On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 7:19 PM, Kelly St. Clair <kellys@efn.org> wrote:

On 5/21/2015 4:12 PM, Craig Berry wrote:

Firefly played well with this trope. You initially know the "good guys"
were on the losing side of a war, but you don't really have any reason
to think of the winners as "bad guys" initially. So some of the more
morally questionable activities of the characters really are
questionable. Then you gradually find out just how bad the bad guys are,
and the heroes look more like heroes all the time.

Mm... I'd say that in the Verse, there are some "good guys" and "bad guys" (some of them very much so) on both sides, and a whole lot of people in the middle, just trying to get by and/or do their jobs. IMO, that includes most of the Alliance's armed forces, as well as the citizenry.

Whenever I consider revolutionary movements as a GM I always reflect back on a college history course I took on the society of early America. My professor pointed out that - according to as unbiased an examinatiob of the available original sources as it was reasonably possible to make - about one third of the population of the English colonies supported independence, another third were Crown loyalists and the final third just wished the whole issue would go away and leave them alone.

I figure that's probably a good baseline for attitudes toward divisive political questions, regardless of the exact issue or period.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester