D&D General Violence and D&D: Is "Murderhobo" Essential to D&D?

[Flamestrike]

Hundreds of countries have moved past employing capital punishment on helpless prisoners-- good for them!-- and (all but) disarmed their police forces, but they still have police forces and they still have militaries whose members are expected and required to employ violence in situations that have absolutely nothing to do with self-defense.

Since when is use of reasonable and proportionate force in policing and military not an extension of self defence (namely collective defence, of the community)?

 

[toucanbuzz]

...Because, I think, @toucanbuzz was trying to communicate that he doesn't want to think that hard about it when they are playing...

Exactly what I was trying to say.

 

[Fenris-77]

Unfortunately the bolded bit gets in the way before you start: how in the nine hells would this work? How would the DM or the players or the game determine what sequence things happened in, in a way that wouldn't lead to an endless string of arguments?

That said, I despise the locked-in cyclic initiative of 3e and newer. Most of the worries about anyone gaming the turn-order go away if you do two simple things:

--- re-roll initiative each round (recommend a smaller die than d20)
--- remove ALL modifiers other than one-off situational (i.e. Dex modifier goes away)

Oh, you'll have to do away with "till next turn" durations and actually start tracking by initiative count, but that's not hard.

EDIT to add: you'll have to allow tied initiatives too, also not hard, and they allow for outcomes you'll never see otherwise.

To start with, my GMing style for D&D is already pretty PbtA influenced. A lot of X plus what do you do? The time I tried this out I was also mucking about with success with complications and alternate DCs to match. It was mostly to get a feel for what I could do with the PtbA numbers and style in the D&D d20 system. I banged out some rough match to match % chances on the 2d6 bell curve and ported that over to d20 and I was playing with the peripherals in-game. With all that in mind, I just ran combat like DW does. I took a soft focus to durations and based them mostly on caster actions, or on iterations of damage.

I did indeed remove most modifiers for initiative, with the exception of things like Alertness, or other things that specifically add to initiative above Dex. I only actually had to deal with Alertness in game, which I ran as allowing the choice to go first in the first round, almost an interrupt ability, plus not being surprised.

As for arguments, I didn't have any. I moved the spotlight and it went pretty well. Keep in mind, this wasn't a combat heavy game, so the burden on me wasn't too heavy. I don't think @Umbran 's suggestion of popcorn initiative would have the argument problem either.

 

[DammitVictor]

Since when is use of reasonable and proportionate force in policing and military not an extension of self defence (namely collective defence, of the community)?

How is the use of any violent force proportionate in response to non-violent crime?

And in what universe is maintaining a standing force of armed professionals to practice "self-defense" not the exact opposite of living in a society that believes "violence is never justified", as was asserted in the post I was reponding to?

 

[Lanefan]

To start with, my GMing style for D&D is already pretty PbtA influenced. A lot of X plus what do you do? The time I tried this out I was also mucking about with success with complications and alternate DCs to match. It was mostly to get a feel for what I could do with the PtbA numbers and style in the D&D d20 system. I banged out some rough match to match % chances on the 2d6 bell curve and ported that over to d20 and I was playing with the peripherals in-game. With all that in mind, I just ran combat like DW does. I took a soft focus to durations and based them mostly on caster actions, or on iterations of damage.

It's easier in systems where spells don't take units of time to cast.

One other thing that bugs me with most init. systems, old and new, is that when say a Fighter gets multiple attacks in a round she gets to take them all at once. The way I see it (and the way I run it) each of those attacks should get its own independent initiative.

I did indeed remove most modifiers for initiative, with the exception of things like Alertness, or other things that specifically add to initiative above Dex. I only actually had to deal with Alertness in game, which I ran as allowing the choice to go first in the first round, almost an interrupt ability, plus not being surprised.

I'd take any init. modifier off Alertness as well, which becomes nothing but a surprise nullifier.

As for arguments, I didn't have any. I moved the spotlight and it went pretty well. Keep in mind, this wasn't a combat heavy game, so the burden on me wasn't too heavy. I don't think @Umbran 's suggestion of popcorn initiative would have the argument problem either.

Perhaps not, but if you think turn order gets gamed now that popcorn initiative idea takes the idea of gaming it and dials it to eleven. Yuck.

