# Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?



## lowkey13 (Jun 11, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## ccs (Jun 11, 2019)

I don't worry about it.


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## Spaztian (Jun 12, 2019)

While I think it always depends on the group-think of the table as to how murdur-y they get, in your case, I think The Caves of Chaos offer PLENTY of opportunities (if the group chooses) to role play through encounters... possibly convincing different groups to go at each other. 

I think a case can be made to show enough of a threat that creatures can be convinced to leave rather than dying. 

I understand you are talking about d&d in general, but I did want to bring that up.


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## Celebrim (Jun 12, 2019)

Briefly, combat has a unique combination of elements that makes it a suitable focus for social gaming.

1) It's a team activity where all participants can make meaningful decisions.
2) It is a conflict that has a clear problem to solve.
3) Progress toward that problem can be easily observed and measured.
4) The progress toward that problem is uniquely dynamic, giving all participants an opportunity to imagine something visceral and exciting.  

Almost nothing else shares these features.  Even sports are simply attempts to codify combat in ways that reduce the chance the parties hurt each other.  One could imagine an RPG revolving around a team sport in the same way that movies can revolve around a team sport, but then the conflicts involved don't clearly mean anything or resolve anything and it's notable that almost all sports movies aren't actually team movies, but movies about the Great Coach or the Underdog Player and everyone else is pretty much an NPC.  The conflict is generally over how a single individual proves himself through sports, and it's that inspiring figures choices that really matter.

There are other sorts of conflicts that can be fun, but they have a tendency to not involve equal cooperation from all party members unless they are carefully contrived.   In fact, most of them involve only a central core character that is being helped by at most a supporting cast in a non-dynamic way.  I've really just never seen a table top RPG do non-combat puzzles involving collective effort in a consistently interesting manner, because the choices involved in the participants are too granular to effectively run in an RPG.   You can do it in a cRPG, but cRPG's allow for more visceral action - think about how a 'match three' type game always involves choices and immediate sensory feedback.   

Too many RPGs that want to have as a focus of play something other than combat, really only work with two or at most three participants because they lack a way to really share spotlight.   They also tend to have fortune checks that resolve conflicts without meaningful choices, leaving the player mostly an observer of the game and with little role but to take stage direction from the dice and the story-teller.  And you can't really do internal exploration of character with six or eight or twelve players huddled at a table (although you might could split them up among 3 or 4 tables each doing their separate RP).  

In short, while I get bored with a game that has nothing but combat in it, and especially if the combat seems to be just a linear sequence of on the rails staged set pieces, I suspect that if it was more than just a couple of players I'd get bored without it as well.

So now that I've answered, "Why combat?", I think the answer to "Why violence?" is pretty obvious.   

As for the particular thing that is triggering you, well, good.   We hit that trigger at age 15 in a homebrew module where the PC's got to the back of the cave after slaughtering the hobgoblin bandits, and found hobgoblin women and children huddled in the back of the cave.   Now what?  Things got real.   We suffered our actual first moral dilemma.  That realization marked one of the most salient points where I can remember my approach to the game becoming more mature.   

It would have worked exactly the same with human bandits I think, only if anything the question got sharper and more pointed with apparent monsters, because there really was no hope that my players could see at the time of assimilating the survivors (and had they tried, that in itself would have been a moral dilemma).   So, yeah, I don't play up the violence and revel in it, but I learned then not to play it down either.   It's more grown up to really think about the violence as consequential.  

Even so, my 13 and 14 year old players when going through B2 didn't slaughter noncombatants.  They generally let anything that didn't attack them flee.  At the time, none of us really thought about the consequences of it. 

The closest I can remember in my young play getting 'murder hobo-y' was playing Gamma World.  I had this mutant gorilla named Koko, and we were for some reason in this village of bat people.  There was this plaster statue in the town square and I decided that the plaster must be hiding some sort of treasure, and broke a piece off to check (also I was bored, the young GM wan't that great).  The bat folk, who I suppose weren't a bad sort, decided I'd committed sacrilege and proceeded to attack us.  A mass slaughter of many of the otherwise innocent bat folk followed.  We were clearly in the wrong and we knew it even then.  But, what are you going to do after, "I'm sorry."  doesn't cut it? 

None of the bat people represented any sort of real world ethnic group.  Nor was my choice of playing a mutant gorilla meant to represent some sort of real world ethnic group.   Nor was the conflict that arose between the party and the bat people any sort of colonialist narrative.  I'm sure you could create some sort of interpretation in that direction, but to be quite frank, it would be BS and any sort of scholarly method that was that divorced from the intentions and thoughts of the participants would be anti-intellectual to the point of insanity because you would learn less than you started out knowing to engage in such analysis.  Some times a pen is just a pen.   Sometimes a sword is just a sword.  And sometimes an orc is just an orc.  Persistently seeing a sword or a pen as a symbol, or persistently seeing minority groups in every monstrous alien thing you meet tells me more about you than it does about anything else.


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## 5ekyu (Jun 12, 2019)

To my way of thinking, RPGs were born out of adding more to the already existing wargame mode of groups playing dides for historical orvfictionsl combats. Then that grew into " playing" as characters in the various fictional setting and stories were had shared interest in- be it supers, sword and sorcery, star wars, scifi, B uck Rogers, etc etc etc...

And so those fictional settings use of violence and combat carried over. 

As RPGs have expanded, you have lots of games and setting with different takes on violence to reflect their source. 

I mean, even today, we see Endgame, John Wick 3, Seal Team, Underworld and countless others where violence and combat are integral. 

So, to me its accepted in the RPGs derived from those because it's part and parcel of their source.

Now, tossing in a Red Wedding into a session of Honey Bear Heist (or Ocean's 11) would lead to a different take.


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## HJFudge (Jun 12, 2019)

I think that as a culture we have decided that violence in general is something that it is okay to pretend at. It is in our books, our movies, our games...our very lives. We watch people fight on the television for real with boxing and MMA and such. We sit in fascination as we watch nature documentaries where animals do violence to other animals.

So it is only natural we allow for it in our tabletop RPGs. 

Note, I would argue that it is currently out of style to have* excessive *violence within our games. I do not allow scenes of torture...if someone wants to do it, we can fade to black, but I don't need to play it out. Also, I encourage (or try to) non-violent solutions to problems within games...and I think a lot of other games do as well.

Violence, however, still has its place as a means of conflict resolution. Indeed, it is the last argument of kings as they say. Because we are acting out fantasies through the game, we imagine we stop the Bad Guys from doing whatever it is they are going to do: in general, by any means necessary. The bad guys, as it were, generally do not listen to Reason. Thus, violence is the answer. We allow this because it is something that, again, is pervasive throughout our culture. Every heroic book or story or movie or game has violence in it. So it is expected when we sit down and play the heroes. Or even the villains.

We are acting out and creating our own stories. The best stories involve Conflict. Sometimes, violence is the only solution to a Conflict. Thus we allow it and expect it.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

I, for one, find some RPG killing unsettling/disturbing:
 - Torturing captives
 - Killing captives 
 - Killing non-combatants/innocents
 - Sometimes even unnecessarily attacking intelligent humanoids

Why "humanoids" on the last one?  I dunno.  Mind flayers, for example, aren't covered by this policy.  I don't _have_ a policy...I'm must describing what bothers me.

In one game (it was The One Ring, so we're in Middle-earth here) we captured and questioned one surviving orc after a fight, then were stuck with the question "What do we do with him?"  We ended up giving him back his sword and telling him that if he could beat my character in a fight he could go free.  I was pleased with that solution.

(If you're wondering how it turned out, when the dirty rat realized he was going to lose he threw his shield at my face and ran for it.  Everybody failed various rolls, and he got away.  We retaliated by parading the shield around the Anduin valley, talking about how its owner was such a coward that he threw his shield and ran. We eventually learned from some other orcs that he was "sent back to guard duty" as punishment for cowardice, and his name was Ufthak.  Ufthak, if you recall your Tolkien lore, was captured, toyed with, then eaten by Shelob.  So there.)


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## trancejeremy (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Now, I'm as fond of ye ol' murderhoboing as the next person. As I always remark, "If God & Gygax didn't want us to kill Orcs, why did He make them out of XP?"




That's actually the thing that people get wrong. Killing orcs in D&D (at least early versions) was not really worth much XP. An orc was worth 15 xp. A fighter would have to kill 134 of them to reach 2nd level.

XP mostly came from loot.  But how do you get that? That's up to the players.

Violence is an option in early D&D, but it's not the only or even optimal option. The idea was to fight when necessary, but only when necessary.


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## macd21 (Jun 12, 2019)

I think HJFudge has it: culturally we find it ok to pretend at violence. It’s not just RPGs, it’s movies, computer games, novels, wargames, paintball...


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So, this is a thread / thought / discussion starter.
> 
> I am going to start by saying that I am not looking to open this up to general comments about adult themes, etc. in RPGs. So, please don't, okay?
> 
> ...




Your quote is blacked out.  Here’s why, and how to fix it.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2019)

Most of us play RPGs for some kind of adventure.  Adventure requires some kind of dramatic potential.  Dramatic potential comes from conflict.  And for most people, violence is the simplest form of conflict to model and relate to.  It’s a universal theme.

Theoretically, someone could do nonviolent RPGs based on being successful stock brokers, venture capitalists, rival art schools, or plants seeking nutrients in a certain strip of land.

But those would all be very difficult to model in an accessible and engaging fashion.  And their appeal would be very narrow.  Hard to see how they’d be profitable.


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## Riley37 (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> There's a fine line between fun happy combat and ... um ... uncomfortable colonialist massacre of women and children, if you catch my drift




IMO there are fine lines on some axes, and wide gaps on other axes.

I've enjoyed sparring, which is a form of violence, though intentionally and drastically limited violence; we were trying to *hit* each other, just not for significant damage. It was fun happy combat. It was different from colonialist massacre of women and children.

I've used physical violence once in my adult life, to stop a man who was holding a woman down on the sidewalk, and repeatedly punching her. That was not sparring; it was the real thing. I used minimal force, enough that she could get away, without doing him any permanent harm - but I had accepted non-zero risk of permanent harm to myself, had certain factors turned out differently, and if I'd been unable to limit how far the situation escalated. (Fortunately for me, he turned out to be unarmed, mentally disorganized, and smaller than me in both reach and mass.) 

Again, that was real violence, and it was NOT "colonialist massacre of women and children". He and I were both white men; no one died; I did not subsequently take his hunting grounds and turn them into a plantation.

During the Third Reich occupation of the Warsaw ghetto, there was mutual violence between Jewish civilians and German soldiers. There is a TRPG, in which the PCs are members of the Resistance. It has a grim tone, but the players may reasonably consider (some of) their PCs to be heroes (of a sort). I am not aware of a published TRPG in which the PCs are soldiers in the German army, assigned to crushing resistance in Warsaw. (Though I am aware of white supremacist TRPGs.) It's as if though both Jewish snipers firing at German soldiers, and German soldiers firing at Jewish volunteers, are both practicing violence, many players see a *moral* difference between one side's use of violence and the other side's use of violence. More or less the same applies to "Golden Age Champions"; the setting book assumes that the PCs are on the side of the Allies. 

So there's a valid general question about why so many of us, play so many games with *any kind of violence*.

There is also a MUCH more specific question about why so many of us play - or have played - games which specifically include colonialist massacre of women and children (whether human or humanoid). In AD&D, high level PCs don't just slaughter orcs without second thoughts; PCs even exterminate "monsters" in a designated territory, so that human or demi-human farmers will arrive, build farms on the land, and then pay taxes to the PC, so long as the PC builds and maintains a keep. Yup, there's specific rules for that process.

When did non-colonialist games emerge (that is, games *without* built-in rules for the endgame of becoming a tax-collecting, monster-eradicating plantation overlord), and to what extent have some players preferred those games, specifically on that basis?


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## Riley37 (Jun 12, 2019)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Theoretically, someone could do nonviolent RPGs based on being successful stock brokers, venture capitalists, rival art schools, or plants seeking nutrients in a certain strip of land.




I've played Fiasco once, at a convention. No fight scenes, no chase scenes. Conflict, but at other levels. I suspect that we actually *could* use the Fiasco rules set for a fun session about rival venture capitalists (some of us cutting more corners than others). IMO a game of plants competing for nutrients - or perhaps exchanging nutrients sometimes, via interconnected root systems - would require difficult role-playing expression for those of us without lived experience as plants; but if we were willing to employ Pixar levels of anthropomorphosis, it could be both engaging and hilarious.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2019)

> When did non-colonialist games emerge (that is, games *without* built-in rules for the endgame of becoming a tax-collecting, monster-eradicating plantation overlord), and to what extent have some players preferred those games, specifically on that basis?




Pretty early on, actually.  Boot Hill hit in 1975.  Traveller In 1977, as did Superhero 2044.  Champions in 1981.  All still had violence, of course.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> I've played Fiasco once, at a convention. No fight scenes, no chase scenes. Conflict, but at other levels. I suspect that we actually *could* use the Fiasco rules set for a fun session about rival venture capitalists (some of us cutting more corners than others).




Never played it, seen it, nor heard of it, to the best of my recollection.



> IMO a game of plants competing for nutrients - or perhaps exchanging nutrients sometimes, via interconnected root systems - would require difficult role-playing expression for those of us without lived experience as plants; but if we were willing to employ Pixar levels of anthropomorphosis, it could be both engaging and hilarious.




The devil, as always, is in the details.  A simulationist version of it would be *extremely *difficult to design...and probably enjoy.  (But might work just fine as a boardgame.)


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## Tonguez (Jun 12, 2019)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Never played it, seen it, nor heard of it, to the best of my recollection.
> 
> 
> 
> The devil, as always, is in the details.  A simulationist version of it would be *extremely *difficult to design...and probably enjoy.  (But might work just fine as a boardgame.)




I dunno, I spent hours playing both Sim Ant and Pandemic. I'd suspect a plant/forest simulator would play similar to pandemic coopting the mycellium networks for love and lemons.

Anyway as a indigenous minority in a former British colony, I've always been acutely aware of the 'problem of DnDs' fantasy foundations essentially being the glory of Europe and Empire over the 'savage other' (ie Orcs, goblins). 
Its probably what pushed me more towards playing non-human characters (half orcs, gnomes) in non-combat orientated classes (thief-acrobats, alchemist, clerics) or monk-assassins (strike back at the establishment!!). 

That said a bit of violent play isnt so bad, especially if put into a justifiable context (killing zombies and soulsucking fey  is okay - killing innocent orc babies is bad - goblins are annoying scavengers but they have rights too!).
 I'd say the sport analogy is apt, Sport is controlled violence and the controlled violence of RPGs is sport.

That said I do like newer approaches that focus on "overcoming a challenge" rather than killing things, so that whether you choose to Kill it, Talk to it, Trick it or Sneak around it, you will be rewarded


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## Lylandra (Jun 12, 2019)

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.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

*Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?*

Because it isn't real. 

Why are we okay with violence on TV? Because it isn't real. 
Why are we okay with violence in cinema? Because it isn't real. 
Why are we okay with violence in books? Because it isn't real.
Why are we okay with violence in plays? Because it isn't real.

Why are we *not *okay with violence in reality? Because it is real.

I know that is a really simplistic way of looking at it, but it is the core difference.


Edit: Before you respond to this, read my later posts where I expand a bit.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 12, 2019)

[MENTION=1125]Tonguez[/MENTION]

I’ve played Sim Ant (and other early Sim games) and Pandemic- they’re not RPGs, so I’m unclear as to your point.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

Spaztian said:


> While I think it always depends on the group-think of the table as to how murdur-y they get, in your case, I think The Caves of Chaos offer PLENTY of opportunities (if the group chooses) to role play through encounters... possibly convincing different groups to go at each other.
> 
> I think a case can be made to show enough of a threat that creatures can be convinced to leave rather than dying.
> 
> I understand you are talking about d&d in general, but I did want to bring that up.




I played through the caves of chaos a few years ago and my impression is the presence of the children and women were actually great RP opportunities.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> *Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?*
> 
> Because it isn't real.
> 
> ...




This is my view of it. Not a fan of real world violence but I love action and martial arts movies. Combat in RPGs is cathartic. It isn't against real people or creatures.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> *Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?*
> 
> Because it isn't real.
> 
> ...




So is there no violence in games that (for you) crosses the threshold into "not okay", even though it still isn't real?

There is for me.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Okay looking at your question in a bit more detail.



lowkey13 said:


> And this came to a head recently when I ran B2 for some kids. Generally, Goodman Games did an amazing job, and I reviewed it here-
> https://www.enworld.org/forum/showt...the-Borderlands-On-Running-an-Updated-Classic
> 
> So here's the part of the original I wanted to emphasize-
> ...




My question to you would be why? Why did you feel the need to rework it and in what way did you rework it? If you remove the women and children hobgoblins then in my opinion you have done a disservice to your players.

For me the encounter stands up as well today as it did when first published.

It is there to present a moral dilemma to the players. They have been cutting their way through hobgoblins perhaps justifiably so, as they have been raiding the nearby human settlements. But then they face hobgoblin women who are ferociously defending their little hobgoblin children.

I remember playing it my teens and it had an impact then, and presented many questions among the group as to do we kill them or not. Even when we decided to and tried to justify it with terms like "intrinsically evil, we can't look after them and it would be more cruel leave them to starve. They will only grow up to kill more humans." it made us question how heroic we really were. We looked back at the male hobgoblins we had been killing and realised they were just raiding to support their families. And all this was decades before people were analysing D&D for social justice issues in their blogs.

I'm sure I'm part of the only bunch of kids that had a sort of wake up call with encounters like that one.

So if you removed the women and children, you are just encouraging a murderhobo mentality, as for some reason society accepts killing males as fine. The male hobogoblins are then just killing for selfish reasons, and that justifies killing them.

[h=1]So Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?[/h]Who says we are? We all have some fun with a bit of wanton destruction and violence in RPGs every now and again, and certainly violence is often a simple direct solution to problems in RPGs. As I said before it isn't real so there aren't and real world consequences form killing someone or something else(1). RPGs are a safe space in that respect to let out some of your darker traits. But I would say a lot of the time (and certainly in well written scenarios and games outside D&D) violence can have some dramatic in game consequences, and that's when RPGs are at there best, IMHO.

That's why I am concerned to felt a need to alter the encounter in that scenario, even when playing with kids.


---------------------------------------------------------------

Warning: Below is a danger of going off into tangent on adult themes only just stopped myself.

1) Saying that there can be real world consequences if you go and kill another PC. I've played in lots of games with plenty of PvP deaths, and it is never nice to be on the receiving end. But it makes for a memorable moment, and personally I think a little bit of negative emotion at the time is well worth it, and friends end up laughing about it and retelling tales down the line. Other groups have broken up over stuff like that, I don't understand that myself. It is only a game, admittedly one you can get heavily emotionally involved in, but still a game.


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## Maxperson (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So is there no violence in games that (for you) crosses the threshold into "not okay", even though it still isn't real?
> 
> There is for me.





There isn't for me since it's all pretend.  There is for the NPCs, though.  If the PCs torture a thief to get information and it gets out, they could end up imprisoned.  Torture is generally going to be illegal unless the government is doing it, and even then not all governments do it.  The PCs reputation will suffer in any case as the locals view them as bad men.

Whether the PCs engage in torture or not, let the orc women and children go or not, or murder NPCs in cold blood or not, all tell me what kind of people their PCs are, not what kind of person they are.  This is a game and sometimes we stretch out boundaries and play something that we would not be comfortable with in real life.  Roleplaying games are good like that.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> So is there no violence in games that (for you) crosses the threshold into "not okay", even though it still isn't real?
> 
> There is for me.




Thanks that is a great question. 

I went into the point in a bit more detail above, but to answer you directly.

Yes and No, like all entertainment.

Yes - There is no violence in games that cross the threshold into "not okay" to be included in a game, if handled properly. I see gaming as a safe space, where you can have pretty nasty stuff happen but because it isn't real there is no actual danger to the people round the table.(1)

No - There are countless incidences of violence in game that I am "not okay" with either in character or as a person.

To take the recent controversy which involved sexual violence towards characters. 

Am I okay with sexual violence, no of course not, but because of that do I feel a film like *The Accused* should never have been made? No. Do I feel uncomfortable and shocked by the rape scene in that film, of course. So I am certainly "not okay" with it. But the film was very important at the time and had a significant effect.

Same with RPGs, there are plenty of scenes where I am "not okay" with the violence itself, the encounter with the hobogoblin women and children mentioned above. I am "not okay" with violence against women and children, but I am fine with that encounter being in an RPG. In fact I would go as far to say it is an better scenario because it is in. Would it prompt some people today to touch an X-Card perhaps it would, but I still think it should be there. 

I strongly believe not every RPG experience should be a "fun" one. That RPGs are often at there best went you are faced with uncomfortable situations and difficult moral dilemmas that may make you think. That you can have characters put in situations they don't want to be in and you personally find distressing. However I also believe that requires a certain amount of by-in and consent (which appears was lacking in the recent controversy).


_______________________________________________________

(1) This assumes you are playing with friends, or at least people that aren't trying to mental hurt you. I'm pretty stable and have no issues with separating in game and out of game emotions, but not everyone is. But in the past I've had sexual violence done to a character and it does leave a lasting impression, and at the time was a troubling experience. Looking back on it however I am glad it was something I could experience in a safe environment.


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## Dispater (Jun 12, 2019)

The lowest common denominator.

Violence is the basest, crudest capital of our society. A massive oversimplification, I know, but I am one of those who think ordered society is based on the control (or monopoly) of violence. We humans are social animals who have found coded language, laws and rituals to circumnavigate the need for violence, yet instead, we ceaselessly describe and portray and discuss violence in art, literature, games and films. We are essentially indulging in a form of fantasy or fetishism; sometimes for the lack of conflict it in our own lives. 

I think most people who have seen true violence shy away from it, and even in games, because it would remind them too much. Yet most people who have never experienced it properly are drawn to it. And lets face it, thats us, sitting here, and posting on this forum. A blanket statement, I know, but the fact is we are sitting here discussing games on online fora, not out in a ditch somewhere shooting bullets with screaming sergeants about. We are so fortunate to live in relatively peaceful times. Still even the most enlightened progressive individual has no appreciation for this. But has plenty of power fantasies and violent dreams. These cravings are coded into our genes, and I think we resort to games and entertainment to scratch that itch.

I am not one here to call out what came first, chicken, or the egg; it is a paradox, as we make greater leaps of technology, we use a greater part of our intelectual effort to describe violence. Whether it is a coded ritual we inherit from our parents or culture, we pass on to our kids. Do not ask me why. 

So when you get together with your group and play out combat; you are not really describing proper violence. I understand we here are mostly just using it as a vehicle for conflict and drama. However, my point here is, we humans often resort automatically to violence when we have to describe something new. When you are writing you campaign lore, you most likely have "the war of -insert goofy fantasy name-" kick of a chain of events that leads to your currentd day. And most DMs not being the most original of creatives; will most likely, most often, resort to combat as the vehicle for challenge to his group, an easy fix. 

It takes more effort to understand that a political conflict, an intelectual or  emotional conflict can have so many other forms. You can run entire games where violence is simply not an option (consequences too great, or simply not needed). If you want to see less of it, it is down to you. Either as a game designer - make up a game about court intrigue that has only minimal violence involved. As a DMs, run a story where every encounter is one where the characters have talk their way out of it. Make the games reflect more the world we live in; and not the violence fetishism of computer games.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> It is there to present a moral dilemma to the players.




This _seems_ to contradict your other claims. If it's all just make-believe and it's all ok, then there's no moral dilemma.

Now, there may be in-game consequences: if you kill the innocents your god will strip you of your powers, or whatever.  And maybe that's what you mean.  Make-believe violence, and make-believe moral dilemma.

On a somewhat related note, I've never found _any_ attraction to playing evil characters, and I always find it somewhat unsettling when others do.  I've _tried_ to play evil characters, and invariably I put on a veneer of evilness (maniacal cackle, etc.) but I still end up doing good.  Even in solo video games.  I've heard the explanations of exploring other personalities, etc., but I'll admit that in my heart I always think there's something wrong with people who enjoy it.

EDIT: On the other hand, I can easily understand how an actor might really enjoy playing an evil character in a movie.  I just don't see those two activities (acting and RPGing) as remotely similar.  Which in turn may shed light on other disagreements about roleplaying, metagaming, etc.


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## Jonathan Tweet (Jun 12, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> 1) It's a team activity where all participants can make meaningful decisions.
> 2) It is a conflict that has a clear problem to solve.
> 3) Progress toward that problem can be easily observed and measured.
> 4) The progress toward that problem is uniquely dynamic, giving all participants an opportunity to imagine something visceral and exciting.




I've been thinking about this issue for almost 40 years, and this summary is pretty good. 

Humans find sex and violence to be interesting, and of those two pursuits violence is the one suitable to group activity, as in a roleplaying game.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> This _seems_ to contradict your other claims. If it's all just make-believe and it's all ok, then there's no moral dilemma.




How, are you not roleplaying your character? I present you with the trolley car problem is that not an ethical dilemma for you despite the fact there is no real trolley or real people getting hurt?



> Now, there may be in-game consequences: if you kill the innocents your god will strip you of your powers, or whatever.  And maybe that's what you mean.




No, I mean doesn't it present you with a choice to make as a player, like the trolley car problem.



> Make-believe violence, and make-believe moral dilemma.




Yes, but it is still a moral dilemma. How would your good character react to the hobgoblin women and children encounter?



> On a somewhat related note, I've never found _any_ attraction to playing evil characters, and I always find it somewhat unsettling when others do.




I take it you never DM then? As a regular DM I frequently have to put myself in evil characters shoes. Although like you I don't like playing evil characters as a player, and even in gritty dark settings like Cyberpunk will be the one guy still trying to me good. Even as a GM my evil characters tend to have understandable motives even if there methods are somewhat questionable. Although throwing in the odd Hannibal Lector character or actual demon occasionally is fun.



> I've _tried_ to play evil characters, and invariably I put on a veneer of evilness (maniacal cackle, etc.) but I still end up doing good.  Even in video games.  I've heard the explanations of exploring other personalities, etc., but I'll admit that in my heart I always think there's something wrong with people who enjoy it.




Snap.


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## Celebrim (Jun 12, 2019)

Tonguez said:


> Anyway as a indigenous minority in a former British colony, I've always been acutely aware of the 'problem of DnDs' fantasy foundations essentially being the glory of Europe and Empire over the 'savage other' (ie Orcs, goblins).




Certainly if I also had that background, I think I'd see why that would be your first pass understanding of the structure of D&D, but the fantasy foundations of D&D go back to a time well before Europe was a mighty colonizing power, to a time when on the contrary Europe was one of the world's cultural and technological backwaters and more often than not, it was being colonized by foreign nations (Huns, Turks, Moors, etc.).

