Are the Coalition the "Good Guys"?

[barna10]

IMO the Coalition is an evil force. They condone genocide, are bigoted and racist, and don't seem to have ethics.

Plus, the Nazi imagery is a HORRIBLE choice if they're meant to represent "good".

Yet many books, and players, seem to present them as the good guys, or at least in some sort of grey area.

In my games, the citizens are complex, but the military are all bad.

[desrocfc]

IMO the Coalition is an evil force. They condone genocide, are bigoted and racist, and don't seem to have ethics.

Plus, the Nazi imagery is a HORRIBLE choice if they're meant to represent "good".

Yet many books, and players, seem to present them as the good guys, or at least in some sort of grey area.

In my games, the citizens are complex, but the military are all bad.

They are a trope and an easy element to use as "the enemy." That said, one could very easily say the same for the Federation of Magic and any number of other factions not clearly demonic or hell-bent for death and destruction (e.g. Russian Warlords, Free Quebec, Mega-Cities in Australia). I would argue our current worldview is nothing like a (human) person trying to survive in the Rifts setting, which something a lot of folks have difficulty reconciling.

At the risk of triggering a flurry of "CS apologist replies," it takes more than a passing glance and application of your current worldview to pass judgement. From our contemporary position, it's not really a question; they are led by, and the conduct of their military/police elite, is (really) reprehensible. If one were to actually look at real world historical records and apply some critical theory/thought to it, the vast majority of the CS populace in the has been sold a bill of goods on D-Bees and "other" that has more nuance/hits closer to home than most would be willing to accept. It's not like our contemporary setting hasn't justified some fairly similar policies based on emotional/political/religious grounds that were later to be (very) heavily and rightfully critiqued.

I've done a few blog posts on the topic, if you care to take a read (link in sig block below). Essentially, it's down to your table, your GM's rules.
- You want cookie-cutter bad guys, well the CS certainly fits that bill - I've used them as such.
- You want a more nuanced game, it is certainly "do-able" - I've used them as such. (I would warn this approach takes a mature audience and GM and the proper adventure setting.)

[Sambot]

As the organization as a whole, answer is Yes and No. Yes, the CS are the good guys because they're defending their citizens, and humanity in general, against evil vicious magicians, and alien monsters. No, the CS are not the good guys because they see every magician, and alien monster is evil and vicious. Individual attitudes may differ though. Still, it does appear that CS attitudes are slowly turning but officially, magic and aliens are bad.

Whether they're good or bad depends on your group. If you want them to be evil, they're evil. If you want them to be good, then they're good. It all depends on the individual. There's a lot of grey there. They just can't be too friendly with "the others" without risking getting in trouble themselves.

Of course, there's also the "Whatever works for your table" rule. You can make the CS good or bad as you want. If you don't want to include the evil aspects of the CS, or any other organization, don't. The point is to have fun.

[guardiandashi]

by canon the answer is that in most ways the coalition as a whole is pretty much evil. in fact I would go and say that in a lot of ways they are like the empire in star wars. or the natzi's from germany ww2 era.

IE they are evil and do a lot of evil mostly on purpose, while claiming that they are good, they may do some good incidentally or on accident but on the whole 90+% of what they do is evil,

[barna10]

The Confederacy in the U.S. thought they were the good guys.
The German populace under Hitler thought they were doing good and thought Jews were evil so didn't really care what happened to them.
The U.S. populace of the 17 and 18 hundreds had zero issues with pushing Native Americans off their lands and "fighting" them if they refused.
The Catholic church, its clergy, and its missionaries thought they were doing the Lord's work, ie good actions, going around the world, destroying people's history, slaughtering holy men, enslaving people.

These people didn't see themselves as evil. Their acts in these areas were unquestionably evil. It doesn't matter how they viewed their actions. You are not condemning the people, you are condemning the actions, organizations, and saying these things are not acceptable today.

But the main issue is not the ideas...it's that they were put to paper in an RPG in the first place. WE know this is bad. WE know this is evil. The books weren't written by people out-of-time who grew up in the Coalition and have a different world view. It's written with OUR world view and the imagery and ideas are evil. It's a work of fiction, not a historical examination of people from a different time with different morals and stimuli that lead to a different outcome than we might make based on our own circumstances (ie presentism)

If I were to write an RPG set in the Civil war, and I went into great detail about plantation owners, the slave trade, the subjugation of women, etc., and then implied the white slave owners were the good guys, I'd be run out of town.

Yet we've all been OK with books glorifying reskinned Nazi's since the 1990s.

That said, one could very easily say the same for the Federation of Magic and any number of other factions not clearly demonic or hell-bent for death and destruction (e.g. Russian Warlords, Free Quebec, Mega-Cities in Australia).

Sorry, no. There is no allegory with these groups; there's no historical equivalent to the Federation. The Russian Warlords are brutal, but they are not on the same level as the Coalition, more organized crime gone wild.

It's not the actions of the Coalitions that I am taking issue with as much as it is the clear reflective imagery of the Third Reich being invoked, compounded with them being genocidal, bigoted, human supremacists, and then even giving the hint that they're a force of good.

[Fenris2020]

I think the CS is allegory.
Is everyone in the CS evil? No, though pretty much all of the leadership is.
Was everyone in NAZI Germany evil? No, though most of the leadership was.
The same could be said of Stalinist Russia, or really any sort of dictatorship.

[green.nova343]

The Coalition (TM) is definitely evil. However, not every Coalition soldier & officer is going to be the "Ve have vays of making you talk", burying murdered D-Bees & mages in mass graves, kind of evil that the Nazi Party was at.

And just because someone is a CS citizen does not mean that they subscribe in whole or in part with the Coalition philosophy. In 1945, for example, official members of the Nazi Party (8 million) only made up about 10% of the entire German population, despite the Party being integrated into every facet of Germany's culture & society (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/wwii-allies-impressions-of-germany#:~:text=By%201945%20only%20about%20eight,of%20approximately%2080%20million%20people.). Which is also why the post-war Nuremburg trials focused on the heads of the party & other high-ranking officials that helped push the Nazi agenda: because, as the leaders giving the orders, they bore the ultimate responsibility for the evils done in the Party's name. You can even see that in some of the O.C.C. descriptions -- the CS Ranger's willingness, for example, to work with unaffiliated psychics, or even with D-Bees & mages if the mission success would be bettered (whereas the CS Special Forces prefer not to associate with them). I believe there was also an adventure in one of the supplements (where a regular CS patrol enlists the assistance of the players to track down reports of a group in "demonic-looking" armor engaging in wholesale slaughter of D-Bees...only to discover that the group in question is actually testing out the new style of CS body armor, the armor that emphasizes their skeletal aspect). IIRC, the officer of the CS patrol isn't happy about having to essentially arrest/take out another CS unit, but feels it's his duty "for the honor of the Coalition", as he personally doesn't feel that wholesale slaughter of D-Bees is correct.

