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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5575059" data-attributes="member: 8461">So the other day, I was reading a gamer blog, and this particular topic came up.At first, the blog post seemed to be about playing in a campaign where the PCs faced "realistic" consequences for their actions. That is, killing things and causing general mayhem brought heavy legal and social consequences, akin to what would happen in (apparently contemporary) real life if people acted like that.That part made for a pretty cool idea about running a game, since all of the campaigns I've played in had a much more "wild west" feeling to them, where the only justice was found at the end of a sword, and the battle lines were usually fairly clear.But then, the blog started to talk about the effects of this sort of game on the players. The author made it very clear that he thinks that engaging in this sort of thinking - the idea of categorizing entire groups of sentient creatures as things to kill (e.g. "it's a group of orcs, let's get ready to fight") - was something that shaped the players' mentality over time, and encouraged them to think of actual categories of people (e.g. nationalities, ethnicities, etc.) in similar categorical, dismissive ways.Now, to be fair, the author never said that engaging in fictional violence causes people to actually become violent. Rather, he was of the opinion that engaging in fictional violence (not just seeing it, but being an active part of it) desensitized people towards the idea of violence in real life. He considered this "obvious" that you were "training yourself to think in a certain way."I personally don't believe in this at all. I've been playing RPGs for almost two decades, with plenty of campaigns and characters that have glorified the heroes for putting enemies to death. I'd like to think they weren't all totally simplistic, but at the same time I never included a heavy dose of real-world morality in a fantasy game (though obviously there was some morality, since the PCs are supposed to be heroes).In all of that time, I don't believe I've become desensitized to violence that actually happens, both around me and in the world at large. I don't think my friends and fellow gamers have either. In short, I don't think that fictional violence shapes our mindset in any way (in fact, I think it might even be helpful to engage in that sort of imagining, as an outlet for violent impulses).What do you think? Does violent role-playing shape how we think and react to actual violence?</blockquote>

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