Always with the killing

[Ariosto]

King Arthur Pendragon (Chaosium and others) came to offer more roles, but from the start was primarily a game about knights: people bred and raised, along with the horses that formed the other half of the medieval armored fighting system, to be efficient killers. Their class actually urged them to desire violence above all, just one of the ways in which it was in conflict with Christianity.

That can be an inner conflict, for which the game has an extensive rules system. Personality Traits, Religious Virtues (for several religions), Chivalric Virtues, and Passions (loyalty, amour, hatred, fear, and so on) make up a sub-system with I think more going on than the personal combat rules.

Those factors can come into external struggles as well, separately or in combination with skill ratings. For instance, one can get a bonus when Inspired by a Passion. One can succumb to a Trait that temptation brings into play.

Both marriage and courtly romance are among the activities given special treatment. The rules set is designed, ideally, for a campaign that spans generations, so that the first characters' babies grow up as their parents (if so fortunate) grow old.

Fighting can be a very dangerous business. Even short of immediate death, wounds can be debilitating and recovery uncertain. One may be weeks at mending, or weeks at dying.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not entirely convinced that making combat more deadly promotes less combat/more role play. It might, but, I'm not convinced it does. There are plenty of games with pretty lethal combat rules, that do presume a rather lot of combat.

For a game to break out of the kill and loot mentality, you have to completely rewrite the reward system. Not killing something shouldn't be an equal option, it has to be the better option, because, by and large, the most pragmatic answer to a lot of problems is putting a bullet in it.

Take superhero genre games. In supers games, we're not supposed to kill stuff. But, the most pragmatic, and probably the best solution is for Batman to let Joker go splat on the pavement after falling off a tall building twice. Players are almost always more pragmatic than fictional characters.

You have to speak to that pragmatism. Finding a non-violent solution has to presented in the game in such a way that it becomes the best option most of the time. That way, players will do it.

Because, really, why would I otherwise? If I put the Joker in Arkham, he'll just escape and hurt more people. Sure, I could try to convince that tribe of goblins that eating the townsfolk is bad, but, that plan might not work, and blowing them all up with a fireball solves the problem faster and probably more finally.

The scenarios have to be set up in such a way that "Blow them up" is not the solution.

I'm really not sure how to achieve that.

 

[WizarDru]

Myself, I'd like to change this, or at least find a some rules I can crib to make the D&D games I play more about heroism in general, and less about killin' stuff in specific.

Can you give some examples of what 'more about heroism' means? What sort of interactions or options can you think of that would provide the opportunity for the heroes to be more heroic without combat? And why aren't these already molded in the rules?

I'd argue that with each successive version, D&D has moved more and more towards that model of providing non-combat resolution methods and ways to make such situations more exciting. It can be argued that stuff like Skill Challenges don't necessarily succeed at that goal (though I would disagree, personally).

I guess the question becomes, what would make the players seem more heroic WITHOUT the use of violence? Many of the heroic actions I can think of are NOT conducive to lengthy play. Many other 'heroic' activities sound like single person activities...or stuff that certainly some party members will have no ability to help with. I'm sure you could make situations where non-violent 'heroic' tasks come up, but could you base a campaign around them? I'm not sure.

In one of my recent games, the heroes were on-board a ship that was attacked. They managed to get themselves to safety, but we initialized a skill challenge to rescue the other passengers and some of the special cargo they needed to protect. In this case, each character had some skills that they could contribute to the challenge, using their specific talents.

But if you want to base an entire game around primarily non-combat pursuits, you'll have to work hard at making sure characters are given equal things to do. The problem you'll probably run in to is that most D&D characters are balanced and created around the axis of their functions IN combat. Removing that focus unfairly affects some classes more than others. Less so in 4e than previously, but you still have a situation where skill-heavy classes and high INT characters are more likely going to benefit over combat-specialists. A rogue can find use for stuff like sleight-of-hand or bluff in non-violent situations...the fighter is going to find "Tide of Iron" far less useful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The scenarios have to be set up in such a way that "Blow them up" is not the solution.