Note also that the Coalition is far from the only nation engaged in xenophobia & anti-mage bias on Rifts Earth; the NGR may not be as violently anti-D-Bee & anti-magic as the Coalition, but they definitely treat them like second-class citizens. Even in Free Quebec, they're not exactly friendly to mages or D-Bees, they were just exercising their Quebecois heritage & being intransigent about taking orders from a non-French Canadian like Emperor Prosek.

And then, of course, there is the question of how big of an evil the Coalition States truly are. We have Atlantis, with Splynncrith & his Splugorth hordes, that want to take over Earth & add it to his retinue of enslaved planets. We have the Gargoyle & Brodkil nations in Eastern Europe that want to take over and/or destroy the NGR & other human countries. We have the Vampire Kingdoms that want to enslave humanity, Dunscon & the demon-aligned portion of the Federation of Magic that want to enslave or kill anyone that doesn't follow their rule, those aliens with the tri-beam weapons down in South America that tried invading Earth to conquer it, the corporation from the Juicer world book that was creating zombies out of Juicers...the list goes on & on of alien & human-based groups that in their own way are just as evil (if not more so) than the Coalition. And to be honest...with the exception of the war with Tolkeen, for the most part it seems like the Coalition only concerns itself with entities & parties outside of CS-claimed territory if they're deemed to be a threat to CS security. And even then, it's been a while since I read the Siege of Tolkeen books, but there might be a case for Tolkeen having reached that point (note that the Coalition has done nothing against Lazlo or New Lazlo). And even within CS-claimed territory, there are large areas where direct CS control is spotty & thin, resembling more the Old West-type of "a cavalry company happened to come through town every few months to make sure everything's OK" situation than a "CS patrols the area on a weekly or daily basis". Note that even the areas right outside each of the CS arcologies tends to have a plethora of D-Bees & psychics, & even mages that happen to keep their heads down.

In short...while it's easy to simply view this as a black-and-white situation, the reality is much more complex &...human...in how it can be viewed.

I'm reminded of a comment my mom made once about her dad. He was in the USN in WW2 (pharmacy tech) on board the USS Indianapolis (was put off the ship right before they left with the bomb parts, so he avoided swimming with the sharks). She said that after the war, he would read & buy all sorts of books that talked about the rise of the Nazis in Germany & what contributed to WWII, because he had trouble understanding how the German people could have allowed such an event to occur. Unfortunately, he had lost a leg to diabetic neuropathy & died when I was 10, & I never had a chance to ever talk about things like that with him (being a WWII history buff myself).

[Incriptus]

"If Hell invaded the Coalition I would make at least a favourable reference to the Prosek in the House of Commons" to twist around a quote.

Anyways the Coalition is clearly "Bad Guys". The Emperor's alignment is Diabolic. The rest of the high command is Aberrant at best. It says in the War Campaign book some 15-20% are really into the torture and genocide thing. It's easy to call the CS Nazi's and call it a day. As the book explains it's only if you don't want it to be easy do you introduce CS Soldier's who are "Heroes of Humanity". Yes they're "Bad" "Guys". it all depends on how much emphasis you want to put on bad and how much on guys. Bad vs Evil vs Vile vs Just following orders vs Indoctrinated vs Opportunists it takes all kinds.

That said when I play them I tend to play a dark grey. Yes we are bad, but only because the enemy is worse.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

I think the Coalition is one of the better, more mature elements of Rifts lore. Aside from the cartoonish fixation on skull motifs.

They are the good guys, if you're human, don't mind being illiterate, have no interest in using magic, and wish to enjoy reasonably high standards of living and security in a world that has neither for the vast majority of the human population that survived the apocalypse.

In the context of Rifts, it seems like the theme is as follows: to be a human civilization with high standards of living, a large and sustainable population, and to have survived the apocalypse while also retaining some parts of pre-Rifts culture, you need to have embraced technology in a major way.

That reliance on technology inherently distances a tech-based society from magic, as the former precludes the use of the latter in most cases.

Compounding this distancing from magic, is the fact that humanity's greatest enemy immediately after the Rifts, came in the form of D-Bees and magic users. Magic itself is what destroyed most of the world, and roving magic wielders finished off most of the survivors.

It stands to reason that an intense hatred and fear of magic and aliens would proliferate among many human survivors. While the Sovietski, NGR, Free Quebec, and Northern Gun represent various degrees of anti-magic and anti-D-Bee sentiment (or at least a refusal to embrace them), the Coalition is that hatred and fear brought to an extreme.

The Coalition was galvanized by the original Dunscon's attack on it. This is all covered in the Federation of Magic book. The Coalition went from being wary of magic to bitterly hating it and persecuting anybody who might use it. The hatred of magic coincides with the hatred of D-Bees and anything alien, since both magic and aliens arrived on Earth at the same time, by the same means.

Furthermore, Prosek is hyper-paranoid because his precogs are all saying something catastrophic will happen soon. That makes him more likely to attack anything even remotely perceived as a potential threat.

There are plenty of ways to play for the Coalition without having a player group running around exterminating D-Bees all day. Plenty of scenarios where you're fighting demons or various necromancer threats in the Magic Zone. In those specific situations, Coalition soldiers are the good guys for the average human in the region who has no defense against supernatural threats.

Or... you can turn them into cartoonish bad guys who wear too many skull designs, and kill hundreds of them without blinking.

Your choice. That's what an RPG should be all about. Choice. Anybody can write a faction that's all bad or all good. And that'd be utterly boring. Lazlo and Psyscape are perilously close to being too goody-goody and one-note. That's what I like about the Federation of Magic: it's a mirror image of the Coalition. Some good and plenty of bad.

