Children Soldiers in T2K

[The Zappster]

I ran a merc style game a few years back. The team were an advanced team of paratroopers sent into A West African country to assess the area before the main body of troops came in to restore order and help build up the infrastructure. The encounter took place in daylight so the 8 man (3 PC's and 5 NPC's) squad could see who there opponents were. The squad ran into a well placed road block at very short range as the bush was quite thick. There opponents were a team of young irregulars with a couple of fearless, drug fueled 12 year olds. Long story shortish, the squad corporal tried to defuse the situation but was also the first to fire when he realized it hadn't worked. The player justified his actions by explaining that the age didn't matter when they have AK's. He wasn't wrong, 7.62 short doesn't discriminate, but as the squad moved to remove the weapons from the dead the corporal come close to the result of his actions and I made him roll a willpower check, which he failed badly. From that point on i would roll a willpower check for him in secrete when he slept, if he failed badly he would wake in a cold sweat or if he failed REALLY badly he would wake shouting or screaming.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Child combatants is one of those horrifying, moral grey areas that can really mess with a person, or harden them in a way that society doesn't really care for.

I think this is one of those areas where it's worth discussing with the Players how they feel their Characters will react (although this should not be done before you spring the first encounter on them otherwise the shock value would be lost). I think it should be a case by case basis (and fortunately with the game you're only dealing with a small number of people, i.e. the Players, to sort this out).

I feel that there are some Characters who would not be particularly effected by encountering child soldiers. Some of those people have endured the hardship of war for so many years that they have become closed off from the emotional impact, simply as a survival technique (for their mental health) if nothing else.

There are other soldiers who may have encountered child soldiers before, in operations before the Twilight War, so the emotional distress isn't as impactful to them.

I'm not saying every Player should be allowed to use this as some sort of "Get out of jail Free" card, it's not to be used as an excuse to avoid the consequences. It's just that I know from talks I've had with Vietnam War veterans, some of them dealt with this sort of situation in the past and of those, some of them expressed the attitude that they would not hesitate to shoot an enemy soldier simply because the enemy was a child.

Harsh? Definitely. Brutal? Absolutely. But it's survival and not just physical survival. Some of them adopted that attitude for their mental survival as well "They will kill me or my comrades if I do not kill them first" sort of thing.

[wolffhound79]

Originally Posted by The Zappster

I ran a merc style game a few years back. The team were an advanced team of paratroopers sent into A West African country to assess the area before the main body of troops came in to restore order and help build up the infrastructure. The encounter took place in daylight so the 8 man (3 PC's and 5 NPC's) squad could see who there opponents were. The squad ran into a well placed road block at very short range as the bush was quite thick. There opponents were a team of young irregulars with a couple of fearless, drug fueled 12 year olds. Long story shortish, the squad corporal tried to defuse the situation but was also the first to fire when he realized it hadn't worked. The player justified his actions by explaining that the age didn't matter when they have AK's. He wasn't wrong, 7.62 short doesn't discriminate, but as the squad moved to remove the weapons from the dead the corporal come close to the result of his actions and I made him roll a willpower check, which he failed badly. From that point on i would roll a willpower check for him in secrete when he slept, if he failed badly he would wake in a cold sweat or if he failed REALLY badly he would wake shouting or screaming.

When I first started my california campaign it was just my brother, eventually one of my friends joined the party. After a small fire fight with a mexican patrol my brothers charactor (an officer) ordered the mexican patrol survivors line up to be excuted. My buddy was shocked his special forces charactor was arguing that it wasnt right in and out of game. I let them justify there argument back and forth. The party ended up letting them go with a warning. After this I would include morality rolls for others involved as my brother plays Magor payne as out for blood and revenge for the invasion of america. He attemptedto get Arizona guards men to open fire on unarmed troops fleeing the battle field, officer made his morality check and refused as he didnt want to open fire on unarmed men. Ive now included a price on Magor paynes head by the mexicain army command in california for his use of chemical weapons. My brother also started having this officer wear all black and a face mask to hide his identity, he had the motor pool paint his m60 tank all gold so when the enemy saw his tank coming theyd know it was his men coming to kill them. My brother has some unique PCs.

