Terrorist Campaign?, Anyone wanna do it? Options

[Shockwave_IIc]

Hear that Firewall

Thats one Disbute that i personaly think will never get resolved. It's got a life of it's own.

[Nath]

[Siege]

[Glyph]

Right on.

And that tired old quote about "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is absolute B.S., and is usually used by the snivelling apologists for terrorists. Terrorism is terrorism, period, and it is never, ever, in any way, shape, or form, justified. Got that? Good.

Terrorist campaign. :S

Who the hell would want to roleplay blowing up a schoolbus or raping a nun or shooting a guy in a wheelchair in the back of the head?

No, don't answer me. I don't want to know.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Not going to say anything about what people call terrorism and what they don't, but I do find it interesting that playing terrorists is a no-no for so many people who still manage to play characters who make a living out of ruining other people's lives and killing a whole lot of (honest, law-abiding) secguards (many of whom have families, etc). Not to mention all that wetwork.

Would you play a game where the characters got paid to bomb a chemical weapons lab with a few scientists inside? Assassinate those scientists? Kill those scientist's families (or threat to) to make them quit their jobs? What if they researched drugs instead? Etc etc.

My group killed 35 people with a car-bomb once. They never try any non-lethal methods against secguards. If they were paid by a politically motivated terrorist cell to assassinate politicians... Oh, wait, they were and they did. Or if they were paid by such a group to bomb a busy mall or a movie theater, they would. They even raped a 17-year-old girl they had kidnapped. I don't mind, they are a group of organized crime operators who do a lot of wetwork, I don't expect them to have an active set of moral standards.

I personally wouldn't want to play a terrorist, because I haven't got a clue what makes them tick. I do not understand how their minds work in the least, so I can't play one well.

[Zazen]

I think playing terrorists could be cool if the setting were bleak and hopeless enough. I don't think SR's Seattle is oppressive enough to make me feel good about catching "enemy" women and children with my carbomb, but plunge me into the world of 1984 or one where the Nazis won and the sheer hopelessness would make me game for anything.

"Are you prepared to give your lives?"
Yes
"Are you prepared to commit murder?"
Yes
"To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?"
Yes
"To betray your country to foreign powers?"
Yes
"You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases--to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?"
Yes
"If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a childs face--are you prepared to do that?"
Yes
"You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or dock worker?"
Yes
"You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?"
Yes

[Dr Komuso]

It's a bit silly to ignore the major terrorism theme implicit in Shadowrun. Just a short list of groups which have had large portions of one or more sourcebooks dedicated to them and their cause includes: The Irish Republican Army, The Provisional Irish Republican Army, The Legion of the Red Branch, The Metahuman People's Army, Sierra Inc., TerraFirst!, The Huk, Greenwar, The September 25th Alliance.
These are just the ones I can come up with the (I think) correct names for without my sourcebooks in front of me, I can't recall the name of the Kurdish group which Aiden supports, or the Awakened revolutionaries in Cambodia, or the fifth columns in both Tirs and Aztlan. The point is that terrorists and terrorism are a very big part of Shadowrun. Whether you agree with them or not is as moot as whether or not they are freedom fighters or terrorists.... the books refer to most of them as both.

[Anymage]

AE, great point up there. Post the right threads, and you'll hear about players who gleefully slaughter innocents when it's convenient. Say what you will, I find such actions even more offensive than pure terrorism. (The Twin Towers were absolutely horrendous, but if the same act were performed for profit... or worse yet, such loss of life as a simple distraction, it'd be even worse than insane religious fanatics doing it for a "cause".)

If I had to draw a line between freedom fighters and terrorists, it would have to be based on their feelings about collateral damage; "pure" freedom fighters will only target government/military/etc installations and avoid civilian casualties at all costs, while "pure" terrorists will gleefully target such "soft" targets. And by that definition, I'm sure we've all played in "terrorist games"; I find them boring and shocking because there's no challenge in torturing pedestrians, just an endless display of sick ego-stroking. I might be interested in a "jaded guerilla" style game where the occasional harm coming to innocents is treated as sad but inevitable, but both good taste as well as lack of real challenge would keep me from playing a target-the-innocents game.

