1. Words are stronger than blades
In a climax of a recent campaign, we removed an evil, immortal emperor that ruled the world for several hundred years. And we did it by peacefully (ok, reasonably peacefully) persuading him that it's the best thing he can do.
Of course, it wouldn't be possible to do it just by talking. If we tried too early, we would get crushed. But we worked through the whole campaign by unearthing his secrets, by finding uses for the setting's magic which he didn't know, by pulling his most powerful and (as he believed) absolutely loyal followers to our side and finally by becoming friends with what he believed to be an impersonal source of power.
By showing the emperor what we did and why we did it, we were able to destroy his belief in both his "ultimate" power and his justifications for what he did, resulting in him stepping down. At least some of us wouldn't leave his palace alive if that didn't work.
2. Metaphysical confrontation
We fought a demon.
We didn't try to kill it. We tried to break through its lack of hope, so it would eat our ally and become whole again.
It didn't try to kill us either. It tried to devour our goals and motivations, to make us accept the world as it is.
It had scriptures written in its eyes, thousands of proofs that hope is a contradiction and that change can only be for worse. It had fractally forked tongue that could find weakness in every argument and asked questions that burned away beliefs.
We used martial arts to show it how people are tied together and nobody can be complete alone. We provoked it into admitting that it's more evil than devoid of need for change. And we attacked with love as a force of necessity the demon couldn't reject.
Both scenes were strange, fun and extremely satisfying.
And both were only possible because of how the game mechanics supported them.
In a climax of a recent campaign, we removed an evil, immortal emperor that ruled the world for several hundred years. And we did it by peacefully (ok, reasonably peacefully) persuading him that it's the best thing he can do.
Of course, it wouldn't be possible to do it just by talking. If we tried too early, we would get crushed. But we worked through the whole campaign by unearthing his secrets, by finding uses for the setting's magic which he didn't know, by pulling his most powerful and (as he believed) absolutely loyal followers to our side and finally by becoming friends with what he believed to be an impersonal source of power.
By showing the emperor what we did and why we did it, we were able to destroy his belief in both his "ultimate" power and his justifications for what he did, resulting in him stepping down. At least some of us wouldn't leave his palace alive if that didn't work.
2. Metaphysical confrontation
We fought a demon.
We didn't try to kill it. We tried to break through its lack of hope, so it would eat our ally and become whole again.
It didn't try to kill us either. It tried to devour our goals and motivations, to make us accept the world as it is.
It had scriptures written in its eyes, thousands of proofs that hope is a contradiction and that change can only be for worse. It had fractally forked tongue that could find weakness in every argument and asked questions that burned away beliefs.
We used martial arts to show it how people are tied together and nobody can be complete alone. We provoked it into admitting that it's more evil than devoid of need for change. And we attacked with love as a force of necessity the demon couldn't reject.
Both scenes were strange, fun and extremely satisfying.
And both were only possible because of how the game mechanics supported them.
