Moral Dilemma: Killing and Deaths in RPGs

[Tun Kai Poh]

In my current Lancer: Battlegroup game (being recounted in Story Time), my players recently finished a grueling 2-day space battle that left thousands dead, only to find that half the enemy fleet agreed to a conditional surrender, so now they're negotiating the exact details of the enemy withdrawal (only after a week plus of salvage and repairs in place).

It's a very interesting and dramatic situation when you have nearly 3,000 prisoners on hand, your homeworlds' governments are counting on you to clean things up without causing more problems, and both sides have lost hundreds dead. Far more rich a roleplaying situation than one side being totally wiped out.

One of my PCs just found out that the opposing fleet commander is descended from her mother's former lover from 500 years ago, thanks to the weirdness of relativistic slow ageing of career nearlight space officers...

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Grendel_Khan, is there a tension between your second factor ("Don't talk to the prisoners") and your proposed solution ("Fewer total fights")? If we substitute X for fights in our RPG sessions, what is X? At least some of it will be talking to NPCs, won't it - which potentially reintroduces the roleplaying problem.

I don't have an obvious solution to propose, only a thought that also picks up on what BrokenTwin said: if the system has something a bit more robustly mechanical for social interaction, then that can shift play away from "free roleplaying" small talk - which I take to be what you're flagging could be a problem (and I'm treating your concern as literal, not ironic - which makes sense to me - but if you did intend it ironically I apologise for my failure of uptake!), and turn it towards more consequence-laden interaction, whether that be persuading prisoner to honour their parole if released, or conversion to the PCs' cause, or other things that downplay the tedious small talk and keep the stakes/goals of play in focus.

I didn't mean to imply that all or even most time spent talking to NPCs is a bad thing. I meant that, much more narrowly, having what might wind up being repetitive interactions with prisoners might become a real bummer. And if the PCs are sort of accumulating loads of prisoners during a somewhat typical dungeon delve (or similar situation)--one during this fight, two more for the next, another two after the third fight--it could make it not only cartoonish in nature and logistically annoying, but also sort of a roleplaying slog. Do you stop talking to the prisoners after the first batch, and gruffly tell the subsequent ones to shut up and march? But what if these new ones have different information, or a greater possibility of become allies?

Generally speaking I think interacting with prisoners can be incredibly rich, for pure roleplaying and to develop the narrative (maybe even both at once). It was the potential repetition I was trying to address.

But as for what would replace fights, if there are fewer of them, I think everything you might do in a game that isn't fighting. If it's a classic delve, then maybe it's the interactions that lead up to setting out, and the travel/exploration challenges and experiences along the way, and maybe the situations that could be combat but that many PCs would want to address some other way (stealth, bargaining, etc.).

I don't mean to push a given playstyle, I've just personally found that a lot of issues that are related to combat--including stuff like over-incentivizing lethality, body counts that are goofily high and numbing, balanced encounters, etc.--sort of melt away if fights are less common, but the ones that happen typically come with a lot of dread and buildup, and usually have major consequences.

A little like how there are so few actual fights in GoT (talking more the books than the show in this case), but almost constant menace and danger throughout. And also how some of those main characters don't really know how to fight, but for the ones that do that's a major part of their identity, even though the narrative isn't constantly showing them cutting people down to prove their badassery.

That general approach probably doesn't work for story now games, though, I realize, so I guess I'm talking more in the context of the pacing and distribution of authority in a traditional game.

 

[pemerton]

That general approach probably doesn't work for story now games, though, I realize, so I guess I'm talking more in the context of the pacing and distribution of authority in a traditional game.

Maybe, maybe not. Cross-referencing the "Conflicts" thread: maybe it can be part of the build-up to conflict!

 

[S'mon]

I thought those two characters were the same for years, but after @MGibster casually dropped that bomb I went down the rabbit hole.

"Steamboat Willy" (the unit's nickname for the German soldier they released) and the SS guy who infamously stabs the American soldier aren't the same actor, or character. They just kinda look the same from certain angles.

But to confuse matters further, Steamboat Willy does show up in that last battle and kills two of the main characters.

So yeah, he does come back to punish them for their foolish mercy, but not in the exact way some of us believed.

Oh, I had no idea anyone thought the SS guy who stabs the American soldier in the grapple upstairs then walks down past the translator was the same as the ex-prisoner. They don't look at all alike to me. The SS guy is much tougher looking.

 

[S'mon]

No, that's not why the translator killed him. In an earlier scene, the German soldier killed, I want to say Mellish, by slowly stabbing him after they engaged in a melee. Translator guy sat that fight out paralyzed by fear. He could have saved Mellish but he sat by and did nothing.

The one who killed Mellish (the big SS guy) walks down past the translator in a daze and is never seen again afaict. He's not the same man as the released prisoner who turns up shooting Americans & is shot by the translator after surrendering (again).

 

[Jd Smith1]

Death in RPGs and video games is so stylized and sterile it hasn't ever really registered with me (with a single exception, in a video game, of all things).

That said, I've seen players quit the hobby after losing a PC, which always seemed silly to me.

