Always with the killing

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I somehow doubt that Clarabell will have a similar problem when her players parade the slain innkeeper's head on a stick around town.

Controlling evil PCs is, IME, easier than controlling smart, bloodthirsty ones.

 

[Henry]

I guess it depends on the story you hope to see come out of the game. Twelve Angry Men would've been a snooze-fest if Henry Fonda had punched the other 11 men until they voted not guilty.

I KNEW that movie was missing something, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

 

[Anselyn]

Pacifism is a very rare moral position, even among pacifists. While quite a few people claim to be pacifists, in practice virtually no one actually practices it because the logical upshot of pacifism is that someone who isn't a pacifist kills you in very short order. One really easy test of this is to ask the supposed pacifist whether they believe that they should contact the police in the event that they have been wronged (robbed, assaulted, raped, had a family member murdered, ect.)

The existence of an effective police force in a well-regulated society isn't contingent on the use of violence or a requirement for violent self defence. Standard punishments, it seems to me, are the deprivation of resources or liberty not the infliction of pain.

What definiton of pacifism are you using here?

 

[Umbran]

Standard punishments, it seems to me, are the deprivation of resources or liberty not the infliction of pain.

What definiton of pacifism are you using here?

I think the question isn't about the punishment, but of apprehending the criminal and/or protecting the victim in the short term - things we've as yet been able to make categorically non-violent.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think it's very easy to create a conflict without the use of fighting.

 

[WizarDru]

I guess I'm thinking the problem is not that you convince your players to not be murderous psychopaths than wonder why you're playing with three completely separate groups of them. I'd recommend that you run, not walk, over to the Gamers seeking Gamers part of the site and start looking.


Now, as to the idea of why is combat, violence and yes, KILLING, such a big part of the game? A few reasons. First off, D&D was born from a war game. Self-obvious, but worth remembering. Secondly, D&D and many RPGs are specifically meant to recreate a long tradition of myths, tales, stories and fantasies of adventure. Many of those things center on violent interactions. Whether it be Jason and the Argonuats, Le Morte d'Arthur, The Fellowship of the Ring or The Walking Dead...the story of heroes battling monsters has compelled us for millennium. Games based on at least partly recreating this experience in game form is going to reflect their sources.

Third, and this has been discussed but deserves reiterating, combat is the aspect of such games that requires the most adjudication. Unlike social interactions, which can have actual interfaces at the table, combat is almost entirely conceptual. You may use a funny voice or strange accent to pretend to be 'ze Baronn' and put the words in his mouth...but you're not going to reproduce his swordsmanship or spellcasting in combat with a minotaur. There has been more than one debate about the question of a charismatic player with a non-charismatic character or vice-versa...but generally a lot of rules are not needed to dictate a parlez with the lord of the castle and the PC's paladin...but games need more detail beyond "I try to appeal to Lord Dimwitty's sense of duty to arrange for us to access Dorwin Pass" for a combat encounter.

None of this is to say that non-combat is BadWrongFun. Quite the opposite. Some of the best sessions of gaming I've ever HAD featured exaclty zero combat. But a lot of games and gamers WANT the violence. When I play Mutants and Masterminds, I don't want to play super desk-clerks. I want to play The Avengers. I want to kick bad-guys in the tail-feathers and send them packing.

The exact mix and balance varies from group to group. I prefer a healthy mix of gameplay. Sometimes my group and I enjoy being detectives or navigating the high courts of powerful people. Sometimes they just wanna blow off some steam and murdalize some marauding irredeemable bad guys.

Or, as one of my players puts it: "...them orcs ain't gonna kill themselves!"

 

[Umbran]

I guess it depends on the story you hope to see come out of the game. Twelve Angry Men would've been a snooze-fest if Henry Fonda had punched the other 11 men until they voted not guilty.

I've not just watched Twelve Angry Men, I've acted in it. Juror #6 (no, he doesn't get a name) has, if I recall correctly, six lines in the entire show. Most of them are "Yes," "No," "Guilty" or "Not Guilty".

It is, in fact, a snoozefest. In terms of keeping all of the characters engaged and participating, it is lousy! We had people napping during rehearsals for an hour before anyone noticed they'd dropped off!

 

[Celebrim]

The existence of an effective police force in a well-regulated society isn't contingent on the use of violence...

It's not? Have you attended a police academy lately? Because, so far as I know, police officers are still taught and required to use in their careers handguns, physical restraints, clubs of various sorts, and hand to hand combat. Do you think these things and skills are unnecessary in a 'well-regulated society' or that they are no longer employed?

...or a requirement for violent self defence. Standard punishments, it seems to me, are the deprivation of resources or liberty not the infliction of pain.

I think we can quibble over whether the deprivation of resources and liberty constitutes torture, but I don't think you can even rationally advance an argument that incarceration doesn't inflict pain.

What definiton of pacifism are you using here?

Simply put, to refrain from the use of violence. I will hold as definitive the definition of pacifism advanced by leading and recognized pacifists like Mohandas Gandhi. If there is some squirrelly definition of pacifism out there that boils down to "Refraining from the use of violence unless it is absolutely necessary" or similar such qualifiers that say only some violence is immoral, then I don't find such a definition to be very useful because under such a definition virtually everyone (including me) will claim to be a pacifist. Not many people brag of using violence that wasn't necessary, nor do I know of many that claim that all violence is morally superior to nonviolence. So if pacifism is to mean anything at all, it must mean something different in practice than what everyone not in the category believes.

So far as I know, it is not possible to apprehend, restrain, and confine an unwilling person without resorting to some sort of violence. I further note that its not possible to avoid using violence to restrain and confine someone who is unwilling even if they themselves are non-violent, a fact that pacifist recognize and loudly point out when they are arrested but which seems to escape their attention at other times.

 

[nedjer]

Yes, but - it could just as well be interpreted that the natural tendency to violence is most easily expressed when given the sanction of authority.

It couldn't, because there's no standup evidence of hardwiring for violence. Quite the opposite, our brains develop lesions when exposed to seriously violent situations and our outside nuts are in the wrong place. We're plain not psychologically or physically well-adapted for violence. There's a whopping great mountain of evidence that violence is primarily the result of the factors set out.

The 'born bad' idea is, until other evidence shows up, tabloid denialism.

So I'll be good with 'natural tendency' as soon as I wake up with my nuts on the inside

 

[nedjer]

Can we have some reasonable movie analogies:

Rambo
Jean Claude v D
Chuck N
Seagal
Dolph
Tango and Cash
Lethal Weapon
Terminator 3
Aliens 3

v's

Where Eagles Dare
633 Squadron
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Pulp Ficton
The Godfather
Terminator
AvP
Resident Evil
Apocalypse Now
Beau Geste
Nikita