Can terrorists be done well as villains? Or are they too one dimensional?

This is a /pol/ bait, right?

Unironically watch the first half of Iron Man 3, it's a very good example.
A terrorist can hardly be a good villain, but a terrorist organization is not only a good and frighting villain when well done, but it can also have one leader that condenses everything about their ideology, mentality and motives that can work as a more tangible counter-point to the hero(es) and be the main goal.

They make bad villains, but good heroes.

Step one: stop being american.

Unlikely. Last time I checked /pol/ thought Bin Laden was a jewish meme and the Mossad did the 9/11

>different factions around Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

The 'factions' are entirely based on who's version of the Quran is true, it's Sunni vs Shiite vs Wahabi vs Salafi.

>Are terrorists one dimensional
Terrorists are people. Delve into why they do what they do and you can have a fully fleshed out villain that has reasons for why they do the terrible things they do.

Yeah, it's a difference of denomination.
Which is still enough of a reason for the fourth Crusade to go after Constantinople.

>calling freedom fighters "terrorist"
wake the fuck up, fascist.

...

the different factions also have different values, and its not always purely based on their sect - often its based on their geography or goals.
The Northern alliance for example were all different kinds of religion - Their other name is the "United Islamic Front for Salvation of Afghanistan" and their goals were to take down the Taliban, hence why Bin Laden had their leader assassinated.

Aren't we all terrorists deep down inside?

>United Islamic Front for Salvation of Afghanistan

Splitters!

The United Afghani Front for Islamic Salvation is the one true path!

Bin laden was on the US' side during the Soviet-Afghan War... Then ~20 years later he's public enemy no. 1.

Bin Laden is one of the most multi-faceted characters out there...

Nah there is a difference that is not a matter of perspective. Whetever one is a terrorist or not depends on who they target.

One intentionally targets citizens to get an beneficial response from the government while the other targets the government and its tools of oppression.

>The United Afghani Front for Islamic Salvation

Splitters!

The Popular People's front of Islamic Salvation is the future.

youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4

Robin Hood went after everybody; but he blew a ton of money throwing a party for the king, so he's a Freedom Fighter

>The Northern alliance for example were all different kinds of religion
>Their other name is the "United Islamic Front for Salvation of Afghanistan"

Again, no there was not different religions. Any religion other than their particular brand of Islam was ruthlessly stamped out. Others competing brands of Islam are funded by Nations in the surrounding area that shares their belief.

>One intentionally targets citizens to get an beneficial response from the government while the other targets the government and its tools of oppression.
That's very beautiful in paper, but in reality you're not going anywhere without slaughtering civilians

>The Popular People's front of Islamic Salvation

Splitters!

Only the Islamic Salvation Front can save Afghanistan!

This is literally the problem of the Middle-East, only instead of words they use surplus AKs and explosive vests.

Which is why I noted "intentionally".

One specifically uses the slaughter of civilians to achieve their objectives while the other doesn't pursue it, rather the slaughter of civilians is a consequence of other policies.

it worked for getting Japan to surrender

Freedom fighters can be terrorists, because freedom fighter doesn mean anything

Yeah there was a lot of state supported terrorism during world war 2 on all sides.

LIES....DECEPTIONS

That'll be the US in twenty years.

Japan, like many in the Middle East, thought that by placing armories, militants, combat positions and war infrastructure and logistics inside civilian homes and residential areas that they would be safe from retaliation.

>terrorists

The American concept of a "terrorist" is heavily skewed this point as a vocation or even an ethnicity.

Terrorism is a tactic, and to be a terrorist implies there is a political goal. The larger revolutionary outfits that had gone off the deep end with terrorism as an MO, like Al Queda and the IRA, have a larger political effort they are striving for.

Using the IRA as are example, once they were legitimized politically the use of terrorism fell out of vogue. There are your inevitable splinter groups, like sin fein (sp?) that break off because they can't cope or don't agree with the compromise.
>I may have it backwards, the IRA may have been the more violent holdout while sin fein was the political front, either way I hope you get the point.

