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

[payn]

The rules should, as far as possible, absolutely be proofed against bad-faith play; so yes, the advancement system needs to be proof against bag-of-ratsing. (also, with proper design the bag-of-rats combo wouldn't exist in the rules in the first place)

My assumption in general is that the players are trying to exploit or work around the rules, and that the rules are there expressly to prevent (or at least greatly inhibit) such exploitation. It's a game, and in any game if you're not looking for an edge you're probably doing it wrong.

If not engaging in an ever exhausting arms race with each other is wrong, I dont want us to be right.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except it is forced on me. Pressure to conform is a thing, whether overt or covert.

By that standard, any set of tastes that assumes the majority and isn't yours is the enemy. That's a hell of a position to hold.

 

[Necropolitan]

Or here's another example:

"Please help save our loved ones," begged the villager, "A group of bandits invaded our peace festival because we didn't have weapons during it and took as slaves all those they did not slaughter!"

The Paladin shook his head.

"Your town watch had previously arrested members of that bandit group for robbing and killing people and put them in jail, thus both of you have unjustly held prisoners. The bandits say they'll stop attacking you if you stop trying to arrest them."

"We're trying to arrest them because they keep attacking us!" protested a watchman.

The Paladin drew his sword.

"How dare you! Those bandits might have tragic backstories! Have you tried not attacking them?"

"We had left them alone until they attacked our peace festival!" shouted a villager, "are you seriously unable to make moral judgements on which of us is in the wrong in this?!"

The Paladin considered a moment.

"The bandits clearly had unmet material needs which is why they robbed and murdered you all. That makes you the evil ones! Your peace festival was flaunting your prosperity, you were practically asking the bandits to attack you!"

"That's not actually true," called out a justly imprisoned bandit, "We just hate the villagers and want to murder, enslave, and rob them all. The only reason we haven't wiped them all out is because they were capable of defending themselves. Just because there's an in-group/out-group divide doesn't mean it's an unreasonable one. We have made the choice to harm others for profit and pleasure and refused any nonviolent means of attaining our desires because our desires are inherently at odds with any sort of healthy society."

It's just really weird to me that there are complaints about fighting against evil empires, slavers, and bandits.

 

[Voadam]

Of course, some folks say that feels punitive in practice rather than rewarding for the regular attendees, and that they don't want their players to stress over missed xp and have the feeling of "falling behind" become a DISincentive to attend and catch up. A concept which was never an issue back in the old days of level drain, magic effects which bumped someone UP a level, and of level loss for death and being Raised, of course. Because different players' xp totals would naturally vary.

In my experience it was an issue.

I ran a long time 1e game with a big core group who mostly were there a bunch but also some people who were there every once or twice a year or couple of years. Everyone was different levels pretty soon due to the different xp charts, multiclassing, ability score xp bonuses, and not being there for 100% of everything but the core group was all within two or later three levels of each other even with the ranger betraying his nature god and losing a level as he turned non-good and now a fighter.

Then someone is in town and shows up who has not been there for three years, and I have basically four options.

1 Play their old much lower level character who is way below the current module guidelines.
2 Play the old character but level him up some.
3 Make a new character who is at the party level or whatever the guideline for new pcs we are using (lowest active PC's xp amount, that amount but one level lower, or whatever).
4 play an NPC for the game.

I don't really want the guest experience with our group to be playing a second level character as the otherwise high level group goes through the frost giants or whatever.

 

[payn]

Or here's another example:

"Please help save our loved ones," begged the villager, "A group of bandits invaded our peace festival because we didn't have weapons during it and took as slaves all those they did not slaughter!"

The Paladin shook his head.

"Your town watch had previously arrested members of that bandit group for robbing and killing people and put them in jail, thus both of you have unjustly held prisoners. The bandits say they'll stop attacking you if you stop trying to arrest them."

"We're trying to arrest them because they keep attacking us!" protested a watchman.

The Paladin drew his sword.

"How dare you! Those bandits might have tragic backstories! Have you tried not attacking them?"

"We had left them alone until they attacked our peace festival!" shouted a villager, "are you seriously unable to make moral judgements on which of us is in the wrong in this?!"

The Paladin considered a moment.

"The bandits clearly had unmet material needs which is why they robbed and murdered you all. That makes you the evil ones! Your peace festival was flaunting your prosperity, you were practically asking the bandits to attack you!"

"That's not actually true," called out a justly imprisoned bandit, "We just hate the villagers and want to murder, enslave, and rob them all. The only reason we haven't wiped them all out is because they were capable of defending themselves. Just because there's an in-group/out-group divide doesn't mean it's an unreasonable one. We have made the choice to harm others for profit and pleasure and refused any nonviolent means of attaining our desires because our desires are inherently at odds with any sort of healthy society."

It's just really weird to me that there are complaints about fighting against evil empires, slavers, and bandits.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In my experience it was an issue.

I ran a long time 1e game with a big core group who mostly were there a bunch but also some people who were there every once or twice a year or couple of years. Everyone was different levels pretty soon due to the different xp charts, multiclassing, ability score xp bonuses, and not being there for 100% of everything but the core group was all within two or later three levels of each other even with the ranger betraying his nature god and losing a level as he turned non-good and now a fighter.

Then someone is in town and shows up who has not been there for three years, and I have basically four options.

