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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ParanoydStyle" data-source="post: 7622414" data-attributes="member: 6984451">Well first off, the same reason I'm okay with violence in videogames and on TV: because it isn't real. And that is all I'd feel the need to say if this wasn't a topic I've thought a fair bit about. To go a bit more in depth:Human beings have celebrated and glorified violence--usually but not always with a focus on courage, honor and valor--for our entire history. The need to do violence is biologically wired into us as organisms.Our (Western and then when I speak, I do mean specifically American) culture has lacked for outlets for real violence for a long time because of the state of relative advancement our civilization has reached. Our warrior caste is, compared with that of previous civilizations, nearly invisible. The US population is 327 some odd MILLION people. The US Army has only a hair over 2 million troops, counting the reserves. Overwhelmingly, these troops are professional career volunteer soldiers: the rest are largely made up of youths from lower income brackets joining the military as a practical way of paying their way through college. Our soldiers in the former group are largely segregated from the civilian population and make up their own subculture with relatively little cultural intercourse between soldiers and citizens. Amidst our mania for television, sports, and televised sports what would in ancient cultures have been warrior poets are largely ignored in the shadow of sports and media celebrities. Actual martial glory and/or honor is something only a tiny percentage of soldiers will achieve, and only a tiny percentage of US citizens are soldiers. For everyone else there is a fantasy/fantastic/fictional violence. A appreciation of violence, conquest, and victory seems to be built into us instinctively.   Now, let's compare this with another Democracy like I don't know, Athens. Historians estimate that during the 4th Century BC Attica may have had as many as 300,000 citizens. Only adult male citizens who had completed their military training were allowed to participate in Athenian Democracy. This military training gave every citizen at least a taste of what violence was like, even if they decided they wanted to have nothing to do with it. According to Thucydides, at the start of the Peloponessian wars in 431 BC Athens had a total military strength of a little over 30,000 troops.Ancient Athens -- note that I did NOT pick <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZeYVIWz99I" target="_blank">SPARRRRTAAAAAA</a> -- had a population comprised of roughly 10% soldiers, based on the above numbers.The modern United States has a population comprised of roughly 0.61% soldiers, based on the above numbers.It seems reasonable to me to extrapolate that means that compared with an ancient democracy, a modern democracy has 9.49% less soldiers: in the case of the US, that would be roughly 31 million citizens who would have been soldiers for the vast majority of human history that are now accountants, construction workers, doctors, software engineers, you name it. It seems to me that interactive violent entertainment (whether videogames in 99/100 cases or TTRPGs in the other 1%) was a necessity for these individuals who would spend their lives distanced from real violence, and the creation of such entertainment by modern culture feels perfectly logical. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying that everyone who enjoys fictional violence in TTRPGs or any other medium does so out of a subconscious frustration at being unable to be doing violence (soldiering) in real life.   So, to sum up: there is practically no modern warrior caste, or at least it has nearly vanished in the modern age with a few striking counter-examples, because of civilization. Violent entertainment is in part a cultural response to this sea change in a large portion of the populace from soldier or citizen/soldier to non-soldier citizens.  This is something I have thought about because I have killed millions and millions of fictional people (the overwhelming majority in videogames, a few hundred in TTRPGs) and enjoyed the heck out of it. If I am not just a sick bastard, plain and simple, then most likely the explanation I've outlined makes some sense. Born into a different culture (and with actually functioning intestines) I might have been a soldier if I had displayed any natural aptitude for it.I would say that a lot of the time when not acting more like a Referee, a GM acts more like a director and showrunner than an author per se. It's a subtle but important distinction. An author is the usually the sole creator of a narrative work. A director guides many people together to achieve the desired effect, and likewise while the showrunner is in charge of the overall direction of a narrative, they do so by working through the writers on their team.See, "why are we okay with violence against demihumans?" is an altogether different, probably more interesting, and certainly stickier question. But mainly, it is a DIFFERENT question. And you are absolutely right that colonialism is undeniably bound up in it.</blockquote>

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