[waxing philosophical] senseless violence

[der_kluge]

In the real world, there is no such thing as an inherently EVIL race of creatures. Not the animals. Not the plants. They both operate on instinct, not choice. So, that leaves humans, the only semi-intelligent race (and I use that term loosely). Sure, there are humans that engage in evil acts - but as a whole, we (humans) are not evil, per se.

That's an angle I hadn't quite considered. In our world, pacifism is a black and white concept, but in D&D, there are many shades of gray. I guess one would have to get to the basis of *why* someone is a pacifist. Would it be wrong to kill a mindless skeleton or a golem? Probably not. Is pacifism about negating aggression, or is it about inflicting harm on others? I admit I don't know. Certainly, destroying a skeleton with a turn undead spell would be outside the bounds of either restriction depending on which philosophical approach to it you took.

 

[kitsune9]

Needless violence

In this game of 1st level characters, we've seen the deaths of numerous folks. A few we were responsible for, and some we weren't. This strikes me as somewhat unrealistic. Now, granted this is a game we play, so I'm willing to overlook the fact that my character casts spells, but in real-life, most villains don't go around slitting the throats of people while they sleep as happened in our game last session. I mean, that's like a Valentine's Day Massacre level serial killing. It was easily 20 people.

So, this is a two-pronged question - have you played in a story-driven, non-violent campaign, and was it successful? Well-received? What was the story? And have you, or known anyone to play a pacifist character, and were they able to pull it off?

Hi Die_Kluge!

I too had the same dilemma when I was reading a module and saw some artwork that "pricked" my conscience about my player characters who will more than likely just kill an NPC that they could possibly role-play out an encounter with.

If you want to run a campaign without a lot of senseless violence, you must define a campaign that avoids it. For example, your villains are power hungry, greedy, but they see their victims as people to manipulate, rob, intimidate, not kill. An example is the tyrannical baron who taxes his populace. If the people fail to pay their taxes, punishment will be harsh, but dead peasants do not pay taxes. Villains should be constructed this way and can be realistic.

Another aspect is to make violence an unpalatable choice unless absolutely necessary. Many DM's tolerate their player characters to flaunt the laws of the land that would normally put someone in prison for years and years (thus effectively ending their character's career) for the sake of continuing the adventure. Don't allow that. If the character(s) breaks the law of breaking and entering, looting, pillaging, murder, attempted murder, property distruction, it doesn't take but a few spells to find out who's responsible and the characters are hunted down to be brought to justice, even if it was all the name of doing the greater good. If I was going to implement dire consequences, I would never use this as a Catch-22 situation (the PC is forced to kill vile noble to free the people, but now he's caught and hanged for it--realistic, but not fun at all). This would be a tool to let the players know up front that they should think about their character actions, before they engage in the interests of the greater good.

To continue to make violence an unpalatable choice, it must have realistic consequences to the character. D&D uses the abstract system of hp, but a character who has 100 hp being reduced to 1 hp still has the same ability to dish out damage, fight, and not die of exhaustion and shock. While this system is fun for D&D, it does make violence as easy solution to every problem, because the characters begin to the "feel the pinch" when they are in negative hp approaching -10, but there are no debilitating effects during the actual combat itself. Mechanics that deal with critical effects, maiming, and a fairly easy way to get killed could make players think twice about engaging in an all-or-nothing fights every time they run into someone who cops a bad attitude toward them. If you don't want to add such realism, you can take away all the raise dead spells, so that player characters know that if their character gets killed, death is permanent.

Another thing is that as a DM, I wouldn't want to subject the player characters to engage in unnecessary confrontations, thus random encounters are gone. Any encounter should be a meaningful encounter. In addition, I wouldn't award XP based on the current system. A DM would award XP on mechanics other than "defeating" or killing monsters.

Of course, if your players are the type who get a great deal of enjoyment of hacking every evil monster in sight, then forcing them into an environment where they got to role-play their encounters out wouldn't necessarily be fun for them, so I would only implement these changes if it's something their apt or willing to do. I had a DM once who forced a campaign style of non-violence on us when we are a bunch of players who like to roll dice, dish out damage on monsters, and take their money. After a couple of sessions of not rolling dice, we started to complain about the lack of action and he refused to accommodate us, so we asked him to leave.

As a player who wants a more pacifistic game, you would have to see if your DM and other players would agree.

Well, good luck with your games!

 

[barsoomcore]

A game system whose fundamental stats include

Hit Points
Armor Class
Base Attack Bonus
Damage

Is going to be a difficult fit for a peaceful type of game. Of course you can do it, but the game rules are strongly geared towards resolving combat rather than playing out social encounters.