I'm really not sure how to achieve that.

An idea for a supers game I had: What if the party's actions affected the town they are protecting? So letting the Joker go splat got Gotham -10 Peace Points (Vigilantes take to the street! Thugs avenge the death of their boss!), but not letting him go splat got Gotham +30 Peace Points (people recognize the value of law and order, the Joker becomes pathetic instead of a martyr)? As Gotham's Peace score goes higher, crime decreases, people get safer, and people start smiling when you see them on the subway.

You could take this to a limited degree in a D&D game, but so many D&D games don't revolve around a single city or town or kingdom or planet or plane of existence that it is a little harder. I suppose you could link it to All Of Existence, but that kind of looses the effect. Still, doing that might make it seem more mythically heroic. You kill goblins, and the whole world gets a little brighter!

 

[Dausuul]

I ran one campaign in which the driving conflict was between the gods and the demon Lords of Chaos. Since war is a chaotic and destructive activity, any time the gods got in a fight with the forces of the Abyss, it ended up making the Abyss stronger in the long run--even if the gods won the battle. It ultimately led to the downfall of the pantheon.

 

[Celebrim]

The scenarios have to be set up in such a way that "Blow them up" is not the solution.

I'm really not sure how to achieve that.

1) The party is being foiled by good-hearted and well-meaning people who just see things differently than they do. There are plenty of matters of ethics, morality, and perception that good people can differ over. "Blow them up" is here not a solution because it means hurting innocents and coming into conflict with the very people they wish to help and protect.

ex. The PC's have to enter into the tomb of a great hero to precure a magical mcguffin. The tomb is well protected by the extremely honorable local villagers, who aren't convinced of the need to descrecrate the tomb or of worthiness of the PC's.

2) The party is being foiled by a rival who has considerable favor and respect by the public and/or people in places of power. The rival need not be evil. He just might not like or trust the PC's, perhaps for reasons that are quite valid. Direct violent conflict with the rival will only confirm to everyone that the rival was right to distrust the PC's.

ex. A highly placed minister serving the king has set up, duped, or framed the PC's. Killing the minister does not help get the players out of trouble, nor does killing his soldiers. Evasion, investigation, and diplomacy are far better strategies.

3) The party is faced with a threat that they can only overcome with the aid of another enemy. Simply antagonizing that enemy only makes matters worse.

ex. A tribe of centaurs that ill-trusts humans and has been in sporadic conflict with them, must be recruited to fight off an impending goblin invasion. Without this aid, the village is unlikely to be saved.

4) The problem is such that combat can't solve it. Usually this is a 'man vs. nature' scenario. For example, the problem might be one of survival - ship wrecked, lost without equipment in hostile terrain, etc. Or it can be conflict with some sort of wide scale natural phenomenom - weather, plague, earthquakes, etc. - but in a magical setting the definition of natural is extremely broad and can include everything from the depredations well meaning but niave or foolish deity to embodied curses. To solve the problem the PC's will have to leverage their non-combat powers and abilities.

ex. The PC's have to survive and then deal with the aftermath of a tsunami. While some combat is involved, the majority of problems require more mundane skills.

5) The problem involves creating something, not destroying something. For example, the party might be called upon to make shelters for helpless innocents caught in some disaster. Or the party may need to perform some sort of mundane labor. Or the party may need to craft a particular set of articles in order to activate a needed magical mcguffin. I find occasional scenarios of this sort very interesting as a DM because it highlights to the players the limits of what they might otherwise believe is their exceptional power. In such scenarios, usually the players find they are rather inadequate compared to normally 'helpless' NPCs.

ex. In one adventure, the parties discover that the trouble with the kobold tribe is due to the fact that a recently dead town leader had negotiated a secret arrangement where the kobolds were paid off in exchange for peaceful coexistance. The arrangement would not have been popular with the locals who would rather exterminate the little buggers. The adventure was actually precipitated by an unscuplous successor who had been charged with carrying on the treaty instead pocketing the resources and selling them. One possible solution to the adventure (and arguably the easier than digging the kobolds out of their home) is precuring the missing resources (keg of beer, barrels of apples, wheels of cheese) and reinstating the treaty.

