Does hack-n-slashing desensitize us to violence?

[Phototoxin]

Sounds like the pirates : global warming issue!

Some games you just want to run in kill baddies have fun. Other games the PCs want to have to think ... if we kill/murder/assassinate this enemy (say an evil noble) we're going to be treated as criminals... but if we wait to prove his guilt then he's going to screw us...

It depends on if you want games to have ethical or moral dilemmas in them too.

Ultimately it depends on the DM and PCs and what type of game they want to play.

 

[Starfox]

the things we train ourselves in as part of our gaming do become part of us. And if you are inculcating a simplistic morality where it's OK to kill or marginalize other races or belief systems, then you just might be a little more likely to buy into some of the unfortunate things that work that way in the real world.

I agree this CAN happen. As Tuft points out above, the opposite can also happen; after a career of gore-fest role-playing you might feel revolted and have your ethics strengthened.

I spoke earlier about violent teem urges and how they can be channeled into sports and other constructive ways. Well, this is true. But they can also be channeled into creating child soldiers or into Hilterjugend and other organizations I cannot mention here or become political. And I suppose a very extreme RPG could do that as well. Anything can be abused, and this would be bad indeed. But I must say I have never seen such an RPG. In my experience, even the most violent gamers keep a distance between themselves and the game reality.

It is good to discuss these issues, but lets not try to force them down each others' throats. Saying "this is something to watch for" is good. Saying "don't do this, it is bad" is moralism. Trying to make legalization against this or to try to create something like a comics code for gaming is to go too far and really just as bad as the root issue. The problem with being good is that it is always a balance; stray to either side and you fail. I guess that's why we call it the "straight and narrow".

Note that I am not saying anyone here is going too far here on this board, just warning against the possibility.

 

[Jhaelen]

What do you think? Does violent role-playing shape how we think and react to actual violence?

I think, I've already been desensitized (is that really a word?!) to violence for a long time before I even started playing rpgs

More seriously, though, I actually didn't enjoy the 'hack-n-slash' playstyle that seemed to be epitomized by D&D back in the days. I prefered rpg systems that used a more 'realistic' approach towards violence, i.e. tended to regard it as a last resort (if only because it could so easily be lethal) and often required the characters to find other solutions.

I've also never seen the appeal of engaging in an 'evil' campaign. I still frown on players enjoying that kind of stuff.

These days I'm a more casual player and don't mind the occasional mindless 'hack-n-slash' action. It's fun in the same way the Diablo2 computer game is fun. But I view it more like a tactical board game than 'serious' roleplaying. If my pc kills something, he's doing it by reducing the target's hit points to zero and it's a mini that is removed from the battle-mat, nothing more.
In these games we don't indulge in portraying gracious violence. The very premise of 'kill monsters & take their stuff' is so for from anything realistic, I would never think of comparing it to actually committing acts of violence.

I still like to balance these sessions by playing different rpgs that focus on the roleplaying. Currently this is mainly our Earthdawn campaign where we spend more time dealing with the consequences of violence than engaging in violence. It's all about having to make tough moral decisions and thinking hard about what a realistic person would do in place of my character.

Engaging only in the former or only in the latter playstyle gets old pretty quick.

 

[nedjer]

Tabletop RPG violence is cartoon/ exaggerated, abstract, contextualised and, generally, impersonal. TRPGs offer 'fish tank' worlds that specifically remove 'violence' from the realities of violence. It's, therefore, more likely to offer a way to understand and re-evaluate violent tendencies than fueling them.

 

[Ariosto]

Long before D&D and "roleplaying games" arose from the wargames hobby, wargamers were accustomed to perennial accusations of being warmongers.

Those were actually anticipated and answered before the hobby itself was a going concern, in the pages of the seminal work Little Wars by H.G. Wells (first published in 1913).

And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster--and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind -- splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more--and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable "patriots," and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers--tons, cellars-full--and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

 

[Celebrim]

Long before D&D and "roleplaying games" arose from the wargames hobby, wargamers were accustomed to perennial accusations of being warmongers.

Those were actually anticipated and answered before the hobby itself was a going concern, in the pages of the seminal work Little Wars by H.G. Wells (first published in 1913).

The Japanese Imperial high command was quite a big fan of Well's little rules, and almost continually played variations on his games. It has often been argued that one of the contributing factors in Japan attacking in the USA during WWII, is that that had gamed the attack so many times that it seemed just like a natural and logical thing to do. In fact, part of what contributed to their euphoria was that the very first few days of the war played out just like their most optimistic and biased projections, which thereafter - because of the many war games they'd played - kept them always believing the most optimistic outcomes were the most realistic and always dismissing any scenarios that ended up not in their favor as unrealistic. It was this, combined with a belief in their racial superiority, that kept the Japanese high command from ever considering surrender. The games that they played always showed them that victory was always possible with just a little more commitment and sacrifice.

Did the their games solely contribute to a situation where the USA felt it had no other choice but to use an automatic weapon to end the war? No, there were many other cultural factors on both sides that led up to the logic of annihilation; but, I don't think you can examine the influence of the war games on the mentality of the Japanese High Command and claim that they had no influence in determining that ultimate outcome.

Also, I've often observed that as a war gamer I have a certain unseemly fascination with 'war porn'. That is to say, sometimes I find myself 'loving the sword for its sharpness, and not only for the things it defends'.

