Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?

Tony Vargas · Jun 17, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
I disagree very strongly. It isn't just about the stakes. It is about how difficult it is to adjudicate something as physically unpredictable and dynamic as combat fairly without a resolution system. With social situations, it is much easier to adjudicate based on the NPC personality in question and the reasonableness of what players are proposing.

Again, I'd argue they're not necessarily easier, just more familiar, that way. Is it really that difficult to conclude who wins a fight (a fight in an heroic fantasy story, no less - the hero usually wins, unless his loss advances the plot somehow, no?), and narrate how, vs both the DM and player getting deeply enough into the minds & emotions of a character & NPC to accurately simulate a tense or high-stakes negotiation, between those two imaginary individuals, with their knowledge, talents, skills and agendas?

Umbran said:
I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules. A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules. If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?

Well, a GM isn't just a referee/judge, even if they did get called the latter back in the day, but also a player just one with a very different role in the game, and a sort of narrator or storyteller, and a sort of author...

...even so, when adjudicating in the absence of rules, the GM is still mediating between the players and the rules, just in the abject case of the rules.

hawkeyefan said:
I do think that it's a bit of a chicken or egg thing.....is the game combat heavy and that's flavored our expectations, or have our expectations influenced the rules design? It's a bit of both, for sure, I'd say.

since the game appeared in 1974, well within living memory, it clearly came first. Of course, it was preceded by Chainmail & other wargames, which carried with them an expectation of being combat simulators - but, for the most part, that wasn't /our expectations/ as Roleplayers, because we didn't exist as a community until after D&D came on the scene.

I don't think that there's any reason a game cannot be focused on non-combat more than combat, or that there must be more rules for combat. I think this is simply the general trend, which reinforces long standing play expectations.

There are reasons a game /could/ be more focused on combat, like it's a combat simulator, or the stakes of combat are life-and-death or combat is always there as a last resort - negotiations break down, exploration triggers hostility, whatever. But no reasons it must or should be, and reasons it might not be: combat could be out of the scope of the genre, or instance, or a (comparatively) minor part of it. In a murder mystery genre, for instance, violence is actually pretty rare, overall in what would correspond to play - there's /a/ murder, which is viewed as a terrible thing, but generally happens 'off stage,' anyway, and the murderer rarely fights his accusers (more often confesses, gives up, flees or dies trying), and it'd be an odd twist if he got away with it by resorting to violence.

lowkey13 · Jun 17, 2019

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Flexor the Mighty! · Jun 17, 2019

Umbran said:
I rather think that depends upon what the focus & intent of the game is. Just this weekend, I played a game which had no combat mechanic. The PCs weren't people addressing their challenges via personally applying physical force, so no system for doing so was included. We didn't miss it.

If the intended action in a game is "kill things and take their stuff" then yes, your game needs a combat mechanic. If the intended action in game is... "Kill things, and take their stuff... and then persuade the king to not execute your PCs after you killed many of his subjects," then you really should have a social conflict resolution mechanic.

I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules. A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules. If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?

I'd say my job as a referee is to adjudicate between the scenario, call it fiction or imaginary world and those in it, and the players actions. The rules provide a framework for a lot of that but for me some areas are best left to the interactions between the players and the DM. If I know what will lines of argument will convince the King and what will enrage him I can rule fairly easily based on what the players tell me they are doing if they are successful or not.

IME heavy social rules have never led to more roleplaying, only less. Granted I don't play with a lot of randoms. But even in the Con games I was in last spring there was all kinds of role playing going on and none of it had to do with mechanics.

5ekyu · Jun 17, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
Sure, the set up was very basic....and although that was largely for the sake of brevity, I don't know if expanding a bit upon the set up will matter all that much. A lot of times, that's exactly what a skill check boils down to.....one roll, with a success or fail end state. I'd expect that most attempts to avoid combat by using a skill or a spell wind up coming down to one roll, and a failure almost always results in the combat taking place anyway. Very often with the PCs in a worse position than if they'd simply charged in at the start.

Again, that's speaking in general; there are certainly examples of a different approach (my 5E game would have plenty of examples to offer).

The idea of a partial success, or success with a set back, is a very good one, and is the kind of thing I'm talking about when it comes to improving the non-combat actions. The PHB does talk about them, which is a good thing, but I think they likely could or should have gone a little further.

If a group decides to go with simple binary for non-combst, then I tend to think thats what they want. The rules certainly dont require it. Both the GM and players csn ddcide to build as much into those as they eidh.

I mean, ok, so if we look at stealth and hiding, we see it starts with GM determination of whether thsats evedn even possible well before you get yo jour toll. You got spells starting at cantrips thst csn help, a little or a lot, plus help action, etc etc.