D&D's fantasy and folk roots don't start in the 18th or 19th century.  Trolls and goblins and elves and dwarves and the like didn't come out of Europe's colonial experience, but out of its dim dark prehistory.   The fantasy roots of goblins and trolls and the like aren't Europeans driving out indigenous groups in the Age of Exploration, but the brutal man versus nature fight of the European Dark Ages.  Tolkien, who popularized this sort of thing as much or more than any other, was a medievalist.  His inspiration was Beowulf and the Viking Eddas and the rest of that Northern European we are just now emerging into literacy a good 5000 years after writing was discovered literature.  The northern Europeans that believed in savage fairy people and driving them into the wild country weren't thinking about non-European peoples of which they had almost no contact.  They were thinking of their own bitter cold, inhospitable, and savage land with its long lightless nights and short growing seasons.

When D&D establishes the idea of driving out monsters, and settling the land in a pastoral manner, it's entirely self-contained within European setting.   There are no non-Europeans present in that narrative, and the monsters - fairies, dragons, evil spirits, giants, restless dead - are the inhospitable wilderness and possibly other European iron age tribes.   So, I reject the assumption that D&D in its core gameplay first emerged as some sort of "colonialist narrative" and that we need to find a point in RPGs where some alternative was first introduced.   The original Blackmoor Braunstein was certainly not based on colonialist tropes, and it's slander to claim so.

Has this sort of thing on occasion been transformed into a colonialist narrative?  Probably, but it's not that common.  Even writers who held at times in their life deeply racist attitudes, like Robert Howard, when they projected their own race into this fantasy setting, they projected them as the barbarians in the setting and not the civilized peoples.   The white peoples of Howard's setting were the primitive, unsophisticated ones, limited in technology, lore, commerce, and wealth.  Howard's setting isn't about white colonialism per se - it's about a yearning for that mythic primitive bygone time when supposedly Caucasians were more manly, honest, virtuous or whatever than they were now in his eyes, polluted by commerce, decadence, excessive learning, and the sort of things that Howard thought led to social and racial decline.  In other words, it's back to yearning to that just emerging from the dark ages mythic narrative.   Does this not being colonialist necessarily make it better?  No.   But there is a danger I think in seeing things too much within the lens of your own experience.  



> Its probably what pushed me more towards playing non-human characters (half orcs, gnomes) in non-combat orientated classes (thief-acrobats, alchemist, clerics) or monk-assassins (strike back at the establishment!!).




I think it bizarre to self-identify with orcs.  I don't identify you with orcs.  Why would you identify yourself in that way?  Why consciously adopt a negative stereotype?  The orcs, ogres, trolls, goblins, kobolds, and so forth were never meant to mean you.  So if you appropriate them and self-identify as them, then of course you are going to see all violence against them as some sort attack on yourself whether it is meant that way or not.  But then, you are at that point the one engaged in cultural appropriation - taking dark age fears of a different culture and reskinning them for your own purpose.   You can't blame the author for that baggage. 

I spent almost my entire youth playing a 1e AD&D Thief.   I probably did it because I was an adolescent and adolescents are almost always attracted to rebellion.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 12, 2019)

Violence is one of the fundamental elements of the human experience I guess.  And even our civilization is held together ultimately by the threat of violence.  Its a basic part of life.  Plus its easy to make into a game.  Other fundamental aspects of living, like sexuality, don't translate as well to a game. Well a RPG.  Well a table top RPG.  Well...it depends on who is playing.


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## Umbran (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> Yes - There is no violence in games that cross the threshold into "not okay" to be included in a game, if handled properly. I see gaming as a safe space, where you can have pretty nasty stuff happen but because it isn't real there is no actual danger to the people round the table.(1)




A little while back, I taught my 13-year-old _de facto_ goddaughter how to play D&D.  That gave me an entirely new perspective on what "safe" means.

There's a little-realized fact that there's no such thing as a no-holds-barred safe space.  Safe spaces need boundaries, and the boundaries that are useful and safe for one group may not be for another.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

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## Umbran (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Yeah, as I wrote originally, this nagging idea re: violence first started when I was reading through B2 and preparing it for kids.




So, let me continue from the perspective of my experience - since it was a recent one in which I actively questioned the tolerances for many things in my game and presentation...

At the root, we view some violence as okay, because we still live in a world in which violence is occasionally necessary.  There are still (entirely human) monsters among us, and sometimes we are not left with non-violent alternatives for dealing with them.  

My 13-year-old players knew this, so I could use violence in my game to that extent.  There could be foes in my game who were willing to do harm in order to achieve their ends, and the players could oppose them and use violence to do it.  That would be okay, as they are prepared for it.

What wasn't going to be okay?  

1) Explicit graphic brutality.  Yes, it exists in the world too, but my 13-year-olds were not yet versed in what that really means, and it was not my place to introduce them to the idea and help them integrate that understanding.  

2) The PCs as the bad guys.  While it was okay to allow the PCs to take a certain glee from exacting a sort of rough justice, taking glee in getting what they want through violence was not going to fly - much for the same reason as (1), because to do that right I'd have to make it clear what kind of consequences that has - and 13-year-olds are not yet ready to understand the depths of those consequences.  Thankfully, the kids showed no desire to be bad guys, even when the opportunity was easily available.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Why are we okay with violence in RPGs?



 If we were all Americans, here, I could just say "because we're a violent society."

Instead, for my flip, sarcastic, cynical answere I'm going to have to go all ST:tNG,  and say " because we are an egregiously violent species."


(And, you don't get to complain about flip, joking answered to serious questions.)


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## Celebrim (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Yeah, as I wrote originally, this nagging idea re: violence first started when I was reading through B2 and preparing it for kids.




One thing I've noted in the past about playing with kids is that they tend to be vastly more moral than the adults.   Most middle school and earlier players I've encountered tend to take moral quandaries very seriously, where as most adult players I've encountered are ruthless murder hobos.  

I've always been really fascinated by why that is.   Is it that the kids can't separate fantasy and reality as easily as adults, or is it that the kids correctly recognize the importance of make-believe and play as a form of mental practice and problem solving and the adults have forgotten?   Or are the players in their innocence actually in truth more moral than the adults?  Or is it just that since the adults know they are playing a game, they take none of it seriously except "winning" the game?   Or is it that the adults have been conditioned to think of winning as only a matter of dog-eat-dog survival?

One other problem I encountered when running RPGs for 5 year olds, is that the players (my children) refused to make choices that would put them in danger.  If a house in the neighborhood was said to be haunted, well that was more than sufficient reason not to go into a run down house.   Besides, going into an abandoned house was dangerous in itself, and it was trespassing.   If there was a dark hole that possibly led to fairy country, by no means where they going to go down it.   Anything remotely uncanny or dangerous caused them to make the very rational decision to avoid that potential danger and stay safe.  So it basically became impossible to have adventures, because they'd take one look at an adventure and tend to go, "Nope.  Not doing that.  You'd have to be stupid to do that."   The result is that most of their make believe play tended to lack conflict, and consequently tended to lack drama as I thought of the term.  

We had some drama of mundane things, but it was nothing like running any sort of RPG I'd run before.  I had a tendency to find that in game stress didn't need consequences.   Any end game stress was completely debilitating to the player anyway, that it was hardly necessary to dehabilitate the character.   If the character would be sad, frustrated, scared, or what not - the player probably was as well.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Umbran said:


> There's a little-realized fact that there's no such thing as a no-holds-barred safe space.  Safe spaces need boundaries, and the boundaries that are useful and safe for one group may not be for another.




Hence my footnote. Of course you aren't going to throw the same situations and dilemma's at a 13 year old kid as you might to at a University student or an middle-aged bloke like myself, or if you did they wouldn't react the same way.

I still think you could probably throw the hobgoblin women and children at all of them.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Okay. But that's not necessarily the case, is it?
> 
> (snip)
> 
> ...




I'm sure you've seen my responses that followed that rather simplistic first response. I still stand by that statement however, but nothing is that simple.



> Why are we okay with violence in RPGs as such a foundation of (most) games? Why does violence and killing go unremarked, and seems unremarkable?




Because it is influenced by the media and myths it represents that has always had violence and killing as it's foundation. 

The next question is of course why does the media/myths have violence and killing as it foundation?

You are then getting in to philosophy and the human condition. A bit too broad of a topic. Although I like Tony Vargas's Star Trek quote.


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## Umbran (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> I still think you could probably throw the hobgoblin women and children at all of them.




Perhaps.  But I would likely *position* it differently.  See above - I was not going to run a game in which 13-year-olds end up on the wrong side of the moral argument.  If I'm going to present the non-combatants as a challenge to kids, I'd position it clearly as a, "Well, nuts, you have to get around this without hurting anyone."  

Heck, in games for my adults, if the PCs choose the wrong side of the moral argument, they are apt to be treated by the world like the monsters they have become - meaning that they have made it moral and ethical for others to kill the PCs and take their stuff!


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## Kaodi (Jun 12, 2019)

Colonies and colonialism explicitly exist in many RPG settings, but I think the original framing of a "colonialist massacre of women and children" is a complete mischaracterization of what work "colonial" actually does.  It does not really do any _moral_ work in most situations. A "colonialist massacre" must necessarily be contrasted to a "non-colonialist massacre" and thinking there is some sort of moral difference between them is as foolish as thinking there is a meaningful difference between a French massacre of women and children and an English massacre of women and children. As well colonialism is not a particularly good description of most violence games like D&D, at least insofar as it does not match up with what "colony" actually means. Territorial violence in D&D tends to be more basic expansionary violence. It can only be described as "colonial" to the extent that "colonial" killed "expansionary" and took its stuff.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Kaodi (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I know the argument you are trying to make, and the people that ascribe to it- please go make it somewhere else.




...Excuse me?


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 12, 2019)

So in D&D games do people actually encounter and slaughter humanoid tribes that were just living a peaceful existence? I think every orc group I've ran into in D&D over the years was actively raiding the human civilizations around them, pillaging, marauding, or started things off by attacking the party. That's why we went to pacify them. Granted as a DM I've never included a peaceful tribe of hobgoblins, they don't really exist in the game world and I'm not really aiming to examine moral quandaries. Though maybe in a way I am without trying to. 

While all the species are fairly expansionist outside of hobbits and gnomes, the orcs and such are quite aggressively and violently so, unwilling to live in co-existence and driven by a will to dominate all life around them. 

Despite playing D&D since the early 80's never played B2 for some reason. I probably missed out.


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## Gradine (Jun 12, 2019)

There are two common cultural concepts that I believe are misconceptions, and why I think violence plays such a large role in our culture (western civilization more broadly, USA more specifically). 

1. Violence is always bad
If it can be argued that all acts of violence are evil, which I'm not sure about, at worst it can be said to sometimes be a necessary evil. Violence in media (including and probably even _especially_ games) allows us to, among other things, remind ourselves that sometimes we have to fight (literally) for what is right or just. Whether than means roleplaying shooting nazis in _Rocket Age_, shooting nazis from the comfort of your couch in _Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, _or punching nazis in the face in the streets of D.C, this brand of violence helps remind us that there is evil in the world that will not go away just by us asking really, really, nicely.

Yes, our history is littered with examples of acts of violence, small and large, that had largely deleterious effects on the people it was enacting upon, people who in most cases did nothing to warrant it beyond existing on land somebody else wanted. That said, many of those people fought back.

There's any number of other reasons why violence appeals to us as humans, westerners, Americans, etc., or at least certain segments of our population (clearly violence is celebrated in toxic masculine cultures, for example), but for me, it's about recognizing that standing up for what we believe in requires us getting our hands dirty* from time to time.
_
*(you know, by punching filthy nazis in the face)

_2. Simulated violence desensitizes us to real violence.

I think most of us are familiar with this old saw, how it's been used to attack games and/or gamers in various ways by the media and/or political concern trolls, so I think calling this a misconception would less controversial here than it might be in some of the other circles I run in. What's probably more controversial is my actual belief on the subject: this process actually works in reverse.

Real life anecdote number one: I have a daughter. She's older now, but like all humans of a certain age she was once a toddler. Have you seen a group of toddlers interact with each other? They punch, they kick, they bite, they pull hair, for really no god damned reason whatsoever. Kids start violent. It's, in many ways, one of our most natural instincts. Kids don't stop getting violent until you really drill into them the negative consequences of their behavior.

Real life anecdote number two: I have a partner. She grew up on classic 90's slasher horror. One of her favorite childhood stuffed animals was Freddy Krueger. As she got into her teens, her particular jam became zombie movies. Even into adulthood, her favorite thing was horror movies, and she didn't shy away from gore one bit.

Then she had our kid, and horror became verboten in our household for years.

My point is, I think it's far more common for us to become _sensitized _to violence (not necessarily through media so much as our life experiences) than it is for us to become _de_-sensitized to it.

There's been some discussion in the thread about both (a) the ability of rpgs to force us into moral dilemmas and (b) the disconnect between player and character, and I think both of these play into the ways RPGs can sensitize us to violence. The morals dilemmas are easy; they ask us what we would do in those circumstances. Even in those instances where I'm playing a character who would act differently from myself, it's nearly impossible for humans to manage that disconnect in a way that doesn't also force them to consider what they'd do themselves and how they personally feel about their character's actions. That's something no other media, not even really video games, can accomplish as well as tabletop RPGs.

And while we're clearing up misconceptions...



Jonathan Tweet said:


> Humans find sex and violence to be interesting, and of those two pursuits* violence is the one suitable to group activity*, as in a roleplaying game.


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## pogre (Jun 12, 2019)

If one is OK with depictions of violence as entertainment - and I very much respect the opinions of those who are not OK with this - then the wargaming hobby largely presumes hostile intentions on both sides and war as a "solution." I believe there really is no difference for the RPG community in general.

***Painting with a broad brush here I know. There are plenty of non-violent RPGS...***


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Gradine said:


> And while we're clearing up misconceptions...
> 
> Originally Posted by *Jonathan Tweet*
> 
> ...




Yeah didn't end well for the last GM that tried that... (too soon?).


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

pogre said:


> ***Painting with a broad brush here I know. There are plenty of non-violent RPGS...***




I would say they are an almost insignificant minority.


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## Gradine (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> Yeah didn't end well for the last GM that tried that... (too soon?).




Well I mean, not both at the same time. Or if it is, then make sure it's consensual, at the very least. Safe words are key.

(not to dig up a recently closed thread again but while we're talking about misconceptions, rape is about violence and *not* sex)


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## Jonathan Tweet (Jun 12, 2019)

Indeed Gradine is right, and I typed too quickly. I would say that violence is generally more suitable than sex, rather than either/or, one being suitable and the other not.


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## Derren (Jun 12, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> So in D&D games do people actually encounter and slaughter humanoid tribes that were just living a peaceful existence? I think every orc group I've ran into in D&D over the years was actively raiding the human civilizations around them, pillaging, marauding, or started things off by attacking the party. That's why we went to pacify them. Granted as a DM I've never included a peaceful tribe of hobgoblins, they don't really exist in the game world and I'm not really aiming to examine moral quandaries. Though maybe in a way I am without trying to.
> 
> While all the species are fairly expansionist outside of hobbits and gnomes, the orcs and such are quite aggressively and violently so, unwilling to live in co-existence and driven by a will to dominate all life around them.
> 
> Despite playing D&D since the early 80's never played B2 for some reason. I probably missed out.



(removed the color to make it actually readable)
More often than you think. Basically every time you delve into a dungeon.
And why only limit it to humanoids? D&D is full of nonhumanoid sapient creatures. Yet I doubt many players had a second thought about killing a dragon for just existing and having loot.

Imo, how monsters a treated in an RPG is a interesting example of how "dehumanization" works.
When Players fight a tribe of evil human barbarians they will often try to spare some of them or seek means to drive them off. Make them orc barbarians and they are a lot more willing to kill everyone. And when you instead have a pack of winter wolves or other sapient nonhumans than imo most players never even consider anything else than killing them all.


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## Umbran (Jun 12, 2019)

Gradine said:


> 2. Simulated violence desensitizes us to real violence.
> 
> ...
> My point is, I think it's far more common for us to become _sensitized _to violence (not necessarily through media so much as our life experiences) than it is for us to become _de_-sensitized to it.




Um, be careful there.  You started with simulated violence, but then use *real* physical conflicts (minor ones, as toddlers) as your example.  Apples and oranges.

De-sensitization to violence *does* happen.  If you are 11 years old, and you regularly see real violence in your home, in your school, and in your community, yes, you get de-sensitized (meaning - you have a decreased emotional response to it).  And yes, it seems that de-sensitization correlates with violent behavior as a young adult.  But this isn't about kids pulling hair when they are two.  This is about seeing people getting threatened, beaten, or shot.

What is much less clear is whether realistically simulated violence in a specific context (like videogames, or movies) has anything like the the same impact on a person's behavior as the multi-context exposure to real people getting hurt around you I described above.  And, to be clear - the current rollback on the idea of video games having an impact is based mostly on noting how early studies were seriously flawed, not on further studies that show the effect isn't present.  In effect, while lots of folks have opinions, the science-jury is still out on that one.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4539292/


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## Satyrn (Jun 12, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> If we were all Americans, here, I could just say "because we're a violent society."
> 
> Instead, for my flip, sarcastic, cynical answere I'm going to have to go all ST:tNG,  and say " because we are an egregiously violent species."
> 
> ...



Excellent! Since [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] doesn't get to complain, that lets me go to the front of the line with my complaint.

My Complaint: you're stealing my schtick! Please Schtop.


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## Gradine (Jun 12, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Um, be careful there.  You started with simulated violence, but then use *real* physical conflicts (minor ones, as toddlers) as your example.  Apples and oranges.
> 
> De-sensitization to violence *does* happen.  If you are 11 years old, and you regularly see real violence in your home, in your school, and in your community, yes, you get de-sensitized (meaning - you have a decreased emotional response to it).  And yes, it seems that de-sensitization correlates with violent behavior as a young adult.  But this isn't about kids pulling hair when they are two.  This is about seeing people getting threatened, beaten, or shot.
> 
> ...




I wasn't pretending towards any claims of scientific accuracy. You do make a good point about the prevalence of real-life violence in one's life versus simulated violence. I want to be clear; I agree fully that presence of real-life violence in someone's life will naturally impact their personal inclinations towards violence. I am speaking specifically of simulations of violence and how they, by and large, do not desensitize us to violence, and in fact are much more likely than not to _sensitize _us away from our natural predilections towards violence than the opposite.

I have zero evidence to back this up beyond my own personal experiences, for what it's worth. As long as the science-jury is out that's about all I've got to rely on.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## billd91 (Jun 12, 2019)

Gradine said:


> Real life anecdote number one: I have a daughter. She's older now, but like all humans of a certain age she was once a toddler. Have you seen a group of toddlers interact with each other? They punch, they kick, they bite, they pull hair, for really no god damned reason whatsoever. Kids start violent. It's, in many ways, one of our most natural instincts. Kids don't stop getting violent until you really drill into them the negative consequences of their behavior.




You don't even have to drill negative consequences into them. Kids bite, for example, because they don't yet have the means to express themselves in any other way. As they develop communication skills, toddler violence goes way down.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> How, are you not roleplaying your character? I present you with the trolley car problem is that not an ethical dilemma for you despite the fact there is no real trolley or real people getting hurt?




You have a point: an ethical dilemma is an ethical dilemma even if it is entirely imaginary.  But when you discuss the trolley car problem in freshman philosophy you are, I assume, trying to imagine that there are real lives at stake, and that it would be a tragedy for them to be lost. In other words, you are analyzing the problem _as if it were real._ I don't think you would answer the trolley car problem with, "Can I kill them all, and take their stuff?" 

 Is that right?

If so, that seems to conflict with the sentiments you express about RPG violence: that since it is make-believe violence it doesn't really matter.  

(As an aside, a version of the trolley car problem is now appearing in real life in autonomous car design, in the sense of balancing the life of the occupants of the car versus the lives of others.  One company...I think it was Mercedes...got in some hot water for publicly stating how its algorithms would make those decisions.)




> Yes, but it is still a moral dilemma. How would your good character react to the hobgoblin women and children encounter?




Honestly, I haven't seen that adventure since the early 80's so I don't remember the specifics.  Is it like the trolley car, in that there is no answer that avoids killing innocents?  Or can you choose to put your character at risk to save the innocents?  If the latter, that's usually what I'd do.  To a much greater extent than I fear I would in real life.



> I take it you never DM then?




...wtf?



> As a regular DM I frequently have to put myself in evil characters shoes. Although like you I don't like playing evil characters as a player, and even in gritty dark settings like Cyberpunk will be the one guy still trying to me good. Even as a GM my evil characters tend to have understandable motives even if there methods are somewhat questionable. Although throwing in the odd Hannibal Lector character or actual demon occasionally is fun.




Again, a fair question to ask.  As DM, though, I don't feel that my NPCs "are me" in the sense that a PC is.  I have no more trouble portraying evil NPCs (to be slaughtered by the heroes) than I would putting an evil villain in a story I might write.  But I can't imagine writing a story in which the protagonist/hero is evil.  Struggling with inner conflict, and as a consequence doing not nice things or making unwise decisions?  Sure.  But slaughtering innocents, no.

So I find your question "are you not roleplaying your character?" odd.  It's precisely because I _am_ roleplaying my character that I find in-game violence disturbing.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

billd91 said:


> You don't even have to drill negative consequences into them. Kids bite, for example, because they don't yet have the means to express themselves in any other way. As they develop communication skills, toddler violence goes way down.




Faulkner's "The Unvanquished" is really about exactly this question.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You have a point: an ethical dilemma is an ethical dilemma even if it is entirely imaginary.  But when you discuss the trolley car problem in freshman philosophy you are, I assume, trying to imagine that there are real lives at stake, and that it would be a tragedy for them to be lost. In other words, you are analyzing the problem _as if it were real._ I don't think you would answer the trolley car problem with, "Can I kill them all, and take their stuff?"
> 
> Is that right?
> 
> ...




I think a key difference though is the trolley car problem asks students what they would do, RPGs are asking what the character would do. And the reason it matters in the trolley car problem is because it reveals something about how we value human life. But let’s be clear: the trolley car problem is still just a thought exercise. It still is imaginary. 

That said how Rob reacts to the trolley car problem is very different from how Rob’s C/E barbarian reacts to the Orc dilemma. 

Either way, I don’t think there is much of a connection with role playing violence and real world violence


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## Kaodi (Jun 12, 2019)

Were I in school today I think I would have more fun (or even more fun?) with the trolley problem than I did back when. I think people forget that the people at risk can have interpersonal relationships, not just characteristics or numbers. Like if the trolley is hurtling towards one person and you could switch tracks so it would hit four people that _seems_ like a non-issue - you let the one die. But what if the four are the grandparents of the one?  

In any case I cannot say I am the sort that identifies myself with my characters even if I refer to them sometimes in the first person. It's all about "WWJD"  - What Would Jozan Do?


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## Immortal Sun (Jun 12, 2019)

I think this question deserves some refining.

What kind of violence?  Murder-hoboing?  I'm not really okay with that because A: it tends to draw a crowd I don't like, and B: I find it boring.

Collective violence?  Like, waging wars, fighting over resources, that thing?

Individualized-violence?  Like one dude killing another dude for *whatever reasons*?

Though I think these deserve different _specific_ answers, the general answer is that I think a lot of people believe you can't accomplish anything without struggle, and the fact that we're simulating an often medieval era or apocalyptic era or other kind of dystopian era with RPGs, "struggle" most always translates into physical conflict.  We must overcome certain obstacles and those obstacles are usually other living things.

Also, because DMs don't reward non-combat solutions or situations.


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## Celebrim (Jun 12, 2019)

billd91 said:


> You don't even have to drill negative consequences into them. Kids bite, for example, because they don't yet have the means to express themselves in any other way. As they develop communication skills, toddler violence goes way down.




That may be true in part, but part of the negative consequence that gets drilled into small children is other small children bonking them in the nose or biting them back in response.   

That said, I don't remember a notable drop in violence between myself and my playmates, classmates, and even friends until we were about 15.  There were plenty of explosive fights in elementary and middle school, sometimes between two kids that really didn't get along, or a bully and a victim, but sometimes between otherwise close comrades.   Then, often as not, things would be smoothed over either immediately or a day or two later.

Adjacent to this background, there were a group of older persons where the boundaries on violence never got set.  The guy who sat in front of me in my home room class killed two people with a shotgun when a drug deal went wrong.  A fight broke out between two upper classmen, and I ended up in the middle of rifle fire when one went out to his truck to get the means to settle the argument.  And then there was that time the sons of the local KKK chapter told our RPG group we couldn't call ourselves Knights, and we had to explain to them with more than words that we really weren't going to be intimidated.

So, while I do agree that toddlers become violent at times because they have difficulty expressing themselves and being understood, I'm more on the side of Gradine's appraisal that kids start violent and stay that way unless conditioned otherwise.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 12, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Either way, I don’t think there is much of a connection with role playing violence and real world violence




???

Me either.  Was somebody in this thread suggesting there's a connection?

Makes me wonder if you actually understand the arguments in this thread, or in that other one that shall not be named.  Or if maybe you just fear others making such a connection (e.g., the "violent video games cause violent crime" canard) so you're unwilling to entertain some possibilities.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> You have a point: an ethical dilemma is an ethical dilemma even if it is entirely imaginary.  But when you discuss the trolley car problem in freshman philosophy you are, I assume, trying to imagine that there are real lives at stake, and that it would be a tragedy for them to be lost. In other words, you are analyzing the problem _as if it were real._ I don't think you would answer the trolley car problem with, "Can I kill them all, and take their stuff?"




You are right I wouldn't answer it like that, and when play tabletop I generally don't roleplay like that either. I know the murderhobo is a common trope, but generally most players I know have progressed beyond that pretty quickly, but occasionally revisit it, because it can be fun from time to time.



> If so, that seems to conflict with the sentiments you express about RPG violence: that since it is make-believe violence it doesn't really matter.




I didn't say it doesn't matter, just that it isn't real. So we shouldn't have a problem with it. Like the Trolley Car problem, what you decide matters at least to you, in the fictional world it matters to the people the trolley runs over, but in the real world it has no consequence if you decide to save the five and sacrifice the one or not. It doesn't matter if five make-believe people die or not.

Similarly it doesn't matter if a family of hobgoblins die to the real world as a whole, but it does and should matter to you personally. Because it influences how you play that character you are emotionally invested in.



> Honestly, I haven't seen that adventure since the early 80's so I don't remember the specifics.  Is it like the trolley car, in that there is no answer that avoids killing innocents?  Or can you choose to put your character at risk to save the innocents?  If the latter, that's usually what I'd do.  To a much greater extent than I fear I would in real life.




