Cannibalism in Games

A bunch of Nagaraja, the actual specific cannibal bloodline, or do you just count Vampires in general?

Ghoul in Shadowrun. Worked graveyard shift at local morgue. Would wear custom ballistic mask for runs, so team didn't even know about his condition until much later into the game.

Well, I would count drinking blood as cannibalism. But as I count vampires as non-humans it wouldn't be cannibalism as that means eating your own species.

>Generic fantasy setting
>I'd never eat a fellow man, but dwarfs, elves, halflings and the sort are all fair game

Because my closeted fetish can overlap with this, I try to keep it away from my games. Better safe than sorry.

What's going on in this thread?

Currently playing an undead woman carrying a coffin on her back, constantly replacing limbs and pieces with parts she picks up along the way. It’s cannibalism without the extra steps. And she hates herself for it.

Sounds like an interesting character, though I have a hard time seeing many campaigns where it will fit in.

Ouch, that sounds pretty heart-crushing. What system is that in, what's the campaign?

Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, Fomorians, Goblins, Kobolds, Gnolls, Formians, Minotaurs, Red caps, Imps, Ghouls, duerrogar dwarves,and Unseelie Gnomes are all brutal opportunistic exo-cannibals, some are more usual same-race-devouring cannibals instead, or as well.

Nechronica. Poor woman’s following a child with a sniper rifle and a tall nerd in a cardboard gundam suit who thinks he’s a robot. It’s a maddening, stressful, awesome campaign that she’s barely surviving through. During my final roll of the previous session I was already thinking of new character ideas before she escaped.

My character worships a spooky Outer God type motherfucker and has developed cannibalistic habits as a result of hanging out with his morally loose new friends. Its not like a compulsion or anything he's just gotten numb to it.

>"Oh hey N'gath this pork bowl is on point."
>"Its people?"
>"Oh well I guess this is my normal now."

Dark Heresy campaign where a necrophage cult of biomancers ate people to gain their power. They planned to consume an entire city as the Black Sun appeared in a night of blood and terror, and let the blood/souls drain into an enormous xenos chalice a hive noble family had secretly been hiding, so one person could be reborn as a god.

Got hijacked by a radical Inquisitor the party failed to stop earlier in the campaign, and the only way they could defeat her was by grappling her and chowing down on her.

In the setting, a major saint and sector hero was artificially created by the same ritual. The Inquisitor foresaw the fall of the Imperium and embraced cannibalism as the only way to regenerate mankind.

I played a high class goul that shapshifted into a monster once

First off, that's metal as hell.
Second off, how did everyone react to that afterwards?

So, in a campaign I tested out a custom race as my own personal brand of elves, only phenotypically similar, rather than actually being related. They're more of a spirit-golem symbiote, whose appearance was inspired by a mix between Prince Nuada from Hellboy II and Yolandi from Donker Mag/Pitbull Terrier. Their skin looks more like living porcelain than it does flesh.

In order to sustain the physical half of the symbiote, they could theoretically drink blood, but due to the difficulty of acquiring it, they usually just consume blood-rich organs, such as the heart or liver.

After most fights, the rest of the party would remain quietly horrified as this ethereal life-sized doll would dig into the flesh of their downed opponents and consume their organs.

Well, maybe the literal image was the better one.

>They're more of a spirit-golem symbiote
> Their skin looks more like living porcelain than it does flesh.
Are you me. I have my own race with a similar vibe, but more of a biomancy flavor than cannibalism by necessity. Wasting flesh is just seen as silly so they don't discriminate.

Cannibalism in D&D is fucked, literally every conceivable force in the universe automatically zones in on you to fuck you in the ass, Ghouls, Wendigos, and a shitload more that are varaints of this to name but a few.

I once had a gm who was really into the whole "Monsters make their own" thing. We ended up fighting a wendigo and I ended up getting turned into one. Ended up being a great character, all I took were monster levels from there on out. Great role-playing experience.

I like to have cannibalism as a central theme in games/ characters.

I was hungry as a kid. Not starving, but I didn't eat twice a day, either. I was also homeless for a stint. I resorted to stealing food from the high school cafeteria for months. Being hungry is scary.

Wrath has always been a favorite character motivator of mine, but no matter how great, it anyways leaves a chance for diplomacy. Feral hunger, however, cannot be reasoned with. It's ravenous, it's atavistic.

I like to make characters that are cursed to devour those close to them. This probably says a lot about my personal life, too

I a cannibal once in DnD.

Lizardmen eat their dead and have bonuses to con and wiz.

How do the GM and other players typically react to that?
Do you have a common group who notice that theme in your characters? I get some people have a recurrent character theme or quirk but I'm one of those "Variety is the spice of life" types, so I'd notice if a player had something like that running through most of their characters.

WHAT

I play with my good friends from high school. I'm sure my characters don't betray anything they hadn't figured out already.

>good wordfiltered to food

I play an Angels Sanguine. I've torn out a few throats to get at that divine crimson sacrament and abate the red thirst, but short of an Eldar trachea or three, I've never indulged in anything more than a pilfered blood bag.

