Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?

Elfcrusher said:

My original source was my grandfather, describing his training for WWII. However, this is the first thing that popped up for me on Google: https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/THE-SCIENCE-OF-CREATING-KILLERS-Human-2514123.php. (EDIT: I just realized you only quoted the second half of my post. No, it doesn't mention the derogatory slurs thing. I'll go look for that. EDIT2: Nope, first page of results on first search didn't turn up anything. But I'll continue to believe my grandfather.)

Pithy quote:


For somebody who doesn't want to believe this, it would be pretty easy to just say, "Yeah but that's a newspaper...from liberal San Francisco. Where's the peer reviewed clinical research?" And my answer would be: "I dunno. It's not a high enough priority for me that I'm going to go looking."

EDIT: And just to honor my grandfather, who died a few years ago, I want to mention that for decades he claimed he had been on Guam, doing supply stuff. Just before he died he was at a doctor's appointment with one of my aunts. The doctor, while chatting him up, asked if he was in the war, and what unit he was in. My grandfather told him. The doctor turns out to be a military history buff, and looked startled. He said, "So you were on Iwo Jima." My aunt scoffed, "No! He wasn't on Iwo Jima!" My grandfather said, "Yeah, I was," and started sobbing. It was literally the first time he talked about it since coming home.

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Agreed about the natural resistance to taking human life. My comment was just about the military encouraging slurs

Umbran said:

I will push back on the idea that, since very young kids can be observed being rough with each other, that violence is the human "natural state". Human children are not born with a full suite of natural behaviors that they get conditioned out of. Human children are more blank slates - they *experiment* with behaviors, and they observe the behaviors of others, and they learn and develop.
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I am no scientist but this seems quite wrong as well. I mean I did at least minor in philosophy and even there blank slate theory wasn't taken particularly seriously. I don't think celebrims conclusions seem accurate either, but there is at least some amount of truth to people having a natural state (like any other animal) and part of that natural state probably includes a certain amount of violence. My understanding is we have a natural resistance to killing each other, but we also have a natural need to defend ourselves against predators and rough play is pretty common in not just human children but a lot of mammals. I think it is fair to say we have culture layered on top of our nature, and that complicates the picture. But I think it would be really hard to argue now that everything is 100% cultural and we are pure blank slates.

Oh, a classic theological question! Are we created intrinsically good "in the nature of god" or are we born in sin, predisposed to evil?

As you might guess, the scientific community is having no more certain response than the theological community. On the one hand we are an animal that is both territorial and societal, which is a sure recipe for violence (we like our house to be beside another house, but if someone strays into that house, we feel it's OK to shoot them). Our murder rates are roughly the same as other simians, tending to be 7x higher than other mammals, so there's a fair amount of evidence for the "bad" side.

On the other hand the military studies show very clearly that most people are reluctant to attempt to kill others even when they know they are risking their own lives. So maybe we're "good"?

Or maybe we're just a mix; our societal leanings make us want to not hurt others, but our territorialism can override that and urge violence; I'm a mild-mannered man who respects others, but if you cut into my lane I have the sudden urge to ride you off the road and into a tree.

If so, it could explain our fascination with violence. Our "be nice to others; don't repay evil with evil; play nice" side is mostly in control and is our default state. But we still remember the times someone ticked us off -- stole our parking spot, mocked our accent, gave us a C when we deserved an A -- and we WANT to punch them in the face. Roleplaying gives us a chance to indulge that desire; we don't have to be constrained by society. If the NPC slaps our ass as we pass by him, we can pull out our sword and decapitate him. That's extreme in the real world, but it's not in Baldur's Gate, so screw you, half-orc commoner with 5 hit points, take 28 points of power attack damage and DIE.

lowkey13 said:

I was thinking about your comment, re: the media, and dragoner's comment, directly above it.

I'm not looking at specific things, more of a gestalt.

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I didn't mean it as a gut punch, maybe that's the slavic emotional roller coaster. lol

Not that I'm saying to stop playing the game, because I am not, only that some things strike closer to the bone for some people. Play away and have fun.

Also, afaik talking to biologists, reading science papers, we are 99% oriented towards cooperation and not conflict. Civilization can not exist if we are too violent, and even violence on the battlefield or in game is usually cooperative, soldiers are part of a military unit as their primary function. Even then many get PTSD, plus irrationally violent people are put in mental health care in civilian society, and that we call the aberrant behavior being a socio- or psychopath.

Bedrockgames said:

Agreed about the natural resistance to taking human life. My comment was just about the military encouraging slurs

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I would be surprised if there's anything formal on paper (at least that's discoverable.) But I would be equally surprised if drill sergeants during time of warfare were not unofficially encouraged to refer to the enemy in dehumanizing terms. Not because I think poorly of the military, or the people in it, but because it makes sense to do so, and organizations take on a life of their own.

Same reason that corporations full of otherwise decent people do unconscionable things.

My very simple answer to the thread-title question: because it isn't real.

A fine corollary thread could and should be titled "Why aren't we OK with sex in RPGs", as I've seen numerous posts over the years in here from DMs who don't even allow inter-PC romance, never mind sex.

Because we are not little crybaby snowflakes and killing is fun. But seriously I hope u r killing the bad guys in self defense or tracking down murderers that are dangerous and have caused harm.

