Is D&D all about murder and pillaging?

[Garthanos]

Wonderful... point fingers about later editions being more violence oriented all you like. Lets poke at the greed.

"I avoided the monster and snuck around to find the money" vs "I killed the monster to stop it feeding on the human village and wasn't interested in following its tracks back to its lair". The latter used to get very little experience points, it seems very determined to encourage what? I suppose we could call it cowardice and greed?

So the looter gets MORE experience points is more likely to survive and gets more heroic luck (gack) by gaining more hit points and the hero who fights evil because its the right thing to do maybe?,and takes more risks, gets much fewer and this was a "good" thing so say the uber proud fans of early D&D... the looter had a smarter player obviously.

Sounds like we could change the title of the thread to D&D is all about fighting evil and used to be all about looting and pillaging.

 

[Quantum]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the experience gain from killing was hilariously tiny to the point where trying to level off of slaughter was fruitless.

Hmmmmm... let's see...

Basic D&D says on page 12 (not Rules Cyclopedia, original book and yes I STILL have mine):

In the game, your character will become more powerful each time you complete an adventure. The way of measuring this “power” is another number, called Experience Points; the abbreviation is XP.

When your character started, you had no Experience Points. But in your first adventure, you killed a giant snake and a goblin, and found some treasure. You get Experience Points for each of these things. For the treasure you found, you get 200 XP. (one experience point per gold piece value). For killing the monsters, you get 30 more. That adds up to 230 XP, but it’s not your total. You also get a bonus because you are a Fighter and have an above average Strength score.

This bonus is +lo% of your XP. Since you earned 230, you get 23 bonus points, for a total of 253 XP. In the Experience box at the bottom of the page, write “253.”

Did you notice that you get a lot of experience for treasure, and not much for killing monsters? It’s better to avoid killing, if you can, by tricking monsters or using magic to calm them down. You can sometimes avoid the risks of combat. But you will have to fight many monsters to get their treasures.

Remember your “Level” at the top of the front of the sheet? That relates to XP (Experience Points) in the following way; if you gain enough experience points your level goes up.

When your Level goes up, you become more powerful. Each time this happens, you will get more Hit Points. Sometimes (but not every time) when your Level goes up, your character will be able to make Saving Throws a little easier, and hit things a little more often. So the more Levels you gain, the longer you can survive, and the more treasures you can collect.

On the line at the bottom of the Experience box, write the number “2,000.” This is your goal. When you finally have this many XP, adding up your points from each and every adventure, your character will no longer be Level 1; you will move up in power, to Level 2. This doesn’t mean that you lose any XP; you will keep adding more as you get them.

You will probably work your way up to Level 3,4, 5 and so forth, becoming more powerful each time. And human characters can go all the way to 36th level, though this should take hundreds of games. For low level your goal doubles for each Level: 4,000 XP for 3rd Level, 8,000 XP for 4th Level, and so forth.

But there are points that I wanted to express: you got xp from killing monsters and getting loot in D&D Basic. There was only one other bonus, and that was from above average stat.

But it also did encourage people to use their brains and not their brawn.

And there were no additional awards for completing a mission or achieving objectives, just for killing monsters and getting their treasure, plus a bonus for above average stats.

But in order to get the treasure you had to get past the monster and often, if the DM was very crafty, there would be no way to get past the monster and you'd be forced to kill the creature.

And you also see this style of play in CRPGs as well. Especially Mmmorpgs.

 

[Garthanos]

We could change the title of the thread to D&D is all about fighting evil and used to be all about reclaiming lost treasures.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

And there were no additional awards for completing a mission or achieving objectives, just for killing monsters and getting their treasure, plus a bonus for above average stats.

But in order to get the treasure you had to get past the monster and often, if the DM was very crafty, there would be no way to get past the monster and you'd be forced to kill the creature.

And you also see this style of play in CRPGs as well. Especially Mmmorpgs.

What MMORPGs on earth are you playing? I've never seen one that rewarded you more for avoiding monsters then fighting them, and they're certainly all based towards giving you rewards based on quest achievements.

I'd like to note that, at least philosophically, there's a difference between looting - delving into the dungeon, sneaking through, and making out with the loot - and pillaging - finding the tribe of enemies, killing them all, and taking their goods.

Once again, the big note is in exploration. Dungeon delving, avoiding or bypassing monsters, using your wits to get to the treasure.

Look, I'm not here to claim early editions were this bastion of glory. I'm just saying that their emphasis was on something other then killing things.

 

[Garthanos]

Look, I'm not here to claim early editions were this bastion of glory. I'm just saying that their emphasis was on something other then killing things.

Yeah avoid the dragon ... let it kill the village no problem we arent heros.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

We could change the title of the thread to D&D is all about fighting evil and used to be all about reclaiming lost treasures.

Or just change the thread title to "Tastes great! Less filling!"

 

[ExploderWizard]

Yeah avoid the dragon ... let it kill the village no problem we arent heros.

That was certainly a valid approach. Being heroes is one approach to play, and being mercenaries or disinterested seekers of fortune are others.

 

[Quantum]

What MMORPGs on earth are you playing?

Ahem, you missed this part:

if the DM was very crafty, there would be no way to get past the monster and you'd be forced to kill the creature.

Mmorgs force you to kill the monster to get the treasure. WoW is like this. So is Champions Online.

And you can certainly claim that it is about exploration, but exploration is simply a means to achieve an end, and is not the true focus. The true focus is on defeating the creature and getting its loot. Sometimes you have no choice but to search the country side to find it or solve a mystery to get it.

But this is a poetaytoe and a poetahtoe kind of thang that all teh youngsters are hip to, savvy?

 

[Garthanos]

That was certainly a valid approach. Being heroes is one approach to play

Heroic behavior and attitudes were not very encouraged ... remember greed and the rewards there of are the "dominant" method of becoming less fragile.

Sigurd slew the dragon and walked away from its treasure lest he become the beast he destroyed.

 

[cattoy]

Murdering and pillaging are loaded terms. Certainly there is a lot of killing things and taking stuff in D&D. Most of it isn't murder and pillage.

As has been pointed out a long time ago, it's not murder if it's trying to kill you, too. It's not murder if there is no way of stopping it from killing you except escape (not always possible) or killing it first.

Don't blame the players for using the tools that the game provides. The best way to determine what D&D is all about is to read the rules.

The core rules have a lot of column inches of text devoted to violence. Much fewer column inches of text devoted to nonviolent conflict resolution.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.