Well it's an RPG, there are almost always more than just option A or option B, even if the GM presents it as such. That's part of what makes them so much more fun than CRPGs. And another part of what makes RPGs fun is you can be more heroic than you might be in real life, since there is no danger of you actually dying, only your character at worse.



> ...wtf?




It was your comment about not playing evil characters, I see DM'ing as playing a character, and they are often evil.



> Again, a fair question to ask.  As DM, though, I don't feel that my NPCs "are me" in the sense that a PC is.




Ah I rarely have a sense that the PC I am playing is an avatar of me in the game world. I recently heard a great quote from Robert de Niro, 

_"One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price."_

To me roleplaying is about trying out being someone other than myself, obviously I can't help but bring something of myself to a character, but I make a conscious effort to avoid it when I can. I will frequently play characters that have motivations very different from my own. 



> I have no more trouble portraying evil NPCs (to be slaughtered by the heroes) than I would putting an evil villain in a story I might write.  But I can't imagine writing a story in which the protagonist/hero is evil.  Struggling with inner conflict, and as a consequence doing not nice things or making unwise decisions?  Sure.  But slaughtering innocents, no.




Cool. When you said you had a issue with roleplaying evil characters I thought in general.



> So I find your question "are you not roleplaying your character?" odd.  It's precisely because I _am_ roleplaying my character that I find in-game violence disturbing.




Right so because your character is an avatar of yourself to some extent. When you roleplay the character in game murder has an emotional impact on you as they are an extension of yourself, hence it matters in the real world. 

Where as when I roleplay a character they are often very detached from myself, how my character reacts to a situation matter to me because it influences how I see that character and who they develop and react to future situations in the game, but it only matters in the game not the real world, as it isn't me. Obviously it has some impact in the real world as I try to understand the motivations of someone who has a goals and drives different than myself.

I read a good article recently on what is referred to as Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character, about the real world emotional impact of some roleplaying experiences. It refers to LARPs but I think you would find it interesting, and equally applicable to tabletop. I suspect I build a stronger "alibi" to use the term from that article.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> ???
> 
> Me either.  Was somebody in this thread suggesting there's a connection?
> 
> Makes me wonder if you actually understand the arguments in this thread, or in that other one that shall not be named.  Or if maybe you just fear others making such a connection (e.g., the "violent video games cause violent crime" canard) so you're unwilling to entertain some possibilities.




I assumed this was the reason behind the discomfort with violence in RPGs


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> ???
> 
> Me either.  Was somebody in this thread suggesting there's a connection?
> 
> Makes me wonder if you actually understand the arguments in this thread, or in that other one that shall not be named.  Or if maybe you just fear others making such a connection (e.g., the "violent video games cause violent crime" canard) so you're unwilling to entertain some possibilities.




Also others on the thread brought up this topic so figured might as well weigh in on that point. Happy to engage you elf, but not going to do so if you continue to speak to me like this. A modicum of respect or politeness would be appreciated


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Nope.
> 
> You read what I wrote, right?




Yes I read what you wrote.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 12, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Bagpuss (Jun 12, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Perhaps.  But I would likely *position* it differently.  See above - I was not going to run a game in which 13-year-olds end up on the wrong side of the moral argument.  If I'm going to present the non-combatants as a challenge to kids, I'd position it clearly as a, "Well, nuts, you have to get around this without hurting anyone."
> 
> Heck, in games for my adults, if the PCs choose the wrong side of the moral argument, they are apt to be treated by the world like the monsters they have become - meaning that they have made it moral and ethical for others to kill the PCs and take their stuff!




I think kids could also handle consequences to their actions, if they make a questionable choice.


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## MGibster (Jun 12, 2019)

As others have pointed out, role playing games evolved from war games and violence has remained a large part of most mainstream games over the past 45 years.  So from the early days of gaming the audience have been made up of people who don't have a problem with the kinds of violence typically found in games.  I wouldn't doubt it if some people from the 70s, 80s, and today decided RPGs weren't for them because of the violence.  I can't think of any popular RPG that doesn't make the assumption that player characters will engage in violence.  

But violence in most RPGs isn't all that realistic.  And part of that is because of the abstract nature of combat in a game.  Sanitized violence has been acceptable for a long time.  Most parents don't have a problem with their kids watching hordes of Storm Troopers mowed down in Star Wars but they might have a problem with those same kids watching John Wick 3.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 12, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So why did you assume this was the reason behind the discomfort? If it wasn't?




I assumed it was the reason behind Elfcrushers discomfort. But it was also a fairly throw-away comment on my part. Not something I am hellbent on defending.


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## Umbran (Jun 13, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> I think kids could also handle consequences to their actions, if they make a questionable choice.




There's "questionable choice" and "end up on the wrong side of the moral argument".  Splitting the party to chase down goblins in the woods is a questionable choice, and when they did that, they handled the consequences.  Becoming villains is what happens when you are on the wrong side of the moral argument.

I think, on their first go ever at RPGs, having them hunted down and either executed or imprisoned for murder (a likely consequence for adventurers who have moral weaknesses) would not have had a salutary effect on their impression of RPGs.  So, yes, I aimed my presentation to steer clear of certain pitfalls.  They are young, and have time to get into those later.


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## Umbran (Jun 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> Makes me wonder if you actually understand the arguments in this thread, or in that other one that shall not be named.  .






Bedrockgames said:


> Also others on the thread brought up this topic so figured might as well weigh in on that point.





Talk about your questionable choices.

One reason why we are okay with violence, is that in the real world, some people have issues letting things go, and that tends to escalate....

Gentlemen, be warned - dragging around drama from closed threads is an astoundingly good way to get yourself a vacation from the site.  Both of you drop it, now, please and thank you.  I would, in fact, take this exchange as an indication that neither one of you should be responding to each other in this thread.  It does not seem that either of you has cooled off well enough to resist the temptation to take pot-shots.


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## Riley37 (Jun 13, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> I think this question deserves some refining.




Yes. On the first page, I raised a distinction between colonialist and non-colonialist violence. AD&D has a colonialist endgame: at Name Level, a PC can build a keep and kill all monsters around it, with the result that peasants show up, build farms, and pay taxes to the PCs. Celebrim and I may disagree on whether that constitutes colonialism, and whether that's the default context for Keep on the Borderlands; well, we agree on many things and disagree on many things. There are D&D games with non-colonialist and possibly with anti-colonialist story arcs.

There's also, as you say, significant differences between collective and individual scales of violence. "Braunstein" was a Napoleonic war game, which considered significant individuals as factors in the progress of battles: if the battle happens in a town, then what happens if someone kills the mayor of the town? Arneson's "Blackmoor Bunch" (eg Sir Jenkins and the Bishop of Blackmoor) shifted the game from an overview of a battle (literally looking down onto the table-top diorama of a battlefield) to a zoom-in on named individuals; and that was a step from war-games towards D&D. (These steps happened *before* Arneson started using the "Chainmail" rules, if I understand correctly.)



Immortal Sun said:


> Also, because DMs don't reward non-combat solutions or situations.




Hey now. You could make some points and arguments about how *often* DMs reward non-combat solutions. I'd take interest in well-researched assertions about changes in rewards, across the expansion and evolution of TRPG, and which game publishers introduced which mechanics in which editions.

Your categorical and unqualified statement has been counter-factual at least since 1981, when "Champions" was first published, since the Champions rules for XP are not specific to defeating enemies. (If the Big Bad Guy plots to poison the city's water supply, then *any* method of foiling his plot counts as success.) There are published 5E D&D "Adventurer's League" scenarios which include XP rewards which are *only* earned by non-violent resolution of problems. My PC got 50 XP, for example, when the party encountered a dire wolf, and my PC cast Speak with Animals, enabling us to get past the wolf without bloodshed. That's not some DM's house rule; that's direct from the scenario as published by WotC.


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## Riley37 (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> One other problem I encountered when running RPGs for 5 year olds, is that the players (my children) refused to make choices that would put them in danger.  If a house in the neighborhood was said to be haunted, well that was more than sufficient reason not to go into a run down house.   Besides, going into an abandoned house was dangerous in itself, and it was trespassing.




Perhaps you have taught your children that danger and morally questionable choices are best left to adults. IMO, this is good parenting of five-year-olds. If your children's off-the-cuff response to "you see something moving in the windows of an abandoned house" is "find Daddy and tell him", so much the better. Have you tried games written for young players, such as "No Thanks Evil"?


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## Riley37 (Jun 13, 2019)

MGibster said:


> Sanitized violence has been acceptable for a long time.  Most parents don't have a problem with their kids watching hordes of Storm Troopers mowed down in Star Wars but they might have a problem with those same kids watching John Wick 3.




Most parents, yes. I am an oddball, or outlier, in feeling *less* comfort with sanitization. Years ago, I was watching a group of children, ages maybe 8 to 12, while their parents were having a meeting, and I played a VHS of "Star Wars". I hadn't planned this in advance, but right after the PCs escape the Death Star, on impulse, I hit PAUSE, and asked: What emotions Luke does Luke show, immediately after killing several people? (Troopers shot in the Death Star, plus Tie Fighter pilots: "I got him!".) Does he seem proud, sad, angry? I recognized that Luke killed in self-defense; but if I ever kill a fellow human, I *expect* to have strong, unpleasant feelings, as soon as the situation allows me to drop out of fight-or-flight mode. Even if I am simultaneously proud of my skills, and proud of my successful defense of myself and/or others.


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## Li Shenron (Jun 13, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I'm just ... curious ... as to what other people think. I mean, I understand WHY (IMO) violence is part of the scene (legacy of wargaming, advancement through XP, fantasy tropes, etc.), but I'm curious as to what people think of it now?




Just because violence is in the game, it doesn't mean that _all_ possible violence has to be in the game.

In all my D&D games, certain kinds of violence will never be featured (rape is one, anything specifically against children is another), and other kinds can be mentioned but are not narrated in detail (torture).


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## Riley37 (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> And then there was that time the sons of the local KKK chapter told our RPG group we couldn't call ourselves Knights, and we had to explain to them with more than words that we really weren't going to be intimidated.




On one hand, EN World is for gamers regardless of political allegiances, and for all I know, some of us (in this thread or otherwise) have a positive opinion of the KKK while others have a negative opinion of the KKK; there are differences we "check at the door" or take to PM. On another hand, bravo for standing your ground on "knight", and (if I infer accurately) for succeeding.


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## Tonguez (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Certainly if I also had that background, I think I'd see why that would be your first pass understanding of the structure of D&D, but the fantasy foundations of D&D go back to a time well before Europe was a mighty colonizing power, to a time when on the contrary Europe was one of the world's cultural and technological backwaters and more often than not, it was being colonized by foreign nations (Huns, Turks, Moors, etc.).
> 
> D&D's fantasy and folk roots don't start in the 18th or 19th century.  Trolls and goblins and elves and dwarves and the like didn't come out of Europe's colonial experience, but out of its dim dark prehistory.   The fantasy roots of goblins and trolls and the like aren't Europeans driving out indigenous groups in the Age of Exploration, but the brutal man versus nature fight of the European Dark Ages.




my nephew use to watch the cartoon series Blinky Bill, which is about a group of Anthropomorphized Australian animals having adventures in the Australia bush. Anyway I remember watching one episode when Blinky and friends go back in to the past to explore history, except they didnt go back in Australian history, instead Blinky (who is a koala) becomes a armoured knight out to save the princess from a medieval castle.
I for one was really disappointed, sure it was a kids show but the example does illustrate the inherent bias of 'Western' views of their romantic 'fantasy' past - Fantasy has developed from the old folklore rendering of the Dark/Middle Ages with its Rogues, Knights, Castles, Wolves and Dragons who lived "Once Upon a Time" in a "Land Far Far Away".

They might well, predate the imperial era of the 18th/19th century but the modern understanding of them was most certainly transformed and modified by the era. 



> Tolkien, who popularized this sort of thing as much or more than any other, was a medievalist.  His inspiration was Beowulf and the Viking Eddas and the rest of that Northern European we are just now emerging into literacy a good 5000 years after writing was discovered literature.  The northern Europeans that believed in savage fairy people and driving them into the wild country weren't thinking about non-European peoples of which they had almost no contact.  They were thinking of their own bitter cold, inhospitable, and savage land with its long lightless nights and short growing seasons.




Its notable that you raise Tolkien as he also reflects some of the colonial reality of his era via the inclusion of the 'elephant' riding black Southrons, a 'warlike people' who side with Sauron and fought alongside the Orcs against the heroes.




> When D&D establishes the idea of driving out monsters, and settling the land in a pastoral manner, it's entirely self-contained within European setting...Even writers who held at times in their life deeply racist attitudes, like Robert Howard, when they projected their own race into this fantasy setting, they projected them as the barbarians in the setting and not the civilized peoples.   The white peoples of Howard's setting were the primitive, unsophisticated ones, limited in technology, lore, commerce, and wealth.  Howard's setting isn't about white colonialism per se - it's about a yearning for that mythic primitive bygone time when supposedly Caucasians were more manly, honest, virtuous or whatever than they were now in his eyes, polluted by commerce, decadence, excessive learning, and the sort of things that Howard thought led to social and racial decline.  In other words, it's back to yearning to that just emerging from the dark ages mythic narrative.   Does this not being colonialist necessarily make it better?  No.   But there is a danger I think in seeing things too much within the lens of your own experience.




I accept that most of the Eddas and earliest European folklore has Man v Nature as its foundation, that of course is very evident in the development of the dragon, ogre and of course the wolf, witch and fey. But to say that the foreign other is unknown is incorrect as Africa and Near East were known, and even within Europe you have people like Saami, Roma and Picts who were other'd. 

REHs states that the Cimmerians were ancestors of the Irish and Scots Gaels and while Conan is a barbarian herepresents the finest ideals of the North West European as he is set against both decadent civilization of the northern lands and the exotic foreigners further south in Stygia (Egypt), Kush,  Zamora (Middle East) and Vendhya (India).

While these renderings of the exotic other as dark scorcerer and beguiling enchantress may not play to the savage image (although the Afghuli of Afghulistan do) they are nonetheless colonial images of other as untrustworthy enemy that influenced the development of RPGs.

As an aside does anyone remember Aesheba? an older setting envisioned as Greek-Africa? The book had some good research and nice ideas but for me there was always that niggling thought that Africa is rich enough to have its own existance without needing to overlay ancient Greece on top  



> I think it bizarre to self-identify with orcs.  I don't identify you with orcs.  Why would you identify yourself in that way?  Why consciously adopt a negative stereotype?  The orcs, ogres, trolls, goblins, kobolds, and so forth were never meant to mean you.




Actually my playing orcs was probably more inspired by my love of Pigsy (Cho Hakkai) from Monkey Magic, I also used a half-orc to approximate Woefully Fat the Pirate bokor in On Stranger Tides. The character I played most often was a gnome - also non-human, but more easily kept out of conflict.



> So if you appropriate them and self-identify as them, then of course you are going to see all violence against them as some sort attack on yourself whether it is meant that way or not.  But then, you are at that point the one engaged in cultural appropriation - taking dark age fears of a different culture and reskinning them for your own purpose.   You can't blame the author for that baggage. I spent almost my entire youth playing a 1e AD&D Thief.   I probably did it because I was an adolescent and adolescents are almost always attracted to rebellion.




That indeed is one of the dilemma in playing DnD races as races rather than as monsters and of course I am not unique in that as can be seen in the various cultural reskinnings that have happened over the years, most notably of course the Native American Elfs of Dragonlance.

Anyway this thread has been popular and the discussion moved ...


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## Kaodi (Jun 13, 2019)

While it has been mentioned that the game and/or DMs sometimes fail to reward non-combat solutions I think this kinda sidesteps the main issue: that for many characters the main form of advancement is getting better killing things and that for all characters advancement means de facto getting better at killing things. And in D&D and Pathfinder at least any class that lacks plentiful skills or magic is going to be extremely sub-optimal in a game with minimal violence. Violence is baked into these systems from top to bottom; they are designed for it.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Talk about your questionable choices.
> 
> One reason why we are okay with violence, is that in the real world, some people have issues letting things go, and that tends to escalate....
> 
> Gentlemen, be warned - dragging around drama from closed threads is an astoundingly good way to get yourself a vacation from the site.  Both of you drop it, now, please and thank you.  I would, in fact, take this exchange as an indication that neither one of you should be responding to each other in this thread.  It does not seem that either of you has cooled off well enough to resist the temptation to take pot-shots.




Why am I getting warned, I didn't bring the other thread up. I was talking about this thread.


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## Dispater (Jun 13, 2019)

Violence is a fundamental aspect of the human experience whom we have spent centuries to figure out how to get rid of. First, delegated away to government and professional troops to avoid it in our daily lives, whoin turn fought god-awful wars and found it better to be at peace. We are all fascinated by it, but the truth is, violence does not reflect our reality any more. It is the exception, or a sign of societal decay. 

Still we endlessly fetishize it in games and pop culture. Sexuality, on the other hand, very much reflects our existence. As humans we procreate and fornicate in the millions every day! And yet we are so afraid of it in games. 

Someone make me understand us humans, because I dont.


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## Celebrim (Jun 13, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Perhaps you have taught your children that danger and morally questionable choices are best left to adults. IMO, this is good parenting of five-year-olds. If your children's off-the-cuff response to "you see something moving in the windows of an abandoned house" is "find Daddy and tell him", so much the better. Have you tried games written for young players, such as "No Thanks Evil"?




When preparing to run a game for them, I looked over some of the other options out there and decided (characteristically) that the systems were too complex and not expressive enough, so I wrote my own which I dubbed SIPS (Simple Imagination Play system).


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## Celebrim (Jun 13, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> On one hand, EN World is for gamers regardless of political allegiances, and for all I know, some of us (in this thread or otherwise) have a positive opinion of the KKK while others have a negative opinion of the KKK; there are differences we "check at the door" or take to PM. On another hand, bravo for standing your ground on "knight", and (if I infer accurately) for succeeding.




There aren't enough KKK left in the USA to fill a basketball arena.  The leadership got busted up by state Attorney Generals about that same time, and they never recovered.  Heck, even the neo nationalist socialists that we do have left in the USA have a bad opinion of the KKK because they consider them too soft.   I can feel pretty safe in saying that no one in these threads has a positive opinion of the KKK.

That said, I don't agree with your first sentence, nor does the management.


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## Umbran (Jun 13, 2019)

Kaodi said:


> While it has been mentioned that the game and/or DMs sometimes fail to reward non-combat solutions I think this kinda sidesteps the main issue: that for many characters the main form of advancement is getting better killing things and that for all characters advancement means de facto getting better at killing things.




The game's rules are certainly largely about combat.  The *could* have rules that were as rich for dealing with social/political action, or other activity, but they don't.  If we hand players a hammer, we should expect them to treat problems like nails...

There are games that do better.  The CORTEX+ based _Leverage_ game, for example, does include combat.  But that is only one out of five major skills, and the other four are expected to be just as valuable in getting through to the conclusion of an adventure - and in fights it is generally assumed the PCS are not using firearms, and are knocking out bad guys instead of killing them.  There are FATE variants that put intellectual and/or social conflict on the same mechanical basis as physical conflict.


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## dragoner (Jun 13, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> There's a fine line between fun happy combat and ... um ... uncomfortable colonialist massacre of women and children, if you catch my drift.




Coming from people that genocide was committed against, yes, it was immediately noticed, and it was uncomfortable. Eventually it was one of the motivators to move away from that system. Personal combat, combating supernatural horror, that's fine; wiping out entire groups down to women and children? No. It wasn't even a fine line, I remember my friend reading that and being like "eh".


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> I think this question deserves some refining.
> 
> What kind of violence?  Murder-hoboing?  I'm not really okay with that because A: it tends to draw a crowd I don't like, and B: I find it boring.
> 
> ...




I think it is also just a natural thing that people like to see in their entertainment. Violence isn't unique to RPGs. It exists in movies, books, television and even music. I watch a lot of Kung Fu films and a lot of action movies. And I think the reason I like those is probably tied to the same reason I like killing monsters in an RPG or having a campaign that is about a massive sect war. It is exciting and cathartic. It also creates very high stakes (the threat of character death for example).


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## MGibster (Jun 13, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Does he seem proud, sad, angry? I recognized that Luke killed in self-defense; but if I ever kill a fellow human, I *expect* to have strong, unpleasant feelings, as soon as the situation allows me to drop out of fight-or-flight mode. Even if I am simultaneously proud of my skills, and proud of my successful defense of myself and/or others.




You might be surprised.  Many soldiers have stated they experienced a feeling of elation after killing the enemy.  They might feel bad when they get a chance to reflect upon it later but in the immediate aftermath?  Often it's joy.  The killed the people who were trying to kill them, they won, and they survived.  Happy times.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 13, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> 1. The media I consume is much, much, much more comfortable with the depiction of violence. I mean- sure, there was some violent and transgressive stuff in the lates 70s and early 80s, of course, but it's somewhat interesting to me how much more mainstream it is in all media. From video games (do you remember when the original Mortal Kombat was a BIG DEAL) to movies (ahem, JW3) to tv (GoT etc.). Arguably, this started in the 80s and has just accelerated.




Was there a reason for quoting me (just genuinely not sure and not sure if you were inviting a reply)


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## Celebrim (Jun 13, 2019)

MGibster said:


> You might be surprised.  Many soldiers have stated they experienced a feeling of elation after killing the enemy.  They might feel bad when they get a chance to reflect upon it later but in the immediate aftermath?  Often it's joy.  The killed the people who were trying to kill them, they won, and they survived.  Happy times.




Feeling bad about killing is a heavily conditioned response, and so far as I can tell is not natural.  And, even if it were, the vast majority of civilizations in world history have built their culture around celebrating martial prowess and victory, and were ruled over by a martial elite class.  The easiest way to achieve social and economic mobility was to kill your civilizations enemies.   Until relatively recently, in many societies a young male couldn't even hope to marry unless he achieved a certain level of above average social standing and economic success, so most societies - from North American aboriginals, to Scottish Highlanders, to the steppes of Asia, and on and on - had a huge surplus of unmarried young men eager to kill other unmarried young men.   That was human culture worldwide for most of humanities existence, so much so that evidence for it is written into our genes, and you can mark in the genetic code where the culture started to shift.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Feeling bad about killing is a heavily conditioned response, and so far as I can tell is not natural.




I thought it was the other way around: the military puts a whole lotta effort into _un_-conditioning new recruits, so that they won't be all conflicted about it when the moment comes. And that this is why the military actively promotes derogatory slurs for people of whatever state they happen to be fighting.  To de-humanize the enemy.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Feeling bad about killing is a heavily conditioned response, and so far as I can tell is not natural.  And, even if it were, the vast majority of civilizations in world history have built their culture around celebrating martial prowess and victory, and were ruled over by a martial elite class.  The easiest way to achieve social and economic mobility was to kill your civilizations enemies.   Until relatively recently, in many societies a young male couldn't even hope to marry unless he achieved a certain level of above average social standing and economic success, so most societies - from North American aboriginals, to Scottish Highlanders, to the steppes of Asia, and on and on - had a huge surplus of unmarried young men eager to kill other unmarried young men.   That was human culture worldwide for most of humanities existence, so much so that evidence for it is written into our genes, and you can mark in the genetic code where the culture started to shift.




I am pretty sure when soldiers go to war militaries have to work against a natural aversion to killing other people. This seems like an extreme simplification. Even if you look at a lot of those ancient armies, many of them were professional, others were class or caste based, not everyone was involved in the fighting.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> And that this is why the military actively promotes derogatory slurs for people of whatever state they happen to be fighting.  To de-humanize the enemy.




This doesn't sound like it is true, or at the very least not true for a very long time (been googling it and can't find much); do you have sources on this? This doesn't match what I've heard from people in the military I've spoken with.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 13, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Jun 13, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Feeling bad about killing is a heavily conditioned response, and so far as I can tell is not natural.




You say that as if humans *have* an identifiable "natural state" - we are a tribal, social species and an extremely extended infant period compared to other animals.  We, more than any other creature on the planet, are focused on *learned* behavior, not inborn, "natural" behavior.  What is natural for us is to try out a large number of different behaviors, and see what works.

I will push back on the idea that, since very young kids can be observed being rough with each other, that violence is the human "natural state".  Human children are not born with a full suite of natural behaviors that they get conditioned out of.  Human children are more blank slates - they *experiment* with behaviors, and they observe the behaviors of others, and they learn and develop.  

Note: learning and developing are not synonymous.  Some learned behaviors can be unlearned.  Some behaviors come from how brain structure develops over time, and that can be difficult or impossible to undo.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 13, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> This doesn't sound like it is true, or at the very least not true for a very long time (been googling it and can't find much); do you have sources on this? This doesn't match what I've heard from people in the military I've spoken with.




My original source was my grandfather, describing his training for WWII.  However, this is the first thing that popped up for me on Google: https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/THE-SCIENCE-OF-CREATING-KILLERS-Human-2514123.php. (EDIT: I just realized you only quoted the second half of my post.  No, it doesn't mention the derogatory slurs thing. I'll go look for that. EDIT2: Nope, first page of results on first search didn't turn up anything. But I'll continue to believe my grandfather.)

Pithy quote:


> The FBI discovered a similar problem among law enforcement officers through the early 1960s: a startling number were refusing to fire at suspects even when other lives were endangered.
> Even those who fired their weapons were not necessarily trying to kill -- it is hard for an observer to detect soldiers or cops who fire high to intentionally miss.
> Psychologists who advised the military and law enforcement agencies began to push for changes that would revolutionize training to improve kill rates. Their methods -- familiar to those who operate boot camps, police academies and aggressive-response self-defense courses -- are a distasteful mystery to most in the outside world. But they work.
> The Pentagon improved firing rates. Research suggests that 55 percent of U.S. soldiers fired on the enemy in the Korean War. By Vietnam that rate had climbed to more than 90 percent. Police studies document similar changes in recent decades.




For somebody who doesn't want to believe this, it would be pretty easy to just say, "Yeah but that's a newspaper...from liberal San Francisco. Where's the peer reviewed clinical research?"  And my answer would be: "I dunno.  It's not a high enough priority for me that I'm going to go looking."

EDIT: And just to honor my grandfather, who died a few years ago, I want to mention that for decades he claimed he had been on Guam, doing supply stuff.  Just before he died he was at a doctor's appointment with one of my aunts. The doctor, while chatting him up, asked if he was in the war, and what unit he was in.  My grandfather told him.  The doctor turns out to be a military history buff, and looked startled.  He said, "So you were on Iwo Jima."  My aunt scoffed, "No!  He wasn't on Iwo Jima!"  My grandfather said, "Yeah, I was," and started sobbing.  It was literally the first time he talked about it since coming home.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> My original source was my grandfather, describing his training for WWII.  However, this is the first thing that popped up for me on Google: https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/THE-SCIENCE-OF-CREATING-KILLERS-Human-2514123.php. (EDIT: I just realized you only quoted the second half of my post.  No, it doesn't mention the derogatory slurs thing. I'll go look for that. EDIT2: Nope, first page of results on first search didn't turn up anything. But I'll continue to believe my grandfather.)
> 
> Pithy quote:
> 
> ...




Agreed about the natural resistance to taking human life. My comment was just about the military encouraging slurs


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 13, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I will push back on the idea that, since very young kids can be observed being rough with each other, that violence is the human "natural state".  Human children are not born with a full suite of natural behaviors that they get conditioned out of.  Human children are more blank slates - they *experiment* with behaviors, and they observe the behaviors of others, and they learn and develop.
> .




I am no scientist but this seems quite wrong as well. I mean I did at least minor in philosophy and even there blank slate theory wasn't taken particularly seriously. I don't think celebrims conclusions seem accurate either, but there is at least some amount of truth to people having a natural state (like any other animal) and part of that natural state probably includes a certain amount of violence. My understanding is we have a natural resistance to killing each other, but we also have a natural need to defend ourselves against predators and rough play is pretty common in not just human children but a lot of mammals. I think it is fair to say we have culture layered on top of our nature, and that complicates the picture. But I think it would be really hard to argue now that everything is 100% cultural and we are pure blank slates.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 13, 2019)

Oh, a classic theological question! Are we created intrinsically good "in the nature of god" or are we born in sin, predisposed to evil?

As you might guess, the scientific community is having no more certain response than the theological community. On the one hand we are an animal that is both territorial and societal, which is a sure recipe for violence (we like our house to be beside another house, but if someone strays into that house, we feel it's OK to shoot them). Our murder rates are roughly the same as other simians, tending to be 7x higher than other mammals, so there's a fair amount of evidence for the "bad" side.

On the other hand the military studies show very clearly that most people are reluctant to attempt to kill others even when they know they are risking their own lives. So maybe we're "good"?

Or maybe we're just a mix; our societal leanings make us want to not hurt others, but our territorialism can override that and urge violence; I'm a mild-mannered man who respects others, but if you cut into my lane I have the sudden urge to ride you off the road and into a tree.

If so, it could explain our fascination with violence. Our "be nice to others; don't repay evil with evil; play nice" side is mostly in control and is our default state. But we still remember the times someone ticked us off -- stole our parking spot, mocked our accent, gave us a C when we deserved an A -- and we WANT to punch them in the face. Roleplaying gives us a chance to indulge that desire; we don't have to be constrained by society. If the NPC slaps our ass as we pass by him, we can pull out our sword and decapitate him. That's extreme in the real world, but it's not in Baldur's Gate, so screw you, half-orc commoner with 5 hit points, take 28 points of power attack damage and DIE.


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## dragoner (Jun 13, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I was thinking about your comment, re: the media, and dragoner's comment, directly above it.
> 
> I'm not looking at specific things, more of a gestalt.




I didn't mean it as a gut punch, maybe that's the slavic emotional roller coaster. lol

Not that I'm saying to stop playing the game, because I am not, only that some things strike closer to the bone for some people. Play away and have fun.

Also, afaik talking to biologists, reading science papers, we are 99% oriented towards cooperation and not conflict. Civilization can not exist if we are too violent, and even violence on the battlefield or in game is usually cooperative, soldiers are part of a military unit as their primary function. Even then many get PTSD, plus irrationally violent people are put in mental health care in civilian society, and that we call the aberrant behavior being a socio- or psychopath.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 13, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Agreed about the natural resistance to taking human life. My comment was just about the military encouraging slurs




I would be surprised if there's anything formal on paper (at least that's discoverable.)  But I would be equally surprised if drill sergeants during time of warfare were not _un_officially encouraged to refer to the enemy in dehumanizing terms.  Not because I think poorly of the military, or the people in it, but because it makes sense to do so, and organizations take on a life of their own. 

 Same reason that corporations full of otherwise decent people do unconscionable things.


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## Lanefan (Jun 13, 2019)

My very simple answer to the thread-title question: because it isn't real.

A fine corollary thread could and should be titled "Why aren't we OK with sex in RPGs", as I've seen numerous posts over the years in here from DMs who don't even allow inter-PC romance, never mind sex.


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## Arnwolf666 (Jun 13, 2019)

Because we are not little crybaby snowflakes and killing is fun.   But seriously I hope u r killing the bad guys in self defense or tracking down murderers that are dangerous and have caused harm.


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## Riley37 (Jun 13, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> A fine corollary thread could and should be titled "Why aren't we OK with sex in RPGs", as I've seen numerous posts over the years in here from DMs who don't even allow inter-PC romance, never mind sex.




Hard disagree. You have clear evidence that SOME of us aren't OK with sex in RPGs. Do not confuse "some of us" with "all of us". That leads to treating the rest of us as "not really us", which is all too often a step towards humanity at its worst.


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

Kaodi said:


> While it has been mentioned that the game and/or DMs sometimes fail to reward non-combat solutions I think this kinda sidesteps the main issue: that for many characters the main form of advancement is getting better killing things and that for all characters advancement means de facto getting better at killing things. And in D&D and Pathfinder at least any class that lacks plentiful skills or magic is going to be extremely sub-optimal in a game with minimal violence. Violence is baked into these systems from top to bottom; they are designed for it.




If by "these systems" you mean D&D and Pathfinder, then mostly yes. Though at various points in the last four decades, some people have worked, within those systems, in other directions. Scholar or diplomat as a playable class, for example.

5E D&D recognizes combat as one of three pillars. Combat is the pillar with the most, and most detailed, mechanical support. In 5E, a character who gains levels necessarily gains HP, which are strongly relevant in combat, and (almost?) exclusively in combat. (I cannot think off-hand of non-combat situations in which a character with 12 HP does better than a character with 11 HP; but for all I know, such cases may exist.) When I look at the charts in the Player's Handbook, summarizing what features each class gains at each level, they're mostly combat-oriented abilities.

That said, there are spells and magic items which have little or no combat utility. Rogues and lore bards get Expertise. I've seen players apply Expertise to Stealth and/or Athletics, and use that in combat frequently; I've seen players apply Expertise to Persuasion, and use it only out of combat. There's a range, of how players act within the system. Some players go along with the built-in bias towards "My character's main abilities are their combat abilities", and some players swim upstream.

In my experience of Call of Cthulhu, it doesn't take much reductionism to sort PCs into "investigation and lore" characters, who locate the monsters, and "shotguns and dynamite" characters, who then slay the monsters. One can write an "investigation and lore" PC which also has interesting, useful things to do during a fight scene; and one can write a "shotguns and dynamite" character who also has things to say, questions to raise, during the lead-in towards the fight scene; a party benefits from a mix of both. That said, most Call of Cthulhu scenarios are written to end in violence. If the guy with shotguns and dynamite never fires the shotgun, and uses the dynamite to collapse the old abandoned mine, leaving the subterranean reptoids to live out their lives but blocked from interaction with humanity, that's interesting because it's *not* the usual ending.

In Hero System, a player has options along a sliding scale, when allocating character build points. A player, when writing a PC, can spend ALL the build points on abilities usable only in combat (eg Combat Skill Levels); a player can allocate some points towards abilities which have significant utility both in and out of combat (most of the primary stats, Overall Skill Levels, and so forth); a player can allocate points towards abilities usable mainly outside combat (I can't think of an ability which has *no* possible use in combat). One of my favorite Fantasy Hero characters, played in a four-month weekly campaign, was built on 150 points, with maybe 50 points invested in non-combat skills. She was a traveling merchant with enough combat prowess to handle poorly-armed bandits, and a LOT of expertise on dealing with people all along multiple trade routes. This expertise was useful to the party, in its main quest, because the GM had planned a story involving a long overland journey passing through multiple nations. The GM took the story deeper - that is, zoomed in - on aspects of the story which engaged PC expertise, so my choice to play a character who spoke multiple languages, probably motivated the GM to write scenes in which linguistic ability became useful. Another player built her PC almost entirely for combat. We each had fun, playing to our various interests. In combat scenes, we both had things to do, my character mostly using hit-and-run, her character more often choosing frontal assault; in non-combat scenes, she could talk in character just as much as I could, but she didn't have a lot of options along the lines of "I apply a skill, does that help?" or "what does my PC know about this, beyond what I as a player already see?".

Other games with build points, rather than levels, have similar flexibility, to invest a higher or lower percentage of build points into combat readiness. This includes Shadowrun; also White Wolf's Orpheus, and to some extent Mage. Are there level-driven systems with anywhere near that degree of player choice, in how much PC creation tilts the game towards which pillar?


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> That said, I don't agree with your first sentence, nor does the management.




I'll believe that when I hear it from the management. There are opinions one may not express on EN World; but one can *hold* them, as long as one can refrain from expressing them openly, while chatting merrily about how to optimize a sorcerer-warlock. I may benefit from a Klan sympathizer's advice about how to optimize the sorcerer-warlock, and I may or may not ever learn about the differences between my ideology and theirs. An actual member? Statistically unlikely, after membership downsizing in recent decades, but I would not rule it out, not as confidently as you do. Someone who agrees with *part* of the Klan platform? I find it likely that I've given XP to at least one post from at least one such participant.

You and I have, in PMs, debated differences which have, historically, sometimes put people on opposite sides of a battlefield. I'm not sure that my differences with the Klan are actually deeper than my differences with your positions on those issues we discussed. I still benefit from your observations on the relationship between structure and story in TRPG, and on many other topics.


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

MGibster said:


> You might be surprised.  Many soldiers have stated they experienced a feeling of elation after killing the enemy.  They might feel bad when they get a chance to reflect upon it later but in the immediate aftermath?  Often it's joy.  The killed the people who were trying to kill them, they won, and they survived.  Happy times.




I cannot rule out that possibility, not this side of the actual experience. I can extrapolate from past experience, such as the incident I mentioned earlier. I was happy and proud that I had accomplished my goal (stopping the original attacker), without paying the price of my life, or even any bloodshed; I also, in an overlapping interval, got the shakes.

Here's a hot take: humans vary. 

I've known humans who delight in squashing spiders. I've known humans who would go to the effort of capturing a spider (with paper or some such) and carrying it to the door, to remove it without harming it. I've known humans who did the former at one age, and the latter at another age.

Some humans feel joy after killing, in certain circumstances. That doesn't mean all humans, nor all circumstances. General Patton, on at least one occasion, expressed joyful responses, on seeing the carnage of a battlefield, and his emotional responses were notably different than the emotional responses of several of his fellow humans in the immediate area (and in the same army).

"The right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and received all the enemy's fire... I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound." - George Washington, in a letter to his brother, 1754. Perhaps humans such as Washington, and humans such as Patton, are a minority; and when their particular response becomes situationally useful, those humans rise to the top, much as Rudolph rose to the top *only when Christmas Eve was foggy*. Under other circumstances, they might not. I find the whistle of a bullet charming, largely insofar as it means that particular bullet *didn't hit me*. I'm glad that my species includes both me and Washington.


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## Immortal Sun (Jun 14, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Yes. On the first page, I raised a distinction between colonialist and non-colonialist violence.



Kay, I rather lightly skimmed the last 8 pages.  I hope you're aware that your singular response to the OP doesn't mean you've got the final answer on things.  I also wasn't talking to you in particular, so I'm not really sure where you're going off with the rest of this.



> AD&D has a colonialist endgame: at Name Level, a PC can build a keep and kill all monsters around it, with the result that peasants show up, build farms, and pay taxes to the PCs. Celebrim and I may disagree on whether that constitutes colonialism, and whether that's the default context for Keep on the Borderlands; well, we agree on many things and disagree on many things. There are D&D games with non-colonialist and possibly with anti-colonialist story arcs.



Oooookay?



> There's also, as you say, significant differences between collective and individual scales of violence. "Braunstein" was a Napoleonic war game, which considered significant individuals as factors in the progress of battles: if the battle happens in a town, then what happens if someone kills the mayor of the town? Arneson's "Blackmoor Bunch" (eg Sir Jenkins and the Bishop of Blackmoor) shifted the game from an overview of a battle (literally looking down onto the table-top diorama of a battlefield) to a zoom-in on named individuals; and that was a step from war-games towards D&D. (These steps happened *before* Arneson started using the "Chainmail" rules, if I understand correctly.)



That's some interesting name dropping there, but not being familiar with all of those things makes this paragraph wasted on me.  I'm not saying I'd like a more in-depth response from you, I'd actually prefer no response.  



> Hey now. You could make some points and arguments about how *often* DMs reward non-combat solutions. I'd take interest in well-researched assertions about changes in rewards, across the expansion and evolution of TRPG, and which game publishers introduced which mechanics in which editions.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA "well researched" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

Omg I'm sorry but pulling the "I need you to cite your sources." card in an internet discussion forum is just hilarious to me.  You can browse the various threads about awarding XP on this various forum to find that DMs are less likely to reward XP for non-combat situations and resolutions than for combat ones.



> Your categorical and unqualified statement has been counter-factual at least since 1981, when "Champions" was first published, since the Champions rules for XP are not specific to defeating enemies. (If the Big Bad Guy plots to poison the city's water supply, then *any* method of foiling his plot counts as success.) There are published 5E D&D "Adventurer's League" scenarios which include XP rewards which are *only* earned by non-violent resolution of problems. My PC got 50 XP, for example, when the party encountered a dire wolf, and my PC cast Speak with Animals, enabling us to get past the wolf without bloodshed. That's not some DM's house rule; that's direct from the scenario as published by WotC.



Also, lets just assume for a moment that the primary game I play, like most people on this forum, is D&D.  So doing some more name-dropping with _games that aren't D&D _really isn't going to get you much credit.

Secondly, pulling out a game that was developed only a few years ago, and obviously accounted for people who were interested in rewarding non-combat situations doesn't help your argument.

I've played in numerous games and I'll tell you one surprising commonality: killing monsters gets you the best XP.  Not killing stuff gets you reduced or no XP.

Anyway, wanted to get back to this, but I don't have any real interest in further discussion with you.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 14, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> .
> 
> Anyway, wanted to get back to this, but I don't have any real interest in further discussion with you.




I’m not choosing sides, but that seems to be an invitation to let you have the last word, and I’m guessing that’s not gonna happen...


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> I've played in numerous games and I'll tell you one surprising commonality: killing monsters gets you the best XP.  Not killing stuff gets you reduced or no XP.




Does your "numerous" includes CPRGs? You apparently haven't played anything in Hero System (XP by story arc), nor anything using Chaosium's "Basic Role Playing" mechanics such as Call of Cthulhu (skill improvement by skill use), nor Traveller, nor Shadowrun, nor anything from White Wolf. Or maybe you've played numerous and diverse games, all at the same DM's table, all following that DM's preferences and assumptions, no matter what each game's book says.

If you are neither willing to learn from games that aren't D&D, nor from the current edition of D&D, then maybe you're just not interested in learning? In which case, feel free to never hit REPLY to anything I write, ever again, starting now.


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## Immortal Sun (Jun 14, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> Does your "numerous" includes CPRGs? You apparently haven't played anything in Hero System (XP by story arc), nor anything using Chaosium's "Basic Role Playing" mechanics such as Call of Cthulhu (skill improvement by skill use), nor Traveller, nor Shadowrun, nor anything from White Wolf. Or maybe you've played numerous and diverse games, all at the same DM's table, all following that DM's preferences and assumptions, no matter what each game's book says.
> 
> If you are neither willing to learn from games that aren't D&D, nor from the current edition of D&D, then *maybe you're just not interested in learning*? In which case, feel free to never hit REPLY to anything I write, ever again, starting now.




If I ever need lessons in how to be a pretentious jerk I'll be sure to keep you in mind.


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## MGibster (Jun 14, 2019)

Let's be cool, folks.  It's true that a variety of games offer different ways to award experience.  I think the salient point is that the majority of mainstream RPGs assume violence will be a component of the campaign.  Even games like Trail of Cthulhu and Call of Cthulhu assume the PCs will engage in combat at some point during the course of an investigation.


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## Umbran (Jun 14, 2019)

GrahamWills said:


> As you might guess, the scientific community is having no more certain response than the theological community.




The scientific community recognizes "good" and "evil" as human concepts, not natural states of the universe.  The question of whether we are born good or evil makes little sense, when we *define* good and evil only after we are born!



> If so, it could explain our fascination with violence. Our "be nice to others; don't repay evil with evil; play nice" side is mostly in control and is our default state.




There's a problem with discussing our "default state".  

Consider, for a moment, a housecat.  There are housecats that have grown up without significant human interaction, that we call "feral".  In areas where we have such animals living mostly in land not developed by people (say, feral cats in the woods), we might call their behavior after a few generations in this state to be the "natural" or "default" behavior for cats.  This would be overlooking how domestic cats have been with humans for ten thousand years or so, but, for sake of argument - we can consider the behavior of cats that grow up without human influences as "natural".  And we can contrast that with the behavior of cats who do live with humans.

We cannot, however, do that same for humans.  There are no humans in the "wild" state - where "wild" is "without human influence".  We are social animals, so our natural state is *with* human influence.  Our "default" is "adapted to live within a community of other humans".


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

MGibster said:


> the salient point is that the majority of mainstream RPGs assume violence will be a component of the campaign.  Even games like Trail of Cthulhu and Call of Cthulhu assume the PCs will engage in combat at some point during the course of an investigation.




True, and a useful salient point.

I once ran a TRPG as part of an elective writing class for a middle school. The PCs went into a jungle, and fought various mutated monsters along the way to the source of the mutation: the ruins of a secret nuclear and chemical weapons lab... and a surviving scientist who'd developed a (lots of hand-waving here) symbiotic micro-organism which enabled plants and animals to adapt to the wasteland. Mission sponsors wanted his lab notes. He didn't want to hand them over. PCs brokered a compromise. So when I told them that they'd won, and they could backtrack to base... and because they'd also gained mutations, and learned to usefully control those mutations, we could assume they easily won any fights... they were displeased. They demanded a Boss Fight. They insisted that there should be a Boss Fight. They did not feel victorious without one.

So I had the local government, displeased that their lab had been found, and trying for a cover-up, send a military team to capture the forward base of the team's sponsors. (The same sponsors who had pushed the PCs to take the lab notes by force.) That military team was sufficiently bad-ass and sufficiently Black Hat, for the middle school students to enjoy playing their PCs in a Big Fight, overcoming the soldiers and freeing the Mission Control team from captivity.

This particular example did not involve XP for those characters. Their "advancement", such as it was, came from studying, then cultivating and harnessing, the mutation process, to gain super-powers. They were just deep in the trope - whether from movies which hinge on Big Fight Scenes, or from CPRGs, or a mix of factors, I cannot say for sure.


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## Lanefan (Jun 14, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> Omg I'm sorry but pulling the "I need you to cite your sources." card in an internet discussion forum is just hilarious to me.  You can browse the various threads about awarding XP on this various forum to find that DMs are less likely to reward XP for non-combat situations and resolutions than for combat ones.



Sources or not, though, [MENTION=6786839]Riley37[/MENTION] does - somewhat obliquely - raise an interesting point: reward mechanisms in RPGs have changed over the years, and it'd be interesting to know if there's ever been any competent research done on how playstyles adapt and morph as a result of these changes both within successive editions of a game and across the hobby as a whole.

An easy example of what I'm talking about: early-days D&D was very risky for the PCs and gave x.p. for treasure recovered.  This put a strong focus on looting every shred of valuable material from the dungeon ("Greyhawking" was, I think, the term for this), and so the foundational goals of play were to a) survive and b) get rich.

Then x.p.-for-g.p. went away with 2e, leaving combat as the main (and sometimes only!) source of x.p.  The game was still risky for the PCs' though, and so the goals shifted to being a) survive and b) kill everything you can.

Over the editions since, the risk-to-PCs factor has slowly but steadily diminished, and thus so has the difficulty in achieving the 'survival' goal.  So now there's only one goal left: if it moves, kill it.

A pushback aginst this trend has seen the development of non-x.p.-based levelling and-or 'milestone' levelling, core in numerous systems and now an option in 5e D&D.  For many reasons I'm not at all a fan of this and will never ever use it in any game I run, but I can appreciate it as at least an attempt to solve a legitimate problem.


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## Hussar (Jun 14, 2019)

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I'm not sure I agree with your premise.  AD&D, while lethal at low levels, was not particularly dangerous at higher levels.  Granted, save or die effects might have made it more dangerous, but, most save or die effects are not a result of combat - poisons, traps, that sort of thing.  By the time the PC's were about 6th or 7th level, they were among the most powerful combatants in the game.  By double digit levels, they were competently taking on unique monsters.  

And, really, to me, the shift from 1e to 2e wasn't all that great.  We killed everything we could in 1e because, well, why wouldn't you?  Outside of dragons, there was virtually nothing that could take on a PC one on one and the group of 6-8 PC's plus a few henchmen and whatnot could mow through a LOT of combat.  

I found 3e a LOT more deadly than AD&D to be honest.  The massive increase in monster damage while the PC's didn't actually get a whole lot more HP's than in AD&D meant that I was killing PC's straight up in combat pretty darn often.  It was hard not killing PC's, to be honest.  

And, you're ignoring the fact that from 3e forward, the game codified non-combat Xp awards.  Plenty of 3e and later modules have text to the effect of, "convincing so and so to do such and such grants a CR X xp award."  Something you rarely, if ever, saw in earlier editions.

If anything, I think as time has moved on, we've moved farther and farther away from the whole "murder hobo" approach to the game.  At least the modules have gone this way.  Heck, look at Waterdeep Dragon Heist.  You could get through most of that module with barely any combat and still get the reward at the end.  Actually, to get the reward at the end, you have pretty much zero choice about not engaging in combat.  Engaging the guardian of the treasure is a pretty much guaranteed tpk.


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## Riley37 (Jun 14, 2019)

Hussar said:


> AD&D, while lethal at low levels, was not particularly dangerous at higher levels.




Nit-picking: do you mean that AD&D *across the board* was less lethal at high levels, or do you mean that *combat* was less lethal at high levels? If exploration remains lethal at high levels - traps, random diseases, and so forth - while combat drops in lethality, then that might shift the relative proportions of player interest in the three pillars. "If I solve this puzzle, then we can bypass the guard barracks!" is a bad deal, when the puzzle has a significant risk of "you pushed the wrong button, so you die" and fighting through the guard barracks has no significant risk of lethality (and also scores a few XP). Better to just turn away from the puzzle, and activate your +5 Chainsaw. This gives the DM reduced incentive to put any puzzles in the next dungeon - why bother, if players have learned to stick to combat?

My observations indicate that "we've moved farther and farther away from the whole "murder hobo" approach to the game" is true both within D&D, and also across the genre, with some games going much further than others. I played the current Doctor Who game at a recent con, and though we rolled a lot of dice for action resolutions, it was 100% investigation and interaction, with no one so much as throwing a punch. (There was a scary monster; it was stuck in our dimension, we freed it, and it went away.) Are there also, on the other end of the spectrum, TRPGs which are even more kill-and-loot-oriented than D&D? Hackmaster, perhaps? Is reversion, away from negotiation, back to kill-and-loot, part of OSR's appeal?


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## Bagpuss (Jun 14, 2019)

Immortal Sun said:


> If I ever need lessons in how to be a pretentious jerk I'll be sure to keep you in mind.




I'm starting to be thankful that @_*Riley37*_ put me on their block list, but try not to rise to this troll. They are just trying to get you banned from the thread.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 14, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> Sources or not, though, @_*Riley37*_ does - somewhat obliquely - raise an interesting point: reward mechanisms in RPGs have changed over the years, and it'd be interesting to know if there's ever been any competent research done on how playstyles adapt and morph as a result of these changes both within successive editions of a game and across the hobby as a whole.
> 
> An easy example of what I'm talking about: early-days D&D was very risky for the PCs and gave x.p. for treasure recovered.  This put a strong focus on looting every shred of valuable material from the dungeon ("Greyhawking" was, I think, the term for this), and so the foundational goals of play were to a) survive and b) get rich.




Exactly in the early days avoiding conflict to gain treasure was one of the better ways of getting XP, because of the risk vs reward, was significantly less than getting into a fight. I remember scouting was a very popular strategy in those days. 



> A pushback aginst this trend has seen the development of non-x.p.-based levelling and-or 'milestone' levelling, core in numerous systems and now an option in 5e D&D.  For many reasons I'm not at all a fan of this and will never ever use it in any game I run, but I can appreciate it as at least an attempt to solve a legitimate problem.




I'm curious as to why you wouldn't use it, what problems do you feel it doesn't address or it creates, in comparison to monster slaying for XP.


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## Sadras (Jun 14, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> I'm curious as to why you wouldn't use it, what problems do you feel it doesn't address or it creates, in comparison to monster slaying for XP.




I'm not [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], but the obvious limitation is that it removes XPs as Reward. Milestone seems to negate individual creative/smart efforts by characters, moving from individual level progression to a party-progression paradigm.

Milestone certainly has its uses. Personally I would use that style of progression in more linear/railroad-y games which have a strong storyline buy-in.


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## Lylandra (Jun 14, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I'm not @_*Lanefan*_, but the obvious limitation is that it removes XPs as Reward. Milestone seems to negate individual creative/smart efforts by characters, moving from individual level progression to a party-progression paradigm.
> 
> Milestone certainly has its uses. Personally I would use that style of progression in more linear/railroad-y games which have a strong storyline buy-in.




mh, but should or could the reward for creative and smart solutions not be positive in-game consequences? Could be loot, could be a new ally, could be a favor, good political standing or some unforseen twist.

Individual XP seem to be shunned upon in most groups I've played in as it discourages newbies or tends to be unfair or biased. In addition to setting unhealthy risk-reward incentives for players to "go solo".


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## Hussar (Jun 14, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> Exactly in the early days avoiding conflict to gain treasure was one of the better ways of getting XP, because of the risk vs reward, was significantly less than getting into a fight. I remember scouting was a very popular strategy in those days.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm curious as to why you wouldn't use it, what problems do you feel it doesn't address or it creates, in comparison to monster slaying for XP.




See, I've never understood this.  

Like I said, sure, in the early levels, say 1-3, I get it.  You want to be pretty careful about not biting off more than you can chew.  But, after that?  Why would you avoid a fight?  You were almost always guaranteed to win.  The odds of losing a fight were pretty darn slight.  And, even then, by 9th level, you have access to raise dead, so, big deal, you can bring anyone back other than the cleric.  Really, even before that, raising a PC wasn't exactly complicated.  The odds of failure were extremely low.

Sure, Res survival and all that, I get that.  But, it's not like you were dying that often.  We never bothered running from fights.  We went room by room and killed everything that moved.  Again, it wasn't until 3e that we actually started getting even remotely tactical in our thinking.


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## Sadras (Jun 14, 2019)

Lylandra said:


> mh, but should or could the reward for creative and smart solutions not be positive in-game consequences? Could be loot, could be a new ally, could be a favor, good political standing or some unforseen twist.




100%. 5e adds to all those positive in-game consequences with mechanical positives too, as you likely know, like Inspiration points and in the DMG you have Faith, Faction progression...etc  
So yes, there is plenty to use as a substitute for XP. 



> Individual XP seem to be shunned upon in most groups I've played in as it discourages newbies or tends to be unfair or biased. In addition to setting unhealthy risk-reward incentives for players to "go solo".




Sure, XPs has its 'negatives' too, although not everyone sees all of that as bad. Having read many of @_*Lanefan*_'s posts about the table he and his group run, I'd say they're ok with much of it. They easily run disproportionate leveled characters at their table with no worries, and have a lot of fun doing so. The higher-leveled characters shielding the newbies, with character death being a certainty.


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## Bagpuss (Jun 14, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See, I've never understood this.
> 
> Like I said, sure, in the early levels, say 1-3, I get it.  You want to be pretty careful about not biting off more than you can chew.  But, after that?  Why would you avoid a fight?  You were almost always guaranteed to win.  The odds of losing a fight were pretty darn slight.




That's not my recollection of early D&D, there were a lot of "save or die" type creatures about, and there wasn't much guidance in the way of balancing encounters. I suppose it depends on the DM you had. I remember that certainly once you got past a certain level you didn't worry about hordes of goblins and the like, but you had a healthy respect of monsters and undead, particularly those that might paralyse or have level drain.


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## Sadras (Jun 14, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> I suppose it depends on the DM you had.




Agree with all you said, but for me it comes down to the above quote.


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## Morrus (Jun 14, 2019)

Riley37 said:


> In which case, feel free to never hit REPLY to anything I write, ever again, starting now.






Immortal Sun said:


> If I ever need lessons in how to be a pretentious jerk I'll be sure to keep you in mind.




Really. Both of you.

@_*Riley*_, ordering people not to reply to you is not how to handle a disagreement. Either politely disagree, or use the block function.

@_*Immortal Sun*_, calling people names is DEFINITELY NOT how to handle a disagreement. I will also add -- if you report a post, and then immediately respond to it with namecalling or insults, we are *not* going to look favourably on it.

Neither of you post in this thread again, please.


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## billd91 (Jun 14, 2019)

Sadras said:


> I'm not [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], but the obvious limitation is that it removes XPs as Reward. Milestone seems to negate individual creative/smart efforts by characters, moving from individual level progression to a party-progression paradigm.
> 
> Milestone certainly has its uses. Personally I would use that style of progression in more linear/railroad-y games which have a strong storyline buy-in.




Individual level advancement started to be seriously problematic with 3e. In AD&D, advancement was less regular in general for things like the to-hit tables and saves, plus monster vs party balancing was less granular. The game tolerated having PCs at varying levels in the same party better. 

3e and 4e both regularized advancement and had more precision in encounter design (4e more than 3e, in this factor). Characters who lagged more than about a level were put, relatively speaking, at more of a disadvantage. Ultimately, the tighter the design, the more it makes sense to advance them all as a group than as individuals.


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## Sadras (Jun 14, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Individual level advancement started to be seriously problematic with 3e. In AD&D, advancement was less regular in general for things like the to-hit tables and saves, plus monster vs party balancing was less granular. The game tolerated having PCs at varying levels in the same party better.
> 
> 3e and 4e both regularized advancement and had more precision in encounter design (4e more than 3e, in this factor). Characters who lagged more than about a level were put, relatively speaking, at more of a disadvantage. Ultimately, the tighter the design, the more it makes sense to advance them all as a group than as individuals.




Good point! Never thought about it before from this perspective. Thanks.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 14, 2019)

billd91 said:


> 3e and 4e both regularized advancement and had more precision in encounter design (4e more than 3e, in this factor). Characters who lagged more than about a level were put, relatively speaking, at more of a disadvantage. Ultimately, the tighter the design, the more it makes sense to advance them all as a group than as individuals.




One thing I really appreciate in games is the extent to which they support/tolerate mixed levels.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 14, 2019)

Umbran said:


> The scientific community recognizes "good" and "evil" as human concepts, not natural states of the universe




Absolutely; but the theological community tends to believe they are natural states. I was drawing a parallel between the theological community's age-old search for an answer to the theological question "is humanity naturally good/evil?" with the scientific question posed by this thread. In general using theology to inform science works poorly, so I definitely wasn't suggesting that!



Umbran said:


> There's a problem with discussing our "default state" ... There are no humans in the "wild" state - where "wild" is "without human influence".  We are social animals, so our natural state is *with* human influence.  Our "default" is "adapted to live within a community of other humans".




I am not sure why you conclude that there is a problem -- in fact, on the face if it, you seem to be supporting my conjecture. I stated that research indicates that humanity is innately social -- and you confirm that "Our default is adapted to live within a community". Isn't that the same thing -- or at least close enough for internet conversation?

Your statement equating "wild" as  "without human influence" seems a rather odd statement. Would you consider ants as not being "wild" as they are rarely found "without ant influence"? Or are you asserting that the default state of a species is that state when they are not in contact with humanity, specifically -- so that, by definition, humanity cannot be in a default state?

If the latter, then we can bypass that objection by looking at research on "wild" apes, specifically chimpanzees, which have murder rates closer to humanity than to the average mammal. They, like us exhibit both social and territorial aspects. I cannot find a good paper on the subject, but investigations into the causes of ape murder seem rare ...


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## Kaodi (Jun 14, 2019)

Umbran said:


> The scientific community recognizes "good" and "evil" as human concepts, not natural states of the universe.  The question of whether we are born good or evil makes little sense, when we *define* good and evil only after we are born!




Ethics: What is good and bad?
Meta-Ethics: What are good and bad?


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## Kaodi (Jun 14, 2019)

Tangentially I wonder how normal play is differentiated from irregular play in various systems. We can ask if certain play styles become more prevalent in chat or PbP games. And I wonder if there is any meaningful way to play solo other than as a murderhobo (maybe as a novelist, I suppose).


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## Umbran (Jun 14, 2019)

GrahamWills said:


> I am not sure why you conclude that there is a problem -- in fact, on the face if it, you seem to be supporting my conjecture. I stated that research indicates that humanity is innately social -- and you confirm that "Our default is adapted to live within a community". Isn't that the same thing -- or at least close enough for internet conversation?




You aren't the only one in the thread that has tried to refer to something like the human "natural state".  I was speaking to the entire concept with your post as merely a jumping off point, as it was the most recent to use the concept.



> Your statement equating "wild" as  "without human influence" seems a rather odd statement. Would you consider ants as not being "wild" as they are rarely found "without ant influence"?




No.  Just as a wild cat is not "without cat influence".  Wild is variously, "in a natural environment" or "undomesticated" - which I restated as 'without human influence" (which isn't the entirety of it, but was enough for my point).  Ants living in a human building are not in a natural environment, so may not behave or develop in ways other members of the species that are in natural environments do.  

I'm basically suggesting that all humans are, for our purposes, domesticated.  



> If the latter, then we can bypass that objection by looking at research on "wild" apes, specifically chimpanzees, which have murder rates closer to humanity than to the average mammal. They, like us exhibit both social and territorial aspects. I cannot find a good paper on the subject, but investigations into the causes of ape murder seem rare ...




Well, that'd be cherry picking.  

Researchers complied data from some 426 combined years of observation of chimpanzees, across 18 different chimp communities - a total of 152 killings were reported. 

When the did the same for bonobos, a combined  92 years of observations -  just a single suspected killing.

Similar behavior is not generally seen in gorillas, unless they are forced into large groups with 3+ potential breeding males, not the natural state for the animals.

So, chimpanzees murder at human rates.  Bonobos and gorillas don't.  From this larger view, violent behavior does not seem that great apes, in general, are particularly violent.  Jumping to the conclusion based on chimpanzees alone seems questionable in the larger context.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 14, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I'm basically suggesting that all humans are, for our purposes, domesticated




I guess that if you define "humans living with other humans" as not in a natural state, then, yes, you come to the conclusion that humans do not have a natural state. It seems a bit extreme to me, honestly, but OK.


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## Umbran (Jun 14, 2019)

GrahamWills said:


> I guess that if you define "humans living with other humans" as not in a natural state, then, yes, you come to the conclusion that humans do not have a natural state. It seems a bit extreme to me, honestly, but OK.




I think you are missing the point a bit. 

Folks are asking whether "violent" is the "natural state" for humans.  They then have to turn and look for what the "natural state" for humans actually is... and wind up reaching for straws, because they want to find the thing analogous to the feral cat, when no such thing exists.

Basically, "natural" human behavior is everything we already see.  There is no *other* natural state to look for.  All the wide variability we see in human behavior is, in effect, natural for us.  Some of us are violent.  Others of us aren't.  Whether you call humanity a violent species perhaps depends more on what the threshold you set for being a violent species - and thus says more about the person setting the threshold than anything else.


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## Guest 6801328 (Jun 14, 2019)

Kaodi said:


> Ethics: What is good and bad?
> Meta-Ethics: What are good and bad?




Metagame-Ethics: How can I exploit the alignment system out-of-character to win the game?


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 14, 2019)

How on earth did we get into bonobos here.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 14, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> That's not my recollection of early D&D, there were a lot of "save or die" type creatures about, and there wasn't much guidance in the way of balancing encounters. I suppose it depends on the DM you had. I remember that certainly once you got past a certain level you didn't worry about hordes of goblins and the like, but you had a healthy respect of monsters and undead, particularly those that might paralyse or have level drain.




Some of those AD&D monsters were brutal and the only guideline I remember using was monster HD and eyeballing things like damage output. 

My recollection of AD&D (both 1E and 2E) was it could be quite lethal. 3E could also be a lethal system, but there was a lot of ink spent dealing with things like Encounter Levels and having GMs pace encounter levels. So my experience with 3E involved a lot less character death, though it did still happen. I think it does boil down to the GM and to the playstyle. 

Also worth mentioning that 2E did have XP guidelines for non-combat.


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## Lanefan (Jun 14, 2019)

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I'm not sure I agree with your premise.  AD&D, while lethal at low levels, was not particularly dangerous at higher levels.  Granted, save or die effects might have made it more dangerous, but, most save or die effects are not a result of combat - poisons, traps, that sort of thing.  By the time the PC's were about 6th or 7th level, they were among the most powerful combatants in the game.  By double digit levels, they were competently taking on unique monsters.



My experience shows the kill rate to be more or less the same across the levels (except 1st level, which is higher); the difference is that higher-level types can either afford revival spells or have them available within the party, meaning that while the kill rate is the same there's much less actual character turnover.  The cause of death changes - less come from direct combat, more from save-or-die effects and spells - but it's still deadly, and survival remains a key goal.



> And, really, to me, the shift from 1e to 2e wasn't all that great.  We killed everything we could in 1e because, well, why wouldn't you?  Outside of dragons, there was virtually nothing that could take on a PC one on one and the group of 6-8 PC's plus a few henchmen and whatnot could mow through a LOT of combat.



That was your approach, and the game could handle it, but by RAW you'd have got the same xp for intentionally bypassing or avoiding an encounter as you would have for beating it up.  More to the point, if the published modules are anything to go by combat only accounted for a small percentage of the available x.p.; with the vast majority of potential x.p. coming from treasure. (a long time ago a poster named [MENTION=3854]Quasqueton[/MENTION] ran the numbers on this, if you feel like digging through ENWorld's dusty archives)



> I found 3e a LOT more deadly than AD&D to be honest.  The massive increase in monster damage while the PC's didn't actually get a whole lot more HP's than in AD&D meant that I was killing PC's straight up in combat pretty darn often.  It was hard not killing PC's, to be honest.



3e was a different breed of animal in a few ways:

First, because of the steep (and open-ended) power curve it heavily relied on the DM to make sure encounters were more or less level-appropriate; where earlier editions with their flatter power curves could get away with a wider variance.

Second, both the monsters and the PCs had a lot more going for them above very low levels/HD which tended to force a certain degree of character optimization.

Third, while 3e was about as lethal as the earlier editions, various other nasty effects had either been nerfed (level loss made temporary; item saves much less frequent) or removed (no permanent penalty on revival from death)



> And, you're ignoring the fact that from 3e forward, the game codified non-combat Xp awards.  Plenty of 3e and later modules have text to the effect of, "convincing so and so to do such and such grants a CR X xp award."  Something you rarely, if ever, saw in earlier editions.



True, this does appear more often in the more recent editions - but even there, what %-age of the total x.p. available in the module do these type of encounters represent?  With rare exceptions, not much. 



> If anything, I think as time has moved on, we've moved farther and farther away from the whole "murder hobo" approach to the game.  At least the modules have gone this way.



Again true, though I think this is an odd case where the underlying system design and the published modules are in conflict: the system wants to reward one aspect of play (combat) while the modules want to reward other aspects (exploration, social interaction, or whatever).


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## Lanefan (Jun 14, 2019)

Bagpuss said:


> Exactly in the early days avoiding conflict to gain treasure was one of the better ways of getting XP, because of the risk vs reward, was significantly less than getting into a fight. I remember scouting was a very popular strategy in those days.



Agreed.  Still is.



> I'm curious as to why you wouldn't use it, what problems do you feel it doesn't address or it creates, in comparison to monster slaying for XP.



A number of reasons, mostly revolving around not wanting characters getting rewards they don't deserve.  Milestone levelling brings everyone up no matter how much they did (or didn't) contribute, where I much prefer the reward be more commensurate to the individual risk taken.



			
				Lylandra said:
			
		

> Individual XP seem to be shunned upon in most groups I've played in as it discourages newbies or tends to be unfair or biased. In addition to setting unhealthy risk-reward incentives for players to "go solo".



I've used individual x.p. forever and I've yet to see it as discouraging newbies.  If anything, the reverse is true: it makes them more gung-ho than the veterans!

And your choice of words regarding risk-reward incentives for going solo is perfect: "unhealthy".  Going solo is high risk high reward, and is much more likely to adversely affect the character's health (if death can be assumed as a negative health effect) than staying with the party.


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## Lanefan (Jun 14, 2019)

Sadras said:


> Sure, XPs has its 'negatives' too, although not everyone sees all of that as bad. Having read many of @_*Lanefan*_'s posts about the table he and his group run, I'd say they're ok with much of it. They easily run disproportionate leveled characters at their table with no worries, and have a lot of fun doing so. The higher-leveled characters shielding the newbies, with character death being a certainty.



In fairness, I think  [MENTION=6816692]Lylandra[/MENTION] was referring to newbie players rather than characters.

But yes, and back to the theme of system flexibility, 0-1-2e are far more flexible as regards in-party level variance than either 3e or 4e are; 5e has trended back towards this flexibility which is excellent. (EDIT: [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] got to this ahead of me, upthread)

And that brings up another issue I have with milestone levelling - lower level characters can never "catch up".  Also, how does one ever introduce items or events that give an individual character a level - or take one away?  What happens if a character gets a wish and wishes to go up a level - does the whole party get dragged along for the ride?

In a long-term campaign things like this will happen, and level variance is thus inevitable unless the DM does some very arbitrary forcing of things.


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## Umbran (Jun 14, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> And that brings up another issue I have with milestone levelling - lower level characters can never "catch up".




The thing about milestone leveling that breaks the association of levels to combat is that it gets applied when you reach the milestone, *however* you reach the milestone. It doesn't have to be "you gain a level when you hit a milestone."  It can be, "you gain some number of XP when you hit a milestone."  And I think that fixes all the issues with milestone leveling you mention.  

People who are behind still catch up - they gain the same XP as those at higher level.  Items or wishes that add or remove levels are then of no difficulty, as you still refer to the XP chart.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 14, 2019)

I’ve found that if the game in question has non-combat mechanics that are as engaging as the combat mechanics, and non-combat rewards on par with the combat rewards, players are much more willing to seek other solutions to in game challenges.

Many games have an imbalance between those two elements leaving combat as the preferable method for a variety of reasons. Early editions of D&D avoided this by granting XP for treasure. But as the game shifted away from dungeon delving as its primary focus, this became problematic in its own way. Then 3E came along and things shifted even more toward combat. 

So the reason that violence is so prevalent is due to genre and the roots of RPGing. But I think it can be changed pretty easily when needed. You just need to figure out your play priorities, and then adjust the XP/Advancement system to more closely match them. Find a system that serves what you want rather than a system that dictates how you play.


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## Bobble (Jun 15, 2019)

A FAR better question, "Why would we NOT be okay with violence in RPgs?" given the nature of humans and the fact that the VAST % of people who play RPGs like some or a lot of violence in their games.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 16, 2019)

Bobble said:


> A FAR better question, "Why would we NOT be okay with violence in RPgs?" given the nature of humans and the fact that the VAST % of people who play RPGs like some or a lot of violence in their games.




Personally I am totally fine with violence in RPGs and fine with hack N slash style campaigns. I think it depends on what you want though. If I am in a Noir Campaign, I expect more focus on role-play and solving problems in ways that don't involve combat. But nothing wrong with being Conan or Bruce Lee either.


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## Bobble (Jun 16, 2019)

Yes, of course.  The genre will greatly influence the amount and frequency of any violence. But, the original question is somewhat odd IMO.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 16, 2019)

Bobble said:


> Yes, of course.  The genre will greatly influence the amount and frequency of any violence. But, the original question is somewhat odd IMO.




Different people have different preferences in gaming. The OP indicates he doesn't seem to mind if other people engage in that kind of violence at the table. He just is personally uncomfortable with it these days. I think there are different cultures of play as well. In the groups I run things with, no one cares about violence, and no one is concerned about stuff mentioned in this thread. But I've met players who are troubled by it. Just like I've met people who don't want to watch movies like Commando or 300 because of issues with the violence or political messaging in the violence (personally I love these kinds of movies, and can separate the message of the film from my own beliefs--I am the same with gaming). But when I first started, I came from a religious household, and I remember the idea of characters worshipping a pantheon in a setting where there was no Christianity, bothered me (obviously my views on this changed as I got older). I think where this stuff becomes a problem is when people shift from it being their own preference to telling other people they need to game differently and in a more wholesome way. That is where I tend to stop listening.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 16, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> I’ve found that if the game in question has non-combat mechanics that are as engaging as the combat mechanics, and non-combat rewards on par with the combat rewards, players are much more willing to seek other solutions to in game challenges.



 That sounds a reasonable observation.


> Many games have an imbalance between those two elements leaving combat as the preferable method for a variety of reasons.



 Can't disagree...


> Early editions of D&D avoided this by granting XP for treasure. But as the game shifted away from dungeon delving as its primary focus, this became problematic in its own way.



 That hardly seems to follow from the above.  Early eds gave exp for combat & treasure, not for non-combat, and had detailed, elaborate rules for combat (many of which were summarily ignored) and far fewer, less consistent, and less engaging rules for other tasks - they also 'niche protected' a lot of exploration abilities in the Thief class.
Exp for treasure did nothing to mitigate that - you got more Exp for killing monsters for their treasure type than for sneakily stealing said treasure, and the combat engaged the entire party vs the Thief pulling a lone Bilbo v Smaug burglary.


> Then 3E came along and things shifted even more toward combat.



 By bringing in an exhaustive skill system including non combat skills from blacksmithing to playing the kazoo?  By giving quest-based exp as well as combat?  That also doesn't sound right.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 16, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 16, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> That sounds a reasonable observation.
> Can't disagree...
> That hardly seems to follow from the above.  Early eds gave exp for combat & treasure, not for non-combat, and had detailed, elaborate rules for combat (many of which were summarily ignored) and far fewer, less consistent, and less engaging rules for other tasks - they also 'niche protected' a lot of exploration abilities in the Thief class.
> Exp for treasure did nothing to mitigate that - you got more Exp for killing monsters for their treasure type than for sneakily stealing said treasure, and the combat engaged the entire party vs the Thief pulling a lone Bilbo v Smaug burglary.




I mean in the broad sense of XP for GP; you could still gain a lot of XP by tricking the dragon or stealing from it as opposed to fighting it. The treasure was the goal, so you were heavily incentivized to get the treasure.

So when the game shifted away from dungeon delving more toward heroic mission type of adventures, treasure was less of a motivation. Instead it was about stopping the bad guys, or about saving people....from the bad guys. And you dealt with bad guys by killing them. 



Tony Vargas said:


> By bringing in an exhaustive skill system including non combat skills from blacksmithing to playing the kazoo?  By giving quest-based exp as well as combat?  That also doesn't sound right.




Well, this is all based on my personal experience, so I wouldn’t expect it to he universal. 

That being said, I wouldn’t describe 3E’s skill system as exhaustive. It’s pretty basic. I think they divided the necessary skills more than needed, so it seems like a bigger deal than it is. But it was certainly an improvement over Non-Weapon Proficiencies, for sure, and the protection of the Thief/Rogue as the only skilled character. It was a step in the right direction. 

And I’m not blaming the introduction of a skill system for the increased focus on combat in 3E. It was more about the codification of everything, and challenge rating and XP budgets and all of that. In the 1E era, when faced with an encounter, a party of PCs wasn’t always sure if it was a winnable by combat. I think this was less so in 2E, and then even less true in 3E. Challenge rating and encounter budgets and the like really reinforced the numbers game. Encounters were expected to be within a range of difficulty, but never truly beyond the party’s ability. 

And yes, there were more options for task based XP, but I found those in published modules to be nominal when compared to the XP gained through combat. Especially since you could still get the mission based XP by slaughtering all who opposed you. 

It’s why my group essentially adopted the milestone leveling model (though it wasn’t called that yet) in this edition. It helped mitigate some of the problems we found with the design versus play expectations we had. 

Ultimately,  violence is so prevalent in RPGs because it (a) is baked into the most frequently used genres for games, (b) is the most obvious expression of the core of all drama: conflict, and (c) lends itself to mechanical expression for games. 
The tropes that tend to be present in many genres, and also the gaminess itself, helps to abstract the violence in a way that makes it much easier to gloss over.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 16, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> I mean in the broad sense of XP for GP; you could still gain a lot of XP by tricking the dragon or stealing from it as opposed to fighting it. The treasure was the goal, so you were heavily incentivized to get the treasure.



 Especially the magic items, sure.  But, if you killed the monster to get it's treasure, you also got the XP for that - and, everyone got to play, the "More engaging aspect" as well as greater incentive.  Trying to trick or steal treasure was probably going to involve just the theif, just the talkiest player, or just the caster using just the right spells.



> That being said, I wouldn’t describe 3E’s skill system as exhaustive.



 What's a task it didn't cover?



> But it was certainly an improvement over Non-Weapon Proficiencies, for sure, and the protection of the Thief/Rogue as the only skilled character. It was a step in the right direction.



 Yes, the direction of making non-combat more engaging, so a more viable alternative to combat...


> And I’m not blaming the introduction of a skill system for the increased focus on combat in 3E. It was more about the codification of everything, and challenge rating and XP budgets and all of that



 Codification should help, so long as the systems are functional, but I can see how CR & EL could improve combat challenges as an option from the DMs point of view.
Of course, the solution to that would be to provide equally (or preferably, more) workable guidelines for non-combat.



> And yes, there were more options for task based XP, but I found those in published modules to be nominal when compared to the XP gained through combat.



 Still, a step forward, not back.



> Especially since you could still get the mission based XP by slaughtering all who opposed you.



 Just like you could get the treasure-based xp by killing the owners.

So, yeah, I think you have a solid idea:  a game that makes combat the most rewarding aspect of play, both in terms of player engagement, story success, and character advancement, encourages "violence" in that game.
I just think old-school vs WotC era is a better example of a game getting /less/ combat centric, for those reasons.
3e added a viable system for resolving a wide range of out of combat tasks, instead of a narrow ate locked into class features, and XP for quest awards (if small relative to combat). 4e expanded on that with a codified system for non-combat challenges that engaged the whole party and carried the same XP awards as combat, 5e retained some of that in its exploration mode, and added a downtime mode.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 16, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> Well, I wish I was that enlightened! As you can tell from my other threads* I enjoy violence as much as the next person.
> 
> It was more, "Why?" And specifically, "Why so much in the RPGs?"
> 
> ...




I made that post because when I challenged the notion a few pages back, people took pains to explain the thread wasn't about eliminating violence from RPGs or eliminating a certain kind of violence from RPGs. If you are advocating for a shift in gaming culture when it comes to violence, let me know because I want to make sure I understand the thread's intent. And I think I am not 100% clear now after this clarification. 

In terms of what you brought up. I think it is actually pretty undesirable to return to that 70s and 80s period of being concerned about this stuff (especially the emphasis on pablum and wholesome entertainment that reached an apex with 'the very special episode of X'). I remember those days. I mean my parents were very strict about violent content growing up. I was not even allowed to play with GI Joe. And they were concerned about it in movies, in RPGs, etc. However, eventually I realized, and so did they, that this is much too repressive an approach to entertainment. At the end of the day, you can discourage violence in RPGs, in movies, in books....but there is something in us that wants to see this and wants the catharsis it provides. I think with D&D it is the same. You can strip out the murderhobo stuff, but I think, like with any other form of repression, you will just see ugliness emerge elsewhere in other areas of behavior.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 16, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 16, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Especially the magic items, sure.  But, if you killed the monster to get it's treasure, you also got the XP for that - and, everyone got to play, the "More engaging aspect" as well as greater incentive.  Trying to trick or steal treasure was probably going to involve just the theif, just the talkiest player, or just the caster using just the right spells.
> 
> What's a task it didn't cover?
> 
> Yes, the direction of making non-combat more engaging, so a more viable alternative to combat...




Each system has pros and cons in relation to combat versus non-combat solutions; I didn’t mean to sound like I was advocating one system over another in that way. 1E Made combat costly and potentially very dangerous, so clever play was often expected in order to avoid combat. The drawback here is that the game mechanics for non-combat options were minimal at best. 

My criticism of 3E’s skill system is not so much that it was limited in what actions it covered, but more that its resolution of those tasks was pretty bland compared to combat. Most actions involved a DC and a skill check and little more. 

This is not to say that this basic system couldn’t be built upon or tweaked to produce something a bit more meaningful, just that as presented, the system was pretty basoc, and only seemed like such an improvement because of what had been in place before. 




Tony Vargas said:


> Codification should help, so long as the systems are functional, but I can see how CR & EL could improve combat challenges as an option from the DMs point of view.
> Of course, the solution to that would be to provide equally (or preferably, more) workable guidelines for non-combat.




