looting and corruption

[Taharqa]

I was just perusing the rules in Free Companies and I noted that breaking the "rules of looting" exposes you to potential corruption.

This seems odd to me - I thought of corruption as a sorcerous concept. If you follow the rules on corruption, this means that a serial looter will eventually grow horns or glowing eyes simply from stripping the dead in an inappropriate way! Frankly, it seems like a backdoor way of introducing alignment concepts into Conan ("you can't do that, you are LG" -> "You can't do that or you will become corrupted")

Are there rules like this in any of the other books? I hadn't noticed any.

 

[Yogah of Yag]

I reserve Corruption for sorcerous and similar situations (reading/deciphering tomes or scrolls of sorcerous nature, encountering strange creatures from the Outer Dark, &c.), but since my campaign is extremely low-magic/rare-magic, this doesn't come up often.

 

[Castel]

I also give corruption only to Unatural situations related to magic or demons...

It seems that in Free Companies, corruption was taken as a form of "evil" that comes from the person itself...

I use instead of corruption a modifier on "reputation" (like Reputation "corrupt" or "evil") when dealing with breaking of human rules...

But then... if a general decides to kill all the inhabitants of a citie just for fun... i would give him a corruption point since it´s more of an unnatural doing, probably being related with some demon or dark god.

I don´t agree with gainning Corruption points for usual foul deeds like killing... for those i use "reputation" penaltys
Reputation if "evil" or "corrupt" gives you some serius penaltys to certain checks (at least the way i play it), if people think that´s bad of course, if your among thiefs, you probably would get a bonus...

I hope this matter of reputations and corruption gets an extended book just for it, with probably more developed Codes of honor, being revised and or more restricted, call it "the hyborian Soul" or whatever...

When is a men doing something so foul that he is becoming corrupt?
Good thing to be anwsered in a book...

Well i would like to see these things awnsered...
Don´t know about you guys...

 

[urdinaran]

My players don't have to check for corruption very much. I did have a character gain a corruption point once:

A wounded near-death NPC fires a crossbow bolt at the party and Otho (a soldier) goes over to the fellow and reassures him that everything is going to be ok and they mean him no harm. He proceeds to tend to the man's wounds and question him (about recent events in the adventure). After Otho questions him thoroughly and determines there is nothing more to learn from this chap, he decides to run him through with his broadsword.

GM: ok, gimme a Will save please.
Player: oops, I failed.
GM: ok, no problem. <scribble scribble>
Player: what happened?
GM: eh, don't worry about it.

 

[Yogah of Yag]

After Otho questions him thoroughly and determines there is nothing more to learn from this chap, he decides to run him through with his broadsword.

Man, that is pretty rough! :shock:
Is Otho a follower of Set? Yikes!

 

[Zul Daire]

A similiar situation happened in a game I ran except the npc surrendered and a soldier ran by one of the players ran him through after the interrogation. Instinctivly I decided a loss of the soldiers code of honor was appropriate as we were all shocked that he did this.

He protested the loss of his code of honor (after the game 1 on 1) citing rules from the Core book, the fact that he was a zealot also came into question and to be honest he made a good case.

In the end I decided to not strip his code of honor but rather have him make a corruption save which he was totally cool with and which he also totally failed. :twisted:

The other players at first agreed his honor should be stripped but later agreed the corruption save was feasible as well.

Yea! Everybody wins!

 

[vince the french]

i think you can't be honorable and corrupted. am i wrong?
Also, there's some situation that could corrupt human soul; think about nazis : they weren't socerers. So corruption could be consider like a kind of madness.....

 

[Mark Dunder]

Although, there is no alignment in Conan (for which I agree, but only as D&D did it), you could say the guy who does something so horrendous without any kind of excellent reason, may acquire something like "Tainted" as a sort of corruption. I use Tainted as a Magical Weakness in my game, but I never thought of using it for a regular Weakness. In my game it causes a character to have a "need" to eventually do something wrong again, anything. It accumulates by 1% each day, and the character will eventually have to do something to another character or will turn on himself. This does not mean he has to do something to the other player's characters, he may find some innocent to vent his "need" on. But you have to understand that in my game, no player "has" to pick any particular magical weakness. The only thing in my game a player accumulates during play is Fame and Obsession. Perhaps I will add a new earned Talent called "Infamy."

 

[Zul Daire]

i think you can't be honorable and corrupted. am i wrong?
Also, there's some situation that could corrupt human soul; think about nazis : they weren't socerers. So corruption could be consider like a kind of madness.....

I'm not sure there is a right or wrong answer to your first question. I think it is a matter of personal belief and conviction. Did the Nazi think they were morally wrong at the time or were they just mad?

I don't really know but the point is the ruling made everyone happy including the player. He had valid points about the surrender and how it played out in the game and as stated in the code of honor rules. Plus his corruption has become a personal story arc for his character.

I think the second part of your statement hits home.

