Has your party breached the Geneva convention?

What are the actual Geneva convention laws?

I wanted to find them for a game I'd like to run but I couldn't find any itemized lists or a summary.

Quite sure the Emprah abolished whatever vestigial laws of war still existed when he torched Switzerland and outlawed the big three religions that made service of the Red Cross/Cressent/Jewel/Whathaveyou possible illegal.

Here's a more potable listing.

"Crimes against humanity are certain acts that are deliberately committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population or an identifiable part of a population."
>Murder
>massacres
>dehumanization
>extermination
>human experimentation
>extrajudicial punishments
>death squads
>forced disappearances
>military use of children
>kidnappings
>unjust imprisonment
>slavery
>cannibalism
>torture
>rape
>political or racial repression that may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.

"War Crimes are an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility."
>Intentionally killing civilians or prisoners
>torture
>destroying civilian property
>taking hostages
>perfidy
>rape
>using child soldiers
>pillaging
>declaring that no quarter will be given
>using weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.

I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a character of mine who hasn't done one of these. Even the good guys usually pull one of those war crimes against the evil empire

So is purging with extreme prejudice using flamethrowers a war crime?

Is cannibalism or necrophilia against the Geneva Convention?

>declaring that no quarter will be given

As long as its not against civilians and (somehow) not causing superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering

crimes against humanity

kek

What kind of question is this? I haven't presided over a party that hasn't....

You can't break a man the way you break a dog...or a horse. The harder you beat a man, the taller he stands. To break a man's will, to break his spirit, you have to break his mind. Men have this idea that we can fight with dignity, that it's the proper way to kill someone; it's absurd, it's inaesthetic. We needed to endure the bloody horror of murder. You must destroy that idea. Show them what a messy, terrible thing it is to kill a man... and then show them that you relish in it. Shoot the wounded, then execute the wounded; burn them. Take them in close combat, destroy their preconceptions of what a man is, and you become their personal monster. When they fear you... you become stronger, you become better. But let's never forget, it's a display, it's a posture, like a lion's roar or a gorilla thumping at his chest. If you lose yourself with display, if you succumb to the horror... then you become the monster. You become reduced. Not more than a man, but less; and it can be fatal.

We conquered a city and the "commander" of the party had to determine what to be done with the survivors. He had everyone but women and children slaughtered. Any survivors were split between the two genders and made slaves. I think he was trying to be "good" by sparing the women and children, but we all made sure to tell him how fucked up it was and there was long-term repercussions.
The player is a nice kid, but when he's put on the spot he tends to make... Poor decisions.

There is no real point to the Geneva convention nowadays because most enemy combatants nowadays are poor dirt farmers in Africa and the Middle East who just don't give a fuck, and will take advantage of this fact by suicide bombing the shit out of you when you try to apply it.

Yea, take advice on morals from an arms dealer
you have great taste in vidia user

What kind of snake eats someone alive?

They're supposed to hug their victims to death first.

A lot of these rely on the setting having such a thing as "civilians".

Worst part about the whole thing was that the lamia's player was only given 10 RP to make said lamia, so he didn't have a bite attack. DM told him that he "Can't easily eat someone without a bite attack". So she ended up having to use her trusty knife to just scoop chunks off the mayor and eat them that way.

Remember however, it is only cannibalism if what you're eating is the same race as you. Elf burger? Go for it; it's not biologically human! Hungry but our of supplies? Try a fairy slugger: you earned it!

man i had no idea it was so restrictive.
lets see, as donk i've committed
>Murder, daily
>massacres, mostly against orzov assholes
>extermination, i wiped alien style xenomorphs out on the plane of ravnica.
>death squads, what else do you call an adventuring party with a gnoll leading it?
>kidnappings, trail rations.
>unjust imprisonment, see above.
>slavery, surprisingly few times for a gnoll but it does happen.
>cannibalism, meat is meat to a gnoll.
>torture, pretty sure boiling someone alive for dinner counts.
>rape, i may have paid those whores but what followed couldn't be called anything but.