The absolute opposite of the chaos of the fog of war, which ideally a combat rule-set would want to try to replicate where it could, right?

 

[Guest 6801328]

One other thing that bugs me with most init. systems, old and new, is that when say a Fighter gets multiple attacks in a round she gets to take them all at once. The way I see it (and the way I run it) each of those attacks should get its own independent initiative.

Yeah, it makes sense that, for example, your second attack is at your initiative + 5, the third attack is at +10, etc. And there are lots of ways that an initiative system could be more "realistic" with more complexity. You could add modifiers for weapon speed (modified by Str), or the level of the spell being cast (modified by Int). You could break movement up the way you break up multiple attacks. And so on.

But...other than driving people away from the game, what would this really achieve? Would combat really be more fun?

 

[MGibster]

How is the use of any violent force proportionate in response to non-violent crime?

Arresting someone, even gently, is a form of force and it's an appropriate reaction to some non-violent offenses. Trespassing is one example where it might be appropriate to arrest someone who otherwise refuses to leave. It might be appropriate to arrest someone who refuses to follow a court order such as paying fines for speeding tickets.

 

[DammitVictor]

Arresting someone, even gently, is a form of force and it's an appropriate reaction to some non-violent offenses. Trespassing is one example where it might be appropriate to arrest someone who otherwise refuses to leave. It might be appropriate to arrest someone who refuses to follow a court order such as paying fines for speeding tickets.

I agree. This disqualifies both of us from asserting that we come from societies that believe violence is always wrong, and that we have evolved past the use of physical force to resolve our disputes.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I've always understood this style of play, but man it's just never sat well with me. I remember having nightmares in high school that I had to kill someone because they were an orc and they were evil, but I just felt sick to my stomach doing so! This was... 18 years ago, and I still remember the dream!

I am thankful that even though D&D supports this style of play, it's not required.

Within the context of everything that's going on, my group sat down the other day and talked about how we want to remove the narrative of "all ___ are bad" from our game. We have a really, really roleplay-heavy game (we have combat about once every four sessions), and yet I was able to point out at least five different times the DM expected us to fight humanoid monsters just because they were there, not because they were doing anything bad. I feel like this style of gameplay is so baked into the game that it's almost invisible.

If I found a magic D&D focused genie lamp, I would definitely make a wish to restructure D&D so that combat was not the most mechanically rewarding aspect of the game. But that's just my preference!

 

[Bawylie]

Okay, so this doesn't actually remove initiative & turn order - it removes the randomness, and turns it into a tactical choice.

Popcorn Initiative! AKA Elective Action Order (of which there's two variants)

Spoiler

Variant 1: You roll initiative, highest roller goes first.
Variant 2: Whoever declared the first combat action goes first. There is no roll for initiative, ever.

From there the variants are the same.
The top roller takes their turn. Then, that person chooses who goes next. It may be a friend or foe.
That second person goes. Then, they choose who goes next - they cannot choose someone who has acted already in the round.
The chosen third person goes. They choose who goes next - they cannot choose someone who has alraedy acted...
Lather, rinse, repeat until everyone has gone. Initiative refreshes.

Whoever went last in the first round, chooses who goes first in the next round.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

Note, there can be some strategy here - the party will be tempted to take all their actions first. But then the villain(s) go, and can choose themselves to go again first in the second round. If you don't polish them off before you act, they can act twice in a row without you being able to intervene, which can be nasty. PCs will often want to insert the opponents in the middle of the order to avoid this.

When using larger groups of opponents, I will tend to group them: Big Bad, Melee Minions, Ranged Minions, for example, as three groups the Players can give initiative to.

I’ve been doing this version and I’m good and ready for a change.

My current thought is to do side-initiative every round (highest initiative party member or whoever is scouting versus highest initiative monster). So there’s some chaos round to round. And then I was thinking I’d let players use inspiration to jump the line and take an immediate turn.

So if the players win the first round, they go first, then the monsters go. Then we roll again for round two and maybe the monsters win. But the players don’t necessarily want to get beat on that long so they start using inspiration to jump in and do things like heal.

I haven’t tried it yet. But I like the chaos of side initiative every round and I like using a resource to rob chaos of its power.