I for one am the type of person who doesn’t mind a good hack-n-slash game though I do prefer more roleplaying to ‘roll’ playing. So, a few days ago I was thinking about the fact that nearly every single roleplaying game out there involves some form of rules for murder.
I’m calling killing murder because that’s what it comes down to: the taking of life unjustifiably. As your heroes tromp into a dungeon where some Kobolds have set up a home, the heroes, whether they be thief or cleric, slaughter those sentient creatures who were doing no more than defending their home.
It seems like because you’re sitting around a table and not actually in the location, killing becomes much easier. If you were given a sword and told to go into the forest and kill a few animals, you might have a difficult time doing it, and you certainly wouldn’t revel in pressing through a pack of deer decapitating any one that you came across.
Even in modern games, most players don’t have many moral qualms about shooting someone down in cold blood just because the person was guarding the door to a nightclub or what have you. But in the real world, sane people don’t simply kill just for killing’s sake. So how is this justified?
Listen, I’m not trying to say that RPGs need to have less killing or be more feel-goody. I’m just wondering how it is that you can actually apply the moral qualms people have in the real world to that of RPG characters without disabling a character’s abilities completely.
Anyone?
10 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 31, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Tom
You just noticed this?
The game was basically an idea spawned from a wargame. Since the original boxed sets, the majority of the rules and mechanics have focused on combat.
We play heroes, heroes kill villains. Nice and simple.
Doesn’t mean you, as a DM, can’t add consequences for random acts of violence! Just be careful on “realistic” you make it. No one wants their PCs to spend life in prison for killing one measly little peasant!
January 31, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Mad Brew
Justification is a matter of perspective. To be honest, I have never participated in an adventure, even a classic dungeon crawl, where there wasn’t a backstory about the antagonists doing some unacceptable deed.
Having been in IRL situations where I was “justified” in taking lives, I find that 99% of roleplaying instances are more clear cut than anything I have encountered while serving as a Marine.
January 31, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Syrsuro
Well, first you would need to overhaul the game to have more complex goals than “kill them and take their stuff”.
But assuming you do that (arguably the harder part), it’s relatively easy to go the rest of the way. You just convert all damage over to non-lethal damage. Hit points are already an abstraction, so you just need to make the consequence of 0 hit points be knocking them out, not death.
Then the natural outcome of combat becomes an unconscious creature, not a dead one and choosing to kill them (via a coup de grace or other mechanism) becomes a conscious decision taken on top of defeating them in combat.
Aside: The 4E rules already allow for this by allowing whomever strikes the final blow to declare that they are choosing to knock the target unconscious rather than killing it.
In other systems you may need to overhaul some of the spells to make them less fatal (it’s hard to justify disintegration doing non-lethal damage) or at least to make sure that there are plenty of non-lethal options at all levels.
Carl
January 31, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Karizma
There is a slight problem with drawing the parallel. Real life is not black and white. Real life isn’t even a gray scale, it’s full color.
But fantasy is the assumption of black and white. There are “good” races, and “bad” races. That’s if you let the world be that way.
If you go for a more colorful world, then you can change that.
January 31, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Stuart
Quite a few old school dungeons involved humanoids preparing to attack the local settlement.
If you were playing smart it was never about “kill them and take their stuff” it was about “take their stuff (which probably wasn’t theirs) – and kill them if they try and kill you in the process”.
January 31, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Wyatt
I play with a very different style than most people. I don’t come from a background (nor really care for) pulp fantasy, or even every gritty or non-heroic fantasy. In a lot of my games “throw them in jail” is a decent solution, and “beat them up until they change their minds” works too, though there are always some scenarios where the thing has to be killed, it’s often done to monsters or aberrations, not really to people. I’ve done some grittier and more realistic games, but more often than not I play very cartoony games that feel more like manga or superhero comics (or old cartridge console adventure games like Banjo Kazooie or Goemon) than they do 80s fantasy lit.
I don’t really have a reason for doing it this way. It’s not like I can’t stand death (I’m actually a big fan of gore and splatter films) but I like my games less dark I suppose, and I also am a big fan of recurring villains and face-turns or redemption.
January 31, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Tim Jensen
Play Dogs in the Vineyard, and then revisit this topic in a future post.
February 3, 2009 at 5:09 am
Using Extreme Violence Without Disabling Your Characters | Capturing Fantasy Role Playing Creative Writing Blog based on New World of Darkness
[...] recently read a post addressing violence in role-playing games. The question [...]
February 3, 2009 at 5:50 am
Tommi
I’m running a game where players play dragons. One combat, in which the opponent was almost instantly frozen solid, and few hunting scenes.
I’m running old school dungeoncrawls. Some four (short) sessions, some two combats. First level characters can’t really afford much fighting.
I’m running episodic fantasy games. On average a combat or war per session, though often with demons or their armies, with one player having played the demons pretty often. Sometimes with cthulhuesque abominations or large man-eating apes. Murdering humans has been rare, disregarding the war where commanders where played and plenty of ships burned. (Thus far humans are the only civilised race in the game.)
A viking game I ran: One combat with humans, one in which a giant was slain and one where trolls were killed. Ten or so sessions.
So, I can’t really admit to there being plenty of murder in my games. What you are seeing is something you, other players or the rules bring to table, not something inherent to the hobby.
Moral qualms come when killing is not an assumed part of gameplay. Consequences of choices made is another important factor. You kill someone and will be treated as a murderer. Characters not being immune to these consequences further helps. The important part is making killing something that is not expected part of gameplay. If combats are the exciting part, there will be plenty of killing. So make other things interesting. Get player buy-in, tell them what you want to change in your gameplay.
February 3, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Kiashu
“I’m just wondering how it is that you can actually apply the moral qualms people have in the real world to that of RPG characters without disabling a character’s abilities completely.”
It’s called “roleplaying”. GM and players discuss what the game world’s like, what the characters will be like, what everyone expects and would like. And you go from there. If the consensus is for anything other than pure hack and slash, then the players will just go ahead and roleplay that.
For example, I often have players down a foe, and then refuse to do a “finishing blow.” Honour is satisfied by defeating them, or they’re no longer a threat, or mercy is what they consider a noble trait, and so on.
If all you do is get out the books and miniatures and graph paper, then players will expect just to smash stuff with nothing more damaging than whoops of laughter. But if you discuss it before the campaign begins then something different might come out of it.