Personally, I love magic and have a strong preference for magic OCCs. But even being a Dweomer resident born and bred, I'd still expect any character I play to have some understanding of the history of the region, and why there's so much hatred and fear on both sides.

[Aermas]

The Confederacy in the U.S. thought they were the good guys.
The German populace under Hitler thought they were doing good and thought Jews were evil so didn't really care what happened to them.
The U.S. populace of the 17 and 18 hundreds had zero issues with pushing Native Americans off their lands and "fighting" them if they refused.
The Catholic church, its clergy, and its missionaries thought they were doing the Lord's work, ie good actions, going around the world, destroying people's history, slaughtering holy men, enslaving people.

These people didn't see themselves as evil. Their acts in these areas were unquestionably evil. It doesn't matter how they viewed their actions. You are not condemning the people, you are condemning the actions, organizations, and saying these things are not acceptable today.

But the main issue is not the ideas...it's that they were put to paper in an RPG in the first place. WE know this is bad. WE know this is evil. The books weren't written by people out-of-time who grew up in the Coalition and have a different world view. It's written with OUR world view and the imagery and ideas are evil. It's a work of fiction, not a historical examination of people from a different time with different morals and stimuli that lead to a different outcome than we might make based on our own circumstances (ie presentism)

If I were to write an RPG set in the Civil war, and I went into great detail about plantation owners, the slave trade, the subjugation of women, etc., and then implied the white slave owners were the good guys, I'd be run out of town.

Yet we've all been OK with books glorifying reskinned Nazi's since the 1990s.

That said, one could very easily say the same for the Federation of Magic and any number of other factions not clearly demonic or hell-bent for death and destruction (e.g. Russian Warlords, Free Quebec, Mega-Cities in Australia).

Sorry, no. There is no allegory with these groups; there's no historical equivalent to the Federation. The Russian Warlords are brutal, but they are not on the same level as the Coalition, more organized crime gone wild.

It's not the actions of the Coalitions that I am taking issue with as much as it is the clear reflective imagery of the Third Reich being invoked, compounded with them being genocidal, bigoted, human supremacists, and then even giving the hint that they're a force of good.

The CS are literally Illinois Nazis, so don't take what I say next as any kind of defense of ANY real world politics.

The CS are the good guys. When humanity itself was pushed to the brink & almost annihilated it was the CS who saved North Americans. You talk about European settlers driving natives off of their land. The D-Bees did this to humanity across our entire world. It doesn't matter that some are nice. It doesn't matter than some aren't invaders but rather refugees. What does matter is that Earth is humanity's birthright & humans are allowed to defend it. Humanity on RIFTS Earth are not unlike the Armenians or Natives who were genocided worse than any other people in history. When a literal demon from hell is ripping through your door, you might not care that the men who slew it were deadboys. You have no context to the horrors of what happened to Earth. The CS is fighting for daily survival.

You are measuring them by modern sensibilities which have no relevance to RIFTS Earth. Men 1000 or 5000 years ago would find some of our own daily practices abhorrent. Does that make US evil? Ethics has always been a democracy. If you ask a group of cannibals if it's okay to eat people they'll say yes. If you expand that group to include non cannibals the answer changes. (Fill in cannibalism with whatever political buzzword of the hour you want, too, it doesn't matter) so any appeal to ethics especially with modern sensibilities is a failure from the get go. Their leaders are almost all evil. They perform evil acts from a Moral standpoint (the Cosmic Forge is the ultimate moral authority in the Megaverse), but the State itself isn't evil

[Sambot]

There is a lot of looking through different lenses. To us the CS, Nazis, and the Confederates are evil. And they have done a lot to deserve that but that is painting everyone with a very broad brush. A lot still depends on who and when. To their citizens they may be the good guys. Or at least they started off that way.
The CS used to have Mages until they were attacked by a magic kingdom. After that, they lost a their tolerance for mages. I've heard stories from WWII were members of the German Army treated civilians in occupied areas with kindness and respect. The SS though were evil and treated everyone badly. How about the British and the French? It was their armistice that planted the seeds of WWII. Were they evil? How about Russia? Russia in WWII doesn't sound any better than WWII Germany but they were on the winning side. Were they evil? Was the USA evil for Japanese camps in WWII?

Many Southerners were conscripted into the Confederate Army. Many who never owned slaves or even agreed with slavery. Others joined after Northern soldiers burned their homes and did other worse things to their families. Others joined the Confederate Army just to defend their homes against the invading Northern hordes. That includes people one wouldn't think would be joining the Confederates. Does fighting because they don't have a choice, for revenge, or to protect themselves and their families make them evil? And the North was just as bad as the South in a lot of things. They just won the war, so they got to write the history books.

I could go on and on but that probably wouldn't be a good thing. The point is that things are rarely just black and white. Mostly, they're a whole lot of grey. How much depends on the pint of view. To a Mage or D-Bee merchant in the Burbs the CS is evil. To citizens of Chi-Town, the CS are the good guys defending them from those would want to eat, enslave, or eat and enslave them. So they're both. How we want them to be in our games though is up to us.

[desrocfc]

That said, one could very easily say the same for the Federation of Magic and any number of other factions not clearly demonic or hell-bent for death and destruction (e.g. Russian Warlords, Free Quebec, Mega-Cities in Australia).

Sorry, no. There is no allegory with these groups; there's no historical equivalent to the Federation. The Russian Warlords are brutal, but they are not on the same level as the Coalition, more organized crime gone wild.

It's not the actions of the Coalitions that I am taking issue with as much as it is the clear reflective imagery of the Third Reich being invoked, compounded with them being genocidal, bigoted, human supremacists, and then even giving the hint that they're a force of good.

The allegory only makes the CS a more obvious choice for scorn and ridicule. None of the Free Quebec, Russian Warlords, Australian Mega-Cities or similar examples are doing much different than the CS, they just have fewer jackboots in their recruiting posters.

The FoM and Tolkeen (at the end of the SoT series) are both examples of evil from the flipside of the coin. Sure, they accept outsiders and magic users, but I won't be blowing any smoke blown up their skirts for treating their people populace any better than the CS.

