Story Problem: 'Kill' or 'Kill'? (Spoilers)

The sacrifice of the few should be their option not the many's.

When I did the arc in question, Cleo was my contact and she was trying to prevent the hospital bombings. She's one of the Resistance who believes the Crusaders go too far in their quest to oust Cole.

The one thing she did against my character was send about a dozen waves of Resistance fighters to put my Loyalist down.

Now... The part I felt was bad writing was that in the final confrontation, Cleopatra offers NOTHING to defend herself or her actions. She doesn't even do a good job of trying to convince you and Washington that you've got all the facts wrong. She just says "Things aren't what they seem!" and the fight begins. If Washington hadn't told me to execute her on the spot, my character would have gladly helped arrest the woman. However, my character isn't an executioner...

Here's where meta gaming or roleplaying comes into play. My character DIDN'T kill Washington. Instead, Cleopatra did. Since my character helped save Cleo's life, she explains her position more thoroughly and recruits her into the Resistance. Now, my character balances her role, trying to help the people of Praetoria without sacrificing her personal moral compass, though also thoroughly disillusioned with everything she's learned up to this point.

The developers have given you the bare bones of the story. It's up to you to determine how your character fits into this crazy world. If you had illusions that you could change anything, you're wrong. MMOs are extremely resistant to whatever changes your characters are making. The basic story is that The Praetorian came upon this situation, and somebody died. Much like how The Hero rescues Statesman from the clutches of the Praetorians, and The Villain comes back from the future with Recluse's battered helmet, The Praetorian has its own role to play.

If you don't like it, disassociate your character from it and make your own story. Just remember, though, yours isn't the story the rest of the gameworld heard about.

Siding with Cleo means turning on and killing Washington, a police officer you have fought alongside and who tried to warn you about the ambush you were sent into by Cleo, who is at best a terrorist sympathiser and spy, and at worst is herself a terrorist.

I don't see how that can possibly be considered the 'right' thing to do.

I just played Cleopatra's arc again...

...she called me Suga' one time too many...

...actually 10 times too many...

...so I killed her.

It was entirely personal.

YAY! I get to argue with VENTURE!

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Originally Posted by Venture Yes, they are. Your character knows perfectly well that the system is corrupt and trials, if any, are only pro forma. That makes him complicit in that corruption. The only mitigating factor is the mandatory conscription of those with superpowers.

Where does it say this? If my character were a Power character, I guess I would run into it quite easily. At that point, however, the idea of having a moral conundrum over whether or not I should execute an enemy of the state on-site, without trial, is moot. I'm already there to be powerful, and I've got no problem icing somebody in the way.

Responsible characters, however, are given missions in which they're protecting the public. They're "doing the right thing" and are given little evidence that they're doing anything to the contrary.

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People in Powers Division are in a position to change it, or at least not comply with it. Your character can't win the war, at least not single-handedly, but he can win the battles. Anyone in Powers Division who has played ball long enough to survive the training (see below) will have any number of opportunities to leave and join the Resistance. Of course, our characters get that opportunity right off the bat.

Your character makes his/her own choice, but the system rolls on as if nothing happened. You don't get to make the policy decisions. You don't get to tell the PPD not to kill the criminal, nor do you get to oversee the interrogations. They tell you "Go, patrol, detain suspects" or "Go to this place and arrest this person," then say "We'll handle the rest." You're a cog in the big machine, and not a very important cog, either. If you don't do the job, they'll simply find somebody else who will.

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No, they're not. You can't hide oppression from the oppressors. We know via Word of God that Powers Division kills more people than every other branch of the Praetorian government put together (which is saying a lot).

Authors/Players know this. Characters do not.

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There's no way to hide that and they wouldn't even try. Fascist states are not conspiracies. People seem to think that being a cop in Praetoria (and Powers Division is part of the PPD) is like being in one of these B-grade action movies where the secret agent/commando/etc. hero is working for some Three Letter Agency and halfway through the flick finds out his superiors are actually supporting the crooks/dictator/etc. he was supposed to be fighting and now he's getting Oswalded for it. That ain't it.

Well, not a three-letter group. Really just a two-letter one: P.D. = Powers Division. All jokes aside, however, I never said anything about being hunted for no reason by the people I once worked for, nor was that the idea I was insinuating.

The major story behind Praetorian Earth is that the Praetors are REWRITING THEIR HISTORY. They are LYING TO EVERYBODY, and that includes the bright-eyed recruits, whether they're conscripted or not. While many older members of Powers Division are likely wise to the fact that they're "working for the bad guys," younger members are still being fed the same indoctrination bull dung that the rest of the populace is being fed.