"War Crimes are an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility."
>Intentionally killing civilians or prisoners, where do you think gnoll rations come from?
>destroying civilian property, three churches burned to the ground, one capital city raized to the ground, numerous shops smashed, a small hammlet magic nuked by a wizard we were working for, no less than 12 villages of non-coms slaughtered by a hoard of goblins i was leadind and i beat a wizard to death with his own car.
>taking hostages, we transported a political hostage once but despite my threats i never once harmed him or allowed him to be harmed.
>pillaging, how else do you get loot?
>declaring that no quarter will be given, you mean my battle cry?
>using weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, does drinking all of someones blood while their still kicking count? cause that is literally a daily occurrence.

if i do the math...
15... carry the 2...
yup, i'm a fucking monster.

>Could they reasonably be charged with crimes against Humanity?

Yes, obviously. I play with a bunch of Americans.

It's Rogue Trader, so yes.

Watch out lads we've got a chaotic evil here.

I'm running Exalted for Infernals.

Every single party member is a walking crime against humanity.

naa, no need to worry. just keep me fed and your everything away from my mouth and you'll be fine. unless your a snooty elf. in which case you are as good ass defiled and eaten already.

>pillaging

Literally every D&D party, and a few WoD and Shadowrun groups as well.

As for my current campaign, we're currently noodling about the Astral Plane looking for the corpse of a god to desecrate so that our freaky TARDIS wagon will stop pulling all the solid objects in the void into a big katamari. So there are probably some Crimes Against Githyanki in the offing.

Executed every prisoner since they started.

Let's see, Rogue Trader, so...
>Kidnapping, unjust imprisonment, forced disappearance, and slavery: In the form of press-ganging menial laborers, done literally every time they stop over in civilized space.
>Extermination: Of xenos, yes.
>Death Squads: More like "Summary beating" squads, but Armsmen are authorized to deal out summary death by shotgun or voidlock if warranted.
War Crimes:
>Pillaging: See Rogue Trader
>Destroying civilian property: Define 'civilian'
>Declaring that no quarter will be given: Honestly, offering quarter is far and away the exception rather than the rule
>Weapons that cause unnecessary suffering: Actually fairly innocent, exploding people with bolt rounds is a very quick pain-free way to die. And you save on the funeral costs, since you don't need to be buried, they just mop the walls clean.

Despite our "THE CURRENT YEAR" attitude, I think the Geneva Convention should hold a chivalry-esque clause to it. Which basically means that rather than a binding convention, it becomes a gentleman's agreement: don't do this to us, we don't do this to you. We more or less saw this happen during WW1: the Germans shat on the Geneva Convention by using gas attacks (biological warfare), so the French did the same.

It's stupid to expect one party in a war to disadvantage itself and punish it for breaching the rules when the other can breach the rules with impunity. It should also make anyone quite wary of breaching the Geneva Convention because the moment you use a single gas attacks, all of your soldiers become a valid target for torture and all kinds of non-nuclear brutal attacks, your citizens become valid targets and anything you try to bring to the UN will be responded to with "you shouldn't have been a dick".

user, who taught you history? The Geneva Conventions had chemical warfare added after WWI. Short answer for how it works though is that the UN has no real means of enforcing it so it's basically a gentleman's agreement anyways. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

>The Geneva Conventions had chemical warfare added after WWI.
My bad, I assumed it was in there from the start.

>Short answer for how it works though is that the UN has no real means of enforcing it so it's basically a gentleman's agreement anyways.
That's de facto true, but whenever a first world nation violates the Geneva Convention against a group like the Islamic State, they will still get a "stern disapproval" from the UN rather than simple acceptance based on the fact that IS violates it all the time. That's still pretty harsh diplomacy-wise, as it means a negative judgement in the eyes of the other nations in the world. For all that means, at least.

My newest character has not broken the Geneva convention yet.

Then again, he is only 1 session in and -for now- a peace-loving druid.
Once he will start his plans to take back the lands of the elves, that's when things will really pick up: lodsa humans will die, for sure.

Yea they torture on the regular, even though all they ever need is Charm Person (which would be against the fantasy version of the Geneva Convention, I'm sure).

We're still working on the crimes against humanity. And when I say work I mean it, we're nothing if not committed.

>ISIS did it first, so we should do it harder.
Thank goodness the UN doesn't choose to conduct itself with the mentality of petulant children.

In the same way that Prohibition in the United States enhanced the proliferation of alcohol and made millionaires of murderers and thugs, the Geneva Conventions have enhanced the proliferation of arms, WMDs, and has made rulers of petty criminals who've cornered the trade.

