Beccaria and Camarilla Justice

(edited version of email I sent to the OWBN-ST list.)

Hi Folks,

I'm not the Camarilla Coordinator, this isn't canon, this is me (Zephyr), whose PC is Cam Law expert, being a nerd trying to create a richer game world by perhaps explaining some ideas Elders have.  This grew out of something I'm writing in character, but it's good enough that I thought it's worth exploring here.

I believe it's better to have monsters make a certain kind of sense, and I recently read some stuff that has been helpful in that regard. Bear with me, you might be thinking half way through this, "what the hell are they talking about?" but trust me I have a point.

Anyway, Cesare Beccaria changed the world with a little pamplet, and you might have never heard of him, and that's a shame.

In 1764, during a time we now called the Age of Reason, Beccaria, a 25 years old lawyer authored, with the help of two members of his circle, a slim volume in Milan.

18 months later it was in its 6th edition.  The Italians read it.  By 1766 it was translated for a second time  into French with a foreword by Voltaire, who also told everyone he met to read it. Voltaire is someone you think of as an author, but back then he was a huge influencer. People listened to him. Several of the US founding fathers definitely read it.

What was this short pamphlet that took the world by storm? On Crimes and Punishments.

See back in the day they used to torture the innocent to confess, and then torture them again when executing them,Why? Well mostly out of tradition.  But there were two fundamental possible understandings of how to measure crime that could explain that that Beccaria explored  and rejected.

One is that the dignity of the injured party is how you measure crimes.  That is killing a king is worse than killing a peasant.  The killing of a King's deer likewise a huge crime.

The second is the idea, expressed in the bible and antiquity, of in making the punishment fit the crime, eye for an eye, or in Latin what was called the Lex Talionis, the Law of equivalent retribution.

Becarria rejects both these ideas for what are perfectly logical reasons for him.  The former because people don't punish blasphemy worse than we punish regicide, the latter basically because all people are equal before god.

Beccaria had the idea that justice shouldn't be about making the punishment fit the crime or the dignity of the acused, but be done purely for the utility of preventing crime. That is, nobody wants crime to be done to them, and yet some people do crime, so government should act to discourage crime so that everyone can be happy. That is, justice should deter criminal behavior, so that through reason and the principles of pleasure and pain people can live their lives in a good and godly way.  Reason wasn't considered anti-god in the age of reason... reason was god's gift to man to govern himself, and so can be applied to all things man does to bring about good ends. 

Beccaria believed in what was then a new fangled idea, a social contract, in which men were governed by their own implicit consent, so they could enjoy civilization. This was in contrast to the idea that governments, kings, ruled by divine right.

Thus the idea he believed in was that punishment was done for deterrence, as any other reason to do so was tyrannical and illogical and thus ungodly.

Anyway, why is this relevant to the Camarilla?  Well the idea that the dignity and position of the offended and offender matters, well that's how status works basically.  And the Lextalionis is absolutely used for Camarilla criminal justice in the books.

But both of those were Beccaria trying to reason out why people do things the way they do them.  The truth is some things are just done because of tradition... there isn't a logic to understand them, they just are that way. Roman law from Constantinople was the basis of a lot of legal practice in his time and people were taught to apply it. The idea that things should be reasonable and logical or done towards a purpose, that's shockingly recent and modern.

Anyway, when NPC Elders act "unfairly" in the modern sense, one way to make them make sense to the players is to pick one or more of those three elements to base their actions on and explain it thusly.

1. They are doing it because that's what's always been done.  Those who steal on Elysium always lose their hands to sunlight, because that's what they learned was the punishment.  Or it's always been theirs to decide, and this is the punishment they've always used.

2.  They are doing it because of the difference between the Dignity of the offended vs the dignity of the offender.  Thus an independent Ravnos stealing from a Ventrue Seneschal absolutely deserves to lose his hands, whereas a Tremere Primogen taking a magical item from a Nosferatu neonate might get a literal slap on the wrist, assuming that it's not understood that the Primogen had every right because Magical items are part of his Domain in that city, just like Police are part of the Ventrue Domain in London.

3. They are doing it because it's equal retribution, for some value of equal. Losing your hands is a suitable punishment for taking something with them.

And if you are portraying a Brujah Elder or older Anarch or Loyal opposition member, this maybe also gives you some ideas regarding where to take them.  Honestly just reading a book about enlightenment thinkers is a wonderful way to think about the Anarchs as a sect in opposition to the Camarilla. 

And that tension, between the old ways of doing things and a more modern understandings, perhaps ones based on equity, or deterrence, or even rehabilitation, I think can absolutely create drama for PCs.