For social checks, the defined interaction process in the DMG for resolving those is far from "I persuade" and vice hit table- it includes determination of starting outlook, possibility of changing that using traits, possibly needing investigation etc.

And yep, the PHB mentions progress eith srtbsck, tight theremin the same sentences as they do pass and fail. So, not really given much less than they were. Then it shows up again in the DMG for saves snd attacks- fitted in with Success at cost.

Whether or not groups decide to use any of it is on them... but it's not a case that 5e by design boils those kinds of things to a simpler declare asnd one roll.

5ekyu · Jun 17, 2019

hawkeyefan said:
No, but you said more people would be comfortable with them not existing. So I was addressing that. I think that's mostly due to expectation and tradition, or maybe a feedback loop of both.

I'm currently playing a game that treats all the combat and non-combat actions the same....it has a universal mechanic that's resolved the same for all actions.

Combat is still a big part of the game. But non-combat is just as important, and is just as engaging.

So I think the existence of engaging mechanics for social interaction can actually add to play rather than detract from it. The problem is that the most common social interaction rules aren't really all that engaging.

"So I think the existence of engaging mechanics for social interaction can actually add to play rather than detract from it. The problem is that the most common social interaction rules aren't really all that engaging."

The DMG setup for these involve the traits such as ideals, bonds, flaws- discovering them, exploiting them etc and can easily lead to no roll needed or an easy roll of DC 10.

lowkey13 · Jun 17, 2019

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Flexor the Mighty! · Jun 17, 2019

Even if I don't run a game with social mechanics I still factor in the PC charisma. And it also impacts hirelings and their loyalty.

Bedrockgames · Jun 17, 2019

Umbran said:
I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules. A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules. If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?

Sure. I mean the GM adjudicates things all the time that are not covered by the rules, and in those moments the GM is acting as a sort of game mechanic. They are not referees in the same way that a boxing match or soccer match has. They are also there playing a world around the players. I don't need a mechanic to decide something interesting happens, or to decide how a baker responds to a player character's request for an endless supply of bread sticks.

Bedrockgames · Jun 17, 2019

Umbran said:
I rather think that depends upon what the focus & intent of the game is. Just this weekend, I played a game which had no combat mechanic. The PCs weren't people addressing their challenges via personally applying physical force, so no system for doing so was included. We didn't miss it.

Sure if there is no combat in a game, then you don't need combat rules really. But I think the key thing here is social interactions are things we can actually play out at the table. I can talk in character to the GM playing an NPC and to other players playing their characters. I can't really do that with combat. We are not going to take out boffer weapons to resolve combat. We need a mechanic. Now that mechanic could just be GM fiat. But the point is you can't play it out naturally the way you can play out a social interaction naturally and I think that is the main reason why so many games have large amounts of combat mechanics. It isn't necessarily a reflection of the game being focused on combat. It is just that more of the combat stuff can't be played out as naturally at the table as exploration and social stuff. Even when you have social mechanics, you don't really need that much. You don't necessarily need social mechanics to function like combat mechanics (there are games that do this obviously, but it is perfectly easy to play games without this level of depth of social mechanics).

Bedrockgames · Jun 17, 2019

Celebrim said:
My suspicion is that it is because gamers tend to prefer the least abstract experience of the scenario possible (or at least that is convenient).

For combat, the least abstract thing to do would be dress up in armor, take up some sort of sparring weapon, and play out the combat. This is exciting visceral and only slightly abstract and many people do it, yet it is not particularly convenient and leaves open problems of how you simulate giants, dragons, magic, and most of all being someone other than yourself.

The combat rules used by most systems, and certainly by the most popular and enduring systems, tend to be as un-abstract as is convenient to run in a table top game. All those fiddly rules help describe a less abstract reality for the combat, where moment by moment decisions can be played out in a way that allows the participants to imagine what is going on.

By contrast, the least abstract way to simulate social interaction is with social interaction. Table-top RPGs after all are inherently social games, and so the easiest way to simulate a conversation is simply to have that conversation. Actually having the conversation creates in a non-abstract way what was said in a far more detailed, complete, natural and convenient manner than any attempt to model conversations as combat ever could. Thus, while the least abstract combat system involves the most rules, the least abstract social system involves the fewest rules.

And while there are some complexities to overcome in imagining conversations, I personally as a DM find it easier to simulate speaking and thinking like a dragon - however unrealistic my approximation may be - than I find it to actually simulate moving and fighting like a dragon. I can pretend to hubris and greed far easier than I can pretend to fly and breath fire and be 40' long. Barring acquiring the ability to change shape and bend the laws of physics, I'm going to need to model the later in a way I don't need a model for something I can do like conversation.

So in a sense, yes we do choose rules for one over the other, but I don't think it is true that we do this for arbitrary reasons or even that the reasons are primarily cultural in nature.