Re: Lethality of events

On Fri, 11 May 2007, Ed Chauvin IV wrote:
> On the grounds that it's potentially psychologically traumatizing.  I
> don't see any good reason to expose oneself to psychological trauma.

I'm not seeing the distinction that you are, then.

> Certainly not morally equivalent, but comparable nonetheless.

I don't think they really are, except in the broadest of senses.  And I 
don't think various war crime tribunals and Nazi hunters think they are, 
either, since they seem to go after a fairly select group of Nazis rather 
than everyone who enabled them or sup****ted them.

> It isn't necessarily throwing one's life away.

For the first few, it's almost always equivalent to throwing your lives 
away.

> If enough Germans had decided to not follow through with the Final 
> Solution, then it wouldn't have stood a chance to begin with.  There was

> a point, quite early in the course of events, where a single person 
> standing up and saying, "No.  This is not right, I refuse to 
> participate." could have been enough to inspire others and lead to the 
> failure of Hitler's plans.

Well, the goal of calling such behavior evil and holding people 
responsible for it is the hope that it will never reach a critical mass, 
but in practice it doesn't seem to work that way.  There have been plenty 
of genocides since, sometimes among people who really should have known 
better.  And also bear in mind that one person standing up and saying, 
"No,  This is not right, I refuse to participate," only to be shot in the 
head or to wind up dead with their family in a ditch somewhere often has 
the exact opposite effect.

> I have addressed this a couple of times and gave some examples of the
> kinds of situations where it'd be at least appropriate and perhaps
> even fun.  Mind you, I'm referring to a more general playing of evil
> characters than the BER, but I really think it's going to have to wait
> for some of the heat in this thread to die down to really get into it.

And what I think is going on is that people who are defending the playing 
of evil characters seem to be envisioning characters flirting with the 
edges of evil or who are doing evil because they are misguided.  That's 
not the sort of evil that I personally have in mind, if it even qualifies 
at all.

> Suffice it to say that I think there are legitimate reasons other than
> simply vicariously living out evil fantasies for playing a character
> who is evil.

The problem is that in achieving those other reasons, you wind up 
vicariously living out evil fantasies just by playing the evil character. 
The only way to escape that trap seems to be to have a very detached 
connection to the character such that the player is not vicariously living

through them, in much the same way a GM doesn't vicariously live through 
many of their NPCs.

John Morrow