The Geneva Conventions were a mistake.

And in five years everyone will be doing everything to everyone else. Because fuck being gentlemen.

Fairies are for love not for eating!

Yes, because adult men actively disadvantage themselves against an enemy that's going all-out, right? What next, if you kill your enemy they win?

>Everyone
Not really, no. Most people don't really enjoy the harsher results war can bring, so will actively try to limit its impact. In civilized regimes at least, and especially those reliant on popular sovereignity.

>Thank goodness the UN doesn't choose to conduct itself with the mentality of petulant children.

But it does. The UN is literally a whining chamber for the worst countries on the face of the planet.

This is an all-barbarian party in a Conan style setting
>slaughtered not one, but two indigenous tribes of pigmies in retaliation for ambushing us; decided that all pygmies should be treated the same because they are "nasty little buggers"
>regularly take slaves
>fed an alchemist his entire stock of potions because he pissed us off
>hung a dozen pirates to the mast of their ship
>technically one of the party members is barely pubescent
>civilians are just cowards who don't fight back
>pillaging : yes please
>unnecessary suffering : yes
>the bullying of anyone we encounter can be considered "systematic"

Once in a while it's fun to play as literal murderhobos in a game that's made for it

>What next, if you kill your enemy they win?

As written in the Lo Accords

There are a lot of followers of Wimp Lo these days, aren't there?

>Resorting to yet more childish arguments
I'm just glad you will never hold a position of true power.

Most of the things in the Conventions are about not being a dick to people who aren't fighting - it's not really a disadvantage to follow them.

Gas isn't an easy weapon to use and there's long-term effects - areas of France from WWI that are still too poisonous to use (there's also a much bigger area around that that's just too full of unexploded shells to use)
Cluster bombs cause a similar unexploded ordnance problem

The entire reason they encompass such a wide range of things is to discourage any of them - it's the whole point.
And to make sure someone who's an asshole gets punished post-war

>"It is not a good idea to actively limit ourselves against an enemy that's not holding any punches"
>Childish
Whatever you say, friend.

Honestly the rules of rule have been pretty well respected by both sides of the major conflict in the game I'm running.

But then, the war is (For the moment) mostly border skirmishers and claiming territory that neither side has cities in. There has been causalities on both sides (It IS still a war) but both sides have been doing their best to demonstrate they don't want it to go to annihilation and provide medical care to the other side.

The major instance of war crimes is mostly on the Hyperion side. K1 gas is very much a chemical weapon...but it's also non-lethal. It drains all magic from the area it covers and Hyperion's primary foe is very magically active. It's not pleasant but it won't kill anyone save in the case of rare allergic reactions. The Chemical Weapons Conventions however would rule that illegal due to 'temporary incapacitation' being one of the things that classes something as a chemical weapon.

The players just managed to stop someone who was trying to push it into total war, which is always nice.

Yeah, the countries with veto votes.

The thing is...how many of the Geneva conventions actually limit a country from doing things that are actually effective?

>Land Mines are utter shit against terrorists.
>Gas Weapons are utter shit against terrorists for the same reason (Mixed in with civilians of a country you are not at war with)
>Attacking civilians just gets terrorists more support within the country they are in.
>Torture is notoriously unreliable as a method of information gathering.

Does raising the dead count?

Likely not. Unless you are preventing neutral clerics from raising both sides of a fight.

Then no, everything is all by the books.

I'm pretty sure that across the spectrum, the only things one or more of my characters haven't committed at one point or another in-game would be cannibalism, military use of children, dehumanisation, child soldiers, and rape.

I agree with this, it should be more of a 'rules of escalation' than anything. There's nothing you can't do, but should you? Type deal. The concept of warcrimes doesn't make any sense to me.

The issue there is that it means that 'I have access to the bigger, meaner warcrimier toys' becomes a wantable goal. As you can escalate and someone who didn't invest in land mines and toxic gas can't.

Anyway, the main point of warcrimes is to make it so that there is still a country left at the end, not just dead land. It's no use if everyone who could work the land and live in the cities is dead.

