Always with the killing

[Hussar]

Orc's have feelings too What about all those poor widowed orc wives and the little baby orcs. That Gimli thug and his smug elf mate should be had up in front of a war crimes tribunal

Well, fortunately, they completely sidestep this issue in the movies. No orc babies or wives - they're decanted clones. You can wipe them out without a single twinge of guilt.

 

[nedjer]

Heroes of the winning side rarely end up in those.

Did they ever actually commit any? War crimes are mostly those you do against defenseless opponents. Civilians, surrendering or captured soldiers, population centers, faking a surrender and then attacking, targeted genocide (I guess accidental isn't a crime per se), turning a blind eye to war crimes of soldiers below you in rank..

But like in everything it again falls on the definitions we grant things. Which were the parts of LoTR that you consider war, and which were not?

According to my orc mates, it's all about who writes the history. When crusty old, self-appointed spoilsport Gandalf decides it's time to put a stop to partying he sets off on a Cromwellian ethnic cleansing of epic proportions.

Starts off evicting the longstanding tenants of Moria, uses biological warfare (aka Ents) to dis Saruman (just 'cos the guy's got a few mental health issues), and goes on, ultimately, to personally slaughter a multitude of orcs using the powers of the occult.

Couldn't wait for him to bog off to the Grey Havens so they could have their very own Restoration.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2kyNbZc7oc&feature=related"]YouTube - Horrible Histories - Charles II: King of Bling[/ame]

 

[jonesy]

According to my orc mates, it's all about who writes the history.

I've found evidence that you might be right. Orcs just wanna sing, not war, but the man says otherwise:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-tjJDFfjQw]YouTube - Where there's a whip there's a way, full version[/ame]

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't recall any of the Fellowship trying to discuss the relative benefits of peaceful co-exitence with the Nazgul, for example. Nor do I recall, off hand, any instances where Conan brought the two warring factions together and, in a brilliant bit of diplomacy, defused the situation to everyone's satisfaction

I've always wanted a hero with the power of PAX PROBLISCUM.

In a last ditch effort to salvage diplomatic proceedings, you invoke the ultimate resolution in your formal attache of plenipotentiary clauses, motioning for bilateral demilitarization and cessation of hostilities for the mutual advancement and prolonged commitment to the furtherance of harmonious relations among sovereign parties.

PEACE BE WITH YOU

 

[nedjer]

I've found evidence that you might be right. Orcs just wanna sing, not war, but the man says otherwise:

Much as I suspected

 

[Saeviomagy]

Yup. Or rather: I've often seen the negative effect of games that were too lethal - either because of the system or because of 'killer-DMs':

Pc backgrounds get shorter and are eventually not written down at all, ditto for personality traits. There may still be 'roleplaying' but it's lacking depth and consistency.

There's a difference between "games that are too lethal" and "games where combat is very lethal".

You can have either one independantly: it would be entirely possible to construct a lethal game with nerf combat rules (Ok, you slaughter the 10,000,000 orcs with your rusty dagger. Then you trip over a rock and die. Next character!).

It's the opposite that is interesting: you can have a game where combat is very lethal, but then combat is also easy to avoid. If you're in a stand-up fight, you've already made your mistakes. In such a game, the violent psychos tend to die out quickly, and as long as you don't stop the game to wait for people to roll up a new character, the people who insist on playing them won't get to do a lot.

Incidentally, recruiting the rest of the group as moral enforcers is probably the most effective measure:

My own shadowrun group, for instance, after having our missions ruined by a run of violent psychos with predispositions for revenge joining us told the next PC recruited "do what you're told on this first run, or we'll take care of you: no second chances, no excuses". The player decided that violent psycho was a great archetype, pulled a gun on our opening meeting with a client, and the rest of the party disarmed him, bound him, locked him in a car trunk and left him to cool his heels in a junkyard for a day.

Unfortunately we then left the country for a week and forgot about him.

But the point is: while we did enjoy playing combat (and by that point it wasn't all that deadly to be honest), we didn't enjoy having our goals wrecked by someone who wanted to indiscriminately murder or threaten random NPCs (or us for that matter). Violence had a time and a place, and that time and place were fairly obvious.

 

[nedjer]

There's a difference between "games that are too lethal" and "games where combat is very lethal".

