So, What Exactly is Cannibalism?

So, what exactly is cannibalism?  Hoping we don’t wind up in a, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it” style of answer.

Sure, some of you are thinking we’re crazy for even asking the question.  I mean, cannibalism - eating people, right?  Is that what it is?  Is cannibalism eating your own?  Is it eating people?  Is it eating sentients?  What exactly is cannibalism?

I was tempted to go and look up the definition in some dictionary, but what’s the use of that?  Webster doesn’t have to worry about dwarves, elves, and the others.  We talked about this kind of stuff in Ballogfar because the Calentrocs tend to eat their prey.  Does that make them cannibals?  If an ogre eats a human, is that cannibalism?

Why does any of this matter?  It matters because we have modern humans pretending to be hired killers.  Far too often, whether you play with alignments or not, moral questions arise.  Is it OK to kill a person in cold blood?  You would have killed them in a fair fight, but is it OK to kill them while they sleep?  Is it OK to kill them from a sniper’s perch when they have no warning?  Is it OK to eat them when they are dead?

Maybe this is incredibly disgusting to you.  That’s probably good.  Probably shows you have some morals, ethics, or at least common sense.  But let’s change it around just a little bit:  What if it’s a dragon?  Going to be honest - In Fletnern, people eat dragons.  Some of those dragons are intelligent.  They speak, they cast spells, they plan.  They are not “dumb animals”, and yet they are eaten.

Maybe it’s fair; dragons eat humans.  But that is the question - what is allowed?  Trust me, the last thing you want at your gaming table is a bunch of players arguing over morals.  If one player or group of players is having a serious argument with another or another group, no matter how much effort you put into writing tonight’s game, it is not going to be remembered as being fun.

The best way to avoid these “ethical” problems is to establish what is and isn’t ethical.  If you as the GM can step in and say, “In the Velesan culture, snipers killing enemies from afar is considered perfectly ethical.”  or “In the Latvich culture, they kill in cold blood all the time, but only if they are combatants.  Killing civilians in cold blood is a whole different thing.”  Stuff like this allows you to circumvent these arguments.  You step in and stop it.  Yes, it is quite likely that one side or the other is going to tell you how wrong you are or they don’t feel that way, but the answer is:  The culture is established, and this is the way of the world.  You don’t have to agree with it, but 90%+ of the people around you will.

There is nothing worse than players telling you how you don’t understand your own world, but this is still a far better (and shorter) resolution than the players all arguing with each other.

But back to the original question:  What is cannibalism?  That is something you have to decide for yourself, but we will give you what we think the answer is for most races.  If you eat someone who is generally the same shape as you, you are committing cannibalism.  The closer you are to each other, the more likely it is cannibalism.  Humans, ogres, dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins - they are all the same.  If they eat each other = cannibalism.  If one of these races were to eat a centaur or minotaur - probably still cannibalism.  But if one of these humanoid races were to eat an intelligent dragon, bull, or whale, that probably would not be cannibalism.  Doesn’t matter if this intelligent animal speaks or thinks or loves its family.  With all the races in the world, few people would think of an “animal” as the same as them.

Unless, they’re a vegetarian.  Well, those cultures obviously have an issue eating any form of meat.  It won’t matter to them whether or not the animal is intelligent.  But this is high fantasy (or possibly highest fantasy).  What happens if you have an intelligent plant?  Are there any treants or ents who have apples or maybe hickory nuts?  Would there be an issue here?  Well, assumedly there would be a problem for the ents.  They might see it as humanoids eating their babies.  But as for the humanoids?  Seems a huge stretch to assume that eating a treant’s apples or other seeds is cannibalism, and most wouldn’t see it that way.

Maybe this is simplistic, but we don’t really see it that way.  After all, would eating a mermaid’s tail just seem like fish?  (Don’t read anything dirty in there!!)  But honestly, trying to establish how the various cultures felt about things like genocide, torture, executions, and similar issues was one of the first things we used to start setting up the differences between the cultures of Fletnern.  This is one of those times when knowing is half the battle.

This post was written as part of the recently released Carnage Amongst the Depraved aka All About Big Stupid Monsters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with those monsters that are typically huge, super strong, but also not so bright, and how this will affect their actions and tactics, as well as other game mastering tricks, but within a fully defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.

 

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 59 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.