It would be a massive risk to change that story while they're in training. You don't want impressionable minds with the power to level buildings with the rampaging energies within their own bodies to suddenly learn that their leadership is a despotic autocracy and that they're working for people who have no problem just slaughtering people in the streets because they feel like it.

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No. They may be wilfully complicit, either out of fear or because they believe they're doing the right thing, or they might be in denial, but they're not ignorant. The idea that anyone with a badge in a fascist state doesn't know about the atrocities his own agency commits is less credible than the idea that you can get superpowers from jumping into a vat of toxic waste.

Welcome to Comic Book World, where both happen rather frequently.

And again, I have to point out that Nazi Germany carried out its atrocities in secret, not in public. People had no clue as to what was happening to those in the concentration camps until the war was over. Even most of the Allies were thinking it was just propaganda and rumor until they actually found the camps.

It's not rare for the leadership to tell you that your enemies are willing to slaughter and eat children (and worse). In World War One, the Germans thought American soldiers could only get enlisted because they had no problem killing their own mothers.

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Remember those 90% of Powers Division trainees that get "sent overseas"? They're the ones that wouldn't get with the program. If your character makes it to the tutorial he knows damned well he's a brownshirt in a fascist state.

Again, this is author/player knowledge, not character knowledge. Besides, we're not shown what Player Characters go through for their training. Considering the fact that we don't have a uniform for our characters to wear (heck, we can be wearing a Resistance outfit from the get-go, and nobody in Powers Division or the PPD even bats an eye), it could be just some basic "Here's how to not kill yourself with your powers" classes followed up with heavy indoctrination.

Now, for my own experience, I've been through military training. I got to see firsthand how a group of people are forced to endure the biased opinion of how "Our State is superior!" I got to listen to Marine instructors talk about how we were trying to "preserve freedom!" in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. I also got to witness how the instruction shifted dramatically after 9/11/01, and I had to listen to all the horrible things Al Qaeda does to people.

We don't talk about the horrible things we have done or do, though. How many people know about the Tuskeegee Syphilis trials? The Japanese concentration camps? Or even just how many nuclear weapons we built or how destructive they were getting?

We still execute criminals in our nation. How do you look at capital punishment? Do you feel those trials are just a show? Do you feel it's barbaric or tyrannical? Do you feel that it's just another part of the system?

If you want to consider how your character views the world, take into consideration how you view the world. Take into consideration how the people around you view the world.

Again... Author knowledge is NOT character knowledge. Not until The Big Reveal, anyway. Until then, you're operating with assumption, hearsay, conjecture and propaganda.

The thing with doing the Responsibility story arcs is, you usally don't have the time to stop and think "these people will be put on an unfair trial and consequently put into a torture camp", you think "they're trying to blow up the hospital and I need to stop them now or countless innocent lives are lost!"

You might not even like the Praetorian government if you're working as a Loyalist, but you want to help the people of Praetoria so you're doing cop-work.

Of course you might say if you really wanna help those people you'll go Resistance and try to free them from an oppressive government, but what do you see the Resistance doing? They're the guys trying to blow up hospitals! One thing you need to remember is that the Resistance's public face are the Crusaders. The Wardens are fighting an information war, they want to bring the truth to the people, but that involves almost solely covert work.

The Crusaders instead think the best course of action is to blow &!%$ up, damn the consequences. One reason that the Crusaders get all the press in Praetoria might be because the press is heavily censored, but another is that the Warden don't actually openly operate in the public eye like the Crusaders do. So to a Loyalist, this means that the Crusaders are the Resistance, there are no Wardens that mean well. To side with the Resistance means to side with Crusaders who blow up hospitals, and as a protector to the people that's exactly what you set out to prevent.

Your greatest fear as a Responsibility Loyalist isn't that the people will topple the government, but that a civil war will see the death of innumerable innocent people.

This is best exemplified by the flavour text of the Neutropolis Responsibility Morality Mission. Both the Resistance choice and Loyalist choice are actually opposed to Emperor Cole's plan to invade Primal Earth because a war would mean countless deaths on both sides, but where the Resistance choice has the Warden twist of telling the Praetorian people about the incoming invasion, the Responsibility choice is to keep it secret because you fear that a civil war would ravage Praetoria and, note that this is the important part, that there must be another way to prevent the invasion.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, true, but I'd never doubt that the intentions of the Responsibility people are good. That's the conflict of the Responsibility arcs. You're torn between protecting your people and working for a fascist government that puts these people at risk.