Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

[megaplayboy]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I fully recognize that the genres are different. I raised the issue of the destruction of the Death Star originally because it is universally known and because it is a good fictional example, I think, of how 'heroic' action can be simultaneously 'heroic' and hugely destructive/lethal to the point of murderous (even to innocents who become 'collateral damage').

 

I agree that what makes such an action 'heroic,' despite killing 1.2 million people, is the colossal threat posed by the Death Star to wreak exponentially more death and destruction.

 

I personally see a strong parallel between the Death Star and master super villains like Dr. Destroyer.

 

 

 

Indeed.

 

 

 

 

I'm not at all clear how this final conclusion flows from the prior assertions, however.

 

If, for example, a super hero faced the imminent threat of death while fighting a super villain, that certainly would give the super hero license to kill, legally speaking (under the doctrine of self-defense). I don't think most people would consider any such action immoral either. Additionally, it would likely be celebrated by the public, almost without concern for the specific circumstances (as was Osama bin Laden's death).

 

Could the superhero have defeated the villain without using lethal force/killing the villain? If so, would other superheroes be likely to be aware of this? That could influence how other superheroes(and possibly law enforcement) view such an act.

[Clonus]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

In order to actually assist wounded combatants, one must land the ship and depart to help them. The proposition has been made that active support of the troops makes the individual a valid target, just as if he were fighting the war himself. Medics actively assist the troops, don't they?

 

No. The proposition has not been made that active support of the troops makes the individual a valid target.

 

The Emperor didn't strike me as the "jail my opponents" type, but the DS was certainly operational for only a limited time and may not have had time to accumulate many prisoners. But then, why freight Leia out there rather than imprison her elsewhere? She doesn't need to be on the DS bridge to be patched in to their communications and see Alderaan explode.

 

Probably because that was where Darth Vader was going and he wanted her close at hand.

[Zen Archer]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

In the end' date=' yes, you may think heroes murdering the villains should be forbidden. I get that totally. But, I'm willing to be a bit more flexible and see how this plays out. As long as the players are having fun, it's working out in my opinion.[/quote']

 

As long as you and the players are having fun, that's what matters. You all work in setting these parameters, and it's great when it pays off.

[Zen Archer]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

According to the "Death Star Technical Companion' date='" there were 25,984 Storm Troopers on the Death Star in addition to the 1,180,000 other personnel I previously noted. [/quote']

 

Fair enough. I haven't read it, and I don't believe the actual movie was clear.

 

Anyway, unless some Lucas-approved book says otherwise, I still think my second sentence in the post you quoted is likely: The bigwigs get the royal treatment, and everyone else gets what they need to function. The Empire doesn't seem to run on boosting morale, after all.

 

 

I agree that what makes such an action 'heroic,' despite killing 1.2 million people, is the colossal threat posed by the Death Star to wreak exponentially more death and destruction.

 

I personally see a strong parallel between the Death Star and master super villains like Dr. Destroyer.

 

What also makes the action "heroic" is the colossal risk involved in accomplishing the mission. If the X-Wings had been drones, one might get a different impression.

 

And yes, you can draw a parallel between the Death Star and Dr. Destroyer. But we started out by talking about the Ultimates, who do not hold up to parallels drawn to either, and (unless I'm mistaken) you didn't seem to have an issue with them being blown away while unconscious either. Which is fine; that's your opinion, and I'm glad you're expressing it freely here.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Code vs. Killing is a Psychological Limitation/Complication the Player needs to make an Ego Roll to override it. It is also a Genre/Theme Convention that the Players need to Understand and Accept. Lesser versions of the Code make it easier to overcoming mechanically with an Ego Roll, but are not as Silver Age as the GM is aiming for.

 

Code vs. Killing is not Pacifism. Push enough Emotional/Psychologial Buttons and even the most moral/law abiding citizen will Kill. Explain to the Player that his Code does not prevent them from Killing when necessary, but does prevent them from Kill needlessly.

 

The Rebel Destruction of the Death Star (Weapon of Planetary Destruction; Alderan). The Death Star was about to destroy the Rebel Base and an entire world to do it. Self Defense, Protection of the Innnocent, etc... The deaths of those on the Death Star were an unfortunate consequence. They were also in a state of war. - "The First Casualty of War is the Truth" - US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson, 1918.

 

The GM should demonstrate how the Justice and Incarceration System should be seen to function better is the Superhero Setting than in real life. Have Supervillain successfully rehabilitated and released. The Superheroes now encounter the former Supervillain as a Superhero or even just a up right member of the community.

 

Lastly, Code vs Killing can be best demonstrated by having the Supervillains or Masterminds not kill the Superheroes when they are at their mercy. Monologuing is something to be prepared in advance for all occassions. Kept on Cards or Files for easy reference and use.

 

 

IMOHO

 

 

QM

[Pattern Ghost]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

The player in question doesn't have a CvK.

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Yes, but on the other side of that, was he a "Casual Killer"?

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

GM has final approval of all characters. I would say no to the character and help the player create a new character. If the player cannot be swayed then either exclued him from the game or discuss with the group if they would like to try something else.

 

Silver Age Superheroes for Beginners (removed Dummies) - New Sourcebook coming soon from a GM near you.

 

QM

[Pattern Ghost]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Yes' date=' but on the other side of that, was he a "Casual Killer"?[/quote']

 

Yes, that's the discussion I was implying was taking place.

 

Although, to answer the question: Did he kill casually? It seemed very calculated and deliberate. He came to the (flawed, IMO) conclusion that the only way to control the villains and prevent them from doing future harm was to put them down for good. That's not a casual killer, in my book. That's a vigilante with vigilante ethics. Which may be worth a Disadvantage (Complication), but there's nothing in the rules that says you have to take the points for it, either.

[Pattern Ghost]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

GM has final approval of all characters. I would say no to the character and help the player create a new character. If the player cannot be swayed then either exclued him from the game or discuss with the group if they would like to try something else.

 

Silver Age Superheroes for Beginners (removed Dummies) - New Sourcebook coming soon from a GM near you.

 

QM

 

This is an important point. When running a game, it's vital to put down the ground rules and make sure the players understand them before starting. One way I like to do this is to make the PCs a sanctioned team, with the understanding that they're expected to act within the same ethical guidelines as civilian law enforcement, meaning their job is to apprehend the criminals, not punish them. If a vilolently resisting criminal manages to get killed (hasn't happened yet), no harm, no foul IMO. If a defeated criminal is executed, there's going to be an in game consequence for the character that did so, and a serious discussion about the campaign ground rules.

[Guest dan2448]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

And yes' date=' you can draw a parallel between the Death Star and Dr. Destroyer. But we started out by talking about the Ultimates, who do not hold up to parallels drawn to either...[/quote']

 

This is a a very fair point, Zen Archer, to which I don't really have a 'killer' direct response except, I suppose, to add that I don't think a super villain has to have (metaphorically speaking) 'the power of a thousand suns' in order to justify killing while unconscious, under certain circumstances.

[Guest dan2448]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

The Empire doesn't seem to run on boosting morale' date=' after all.[/quote']

 

I take your point, Zen Archer. But off hand, I can't think of any historical empire that succeeded in the long term without taking into account the morale of its ground troops, even if they were mostly mercenaries, and even if that was by merely allowing 'pillaging' after victories.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I take your point' date=' Zen Archer. But off hand, I can't think of any historical empire that succeeded in the long term without taking into account the morale of its ground troops, even if they were mostly mercenaries, and even if that was by merely allowing 'pillaging' after victories.[/quote']

 

I can't think of any historical empire whose original forces was primarily made up of clones...

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

...clones which came out fully grown. So many on the Death Star could, theoretically, be less than a year old.

[Christopher]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Hah! A very good point!

 

But nonetheless, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service places franchises of fast food restaurants at US military facilities all over the world.

Wich would help us if the Empires Navy would be anywhere near the US-Force, idiologically.

It is not. It's is much closer to the Wehrmacht or the Red Army from WW2: Moral problems are solved with exemplary execution.

 

To bring this back to the topic of the thread' date=' the issue is whether killing a villain who is unconscious and defenseless and at the feet of the super hero could ever be anything other than craven, criminal and murderous. I've said, 'yes.' It may even be heroic. To use a fictional example, Luke Skywalker blew up an artifical moon that was the equivalent of the 9th largest city in America, and he was cheered wildly and ultimately given a gold medal for his efforts.[/quote']

I still can't see how "executing a helpless foe" compares in any way to "destroy military (star)ship that is about to kill hundreds of your friends".

 

If there is any real world analogy too the death star it would be the bombers that dropped the nuclear bombs. The only one "armed" is the bombardier.

All other are only support personel (pilots, technicans) or man the self-defense weapons (MG's).

Yet in order to stop the bomb you have to destroy the entire bomber, including all personel. It is unfeasible to only kill the guy on the relevant trigger (even if there would be nobdoy else to push it), or to selectively disable the bomb.

