Moral Dilemma: Killing and Deaths in RPGs

[Deset Gled]

Can you play and run Dungeons & Dragons without all the violent encounters and killing?

What fantasy and sci fi RPGs would you recommend as an alternative to the traditional slay the adversary and take their loot model?

Is it possible to separate "violence" and "killing"? A game could be violent, but have no killing. Conversely, a game could involve a lot of death but little violence.

If you're willing to put the time and effort into it, D&D 3.X actually had a lot of options for non-lethal combat. There were many choices that resulted in non-lethal damage, including subdual damage for both physical attacks and spells. However, building an entire campaign that only offered these options to players would be a bit of work, both in terms of dealing with native crunchiness of 3.Xe, and hunting down all the optional rules from multiple books. But I think it could be a great way to handle a violence-without-death campaign if the DM was willing to invest in it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This makes me very happy, but also nervous!

I hope you and your players like it at the table, and if you have questions (I know I had tons, and still do) I'm going to go ahead and rudely volunteer @hawkeyefan @Malmuria @Manbearcat and @Ovinomancer as recipients. They have way more experience with Forged in the Dark than I do, and were super patient and helpful to me in another thread. The FitD learning curve, at least for people like you and me who are coming directly from more traditional games, can be really steep. But I think it's worth the effort, even if it just winds up being an experiment that might tweak or inform the way you play other games.

Ask away!

 

[Yora]

Is it possible to separate "violence" and "killing"? A game could be violent, but have no killing. Conversely, a game could involve a lot of death but little violence.

Not really applicable here, but in the sandbox game Kenshi, the game mechanics make it very unlikely that characters are killed in battle, and they have a good chance to get back to their feet without being cared for after a few hours of bleeding in the sun. NPCs will leave your characters on the ground alone, and the game won't let you attacked downed enemies. Hostile NPCs only take a little bit of stuff from your characters when they are knocked out instead of robbing them blind.

This results in quite interesting gameplay, as the game can get away with throwing unexpectedly hard enemies at you in areas that you didn't have any problems with so far. And I had many hours of tense fun fighting with a gang of ninja that was squatting in my base after I had I had to beat a retreat (with half my characters being carried by the other half), and the base changing hands half a dozen times over several days.
It also is a big factor that gives the game a somewhat silly tone with the pretty brutal violence taking a rather cartoony turn when beaten and stripped enemies come hobbling and crawling back to your gates for a second round.

I don't think the specific mechanics would translate well to an RPG, but playing around with the formula can absolutely result in new experiences that can be really fun.

 

[Li Shenron]

Can you play and run Dungeons & Dragons without all the violent encounters and killing?

Yes.

Do you know why most players choose to fight and kill the enemies? Because they know they are going to win. The game is rigged in favour of the PC, particularly in battle. It's not so much a matter of rules (even though the newer the edition, the more generous the death/dying rules) but a matter of assuming that the PCs MUST encounter killable monsters, and most of them should be EASY to kill so that you can have lots of encounters.

It's an extreme idea, but what if you start by default having the majority of the enemies be BETTER than the PCs in combat? If the players start learning that picking a fight is a real risk, they are going to change their strategy for the whole game. They are going to use other ways than violence first, to reach their ends. Like normal people do in real life...

 

[pemerton]

Do you know why most players choose to fight and kill the enemies? Because they know they are going to win.

I don't agree with this. I think it's mostly because in many RPGs, victory in combat is the only way for the players to obtain finality of resolution. This is also often related to combat being the most mechanically interesting or dynamic part of the game.

 

[S'mon]

Yes.

Do you know why most players choose to fight and kill the enemies? Because they know they are going to win. The game is rigged in favour of the PC, particularly in battle. It's not so much a matter of rules (even though the newer the edition, the more generous the death/dying rules) but a matter of assuming that the PCs MUST encounter killable monsters, and most of them should be EASY to kill so that you can have lots of encounters.

It's an extreme idea, but what if you start by default having the majority of the enemies be BETTER than the PCs in combat? If the players start learning that picking a fight is a real risk, they are going to change their strategy for the whole game. They are going to use other ways than violence first, to reach their ends. Like normal people do in real life...

I recall the first encounter in a fantasy Japan game, our 1st level PCs were in the peasant village when the BBEG bandit chief turned up with his goons. And we were standing up to him, trying to look tough & persuade him not to take all the rice. It was incredibly tense and dramatic, the feeling that we could be killed at any moment. It also felt a lot more like real life than 99% of the D&D I've played.

 

[Manbearcat]

@uzirath , if you want to see FitD play in action and then you can ask questions later to clarify play structure/rules et al, let me know and I can get you invited to watch. Game is later this evening.

If uptake via watching and asking isn’t your thing, I’ve got a lot of play excerpts around. You can check those out or just ask questions.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I think I've experienced it, to a certain extent: I like action, and combat is a good way to get action. But I'm not interested in deadly/injurious combat, just people getting knocked around. And then sometimes I want no combat at all.

Rather than search out specific games to do specific non-deadly/violent activities, I usually choose games that can go between these two states easy. FATE is the usual suggestion, but I have problems keeping track of its currencies, so I prefer RISUS or Cartoon Action Hour.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

Yes.

Do you know why most players choose to fight and kill the enemies? Because they know they are going to win. The game is rigged in favour of the PC, particularly in battle. It's not so much a matter of rules (even though the newer the edition, the more generous the death/dying rules) but a matter of assuming that the PCs MUST encounter killable monsters, and most of them should be EASY to kill so that you can have lots of encounters.

It's an extreme idea, but what if you start by default having the majority of the enemies be BETTER than the PCs in combat? If the players start learning that picking a fight is a real risk, they are going to change their strategy for the whole game. They are going to use other ways than violence first, to reach their ends. Like normal people do in real life...

I once designed a game like this, sort of based on the Cthulhu Dark engine. If you try to fight anyone 1 size class larger than you, you die. And all the PCs are halflings.

It's a detective game, so it's not like combat is meant to be the right way to solve problems anyway.

Pipedream by Role Over Play Dead

Solve cases. Die horribly. Get high. Roleplay as halfling detectives fueled by magical pipe-weed.

roleoverplaydead.itch.io

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't really think too much about this kind of ethics when it comes to RPGs. Real life is one thing, RPGs are another, and I'm happy to keep them separate. Much like reading a whole lot of Stephen King doesn't make me a psycho killer. Anyway, I'm sure this isn't a popular take, but I'm ok with that.