So I have a bit of a problem. I am working on a Neo-Lithic game. I want to bring a new flavor to D&D and tell stories in a brand new way. I feel like paying homage to actual World History to shine light on underserved mythologies and battle fantasy defaultism. So far, things are going well. I have exciting solutions to make stone-age combat unique and awesome. There’s some other stuff that happened in the stone age, though, and it rubs raw against modern morality.

In Neo-Lithic societies, especially those of Meso America, where I am taking a great deal of inspiration, human sacrifice was pretty common. Though slaves and enemies were often made victims, sometimes a loyal citizen was honored by being sacrificed. They even had volunteers from time to time. It was a very different understanding of the value of human life.

Now this had other, more far reaching effects. War wasn’t nearly as lethal as other societies. When two nations went to war, they were looking for plunder and slaves. They used spears and eventually arrows, but mostly they swung clubs. They wanted to stun and bind soldiers. They would incapacitate the enemy army and select the most valuable subjects to take back. This means they would often let poor conscripts walk home. Innocent foot soldiers, normally crushed and killed in other conflicts, got to live. Fancier nobles and priests were dragged to enemy cities and beheaded.

There’s a bizarre argument in there that human sacrifice might have brought a taste of social justice to warfare.

So now I have to think about how this applies to my game. I want to mechanically represent the myth and fantasy so that the game feels very different than standard euro-centric fantasy. There is a definite temptation to include ritual sacrifice as an accessible field of magic for PCs.

There are a few ways I think I can handle this:

1 – It’s there, but it is not supported mechanically. This would be like magic item crafting in 5e. People make magic items, and technically PCs can craft magic items, but it’s not explicitly addressed in the rules. DMs are left to fudge it if they want.

This is a decent solution, and the laziest. The book will mention that sacrifice exists, but the game will neither support, condone, nor discourage it. You might get a sadist player who wants to create a character that is all about human sacrifice, killing everything with a pulse, but there won’t be mechanical justification for it. It’ll be up to the GM to corral their perverts and keep the game on track.

The trouble is that this was a huge part of culture and myth of the time. Let us not forget there were volunteers (or at least it was recorded that they volunteered) for the chopping block. It would be a gross imposition of my modern morality to gloss over this part of the culture. It would be another white-washing. A ‘cleaning up’ of inconvenient aspects of ‘those dirty primitives’. I want this game to be fresh and strong, a powerful alternative to dreary, nearly indistinguishable dungeon crawls. Yet, here I am gun-shy to include one of the most significant practices of this culture. 🙁

2 – I include some mechanical support for ritual sacrifice, but make it explicitly clear that is only for enemies or NPCs. Or perhaps there is a corruptive quality that makes the practice prohibitive. Like magic in Call of Cthulhu. Sure, you can cast a handy spell, but you’ll watch your sanity slip away, sending your character into gibbering catatonia quicker than you can shout, “Fhtagn!”

So now these sacrifices are happening, but it’s clear that bad guys are doing it. The benefits are clear and evil. It could be like drugs. You get a boost from taking all that meth, but your character falls apart soon after. You’d be a fool to start taking it. This reinforces the modern morality with in game mechanics.

This is even more egregious than the first approach. This is a pinched, condescending, dismissive look at the culture I’m trying to honor. In no way can I see myself resorting to this sort of thing.

3 – I include an entire, optional, modular magic system for ritual sacrifice. A GM can make the decision that their players are mature enough to handle such a topic and include it in their game. There will be minor buffs that are accessible through sacrifice, but they do not stack. This way, players wouldn’t feel obligated to murder a dozen slaves a day to refresh all their favorite buffs. Also, there would be a more exclusive, improved list of effects for voluntary sacrifice, perhaps including PC sacrifice.

Here we get to really say something about these cultures. Players access the feel of the world through the mechanics. The old myths become a little more relevant and the traditions are represented, perhaps more authentically. There are ways to tweak the mechanics so as not to reward thoughtless slaughter. Perhaps there is a divinity stat, and PCs need to take care not to let it dip too low, or rise too high. So infrequent rituals perhaps mixed with other forms of devotion like fasting or dancing might help manage the favor of the gods. Human sacrifce becomes a legitimate part of the game, but there are other aspects of the religion that are also significant.

So yeah, obvious problem is obvious. Human sacrifice becomes legitimate. That’s a tough stigma to live down. I can see this game picking up some dirty press as people point out my game promotes ritual murder. They wouldn’t be very wrong. The intention is to present an alternative fantasy to the market, and that fantasy will fit uncomfortably in today’s moral landscape. Perhaps that’s what will make it worthwhile.