You can have either one independantly: it would be entirely possible to construct a lethal game with nerf combat rules (Ok, you slaughter the 10,000,000 orcs with your rusty dagger. Then you trip over a rock and die. Next character!).

It's the opposite that is interesting: you can have a game where combat is very lethal, but then combat is also easy to avoid. If you're in a stand-up fight, you've already made your mistakes. In such a game, the violent psychos tend to die out quickly, and as long as you don't stop the game to wait for people to roll up a new character, the people who insist on playing them won't get to do a lot.

Incidentally, recruiting the rest of the group as moral enforcers is probably the most effective measure:

My own shadowrun group, for instance, after having our missions ruined by a run of violent psychos with predispositions for revenge joining us told the next PC recruited "do what you're told on this first run, or we'll take care of you: no second chances, no excuses". The player decided that violent psycho was a great archetype, pulled a gun on our opening meeting with a client, and the rest of the party disarmed him, bound him, locked him in a car trunk and left him to cool his heels in a junkyard for a day.

Unfortunately we then left the country for a week and forgot about him.

But the point is: while we did enjoy playing combat (and by that point it wasn't all that deadly to be honest), we didn't enjoy having our goals wrecked by someone who wanted to indiscriminately murder or threaten random NPCs (or us for that matter). Violence had a time and a place, and that time and place were fairly obvious.

I used to try to persuade apprentice psychos that they'd watched The Shining too often, as real psychopaths tend to have 'superior' self-control and excellent 'masking' skills.

Now I don't bother; I just tell them not to be so wanky

 

[Dausuul]

My own shadowrun group, for instance, after having our missions ruined by a run of violent psychos with predispositions for revenge joining us told the next PC recruited "do what you're told on this first run, or we'll take care of you: no second chances, no excuses". The player decided that violent psycho was a great archetype, pulled a gun on our opening meeting with a client, and the rest of the party disarmed him, bound him, locked him in a car trunk and left him to cool his heels in a junkyard for a day.

You're nicer than I would have been. Had I been playing in that campaign, I probably would have just had my PC stick a silenced automatic in his ear and pull the trigger, then apologize to the client and promise to pay for cleaning the carpet.

 

[xipetotec]

This happened not so much from a big effort on our part, but our DM made a pretty cool plotline and there was so much planning and NPC interaction that we actually just didn't have time to get to the fights, which was fine by us. He actually had several fights in store for us, but our group decided to tackle the problems a little differently and he did a brilliant job of rolling along with our decisions and making a very fun session of us working out a political war and trying to stop it and at the same time make us look like good guys while we still made a lot of $$ and reputation by playing both sides of the conflict. None of it was planned but it worked out well.

Part of this was that our group made PCs with some background and long term campaign goals, the DM was aware of them, and also fleshed out a lot of NPC and NPC organizations for us to work with who also had their own goals. We spent the whole session trying to line up those goals so we all got what we wanted and was quite fun.

In another session, our DM (same one actually) bought a book of riddles and thought games. We spent the whole session trying to get past a guardian who would only let us pass if we were able to solve the puzzles. They were challenging and took us a couple of hours. We could have fought the guardian, but it was very tough and the outcome was far from certain. Classic choose your own adventure and we took the roleplay path rather then the roll-dice path. Don't get me wrong, there are times when we all agree that the next session is a fight fest cuz we need to use our shiny powers and we have done enough talking, but whether we fight or not is not necessarily dictated by the system itself.

This sounds awesome and is actually what I really want to put together. My players don't hate combat, quite the contrary, but they do "prefer" straight up roleplaying. I want to put together something in Eberron ( or maybe Dark Sun ). Being a novice though, I had hoped to mine some adventures ( even if they were from previous editions of D&D ) that were more concentrated on NPC interaction and roleplaying than combat. But not necessarily looking to eliminate combat completely.

 

[Umbran]

You're nicer than I would have been. Had I been playing in that campaign, I probably would have just had my PC stick a silenced automatic in his ear and pull the trigger, then apologize to the client and promise to pay for cleaning the carpet.

In Shadowrun, when in doubt, show the client not only that you have control, but that you are in control. Clients like to know that the runners know the meaning of term "measured response".