 

[Umbran]

I'm really not sure how to achieve that.

Well, since you raised the Supers genre, let's look at how one supers game handled exactly that problem.

In Marvel Superheroes (the original FASERIP game), the hero had Karma points - they could be spent on advancement, altering die rolls, and such - They're a pretty potent resource n the game. You earned Karma for doing heroic things (defeating the bad guys, getting old ladies out of trees and walking kittens across the street). If you failed to do the right thing, you lost Karma points.

If someone died as an unintentional result of your actions, you lost a chunk of Karma. If someone died because you outright killed them, you lost all your Karma. Also, your Popularity stat went down if it became public knowledge.

On top of that, the system was designed for killing to be difficult. You usually had to try to accomplish it, beating a guy when he was already down, and they had to be out of Karma (villains had Karma too).

So, as far as the reward system was concerned, killing the bad guy was generally a bad idea.

 

[nedjer]

Given your assertion about male testes, no mammal on the planet is biologically predisposed to violence, but pretty much all reptiles would be. That has more to do with warm-blooded vs. cold-blooded than "predisposition."

Interesting Not sure where armadillos, sloths, elephants, rhinos, whales and dolphins fit into that

At no small risk of straying well beyond the slightest expertise: a carnivorous dinosaur, croc or komodo seems pretty well prepared for and maybe 'predisposed' - adapted might well have been better as I don't think reptiles go looking for fights as such - to violence as they've protective armour, racks of sharp teeth and a brain that struggles to put together a tasty salad.

Mammals appear to have headed off down a niche which rewards guile and avoids direct confrontation with serious competition. Our 'reptilian' brain is still there, and we fall back on it when we get tired, threatened or it works well. However, complex mammals seem predisposed to avoid violence as a result of access to higher and better cognitive options.

E.g stags have pointy antlers but confrontations are restricted to seasonal mating displays and territorial disputes, which don't seem to operate according to a predisposition to violence, i.e. stags lock horns instead of jumping out of hiding and goring even when doing so should give an advantage.

By the time we get to modern humans we've lost the thickened foreheads, are totally soft-shelled, don't have any claws and avoid violence providing resources are plentiful. Unless we have authoritarian personalities or are driven by authoritarian personalities. There may be a genetic element to authoritarian personalities but there's strong evidence they develop through socialisation.

Which possibly points to a distinction between 'reptilian' roleplaying and 'higher mammalian' roleplaying. (Hopefully hearing a few howls of protest there )

 

[Dausuul]

Human beings, like most animals, are equipped to handle violent situations. That's why we have adrenal glands, plus a host of other adaptations. Evolution tends to whack animals that can't cope with violence one way or another.

However, evolution also tends to whack animals that are overly prone to violence. Predators look for prey that is sick or very young or very old, because it's less likely to put up a fight. Species that fight one another over mates or territory usually evolve elaborate rituals to avoid a real, life-or-death confrontation... because life-or-death confrontations by definition result in death for one participant, and if you're going to stake your life on a series of coin flips, you won't live very long. You may take a lot of other critters with you, but that doesn't do anything for your personal genes.

 

[Umbran]

Mammals appear to have headed off down a niche which rewards guile and avoids direct confrontation with serious competition.

It isn't just mammals - in general, animals (even insects) tend to use "ritual" combat and display over actual confrontation, when they can. It's a simple issue of risk - is whatever you are fighting over worth the injury? And remember, it isn't like wild animals get to go to the doctor and rest up after getting hurt - an injury may not immediately kill them, but the impaired performance while they heal might.

That being said, there's any number of mammals who are well-known for dealing out violence when need be. Wolverines, wild boar, rhinos, bulls - all known for being more than ready to show you who's boss quite unequivocally.

Modern humans aren't so hot at doing that risk assessment, at least in respect to each other.