One of the problems is that a big part of what's fun in the game is managing resources ("Should we open the door? The fighter's only got seven hit points left and the cleric has no more heal spells."). Social encounters in D&D don't consume resources, so that entire chunk of what's fun is gone. You can make as many Bluff checks per day as you want -- can't do that with combats, and there's a key difference.

You could BUILD a d20 game that made social interaction more the focus and sidelined combat, and it could be good fun, but with the rules as written I think it would be somewhat frustrating for a lot of players.

 

[Umbran]

The problem you have is this - when the bubblegum hits the fan, and people care deeply about what is going on, violence is a likely result. If the people involved are not specifically avowed pacifists, pushing them over the edge to violence isn't all that hard. And if you aren't pushing them to the point where they consider violence, how much drama do you really have?

Also, while today, your typical middle-class citizen of a first world nation may not want to stick his neck out far enough to have violence happen, the same is not the case for the entire world, nor has it always been the case in history. Typically, humans are a pretty violent bunch. Just watch the news if you don't believe me.

With violence actually being pretty natural for the species, and with most players rather more willing to accept it because the character is fictional (and to mangle the phrase - cellulose heros feel no pain), you have to go well out of your way to construct a game in which players will really avoid violence. I've done it, and it can be interesting and rewarding, but it often isn't worth teh work.

 

[painandgreed]

One of the problems is that a big part of what's fun in the game is managing resources ("Should we open the door? The fighter's only got seven hit points left and the cleric has no more heal spells."). Social encounters in D&D don't consume resources, so that entire chunk of what's fun is gone. You can make as many Bluff checks per day as you want -- can't do that with combats, and there's a key difference.

Sure it does. It consumes time and effort. Not to mention reputation and credibility. you can make bluffs all day, but that's a day you can't be doing anything else. After awhile, you're going to get a reputation for being a bluffer and earn situations modifiers to your bluff rolls because everybody knows it. You'll become the boy that cried wolf and it won't even require a check because nobody is listening to you.

You could BUILD a d20 game that made social interaction more the focus and sidelined combat, and it could be good fun, but with the rules as written I think it would be somewhat frustrating for a lot of players.

No more frustrating that the game already is for a lot of players. of course, most of those players have gone off to what they consider "better" game systems by now. Which is the problem, the RAW mainly caters to mindless combat as the focus of the game and the people who don't like the mechanics of worrying over hitpoints and cure spells over roleplay and character development are at a loss.

It would be easy enough to introduce a non-combat game. Simply have a lawful city or kingdom where good and evil exist side by side under a common set of laws. Any breach of the peace is dealt with by authorities and a supporting public using magic to hunt down those responsible. To get characters intrduced to such a setting, set them up for soem small mischeif such as a bar fight or being robbed. If they do anything besides stay out of trouble and report it to the guard, then they'll be hunted down and charged with various minor crimes even if they "didn't do anything wrong". Lay down some monetary fines and let them back into the city with an idea of what it means to cause violence.

From there you could take it several different ways including investigation, economic, or intrigue. Even if just making them go out socially to get the ability to act more "normally". Perhaps if they befriend the right noble they might get deputized and be able to break heads within the law. If the players didn't like it, they could always leave the area and continue adventuring as per normal.

 

[Umbran]

Which is the problem, the RAW mainly caters to mindless combat as the focus of the game and the people who don't like the mechanics of worrying over hitpoints and cure spells over roleplay and character development are at a loss.

This is not a "problem". It's a simple practical fact of life - No single set of rules does everything well. It simply isn't possible to build a game that is all things to all people, and trying to be one works to the game's detriment. It makes far more sense to build a game that does some reasonably large set of things well, and leaves a few by the wayside.

 

[barsoomcore]

Sorry I wasn't clear, painandgreed. When I said that social encounters in D&D don't consume resources, I meant specifically in a game-mechanic fashion.

For many people, part of the fun of D&D is watching their hit points decline, their spell slots get used up, and managing these things so that when they face the BBEG, they still have sufficient resources to deal with it and triumph.

D&D does not offer equivalent mechanics to allow players to do that with respect to social encounters. Social encounters do not consume hit points, and hit point management is in some senses at the heart of D&D for lots of players.

OF COURSE the DM can make up any set of rules to provide for this sort of thing. That was my point, earlier. It's not rocket science to come up with some rules to make social encounters more exciting. All I'm saying is that one of the problems with playing D&D in a peaceful manner is that a big chunk of what makes the game fun for lots of players -- resource management -- is made unnecessary.