Lanefan said:

A fine corollary thread could and should be titled "Why aren't we OK with sex in RPGs", as I've seen numerous posts over the years in here from DMs who don't even allow inter-PC romance, never mind sex.

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Hard disagree. You have clear evidence that SOME of us aren't OK with sex in RPGs. Do not confuse "some of us" with "all of us". That leads to treating the rest of us as "not really us", which is all too often a step towards humanity at its worst.

Kaodi said:

While it has been mentioned that the game and/or DMs sometimes fail to reward non-combat solutions I think this kinda sidesteps the main issue: that for many characters the main form of advancement is getting better killing things and that for all characters advancement means de facto getting better at killing things. And in D&D and Pathfinder at least any class that lacks plentiful skills or magic is going to be extremely sub-optimal in a game with minimal violence. Violence is baked into these systems from top to bottom; they are designed for it.

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If by "these systems" you mean D&D and Pathfinder, then mostly yes. Though at various points in the last four decades, some people have worked, within those systems, in other directions. Scholar or diplomat as a playable class, for example.

5E D&D recognizes combat as one of three pillars. Combat is the pillar with the most, and most detailed, mechanical support. In 5E, a character who gains levels necessarily gains HP, which are strongly relevant in combat, and (almost?) exclusively in combat. (I cannot think off-hand of non-combat situations in which a character with 12 HP does better than a character with 11 HP; but for all I know, such cases may exist.) When I look at the charts in the Player's Handbook, summarizing what features each class gains at each level, they're mostly combat-oriented abilities.

That said, there are spells and magic items which have little or no combat utility. Rogues and lore bards get Expertise. I've seen players apply Expertise to Stealth and/or Athletics, and use that in combat frequently; I've seen players apply Expertise to Persuasion, and use it only out of combat. There's a range, of how players act within the system. Some players go along with the built-in bias towards "My character's main abilities are their combat abilities", and some players swim upstream.

In my experience of Call of Cthulhu, it doesn't take much reductionism to sort PCs into "investigation and lore" characters, who locate the monsters, and "shotguns and dynamite" characters, who then slay the monsters. One can write an "investigation and lore" PC which also has interesting, useful things to do during a fight scene; and one can write a "shotguns and dynamite" character who also has things to say, questions to raise, during the lead-in towards the fight scene; a party benefits from a mix of both. That said, most Call of Cthulhu scenarios are written to end in violence. If the guy with shotguns and dynamite never fires the shotgun, and uses the dynamite to collapse the old abandoned mine, leaving the subterranean reptoids to live out their lives but blocked from interaction with humanity, that's interesting because it's *not* the usual ending.

In Hero System, a player has options along a sliding scale, when allocating character build points. A player, when writing a PC, can spend ALL the build points on abilities usable only in combat (eg Combat Skill Levels); a player can allocate some points towards abilities which have significant utility both in and out of combat (most of the primary stats, Overall Skill Levels, and so forth); a player can allocate points towards abilities usable mainly outside combat (I can't think of an ability which has *no* possible use in combat). One of my favorite Fantasy Hero characters, played in a four-month weekly campaign, was built on 150 points, with maybe 50 points invested in non-combat skills. She was a traveling merchant with enough combat prowess to handle poorly-armed bandits, and a LOT of expertise on dealing with people all along multiple trade routes. This expertise was useful to the party, in its main quest, because the GM had planned a story involving a long overland journey passing through multiple nations. The GM took the story deeper - that is, zoomed in - on aspects of the story which engaged PC expertise, so my choice to play a character who spoke multiple languages, probably motivated the GM to write scenes in which linguistic ability became useful. Another player built her PC almost entirely for combat. We each had fun, playing to our various interests. In combat scenes, we both had things to do, my character mostly using hit-and-run, her character more often choosing frontal assault; in non-combat scenes, she could talk in character just as much as I could, but she didn't have a lot of options along the lines of "I apply a skill, does that help?" or "what does my PC know about this, beyond what I as a player already see?".

Other games with build points, rather than levels, have similar flexibility, to invest a higher or lower percentage of build points into combat readiness. This includes Shadowrun; also White Wolf's Orpheus, and to some extent Mage. Are there level-driven systems with anywhere near that degree of player choice, in how much PC creation tilts the game towards which pillar?

Celebrim said:

That said, I don't agree with your first sentence, nor does the management.

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I'll believe that when I hear it from the management. There are opinions one may not express on EN World; but one can *hold* them, as long as one can refrain from expressing them openly, while chatting merrily about how to optimize a sorcerer-warlock. I may benefit from a Klan sympathizer's advice about how to optimize the sorcerer-warlock, and I may or may not ever learn about the differences between my ideology and theirs. An actual member? Statistically unlikely, after membership downsizing in recent decades, but I would not rule it out, not as confidently as you do. Someone who agrees with *part* of the Klan platform? I find it likely that I've given XP to at least one post from at least one such participant.

You and I have, in PMs, debated differences which have, historically, sometimes put people on opposite sides of a battlefield. I'm not sure that my differences with the Klan are actually deeper than my differences with your positions on those issues we discussed. I still benefit from your observations on the relationship between structure and story in TRPG, and on many other topics.