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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7619143" data-attributes="member: 6816692">I think Riley made a good point: violence is too broad of a term to simply say that using it in RPGs is more or less moral by itself. What we have to take a look at is both story/setting and context.First, story and setting. Someone already mentioned John Wick, wich is, in my opinion, a totally enjoyable over-the-top franchise. I can imagine playing a John Wick RPG and it would be completely violent, as you'd expect from a setting in which assassins are a huge, organized thing. But I guess that a John Wick game would never give you any XP for killing (defenseless) noncombatants and neither would the setting's tone encourage you to do so. Another example would be an evil fantasy campaign (and I know they're kind of en vogue now) where the players are obviously playing the bad guys. Again, violence would be expected, but thins time, it could happen to anyone for any reason. Which is why a good evil campaign needs a strong session zero in advance or else people can be pushed over the lines of what's acceptable in their games. Other kinds of story or setting would involve PCs trying to avoid violent situations at all.Then there is the context of violence which is more or less the ages old question of whether or not a violent act is justified. I imagine most games and players will be okay with using justified violence against their opponent, in example for self-defense or to protect others from being harmed. Because that's what heroes would do, y'know?Murderhoboing, on the other hand, means that every NPC out there is a potential source of loot and XP to be harvested. Which isn't really justifyable violence or proper conflict resolution. In most cases, killing everyone and stealing their stuff is solely motivated by pure and simple greed. The question is where we draw the line when it comes to violence. And how we design certain games to encourage or discourage certain modes of using violence as a tool for conflict resolution. For example:- does a game award XP for killing, no matter who or what you kill?- does a game award XP (more, less?) for subduing opponents after you defated them?- does a game award XP (the same amount? more? less?) for finding a non-violent solution instead?- does a game reward you more for killing people than for not killing them? (i.e. do you get "loot" for peacefur resolutions?)- does a game award XP for killing, but only when you kill a certain type of opponents? (i.e. opponents of roughly equal level, monsters, evil people...)As long as killing people and taking their stuff is the most efficient and rewarding way to progress through a game, players will be really tempted to use murderhoboing as their preferred method.</blockquote>

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