't like stories about "good guys" and "bad guys." I like stories about people being what they are, people. When the PC's in my game kill someone, they're not killing a bad guy, they're killing a person... probably on the wrong side of the heresy line (not always though), but just a person none the less.

I loath easy choices, but I love the almost duel nature of roleplaying in the 40k universe. There's nothing but black and white yet staying black and white is no easy task and the choices one must make to remain so are not easy in the least. Such things adds depth to the gaming experience and in my book, that's always a good thing.

If the portrayal is balanced - with both good and bad elements flowing naturally - then it's not offensive to me. The idea that these mutants live their nasty, brutish, and short existances with the hearts of saints is just silly to me. I'd feel the same if the nobility or Ecclesiarchy is depicted as nothing but treacherous and debased - another common heavy-handed approach that I find annoying. It's all about balance in the execution (no pun intended). Its almost too easy to take the black/white divide and go the other way where every **** thing that the PCs are supposed to support is 'repulsively inhuman' and everything that they are supposed to fight/purge is 'sympathetically human' - and, IMO, that's crapping on the fun and credibility of the game.

Ah, good point! And i really see where you're coming from now.

One dimensional is one dimensional no matter the color you paint it.

Agreed, one dimensional is one dimensional regardless of which dimension. The heavy handed ‘shock tactics’ I’ve listed only work if you have already emapthised with the mutants (which I stated). I actually agree with you HappyDaze, if I was happily playing the ‘good imperial’ and purging the mutants and my GM suddenly pulls all this guilt-ridden stuff, it would piss me off. If however, I’d already gotten to know the mutants and then decided to purge them anyway, knowing full well I would have to kill all the people I’d just spent a month living with, well that’s more appropriate.

Handled correctly, I think this sort of stuff makes for powerful and gritty gaming, poorly it would totally sour a game.

“I loath easy choices, but I love the almost duel nature of roleplaying in the 40k universe. There's nothing but black and white yet staying black and white is no easy task and the choices one must make to remain so are not easy in the least. Such things adds depth to the gaming experience and in my book, that's always a good thing.” I completely agree with this particularly, its one of the main themes I run with, “Just how awful a person does doing the right thing make you in the Imperium? And what does that do to you psychologically?”

Which is exactly what I am trying to explore with this scenario.

Our GM has done this quite a bit, with varying variations on the same theme. It divided the group quite a bit, with more liberal leaning Alcolytes willing being more forgiving while more conservative Alcolytes tolerating the infiltration, but when it was done happily purging the entire "enemy".

My old Psyker was a bit more liberal, since he quite honestly sympathised and understood being an group that the Imperium was more then willing to burn down, and was willing to allow a bit more to go by and leave the decision for exterminating in the hands of our Inquisitor. His view was that if the Imperium didn't want them to live they'd have already sent in the Navy and Guard and wiped them all out. The Sister of Battle was a lot more conservative, and was the first to pull her bolter the moment she was let loose and didn't think twice.

With my newer priest, he' s more in line with the Sister in his thinking of Imperial Doctrine of burn them all, and let the Emperor Judge. He's not quite a redeptionist, but he's getting close (he's actually Thorian in his beliefs more or less).

Its an interesting take on what the PLAYERS believe and what their CHARACTERS believe too. The Sister's player, she was visibly upset that her character was so willing to exterminate every man, woman and child, but for the sake of RP she knew what her character would do. Very interesting discussions later on.