Always with the killing

[nedjer]

Won't work.

Good points but Will work!

There's not a whole hill of beans to support the 'born bad' or 'caveman conflict' primes violence interpretations.

There's a stack of evidence to suggest authoritarian parenting, toxic social environments and custodial governance sponsor conformist expressions of violence.

Doug's points won't stop combat, (which is IMO good), but they can make it more varied, more subtle and more 'meaningful' than monster-bashing.

Boys don't have to be boys; they can, occasionally, have a go at being men

 

[Dausuul]

Heroism is far from the only reason we play RPGs. If it were, we wouldn't see evil parties, or amoral/mercenary parties who are just in it for gold and glory.

I think Umbran is on the right track here: We play RPGs because in an RPG we can do things that real life doesn't let us do. In D&D, that may involve being a hero and having a showdown with grand dramatic evil. Other times it's being a villain and perpetrating that grand dramatic evil yourself. And sometimes it's just slugging it out with big scary monsters at risk of life and limb.

In order to make an RPG campaign work, you have to find something to offer your players that they can't or won't do in real life, but would like to vicariously experience through the game. You also need a way to challenge them, with rewards for success and consequences for failure.

Combat is popular because it fulfills both of those needs in a single convenient package. Plus it's relatively easy to write rules for it, if only because we have thousands of years of wargames to draw upon. But there are other ways to accomplish the same goal--romance, for example, or exploration, or political intrigue. You just have to decide what your chosen mode of conflict/challenge will be; pick or build a system that supports it; and then find players who are on board with it.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Actually, thoughts like this are precisely the problem the OP struggles with.

Heroism is not about defeating enemies, it is about helping people.

Now you can make lots of things to threaten others, then call the people who destroy those things heroes. But the heroism lies in destroying the threat, not in the act of killing itself or the monty haul of loot you get as a result. Conflating the two issues is part of the problem the OP has.

Heroism (and his little brother Courage) is not about killing, but helping and doing the right thing. It is about overcoming your fears and living up to a higher purpose. Turning to your friend and saying, "no, you are being a racist/sexist/etc and that is wrong": that is Heroism right there. Doing the right thing when it would be soooo easy to do the wrong thing: that is heroism.

The game I designed actually has a Heroism attribute in it. It represents the degree of selflessness a person has. Not the amount of killing they do.

Notice that I never indicated killing anywhere in my post. You made the leap from "defeating enemies" to "killing and looting" all on your own.

While I do not disagree one bit as to your definition of heroism, from a gaming perspective playing a game where you turn and say, "no, you are being a racist/sexist/etc and that is wrong" may be roleplaying a heroic act, but it probably won't do much to evoke feelings of success at an emotional level from the players of the game.

It is the desire for these feelings that I believe leads to the focus on combat in most games.

 

[Lidgar]

A quick and easy way to deemphasize killing is reducing the XP award (to the point of nullifying or even a negative award in some cases) for killing.

Instead, provide greater reward for solving problems, traps, encounters, and deeds. If the players want their PC's to advance, they will be attracted to what gets them there.

This was a pretty common tactic in my 2e days, although not with the specific intention to simply reduce killing. I think it was just a move to get away from the more standard "kill and loot" days of 1e, to the very story-driven Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and other "heavy on fluff", campaign world settings.

In both cases I had a lot of fun.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yeah, I could use different systems. I'm making my own system which is far less combat centered. I can deal with the combat, but what I don't want to deal with are my players, honestly.

I've has about three different groups so far in my DMing time. All of them had the same thing in common: they loved killing things. It wasn't just, "let kill the monsters and take the loot." It really became killing just to kill things.

Maybe I'm just a little crazy. I've considered this many times. And i know the game isn't real, but I still don't like having the things that I create be brutally murdered just because, even if they are imaginary, and i do make the NPC's of my world...and all the other stuff.

One time, it was an NPC i had a story for. He had a wife and a daughter, who was key to the story i had in mind. Players go in and I, speaking as the innkeeper, say something that pisses off the player. So he cuts his head off, mounts it on a stick and parades around town scaring everyone off. The rest of the player thought it was funny. I was very sad. I rather liked that innkeeper...