[CountZero]

Alright here's my thoughts on the whole thing (which may be full of drek, so YMMV)

"Terrorists" and "Freedom Fighters" are not mutually exclusive. However, you could describe Terrorists as a sub-group of "Freedom Fighters". Specifically, Freedom Fighters can fall into the catagories of either Guerrillas and Terrorists.

Guerrillas generally (there can and are exceptions)operate in rural areas that are sparsely populated. Typical tactics are hit-and-fade raids on the forces of the government/group they are trying to overthrow. The idea behind these tactics usually are causing the enemy to spread their forces thin while they try to hunt out the Guerrillas, which make their groups easier to take out. Also, the guerrillas attempt to raise support for them in rural communities through propaganda, and by increasing dislike of the government by the people, as the military will, eventually, start searching people's houses to look for sympthizers.

As the Guerilla campaign continues, the support of the people in the cities towards the government's efforts will slacken as the death toll rises. This will happen even if the government does not have a free press, as the eventually the death toll will hit a point that no degree of spin can lessen the size. However, the Guerillas will attempt to avoid killing civilians who might support of them. If a rural village is willingly supporting the government, then they may attack the village. They might also kill upper class civilians to try and send a message that they are "fighting for the people". If the upper class civilians are humanitarians, their propeganda might be adjusted to send a message that "if you're not with us, you're against us".

Terrorists, on the other hand, operate in urban areas, and while they do hit-and-fade attacks, they aren't quite as conserned about civilians. Like Guerillas they employ propaganda. A discriminate terroist group might limit their attacks to places where foreigners are known to congregate, as well as police stations, government buildings, and similar locations. Likewise, government and police vehicles can become targets. If civilians who do not fall into either catagory or children are killed by their attacks, the terrorists will spin their propaganda to say that they were "victims of circumstance" or simply ignore the deaths. Their aims, in terms of government reactions, are to attempt to get the government to impose draconican security measures, and to get the government to launch retalitatory strikes that injure or kill people who weren't members of the group. These attacks can be spun in their propeganda to give the impression that the government is cold and heartless, raising sympathy in the community towards the terrorists.

Thoughts on how to handle this as a campaign.

PCs could work as Mercenaries or members of a organization fighting a Guerilla war against the Aztlan government. Also, several politiclubs are several degrees removed from terrorists, so you could take a politiclub and turn it into a terrorist organization, and have PCs be a member of that organization.

[Panzergeist]

Being a terrorist doesn't have to mean killing masses of random people. It could mean sabotaging illegal toxic waste dumping operations, exposing a shadowrun to the media, or taking down a cluster of matrix bank servers to hurt corps in general financially.

As for terrorists and freedom fighters just being two terms for the same thing, that's only half true. Just because some people call terrorists freedom fighters and some people call freedom fighters terrorists doesn't mean they are the same thing. A lot of people think spiders are insects, but that doesn't mean that one man's spider is another man's insect. Regardless of what any number of people think, arachnids have 8 legs and insects have 6, and no amount of public opinion will change that.

[kevyn668]

[FlakJacket]

[blakkie]

[FlakJacket]

[Panzergeist]

The IRA are murderers, but I have to agree that the ETA are good about not going after innocents. The ETA only kills people who are important in and of themselves, rather than simply killing people for the sake of killing people.

[RedmondLarry]

The Sheriff of Nottingham was an appointed government official, and the Bishop of Hereford a leader in the church. Both would use the word "terrorist" to describe Robin Hood.

The words "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" have been misused so often for political gain that we can better discuss the merits of different types of Shadowrun campaigns if we avoid these words and instead use words like what AE used in his posts -- descriptions of actions.

I've played an Elf that would blow up a polluting factory, damaging hundreds of acres of surrounding land, in order to prevent the factory from spewing out any more pollution. He was an Eco-terrorist, but thought of himself as a one of the good guys. Our campaign rarely has a character that thinks of himself as evil, and there is enough save-the-world attitude and ethical behavior that sometimes the challenge in our games are the ethical dilemmas the characters find themselves in.

