Opting Out of Playing the Bad Guys

[JWW]

Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa is one of the few games that touches at least lightly on the issue, with the Geneva Convention on/off option. Turn it off -- it defaults to on, and you get a warning if you want to turn it off -- and the German commander has to make moral decisions that cost political points if he opposes command decisions that go down the dark path. It is an interesting game dynamic which makes it harder on the German player who chooses to make a moral stand.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa is one of the few games that touches at least lightly on the issue, with the Geneva Convention on/off option. Turn it off -- it defaults to on, and you get a warning if you want to turn it off -- and the German commander has to make moral decisions that cost political points if he opposes command decisions that go down the dark path. It is an interesting game dynamic which makes it harder on the German player who chooses to make a moral stand.

warspite1

I loved playing DCB - the decisions to be chosen made for a very interesting game. However iirc the German player is playing as Halder. I don't think some of the political decisions were aimed correctly at Halder and weren't decisions he could influence.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: bayonetbrant

ORIGINAL: demyansk

When I play the Germans I think of the army. Not the Nazi party.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5wa ... n-soldiers

Isn't that what most of them were, just soldiers following orders? The alternative would seem to be to think there is some sort of (perhaps genetic) moral deficiency in the German people that makes them unable to discern right from wrong and therefore morally inferior to the citizens of Allied countries. Otherwise, sans the effects of Nazi propaganda, how else do you explain why so many German citizens willingly cooperated or fought in the war on the side of such a great evil? Surely, I don't think the author would want to go that route, would he? [&:]

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa is one of the few games that touches at least lightly on the issue, with the Geneva Convention on/off option. Turn it off -- it defaults to on, and you get a warning if you want to turn it off -- and the German commander has to make moral decisions that cost political points if he opposes command decisions that go down the dark path. It is an interesting game dynamic which makes it harder on the German player who chooses to make a moral stand.

warspite1

I loved playing DCB - the decisions to be chosen made for a very interesting game. However iirc the German player is playing as Halder. I don't think some of the political decisions were aimed correctly at Halder and weren't decisions he could influence.

Yes, cannot influence them. Just can choose to support or oppose them. Opposing costs political points. And it is indeed a great game.