My experience is that 3E tried for a very scientific approach to crafting encounters and adventures. There was a budget calculated in order to keep things within the expected range and that’s what it did. And players became very aware of that. After playing 3E for a time, my players almost never hesitated to enter combat. I had to actively alter the system in order to make them think of combat as the last option. I find this to be true of 5E, as well, although it’s easier to adjust.



Tony Vargas said:


> Still, a step forward, not back.




In the sense that now there were at least rules in place, yes absolutely! 




Tony Vargas said:


> Just like you could get the treasure-based xp by killing the owners.
> 
> So, yeah, I think you have a solid idea:  a game that makes combat the most rewarding aspect of play, both in terms of player engagement, story success, and character advancement, encourages "violence" in that game.
> I just think old-school vs WotC era is a better example of a game getting /less/ combat centric, for those reasons.
> 3e added a viable system for resolving a wide range of out of combat tasks, instead of a narrow ate locked into class features, and XP for quest awards (if small relative to combat). 4e expanded on that with a codified system for non-combat challenges that engaged the whole party and carried the same XP awards as combat, 5e retained some of that in its exploration mode, and added a downtime mode.




My experience with 4E is pretty minimal, but the Skill Challenge system seemed to be an attempt at what I’m describing. I think that games that make non-combat challenges more engaging will wind up seeing them come up more often...nothing surprising, really. If sneaking into a lair is as much fun at the table as killing the monster would be, and equally rewarding for the character....then it would happen more often. Especially when, as you say, everyone can be involved and not just the Thief.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 16, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> ?????
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I read it all and have seen the John Wick movies, but I just was confused by the wording of your post I think.


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## Bobble (Jun 16, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> So the reason that violence is so prevalent is due to genre and the roots of RPGing. But I think it can be changed pretty easily when needed. You just need to figure out your play priorities, and then adjust the XP/Advancement system to more closely match them. Find a system that serves what you want rather than a system that dictates how you play.




If one actually reads the earlies of the genre it was clear that XP was to be given for accomplishing the goal.  Not necessarily killing anything.  If one bested or overcame, by whatever means, the bad guys and saved the Princess XP was awarded.  Whether out fought or out thought.


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## Celebrim (Jun 16, 2019)

Elfcrusher said:


> I thought it was the other way around: the military puts a whole lotta effort into _un_-conditioning new recruits, so that they won't be all conflicted about it when the moment comes.




Yes, but I am postulating that modern society successfully conditions the majority of person to abhor actual violence through a variety of mechanisms, both subtle and overt.

Thus, it is necessary to uncondition new recruits if they are from modern society.   

However, there is a lot of highly politicized research into this and because it appears to be agenda driven, I take with a grain of salt assertions about how difficult it is to get people to kill other people.



> And that this is why the military actively promotes derogatory slurs for people of whatever state they happen to be fighting.  To de-humanize the enemy.




LOL.  Ok, yeah.   This is an example of why I can't take this sort of thing seriously.   Any group of humans will actively develop slurs for any perceived rival group of humans all on their own.  The idea that the military would some how need to create a culture of slur usage and transmission amongst a group of young humans, rather than simply utilizing what is universal human behavior boggles my mind.   Like, do you suppose there is some intelligence officer who is tasked with developing a slur for the enemy, runs it by some sort of standing committee, and then he disseminates this to officers and NComs?   On the contrary, in the modern military there tends to be heavy pushback from the brass on any sort of slur developed by the grunts that might be perceived as insensitive.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Bobble said:


> If one actually reads the earlies of the genre it was clear that XP was to be given for accomplishing the goal.  Not necessarily killing anything.  If one bested or overcame, by whatever means, the bad guys and saved the Princess XP was awarded.  Whether out fought or out thought.




Well when I mentioned genre, I meant the kind of fiction that RPGs are generally drawing from; fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and all their sub-genres. Many such stories involve lots of violence...so games inspired by them do also.

As for the XP, I was speaking generally, but it varied from game to game and even among editions/versions of D&D. The earliest examples typically didn’t involve saving the princess very often, but usually involve a dungeon/site exploration and the acquisition of treasure. I think, for D&D at least, a shift toward more heroic based XP happened later on, closer to the launch of 2E.

I could certainly be wrong though. Did you have specific modules in mind?


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## Bobble (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> As for the XP, I was speaking generally, but it varied from game to game and even among editions/versions of D&D. The earliest examples typically didn’t involve saving the princess very often, but usually involve a dungeon/site exploration and the acquisition of treasure. I think, for D&D at least, a shift toward more heroic based XP happened later on, closer to the launch of 2E.




No.  starting with AD&D DMG pg. 84? it sets it up for XP without killing.  And has been part of every edition since.  As for modules.  No idea.  We've played TONS of save this or solve that type of games. 99% of my play time and DMing has been our own creation since '79.  BUT, the rules are clear on it since day one.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Bobble said:


> No.  starting with AD&D DMG pg. 84? it sets it up for XP without killing.  And has been part of every edition since.  As for modules.  No idea.  We've played TONS of save this or solve that type of games. 99% of my play time and DMing has been our own creation since '79.  BUT, the rules are clear on it since day one.




Ah okay....I was going off memory of published adventures since that’s what people will have in common. What was the rule on page 84 of the DMG?


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## Maxperson (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> Ah okay....I was going off memory of published adventures since that’s what people will have in common. What was the rule on page 84 of the DMG?




I'm not sure about page 84.  I'll look in a second.  However, the intro section of the PHB says the following.

"While initial adventuring usually takes place in an underworld dungeon setting, *play gradually expands to encompass other such dungeons, town and city activities*, wilderness explorations, and journeys into other dimensions, planes, times, worlds, and so forth."

It's pretty clear that things like "Rescue the princess" and other such adventures were intended as part of 1e from the very get go.  That also jives from my play experience.  I started playing in 1983, 6 years before 2e started and every DM I played with had these sorts of adventures.  Often it was a dungeon.  Less often, but still fairly common were the rescue, infiltrate and steal scenarios.

This is the relevant portion of page 84.

"Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure."

This section seems to indicate that a monster level should be assigned when treasure is accomplished without combat so as to figure out the award of experience for gaining the treasure.

Edit: If you were going by published adventures, then I can see where you'd get that impression from.  The vast majority of them were some form of invade the dungeon and get the loot after killing things that got in your way.


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## Bobble (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> What was the rule on page 84 of the DMG?




That's where XP is discussed (or 86) It's been a couple of decades since I cracked that book open.  But Gygax talks about it in several places in the beginning.  Many players who haven't read what he wrote for DMs assume it isn't there because their DM was stuck on hack and slash.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 17, 2019)

There is violence in gaming, but only up to a point.  Hit points hide the sense of realistic damage: In few games do we deal with lingering injuries (cut nerves or tendons, badly healed bones) or issues of infection, or of malnutrition or insanity.  For most games, the violence is of a sanitized sort.  That 3E was a step away from a miniatures games emphasizes this, at least for D&D.  (There are exceptions.  Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu spring to mind.  And some groups embrace greater realism.)

When violence becomes an issue is when one is forced to more clearly imagine what is happening.  When 1HD-1 goblins turn into juvenile and other non-combatants who are backed in a corner and are facing slaughter.  When torture scenes are made more detailed.  My thinking is that we handle violence by finding find ways to not see it.

That gamers as a whole eschew more detail and realism is positive in that it shows that most folks are violence averse.  See, for example, reactions to groups role playing rape, which was discussed in another thread.  Folks will tolerate only so much violence in their games.

Thx!
TomB


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2019)

Like a lot of things AD&D, it was pretty schizophrenic.

For example, while you can talk about xp for "tricking" monsters being in the 1e DMG, you also have the training rules.  A fighter that didn't fight was actively penalized by being forced to take longer to train and spending far, far more money on training, for example.  In 2e, while there were "bonus Xp tables" again, fighters ONLY gained bonus xp for killing stuff.  

Add to that the published modules of the day, which again, leads to a VERY schizophrenic experience of 1e where the DMG advocates one thing and the modules pretty much entirely ignore the DMG, and it's very easy to see why murderhobo play was pretty common.  

Referenced:  1e DMG p 86



> Clerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, *fighters who hang back from combat* or attempt to steal, or fail to boldly lead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in crucial situations,  thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition  of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, *"cautious" characters who do not pull their own weight* - these are all clear examples of a POOR rating.




It was pretty clear the implication that combat was pretty strongly expected.

1e DMG P 85:



> The judgment factor is  inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure. You must weigh the level of challenge - be it thinking or fighting - versus the level of experience of  the player  character(s) who gained it.




And then there are pretty complex maths used for calculating that xp.  For stuff that isn't killing and/or looting, we get this piece of advice:



> Tricking or outwitting monsters or overcoming tricks and/or traps placed to guard treasure must be determined subjectively, with level of experience balanced against the degree of difficulty you assign to the gaining of the treasure.




IOW, if you kill the monster and take the treasure, you are guaranteed a certain xp award.  If you trick the monster and steal the treasure, your xp reward will be based entirely on whatever you DM feels like.  You tricked them too easily?  Oops, sorry, no xp for you.  And, frankly, that sort of thing just leads to far too many arguments at the table.  So, DM's and players both shied away from it and relied on the codified rules.

And, lastly, we're left with this bit of advice on page 85



> Note: Players who bolk at equating gold pieces  to experience  points should be gently but firmly reminded that in a game certain compromises must be made. While it is  more "realistic" for clerics to study holy writings, pray,  chant, practice self-discipline, etc. to gain experience, it would not make a playable game roll along. Similarly, fighters should be exercising, riding,  smiting pelts, tilting at the lists, and engaging in weapons practice of various sorts to gain real expertise (experience); magic-users should be deciphering old scrolls, searching ancient tomes, experimenting alchemically, and so forth; while thieves should spend their  off-hours honing their skills, "casing" various buildings, watching potential victims, and carefully planning their  next "job". All very realistic but conducive to non-game boredom!




IOW, all that stuff that isn't killing and looting is "conducive to non-game boredom".


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> 1E Made combat costly and potentially very dangerous, so clever play was often expected in order to avoid combat. The drawback here is that the game mechanics for non-combat options were minimal at best.



 When you put it that way, it's amazing we spent so many hrs playing it!  




> My criticism of 3E’s skill system is not so much that it was limited in what actions it covered, but more that its resolution of those tasks was pretty bland compared to combat. Most actions involved a DC and a skill check and little more.



 And, typically only one character...



> After playing 3E for a time, my players almost never hesitated to enter combat. I had to actively alter the system in order to make them think of combat as the last option. I find this to be true of 5E, as well, although it’s easier to adjust.



 I can see how some table take a fair play message from encounter guidelines - and, hey, its not a dysfunctional style of play for the DM to essentially assemble foes for the party like building an army in a wargame,  then playing that side intelligently, to win.


> In the sense that now there were at least rules in place, yes absolutely!



 That's the sense I was going for....




> My experience with 4E is pretty minimal, but the Skill Challenge system seemed to be an attempt at what I’m describing. I think that games that make non-combat challenges more engaging will wind up seeing them come up more often...nothing surprising, really. If sneaking into a lair is as much fun at the table as killing the monster would be, and equally rewarding for the character....then it would happen more often. Especially when, as you say, everyone can be involved and not just the Thief.



 Yes, I do find that idea compelling.  It was just 1e treasure for XP as an example that threw me.
And, while I argued that the WotC eds have implemented some sub-systems that move the game towards more non-combat challenges, I have to acknowledge that none ever really succeeded. Skill Challenges were probably the closest, but they were still more abstract, and faster/less engaging than combat, unless the DM stepped up and elaborated on them to a degree that the game didn't tend to encourage.


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## billd91 (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It was pretty clear the implication that combat was pretty strongly expected.




I notice it doesn’t say anything about seeking out combat. What you highlighted could easily be expected behavior at the point combat has been rendered unavoidable.




Hussar said:


> IOW, all that stuff that isn't killing and looting is "conducive to non-game boredom".




Or, you know, the stuff that isn’t adventuring (which includes other stuff like doping out riddles and traps, exploring, etc. You’re *way* too hung up on “killing and looting”. You should get that looked at...


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## Maxperson (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Like a lot of things AD&D, it was pretty schizophrenic.
> 
> For example, while you can talk about xp for "tricking" monsters being in the 1e DMG, you also have the training rules.  A fighter that didn't fight was actively penalized by being forced to take longer to train and spending far, far more money on training, for example.  In 2e, while there were "bonus Xp tables" again, fighters ONLY gained bonus xp for killing stuff.




You focus on tricking monsters, but ignore that it talks about avoiding/disarming traps as well.  There are no monsters(typically) involved with traps, and yet the DM is supposed to come up with an encounter level for them in order to assign non-combat XP.



> Add to that the published modules of the day, which again, leads to a VERY schizophrenic experience of 1e where the DMG advocates one thing and the modules pretty much entirely ignore the DMG, and it's very easy to see why murderhobo play was pretty common.




Modules are a different beast.  In order to appeal to the widest audience, they have to be written murderhobo and then DMs can add or change them to suit other playstyles.  It's MUCH harder to do it the other way around.



> IOW, if you kill the monster and take the treasure, you are guaranteed a certain xp award.  If you trick the monster and steal the treasure, your xp reward will be based entirely on whatever you DM feels like.  You tricked them too easily?  Oops, sorry, no xp for you.  And, frankly, that sort of thing just leads to far too many arguments at the table.  So, DM's and players both shied away from it and relied on the codified rules.




There is also, "If you trick it and it was harder to pull off than killing it, more XP for you."  And of course the non-combat XP in that statement regarding traps.

And, lastly, we're left with this bit of advice on page 85



> IOW, all that stuff that isn't killing and looting is "conducive to non-game boredom".




Not quite.  Not going out and looting is "conducive to boredom."  That's why there's the whole section on stealing, sneaking, and traps, and why XP was tied to loot many fold more times than killing monsters.  He expected people to avoid fighting and dying whenever possible.


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2019)

billd91 said:


> I notice it doesn’t say anything about seeking out combat. What you highlighted could easily be expected behavior at the point combat has been rendered unavoidable.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Ok, ok.  I surrender.  1e players were renowned throughout the hobby, throughout all the history of RPG's as the greatest, most wonderful roleplayers of all time who never once picked up a d20 unless they absolutely had to and solved nearly every single encounter through spectacular exposition and wonderous words of wisdom.

Now, with the revisionist history out of the way, can we get back to reality where D&D=hack and slash was pretty much common knowledge, even back in the day.  I mean, good grief, look at the flack Dragonlance gets for trying to inject a story into the game.  Heck, among the AD&D crowd, storygame is a four letter word.  

It constantly baffles and befuddles just how far people will go to try to present D&D as the epitome of roleplaying with no drawbacks and all criticism must be folks just doing it wrong.  Sheesh.

In a game where you GET EXPERIENCE FOR KILLING THINGS, combat is pretty much expected no?  When you get REWARDED FOR MURDER, then violence is expected in the game, no?  

I would LOVE to see these mythical AD&D tables where even 40% of encounters were not resolved by combat.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Ok, ok.  I surrender.  1e players were renowned throughout the hobby, throughout all the history of RPG's as the greatest, most wonderful roleplayers of all time who never once picked up a d20 unless they absolutely had to and solved nearly every single encounter through spectacular exposition and wonderous words of wisdom.
> 
> Now, with the revisionist history out of the way, can we get back to reality where D&D=hack and slash was pretty much common knowledge, even back in the day.  I mean, good grief, look at the flack Dragonlance gets for trying to inject a story into the game.  Heck, among the AD&D crowd, storygame is a four letter word.
> 
> ...




You are painting a straw man here. You got XP for gold in AD&D and you honestly wouldn't survive long if you fought everything the moved. AD&D was definitely about being clever. Yes hack and slash was a thing too. But problem solving was just as much as feature of the game. In pretty much every AD&D game I have played in, and in most OSR games I've played in, 40% of encounters not being resolved by combat, wouldn't be that unusual. It very much depends on the GM of course, because what one GM considers a plausible non-combat solution, another might not. But this isn't at all controversial among people who've played AD&D. In fact, I don't think I started to see every encounter being about combat until 3E. 

Also, when Dragonlance came out, I don't remember it getting huge flack. It wasn't like today with the internet where everyone's opinion gets broadcasted. Back then if people didn't like Dragonlance, they simply didn't play, and the single most common reason I recall for people not liking Dragonlance, wasn't the story, it was the pre-made characters. Personally though, I liked the Dragonlance setting.


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## Lanefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> In a game where you GET EXPERIENCE FOR KILLING THINGS, combat is pretty much expected no?  When you get REWARDED FOR MURDER, then violence is expected in the game, no?
> 
> I would LOVE to see these mythical AD&D tables where even 40% of encounters were not resolved by combat.



That 60% or 80% or even 99.5% of encounters were/are resolved by combat is not the point, at least not the one I'm getting at.

My point is that in 1e by RAW all that combat would still, in a typical published module* and given typical play, only represent about [20%? 30%?] of the x.p. you'd usually earn for the adventure; with a very small percentage coming from non-combat encounters and the vast majority (i.e. all the rest) coming from treasure.

* - possible exceptions being the G1-2-3 series; 1e Giants absolutely bleed x.p.


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## Lanefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Also, when Dragonlance came out, I don't remember it getting huge flack. It wasn't like today with the internet where everyone's opinion gets broadcasted. Back then if people didn't like Dragonlance, they simply didn't play, and the single most common reason I recall for people not liking Dragonlance, wasn't the story, it was the pre-made characters.



Round here the general reaction I seem to recall was that the novels were OK but the modules were generally awful, in that a) they expected the PCs to be led by the nose far more than most modules of that era and b) for anyone who hadn't read the novels, large parts of them made little to no sense.


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> That 60% or 80% or even 99.5% of encounters were/are resolved by combat is not the point, at least not the one I'm getting at.
> 
> My point is that in 1e by RAW all that combat would still, in a typical published module* and given typical play, only represent about [20%? 30%?] of the x.p. you'd usually earn for the adventure; with a very small percentage coming from non-combat encounters and the vast majority (i.e. all the rest) coming from treasure.
> 
> * - possible exceptions being the G1-2-3 series; 1e Giants absolutely bleed x.p.




Well, kinda sorta.  Sure, the total would only be a small percentage of kill xp.  Monsters weren't worth that much xp.  But, in order to get that other percentage - the GP value - by and large you did it by killing the monster that was guarding it.  So, yeah, the percentages were mostly for treasure, I totally agree.  But, in order to get that treasure, most of the time, the solution was to beat on the xp pinata until it broke and you picked up the coins.  

I'm just blown away by folks that want to paint early D&D as anything other than a hack and slash wargame with a thin veneer of story laid over top.  99% of the rules were related to combat.  Virtually everything your character got was either directly related to combat, or as a result of combat.  This shouldn't be terribly contentious.  This is D&D after all.  Y'know, back to the dungeon, the mega dungeon, dungeon crawling, that sort of thing?  I mean, good grief, look at most modules published up until about 1982, which is a pile of them - they're pretty much nothing but hack fest dungeon crawls.


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## Maxperson (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> In a game where you GET EXPERIENCE FOR KILLING THINGS, combat is pretty much expected no?  When you get REWARDED FOR MURDER, then violence is expected in the game, no?
> 
> I would LOVE to see these mythical AD&D tables where even 40% of encounters were not resolved by combat.




In 1e an ancient red dragon was worth 7758, or 1939 xp each for a party of 4.  An ancient red dragon can easily have 250,000gp worth of treasure, not including magic items.  That equates to 62,500 xp each for that party of 4.  Gaining the treasure is 32 times more xp than killing it, and you get that same exp if you steal the treasure rather than fight the dragon.  

D&D was originally concieved as a get the loot game where you sometimes had to fight, but really tried to avoid it when possible so you didn't end up dead.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Well, kinda sorta.  Sure, the total would only be a small percentage of kill xp.  Monsters weren't worth that much xp.  But, in order to get that other percentage - the GP value - by and large you did it by killing the monster that was guarding it.  So, yeah, the percentages were mostly for treasure, I totally agree.  But, in order to get that treasure, most of the time, the solution was to beat on the xp pinata until it broke and you picked up the coins.
> .




This so does not match my experience of play. When you have a group of characters with mixed skills (Magic User, Cleric, Fighter, Thief, Monk), it makes complete sense not to fight every monster that is guarding its treasure, but to use your brains to steal it.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 17, 2019)

I don't know if anyone ever asked Gary this, but did OD&D/1e not have all kinds of rules for social situations because he didn't think that was important, or because role playing non combat encounters was something the players at the table did?  Granted I don't think the focus of early D&D was deep social interaction, it was adventure, exploration, and combat.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 17, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I don't know if anyone ever asked Gary this, but did OD&D/1e not have all kinds of rules for social situations because he didn't think that was important, or because role playing non combat encounters was something the players at the table did?  Granted I don't think the focus of early D&D was deep social interaction, it was adventure, exploration, and combat.




You don’t need rules to deal with social interaction and many other aspects of play. But you need combat rules


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> You don’t need rules to deal with social interaction and many other aspects of play. But you need combat rules




Oh I agree. IME the heavier the social interaction rules the more that part of the game becomes "I make a skill check!" rather than trying to roleplay it.  Many don't agree and that is fine.

Thanks Lowkey.  Been a while since I've cracked that part of the DMG open.


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## Umbran (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> You don’t need rules to deal with social interaction and many other aspects of play. But you need combat rules




Why do you *need* rules for one, but not the other?  GMs are capable of just saying, "Yes, this social interaction plays out in this manner, with these effects," and do so fairly, but they are somehow incapable of doing so with combat?  They can't take a player's description of physical and magical actions, and just run with that like they can social interaction?

That, really, is kind of preposterous.  GMs certainly *could* do without rules for combat.  I have played in games with entirely narrative combat.  They aren't impossible.  

It isn't that we "need" rules for one or the other.  We *choose* rules for one over the other.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Why do you *need* rules for one, but not the other?  GMs are capable of just saying, "Yes, this social interaction plays out in this manner, with these effects," and do so fairly, but they are somehow incapable of doing so with combat?  They can't take a player's description of physical and magical actions, and just run with that like they can social interaction?
> 
> That, really, is kind of preposterous.  GMs certainly *could* do without rules for combat.  I have played in games with entirely narrative combat.  They aren't impossible.
> 
> It isn't that we "need" rules for one or the other.  We *choose* rules for one over the other.




Personally, I like having rules for both.  IME, there are just as few masters of social interaction as there are masters of combat in gaming.  Having rules for both lets players who aren’t play characters who are.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Why do you *need* rules for one, but not the other?  GMs are capable of just saying, "Yes, this social interaction plays out in this manner, with these effects," and do so fairly, but they are somehow incapable of doing so with combat?  They can't take a player's description of physical and magical actions, and just run with that like they can social interaction?
> 
> That, really, is kind of preposterous.  GMs certainly *could* do without rules for combat.  I have played in games with entirely narrative combat.  They aren't impossible.
> 
> It isn't that we "need" rules for one or the other.  We *choose* rules for one over the other.




Fair enough. You can run without either, but on the whole I think most people want combat rules. It is a lot harder in my opinion to adjudicate a game with zero combat rules than one with zero social rules. I think most social interacts can easily be handled by role-play. Combat screams for a resolution mechanism


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> I'm not sure about page 84.  I'll look in a second.  However, the intro section of the PHB says the following.
> 
> "While initial adventuring usually takes place in an underworld dungeon setting, *play gradually expands to encompass other such dungeons, town and city activities*, wilderness explorations, and journeys into other dimensions, planes, times, worlds, and so forth."
> 
> ...




Oh, our games with homebrew settings and adventures often included saving the princess and all other kinds of things, for sure. But I think it's pretty clear as displayed in the published modules of the time, and in the pretty skimpy bits about it in the DMG, the rules about rewarding non-combat were far from robust. It basically boiled down to what the DM decided to grant. So if your group wanted to play a more heroic style, and your DM embraced that, then sure, it'd work out. That's how I'd describe my home game at the time (although we were also kids with a tenuous grasp on the way the game was intended to play). 

I think that the XP for GP helped mitigate this somewhat (that was my original point, although it wasn't very clear) but how much depended on play expectations and practices for each group. But we can look at the MM, the DMG, and the published adventures and have all kinds of specific examples of how much XP would be granted for killing a given monster.


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## Bobble (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Like a lot of things AD&D, it was pretty schizophrenic.
> 
> For example, while you can talk about xp for "tricking" monsters being in the 1e DMG, you also have the training rules.  A fighter that didn't fight was actively penalized by being forced to take longer to train and




Um, NO.  "Hanging back from combat" means that combat is ongoing with the rest of the party and the fighter is not involved but hiding behind the party.  That is NOT equal to the fighter working out how to trick the monsters so no combat happens in the first place.  Nice try but you got it wrong.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Like a lot of things AD&D, it was pretty schizophrenic.
> 
> For example, while you can talk about xp for "tricking" monsters being in the 1e DMG, you also have the training rules.  A fighter that didn't fight was actively penalized by being forced to take longer to train and spending far, far more money on training, for example.  In 2e, while there were "bonus Xp tables" again, fighters ONLY gained bonus xp for killing stuff.
> 
> ...




Yeah, the game very clearly wanted you to engage in combat, with maybe the occasional attempt to avoid a particularly deadly opponent through trickery or stealth, or by simply avoiding it if another route was possible. The game could punish those who always attacked, but didn't do a lot to help support any other approach to a challenge. Or at least, it didn't really do so in a mechanical way. How sneaky was the average party? No idea, really.....only the Thief had the ability to Move Silently and Hide in Shadows. So much was left up to DM judgment. And while I generally don't think that's bad (assuming a reasonable DM), I think that such judgment is better off when there are established rules or guidelines on how to handle something so fundamental. 

Like with many things in D&D, there's a sweet spot of sorts; too many rules, and the DM's judgment doesn't matter as much, too few rules and it becomes supremely necessary. There's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> You don’t need rules to deal with social interaction and many other aspects of play. But you need combat rules



 You don't need rules, at all, it's true:  the DM can just rule on everything - combat, absolutely, included.  If you feel you /do/ need rules for combat - because it's life-or-death, presumably, what about life-or-death exploration challenges or negotiations?  

D&D grew out of wargames, they were heavily combat-oriented, so D&D rules started out heavily combat-oriented.  The game happened to progress slowly and haphazardly, at first, then fall into the hands of people who neither understood nor cared about it - so the first 25 years saw very little progress towards more formal, more functional, coverage of other areas.  But that was just an accident of how the game developed.