 

[vince the french]

well, actually, is a mad guy know he's mad?
there's no alignement but evil exist in hyborian world. if you read the rules, corruption could be realy temporary as one could erase 1 point of corruption for 1 point of destiny.
of course, nazys weren't all mad, well may be temporary.
i like the word tainted, it's the way i feel it for low corruption

 

[Yogah of Yag]

well, actually, is a mad guy know he's mad?
there's no alignement but evil exist in hyborian world. if you read the rules, corruption could be realy temporary as one could erase 1 point of corruption for 1 point of destiny.
of course, nazys weren't all mad, well may be temporary.
i like the word tainted, it's the way i feel it for low corruption

I like the fact that the Conan RPG removed alignment from the game. Clearly labelling this makes the campaign seem easily black-and-white.
Hyboria is a world of wickedness, much of it hidden, slinking around in the dark and not always obvious. Most evil is not exposed but intentionally veiled and this makes it evil twice over. I suppose that one could insist the PCs and NPCs wear T-shirts that declare

Oh, Hello!
By the way,
I'm Chaotic Evil
But You Probably
Wouldn't Find This
Out Until It Was
Too Late!
:twisted:

 

[Zul Daire]

well, actually, is a mad guy know he's mad

Exactly! He felt he did not go aganst his code of honor na matter how twisted his sense of honor might seem to some. But we all felt is was worthy of corruption.

 

[Taharqa]

I feel that corruption should be reserved for sorcerous purposes. For random, but non-sorcerous, acts of violence and evil, reputation adjustments and codes of honor should suffice.

 

[Castel]

Well for those situations it think that we must remember that one may think he is not doing anything bad, but others may...

So for example in my game i would make the character lose his code of honor since the code of honor is also how people see and judge you...(if the code of honor did accept this action as an honorable one then he would not lose it)

I see "Corruption points" as a change in your soul, like talking to demons, torturing people, kind of a "Sanity" check to see if you can handle these evil things... if you gain "corruption" it signals that a part of your soul is disturbed...

If he is doing something that the Character thinks is really wrong, or that his society considers wrong them I would make him take a will save agaisnt corruption...

I think that corruption is still very open to GMs to do what they want with it... but a help from mongoose to lead us in how to handle it in certain situations would be nice...

I´ve been thinking and i´ll change my previus opinion and say that the "rules of looting" being braken give a reason to a corruption save...

The rules of looting is part of what is considered by all people to be "wright or wrong", if you brake them then you are going agaisnt what it defined by people and even by yourself as good...
But if you dont belived in this rule then you should not gain corrution with it, to not belive in this rules you would have to have a allready a corruption point.

I think that there should be made a diferance in corruption by minor Evil and major evil...

If you do evil things you get corruption, but will never gain more than 5 corruption points with it (this is minor evil)

If you contact peacefully with a demon, you treat the corruption the normal way (this is major evil)

I´m going to apply this system to my games...

 

[GimpCowKing]

well, how i see it is that you can be corrupt without contact with somthing unnatural, just not nearly as corrupt as one with unnatural connections.

if you murder and sacrifice because you think its fun etc. then yes, you should be able to take corruption points, somone who rapes and murders for the sport of it wont have an easy sleep at night (one of the things you could get at 3pts)

your code of honor should only be lost if you willingly go against your code of honor, if it feels wrong to you and you do it anyway, then you loose your honor

and duh, if you contact a demon or somthing akin then yes, you loose your humanity and suffer the regular rules of corruption

 

[Zul Daire]

your code of honor should only be lost if you willingly go against your code of honor, if it feels wrong to you and you do it anyway, then you loose your honor

This is the point a lot of high and mighties seem to miss. Because it may go against what they think is honorable it may not be for the next guy.

Changing Genre's here but lets look at Marv from Sin City. Corruption points? I would say hell yeah, but he does have a code of honor? "Can't kill a man unless your sure." "I don't hurt girls." I would say so.

I like the idea above for non sorcerous characters to have a cap of 5 as magic does open the door even more.

 

[Thamilon of Zamora]

Funny. I joined the forum here to ask this very question - about whether or not non-sorcerous types can become corrupt.

I am starting a new campaign and one of my players if a Zamoran first-level scholar with the Independent background and Hypnotism as her first school of magic.

The player likes doing magic-users but also wanted to avoid the corrupt ways of most Conan magicians (she's a big Cthulhu player, so she knows all about magic warping you), but given that she's been making her way in the world with her twin sister (a temptress) bilking men out of their purses so far, I was curious as to how corruption might be applied outside of magic-use having just re-read the rules regarding looting in The Free Companies.

 

[Mark Dunder]

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is it the evil men do or just the energy of magic that corrupts? Energy from the massive use of magic may cause "physical" deformations, or even "mental" collapse or madness, but this may purely be a biological symptom and not a "metaphysical" one in nature. I'm not sure the use of magic or the evil use of magic is corrupting. I'm not even sure "corrupting" is correct anyway. The immense power welded by users of magic may not tarnish the soul (for which the opinion of the game designers claim may not exist anyway), it may change their perceptions of the world around them, creating an arragance about their place in the world. They may start to believe they are above "normal" laws and codes. As such, even should they "break" some code they had when they were "lesser" men, it no longer applies. So the corruption may not have any value whatsoever except in the minds of players stuck on some way to "punish" players who cross the line. This is what alignment was all about in D&D. I would just drop the corruption concept, except as a biological cause, and just role-play the situation.