Ok lets see...
First of all sorry for the quote blocks thingie, i will use them now:
As for "Easier than armies than Squads", this is 100% false. There is less desertion and cowardace when you have a large army than when you have a small one. There is a certain momentum built up when you have a lot of people on the move. When 17 people you never met die but you are surrounded by 6000 more, you don't generally run. "They must know something I don't!"
It's when it's you, Joe, and 8 other people around you and Joe is shot that you start to wonder if advancing towards the enemy is a smart idea.
Here's a story from training for you, to explain the concept. This is a true story, to the best of my recollection, of the events that occurred in my training company in the USMC SOI of the west coast, on camp Pendleton. The events occurred on September 10th, 2001.
It was about 8 PM Pacific time. We had gotten back from a range, can't remember what, I think it was the Practice Grenade Range. We were sitting around, awaiting our debriefing, and one of the trainers comes in, all upset. He says we are going to war in East Timor, and our training schedule would be accelerated. He walks out, and the other one comes in with something in his hand. He talks for a bit, sounding pretty odd, then the first guy comes in and begins to struggle with him. Something hits the ground, and everyone around me takes off for the windows. One guy jumps out. We are on the 3rd story, by the way. It turned out what he dropped was a empty practice grenade shell.
Now tell me, if this can occur in a training environment and be believed to this extent, with these reactions, do you honestly believe that cowardace in combat isn't that possible? We had about 40 guys there, one jumped out the window. That's a real 5% sampling.
Same base, a few months previously, I was doing guard duty (a percentage of the trainees are required to guard the camp before getting training. There was a guy who refused to stand post at one of the many armories around the area because he was certain it was haunted. He would do any other thing than that, and would wig out anytime he was stationed there. Our "Squad" had 4 shifts of I believe 12 people, although it's been so long I can't really remember. I wasn't familiar with the behaviors of the other shifts enough to know if he was the only one who had a "quark" like this, but he's an example of at least one issue in 48 people.
Two real world examples of behaviors in the US Marine Corps, a organization seen as so tough that the entire thing counts as special forces. There are reasons that this doesn't always translate to cowardace in the face of the enemy, and a big part of it is leadership and tradition. These are aspects that are ingrained in with training, which means training could make it less likely to happen, but something to keep in mind is that the School of Infantry (SOI) only occurs after 3 months of Boot Camp, so they have already at this time recieved the same amount of training a standard Army soldier gets. (not to be putting down the army, they have training geared towards different missions than marines, so aren't expected to meet the same standards.) This means that for all intents and purposes, this is already a group that has been well weeded of the "dross" that can't cut the mustard. Without this process, you'd see much higher rates of desertion, dereliction of duty, cowardice in the face of the enemy, and stuff like that (there is already PLENTY. Google Court Martials of the US armed forces in Iraq. You'll find examples of it all, and keep in mind most good leaders try to protect even the worst of their members, so what you see is the tip of a large iceburg.)
This is my proofs, from an all-volunteer force. You get into drafted armies, and you have much larger rates of problems. Different CULTURES are different in their ability to deal, but they all have to do so.
See, with that i can agree, you are showing me actual data from actual experience wich i can believe, wen i said they where talking about gigantic armies was because deathworks said "still some soldiers run" wen i hear "some" i think a few, wen you are talking about a gigantic army, a "some" for me, counts like 5% aproximately, 5% of a 20 people squad is 1 dwarf, i dont think a squad makes you more brave, what i do think is that in a squad you have less people that may or may not escape, everyone watching eachother, and less chance of actually "escaping", the window example , they didnt escape, they just had panic, there is some diference, a dwarf that gets panic in the middle of the battlefield would probably get murdered, a desertor would escape, i think there is a diference.
That said, the example you are giving is of modern day armies, in wich you need to take in count 3 details, first of all we have better weapons, i would think that its a lot harder to survive now that you have fire weapons and explosives, you should depend more on luck, second, honor, this has been said before, nowdays other people would understand much better if you would escape or have fear, i reallly doubt it would be the same way at the age the df world is, and finally, life expectansy and quality, the expectansy bit may be ignored taking in count there are dwarves that get to their top age and die of old, but the quality of life should change much, nowdays people lead a longer and more peacefull life, to make it simple, we re spoiled by life (this could be used the other way around saying that since someone that time would be more used to fight for his life they would escape the battle wen they would get a chance)
Now you keep saying Dwarves have to be such and such way, because that is how you see them. Well I don't think so.
I could agree with you if you were arguing that the Cerol Uzol dwarves don't run, that they come back with their shield... or on it.
As i said before i was talking about the way i see the dwarves being, some may disagree, i think everyone has their own view of the dwarves as a civilization, some see them as psychotic murderers, other as rather calm creatures, and so on, there is no point in discussing this, since its up to each player, and in the end you can mod them into any culture you want them to be.
My problem is you are thinking "Them humans are so tough" and saying it based on the culture of Argentina.
Sure, you didn't say that, but it's what you've been thinking. Except Dwarves and Tolkineese.
And by the way, my stereotypes of Argentinians do not match what you view as your "cultural identity".
Actually, i would think of us as rather coward, and mean, so in the end we would rather send someone else to get himself killed than to risk our own lives for someone else, my whole point of the Argentinean and other cultural examples, was to define how much can culture change the way you take diferent subjects of life, in this particular case, war and death, and im not surprised about that bit, the whole dictatorship deal is rarely even known, wich also explains how many think most of us where ok with the falklands war. I did not care if the examples where actually 100% truth or not, i was just giving examples of how culture can change people, each one can understand it by taking in count their own culture and compare it to someone else´s, hell sometimes you have pretty diferent cultures in the same country.
I would like to propose something, how about instead of talking about diferent therms, like "some", and "unusual" we give actual numbers?
I think that in a culture that has all the personality stats at [0:50:100], after having military training to the best possible, with decent armor and weapons, against an equal number of soldiers, only 5% of a population would run away (if you have a fortress with 100 people, of all those people only 5 would run away)
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Topic: Combat Psychology (Read 6860 times)