It's not that you do "need" rules for combat, it's that you've always had them.  It's not that you "don't" need rules for non-combat, it's that you'd gotten accustomed to getting by without them fairly well before even comparatively dubious ones were even published.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> You don't need rules, at all, it's true:  the DM can just rule on everything - combat, absolutely, included.  If you feel you /do/ need rules for combat - because it's life-or-death, presumably, what about life-or-death exploration challenges or negotiations?
> 
> D&D grew out of wargames, they were heavily combat-oriented, so D&D rules started out heavily combat-oriented.  The game happened to progress slowly and haphazardly, at first, then fall into the hands of people who neither understood nor cared about it - so the first 25 years saw very little progress towards more formal, more functional, coverage of other areas.  But that was just an accident of how the game developed.
> 
> It's not that you do "need" rules for combat, it's that you've always had them.  It's not that you "don't" need rules for non-combat, it's that you'd gotten accustomed to getting by without them fairly well before even comparatively dubious ones were even published.




I disagree very strongly. It isn't just about the stakes. It is about how difficult it is to adjudicate something as physically unpredictable and dynamic as combat fairly without a resolution system. With social situations, it is much easier to adjudicate based on the NPC personality in question and the reasonableness of what players are proposing. Negotiations are things we do all the time. Not saying it is the only way to do it But I think if people are honest with themselves, they will have to admit, most people find it easier to manage the social aspect of play without mechanics but harder to manage combat without mechanics. I don't think it is purely because it comes from war-games. I think there is also a very functional reason you see combat mechanics being so central to rules systems. It doesn't need to reflect a focus on combat. It can easily just be that combat requires it more, and the other stuff is more manageable without.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> When you put it that way, it's amazing we spent so many hrs playing it!
> 
> 
> And, typically only one character...
> ...




Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that XP for GP was a solution. Just that it at least offered something for those who didn't fight their way to the treasure. Later editions certainly got other things right (skill systems, etc.) but got other things wrong. 

I think the flatter math of 5E should have also been applied to XP. No need for hundreds and thousands of XP. Have each instance of a certain action grant an XP. Make them class and perhaps race and alignment specific. And it'd probably have been a good idea to connect the Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws to the system, too. Limit how much XP a player can get for any individual action. If a Fighter can only gain XP twice for combat in any given session, he's not incentivized to resolve every challenge with a fight. Each PC would have very specific play goals, and could actively and clearly work toward obtaining those goals. 

You'd have to couple this with other things, though. You'd have to make non-combat action resolution more engaging than:

Player: I try to sneak past the guards.
DM: Okay, make a Dex-Stealth roll.
Player: I got a 7.
DM: Not good enough. The guard sees you and charges. 

This just doesn't really compare to the depth of combat in the game. I think that you'd need to increase the depth of non-combat actions and encounters. I also think that speeding up combat a bit would also help. Obviously, every table will have preferences, so you have to leave it adjustable, but I think that generally speaking, that's the route they should have gone if they wanted the game to genuinely be about 3 pillars rather than 1 pillar and a pair of support beams.


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## 5ekyu (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that XP for GP was a solution. Just that it at least offered something for those who didn't fight their way to the treasure. Later editions certainly got other things right (skill systems, etc.) but got other things wrong.
> 
> I think the flatter math of 5E should have also been applied to XP. No need for hundreds and thousands of XP. Have each instance of a certain action grant an XP. Make them class and perhaps race and alignment specific. And it'd probably have been a good idea to connect the Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws to the system, too. Limit how much XP a player can get for any individual action. If a Fighter can only gain XP twice for combat in any given session, he's not incentivized to resolve every challenge with a fight. Each PC would have very specific play goals, and could actively and clearly work toward obtaining those goals.
> 
> ...



To me, looking at your sneak example, that's a pretty bland setup. Its setup like it's a throwaway scene, not a real task. 

Add in a setup with meaningful scenery, NPCs around and scenes back and forth past the guards etc and you get opportunities for PCs to arrange distractions, to find ways that dont require stealth checks, to investigate and bribe or persuade etc etc etc.

In other words, your sample started way too late in the scene to be interesting. (Although, honestly, there could still be a more robust set of options for the guard's reaction.

"7, not good enough, the guard sees you, but doesnt say anything, just smiles and make a gesture with his hands like handling coins." Some success with setback. - PHB.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I disagree very strongly. It isn't just about the stakes. It is about how difficult it is to adjudicate something as physically unpredictable and dynamic as combat fairly without a resolution system. With social situations, it is much easier to adjudicate based on the NPC personality in question and the reasonableness of what players are proposing. Negotiations are things we do all the time. Not saying it is the only way to do it But I think if people are honest with themselves, they will have to admit, most people find it easier to manage the social aspect of play without mechanics but harder to manage combat without mechanics. I don't think it is purely because it comes from war-games. I think there is also a very functional reason you see combat mechanics being so central to rules systems. It doesn't need to reflect a focus on combat. It can easily just be that combat requires it more, and the other stuff is more manageable without.




I do agree with you that we are, generally speaking, more comfortable with managing the social aspect of the game without rules than we would be the combat aspect of the game without rules. But this is likely a byproduct of the fact that we actively do the social actions in real life....we try to convince people, we discuss, we socialize...so there's a framework we can access. Most of us (I hope) aren't engaging in life or death combat with deadly opponents in day to day life. So yeah, I think we all have a better idea of what might be considered a compelling argument than what would be the best approach to attack with a broadsword. 

But I don't think that automatically means that social interaction rules shouldn't exist, or that combat rules must be more complex. 

I do think that it's a bit of a chicken or egg thing.....is the game combat heavy and that's flavored our expectations, or have our expectations influenced the rules design? It's a bit of both, for sure, I'd say. 

I don't think that there's any reason a game cannot be focused on non-combat more than combat, or that there must be more rules for combat. I think this is simply the general trend, which reinforces long standing play expectations.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> But I don't think that automatically means that social interaction rules shouldn't exist, or that combat rules must be more complex.
> .




I never said this at all. This is a matter of preference. Some people like social interaction rules, some people don't. Both options are fine. Personally I am less inclined to social interaction rules because I have trouble using them in practice. But I don't think there is a problem wit them being in a game. My only point was you can still have plenty of social interaction even if there are no rules in the game (in fact for me, it makes it easier to do so if there are not such rules in the game)


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> To me, looking at your sneak example, that's a pretty bland setup. Its setup like it's a throwaway scene, not a real task.
> 
> Add in a setup with meaningful scenery, NPCs around and scenes back and forth past the guards etc and you get opportunities for PCs to arrange distractions, to find ways that dont require stealth checks, to investigate and bribe or persuade etc etc etc.
> 
> ...




Sure, the set up was very basic....and although that was largely for the sake of brevity, I don't know if expanding a bit upon the set up will matter all that much. A lot of times, that's exactly what a skill check boils down to.....one roll, with a success or fail end state. I'd expect that most attempts to avoid combat by using a skill or a spell wind up coming down to one roll, and a failure almost always results in the combat taking place anyway. Very often with the PCs in a worse position than if they'd simply charged in at the start. 

Again, that's speaking in general; there are certainly examples of a different approach (my 5E game would have plenty of examples to offer). 

The idea of a partial success, or success with a set back, is a very good one, and is the kind of thing I'm talking about when it comes to improving the non-combat actions. The PHB does talk about them, which is a good thing, but I think they likely could or should have gone a little further.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I never said this at all. This is a matter of preference. Some people like social interaction rules, some people don't. Both options are fine. Personally I am less inclined to social interaction rules because I have trouble using them in practice. But I don't think there is a problem wit them being in a game. My only point was you can still have plenty of social interaction even if there are no rules in the game (in fact for me, it makes it easier to do so if there are not such rules in the game)




No, but you said more people would be comfortable with them not existing. So I was addressing that. I think that's mostly due to expectation and tradition, or maybe a feedback loop of both. 

I'm currently playing a game that treats all the combat and non-combat actions the same....it has a universal mechanic that's resolved the same for all actions. 

Combat is still a big part of the game. But non-combat is just as important, and is just as engaging. 

So I think the existence of engaging mechanics for social interaction can actually add to play rather than detract from it. The problem is that the most common social interaction rules aren't really all that engaging.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> No, but you said more people would be comfortable with them not existing. So I was addressing that. I think that's mostly due to expectation and tradition, or maybe a feedback loop of both.




All I meant was more people are able to play the game with an absence of social mechanics than they are with an absence of combat mechanics. i wasn't addressing whether more people wanted them or not. Personally my impression is more people do want social mechanics than don't. This is why I include them in my own games, despite not being partial to them myself.


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## Bobble (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> All I meant was more people are able to play the game with an absence of social mechanics than they are with an absence of combat mechanics.




100% correct.  It is easy to use role playing in place of social mechanics vs. trying to adjudicate combat without mechanics.


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## Umbran (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> It is a lot harder in my opinion to adjudicate a game with zero combat rules than one with zero social rules. I think most social interacts can easily be handled by role-play. Combat screams for a resolution mechanism




I rather think that depends upon what the focus & intent of the game is.  Just this weekend, I played a game which had no combat mechanic.  The PCs weren't people addressing their challenges via personally applying physical force, so no system for doing so was included.  We didn't miss it.

If the intended action in a game is "kill things and take their stuff" then yes, your game needs a combat mechanic.  If the intended action in game is... "Kill things, and take their stuff... and then persuade the king to not execute your PCs after you killed many of his subjects," then you really should have a social conflict resolution mechanic.  

I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules.  A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules.  If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?


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## Celebrim (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Why do you *need* rules for one, but not the other?




My suspicion is that it is because gamers tend to prefer the least abstract experience of the scenario possible (or at least that is convenient).  

For combat, the least abstract thing to do would be dress up in armor, take up some sort of sparring weapon, and play out the combat.  This is exciting visceral and only slightly abstract and many people do it, yet it is not particularly convenient and leaves open problems of how you simulate giants, dragons, magic, and most of all being someone other than yourself. 

The combat rules used by most systems, and certainly by the most popular and enduring systems, tend to be as un-abstract as is convenient to run in a table top game.   All those fiddly rules help describe a less abstract reality for the combat, where moment by moment decisions can be played out in a way that allows the participants to imagine what is going on.

By contrast, the least abstract way to simulate social interaction is with social interaction.  Table-top RPGs after all are inherently social games, and so the easiest way to simulate a conversation is simply to have that conversation.   Actually having the conversation creates in a non-abstract way what was said in a far more detailed, complete, natural and convenient manner than any attempt to model conversations as combat ever could.   Thus, while the least abstract combat system involves the most rules, the least abstract social system involves the fewest rules. 

And while there are some complexities to overcome in imagining conversations, I personally as a DM find it easier to simulate speaking and thinking like a dragon - however unrealistic my approximation may be - than I find it to actually simulate moving and fighting like a dragon.   I can pretend to hubris and greed far easier than I can pretend to fly and breath fire and be 40' long.   Barring acquiring the ability to change shape and bend the laws of physics, I'm going to need to model the later in a way I don't need a model for something I can do like conversation.

So in a sense, yes we do choose rules for one over the other, but I don't think it is true that we do this for arbitrary reasons or even that the reasons are primarily cultural in nature.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I disagree very strongly. It isn't just about the stakes. It is about how difficult it is to adjudicate something as physically unpredictable and dynamic as combat fairly without a resolution system. With social situations, it is much easier to adjudicate based on the NPC personality in question and the reasonableness of what players are proposing.



 Again, I'd argue they're not necessarily easier, just more familiar, that way.  Is it really that difficult to conclude who wins a fight (a fight in an heroic fantasy story, no less - the hero usually wins, unless his loss advances the plot somehow, no?), and narrate how, vs both the DM and player getting deeply enough into the minds & emotions of a character & NPC to accurately simulate a tense or high-stakes negotiation, between those two imaginary individuals, with their knowledge, talents, skills and agendas?




Umbran said:


> I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules.  A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules.  If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?



Well, a GM isn't just a referee/judge, even if they did get called the latter back in the day, but also a player just one with a very different role in the game, and a sort of narrator or storyteller, and a sort of author...

...even so, when adjudicating in the absence of rules, the GM is still mediating between the players and the rules, just in the abject case of the rules.



hawkeyefan said:


> I do think that it's a bit of a chicken or egg thing.....is the game combat heavy and that's flavored our expectations, or have our expectations influenced the rules design? It's a bit of both, for sure, I'd say.



 since the game appeared in 1974, well within living memory, it clearly came first.  Of course, it was preceded by Chainmail & other wargames, which carried with them an expectation of being combat simulators - but, for the most part, that wasn't /our expectations/ as Roleplayers, because we didn't exist as a community until after D&D came on the scene. 



> I don't think that there's any reason a game cannot be focused on non-combat more than combat, or that there must be more rules for combat. I think this is simply the general trend, which reinforces long standing play expectations.



 There are reasons a game /could/ be more focused on combat, like it's a combat simulator, or the stakes of combat are life-and-death or combat is always there as a last resort - negotiations break down, exploration triggers hostility, whatever.  But no reasons it must or should be, and reasons it might not be:  combat could be out of the scope of the genre, or instance, or a (comparatively) minor part of it.  In a murder mystery genre, for instance, violence is actually pretty rare, overall in what would correspond to play - there's /a/ murder, which is viewed as a terrible thing, but generally happens 'off stage,' anyway, and the murderer rarely fights his accusers (more often confesses, gives up, flees or dies trying), and it'd be an odd twist if he got away with it by resorting to violence.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 17, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I rather think that depends upon what the focus & intent of the game is.  Just this weekend, I played a game which had no combat mechanic.  The PCs weren't people addressing their challenges via personally applying physical force, so no system for doing so was included.  We didn't miss it.
> 
> If the intended action in a game is "kill things and take their stuff" then yes, your game needs a combat mechanic.  If the intended action in game is... "Kill things, and take their stuff... and then persuade the king to not execute your PCs after you killed many of his subjects," then you really should have a social conflict resolution mechanic.
> 
> I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules.  A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules.  If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?




I'd say my job as a referee is to adjudicate between the scenario, call it fiction or imaginary world and those in it, and the players actions. The rules provide a framework for a lot of that but for me some areas are best left to the interactions between the players and the DM. If I know what will lines of argument will convince the King and what will enrage him I can rule fairly easily based on what the players tell me they are doing if they are successful or not.  

IME heavy social rules have never led to more roleplaying, only less.  Granted I don't play with a lot of randoms.  But even in the Con games I was in last spring there was all kinds of role playing going on and none of it had to do with mechanics.


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## 5ekyu (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, the set up was very basic....and although that was largely for the sake of brevity, I don't know if expanding a bit upon the set up will matter all that much. A lot of times, that's exactly what a skill check boils down to.....one roll, with a success or fail end state. I'd expect that most attempts to avoid combat by using a skill or a spell wind up coming down to one roll, and a failure almost always results in the combat taking place anyway. Very often with the PCs in a worse position than if they'd simply charged in at the start.
> 
> Again, that's speaking in general; there are certainly examples of a different approach (my 5E game would have plenty of examples to offer).
> 
> The idea of a partial success, or success with a set back, is a very good one, and is the kind of thing I'm talking about when it comes to improving the non-combat actions. The PHB does talk about them, which is a good thing, but I think they likely could or should have gone a little further.



If a group decides to go with simple binary for non-combst, then I tend to think thats what they want. The rules certainly dont require it. Both the GM and players csn ddcide to build as much into those as they eidh.

I mean, ok, so if we look at stealth and hiding, we see it starts with GM determination of whether thsats evedn even possible well before you get yo jour toll. You got spells starting at cantrips thst csn help, a little or a lot, plus help action, etc etc. 

For social checks, the defined interaction process in the DMG for resolving those is far from "I persuade" and vice hit table- it includes determination of starting outlook, possibility of changing that using traits, possibly needing investigation etc. 

And yep, the PHB mentions progress eith srtbsck, tight theremin the same sentences as they do pass and fail. So, not really given much less than they were. Then it shows up again in the DMG for saves snd attacks- fitted in with Success at cost.

Whether or not groups decide to use any of it is on them... but it's not a case that 5e by design boils those kinds of things to a simpler declare asnd one roll.


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## 5ekyu (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> No, but you said more people would be comfortable with them not existing. So I was addressing that. I think that's mostly due to expectation and tradition, or maybe a feedback loop of both.
> 
> I'm currently playing a game that treats all the combat and non-combat actions the same....it has a universal mechanic that's resolved the same for all actions.
> 
> ...



"So I think the existence of engaging mechanics for social interaction can actually add to play rather than detract from it. The problem is that the most common social interaction rules aren't really all that engaging."

The DMG setup for these involve the traits such as ideals, bonds, flaws- discovering them, exploiting them etc and can easily lead to no roll needed or an easy roll of DC 10.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 17, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 17, 2019)

Even if I don't run a game with social mechanics I still factor in the PC charisma.  And it also impacts hirelings and their loyalty.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I will toss out there, for folks to chew on, whether the GM is adjudicating when they are not referring to any rules.  A referee or game judge's job is to mediate between the players and the rules.  If there aren't rules, are they really acting in that capacity?




Sure. I mean the GM adjudicates things all the time that are not covered by the rules, and in those moments the GM is acting as a sort of game mechanic. They are not referees in the same way that a boxing match or soccer match has. They are also there playing a world around the players. I don't need a mechanic to decide something interesting happens, or to decide how a baker responds to a player character's request for an endless supply of bread sticks.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I rather think that depends upon what the focus & intent of the game is.  Just this weekend, I played a game which had no combat mechanic.  The PCs weren't people addressing their challenges via personally applying physical force, so no system for doing so was included.  We didn't miss it.




Sure if there is no combat in a game, then you don't need combat rules really. But I think the key thing here is social interactions are things we can actually play out at the table. I can talk in character to the GM playing an NPC and to other players playing their characters. I can't really do that with combat. We are not going to take out boffer weapons to resolve combat. We need a mechanic. Now that mechanic could just be GM fiat. But the point is you can't play it out naturally the way you can play out a social interaction naturally and I think that is the main reason why so many games have large amounts of combat mechanics. It isn't necessarily a reflection of the game being focused on combat. It is just that more of the combat stuff can't be played out as naturally at the table as exploration and social stuff. Even when you have social mechanics, you don't really need that much. You don't necessarily need social mechanics to function like combat mechanics (there are games that do this obviously, but it is perfectly easy to play games without this level of depth of social mechanics).


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> My suspicion is that it is because gamers tend to prefer the least abstract experience of the scenario possible (or at least that is convenient).
> 
> For combat, the least abstract thing to do would be dress up in armor, take up some sort of sparring weapon, and play out the combat.  This is exciting visceral and only slightly abstract and many people do it, yet it is not particularly convenient and leaves open problems of how you simulate giants, dragons, magic, and most of all being someone other than yourself.
> 
> ...




This


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 17, 2019)

Umbran said:


> If the intended action in a game is "kill things and take their stuff" then yes, your game needs a combat mechanic.  If the intended action in game is... "Kill things, and take their stuff... and then persuade the king to not execute your PCs after you killed many of his subjects," then you really should have a social conflict resolution mechanic.




Not if you want people to talk in character and have what they say be the thing that determines whether the king is persuaded. I am not saying social mechanics are not useful, or are bad. But I mean you don't have to have them just because you want social interaction in the game (especially if you want actual social interaction in the game).


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 17, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Not if you want people to talk in character and have what they say be the thing that determines whether the king is persuaded. I am not saying social mechanics are not useful, or are bad. But I mean you don't have to have them just because you want social interaction in the game (especially if you want actual social interaction in the game).



So, does that mean you probably /do/ want combat mechanics, especially if you don't want actual combat at the table? 

;P


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## Celebrim (Jun 17, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> So I think the existence of engaging mechanics for social interaction can actually add to play rather than detract from it. The problem is that the most common social interaction rules aren't really all that engaging.




More to the point, they tend to be less engaging than the social interaction that they are simulating.

By the argument that I outlined above, the more detailed the social interaction rules, the less engaging that they will tend to be because the less they will resemble the thing that they are a model for.

I can foresee this becoming Celebrim's Third Law of RPGs at some point, I just haven't figured out how to phrase it.   But I have a strong suspicion that one of the reasons that the systems that try to cover everything using the same mechanical resolution system never seem to catch on is that fundamentally the things that they are trying to model are more different than they are similar.  You can hammer every square peg through the round hole in order to get some sort of 'pass/fail' answer, but you can only do so at the cost of increasing abstraction and with that an intuitive and cinematic transcript of play.

"Cinematic" word I realize has been defined in several ways by tRPG writers, but as I use it I mean a process of resolution that tends to increase the ability of all participants to imagine what is transpiring in the scene in the same concrete way.   That is to say, it has mechanics which tend to be self reifying.  For example, if your process of resolution of a social encounter primarily depends on holding some sort of conversation, then everyone at the table can easily imagine what is transpiring in the scene in the same concrete way, because the transcript of the conversation (or at least something quite similar to it) is right there for everyone to experience.   Thus, holding a conversation is cinematic in a way that, "I try to intimidate the guard.", or "I try to persuade the Baron to lend some of his household troops to assault the lizardfolk", or "I use a conversational feint.", etc. etc. just isn't.


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## Beleriphon (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> "Cinematic" word I realize has been defined in several ways by tRPG writers, but as I use it I mean a process of resolution that tends to increase the ability of all participants to imagine what is transpiring in the scene in the same concrete way.   That is to say, it has mechanics which tend to be self reifying.  For example, if your process of resolution of a social encounter primarily depends on holding some sort of conversation, then everyone at the table can easily imagine what is transpiring in the scene in the same concrete way, because the transcript of the conversation (or at least something quite similar to it) is right there for everyone to experience.   Thus, holding a conversation is cinematic in a way that, "I try to intimidate the guard.", or "I try to persuade the Baron to lend some of his household troops to assault the lizardfolk", or "I use a conversational feint.", etc. etc. just isn't.




I think it depends on defining what you want the end goal to be in a social encounter, in fact it has to be really. If the end goal is the Duke lends you some of his household guard to trounce that lizardfolk resolution mechanics need to tell us when the Duke acquiesces, does what we want but with a condition, or flat out refuses. But it also needs to let us use the character abilities, and use player input in a way that physical altercations don't.

Using mechanics to wear the Duke down from his starting Social Points total is probably a bad idea, because as you say it looks too much like combat, but doesn't really let us know what is happening. But if we borrow FATE and start following stress then we can start assigning actual descriptions to what happens. For example, we might pick up a stress description of Insulted the Target, which doesn't go away just because the encounter is over. In a lot of ways that requires the players and the GM determining the outcomes after the dice roll, so if you insult the Duke its between the players and the GM to figure out how that happened.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> To put it in old school terms-
> 
> (1)You can either just RP everything, in which case charisma is a useless dump stat and everything is determined by DM fiat as they judge your performance; or
> (2) you can use a resolution mechanic for social events, in which case RP is just a mechanic.
> ...




I'm not sure that there is a "right" answer (that is, there is probably more than one good way to do things), but I do think that there are wrong answers.

In any event, assuming that both of those are right answers, I think that they are also a false dichotomy.  It's not true that either everything is determined by DM fiat or else RP is just a mechanic.  There are definitely ways to both engage in RP and also have some system for resolving social tests that doesn't depend only on DM fiat.   The real question is just how much prep time do you want to engage in in order to minimize fiat during the run time (fiat during the preparation time, such as what monster a room holds is pretty much impossible to avoid), or which gives you a really great return on investment.   My experience on this is for most things preparation time in structuring a social test is better spent elsewhere unless the social test is going to involve some sort of multi-session minigame focused on RP.

But, now moving up to your thief example, the reason you tended to see only Thieves hiding in Shadows is the relatively poor construction of the 1e AD&D rules.  There is a tension in the rules.  A good rule set tends to have as a meta-rule "Everything that is not forbidden is permitted."   However, if you don't outline a good majority of the things that are permitted, there will be a tendency for players to not even try them, simply because they won't be prompted to consider the option.   Likewise, if you don't outline a good majority of the things that are permitted, then DMs will tend to find themselves in a bind when propositions don't have a rule that covers them, and the result is likely to be either bad rulesmithing that makes the task too hard or too easy, or simply just saying "No" when they realize too permissive of rulings tend to be vastly more destructive to the game than too restrictive of rulings.

So, in a sense, climbing a wall had always been permitted.   But I'm guessing in practice that prior to the introduction of the thief, a given wall was only climbable if the DM called it out as climbable in his own preparation, by for example noting that handholds could be found if the north wall was closely inspected.   The thief allowed a player to propose climbing a more or less sheer wall regardless of whether the DM had called out whether it was climbable.  Indeed, the introduction of the thief probably started provoking DMs to do the opposite - calling on it in their preparation when a wall was especially not climbable.  And this latter habit would tend to make most walls unclimbable except by thieves unless the DM was of a particularly imaginative sort.

There were two other things that created problems.   First, the system didn't define what a non-thief could do, which meant it was always up to the DM to decide on some number for the chance for a non-thief.   And secondly, and this was a fundamental problem with the thief itself, the thief skills at low level already had such a low chance of success that a good thief player basically never used them anyway, since to face a fortune test was to fail and failure was often lethal.   Thus, any number that the DM selected for a non-thief using thief skills would be so low as to be basically saying "No" anyway.

In practice, only M-U's hid in shadows, because they had Invisibility.  Thieves had no reliable means of stealth and so rarely utilized it.   'Move Silently' was used, but only because you had to move anyway, so you might as well try to do it moving silently.  Ironically though, moving silently had no obvious impact on the Surprise system with its fixed chances of surprise, so unless the DM made some sort of fiat ruling, there was usually little point in doing it.

The point is that we know you don't have to a climb skill that either relies entirely on fiat or else prevents untrained characters from trying to climb, even though we know that poorly thought out implementations might have either consequence.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> So, does that mean you probably /do/ want combat mechanics, especially if you don't want actual combat at the table?
> 
> ;P




I just think RPGs are generally harder to run without them than they are without social mechanics. Doesn't mean you have to have them. You can just use fiat if you want. But I think you will run into more contention if and when combat comes up if it isn't perceived to be a fair system. 

What I will say is I don't think having zero combat mechanics is the best way to discourage combat. Players can still pursue combat mechanics even if you don't have them (you will just be forced to figure out mechanics on the fly if they push for combat). In my experience the best ways to discourage combat are to make adventures where there are plenty of non-combat solutions, be open to non-combat solutions and use lethal combat systems. If the combat systems are sufficiently lethal, I find players tend to lean on smarter solutions to problems.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I just think RPGs are generally harder to run without them than they are without social mechanics. Doesn't mean you have to have them. You can just use fiat if you want. But I think you will run into more contention if and when combat comes up if it isn't perceived to be a fair system.