 

[...] however' date=' do you think the base held a full cell block (or more - was that the only one on the entire small moon sized Death Star?) just to imprison Leia for a couple of days, or were there other non-DS personnel prisoners?[/quote']

That was an standart imperial design cellblock. You can find them on every base, every ship, every garrision.

They had a cellblock, because they have a cellblock at every place big enough for one.

As comparsion to the US using civil contractors, the Emprie brings the cellblocks before it even considers the McDonalds.

 

Truthfully' date=' I don't want the law coming down hard on them. In my opinion, that doesn't make for a fun or interesting game. "So guys, this week we roleplay week eight of your trial..." What would be much more interesting is one or two unexpected survivors putting a new team together to hunt down the party and get some revenge. They could do so under a different guise even. Make the party suspicious, but not able to just go after them immediately. This is a much more fun type of consequence of the player's harsh actions.[/quote']

That sounds like material for a "Villains in heroic guise" story:

The survivors come up again as fake heroes who claim to got the video material from an anonimous source and publicy force legal action against the robot.

They would seem like legitimate, law abiding heroes for doing so.

 

If' date=' for example, a super hero faced the imminent threat of death while fighting a super villain, that certainly would give the super hero license to kill, legally speaking (under the doctrine of self-defense). I don't think most people would consider any such action immoral either. Additionally, it would likely be celebrated by the public, almost without concern for the specific circumstances (as was Osama bin Laden's death).[/quote']

Killing in self defense (or defense of others) does not needs a license to kill. That falls under self-defense law.

Executing a foe that is knocked out does.

 

...clones which came out fully grown. So many on the Death Star could' date=' theoretically, be less than a year old.[/quote']

The cloning facilities were destroyed as one of the first acts of the rebellion. The bulk of the Stormtroopers and otehr personel on the Death Star were thus likely normal recruits.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

No. The proposition has not been made that active support of the troops makes the individual a valid target.

 

Tracing my question on medical personnel back, it originates with:

 

My statement about the Death Star assumes that' date=' in any military installation of this size, there will be not only families of personnel 'on base' (who perhaps did not choose to be there, especially children) but also caterers, janitors and the like, i.e. non-combat support personnel. Not just Storm Troopers. And if you then argue that any sleeping children onbard still were not "defenseless" because the Death Star was itself a powerful military weapon, then you head down a very slippery slope that gets into issues of whether, for example, German citizens and Londoners who were subject to savage aerial bombardment during WWII weren't actually "defenseless" civilians because the areas where they lived were prepared for war, defended, and, indeed, armed themselves.[/quote']

 

And the problem with that is? If you are performing some kind of shipboard function that helps the Death Star function' date=' you ARE front-line combat personnel even if you never pull a trigger. Even if you aren't, and your death is incidental to Luke's objective (which is to destroy the weapon), Luke isn't a hero for killing you. He's a hero for destroying the weapon, and your death is a regrettable side-effect. And once against, the rules for serving military personnel are different from the rules for cops and the rules for public spirited citizens with eccentric fasion sense[/quote']

 

Presumably, given the sheer number of personnel on the Death Star, it carried medical personnel. It appears the difference between "shoot the medics" and "blow up the Death Star, medics and all" is simply the use of a weapon or tactic that covers a larger area. So it's not OK to shoot the medics specifically, but if a bomb is dropped on the area, that's OK because we turn the medics into collateral damage.

 

Further extrapolation suggests as long as we have a valid military target, dropping a nuke and taking out a metropolitan area is OK - but not if there's no active troops or other military target included in the nuke's radius. Wasn't the Empire's decision to destroy Alderaan backed up by its belief that there were many high-ranking members of the Rebel Alliance on Alderaan? Of course, Alderaan itself was not an active threat, where the Death Star was.

 

But an unconscious Supervillain is also not an active military threat. Nor, to the best knowledge of the Rebel Allliance, was the second Death Star when they set out to destroy it. Instead, they were attacking the military base during its construction.

 

In any case, I agree a "fully functioning Death Star" is a poor analogy. For that matter, so is a "not yet fully functioning Death Star". Perhaps a bit closer to the actual scenario, do we kill wounded or KO'd military personnel, or do they get held as prisoners of war? If the latter, then I think we're back to "killing the unconscious supervillain" being inappropriate even in a state of war, much less from a civilian law enforcement perspective.