And this realistically is what drives the discussion. Our contemporary worldviews shade our interpretations of the WB info as presented. Barna10, you (and no doubt many others) have expressed that the CS as "hard-black" evil and may have zero inclination to view them otherwise; that is a perfectly valid viewpoint. I view the CS with a more nuanced lens, but still use their military as "bad guys" for player interactions, along with most forces from the FoM; this also is a perfectly valid viewpoint. My typical inclination when GMing is to set adventures in the New England/Canada regions, with more than a slight bias favoring FQ (go figure, LOL). Bear in mind, I make no excuses or forgiveness for FQ who no joke, are probably as bad if not worse than Chi-town. Depending on the maturity of the players, this element gets handwaved in order to prioritize enjoyable adventuring and gameplay.

Thankfully this topic has remained very civilized (compared to previous attempts), so bravo to everyone involved. Let's just remember, evil doesn't come in a cookie cutter uniform or require a snarling maw of jagged teeth.

[Library Ogre]

The CS are xenophobic, genocidal, slavers. They have deliberately made about 10-25% of their population (psychics) into second class citizens, and waged several wars of aggression against states that were not threatening them.

Any justification of "they're protecting humans" is more or less disproven by Lazlo and Houstown... cities with integrated populations, where humans are just part of the population.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

The CS are xenophobic, genocidal, slavers. They have deliberately made about 10-25% of their population (psychics) into second class citizens, and waged several wars of aggression against states that were not threatening them.

Any justification of "they're protecting humans" is more or less disproven by Lazlo and Houstown... cities with integrated populations, where humans are just part of the population.

They protect their own humans (as long as they follow the rules). Just like any nation of today or in the past only looks out for its own people over any other nation's people.

I also think that the Coalition Manhunters book pretty much retcons any notion of psychics being treated badly in the CS. At least, non-mutant psychics.

Really though, we can go round and round all day, but the original treatment of the CS in RUE covers the topic comprehensively.

You can portray them as vile bigots.

Or misguided patriots who ultimately do a lot of harm, but not for the same reasons as the vile bigots.

Or people who are placed in a terrible position--under the thumb of a despotic regime on the inside, beset by innumerable supernatural enemies on the outside--and will try to maintain some semblance of decency in spite of their circumstances.

Or have some of them turn against the CS and go rogue.

The best player group analogy I can think of is the original Star Trek episode, Mirror Mirror, in which Kirk is transported to an alternate dimension where the Federation is a brutal evil cliche. More like Star Wars Sith than the CS.

Anyway, Kirk pretends to be his evil counterpart, while also avoiding wanton slaughter. He convinces evil Spock (who's really more like an anarchist alignment here) that the evil empire is wasteful and stupid, and that change will be necessary sooner rather than later, before returning to his own proper dimension.

Point being, there's no reason a player group couldn't do the same.

[Crimson Dynamo]

It's a tough question.

I mean, the group directly based on Nazis who act like Nazis and who throw skulls on everything they make are quite clearly "the good guys" by anyone's estimation.

[Library Ogre]

They protect their own humans (as long as they follow the rules). Just like any nation of today or in the past only looks out for its own people over any other nation's people.

They kill anyone not human enough for them. They've created slave races of "subhumans" to do their bidding. "We look out for our nations people" kinda falls down when you're
a) actively hunting down those who aren't your people, yet are not hurting you
b) you are creating people and deciding they're not people enough.

I also think that the Coalition Manhunters book pretty much retcons any notion of psychics being treated badly in the CS. At least, non-mutant psychics.

I can't speak to a recent retcon, just to how they've been portrayed for the past 30+ years.

The best player group analogy I can think of is the original Star Trek episode, Mirror Mirror, in which Kirk is transported to an alternate dimension where the Federation is a brutal evil cliche. More like Star Wars Sith than the CS.

Anyway, Kirk pretends to be his evil counterpart, while also avoiding wanton slaughter. He convinces evil Spock (who's really more like an anarchist alignment here) that the evil empire is wasteful and stupid, and that change will be necessary sooner rather than later, before returning to his own proper dimension.

Point being, there's no reason a player group couldn't do the same.

You are conflating the Coalition (i.e. the nation-state) with individuals within the Coalition, and claiming that, because some individuals are not necessarily evil, the state itself cannot be evil, despite its actions and ideology.

[Aermas]

The CS are xenophobic, genocidal, slavers. They have deliberately made about 10-25% of their population (psychics) into second class citizens, and waged several wars of aggression against states that were not threatening them.

Any justification of "they're protecting humans" is more or less disproven by Lazlo and Houstown... cities with integrated populations, where humans are just part of the population.

Lazlo wouldn't exist without the CS pacifying the region.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

You are conflating the Coalition (i.e. the nation-state) with individuals within the Coalition, and claiming that, because some individuals are not necessarily evil, the state itself cannot be evil, despite its actions and ideology.

I didn't say the state wasn't evil. Though the question must be raised of how many humans would be left in North America without the existence of the Coalition, and what conditions they'd be living in. You have to be alive in the first place to debate questions of morality. Millions of people exist who would not otherwise exist, because the Coalition affords them protection with technology.

I've always seen the Coalition as representing the question of what price you are willing to pay for safety and progress.

[Blackwater Sniper]

Name a movie, book, TV Show where the "new aliens" in town are considered good and welcomed by the human populace?

It's far more likely that you'll have various factions of aliens coming to Earth where some are allied with humans against a third faction.

With that in mind, humanity is doing its "best" to hold onto Earth in any way possible.

As for humans being nasty to other humans, that's not something new to recent history or even relegated to humans only; look at how animals claim territory based upon food, shelter, or mating rights.

[barna10]

I think my pain point is being missed.

The choice of a group that uses a Nazi motif being portrayed as the good guys by an RPG company is a poor choice. A group that quacks like Nazis and looks like Nazis.

That there is more nuance in the story and different ways to interpret the Coalition means diddly squat.

Then, if you look into the material more, the canon suggested they ARE the good guys.

I'm talking about canon and what's printed and advertised, not how each of you play it at your table.

I'd suggest a revision in the future, or at least no more Coalition-centric material portraying them as the heroes.

[barna10]

To be clear, KS sees them as evil :
"Rifts is supposed to offer limitless possibilities and cover every possibility. The CS is one of those possibilities. An adversary that is not black and white, but every shade of gray. A villain (and I do see the CS as villains) who can be rotten to the core or surprisingly heroic and compassionate, sometimes even to those they are supposed to hate and destroy. A villain who has the promise of redemption and the potential for true greatness. If you think about it, the CS reflects our own duality and capacity for good and evil. They reflect the worst and best humans have to offer, and the promise of greatness so often left unrealized."