>star wars
besides one of our group members being an assassin and taking out a couple of his targets, we're pretty clean
oh wait, there was that one time we released space zombies onto a planet, but that was entirely an accident

>mekton
>we're part of a military force that's in rapid decline due to recently having its shit slapped hard
>mostly because i may have accidentally started a full-blown war by melting one of the enemy's commanders during what was supposed to be a scouting mission
>oops
anyway
>one of our player's meks hit mach 1 flying just over the tops of a LOT of civilian property, and smashed up a whole bunch of buildings landing at that speed during a hasty mission to rescue our de-facto team leader
>one of the characters is sixteen years old
>we've had to do a lot of looting to stay equipped on the personal level, since our military is in shambles and we can't get supplies easily
>one of the group members spent a while outside of his mek, popping out of sewers to take pot-shots at enemy meks with his new anti-mek laser rifle
>he eventually decided that since the meks were avoiding the areas he was hunting, that he'd draw them in by occasionally shooting civilian targets
>we may end up more or less mortaring a large part of the city to thin out the enemy's numbers as much as possible
we are basically asshole guerillas in our mekton campaign

the idea is that either side isn't left a completely fucked wasteland, that there's still a civilian population at the end of it, and that you don't go out of your way to do absurdly cruel shit just because you're at war.

No, because that would require us to participate in armed conflicts. Raiding a dungeon doesn't fall into that category, because we don't hold incompatibilities regarding government or territories. So we're only bound by our local laws, which happen to be A OK with pillaging.

Think of it as a measure to protect your soldiers rather than to protect the enemy. War crimes are fucked up shit, and doing fucked up shit will fuck someone up. If it's an absolute rule, officers will never have the authority to order a soldier to commit war crimes, nor will they ever have to worry about giving that order.

Actually, the convention specifically mentioned the use of poison weapons in war. The Germans decided to interpreted this as poison bullets and not deadly chemicals in general. There was a lot of shit flinging about it, then everyone else jumped on the gas attack train. They were banned, Germany just pulled a creative interpretation of the wording and stopped giving a shit.

Weapons that are "excessively injurious or whose effects are indiscriminate" are also against Geneva convention: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons
I'd say quite many spells and especially melee methods used in RPGs breach said convention.

Read what you're citing. It's specifically against non-detectable fragments, land mines and booby traps, incendiary weapons which use chemical reactions (so not magic fire), and blinding laser weapons, as well as requiring explosives to be cleaned up afterwards.

So the real question becomes, what in your setting would be added to the list of warcrimes/inhumane tactics? Would fireballs be outlawed, would your rogue no longer be allowed to use poison, would your telepath not be allowed to mind control your opponents, would colony drops be added to the list of WMDs, etc.

>The issue there is that it means that 'I have access to the bigger, meaner warcrimier toys' becomes a wantable goal.
We already have that with MAD though. We've already reached the highest point of escalation with weapons that can eradicate entire countries in mere hours.

"party" is a pretty loose term here because because our group of players are usually split between several factions/locations/ideologies but my evil characters definitely have, my neutral/good characters only do so on occasion

>creative interpretation of the wording and stopped giving a shit
The first time the Krauts used gas they just opened some jars while the wind was at their back, who knew the chlorine gas would drift over the enemy trench?

>if you kill your enemy they win

This. After we pile their corpses, the chaplain ceremonially concedes our enemies the moral victory. Then, we set the bonfires and return to camp to tend our gear - and start drinking pretty heavily. Someone inevitably starts it, and soon the whole camp will be chanting The Lament of the Second to Last Place Fighters.

Good times.

Is the Hague Convention of 1899 the biggest meme ever to exist?
>don't use these bullets in warfare they are too good at killing

No, since we're not bound by it.

look if that werewolf alpha didn't want his head ground to putty underneath a 4x4's rear wheel maybe he shouldn't have let the maw get a foothold in the region.

Which party?
Recently finished campaign: We set off a nail bomb on a space ship, attacked and burned a lab to capture/kill a scientist, basically declared a war on hobos at one point, and executed a sleeping man (admittedly one that was as fucked up as we were). Pretty sure we've violated it, or at least come really close.

Current SR campaign: Not yet. Just typical criminal-for-hire stuff: knocking out guards, stealing shit, killing gangers, sabotage, etc...

Current AToW game: No, but that's not going to stop the Blakists from claiming our resistance movement is breaching future-Geneva.

Yeah man.. we fucked up big time. Geneva is gonna git us.