 

[Victor Spieles]

FATE was a breakout point for our group, 12-13 years ago. Mostly D&D before that; we tried Reign, Burning Wheel, and various others, and then tried Spirit of the Century (a pre-core pulp-era FATE game). It was the first time all four at the table were jazzed and the first time (ever) that all four wanted to ref. The system was flexible and inviting, and collaborative, and very forgiving for new refs/DMs.

That was a revelation for us.

This led the group to Diaspora, which was FATE doing Traveller. Lots of mechanisms for combat if you wanted that, but there's never a need for character (or NPC) death (they are "taken out" in a way determined by the victim). Again, very forgiving on refs, and kept us happy for years.

My 10-y-o made me FATE-based versions of the characters in Planet of the Apes as a Father's Day gift one year (helped by a patient mom). But the system intuitively spoke to him for translating what he'd seen on the screen to a RPG character.

That gaming group (2 of the originals, three new ones) still plays. Currently, I'm running a classic Traveller game for them -- we're in week 12 or so, and there has been one combat.

Kobold Stew thank you for the feedback and suggestion to check out Spirit of the Century. The setting and idea for the game are right up my alley of what I'm looking for. Love that your kid spent the time to make you FATE-based versions of the characters from Planet of the Apes as a Father's Day gift. That's a wonderful lifelong memory.

 

[Victor Spieles]

Hiya!

(Didn't read every page of this thread, only first...gotta hit the sack, really tired!)

To the OP:
Don't hang up your dice.
Go find a Super Hero RPG System.
I'd suggest "SUPERS! Revised Edition" ( SUPERS! Quick Start - HAZARD Studio | SUPERS! Revised Edition | DriveThruRPG.com ). It handles "damage" in a more player-friendly way; it's basically up to the Player to decide how his PC takes damage for a lot of, if not most, situations. I even went a step further and just say "pick where you want damage to go". It's a very narrative-oriented system.

Short Version: You have 4 "Resistances" (Fortitude, Composure, Will and Reflexes). If you get a car thrown at you and you take 2 damage, you, as a Player, decide where those 2 points are allocated from your Resistances (or other powers, like Armour or something). The player can then describe how the damage occurs: "Ow! Steelwing brings up his steel wings in front of him just in time! The force of the car crashes into him, pushing him back and down onto one knee! ...I'll take 1 off Fortitude and 1 off my Flight: Wings if that's ok?" ...It could even be "Steelwing leaps to the side as the car barely misses his head by INCHES! Small pieces of glass dot the side of his face. He is shaken by the near death occurrence. ... I'll take 2 points off of Composure".

Also...death isn't a thing unless the Player, Players and/or GM want it to be.

If you want to play a fantasy game...no worries. Just use the system and rules then just add fantasy stuff, setting, equipment, and get to it. (and yes, I do have a "SUPERS! Fantasy" campaign supplement and setting in the works; it's surprisingly easy...like...no-brainer type easy; all I'm really needing to create is the setting and fluff...the rules for Powers fit for spells, magic, special abilities, etc, so there's no real "work" there at all; just creation! ).

So if I were you... look into SUPERS! or some other Super Hero RPG you are more familiar with and just use that for your game (fantasy, super hero, scifi, etc).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Thanks Paul for the SUPERS! suggestion.

 

[Victor Spieles]

The very best piece of tabletop roleplaying game advice I have ever seen was walk, don't run, into conflict. It basically means that we should take our time to understand the context of potential conflicts before rushing headlong into them. Basically let the narrative breathe a bit. In our games we might often go 3-4 sessions without a fight. The potential for violence is usually there, but a significant part of the tension is if there will be violence or not. We also make sure that we always consider the ramifications of violence, in the setting and on our characters. Sitting in that fallout for a bit is also part of not running into conflict all the time.

Here's the blog post I saw this in:

Walk, Don’t Run To Conflict

Fictional conflict is often the centerpiece of game design and as such the texts advocate “getting to the conflicts.” I believe that historically texts have over emphasized this central point from …

playpassionately.wordpress.com

Great advice Campbell. Reading through that post you shared now.

 

[Victor Spieles]

I would argue that concrete incentives are part of mechanical support, but that's splitting hairs. And I have zero disagreement that early editions of D&D were better at disincentivizing combat.

But D&D 5E's incentive structure is strictly about getting better at fighting things. Heck, outside of specific class features for Rogues and Bards and a handful of feats, your character CAN'T learn new non-combat proficiencies RAW. There's no mechanical support for improving or tracking your social standing with various groups, or owning land/dwellings, or rewards for your characters achieving their personal goals. I'm not saying that D&D 5E is a bad game for not providing this support, it was build to support a certain style of play, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're finding yourself at odds with some of the core conceits of the system (combat as a primary option, combat as sport, little mechanical support for social/exploration/survival gameplay, character progression through combat capability), then there's other systems that do focus on supporting those various foci better in different ways.

Can you play D&D 5E without all the violent encounters and killing, as asked in the OP? Of course you can. You'll need to tweak a lot of things and reduce emphasis on large amounts of the rules, but it can be done. I personally wouldn't enjoy it though. There's a lot of systems out there that can handle that style of play better, up to and including the early editions of D&D.

Thanks BrokenTwin. I've spent the days since the original post exploring the RPG suggestions along with some other reviews and have compiled a good list of very low-combat and non-combat RPG options. The next step is finding the right players to play with.