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

[Laurefindel]

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.

Good point

However, i for one know that there’s a point where a game reaches my CPU limit and starts getting glitchy. For me D&D combat is borderline too heavy already and I don’t think I could stomach equally heavy social encounter systems, overland travel system, infiltration system etc.

But I agree with you that without making them equally complex, other aspects of the game would see more play if they were more compelling…

In my ideal version of 5.24, combat would have gone down slightly in complexity while everything else would have gone up. Unfortunately for me combat has only gone up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, if the party is running round killing people specifically to take their stuff, then they're no longer a party of heroes.

They're a bandit clan.

Yup. A perfectly legitimate style of play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not like most other experience systems aren't just as arbitrary. All they do is provide a set of incentives for a certain style of play.

Yes, and milestone's incentives are strictly narrative, and thus not to my tastes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Players suffering consequences for their actions isn't some new thing to DnD. Even adventures back in the early days of DnD had various NPC's which weren't framed as bad guys.

If your players randomly decide to stab a shopkeeper and take their stuff in the middle of a crowded town, there will be consequences. That doesn't mean the DM is trying to force the players to feel bad or force DnD to be peaceful. It just means that the players murdered a person in the town square in broad daylight, and now the guards are angry.

In-setting logic should almost always come first, yes.

 

[Clint_L]

Players suffering consequences for their actions isn't some new thing to DnD. Even adventures back in the early days of DnD had various NPC's which weren't framed as bad guys.

If your players randomly decide to stab a shopkeeper and take their stuff in the middle of a crowded town, there will be consequences. That doesn't mean the DM is trying to force the players to feel bad or force DnD to be peaceful. It just means that the players murdered a person in the town square in broad daylight, and now the guards are angry.

This is a good example of a situation I would handle differently at home than at school. At a home game, if the party did that, natural consequences would follow. I mean, it’s hard for me to imagine the party doing something so random and out of character, but they could. If it became a habit I would find a new group.

In a game at school I would veto that action. We’re not playing a game of role playing psychopaths. Context matters, and this would be crossing the line in terms of depictions of violence.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Does your group take prisoners? If so, what do you do with them? If not, what do you do instead?

 

[payn]

Good point

However, i for one know that there’s a point where a game reaches my CPU limit and starts getting glitchy. For me D&D combat is borderline too heavy already and I don’t think I could stomach equally heavy social encounter systems, overland travel system, infiltration system etc.

But I agree with you that without making them equally complex, other aspects of the game would see more play if they were more compelling…

In my ideal version of 5.24, combat would have gone down slightly in complexity while everything else would have gone up. Unfortunately for me combat has only gone up.

Im not advocating equal mechanical weight in all pillars, but lets be real, social and exploration are almost non-existent. Which is why a lot of folks run D&D as a murdersim. I found it very interesting back in NEXT when they wanted to streamline D&D a bit and that meant gutting the skill system...

 

[Frozen_Heart]

This is a good example of a situation I would handle differently at home than at school. At a home game, if the party did that, natural consequences would follow. I mean, it’s hard for me to imagine the party doing something so random and out of character, but they could. If it became a habit I would find a new group.

In a game at school I would veto that action. We’re not playing a game of role playing psychopaths. Context matters, and this would be crossing the line in terms of depictions of violence.

Admittedly the only time I've seen that happen is when the group of players was new to DnD and young.

Our group now treats the world seriously and doesn't go murderhoboing. In fact in our current campaign, we're typically only having combat once every 5 sessions or so.

 

[Laurefindel]

Im not advocating equal mechanical weight in all pillars, but lets be real, social and exploration are almost non-existent. Which is why a lot of folks run D&D as a murdersim. I found it very interesting back in NEXT when they wanted to streamline D&D a bit and that meant gutting the skill system...

Yeah, I agree with you here. People can make their own fun in all kinds of aspects of a role-playing game but in D&D, there’s no fun interacting with the system outside combat.

Coming back to my sport analogy, combat is the only sport D&D has to offer…

 

[MGibster]

Our group now treats the world seriously and doesn't go murderhoboing. In fact in our current campaign, we're typically only having combat once every 5 sessions or so.

I've experienced plenty of wacky hijinks over the years, but murder hoboing hasn't been one of them. Even when I was a teenager, we didn't kill the clerk of the magic shop to rob him.