>So she ended up having to use her trusty knife to just scoop chunks off the mayor and eat them that way.
Come on man, it was hot as fuck until you had to ruin it like that.

This is my magical realm

We tortured a goon,before shooting him,the crooked doc that sold him out and leaving them to burn with corpses of other people we had to get rid of.

Here's your (you).

I was gonna say proudly that the character I'm currently playing did none of these, but then I saw "using child soldiers" and I remembered he is currently participating in turning a 12-year-old girl into an adventurer

The problem with the conventions is that the UN is too lazy to enforce them on ANYBODY, making them toothless punchlines to an unfunny joke. For a law to be anything more than a friendly suggestion, you need enforcers.

Rogues. Are. CRIMINALS! They didn't care about chivalry when it first came out, and they don't care about the laws of war now. Really, if a rogue is caught in a war-type situation, and they're not an unlawful combatant, something has gone horribly wrong.

>if you kill your enemy they win?
I've said this before but as fun as it is to meme, in a world of mass media and counter-terrorism he has something of a point.

Comparatively speaking, not much.
Perfidy, but that's social combat for you.

It was a different time. The attendees thought they could roll back the massive technological leaps and make the world advance more like it had in their grandfather's time. It's kind of ironic that by limiting how much could be done with new weapons systems they made it so that all cards were on the table when the great war broke out.

>but if you kill terrorists, more will appear!
Then just kill those ones too until that desert is entirely depopulated.

>superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering
It's flamethrowers, not poison, blinding laser, glass shrapnel, or something equally STUPIDLY BAD at killing people, militarized torture devices.
Flamethrowers will kill you dead.

The wizard went to capture the enemy general's wife, who ended up knocking him out and questioned him before letting him go (without his magical focus).
So then he got his magic focus back and summoned a Wall of Fire around her, killing her.
When the enemy general finally got his hands on the wizard, he proceeded to torture the dude and imprisoned the wizard's soul within an artifact now known as the Bracer of Flame.

Powerful nations ignore the Geneva convention and smaller nations that are threatened with destruction must ignore them. What a load of tripe.

Its just meant as something to legitimize the execution of the leadership of small nations that get invaded.

#notallrogues

>Murder
Yep.
>massacres
Yep.
>dehumanization
Yep.
>extermination
Yep.
>human experimentation
Yep.
>extrajudicial punishments
Yep.
>death squads
Yep.
>forced disappearances
Yep.
>military use of children
Yep.
>kidnappings
Yep.
>unjust imprisonment
Yep.
>slavery
Yep.
>cannibalism
Yep.
>torture
Yep.
>rape
Nope.
>political or racial repression that may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.
Yep.

"War Crimes are an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility."

>Intentionally killing civilians or prisoners
Yep.
>torture
Yep.
>destroying civilian property
Yep.
>taking hostages
Yep.
>perfidy
Yep.
>rape
No.
>using child soldiers
Yep.
>pillaging
Yep.
>declaring that no quarter will be given
Yep.
>using weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.
Yep.

Well, in about the zombie apocalypse, we did the following. Keep in mind we only did most of these after other groups did it to us first, except the last one.

>torture
>hostages
>killing non combatants.
>killing medics
>killing women and children
>biological war fair
>using a dirty nuclear bomb

Whenever I see someone actually and legitimately use "THE CURRENT YEAR" I get unreasonably irritated for a few seconds.

It's like the entire course of human evolution and society gets thrown in the garbage because the absolute worst sub-branches of the generation that inherited the most shit and borderline collapsing social orders think they have the right to breathe my air.

Look, any plan that doesn't result in domestic terrorism is a bad plan.

Yes, but it got a little disturbing.

It wasn't that we had to kill children. It was war, some dirty things had to be done. It was that I got an erection over it.

No jury will find us guilty of breaching them. You see, party face has expert knowledge of law backed by peak human intellect and supernatural charms that can essentially mindbreak common people.

>PC Shopping list.

For my past parties, yes to all because there is always an edge lord "I'm chaotic evil I'll kill who I want."

For my personal characters
Civilians, no [If you consider criminals civilians, then yes]
Prisoners, Not killed under my supervision but never really tried to stop a prisoner if we already had what we wanted.
Medical, Nah they are more useful alive
Weapons, I've used super weapons before so probably had some collateral damage there