Sounds pretty neat. Tell us a bit more about him, if you would.

Hell yeah man. I used to love Clan Tzimisce back in the day, and after starting to read John Prophet and getting hype about Scorn, it's really getting me into the biotech and biomancy stuff again.

I initially started making my elves with the intent of making elves based solely on Celtic influence without Norse, but it went in its own direction. I still haven't decided how they're born, as their physiology is supposed to be more plant-like than animal like, to include regrowing rather than healing.

And just like a tree, they start out rather small and just keep on growing, more slowly as they get older. They also really start to slow down physically as they get older, and require their clan to go out and hunt for them.

Eventually if they survive into older age and about a dozen feet tall they, they migrate into what are known as the Elder Groves, where eventually they stop moving altogether and become this sort of humanoid porcelain tree, which the younger elves can come and commune with in times of need. To join the Elder Groves is their goal in life, as it preserves their will immortal.

Pleasure.

Oh you know.

They're talking about cum

Played a cannibal assassin mutant in Dark Heresy one time. Needed vast amounts of flesh to power his regeneration and cannibalism seemed the easiest option for a hive dweller.

Nothing's too dark for 40k

Veeky Forums never changes.

It depends on where you draw the line, is blood transfusion cannibalism?, are french kisses cannibalism?

Prophet is great

Playing a feral backwater druid who spends pretty much all his combat time in wolf form. Naturally, he eats people and ritualistically spills blood to hasten forest growth.

player played a bestigor (big satyr) in an evil campaign set in warhammer fantasy universe
He ate people, don't know if that counts

I play a kobold in a 5E game, and the way the DM writes it they're cannibalistic. I carry a private stash of kobold jerky in it's own leather pouch and buy more whenever I can find it on the surface, few and far between as it is.

They eat each other mostly out of practicality, on one had it cuts down wasted time on 'burial rites' but mostly a body worth of food goes a long way to a people so universally impoverished. But we fluffed it that there's a significance to it, that in spending a lifetime in service to the clan, wherein every part of your waking life and job goes towards upholding the clan around you, when you die, the last good you can do for you family and the last thing you can give your clan is the nourishment from your corpse.

It's gunna be great when the party finds out why I'm so affronted by them eating the jerky too

In some animist religions, you "become what you eat". So eating a valorous foe or a wise elder is a way to level up.
I've seen Nechrotica mentionned ITT, it's a similar thing, recycling enemy parts to upgrade yourself. You would probably have identical risks of infection, too.

If you don't have anything to add to the thread, you can go away

I played a suicide bomber who did a lot of bombing, but very little suiciding, helped by the fact that they were a regenerative undead monstrosity and their flesh could reconstitute itself. Cannibalism helped this process along quicker, as well as just tasting good to her, since she was the sort of undead designed to enjoy that stuff. When she got the full account of her past back, she gave up the suicide bombing thing and retired, but she still enjoys cannibalism where she lives now.

Depending on how far you're willing to stretch the definition, there's another "zombie" that was brought back all kinds of wrong by the process used to revive her, being turned into a mostly amorphous mass of black sludge. Her primary means of fighting the other girls in the bunker they live in is to form that sludge into angry maws that gnash and tear, devouring their bits to turn into more sludge. But there's an argument to be made for her being so far gone from any traditional human structure that it hardly counts; as well, the primary antagonists consist of, as they're termed, "cybitches", so the amount of flesh vs. metal on any given belligerent is up for debate.

>Black Sludge that eats people
Sounds familiar...
How do you rolelplay that? And what the hell kind of system is that in that it seems to revolve around a bunker full of girls either eating each other or becoming cyborgs?

Aldrich was actually the base for what I designed her look on, yes; though the eventual Gwyndolin was just more sludge protruding in the shape of the upper half of a person. Even had those little gory spiky bits, sort of, in the form of the desiccated pieces of her body that hadn't properly re-animated just floating atop the mass.

As to how I roleplay it, well, it's Nechronica, so I roleplay her as a young girl of about 14 who was actually kind of completely off her rocker. The change in physiology and lack of ability to feel pain or even engage properly with several major portions of the five senses left her a little strange in the head, and she engaged in such behavior as acting as a living bed. If that sounds retarded, that's because it is, and it was treated by everyone else as such. Nowadays, though, she's received a psychic dose of what pain actually is, recalled it, regained several shit memories, and so now she's much more sane in some ways. And, in becoming so, has gone off her rocker in others. She's turned into something of a martyr. Unable to feel pain, and wishing to spare the rest of her sisters it, she throws herself in front of attack after attack for others. While she's incredibly well-suited to the task, she takes it to excessive degrees - to the point that, by fight's end, half the party is usually all but untouched while she's about four parts shy of fucked.

The disparity between the girl who was incapable of processing enough to be bothered by all the horrible stuff going on and the girl who's been shown just how shit life can be and is no longer propped up by blissful ignorance is rather fun.

