D&D General Violence and D&D: Is "Murderhobo" Essential to D&D?

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Agreed on all points. The only things I would add:

• It is possible to have conflict without combat,
• Combat doesn't necessarily need to end in death, and
• Senseless actions (violent or otherwise) should have consequences.

So a Superhero game?

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

What if you don't want to play a game like that, but want to play a lighter shootem-up type game without consequences?

Then play that game without employing any of the suggestions.

 

[CleverNickName]

What if you don't want to play a game like that, but want to play a lighter shootem-up type game without consequences?

Don't get me wrong; D&D can certainly handle that style of play. (Beware, combat tends to drag at higher levels...it's not uncommon for a single combat scene to take several hours from start to finish.) If all I'm interested in is no-consequence combat, I'd probably go with something a little more streamlined like GURPS or Fate. Or Savage Worlds.

But to each their own. D&D supports a wide variety of play-styles; I prefer it for nuance and storytelling.

So a Superhero game?

Yup, D&D can make that happen also. My first D&D campaign was a "superhero" game, now that you mention it: the player characters were avatars of the Aesir, and were trying to prevent Ragnarok. The Muspel had their own avatars, and they were basically supervillains.

 

[Mistwell]

Don't get me wrong; D&D can certainly handle that style of play. (Beware, combat tends to drag at higher levels...it's not uncommon for a single combat scene to take several hours from start to finish.) If all I'm interested in is no-consequence combat, I'd probably go with something a little more streamlined like GURPS or Fate. Or Savage Worlds.

But to each their own. D&D supports a wide variety of play-styles; I prefer it for nuance and storytelling.

Sometimes I prefer it for nuance and storytelling, and sometimes I don't. As I get older, I less want it for nuance and storytelling. Because life becomes more complicated and difficult over time, and I don't want my game playing to those things.

 

[Lanefan]

We'll find out whether hobomurder is essential only after we've killed 'em all (and looted 'em, too!), the deities have sorted 'em out, and we learn if our mission is accomplished or not.

And if they bleed experience points along the way, all the better!

 

[CleverNickName]

Truly, I think the only thing that is Essential to D&D is a twenty-sided die.

 

[aco175]

I loved 80s TV with all the low morality that went with it, when I was a teenager. There was also a few shows that did not kill such as A-Team and G.I. Joe cartoon where everyone would just get their weapons shot out of their hands or crawl out of the tank before it blew up. A-Team had all the bad guys rubbing their heads and crawling away after the fight. We played a few games like this where the monsters were defeated and would end up crawling away or just be knocked out.

We talk about the 3 pillars of play with combat being one and if that was changed, maybe killing most things in an encounter would change. Some may be the 'killer DM' idea where if something managed to get away, the party would be screwed. Some is in how modules are/were set up where things are rewarded for killing. Some is just rolling dice and getting that bit of dopamine pleasure like checking your phone to see if someone liked your last post, but in a more safe and social way than drugs or alcohol.

 

[Umbran]

So players of D&D got good at figuring out how to get what they want by exploiting rules in unintended ways, while GMs like me have honed skills of tricking people into thinking they're doing what they want, even though I'm actually calling the shots?

One can quibble over exactly what one learns from a highly complicated and complex game with different experiences at each and every table.

But... you're not wrong

 

[Umbran]

That's a pretty significant conditional. There's no reason that the opposition in a D&D campaign needs to look like, talk like, and/or think like a person would. We have constructs, aberrations, and actual demons we could be fighting.

Yep. And that's fine.

 

[Umbran]

I keep circling around to this issue because I am torn between competing impulses; on the one hand, D&D is a game, and a fiction. It is fun and escapist. To sit around and spend all my time wondering about the morality of killing kobolds seems about as sensible as worrying about the ethics of capitalism while playing Monopoly.

...and yet, maybe there is something about this underlying violence. I am certainly less comfortable blithely ignoring the issue completely than I was. I am just uncertain what, if anything, there is to do.

I thought I'd start a thread to see what other people were thinking about this. Thoughts?

So, recently, I've been playing in a game run by a friend of mine - the players are myself, my wife, and my friend's 16 year old daughter.

Nothing makes you question the ethics of your actions like having a kid watch what you're doing.