A blog post that helped inspire this email
https://www.exurbe.com/on-crimes-and-punishments-and-beccaria/
The pamphlet in english
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/voltaire-an-essay-on-crimes-and-punishments

Character Pittraps: Never Lost/Seen it All

So I want to bring up a criticism of a type of character, or maybe a certain type of player, but I want to do it by pointing out that I have guilty of it too.  It's something I see all too often... that's not to say such character's shouldn't exist, but they should be created with the OOC understanding that they are flawed, and how.

I've written characters so they are perfect. I remember a Malkavian, childe of an Elder, the coolest guy ever.  They made every decision right in their back story. Every challenge he faced he has beaten.  And of course, anybody who did anything less, are to be derided, and exploited.  No forgiveness, no understanding.  And worse... I as a player judged people who's character's fucked up the same way... and when, inevitably, I failed, I wanted to play a different character.  because the character was broken.  He could never recover.

It's very easy to make a character who never failed... or who, if bad things happened, happened only because of things that were beyond his control.  We all want to play clever, skilled, smart, socially skilled fighters that have never lost a bout.

And of course, if you have never failed, if things have gone wrong only because of others... then any individual who has failed, who makes a mistake... is to be judged.

Don't get me wrong, characters should be successful... they should have something going for them.

But if you only play characters who are successful in their backstory, who don't understand failure, then you should do it with the out of character understanding that, your character is flawed.  Never having failed means never having learned to learn from one's mistakes.  And that is a flaw.  You've been perfect?  that means you never learned how to deal with failure.  In fact, you may be unable to admit you failed.  You should plan for success, and not allow for failure.

The super villain that can't understand how they were beat...  yeah, that's you.  And it's okay to play that character.  But please do it with your eyes open.

You Never Lost.

Because It's one thing to play a character that never made a mistake.  It's quite another to be a guy who thinks that their character is better for having had a back story where they never failed.

Anyway, like I said, eventually your PC will fuck up.  Or find a new mistake,  Or he/she won't, but something will go bad and your first thought will be... this character is no good anymore.

And that is the really sad thing... because in the best stories, the best characters grow... and you don't grow by being perfect... you grow by learning from your mistakes.  Your perfect character found out they aren't perfect... that's when the fun begins.

Not to mention, the perfect back story character is kinda boring... it's successes are based on stuff you wrote, which means that as soon as it has to interact with other characters, it's failing because it's not being awesome.  When you see people coming in an doing nothing at game just waiting on XP... that's this.  

That means that you should never work with others.... since they may fail.  And right then, you've built a PC who belongs on a shelf like a trophy, not in play.  In play they will only get tarnished.

Heck XP represents what your character learned... if you aren't doing stuff, if you know better, then you shouldn't be getting XP.

To me, the best characters are tarnished... They've seen horrors, and they've failed, and they've lost.  And having been broken.  But they aren't done being broken.

There is a variant that perhaps goes too far the other way... the too wise cynic who has seen everything.  That character may have failed, or at least had bad stuff happen, but now they have no more mistakes to make... they are perfect.  Nothing will ever change them, make them care, because they know better.  Every other character who is still trying to do stuff is a failure because they haven't learned the lessons they have. Again, I meet players who play such characters without understanding, or at least without acknowledging, that they are also flawed.

You have Seen it All.

Again... if your character has seen everything and nothing effects you... why the hell are you playing it?

Where is the story?  It's okay to be arrogant and think you know everything... but again, it's a flaw.

So, if you are going to play a character who either never makes a mistake, or knows every mistake you can make, at least now you can do it with open eyes.  And when I play with you, and you say OOC that a PC is a screw up because they didn't know better... I'm thinking you don't know better.  Fucking up is better story, and makes for better characters, then the perfect character that never screws up.  The character that goes home after an adventure without changing or learning anything is a boring and sad one.  And when I've done that, in the past, I've missed out.

We play characters... often vampire characters... and we treat stasis and the status quo as a good thing.  But it's important to remember that what IC is a good thing may OOC make for less valuable characters and less interesting story.

And if you have never made the same mistake, never never lost, or never saw it all... well good for you... Maybe you as a player never screwed up, or maybe you've seen it all.  I hope that makes for good stories for you.

Pixars Rules for Storytelling

On a blog for the Pixar Touch, a documentary about the history of Pixar, they published a collection of rules for good stories originally tweeted by Emma Coats a Pixary Story Artist.

Some good ones:

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.


#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?


#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.





See http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html for the rest.

Online Gaming not Sucking, and the Gamer Nuremberg Defense

http://forum.dwellindarkness.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5028

Two articles, one on how to run online games that don't suck, and one on how just playing your character is a BS excuse.