1 Play their old much lower level character who is way below the current module guidelines.
2 Play the old character but level him up some.
3 Make a new character who is at the party level or whatever the guideline for new pcs we are using (lowest active PC's xp amount, that amount but one level lower, or whatever).
4 play an NPC for the game.

I don't really want the guest experience with our group to be playing a second level character as the otherwise high level group goes through the frost giants or whatever.

And for a one-shot like you're describing using an at-parity PC out of the blue is fine, maybe even necessary. But over a long campaign, I find that level of logical inconsistency unsatisfying.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, hopping in again briefly. Which as most people know about my threads, I hate to do.

But to briefly recap, in the vain hope of trying to get the topic somewhat back on track, let me try and nutshell the OP's points:

1. Violence is a part of popular culture, and has been for a long time. Arguably, this increased in America over the past 50 years due to specific decisions, especially ones that made profanity and sexual expression subject to more restrictions than violence.

2. The rules of D&D privilege combat, and have since the beginning. If a game presents rules that incentivize combat, people will engage in combat.

3. Finally, I would posit that changes that we have seen recently (such as removing humanoids from having a monolithic alignment) are reflecting the time. But they don't fundamentally change the nature of the game. After all, killing human bandits and killing orc bandits has the same moral valence.

I also think it is interesting to reflect on the ways that the culture of a time tends to be reflected in the products of the time. As I wrote, the love I have for B2 and the good memories of running through it were recently put to the test when I had to look at it again when I was considering running it for some teens.* It might be interesting to examine the ways that the game continues to reify the idea that problems are best solved through the actions of individuals applying force to it, but that's likely too deep for a real discussion here.

Finally, I will reiterate that I love D&D. I love combat in D&D. In a PbP game that I in right now I am playing a character that collects souls from the opponents that he kills for his Warlock patron. And my love for certain stylized violence, like John Wick, is only equaled by my hatred of bards.


*And that's not to badwrongfun people that love it. I still love it, and remember the games I played fondly. BREE-YARK! I would say that if WoTC were to re-release it for 5e, they would need to tweak some aspects of it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, hopping in again briefly. Which as most people know about my threads, I hate to do.

But to briefly recap, in the vain hope of trying to get the topic somewhat back on track, let me try and nutshell the OP's points:

1. Violence is a part of popular culture, and has been for a long time. Arguably, this increased in America over the past 50 years due to specific decisions, especially ones that made profanity and sexual expression subject to more restrictions than violence.

2. The rules of D&D privilege combat, and have since the beginning. If a game presents rules that incentivize combat, people will engage in combat.

3. Finally, I would posit that changes that we have seen recently (such as removing humanoids from having a monolithic alignment) are reflecting the time. But they don't fundamentally change the nature of the game. After all, killing human bandits and killing orc bandits has the same moral valence.

I also think it is interesting to reflect on the ways that the culture of a time tends to be reflected in the culture of the time. As I wrote, the love I have for B2 and the good memories of running through it were recently put to the test when I had to look at it again when I was considering running it for some teens.* It might be interesting to examine the ways that the game continues to reify the idea that problems are best solved through the actions of individuals applying force to it, but that's likely too deep for a real discussion here.

Finally, I will reiterate that I love D&D. I love combat in D&D. In a PbP game that I in right now I am playing a character that collects souls from the opponents that he kills for his Warlock patron. And my love for certain stylized violence, like John Wick, is only equaled by my hatred of bards.


*And that's not to badwrongfun people that love it. I still love it, and remember the games I played fondly. BREE-YARK! I would say that if WoTC were to re-release it for 5e, they would need to tweak some aspects of it.

Violence is part and parcel of D&D. It's what the rules are built to support by and large, and it's where most of the mechanical fun of the game comes from. If anything that has increased, not decreased, in recent years, with the stronger and stronger focus on unque special characters showing off their cool superpowers.

 

[Necropolitan]

the game continues to reify the idea that problems are best solved through the actions of individuals applying force to it

It doesn't.

As I previously pointed out D&D has more problems that require violence to solve, it doesn't say that violence should be used to solve more problems.

If you have 100 bandit attacks and 1 dry well that doesn't mean that the game is saying you need to put the well to the sword, it's saying you're in a setting where there are way more bandit attacks than dry wells.

As for the claims of 'individuals,' I am certain that the people affected by the problems would prefer there to be more than the PCs going into action (and the PCs will likely feel the same way) but the PCs are the people who are there so they will heroically step up and deal with it.

If a PC runs into a burning building to save a child it's not saying that they're more effective than a group of firefighters, it's saying there were the right person in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It doesn't.

As I previously pointed out D&D has more problems that require violence to solve, it doesn't say that violence should be used to solve more problems.

If you have 100 bandit attacks and 1 dry well that doesn't mean that the game is saying you need to put the well to the sword, it's saying you're in a setting where there are way more bandit attacks than dry wells.

As for the claims of 'individuals,' I am certain that the people affected by the problems would prefer there to be more than the PCs going into action (and the PCs will likely feel the same way) but the PCs are the people who are there so they will heroically step up and deal with it.

If a PC runs into a burning building to save a child it's not saying that they're more effective than a group of firefighters, it's saying there were the right person in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.

If it happens that way every time though (at least on camera), the game pretty much is saying that.