[wolffhound79]

I find this post interesting as just yesterday I was considering having a party encounter a lone child or teenager as the only survivor of a marauder ambush.
Just to see what they would do.

Would they make him part of the group, or drop him off at the next nearby town?

or is the child a elaborate ruse to get the players to drop there guard as he leads them into an ambush?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by wolffhound79

I find this post interesting as just yesterday I was considering having a party encounter a lone child or teenager as the only survivor of a marauder ambush.
Just to see what they would do.

Would they make him part of the group, or drop him off at the next nearby town?

or is the child a elaborate ruse to get the players to drop there guard as he leads them into an ambush?

This is a technique used in some horror games, a lone child apparently in need of assistance. But the child is really just a façade, something to lure the protagonists into more trouble. Sometimes it's a monster in it's own right, using the appearance of a child to more easily fool the adults into letting down their guard before the monster strikes.

Like Targan, I have no problem at all putting these sorts of things into a game. I have no problems separating what's fodder for the game and what's real life so encountering child soldiers or monsters who look like children in a game is not something that upsets me or disturbs me.
You're playing in the ashes of the apocalypse, the ruins of the world, there's cannibals, there's people suffering terrible diseases or radiation sickness, there's slavery, bandits, people willing to kill just to survive another day.
Child soldiers as a game concept is no worse than any of the above.

I see their use in game as a way to create moral quandaries for the PCs, a way to show that the game world is not the simplistic black & white morality that Hollywood movies are made of. There's many shades of grey and if the PCs defeat such a situation and do so from the moral high ground, then they will have a much more positive impact on the gameworld because of it.
They can rightly be considered not just heroes, but the "good guys".

[mpipes]

This reminds me of a situation I put my PCs in where the child in question was a really cute Russian girl (looked about 12 but was actually 15) that was 1) a complete psychopath and 2) was a KGB trained agent sent on a mission to release a genetic-engineered Ebola strain into the Vistula intended to create a "no go" hot zone separating the USSR from the rest of that part of Europe.

There were all kinds of hints dropped to clue in the team that this girl was the baddest of the bad. I even had this girl actually murder a fairly harmless NPC that had discovered the vials of virus in front of the team and they still did not get it!! They delivered their little precious, innocent orphan to the kindly priest in Cracow, and I gave them one more chance as she dropped the pouch with the vials getting out of the HMMWV. One of the PCs picked up the pouch, made the roll so he knew vials were in it, and he promptly handed the pouch right to her.

As we ended the session, I took a time out, had everyone make a roll to see if they caught the plague (everyone did) and see if anyone lived (one did).
Then told everyone that was dead that they were dead and why as the resulting Ebola plague made much of Poland uninhabitable and the Poles all but extinct as 90% of the population died!!

As tempted as I was to go ahead and end the campaign and just start over with them running new PCs, I finally decided to take mercy and do a Dallas and let everyone pretend it was just a dream, but they never took NPCs at face value again and paid attention to clues.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by mpipes

This reminds me of a situation I put my PCs in....

Ebola's not even close to the nastiest thing the Soviets have either, just possibly the best known. The one that sticks in my mind is their weaponised Marburg hemorrhagic fever - NO cure, NO pain relief, NOTHING stops or even slows it down. Two weeks (at most) from exposure and all your soft tissues have liquified. You die in horrific pain, contagious from the first moment right up to a good 50+ years later.
90% death rate would be light for that one.

[mpipes]

That is actually what I used if memory serves me correctly.

The situation was supposed to lead to the group chasing down a secret KGB lab near Minsk and blow it up or even call in a nuke strike - it was supposed to be a BIG event in the campaign. But my clueless PCs could not take the hint(s) that this girl was "special" and instead of discovering the vials of virus that should have led to vigorous interrogation they turned her over to the priest to help her find her family in Cracow. So they helped her kill well over a million and fulfilled that KGB factions greatest goal.

Sometimes you just end up hating the players! It was kinda fun explaining why she was so HAPPY to get to Cracow, because she had gotten an armed escort to the place she wanted to be and helped her become the greatest mass murderer ever.