Reading this, it seems that the issue isn't game systems as such, but a fundamental disconnect between you and the players about what constitutes a fun game.

If the players are long term friends, then it may be difficult to get a decent resolution, but at least you can talk to them about it. If they are just a group that you game with, it may be worth seeking a different group.

I know that I'd not be happy running or playing in a game where the PCs act like bloodthirsty psychopaths. I'd just get no enjoyment from it (and it is partially the reason why I'm not actively in any gaming group at the moment).

I do hope you can come up with a satisfactory resolution.

Cheers

 

[Dausuul]

Notice that I never indicated killing anywhere in my post. You made the leap from "defeating enemies" to "killing and looting" all on your own.

I would suggest that "defeating enemies" ought to be replaced by "overcoming challenges."

Suppose, for instance, that one were to run a campaign about a quest into the howling arctic wastes, in search of a way to reverse the world's slow descent into an ice age. No combat, just a struggle to survive and make progress in a brutal, unforgiving environment.

This could be quite an exciting and heroic game, although you'd need much more developed wilderness survival rules than D&D possesses. But would you call it "defeating enemies?" You could think of snow and cold and rough terrain as "enemies," I guess, but it seems a stretch.

(In any case, as I said above, it's not really about heroism per se. Heroism is just one of many opportunities for vicarious experience in RPGs.)

 

[S'mon]

I think the chain "the US military used something they called role-playing" to "minis wargaming" to RPGs as we know them today... seems pretty weak to me. I've never seen anyone demonstrate clear linkage between the role-adoption training and psychological exploration tool role-playing and Gygax and his crew, other than the name of the activity, so I am a bit skeptical..

US Military roleplaying-Major Wesley-Braunstein-Dave Arneson-Gary Gygax

The Ars Ludi blog has tons of great info on this.

 

[S'mon]

There's a stack of evidence to suggest authoritarian parenting, toxic social environments and custodial governance sponsor conformist expressions of violence.

And The Gods of the Copybook Headings with Terror and Slaughter Return (see sig)

 

[nedjer]

Heroism is far from the only reason we play RPGs. If it were, we wouldn't see evil parties, or amoral/mercenary parties who are just in it for gold and glory.

I think Umbran is on the right track here: We play RPGs because in an RPG we can do things that real life doesn't let us do. In D&D, that may involve being a hero and having a showdown with grand dramatic evil. Other times it's being a villain and perpetrating that grand dramatic evil yourself. And sometimes it's just slugging it out with big scary monsters at risk of life and limb.

In order to make an RPG campaign work, you have to find something to offer your players that they can't or won't do in real life, but would like to vicariously experience through the game. You also need a way to challenge them, with rewards for success and consequences for failure.

Combat is popular because it fulfills both of those needs in a single convenient package. Plus it's relatively easy to write rules for it, if only because we have thousands of years of wargames to draw upon. But there are other ways to accomplish the same goal--romance, for example, or exploration, or political intrigue. You just have to decide what your chosen mode of conflict/challenge will be; pick or build a system that supports it; and then find players who are on board with it.

It's not a great analogy, as Assassin's Creed 2 is far from open-ended, but there the grand dramatic evil is spread over the setting, parkour, plot, stealth and 'the kill'. The entertainment is maybe more in solving the challenge/ playing the part as a whole, rather than any wish for simulated violence or to experience being genuinely evil in an evil fishtank game.

 

[Umbran]

US Military roleplaying-Major Wesley-Braunstein-Dave Arneson-Gary Gygax

The Ars Ludi blog has tons of great info on this.

Okay, that's kind of cool, if it is accurate. However, looking at this:

ars ludi » Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games

I think this rather weakens the idea that military role playing roots implies violence in the game:

"He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying."

Dave seems to have immediately grasped the idea that you don't need to kill things to succeed in your RPG goals. The whole point seems to be that the military RP was violence-centric, but Dave chose to step away from that!