D&D General A History of Violence: Killing in D&D

[Thomas Shey]

In this example the players are discarding morality. The DM isn't putting them in the position to harm innocents...they made that decision on their own.

Yeah, there's no "gotcha" there once the players don't expect to be completely lawless actors.

 

[Pedantic]

Honestly, I don't think we're coming up on a "reckoning" on the underlying question of using violence to solve problems as a core mechanism in D&D. The appeal of the fantasy is as strong as ever, across all kinds of political and ethical spectrums.

Instead, I think we're more likely to see a deeper exploration of how best to sanctify violence, what scenarios and mechanisms are most likely to put players at ease in fantastic indulgence. The most obvious example is the rise of monstrous foes, like undead, fiends, mindless monsters and so on. Additionally, I think more investigation into/DM advice around how to display evil and structure situations without any institutional support such that violence seems reasonable is likely to be more common.

 

[payn]

What I’m saying is that in D&D, combat is fun because that’s what the game does best - no other elements of the game comes even remotely close. Perhaps If they did we’d be doing those instead, but it would also make D&D a heavy, heavy game to play. Combat in D&D is horror for the characters but a sport for the players. We put our characters in situation of harm waaaaay more than we would in real life because as players, we want to play the sport.

(As an aside, that’s why I hate paralysis-type spells. They go against one of the core ‘rule’ of D&D combat: everyone has a turn. It’s also why I think fantasy is a popular genre, and why some people don’t want guns in their fantasy)

I’ll finish by saying that we have some control over the kind of ‘sport’ we want to play. Not all combat need to be to the death. Going to 0 hp does not always have to mean death; It means defeat. In context, defeat can mean many things, and your own life does not have to be the only stake.

On this note, D&D is already a heavy heavy game to play. I am a big fan of Traveller that has combat that is much more streamlined and fast paced. It also just so happens combat is not required 6-8 times a day. So, yeah a lot of other type of play happens like exploration and social. I think the idea that expanding the other pillars in D&D shouldn't happen because it would make the game heavier isnt a good argument to put forward.

 

[Laurefindel]

I think intrusion situations and some social encounters can go the same way, but the latter gets a lot of hostility toward being played out in a mechanical fashion in large parts of the hobby, and the former usually doesn't support larger groups of PCs as readily.

Intrusion situations could get a similar treatment but they lack an opposition. You could set traps and security systems as enemies but frankly, monsters are way more versatile.

As for social encounters, ‘social combat’ starts with the big disadvantage that D&D, as a role playing game, is already a social encounter in itself. Amongst friends ideally, but one player has the role and duty to play the opposition. As players, our ability to wield weapons in a pretended fantasy is not connected to our ability to deal with social encounters in reality. Pretended social encounters are muddied by the fact that they can be resolved by real-world social skills. It’s harder to remove the role-play elements of a social encounters and have it solely rely on the characters ‘attacks’ and ‘defenses’.

 

[Micah Sweet]

as opposed to XP where it removes the motivation to take the game seriously, as all you have to do is cross a very specific number of dead lvl 1 goblins and npcs to level up?

There are a lot of ways to get xp, but only one way to milestone: whenever the DM wants.

 

[CreamCloud0]

For a game that isn't about violence, there is an awful lot of real-estate on the character sheet for ways to hurt others.
The entire reason for monsters is to ausage the guilt of the player for stabbing "people".
If the DM puts the party in a position to question the morality of their actions...i feel like you're now playing a different game. I don't want to play with a DM that is intentionally trying to make me feel bad.

NPC: The fate of the world rests in your hands. You must retrieve the Mcguffin.
Party: Cool...where is it?
NPC: it is being guarded by a basket of puppies cared for by sea otters and penguin hatchlings. You must destroy them to save the world.

why is destroying them the only offered solution being offered here though? when the only options are 'let the world be destroyed' or 'kill the puppies' i feel like the claim of 'your choices' come with a very large pair of scare quotes.

you fight a bandit, but there's no-one pushing you to make the final blow a lethal one.
the shop prices are high, but the GM isn't saying your only option is to hold up the store at swordpoint.
you encounter an orcish hunting party, but diplomacy wasn't ever removed from your list of options.

these are the kinds of choices to question 'well why did you do that?' when 5 minutes later slaughter was chosen as the solution to all of those scenarios.

Play the game how you want. Of course. But when you change the very foundation of what the system was designed for you then have to allow for those changes in the mechanics.

The game is changing. Of course it its....of course it is. Sensibilities change. Core values change. Change is good. Change is bad. Change is change. But if D&D specifically is going to meet those changes shouldn't the rules also reflect those changes?