Take the villain from the latest Spiderman movie. He sort of culminated as are terrorist actor but his motivations leading up to those events were clear and understandable, making him a pretty cool villain.

>Any religion other than their particular brand of Islam was ruthlessly stamped out

The Northern Alliance wasn't one brand of Islam;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Alliance

Notice how the leaders are Sunni and Shia - the two most common sects. They likely had all branches of Islam in there. Its an Alliance of many peoples, generally allied against the Taliban.

The Afghan civil war was less about religion than about ethnicity - the Northern Alliance being largely Tajik (who are a wide variety of Islam), while the Taliban being largely Pashtun (who are largely Sunni)

Another example, Che Guevara wrote briefly about when he thought terrorism was appropriate; for him it was limited in scope and with a very specific goal in mind. Intimidating a potentially powerful moderate competitor, or using violence to inflame a political grievance beyond diplomacy for a while.

Che Guevara is not commonly thought of as "a terrorist," but as some here have already mentioned that label depends as much on perspective as it does legal definitions.

This. I actually like that Rogue One finally showed the darker side of heroic the Rebellion.

>Any religion other than their particular brand of Islam was ruthlessly stamped out

>Northern Alliance leader is Sunni
>Ruthlessly trying to stamp out Taliban, who are mostly Sunni

ok...

I'm running two opposed terrorist movements in my Post-Apocalypse d20 Modern game I'm currently planning. The first is a a mutant (not as in X-men, more like WHFB Mutants) religious cult following an insane psychic prophet who proclaims to be the prophet of "Evolution" a God who will come and change the life of the planet to cope with the changes brought about by the biological and nuclear war which turned everything to the wasteland it is now. They're essentially a convert or die for mutants, who will take normal humans captives and try to force mutation on them by exposing them to large amounts of radiation. Haven't got a name for them yet if any fa/tg/uys have a suggestion.

The second (also un-named) is a group of human purists who lynch and burn mutants and run genetic tests on humans to test for genetic deviancy. Essentially a KKK/Spanish Inquisition that terrorizes populations that refuse to let them in.

Essentially the setting is south-eastern Texas and Lousiana, with Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, Shreveport and New Orleans being independent city states with the areas outside of them basically being a lawless wasteland in the vain of Mad-Max (just not all of it a dry desert. I'm going to try and run the campaign as a sandbox, with different factions and antagonists, and just sort of wing it as to the choices the players make. Hopefully it'll work and not go to shit considering the work I've put into it, but I have fun world building anyways so it's not a complete waste.

What'ssss wrong with being one-dimensssional?!

Haha, Indeed.

>giant evil empire
>supports aparthied regimes
>supports blockades killing hundreds of thousands of children
>supports bombing medicine factories that millions of poor relied on
>literal Mary Sue appears
>giant imposing man
>from a wealthy powerful family
>leaves his family due to their degeneracy and corruption, almost as bad as the empire itself
>highly educated engineer, brilliant
>last hope for his peoples' freedom against tyranny
>decides he's had enough of the empire's bullshit and therefore attacks them head-on at their military and financial centers
>somehow Mary Sue is the bad guy
bin Laden was a fucking hero.

You forgot the part where the Empire directly funded his resistance against an invading force and then years later he went full nigger and bit the hand that fed him

>degeneracy
>hurr durr killing innocent people is heroic

back to your containment board

>hero
I didn't realize heroes told their followers to detonate bombs in market centers full of innocents.

Doubt it. Protestants and evangelicals don't have the balls to martyr themselves.

Doesn't change much, the Empire was still the one meddling in other nations and ultimately perpetuating violence to begin with. It's like accusing Paul Denton of biting the hand that fed him. It arguably takes an even better and more courageous man to be bank-rolled by evil and then turn around and do what you know is right. Bin Laden wasn't just some nobody kid whose parents were killed in a bombing, he had it made to be a prince and live lavishly for the rest of his life as his literal dozens of siblings/half-siblings did, but he rejected it all for a greater purpose.
>hurr durr morality is relative and tribal societies fueled by pederasty are perfectly normal and should never be destroyed
The Taliban did more good for the Middle-East than the alternative.