That being stated, I don't think a good-enough job has been done to tell new players, customers, or others that they are EVIL VILLAINS and not the good guys

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

That being stated, I don't think a good-enough job has been done to tell new players, customers, or others that they are EVIL VILLAINS and not the good guys

So you want them to, what, sanitize the CS by turning them into an unplayable faction like demon hordes or vampire intelligences?

Doesn't the game already have enough of those?

There's already more than enough hand-holding in the books that tells us why playing as evil characters is a bad idea, etc. Even though the OCCs are presented to us, we realistically can't play as Mystic Knights, Vampires, Necromancers, Witches, etc. Obviously we can do so if we can find accommodating groups, but that's not the point; the point is that the OCC description itself often discourages us and narrows our options.

By contrast, the nature of the Coalition allows people to play as selfish or good characters while working for an evil faction. That whole paradox is what makes it interesting. Like I said with the Star Trek analogy: you can work for an evil empire and still try to make some good things happen. That's the challenge.

The alternative is to have 100% good or 100% evil factions, which as I said, is incredibly dull.

[Wise_Owl]

The Coalition are Fascist. Fascists are Bad Guys. Always and everywhere. Fascists who become Good Guys stop being Fascists. Or maybe die pariahic victories against their former fascist comrades in order to save people.

So to this conversation there are several layers, and because it needs to be stated I'm going to start with the obvious one; The Coalition is Made up. It has no more reality than mickey mouse cartoons or Furry Harry Potter Fan Fiction. What's on the page is what we interpret, but that is just the authorial voice. The Coalition need not be consistent, or internally cohesive, because it's just a made up group. A group that is basically a cartoonish badguy. Not because of it's ideology, which is horrific and replicated far too often in the real world, but because it can Muster MIllion man armies of new technology in a world saturated with psychics with nobody finding out. It can execute plans that should fail and have them succeed by narrative fiat. They are the villians in an RPG. They exist for the players to defeat.

So that's one layer. The Next is this; Don't portray fascists as good guys. Fascists aren't good guys. They aren't good guys to the enemies they identify, and if you examine them historically, they aren't good guys to the populations they rule over, their supposed 'own people'. It sucked to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. It sucked to be a leftist in Fascist Italy. It sucked to be a Korean in Imperialist Japan. It also sucked to be a German, Italian or Japanese citizen in those countries. Fascism is one of the worlds worst ideologies not merely because of it's inhumanity, but because it parasitically destroys the body it has come to consume.

Even though Rifts is fiction, portraying Fascists as good guys is just not a good thing to be doing. If I made a faction of child molesters nobody would be arguing with me about how the Child Molesters are in fact the good guys. Or at least they shouldn't be, and we would all recognize why that was a bad faith argument and that the person making it should be considered suspect. Fascists... same deal.

Lastly, within the fictional world of Rifts the Coalition... sucks. Like every argument that can be made for them is a crudly argument. There are people living better in regimes governed by literal blood-sucking vampires. People have been trying to argue about how evil the Coalition is for decades, and it stunk back then, it stinks now. The Coalition states is an evil regime whose destruction would benefit pretty much everybody not in it's higher hierarchy.

So yeah; simple answer. No. Bloody Splyncryth is more of a Good Guy than the Coalition and he's literally a people eating tentacle monster.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

If I made a faction of child molesters nobody would be arguing with me about how the Child Molesters are in fact the good guys.

Except this is an entirely 'bad faith' comparison, and thus totally invalid.

Such a faction would be idiotic and make no sense in the setting.

A faction of human supremacists who hate magic is absolutely appropriate in a setting where humanity was 99% wiped out by magic, and then the world was 'invaded' by aliens, many of whom wield magic as second nature.

Nobody who says the Coalition is some good, some bad, is arguing that the good part comes from murdering D-Bees.

The good part comes from saving humans from certain destruction.

It's really not that complicated of a dynamic, unless you want to willfully disregard all the context, focus only on whatever triggers a kneejerk reaction, and then obsess solely over that point and ignore anything and everything else.

[Aermas]

I think my pain point is being missed.

The choice of a group that uses a Nazi motif being portrayed as the good guys by an RPG company is a poor choice. A group that quacks like Nazis and looks like Nazis.

That there is more nuance in the story and different ways to interpret the Coalition means diddly squat.

Then, if you look into the material more, the canon suggested they ARE the good guys.

I'm talking about canon and what's printed and advertised, not how each of you play it at your table.

I'd suggest a revision in the future, or at least no more Coalition-centric material portraying them as the heroes.

Or maybe just change it at YOUR table & don't force everyone else to care about your personal line in the sand?

[Aermas]

The Coalition are Fascist. Fascists are Bad Guys. Always and everywhere. Fascists who become Good Guys stop being Fascists. Or maybe die pariahic victories against their former fascist comrades in order to save people.

So to this conversation there are several layers, and because it needs to be stated I'm going to start with the obvious one; The Coalition is Made up. It has no more reality than mickey mouse cartoons or Furry Harry Potter Fan Fiction. What's on the page is what we interpret, but that is just the authorial voice. The Coalition need not be consistent, or internally cohesive, because it's just a made up group. A group that is basically a cartoonish badguy. Not because of it's ideology, which is horrific and replicated far too often in the real world, but because it can Muster MIllion man armies of new technology in a world saturated with psychics with nobody finding out. It can execute plans that should fail and have them succeed by narrative fiat. They are the villians in an RPG. They exist for the players to defeat.

So that's one layer. The Next is this; Don't portray fascists as good guys. Fascists aren't good guys. They aren't good guys to the enemies they identify, and if you examine them historically, they aren't good guys to the populations they rule over, their supposed 'own people'. It sucked to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. It sucked to be a leftist in Fascist Italy. It sucked to be a Korean in Imperialist Japan. It also sucked to be a German, Italian or Japanese citizen in those countries. Fascism is one of the worlds worst ideologies not merely because of it's inhumanity, but because it parasitically destroys the body it has come to consume.

