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

[Remathilis]

If I were to go to a forum and a thread with people who love discussing the joys of manual transmission (stickshift4eva dot com ... although, Rule 34 ... um ...), I might not want to post continuously about how they really should be driving automatics. I mean, I could! But I probably will get the same reactions.

This is what every D&D 24 edition thread has felt like for the last year and a half.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This is what every D&D 24 edition thread has felt like for the last year and a half.

 

[Remathilis]

I mean if we applied the complaints about violence in D&D to an actual campaign:

"Please noble heroes, save my people," begged the villager, "Valdniput's hordes are ravaging the land, enslaving all those they don't slaughter! None are spared, not women, children, or the elderly or disabled! You're our only hope."

"I'm very sorry but we can't," replied the Paladin, "Using violence against the invaders would make us just as bad as them. Besides we're not from your kingdom so it would be imperialism, which is bad even if the only thing we'd be doing is helping defeat a genocidal invasion. And maybe Valdniput the Unrepentantly Evil and Endlessly Cruel grew up poor or was otherwise wronged in the past and thus him slaughtering your people is somehow excusable. Besides, he's creating jobs for the unfairly discriminated against child-eating Torture Demons in his army."

"Um actually us Torture Demons don't NEED to eat children, we just choose to because as our names suggests we are demons who enjoy torturing people," cut in a Torture Demon, "The villagers are entirely correct to want us gone, we reject morality of our own free will. Now if you'll excuse me I have a child to eat."

"MWAHAHA!" laughed Valdniput as he kicked a series of puppies, "ALL SHALL BOW BEFORE ME! Now grovel at my feet and I might let you live the rest of your miserable lives as my slaves instead of putting you all to the sword!"

The Paladin nodded. "See, he's offering a peaceful solution. Clearly it would be wrong of us to fight him. Besides, maybe Valdniput isn't Evil and is instead villain-coded and thus we should side with him against the actually Evil peaceful villagers. After all the status quo is Evil and Valdniput is disrupting it, thus making him Good."

Valdniput's army should be wary of fire with all the strawmen in their ranks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is what every D&D 24 edition thread has felt like for the last year and a half.

To be fair, the by a huge margin largest car manufacturer in the world hasn't announced they will only be making stick shifts from now on (but you can still drive your legacy automatics if you want).

 

[MGibster]

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.

This thread prompted me to take a look at good old B2, and I think it's a pretty solid introductory adventure. There are plenty of NPCs to interact with both inside and outside the keep and players are free to decide how they tackle the Caves of Chaos. It's a little dated, sure, but not embarrassingly so. Bree-Yark!

 

[Micah Sweet]

This thread prompted me to take a look at good old B2, and I think it's a pretty solid introductory adventure. There are plenty of NPCs to interact with both inside and outside the keep and players are free to decide how they tackle the Caves of Chaos. It's a little dated, sure, but not embarrassingly so. Bree-Yark!

I would happily run it right now. In fact, it's part of my settings sandbox.

 

[Necropolitan]

Valdniput's army should be wary of fire with all the strawmen in their ranks.

Who exactly am I strawmanning and how?

Because I already laid out my actual arguments in my other posts, the sketches were for comedic purposes.

 

[payn]

 

[Thomas Shey]

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:

I do somewhat apologize for helping the side trip, though I think initially it was fairly on topic (i.e. what sort of actions advancement systems incentivize).

What's your feeling about my position that the very structure of classes (at least the ones that exist now) tend to put their thumb on the scale of wanting most things to turn toward violence? In its most basic form, if you're playing a class who almost all their abilities are about fighting, its hard to see that you're not going to want to fight a lot in most people's case?

Any thoughts you'd care to express?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I do somewhat apologize for helping the side trip, though I think initially it was fairly on topic (i.e. what sort of actions advancement systems incentivize).

What's your feeling about my position that the very structure of classes (at least the ones that exist now) tend to put their thumb on the scale of wanting most things to turn toward violence? In its most basic form, if you're playing a class who almost all their abilities are about fighting, its hard to see that you're not going to want to fight a lot in most people's case?

Any thoughts you'd care to express?

I completely agree. The very structure of WotC 5e classes tells you what their primary purpose is: mechanically representing how they fight. Very little in the way of non-combat mechanics. One of the things I love about Level Up is effort it goes to to shift that balance somewhat. That is a game where combat is important, but not the main reason we're here.

I feel similarly about many OSR games, although in those cases it's the general rules that push non-combat solutions as opposed to class mechanics, which tend to be simpler across the board.