I meant that from a purely political standpoint, the west has been godless for over 200 years.

Tell that to the WW2 "heroes" that nuked and firebombed the shit out of everyone in the name of fighting "the bad guys".

The US kills lots of innocent people too with their drone bombings. The Iraq War also killed lots of innocent people.

B-but collateral damage is only a bad thing when TERRORISTS do it!

By your definition freedom fighters don't exist

>US and other western powers meddle in Middle Eastern politics
>bin Laden wants them out
>I know! I'll fly planes into major landmarks full of people so that they'll spend the next decade and a half in my country bombing the ever loving shit out of it! I'll also kill my fellow countrymen because REASONS
Wow, so wise and heroic. We should all aspire to be like him.

His plan was to lure the US into a never ending 'conflict in the middle east.' He succeeded.

He was trying to raise awareness of the region because the media never reported on all the horrible shit the US were up to there.
He succeeded in raising awareness of the region, but didn't give the media any reason to change their tune.

Except the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are for all intents and purposes dead and ISIS is on the way out.

But the US is trillions of dollars in debt and the middle east is more unstable than ever. US influence in the region is at a all time low.

Why are some of you guys acting like Bin Laden was an afghan fighting "for his people"? He was a foreigner in Afghanistan.

>everyone is a nationalist

>trillions of dollars in debt
U.S. savings bonds are backed by the mint.
That's like the one* way the mint is actually allowed to distribute money.
*they're also allowed to print money to loan to banks, but that gets returned with interest

>they'll spend the next decade and a half in my country bombing the ever loving shit out of it!
But US didn't bomb Saudi Arabia - you know, ones that was actually behind it. US even went and stomped bunch of its (and Israels) enemies instead. Worked pretty great for them i would say, Mohammad bin Salman should repeat the experience once he is a king.

>Taliban is dead
lol, look at the afghan control map: afghanistan.liveuamap.com/
>Al-Qaeda is dead
>What's nusra/HTS herp derp
It got so dead it's almost took Syrian capital and a bunch of provincial centers in 2014

>and the middle east is more unstable than ever.
Also that's the whole point. Keeps oil cheap.

So its the first two fallout games?

Just remember what terrorism actually is: not just “bad guyness”, but random violence meant to draw attention to a political cause. OBL wanted the US to pull its troops out of Saudi Arabia. Make your terrorist want something interesting.

all you need to do for a terrorist movement, is take an arguably justifiable (from one point of view) rebellion or civil movement, then put it in an ideological purity spiral, until you get the most fucked up version of that movement.

Ummm, didn't think of it that way, but similar yeah. Was thinking more a free roaming Mad Max style thing, with the Bayous being Mad-Max with powerboats. Trade between the big city states being whats preyed upon by the Raider style groups with the city states trying to stop them whilst competing with each other. Throw into that some deep south and Texan cultural tropes in a Post-Apocalyptic setting I thought I'd have an original sort of setting. I thought the two different terrorist groups would make things interesting as well. I guess it turns out a bit like the first two fallouts now I think about it, that wasn't intentional as I've not played either.

>Can terrorists be done well as villains? Or are they too one dimensional?

Nobody wants to fuck a goat-fucker in the ass cause they stink.

The "4th Crusade" went against Constantinople thanks to Venetian politics.

Venice should have been torched down for being the Muslim-collaborators that they are.

They even diverted a crusade against their fellow Catholics.

He was fighting for the people of Islam.

I mean, do you think actual terrorists who do actual terrorism are one dimensional? Why do you think people commit acts of terror, just for kicks?

Pretty sure oil is cheap right now because Saudi Arabia is trying to hurt Iran and Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia being the most stable middle eastern countries.

Scarlet Crusade was done well I feel.

I fucking love that the scumfuck degenerates who do this absolutely count on the moral superiority of the enemies they provoke and fucking hate that we immediately fall short of it.

Never trust a mercantile nation. They have no honor.