Even though Rifts is fiction, portraying Fascists as good guys is just not a good thing to be doing. If I made a faction of child molesters nobody would be arguing with me about how the Child Molesters are in fact the good guys. Or at least they shouldn't be, and we would all recognize why that was a bad faith argument and that the person making it should be considered suspect. Fascists... same deal.

Lastly, within the fictional world of Rifts the Coalition... sucks. Like every argument that can be made for them is a crudly argument. There are people living better in regimes governed by literal blood-sucking vampires. People have been trying to argue about how evil the Coalition is for decades, and it stunk back then, it stinks now. The Coalition states is an evil regime whose destruction would benefit pretty much everybody not in it's higher hierarchy.

So yeah; simple answer. No. Bloody Splyncryth is more of a Good Guy than the Coalition and he's literally a people eating tentacle monster.

Fascism has about a good of a track record as communism but when you get down to definitions is just a highly authoritative & nationalist/socialist government (not to mention Mussolini declared that fascism meant whatever he said it meant) That could be used to describe a LOT of groups, you can even mix it with other ideologies, it doesnt have to just be militaristic & based on persecution of others. Israel could be described as similarly fascist as the CS because it is be very authoritative & nationalist & constantly fighting on the West Bank

[Crimson Dynamo]

act like Nazis and who throw skulls on everything

Again with the skulls - it's a non-factor to me. I'm more afraid of the soldier with a picture of a smiling baby on his chestplate.

That's nice.

It doesn't change a single solitary thing though.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

I also think that the Coalition Manhunters book pretty much retcons any notion of psychics being treated badly in the CS. At least, non-mutant psychics.

I thought at one point all psychis were considered mutants. Did Manhunter single out the Psi-Stalkers or the Psi-Ghosts?

Manhunters specifically mentions that Dog Boys are treated as lower than humans. I can't easily find a reference to Psi-Stalkers, but we should assume the same based on RUE descriptions.

The part that I'm saying is retconned (or rather, explained away as Erin Tarn's skewed perspective) is how the average human (i.e, normal looking) psychics are considered heroes of the Coalition now. The word 'mutant' wasn't casually used in conjunction with psychics.

Except this is an entirely 'bad faith' comparison, and thus totally invalid.
Such a faction would be idiotic and make no sense in the setting.

Actually it would make a lot of sense in the setting - we already know a lot of mages murder children for their higher PPE as fuel in dark rituals.
I imagine Psi-Stalkers could do a similar thing to young psychics.
Psi-Slayers OTOH might make children THINK they're about to be murdered to harvest their high PPE.

Murdering kids for PPE is a far cry from the other crap.

And no, as for the Sea Titan bit, I think you're reaching too far to make a point.

[MyDumpStatIsMA]

That being stated, I don't think a good-enough job has been done to tell new players, customers, or others that they are EVIL VILLAINS and not the good guys

By the way, here's the opening line of Coalition Manhunters:

"Bad guys never see themselves as evil. It's human nature. With the exception of supernatural beings, and the occasional maniac, the "bad guys" see themselves as the "hero" of their story. They are bold, cunning, clever, resourceful, driven, and a plethora of other virtues, not ruthless, treacherous, cruel, or evil. So it is with the CS Manhunters. They don't see themselves as cold-hearted assassins in the service of an evil, human supremacist dictator."

How much more explicit do you want it?

Literally the first paragraph of the book.

[Shorty Lickens]

NO!

And we;ve had this discussion many many times.
This has already been settled.

Since the very first book ever, its been abundantly clear how the C.S. actually is.
They are well-intentioned villains.
Arguably the worse kind of villain.
They are horrible people doing terrible things, under the false prestense they are the good guys.
Which is so much worse than a regular villain who knows he's bad and just has zero conscious about it. He's simple by comparison.

ANd in a RIFTS campaign? No you want smart villains who can make for epic, satisfying long campaigns. The kind you talk about years later.

[Shorty Lickens]

The CS are VILLAINS, who think they're good guys.

In fact every book since and all the less than subtle hints all point to the same thing: The CS is a direct and not too indirect nod to real world Nazis.,

And thats what makes them perfect villains, cuz we can all imagine in our minds what it would be like to fight such villains.

[taalismn]

Especially since for the Proseks it's moved from 'doing what is necessary to protect Humanity', to 'using HItler's playbook to stay in power'.

[Crimson Dynamo]

The CS are VILLAINS, who think they're good guys.

Apparently the skull motif makes them the good guys. Now if they had smiley faces, they'd be true villains.

Apparently.

According to someone in this thread.

Yeah.

[taalismn]

The CS are VILLAINS, who think they're good guys.

Apparently the skull motif makes them the good guys. Now if they had smiley faces, they'd be true villains.

Apparently.

According to someone in this thread.

Yeah.

Because smiley kitten heads were too difficult to mass-produce.

[Crimson Dynamo]

That's nice.

It doesn't change a single solitary thing though.

So you thinking skulls = always evil does change things but thinking otherwise does not?

Nope.

I'm also not the kind of person who ignores everything else that's been said, picks one tiny sentence fragment, then proceeds to do... whatever it is you think you're doing. Seriously, I have no idea why people like you think you're being ultra savvy and hyper-intellectuals when you try to pull that ignorant sh*t.

Warning: Warning issued for trolling, and for a profanity violation. Mack

The skull motif was just one tiny little aspect that demonstrated that they're the f*cking Nazis of Rifts Earth. Just like the books themselves basically call them time and time and time again.

[Aermas]

The CS uses the skull/skeleton because it's human & morbid. No D-Bee has a skeleton/skulls like a human (there are probably a few notable exceptions but thats the CS reasoning) it also makes their soldiers think about death & how dangerous their job is. It's also aesthetic AF.

[Killer Cyborg]

I think my pain point is being missed.

The choice of a group that uses a Nazi motif being portrayed as the good guys by an RPG company is a poor choice.

Well, they're not being portrayed as The Good Guys, so that's kind of an irrelevant point.

[Crimson Dynamo]

You didn't mention the others, I'm focusing on what you mentioned.

No, you edited out the rest yourself.

By the way, how's the well-deserved vacation going?

[taalismn]

The CS uses the skull/skeleton because it's human & morbid. No D-Bee has a skeleton/skulls like a human (there are probably a few notable exceptions but thats the CS reasoning) it also makes their soldiers think about death & how dangerous their job is. It's also aesthetic AF.