This rambling brought to you by a lack of caffeine.

IIRC wasn't a large part of the foundation of the game avoiding monsters because they were dangerous and there wasn't a benefit to killing them unless you absolutely had to do so to proceed?

 

[Micah Sweet]

No it is just the bigger issue. And in game violence isn't a real problem, it is one people have talked themselves into (which taken to its logical conclusion leads to "I guess we just shouldn't even be playing D&D in the first place"). More gamers are going to die every year because of the food culture in the hobby than are going to be harmed by imaginary violence in the game. I am not saying people have to change their diet. If you like mountain dew you liek mountain dew. But that is at least an issue where I know for a fact I have lost good friends who died way before they should have, and it is extremely common in the hobby, yet never something we discuss (instead we talk about the wrongness of in game violence). It is also something we could actually change if we talked about it (whereas talking about in game violence is going to have zero impact on real world violence)

Hear hear. Two close gamer friends died due to preventable health issues.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Short of the occasional new or particularly young player, the groups I've played with have always handled violence in a way that works for me.

We treat enemies with moral capability as more or less people, and we see the game as set in a world at war. Our groups almost always include good characters that consider killing to be an occurrence that, while common for adventurers, is regrettable and to be avoided.

We allow villains and monsters to surrender, often call for them to do so, and don't see anyone affiliated with the bad guys as fair game for pre-emptive slaughter.

At the same time, evil people and beings are proactively trying to murder innocent people, bestial monsters are killing people as a part of their existence, and you usually don't have the luxury of parlaying individually with each member of an opposing army.

To put it briefly, when we are playing good characters, we kill in the game in the same situations we would consider it justified in the real world (at least if we lived in the wild west). When someone is playing a neutral or (real occasionally) an evil character they tend to act accordingly, and we role-play the interactions. When our neutral character that was angry killed a duergar prisoner after a battle, our good character got into an argument with them.

In my experience, issues of morality can be addressed and played through rather than avoided, glossed over, or had a world created that minimizes them. As far as I recall, that's basically always been my role-playing experience.

Honestly, that's always been the norm for the people I've played with regularly. When I occasionally play a one-shot with someone who is just going all in on murderhobo it weird. In the same way, when I see design moves to minimize the capability for moral decisions it doesn't make any sense to me. To me part of playing make-believe, as someone matures from being a young child, is to start role-playing morality and experiencing believable consequences for it.

Maybe I'm weird, but I have zero issue combining escapist fun with role-playing realistic moral decision-making in imaginary worlds with real-world kinds of issues.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It’s a good point though. The game rewards the objectives it encourages. You want players to resolve problems without combat - give them the full reward for solving that problem without combat.

Of course, then you have to make not-violence in the game as fun as violence in the game.

 

[KYRON45]

why is destroying them the only offered solution being offered here though? when the only options are 'let the world be destroyed' or 'kill the puppies' i feel like the claim of 'your choices' come with a very large pair of scare quotes.

you fight a bandit, but there's no-one pushing you to make the final blow a lethal one.
the shop prices are high, but the GM isn't saying your only option is to hold up the store at swordpoint.
you encounter an orcish hunting party, but diplomacy wasn't ever removed from your list of options.

these are the kinds of choices to question 'well why did you do that?' when 5 minutes later slaughter was chosen as the solution to all of those scenarios.

IIRC wasn't a large part of the foundation of the game avoiding monsters because they were dangerous and there wasn't a benefit to killing them unless you absolutely had to do so to proceed?

There are an infinite number of example scenarios. Reductio absurdum has its place.
The basic foundations of D&D were simple:
XP = advancement
GP = XP
Monsters hoard the treasure (ie. treasure tables) = we must take their treasure
They won't just hand us their collection of vintage vinyl and Hummels = we must hit them with heavy metal things and magic to reduce their HP to 0.

Over time the Archie Bunker style of gaming has been supplanted with the....lets see what kind of good stories we can tell together style of gaming.

I have spent many an hour gaming where no dice were rolled at all and those sessions were some of the most memorable.

If D&D is going to change from combat to social mechanics....then the social mechanics need to be invented quite frankly.
I'm not advocating for any style of play/DM. You do you and have as much fun as you can any way you can (hopefully in ways your nanna would approve of of course). But this thread is about how violence is a part of D&D to its core. I mean i think that's what this thread is about. Snarf uses a lot of words so maybe I just got confused.

Game your own game my friends. Hike your own hike. Be wonderful to each other.