Got too flanderized, imo.

Define Flanderized, neighborino.

You’re quite plainly underage, since your only conception of “terrorism” comes from jewish media post 9/11. Fuck the hell off.

>objective truth does not exist
>whines about “containment boards”
Fucking lol

Well there comes a point in a movement where a movement losses its intended propose and just do things just to do them or to simply perpetuate their position.

Everyone is a terrorist. No one is free of sin. And yet, in the end, it won't matter.

Because everyone is already dead.

This is from my recollection:
Started off as the remnants of the Alliance that got together post-plague with a fanatical hatred of undead, reasonable considering the scourge threat and Forsaken betrayal. There was a shred of moral complexity in their fanaticism and we could pretty safely argue that at least some of their paranoia was sensible due to infiltrators. Using the light as a torture device or attack made sense given that paladins could burn undead in WC3 with holy light.

But as the expansions wore on and they couldn't have any shades of grey in the games due to Thrall being perfect in every way and Kael completely losing it, blizzard ditched the idea that people could do bad things for good reasons or vice versa and said:
>actually they were always totally evil
>here's a faction that's just like them but with no flaws and also they accept everybody
>now they're undead because they fought undead, rly maeks u thinck

Fuck I was pissed when Cataclysm came out and I saw that. I made a new Forsaken character just to see what had become of Lordaeron, and I was so goddamn disappointed. Never forget that they had liaisons to the Argent Dawn in Vanilla and were even willing to offer allegiance of some kind to the player character for braving Naxxramas.

>"Prove that you are willing to risk life and limb to stop this madness and the combined might of the Dawn and the Crusade will be at your beck and call."

One thing I would like to add to the terrorist groups is what kind of enemies you face. When we faced Al Qaida, we learned that the ones doing the attacks are the literate terrorists and mr mudhut terrorists are the useless rabble sent to die in ineffectual stone throwing type attacks against a tank. The attack is so ineffectual that tanks ignore their attacks as if they are nothing more than a bunch of worthless rabble who's only purpose is to make sure they get their paychecks in hostile territory and not twiddling their thumb back home.

So an idea of a villain be the leader of a bunch of stone throwing terrorists. Give you the impression that they are fighting like a hopeless resistance with the durability of rats and the persistence of one.

Then when you thought you crush the terrorists and come home is when the terrorists do a bombing that hits something close to you. Make you realize that the guy in charge has got his hand on some people who know how to read, write and plan a terror attack.

Don't you have a Nanjing to apologize for?

Terrorist is just another word for "revolutionary that I personally don't like". Seems extremely easy to implement.

Why would that be the case? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm a bit dumb and don't understand.

>darker side
Suicide missions into enemy territory isn't the dark side of terrorism, not even close.
Murdering innocent civilians by the boatload is.

>Murdering innocent civilians by the boatload is.
This. It's also one of the defining traits of Muslim terrorism.

If you look at the left wing terrorism of the last century (IRA, Weather, etc), you can see that they often didn't kill people. (Except for the black organisations that loved killing cops).
What they did is, they'd blow up some "symbol of oppression" like the lobby of a big corporation's office, and then they'd use the attention to release a communique full of edgy Marxist jargon.

The most likely cause for a second American Civil War isn't religion, it'll be the same as the first: white people killing each other over whether they should treat colored folk decent or not.

Pretty much this. Terrorism is the use of highly visible violence to try and produce the desired response in your enemy (normally this response is breaking their will to fight).

Oil is cheap right now because technology has advanced enough to allow people to tap into previously inaccessible reserves and because natural gas has become cheap enough to compete with oil.
Compared to these factors Saudi politics isn't very significant.

...

That's what's going to keep the price from quickly rising, but isn't Saudi politics what made it crash this time?

They can, they could be proclaimed terrorists with propaganda when in actuality they dindu nothing, or they could be trying to blow up a culture worth blowing up

>Call self freedom fighter
>Blow up Freedomland Towers

ok, i will
because by nuking japan they ended up saving millions more
that makes them heroes in my book