"Hi there, galactic neighbors! We're the Necromongers! Would you be interested in joining our neighborhood communal property sharing club?"

[Crimson Dynamo]

The CS uses the skull/skeleton because it's human & morbid. No D-Bee has a skeleton/skulls like a human (there are probably a few notable exceptions but thats the CS reasoning) it also makes their soldiers think about death & how dangerous their job is. It's also aesthetic AF.

No, the actual reason is because Kevin based them on the Nazis. Again, as the books make abundantly clear in numerous places. They're the bad guys. The skull/skeleton motif is just one small, tiny piece of the puzzle. But certain people think they're being ultra clever when they take one small piece, ignore everything else, and then try to proclaim victory because it is, in fact, just one small piece and doesn't prove anything on its own.

"Well, actually Nazis only wore black sometimes, and lots of people wear black. Even priests wear black. ERGO, NAZIS ARE GOOD." That's how silly that logic is.

[Curbludgeon]

I'll first say that it's noteworthy how people make sock puppet accounts to forward apologist arguments, while the reverse seems entirely absent over the course of years. I'm frankly surprised people here haven't yet name dropped arguably grey morality Nazis like Plagge, Rabe, Wolff, and Dollman in defense of a nuanced perspective that "there are no utopias in Rifts" or whatever the hell.

Palladium has a bit of a history in thinking opening a book with a nominal repudiation of material therein justifies later text which can be argued as being pandering to extremist ideology. Much of the Manhunters book shifts in and out of an in-universe perspective, where indoctrinated psychics, alongside other "heroes of humanity" are absolved via an early splash page telling people that the publishers don't believe in the occult. This largely comes across as an insufficient handwashing.

An earlier example of this tendency can be seen in the use of the GRT slur G****, as found in class names in Triax and Russia books. There is an argument to be made that, given Sinti/Romani/et al prejudice being less of a thing in North America than in Europe that the whole thief/scarf/caravan shtick was just hack work based on stereotype, and is roughly as offensive as assuming that a post apocalyptic Japan would revert to neo-Tokugawa takes on ninja and samurai. It's lazy writing, but contains some tropes people might otherwise expect in some form, some might claim. Rifter 80(pg 19) to an extent puts the lie to this, in that it takes time to specify that their essential reprinting of earlier material is explicitly based on g**** stereotypes. It is nothing less than a twisting of the knife, regardless of how it was intended, and helps to normalize harmful cultural representation among the player base.

So it is with writing which continues to suggest that the Coalition are the good guys. It doesn't come across as tongue in cheek, prefaced warnings notwithstanding. A comparison could be made to how Games Workshop dealt with pro-authoritarian voices. The Imperium of Man was clearly meant initially as a joke, in no small part about Thatcherian politics, but they profited on many Space Marine players seeing it in no way as a joke until finally releasing a statement in response to some creep going by Austrian Painter attending a tournament wearing a swastika. It came across as "too little, too late" there, and while I'd like to think a statement from PB staff wouldn't it's hard to say.

Pandering to edgelords was profitable for a period last millennium, but to do so now either paints a game company as wildly out of touch, or making a deliberate choice.

[Aermas]

The CS uses the skull/skeleton because it's human & morbid. No D-Bee has a skeleton/skulls like a human (there are probably a few notable exceptions but thats the CS reasoning) it also makes their soldiers think about death & how dangerous their job is. It's also aesthetic AF.

No, the actual reason is because Kevin based them on the Nazis. Again, as the books make abundantly clear in numerous places. They're the bad guys. The skull/skeleton motif is just one small, tiny piece of the puzzle. But certain people think they're being ultra clever when they take one small piece, ignore everything else, and then try to proclaim victory because it is, in fact, just one small piece and doesn't prove anything on its own.

"Well, actually Nazis only wore black sometimes, and lots of people wear black. Even priests wear black. ERGO, NAZIS ARE GOOD." That's how silly that logic is.

"Declare victory"? Are we fighting here? I'm not fighting you, my friend I promise.

You are making that argument completely backwards though. I am not saying that skulls make the CS good. I'm just saying why they use skulls. Also, the reason they use skulls is a Fictional reason separated from the Real World reason they wear skulls. It's like, a author making a character who uses a big sword because they like big swords but the fictional reason is because the big sword is a family heirloom that the character doesn't want to part with.

You guys need to understand that Fictional things are different from Real World things.

[Aermas]

snipped from brevity

So your own personal line in the sand is fine, I respect that & support & validate your feelings, but I gotta be honest, I have no clue which G-word you are censoring here. If your own self censorship doesn't help facilitate conversation I don't know how I can talk to you about it but I would like to.

A few things I do want to mention about the other stuff.

You say using cultural touchstones is lazy writing. To that I say what is wrong with lazy writing in a general sense. Not everything needs to be complex or subversive. I find it odd that you call out "lazy writing" yet want to paint the complex ethics of the CS with one giant "BAD" paintbrush.

The other thing is you seem to think using cultural touchstones are somehow maybe prejudiced in someway but as much as Japan has ninjas, you forget that England has King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table, Canada has a demon beaver, & Cowboys roam the New West.

Yes, Nazis are bad. No one here is defending Nazis. There is a difference between Real World & Fictional World things

[Killer Cyborg]

An earlier example of this tendency can be seen in the use of the GRT slur G****, as found in class names in Triax and Russia books. There is an argument to be made that, given Sinti/Romani/et al prejudice being less of a thing in North America than in Europe that the whole thief/scarf/caravan shtick was just hack work based on stereotype, and is roughly as offensive as assuming that a post apocalyptic Japan would revert to neo-Tokugawa takes on ninja and samurai. It's lazy writing, but contains some tropes people might otherwise expect in some form, some might claim. Rifter 80(pg 19) to an extent puts the lie to this, in that it takes time to specify that their essential reprinting of earlier material is explicitly based on g**** stereotypes. It is nothing less than a twisting of the knife, regardless of how it was intended, and helps to normalize harmful cultural representation among the player base.

WAY back when those books were coming out, the G-word wasn't seen as an offensive term in North America in general.
It was only then coming out that there was any other word at all to call the people in question, and while the term was laden with and applied to wild stereotypes, they weren't hate-filled stereotypes.
I remember being rather angry at the time at all the G-word worship in RPGs in that era, particularly with White Wolf, who had G-words on par power-wise with vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural powerhouses.
The G-word Knife Fighter, for example, I remember as being able to hold their own quite well in a fight with a vampire, when previously mortals essentially posed no more threat than chicken wing poses to a human.
And there wasn't any real explanation, other than a general ambience of "G-words are KEWLer than everybody else!!!"