 

[Tuft]

The Japanese Imperial high command was quite a big fan of Well's little rules, and almost continually played variations on his games. It has often been argued that one of the contributing factors in Japan attacking in the USA during WWII, is that that had gamed the attack so many times that it seemed just like a natural and logical thing to do. In fact, part of what contributed to their euphoria was that the very first few days of the war played out just like their most optimistic and biased projections, which thereafter - because of the many war games they'd played - kept them always believing the most optimistic outcomes were the most realistic and always dismissing any scenarios that ended up not in their favor as unrealistic. It was this, combined with a belief in their racial superiority, that kept the Japanese high command from ever considering surrender. The games that they played always showed them that victory was always possible with just a little more commitment and sacrifice.

Did the their games solely contribute to a situation where the USA felt it had no other choice but to use an automatic weapon to end the war? No, there were many other cultural factors on both sides that led up to the logic of annihilation; but, I don't think you can examine the influence of the war games on the mentality of the Japanese High Command and claim that they had no influence in determining that ultimate outcome.

Also, I've often observed that as a war gamer I have a certain unseemly fascination with 'war porn'. That is to say, sometimes I find myself 'loving the sword for its sharpness, and not only for the things it defends'.

Got a good source for that? I don't disbelieve you, but I'd like to retell this to people I think will insist on a source...

 

[Ariosto]

The Japanese Imperial high command was quite a big fan of Well's little rules, and almost continually played variations on his games.

That is misleading. The Japanese military, like many others, played variations (if you will) on the Prussian Kriegsspiel of 1824 and 1862 and the naval rules of John F.T. Jane and Fletcher Pratt.

Mr. Wells developed a game that replaced the intricacies of statistical modeling with tests of player skill both in simple Chess-like rules and -- the key inspiration! -- the aiming of a toy cannon that propelled a wooden projectile.

They tell me -- what I already a little suspected -- that Kriegspiel, as it is played by the British Army, is a very dull and unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected, obsessed by the umpire at every turn, and of very doubtful value in waking up the imagination, which should be its chief function.

Wells mentions a view that he had touched on in his story "The Land Ironclads":

If Great War is to be played at all, the better it is played the more humanely it will be done. I see no inconsistency in deploring the practice while perfecting the method. But I am a civilian, and Kriegspiel is not my proper business.

 

[Ariosto]

Young and Lawford, in their 1967 classic Charge! or How to Play War Games, include an extract from Midway - the battle that doomed Japan by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masataka Okumiya.

Still more amazing, however, was the manner in which every operation ...was carried out in the games without the slightest difficulty. This was due in no small measure to the high-handed conduct of Real-Admiral Ugaki, the presiding officer who frequently intervened to set aside rulings made by the umpires.

For example, at one point the dice indicated that the carriers Akagi and Kaga had both been sunk.

Admiral Ugaki, however, arbitrarily reduced the number of enemy hits to three, which resulted in Kaga being ruled as sunk but Akagi only slightly damaged. To Okumiya's surprise even this revised ruling was subsequently cancelled and Kaga reappeared as a participant in the next part of the games.

Young and Lawford also quote Rand Corporation Paper 1041, written by Robert D. Specht in 1957:

Every command that participates in a war game benefits greatly from that traumatic experience, not necessarily because of the answers given by the game, but because of the questions the game raises, the ideas it suggests, the problems it highlights.

Specht adds a note of warning:

War-gaming may teach us convincingly of things that are not true in the real world.

 

[Celebrim]

That is misleading. The Japanese military, like many others, played variations (if you will) on the Prussian Kriegsspiel of 1824 and 1862 and the naval rules of John F.T. Jane and Fletcher Pratt.

I stand well corrected. You've obviously done your reading more recently than I have, and all you say seems a correct account.

Nevertheless, my intention was not to say that the Japanese High Command was playing the same games that Wells was playing in his parlor, but that they were 'little wars' of the same sort. And yes, they were played by others, the USA had gamed the war in the Pacific with Japan (Operation Orange) on 170 official occasions prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

The central point behind all of this being that while it would be better perhaps if all wars were just fought on paper, that those that fight cardboard battles in the Temple of War are seldom err long content to stay there. And I have certainly noticed that whether by prior inclination or long exposure, that those that play war games are not among the least loving of war when it comes.

Young and Lawford, in their 1967 classic Charge! or How to Play War Games, include an extract from Midway - the battle that doomed Japan by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masataka Okumiya

That account is familiar to me, and I believe I read the same book about 20 years ago. However, I wasn't referring primarily to the mid-war war gaming but rather to the planning stages. The Japanese had gamed a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor as early as 1927, and if I remember correctly, the first game ruled the attack a defeat on account of a counter attack by the US carriers and the stiff resistance of the defenders in the harbor. However, they kept at it. Ultimately, both sides produced games that were overly optimistic when it came to the cost of the war. I don't think you can rely as Wells suggested on the idea that those that play games will either be content to play games, or will take away the lesson that a real war would be too terrible to contemplate.

Nor have you addressed the point that I've attached to this, ancedotal though it may be. But given that you are quoting 'poets' as proof, and I'm covertly employing the counter-factual as the basis of my argument (as all citations of history must be), I figure the ancedotal may well be the strongest evidence present. So what say you, is it clear to you that wargaming has no relationship to warmongering? For my part, I think I'll stick to my original, "It depends."