[Firewall]

Just for the record, I agree that half of what a shadow-runner does borders on terrorism. I would play a terrorist if there was some good reason for their terrorism but I sure as hell would not expect him to call himself a terrorist.

Give me a cause and a sponsor and I will light up Seattle with the glow of a thousand fires...

[Demosthenes]

Speaking on-topic, the only discernible difference - that I can see - between Shadowrunners and terrorists is that Shadowrunners are not necessarily loyal to a given cause. They cause mayhem, or undertake violent crimes in exchange for payment.
That is a rather sweeping generalisation, I might add.
I don't see how playing a group of "terrorist" SR characters is in fact any different to playing a group of Shadowrun characters who have a particular cause to follow: given the complexity of the setting, they're bound to hack off someone with a lot of legal and financial mojo, and then they'll find the label "terrorist" sticking quite firmly - rather like the Shadowrunners and Mercs involved in the Yucatan.
The UCAS call them "insurgents", the CAS "Freedom Fighters", and the Azzies "Foul Indiscriminate Terrorists".

Speaking off-topic...

I think the definition of "terrorist" needs a little expansion:
The purpose of the terrorist is to spread terror and disorder, to make it clear to a given population that their government is incapable of protecting them. The goal of this is to pressurise the government into conceding to the terrorist group's agenda, or suffer the consequences of ruling a country which is ungovernable.

The stereotypical "freedom fighter" also seeks to render a government incapable of governing, generally by demonstrating that it is incapable of dealing with a popular insurgency.

The IRA were terrorists. At least, that's what everyone said. Except the Nationalist Community living on the Falls Road in Belfast, who felt oppressed etc etc etc.

I'm Irish.

The IRA was, and is, a terrorist organisation. Religion, insofar as it has any relation to the IRA, is a factor only in determining the probable politics of the people of Northern Ireland, and so is quite secondary to the IRA's function as a terrorist organisation.

In the Republic, while I was growing up, there was a strong tendency to view the IRA as freedom fighters, using whatever means necessary to get the "Brits Out" of NI. If you want to go into a discussion of the historical basis for "The Struggle" and the SNAFU that came out of it, there may, at some point in time, have been a justification for that portrayal. It went out of the window at about the time that the words "legitimate target" entered the IRA vocabulary.

The closest the IRA got to achieving that goal was when they declared a cease-fire and offered to make a deal with the British Govt.

Living where I do, and being stuck in the middle of the whole mess - my second cousin was a Major in the British Army based in Armagh, and most of the rest of my extended family were ultra-nationalist - it's a bit of a sore point. :|
[/OT Rant]

Back on-topic: as I said, remove Mr Johnson, add "The Cause", and Shadowrunners ARE terrorists, at least as far as someone is concerned. It's as simple as that. :cyber:

[Demosthenes]

Sorry about the ultra-long post.
Oops

[lspahn72]

I think some people have the term "freedom fighter" mis-aligned.

I may be in the minority, but in most cases the "freedom fighter" is struggling against some sort of repressive government. Like the IRA against the British. Terrorist are boot licking, butt smelling, ***holes who TARGET the weak like CHILDREN, women, and old folks!!! I mean come on... Where is the drama in that?

How much respect do you have for the Bulling in the Schoolyard who kicks around kids who are weaker and smaller than him???? The freedom fighter is the little kid who get sick of the Drek and punches him in the mouth...


Now, a game of Freedom Fighter fighting against some mean govt like Atlzan would be awesome.... But Terrorist who go after Civilian targets.... Might as well go down to the local daycare or dogpound and start kicking little creatures!

Sorry for the rant...very close to the topics...

[Firewall]

[kevyn668]

Well, nowadays, if you go around bullying kids in the schoolyard you can expect that one of those "little, weaklings" is gonna show up to class w/ a Uzi.

And shoot you. Repeatedly.

Moral: Don't be a bully.

[Austere Emancipa...]

You gotta wonder why it's perfectly fine in some people's opinion for "freedom fighters" to blow up civilian targets, but really bad if "terrorists" do it.

[toturi]

[Siege]