I'm playing one in my current game. He's a fairly typical tragic character. Dwarf in a tunnel collapse forced to eat his kin or starve in the dark. He ate, started hearing a voice that urged him to eat more- eventually he did and soon lost most of his sanity worshipping a minor demon. It lead him to freedom, instructed him to tear out his teeth and fashion iron replacements. I play him as a blunt Wyald type. A roving blight that is best used as a half-trained dog by someone smarter then him.

The people eating is a stress response to anger or any amount of prolonged hunger and has become a ritual of rabid consumption and profane offering

>Have you ever played a cannibal?
In a Fantasy Craft campaign, I basically played as pic related, only with confirmed cannibalism, as opposed to the really fight happy implied cannibalism Azrael has. While edgy as fuck, I fluffed him as a soldier who initially sank to cannibalism because his unit was stranded in a mountain pass with no supplies and they found themselves eating their dead to survive. Eventually, he discovered he was able to temporarily draw on the strength of those he devours (He had Death Knell as a path spell) and feasts upon the other survivors and used their combined strength to escape. After that, he was only concerned with killing and eating stronger things to find a way to benefit from his consumption permanently and becoming the top of the food chain with his freakish strength. In the end, the party had to put him down after he got a little too wild and very publically murdered ate a corrupt nobleman the party was hired to subtly dispose of.

>Ever had a cannibal villain?
In a short adventure I made for my group, the villains were a circle of druids that partook in human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. None of it ever happened in front of them, but the group gathered as much from NPC chatter.

I have the seeds of a region in my world that's big on the Chinese version of cannibalism. It's ruled by Rakshasa and greatly populated with ogres and oni.

My setting has a race of sentient cow-people. They are amazing chefs by nature, and have no qualms about cooking and eating their own kind. In fact, they prefer to.

They're delicious, and very proud of that fact.

Does eating people once make you a cannibal?

Technically, yes. The act of eating people is cannibalism, making one who does so a cannibal. It does not necessarily make you a wendigo.

That would add whole new meaning to the phrase "They look good enough to eat."

It's an act of cannibalism, so yes, you are by definition a cannibal afterwards, just not habitually.

I had a DE archon who engaged in anthropophagy in Rogue Trader. The players were negociating with the DE, and it was an admittedly cheap way to make the player characters uneasy once they figured just what they were being served when she asked them to discuss the terms of their deal over dinner, and to highlight the way DE tend to be fucked up, with the idea that she was doing something the humans migth find objectionable not even crossing her mind (after all, humans eat lesser creatures all the time, so what's the difference?).

Even if that was the last option, which only other alternative would be starvation?

Yes.

It's a defining term. It doesn't matter why, it's the name of the act and the adjective that describes a person who has performed that act. Justification or reasoning is irrelevant to the appellation.

What you're looking for is anthropophagy, which is the habitual eating of people.

Yes. If I only have sex the once, I'm no longer a virgin. Similarly, if you eat people any amount, no matter the consequences or lack thereof of not doing so, you are a cannibal.
Being a cannibal isn't a mindset or anything, it's just the term given to someone who has consumed the flesh of their own species, there's no qualifiers that mean doing so doesn't make you a cannibal.

Blood drinkinf creatures are haemovores, and not cannibals.

Playing a tiefling ranger that was raised most of her life by an archdevil through a psychic connection (kinda like a radio that never turns off). Is more innocent than most people in a sense, since she believes that there is no reason to end a life except for food. Anything she kills, she must eat, or carry with her until she eats, otherwise she feels like she's insulting her kill by insinuating that it's inedible.

Her personal quest is tracking down a demon that killed her family, but didn't eat them. She plans to choke him on their ashes, to redeem them.

>She wants to choke the thing that killed her family on her family's ashes
That is the best death, the only way that could be improved would be if it was the demon that told her to eat what she killed.

>Let's discuss the terms of our deal over the corpses of the last people who tried to lowball me

>the demon that told her to eat what she killed
You mean devil? There's a big difference.

She actually plans on burning the demon's body to ashes, then scattering it in limbo, to insure that no one consumes him. She counts that as the greatest insult she can inflict him with.

Pretty much literally what happened. A rival rogue trader had hired DE mercenaries to kill the PCs, but after repeated failed attempts and the rogue trader being unable to pay them (due to the PCs freeing the slaves he had intended to hand to the DE as payment), they decided to terminate the contract and extract the payment from him personally. Later the PCs ended up dealing with the very same DE.

They loved it, it was a meaningful climax that mean a lot to the players and built on the cannibalism theme. I intended it to be the finale, but I'm doing another season with the same players.

We are only getting into the aftermath now: some people emerged from the soul soup years later with strange powers. Their former Inquisitor is disgraced and imprisoned and the Calixis sector is in chaos as the Conclaves are torn apart by infighting. A former, much hated PC from a previous campaign is leading a independence movement from the Imperium and has discovered another of these giant alien chalices. The players, filthy as they are from the corruption of the ritual, have to choose between saving their beloved Inquisitor, stopping their hated enemy or purging their souls.

That's why you always pay upfront when dealing with anyone more powerful than you.