The Rifts stuff seemed much the same vein to me at the time; racist nonsense filled with stereotypes, but less harmful than most racism running rampant in the world, because of the nigh hero-worship of the people in question.
Granted, it's been a long while since I've read either game's depictions.

So it is with writing which continues to suggest that the Coalition are the good guys.

Okay, I hear you.
Can I see some direct quotes from the book illustrating what specifically you're talking about?

[barna10]

From Heroes of Humanity: "Though they are loath to admit it, even the Coalition' s harshest critics have to accept that the CS has become the beacon of hope people can rally behind"

But my main problem isn't that one can comb through the books and find some arguments for or against a point.....

Marketing....who is going to comb through every detail of every book to get the full picture before making a judgment?

[Killer Cyborg]

Isn’t “Heroes of Humanity” a sort of flip-expectations-on-their-head sort of book?

[barna10]

Isn’t “Heroes of Humanity” a sort of flip-expectations-on-their-head sort of book?

Again, tell that to someone where that happens to be the first book they pick up

[Hotrod]

Responding to the topic of this thread:

Short answer: No.

Long answer: NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

IMO the Coalition is an evil force. They condone genocide, are bigoted and racist, and don't seem to have ethics.

Plus, the Nazi imagery is a HORRIBLE choice if they're meant to represent "good".

Yet many books, and players, seem to present them as the good guys, or at least in some sort of grey area.

In my games, the citizens are complex, but the military are all bad.

Responding to the OP:
The Coalition are not the "good guys." They're bigoted, xenocidal fascists who actively inflict and enforce self-destructive ignorance on their own people. The Rifts setting has an implicit thematic question for every power in it: how do you balance safety with liberty? The CS inverts this question by seeing liberty as a bad thing, going so far as to suppress literacy amongst its people. It's entirely reasonable to use the C.S. in general and the C.S. military in particular as an NPC villain faction and not think much about it.

That said, it can be an interesting and valuable experience to explore what life might be like for people living in such a society and serving in that kind of military. Going through the thought exercise of how you might act if you were a citizen or soldier under a fascist dictatorship that does great evil is something worth considering. It's also worth considering that while the C.S. is indeed bad, there are a plethora of worse fates for humanity under other powers in Rifts Earth than living as a Coalition citizen. Here are some ways you can set up an interesting adventure, campaign, or story from a perspective of the Coalition military as protagonists:

1. The True Believers.
It's perfectly viable to play the Coalition soldier from a brainwashed hard-core loyalist perspective in a compelling way. The key to this approach is emphasizing just how bad the other choices are from a C.S. citizen or soldier's perspective. Sure, life ain't great for us, but at least we don't have a local magic-using overlord sacrificing our children to power his infernal sorcery, and we aren't constantly getting used like cattle by vampires, and we aren't getting carted off to the Splugorth slave markets to be turned into bio-wizard experiments, et cetera.

Inspiration/Examples:
+Every Imperium of Man faction story I've ever seen or read in 40K.

2. The Unit.
The focus of this approach is the mission. Sure, the C.S. does some awful stuff, but we've got a job to do that matters, and we're going to focus on doing it. The key to this is to emphasize interpersonal challenges, camaraderie and friendship within the group. Enemies aren't really a presence in a personal sense; they're just problems to be solved.

Inspiration/Examples:
+Hounds of the Hunt, the finest Rifts fan fic I ever read.
+Das Boot, an awesome film about a U-boat crew in the Battle of the Atlantic.

3. The Conscientious Rebel
What happens when a good guy finds himself complicit with horrific acts of evil? What would you do if your organization, your boss, and your friends crossed a moral line that you couldn't? There are a lot of ways to make this work in a compelling way, but my favorite is to balance "what's the right thing to do" dilemmas with practical "How the heck do I do it" problems.

Inspiration/Examples:
+The Germans on the Righteous Among Nations list.
+John Rabe, a Nazi party official who sheltered and saved many people during the Rape of Nanking.
+Schindler's List, an amazing movie about a Nazi who sheltered and saved about a thousand jews from the Holocaust.
+Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who unilaterally and personally wrote letters of transit for thousands of jews in Lithuania, allowing them to escape the Holocaust.

4. The Redemption
How does a bad guy become a good guy? This one is pretty tricky to pull off organically in an RPG; most of the time, it's something that a player just decides to do on his/her own, and it's awkward. Some GMs will refuse point blank to allow a player to change a character's alignment. Others may require a gradual transition where the change is earned incrementally. My preferred method would be a change that coincides with some moment of deep personal crisis, but I've never seen that done in an RPG. That said, some of my favorite stories are stories of redemption.

Inspiration/Examples:
+Les Miserables. Jean Valjean could be a poster boy for this.
Neroon in Babylon 5 has an awesome moment of transition he describes in this scene. The redemption of G'Kar from a vindictive man to a state of spiritual enlightenment was also compelling, though there's no one scene that really captures it.


It's worth mentioning that it's quite possible to combine and transition between these approaches in an adventure or campaign. Done right, I think it's absolutely possible to portray and play C.S. characters as good guys in a relative or objective sense. Don't like it? That's cool, you can just treat them as faceless bad guy fascists with a skull fetish and blow them away. But the fact that this faction is as developed as it and the fact that the aforementioned types of storytelling approaches exist invites us all to think a little deeper the next time someone labels a large swath of people as evil, deplorable, or irredeemable.

[Hotrod]

fascists who actively inflict and enforce self-destructive ignorance on their own people

If it's so self-destructive why has it protected so many people?

What's self-destructive is teaching any random child to read so they can activate any ol' Scroll of Summon Lesser Being which blows in through their open window as a paper airplane.

Does that scenario happen often in your games?

[Killer Cyborg]

Isn’t “Heroes of Humanity” a sort of flip-expectations-on-their-head sort of book?

Again, tell that to someone where that happens to be the first book they pick up

I'm not going to explain an entire 30-year-long TV series to somebody who grabs a random new episode as their intro.
That's on THEM for doing things bass ackward.