 

I'd say the biggest difference between most Supers situations and blowing up the Death Star is that the latter left no other choice. The genre trope that "heroes don't kill" comes with the mandate that "there is always another way". Heroes that don't kill also don't stand on the sidelines, rendered ineffectual by their moral and ethical beliefs. The campaign world has to support the genre tropes if the heroes are to be expected to abide by them.

[Guest dan2448]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I'd say the biggest difference between most Supers situations and blowing up the Death Star is that the latter left no other choice. The genre trope that "heroes don't kill" comes with the mandate that "there is always another way".

 

I can't agree with the assertion that there was "no other choice" but to blow up the fictional Death Star. Among other alternatives, why not merely disable the weapon, rather than destroy the entire artificial moon, killing over 1.2 million (fictional) people in the process? (It's not like blowing up the whole thing prevented the Empire from building another one anyway. )

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

As I recall the scenario, the Death Star plans provided a possible means of destroying the entire artificial moon, but no means of disabling the weapon. Meanwhile, the Death Star is circling around for its shot on Yavin IV and the destruction of the rebellion. So...wait while the experts examine the plans in more detail to find a means of disabling the weapon from the outside, and hope they come up with something in time?

 

I'm thinking the GM wasn't leaving "spare the occupants of the Death Star" options open to the PC's.

[Ranxerox]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Presumably, given the sheer number of personnel on the Death Star, it carried medical personnel. It appears the difference between "shoot the medics" and "blow up the Death Star, medics and all" is simply the use of a weapon or tactic that covers a larger area. So it's not OK to shoot the medics specifically, but if a bomb is dropped on the area, that's OK because we turn the medics into collateral damage.

 

Further extrapolation suggests as long as we have a valid military target, dropping a nuke and taking out a metropolitan area is OK - but not if there's no active troops or other military target included in the nuke's radius. Wasn't the Empire's decision to destroy Alderaan backed up by its belief that there were many high-ranking members of the Rebel Alliance on Alderaan? Of course, Alderaan itself was not an active threat, where the Death Star was.

 

 

Dropping the nuke and taking out the metropolitan area along with the military base be okay if the military base represented a significant enough threat and you lacked a smaller weapon that could get the job done with less collateral damage.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Coming back to the Death Star, I'd say that Luke followed the genre conventions of the action-adventure movie. Collateral damage is assumed to cause no harm when it takes place in pursuit of defeating the bad guys. Supers follow similar conventions, but theirs include a "no killing" clause, so just blowing up the Death Star isn't their approach. If it is their only approach, then the occupants all have the ability to get to the escape pods so that their "no killing" clause isn't violated. If not, then there is some other means of stopping the Death Star without blowing it up.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Dropping the nuke and taking out the metropolitan area along with the military base be okay if the military base represented a significant enough threat and you lacked a smaller weapon that could get the job done with less collateral damage.

 

Analogizing this to the OP, then, it was wrong to kill the unconscious villains so they would not be a problem in the future. You had a less lethal means to get the job done (ie they were already KO'd).

[megaplayboy]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I think that's a very good general rule: In any situation involving a confrontation with supervillains, terrorists, criminals or other opponents, where a less-lethal or non-lethal option is available and viable, that option is to be strongly preferred to the most-lethal option.

[Cassandra]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

So quick recap.

 

Superman doesn't kill the unconscious Luthor because he has to have faith in the system, isn't a vigilante, and there are legal and moral alternatives to preventing further evil on the part of the villain.

 

The Death Star is a perfectly legitimate target during a time a war as is an aircraft carrier, or military base even if they were to have non-combatants and/or civilians on board because of it's destruction potential.

 

Further you can't consider the Death Star in the same light as a conventional weapons platform. It is literally a weapon of mass destruction, one the Empire actually used on a Civilian population center, Alderan. The Empire took this action without warning and did so as a show of force.

 

The aggressor sets the rules. They got what they deserve.

 

That is not the same thing as a superhero campaign where it's the job of the hero to bring the villain back alive to face justice, not be judge, jury, and executioner.

[Clonus]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I can't agree with the assertion that there was "no other choice" but to blow up the fictional Death Star. Among other alternatives' date=' why not merely disable the weapon, rather than destroy the entire artificial moon, killing over 1.2 million (fictional) people in the process? )[/quote']

 

Disable the weapon how?

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Like asking a Police Officer to shoot the gun our of the bad guys hand.

 

They had one and only one opportunity to stop the Death Star to save the lives of their friends, families, and innocents accross the galaxy from the power of the Empires' new weapon.

 

IMOHO

 

QM