Joseph Campbell's Heroic Journey, Supernatural Characters in the World of Darkness, and Gangrel

There's been some discussion recently in OWBN's gangrel out of character mailing list about Gangrel. People have been suggesting that vampires (and other supernatural creatures more generally in the World of Darkness) can be Heros in the sense of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or superheros, while others have suggested that Vampires are essentially motivated by selfishness. Personally I think either view is reductionist, and I wrote the following:

Actually, Campbell's heroic monomyth isn't that great a fit. 

Character types of the world of darkness are based on trespassing against a society's taboos, about ceasing to be human. Vampires, Changelings, Werewolves and Mages, all represent an alteration from man to another type of being brought upon by some sort of trespass... with the possible exception of mages, who are a sort of reification of ritual as a means of transcending humanity, but at the same time plays with the separation of the "awakened" from ordinary man. None of them returns to humanity, they are all fundamentally inhuman at some level, set apart in fundamental ways. Even mages are in effect the shamans of their culture, transcending the physical with the metaphysical in ways that "sleepers" cannot.

The mono myth isn't even all that widely accepted among students of mythology, at least as I understand it. It's kind of a crib. Sure the Hero has a thousand faces, but Campbell goes on to write the Masks of god, which talks about the cultural differences in myth and their importance.

Anyway, getting back to vampire, it's perhaps better to see Vampires as representing essentially cautionary tales. Myths about the inhuman are still, at there essence, myths about humanity, the limits of what it is to be human and the allure of leaving humanity behind contrasted with the loss that represents... hence the focus on Humanity in vampire.

That tension, among Clan Gangrel, is about becoming bestial and wild vs. staying human. Gangrel grow more powerful by departing from their humanity, by becoming part of the wilderness. Essentially, Gangrel become red in tooth and claw, the ultimate bestial predator, at the cost of giving up most human concerns. The essential ultimate gangrel lives in the wild, survives easily, is a monsterous predator and a loner, lacking concerns for politics or human morals and even human speech, a master of their environment, but lacking self control and operating largely on instinct..

It's also not really a player character, since living alone in the wild as a beast isn't really great for a protagonist.

Gangrel PCs instead have to have that tension... they live uneasily on the line between beast and human, seeking a unification that may well be impossible. A Gangrel story is about changing, or resisting the change, of becoming more bestial and animalistic. It works slightly better in Tabletop, where Frenzy is an advantage (making you largely immune to social and mental powers) then in live action, where it's mostly a disadvantage. It's also hard for Storytellers to frame stuff... really dramatic moments should have you choose between fufilling your goals by acting like an animal, or remaining essentially human and failing. It's about sacrificing ones humanity for one's goals or one's goals for one's humanity.

Anyway, that's not to say that Gangrel can't be heroic. But in a sense, if your playing your Gangrel as the good guys, facing only easy black and white moral choices, running around in beast form without it making you more into a beast fundamentally, you are not taking full advantage of the real drama of being Gangrel... that tension, that struggle. In a sense, that struggle, winning it, or even losing and becoming more beast like, is also part of myth.

Remember, when you "Win" on a path or humanity check, you feel either guilty (for conscience) or gain a sense of shame over your own failure (for conviction). When you lose, you feel righteous and justified.

If I had to draw a larger lesson from this... I'd say that things that make one more powerful should also bring one closer to one's animal nature, and one's Beast. Maybe some combo disciplines would benefit from having neg trait requirements... you have to be bestial or repugnant or feral enough for them. Maybe getting mentors for paths like path of the beast, especially instinct paths, should be harder for those that resist frenzying, or seek to mitigate their animalistic nature with Mask of 1k, or use tools in beast form. Not that these should necessarily be binding packet rules, but they might make good suggested rules for STs, and guidelines for PCs to gain coord approval.

Hello Again: Character Development Techniques

Hi! It's been a while, but I thought I'd post something I saw.

Kung Fu Monkey, which is a writing blog, talks about developing characters. I think this is valuable both for developing PCs, and developing NPCs.

Techniques discussed:

360 Degree review. IE, how does the character's bosses, peers, and underlings view him.

Flipping characters from villian to hero, or hero to villian.

And my personal favorite:

Years ago another writer taught me a simple exercise -- describe a character, hero or villain, as his best friend would describe him while setting up a blind date. Then do it from the point of view of the co-worker who hates his guts and is unloading to his wife after work, or finally has a chance to sink him with a job recommendation.

Upcoming

I realize it's been a while since I've posted. I'm working on the following two blog posts (titles tentative).

House Rules that Don't Suck: Or what I've generally learned about Writing House Rules that players will actually read
We Screwed Up: Fixing ST mistakes

I'm also considering a post discussing how to communicate players to figure out what they want in terms of plot and theme, but I haven't started work on it.

If there is one you would prefer me to put out first, sound off in the comments.