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

[payn]

I think the first time I heard it was around 2010 or something. We used to call combat oriented campaigns hack N slash. I think now we tend to think of gaming groups as these platonic ideals of style (i.e. you have all heavy role players in a group, you have all tactical people, etc). That can happen, but mostly I think you have a mixture. There may be that guy who makes a no background killing machine but usually he is sitting next to the group thespian or strategist.

I think pre-VTT gaming sort of forced this compromise. If the thespian didnt play with the power gamer they didnt play at all. Folks can be a lot more choosy now with online play.

 

[KYRON45]

Well, as I noted in the original post, the term murderhobo is actually really recent! I know, shocking!

However, the idea of that type of play has long roots. In the 1970s, it was common to have shopkeepers "statted up" or to have them be, inter alia, polymorphed gold dragons in order to deter players from randomly killing shopkeepers and taking their stuff.

I'm going to call flag on the play here. If you knew how it pains me to use a sports metaphor you would know how serious i'm being.
I'm fairly certain (no i don't have a source) that my friends (my cat and a roomba really) have been using the term murder hobo at least as far back as the 90's. I mean sure "recently" (some pendant is going to argue) in the grand scheme of things could mean anything from the 3rd epoch (i may have made that up just now) or last week.

 

[Guest 85555]

I think pre-VTT gaming sort of forced this compromise. If the thespian didnt play with the power gamer they didnt play at all. Folks can be a lot more choosy now with online play.

That can certainly be true. I still find, just in my own games, which I do exclusively online, but not using VTT or grids, I like having a mixture of player styles at the table rather than one shared style. It gives the game a bit more life and longevity (at least for me)

 

[Laurefindel]

you don't have to do either of them all or nothing.

I agree with you there. Nor would a social system need to be used as soon as someone opens their mouth!

Though to be frank, I’ve seen many compelling combat system but very few social system that I liked. It’s hard to strike a balance between « diplomancy » and « just award bonus for good role play »

 

[Micah Sweet]

Can't a PC accomplish something both narratively and gamistly (i don't even know how to express that) that can be substantive?

So long as it's attached to the PC and not just the player, yes.

 

[payn]

That can certainly be true. I still find, just in my own games, which I do exclusively online, but not using VTT or grids, I like having a mixture of player styles at the table rather than one shared style. It gives the game a bit more life and longevity (at least for me)

Ive found mechanically sometimes thats the case. The wallflower sits back waiting until they can contribute in a quick usually spell like way. The powergamer sits (im)patiently for combat. The Face does all the talking and leading. Etc...

My style of play is pretty immersive with metagoal/plot proactive player driven style. I like a longform campaign that requires all hands on deck. I'll do a oneshot with anybody anytime, but when I have a regular group the gloves gotta fit.

 

[CreamCloud0]

XP levelling is just milestone with a very large number of very tiny milestones, i get 50 milestones from killing that goblin, and 300 milestones for that owlbear, once i reach 2500 milestones i level up

 

[Mannahnin]

In it's essence, D&D is about conquering the wild frontier. Adventurers go out of comfort of civilization and deal with problems people have there cause there are no one else to deal with it.

Agree with the latter, though not as much with the former. Even in B2, the iconic example of the wild frontier module, the setup is that Chaos is threatening and encroaching on a static border, rather than as in the American West where it was "civilization" which was expanding.

Also, since it's game, we have benefit of emotional and mental detachment. It's just pixels on the screen, it's just some numbers on the piece of paper. You have fun, make pretend, "kill" stuff, have some fun, go home.

Violence as form of entertainment has been part of our civilization since forever. This is just "pretended" violence.

Largely agree.

@Remathilis

You're post reminded me about quote from Starship Troopers

"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived." Or to phrase it simply "Might makes right". And d&d characters, specially 5e ones, are sure mighty.

Heinlein would have strongly disagreed with your translation. He definitely didn't believe that might makes right, nor was that what he was positing in the book. (we've had long discussions about the book elsewhere).

Those methods are even more narrative or gamist. At least with xp you're doing something to earn it.

Advancing your PC for any reason other than actions that PC has accomplished, even as an abstraction, is either too narrative (based on the "story" you're telling) or too gamist (based on having spent an arbitrary amount of time in play). I want something in the setting, done by the PCs, to hang my hat on.

In the sense that you're using the term "narrative", xp for treasure or for killing monsters are equally narrativist. They're conceits of the game to incentivize characters to engage in a specific style of play. Advancement by the chunkier "number of sessions played" count is just a less granular version of the same thing. The behavior being rewarded is basically "adventuring" in both cases.

In real life experience in fighting does improve certain fighting skills (though it often comes at the cost of PTSD and other long term wounds, tangible or intangible), but training is a much bigger part of it ("the more sweat left on the training field, the less blood lost on the battlefield" I believe was one of Col. Hackworth's mottos). And of course no amount of fighting or loot collecting will make you better at academic skills or picking locks.

If you want "learning through doing", you'd want an advancement system more like BRP. When you successfully use a skill you get a check mark next to it, then at the end of a session/rest period/downtime you get to make a test on each such skill to see if it advances.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How about approximately 2007?

The actual gluing together of the words might well have happened then, but calling PCs "killer hobos" or implying they are goes back decades before that.

The big problem with the claim of 2007 is that only crawled websites are covered, and only ones post-2004, which means almost all earlier RPG sites aren't included. Also Google Trends can't even find the 2007 instance anymore, AFAICT.

It's also something that came up a lot in the '90s. I don't know what terms we used exactly, but we certainly discussed how characters tended to be rootless murderers and this was perhaps, not great.

And I believe that the re-examination of alignment with regard to intelligent humanoids is part of that.

Absolutely.

I mean, even in Gygax's own era, he literally became a genocide apologist/approver because he could bear to retreat from the position that genociding/mass slaughtering intelligent humanoid beings was perhaps, not really okay (and that was in like, 2002).

Certainly even with the slightest bit of real modernity, and as teenage boys, my group realized this in like, 1991 or so. It felt kind of messed up to kill a bunch of people who you could take prisoner or the like, and then you get the awkwardness of D&D having no real rules or ideas or even spells for dealing with prisoners, because the initial conceit was basically "kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Those methods are even more narrative or gamist. At least with xp you're doing something to earn it.

Unless everyone is sitting on their hands all game, they're doing so with one that's time based too. They're just not micromanaging it. In practice all that sort of advancement does is cutting out unnecessary bookkeeping.

As I said, experience can serve a purpose if you're trying to incentivize certain types of behavior and players may not otherwise lean into that behavior. Otherwise, its just pointless bookkeeping.