 You'll run into contention with any unfair mechanic or lack there of.  It might take different forms.  Bang! Your Dead! Am Not. Are too! for lack of combat mechanics, vs moping and not showing up to the next session when your 18 CHA paladin is humiliated in court for the nth time, because the DM doesn't care for the way you RP him, and it's reflected in his success in social situation, for want of any actual mechanics...



> If the combat systems are sufficiently lethal, I find players tend to lean on smarter solutions to problems.



 Like shooting first.  ;P  Seriously, the impetus a very lethal combat system gives is not towards pacifism, but towards assassination over "fair" fights.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> You'll run into contention with any unfair mechanic or lack there of.  It might take different forms.  Bang! Your Dead! Am Not. Are too! for lack of combat mechanics, vs moping and not showing up to the next session when your 18 CHA paladin is humiliated in court for the nth time, because the DM doesn't care for the way you RP him, and it's reflected in his success in social situation, for want of any actual mechanics...




Again, I think there is a big difference between combat and non-combat situations here. I've certainly seen people upset about the 18 CHR paladin thing, but that still doesn't require a whole system dedicated to social mechanics. It just requires the GM stay on the ball and fairly incorporate the CHR score. At the same time, I've not seen nearly as many fights and arguments over this sort of thing as I have over combat issues. I just think combat is much more open to contention. And I find it fairly easy to run a game without non combat mechanics. 



> Like shooting first.  ;P  Seriously, the impetus a very lethal combat system gives is not towards pacifism, but towards assassination over "fair" fights.




That would be a pretty bad strategy long term in a lethal combat system. Most systems don't guarantee you get to go first every combat. Even if you have a high Speed (or whatever is used to determine initiative order) there are always people out there who are fast or faster. If it is a game with guns, and guns can potentially kill in a single hit, my experience is people really hedge their bets when violence arises and they generally try to avoid violent solutions when safer ones are feasible. Obviously if violence is inevitable in a campaign using such a system, shooting first will be the go to move....but that is almost always the case anyways.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Again, I think there is a big difference between combat and non-combat situations here. I've certainly seen people upset about the 18 CHR paladin thing, but that still doesn't require a whole system dedicated to social mechanics. It just requires the GM stay on the ball and fairly incorporate the CHR score.



 IDK, couldn't a GM just stay on the ball and consider a combat-bad-ass concept character's bad-ass-ed-ness when adjudication combat?




> That would be a pretty bad strategy long term in a lethal combat system.



Taking advantage of the system's lethality by killing enemies when the odds are all on your side?  It's classic CaW.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> IDK, couldn't a GM just stay on the ball and consider a combat-bad-ass concept character's bad-ass-ed-ness when adjudication combat?




He could do that, but I think combat is a lot harder to adjudicate in that way than talking (which I explained in an earlier post). 




> Taking advantage of the system's lethality by killing enemies when the odds are all on your side?  It's classic CaW.




But if it is genuinely lethal, any time you engage in combat it is a risky proposition. Look, you might have reckless players who do this, particularly if they don't care if their character dies or if the premise of the campaign involves a high level of character death, but for the most part my experience with this has been players are much more cautious using violence and tend to lean on non-violent solutions when they are feasible. If all it takes is one bullet to kill you, you can have the best laid plans and if one little thing goes wrong, you die. You can't get away with that over the long haul if you are doing it all the time.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> since the game appeared in 1974, well within living memory, it clearly came first.  Of course, it was preceded by Chainmail & other wargames, which carried with them an expectation of being combat simulators - but, for the most part, that wasn't /our expectations/ as Roleplayers, because we didn't exist as a community until after D&D came on the scene.




But they were basing their initial design on things that already existed. One was Chainmail and other wargames, but the other was genre. Lieber and Howard and Tolkien and Vance and Lovecraft and so on. The game was designed with those stories in mind...so rules for fighting were definitely necessary because those stories all included fighting, or the possibility of it, at least. 

So the stories influenced the game design, and then the game design influenced the stories players told with their game. 

So why is a specific game so combat heavy? Because Gary designed the rules that way? Or because of the genre the rules are meant to reproduce? 

I feel like it has to be a bit of both.



Tony Vargas said:


> There are reasons a game /could/ be more focused on combat, like it's a combat simulator, or the stakes of combat are life-and-death or combat is always there as a last resort - negotiations break down, exploration triggers hostility, whatever.  But no reasons it must or should be, and reasons it might not be:  combat could be out of the scope of the genre, or instance, or a (comparatively) minor part of it.  In a murder mystery genre, for instance, violence is actually pretty rare, overall in what would correspond to play - there's /a/ murder, which is viewed as a terrible thing, but generally happens 'off stage,' anyway, and the murderer rarely fights his accusers (more often confesses, gives up, flees or dies trying), and it'd be an odd twist if he got away with it by resorting to violence.




A murder mystery is a great example of a genre that wouldn’t really require combat mechanics. There are others, as well, but even within genres we’d typically think must have them, there may not always be a need. I’m thinking of fiction where most of the “action” occurs offscreen. Or where it’s minimal. Something like The Wire, let’s say. Five seasons of cops and drug dealers, and there are very few gunfights. Rome had almost all of the warfare take place offscreen, although it did show more small scale fights.

These shows were still very compelling. I don’t know if there’s any reason that a RPG couldn’t replicate such fiction.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 18, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> the other was genre. Lieber and Howard and Tolkien and Vance and Lovecraft and so on. The game was designed with those stories in mind...



 IDK, I feel like there'd be a lot more rules for walking around, building fires in the snow, and Expositon, Joel, EX-PO-SITION ... We're Tolkien really a lot more than a cosmetic inspiration.  Likewise,  Lovecraftean influence would have meant more insanity, less combat.  Lieber? You'd need some exhaustive rules for the *ahem* interaction /pillar/...


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## Hussar (Jun 18, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> In 1e an ancient red dragon was worth 7758, or 1939 xp each for a party of 4.  An ancient red dragon can easily have 250,000gp worth of treasure, not including magic items.  That equates to 62,500 xp each for that party of 4.  Gaining the treasure is 32 times more xp than killing it, and you get that same exp if you steal the treasure rather than fight the dragon.
> 
> D&D was originally concieved as a get the loot game where you sometimes had to fight, but really tried to avoid it when possible so you didn't end up dead.




Now, how exactly did you manage to get that couple of tons of treasure out of the lair without fighting the dragon?

Again, why did folks avoid combat when the PC's after about 6th level were FAR more powerful than anything they were facing?  And Ancient Huge Red Dragon had 92 HP (IIRC).  That was about 1 round of damage output for a 9th level party of 6-9 PC's.


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## Lanefan (Jun 18, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I'm just blown away by folks that want to paint early D&D as anything other than a hack and slash wargame with a thin veneer of story laid over top.  99% of the rules were related to combat.  Virtually everything your character got was either directly related to combat, or as a result of combat.  This shouldn't be terribly contentious.  This is D&D after all.  Y'know, back to the dungeon, the mega dungeon, dungeon crawling, that sort of thing?  I mean, good grief, look at most modules published up until about 1982, which is a pile of them - they're pretty much nothing but hack fest dungeon crawls.



And that's what makes them great!


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## Lanefan (Jun 18, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Now, how exactly did you manage to get that couple of tons of treasure out of the lair without fighting the dragon?
> 
> Again, why did folks avoid combat when the PC's after about 6th level were FAR more powerful than anything they were facing?  And Ancient Huge Red Dragon had 92 HP (IIRC).  That was about 1 round of damage output for a 9th level party of 6-9 PC's.



If they won initiative.

But if they lost they'd be eating a 92-point blast of fire (46-point on a made save), with potential subsequent item losses on failing the initial save, when the dragon breathed on them before they got to act.  Chances are that'd turn the 6-9 character party into a 3-7 character party, with each of the remaining characters down a bunch of h.p. and possibly down some items as well.  That evens the odds a bit... 

Not every party would want to risk getting hammered that hard, and so would look for ways to somehow lure the dragon away from its lair or somehow else make that treasure accessible without a direct confrontation.


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## Hussar (Jun 18, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> If they won initiative.
> 
> But if they lost they'd be eating a 92-point blast of fire (46-point on a made save), with potential subsequent item losses on failing the initial save, when the dragon breathed on them before they got to act.  Chances are that'd turn the 6-9 character party into a 3-7 character party, with each of the remaining characters down a bunch of h.p. and possibly down some items as well.  That evens the odds a bit...
> 
> Not every party would want to risk getting hammered that hard, and so would look for ways to somehow lure the dragon away from its lair or somehow else make that treasure accessible without a direct confrontation.




Meh, the dragon had a non-zero chance of being asleep when you got there.    And, again, given that level of a party, you've got so much fire protection that the breath weapon is a joke.  And, let's not forget, we're cherry picking the biggest non-unique monster in the 1e monster manual here.  Most other monsters were nowhere near this dangerous.  There's a pile of variables here.  My point is, by and large, most groups are going to steamroll most encounters.  Why did people feel the need to avoid combat?  

I dunno, then again, we left AD&D as soon as 2e came out and 2e was even worse - fighters really were damage gods.  

As I said, I'm always left rather surprised that folks worried about this sort of thing.  It was so easy to curb stomp monsters in AD&D.  The only real danger came from the plethora of save or die effects.  Combat?  A 9th level AD&D party could face multiple dragons and come out on top.


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## Maxperson (Jun 18, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Now, how exactly did you manage to get that couple of tons of treasure out of the lair without fighting the dragon?




A bag of holding or four.  It's not as if most of that didn't come from gems, jewelry and platinum anyway.  One of the largest bags of holding could hold 150k of the 250k with 1000 pounds left over.



> Again, why did folks avoid combat when the PC's after about 6th level were FAR more powerful than anything they were facing?




Death?  Energy Drain?  Save or die sucked and was all over the place with poison, and energy drain was hell.  It had no save and you never got back all of your experience, even if you were lucky enough to be drained within a day of someone who could cast restoration.  And you started encountering a lot of energy drain undead well before the party could cast restoration itself, assuming your cleric wasn't also drained.



> And Ancient Huge Red Dragon had 92 HP (IIRC).  That was about 1 round of damage output for a 9th level party of 6-9 PC's.




Sure, if it just hung out on the ground ready to duke it out.  Played intelligently, that dragon would destroy a 9th level party.  I also like how you made it a party of 6-9 NPCs, rather than the typical 4.  Double the party size and you double the monsters.  So 8 PCs against a pair or three of ancient red dragons.


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## Maxperson (Jun 18, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Meh, the dragon had a non-zero chance of being asleep when you got there.    And, again, given that level of a party, you've got so much fire protection that the breath weapon is a joke.  And, let's not forget, we're cherry picking the biggest non-unique monster in the 1e monster manual here.  Most other monsters were nowhere near this dangerous.




And worth nowhere as much XP.  I went with ancient red dragon to illustrate just how piddly combat XP was.  Especially vs. XP from treasure.



> My point is, by and large, most groups are going to steamroll most encounters.  Why did people feel the need to avoid combat?




You played with a generous DM, or perhaps one who didn't know how to run monsters.  If the DM wasn't worried about killing you and used tactics that many of the monsters would know and use, combats were not easy, especially when you factored in save or die and energy drains.  

I dunno, then again, we left AD&D as soon as 2e came out and 2e was even worse - fighters really were damage gods.  



> It was so easy to curb stomp monsters in AD&D.  The only real danger came from the plethora of save or die effects.  Combat?




Those are mutually exclusive statements.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Beleriphon said:


> I think it depends on defining what you want the end goal to be in a social encounter, in fact it has to be really.




Doing this in a concrete way requires a bit of preparation of the sort people generally don't do.

You have to define the Duke as a social character.  The 'Seven Sentence NPC' article in Dragon #184 is still in my opinion the definitive starting place for this.   You then need to define the basics of the social challenge, essentially setting the Difficulty, the various obvious modifiers that might result from doing or saying things the Duke likes or dislikes, and defining before hand what partial success or success with complications looks like and under what circumstances such outcomes apply.   These sort of challenges if well constructed have the sort of details we might otherwise lavish on traps or monsters.   Social focused challenges can be really cool, if you have the right group of players, but they do take a bit of work and/or some experience to run them well.   You don't necessarily need a ton of complicated mechanics and most systems - even 1e AD&D with its loyalty checks or a modified version of a common ruling like 'roll below an ability score' - usually have enough of a system to adopt to this sort of thing, but you do need some sort of tangible social reality you are describing.



> But if we borrow FATE...




I'm really not a fan of FATE, and the only part of FATE that I'd ever advise anyone to borrow is less its system than the description it provides for outlining in some concrete way the elements of the game and challenges.  The system itself leaves me cold for a ton of reasons, but it does in its advice to the GM push you toward good preparation to play.  Unfortunately, I really think too often this good foundation is ignored and at most people attempting to play the game do no more than a rough draft and build nothing on it, thinking that they can get away with little or no preparation.   Based on what I've seen from play run by even the designer of the system, this is not a great idea.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> And worth nowhere as much XP.  I went with ancient red dragon to illustrate just how piddly combat XP was.  Especially vs. XP from treasure.




Depending on the style of treasure allocation, XP from combat tended to be between 1/3rd and 1/10th as much as the XP from treasure.



> You played with a generous DM, or perhaps one who didn't know how to run monsters.  If the DM wasn't worried about killing you and used tactics that many of the monsters would know and use, combats were not easy, especially when you factored in save or die and energy drains.




The question I have for that statement is, "Is relying on Save or Die or Energy Drains to challenge PCs fun?"  



> I dunno, then again, we left AD&D as soon as 2e came out and 2e was even worse - fighters really were damage gods.




The problem started in 1e Unearthed Arcana.  Fighters post UA were dishing about twice as much damage at a given level as the game had been built around, but even before UA AD&D had a problem that almost everything in the game was a glass cannon capable of dishing out far more damage than it could take.   I used to joke that the initiative roll was the mid-game of AD&D combat, and that round 1 was the end game.  Any monster that went last in the round would never get an attack off.

Still there are a variety of things you could do about that.  The most important is to not put your fights in 'tournament spaces'.  Instead of arenas with flat floors, you put the fight where the PCs are at a disadvantage of some sort.  And you use the sort of monsters that can actually manage to challenge PCs.   You can also tweak monsters from the MM's a bit and end up with good challenges, which works well in any edition.  For example, taking a standard Ogre and giving it better than normal equipment like plate mail and a two-handed sword can on its own make an encounter much more challenging.  I wrote a short guide.  

I left AD&D in the early 90's, frustrated by the amount of rules and changes that I felt at the time I'd need to make to get the game to work.  In many ways, it's a terrible game.   In many ways it's brilliant.   I get occasionally struck by nostalgia for the game, and want to run it with the knowledge I've accumulated since the time I left it.


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## Umbran (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Sure. I mean the GM adjudicates things all the time that are not covered by the rules, and in those moments the GM is acting as a sort of game mechanic.




I am suggesting, as someone said upthread, that the GM has several functions, only one of which is adjudicating.  When the GM is just deciding a result, for their own reasons unrelated to the rules of the game - that's not adjudicating.  

That moment when the GM is *authoring* a result, whatever their inspiration for that - that's not the moment they are adjudicating.



Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I'd say my job as a referee is to adjudicate between the scenario, call it fiction or imaginary world and those in it, and the players actions.




I don't buy it.  I don't think it fair to call it a "referee" when you choose the opposing force, the scenario, _and determine the result yourself_.  If there were rules present, we'd have that to fall back on.  But lacking them - again, it is a proper GM function, but I think calling it "referee" in this case is misleading.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> The question I have for that statement is, "Is relying on Save or Die or Energy Drains to challenge PCs fun?"
> 
> 
> 
> ...




For the first question, oh yes.  Very much so.   Its quite amusing to watch a higher level PC be afraid of a little spider with a save or die effect. 

When I first started playing 1e AD&D I thought so much in the MM was too weak.  Then when I started playing an OD&D clone recently the power of those monsters all made sense compared to the power of OD&D PC.  It was the first book and I think written more in line with that.  But the power creep in the 1e PH didn't help, and UA made it largely a push over.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 18, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I am suggesting, as someone said upthread, that the GM has several functions, only one of which is adjudicating.  When the GM is just deciding a result, for their own reasons unrelated to the rules of the game - that's not adjudicating.
> 
> That moment when the GM is *authoring* a result, whatever their inspiration for that - that's not the moment they are adjudicating.
> 
> ...




Call it whatever you will, the terminology doesn't mean that much to me.  Referee, GM, DM, largely interchangeable terms for the guy running the game.  And I determine the results myself for so much stuff since the game I run isn't loaded down with a rule for everything, especially talking to some NPC.


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## Umbran (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Not if you want people to talk in character and have what they say be the thing that determines whether the king is persuaded. I am not saying social mechanics are not useful, or are bad. But I mean you don't have to have them just because you want social interaction in the game (especially if you want actual social interaction in the game).




Boogeyman: "If I have the mechanics, I don't actually role play - I just use mechanics."  

FATE, as an example, puts social interaction on the same mechanical footing as physical interaction.  

In FATE-based games, if you say, "I attack" in physical combat, all you get is a very basic roll of your skill, which in general isn't so high as you'll be able to down anything other than a mook.  If you want larger results, you have to engage with the situation more, and interact with the environment, and describe what it is you're doing and trying to achieve, and set up moves and situations that take multiple rounds to achieve results.

The same follows for social interaction - folks have to actually engage in the conversation, interact with the situation, and describe what they're doing and trying to achieve.  Best way to do that is to do the role-play, for those who want to do that.  For those who aren't as comfortable with that, we still get description of their approaches and tactics, and that's okay, too.  Broadly speaking, the rules *enable* social interactions, because the players have some clear guidelines about how likely they are to succeed.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> For the first question, oh yes.  Very much so.   Its quite amusing to watch a higher level PC be afraid of a little spider with a save or die effect.




Only if there isn't a high level cleric on hand with a selection of Slow Poison and Neutralize Poison effects.  Slow Poison can return a PC to life with no ill-effects, no resurrection failure chance, no lost CON, even if they fail a save or die poison effect that has an instantaneous result.  Keoghtum's ointment along with a high level cleric renders most poison a non-issue, as your little spider needs a 20 to hit most likely, and the fighter needs only a 6 or so to pass the save, and worse come to worse, you cast 'Slow Poison' and then neutralize the venom by some means.

There are of course things with save or die effects that aren't "little spiders", but most of those IMO aren't very fun - Rot Grubs, Magnesium Spirits, Bodaks, etc.  They are just random unavoidable death determined in the long run by dice and not player action.



> When I first started playing 1e AD&D I thought so much in the MM was too weak.  Then when I started playing an OD&D clone recently the power of those monsters all made sense compared to the power of OD&D PC.  It was the first book and I think written more in line with that.  But the power creep in the 1e PH didn't help, and UA made it largely a push over.




I largely agree with that.  But I also think the problem was that the designers didn't really expect players to advance to more than 10th level or so, and if they did, figured DMs could invent their own challenges without needing any sort of guide.   Further, I think that designers in that period didn't routinely theory craft and do the math.  They just sort of went with their gut, and their gut tended to make everything a glass cannon.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Only if there isn't a high level cleric on hand with a selection of Slow Poison and Neutralize Poison effects.  Slow Poison can return a PC to life with no ill-effects, no resurrection failure chance, no lost CON, even if they fail a save or die poison effect that has an instantaneous result.  Keoghtum's ointment along with a high level cleric renders most poison a non-issue, as your little spider needs a 20 to hit most likely, and the fighter needs only a 6 or so to pass the save, and worse come to worse, you cast 'Slow Poison' and then neutralize the venom by some means.
> 
> There are of course things with save or die effects that aren't "little spiders", but most of those IMO aren't very fun - Rot Grubs, Magnesium Spirits, Bodaks, etc.  They are just random unavoidable death determined in the long run by dice and not player action.
> 
> ...




I disagree. Rot Grubs are wonderful, but usually only get players when they get foolish.  I had a PC trying to fish out a hobbit corpse from a pit trap.  They lowered him on a rope and he tried to lasso the corpse but kept failing.  So he got frustrated and just grabbed it and they hauled him up.  So he gets to the top and oh no, he's got rot grubs.  So the rest of the party start putting torches to him.  Which lead to him getting some nice burns, and the moronic fighter randomly applying more torch for a few rounds just to be sure.  The table was laughing about that all night.  

And yes, I'm well aware of the solutions to poison.  But your cleric isn't always there, isn't always with spells, and doesn't always have the quick fix.  My guys in S&W are far more hesitant around poison at any level than they were in 3.x or especially 5e.  Even with a 8+ save they are worried about that failure and the rest of the party possibly being unable to haul them up multiple levels of Rappan Athuck while possibly under fire.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Umbran said:


> Boogeyman: "If I have the mechanics, I don't actually role play - I just use mechanics."
> 
> FATE, as an example, puts social interaction on the same mechanical footing as physical interaction.
> 
> ...




I never said that. Everyone is different Umbran. Not crapping on social mechanics. But you don’t need them to to play


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I never said that. Everyone is different Umbrian. Not crapping on social mechanics. But you don’t need them to tokeplay




Is tokeplay how they do it in Mass since its been legalized?


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> I disagree. Rot Grubs are wonderful, but usually only get players when they get foolish.




Your example assumes that the players know OOG that rot grubs exist and have some idea what to do about them because they've read the entry, and that the party is of sufficient level that some solution is available and non-lethal.   In too many cases, they are just whoops, "Die.  No save.", and in the rest of the cases they get rather old fast.  At least they usually have a period of time where the party can respond to them before they become lethal.  Things like the Bodak, which are randomly lethal and a pushover if they aren't, aren't ever fun.

I tend to get really annoyed by monsters that just come down to, "Do you roll well?"  This can include in 1e things like the Death Knight, where if you win initiative as a party it will probably not survive the round, but if it goes first then Power Word: Kill or 20HD Fireball, and someone in the party is probably dying (without a save, or even if they save), turning the initiative into a save or die roll.

Say what you will about the danger of 1e AD&D, I have had far more glorious combats using 3e D&D than I ever had in 1e AD&D, which for all the fun we were having on the whole tended toward the grindy, the random, or the anticlimactic.  Possibly things would have been better with more OD&D power level of PCs, but at the time I lacked the knowledge to adjust things.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> If a group decides to go with simple binary for non-combst, then I tend to think thats what they want. The rules certainly dont require it. Both the GM and players csn ddcide to build as much into those as they eidh.
> 
> I mean, ok, so if we look at stealth and hiding, we see it starts with GM determination of whether thsats evedn even possible well before you get yo jour toll. You got spells starting at cantrips thst csn help, a little or a lot, plus help action, etc etc.
> 
> ...




Sure, it's discussed as a possibility. But it's pretty vague is what I'm saying. One of the things I like about 5E is that they seem to have left it very malleable so that different groups can use it for different styles of play, and could tweak it as needed. The DMG is largely a list of suggestions on how to do so.

And that's great. I don't know if I'd hold it in the same category as a game that includes partial success in a more definitive way. As we've seen in some discussions on the boards, the very idea isn't always easily understood, so without actual rules, it's harder to grasp. For those familiar with the concept, or who take the mention in the PHB and DMG and run with it, yes, you can establish a pretty different system. But I don't know if many people would do so.


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## 5ekyu (Jun 18, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, it's discussed as a possibility. But it's pretty vague is what I'm saying. One of the things I like about 5E is that they seem to have left it very malleable so that different groups can use it for different styles of play, and could tweak it as needed. The DMG is largely a list of suggestions on how to do so.
> 
> And that's great. I don't know if I'd hold it in the same category as a game that includes partial success in a more definitive way. As we've seen in some discussions on the boards, the very idea isn't always easily understood, so without actual rules, it's harder to grasp. For those familiar with the concept, or who take the mention in the PHB and DMG and run with it, yes, you can establish a pretty different system. But I don't know if many people would do so.



Well, to me, its as vague as succeed and fail are - they get about the same.

I mean, if i am climbing a treacherous hillside do i fall on a fail or just get bo ehere? If i succeed is ot one check for the whole climb or one per my half speed climb segment?

Basically, i do not see the progress with setback as any less detailed than the other two options - each is left to the gm to define based on circumstance in the PHB ability score.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Is tokeplay how they do it in Mass since its been legalized?




Typo. Just fixed it


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> More to the point, they tend to be less engaging than the social interaction that they are simulating.
> 
> By the argument that I outlined above, the more detailed the social interaction rules, the less engaging that they will tend to be because the less they will resemble the thing that they are a model for.
> 
> ...




I don't know if I agree with this. I mean, I get your point about how a conversation between players is similar to a conversation between characters. But the entire game is a conversation. I don't think the presence of social mechanics means that actual roleplaying will be replaced by dice rolls. Certainly your examples of "I try to intimidate the guard" and "I try to persuade the Baron" can both be used in a game that has no social mechanics just as easily as one that has them. I think that's more a question of how a player approaches the game; some will jump right into character and speak as if they are the character, others will speak as the player summarizing what the character is trying to do. Neither is right or wrong, but also neither is dependent on the presence of social rules. 

In my experience, such mechanics actively promote focusing on the social aspect more, which winds up enhancing those scenes. People are more willing to get involved when there are engaging mechanics involved. I mean in meaningful interactions that will have an impact on the fiction....convincing the Baron to lend troops, to use your example. Let's say a game has some kind of meaningful mechanics to support an attempt to convince a NPC to do something, and that it can involve more than one roll and one character....it's not just "have the bard try and convince him to help" but instead it's having the party convince him in a number of ways. Hopefully, this would make the attempt to convince the Baron a more involved encounter rather than simply boiling it down to rolls. 

I mean, most people wouldn't say that about combat....."ah it can all be boiled down to some dice rolls", but it's very true.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I am suggesting, as someone said upthread, that the GM has several functions, only one of which is adjudicating.  When the GM is just deciding a result, for their own reasons unrelated to the rules of the game - that's not adjudicating.
> .




We just see things differently then. The GM deciding what happens when the players do something in the world, I file that under adjudication. I think we just have fundamentally different ways of thinking about play Umbran.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Your example assumes that the players know OOG that rot grubs exist and have some idea what to do about them because they've read the entry, and that the party is of sufficient level that some solution is available and non-lethal.   In too many cases, they are just whoops, "Die.  No save.", and in the rest of the cases they get rather old fast.  At least they usually have a period of time where the party can respond to them before they become lethal.  Things like the Bodak, which are randomly lethal and a pushover if they aren't, aren't ever fun.
> 
> I tend to get really annoyed by monsters that just come down to, "Do you roll well?"  This can include in 1e things like the Death Knight, where if you win initiative as a party it will probably not survive the round, but if it goes first then Power Word: Kill or 20HD Fireball, and someone in the party is probably dying (without a save, or even if they save), turning the initiative into a save or die roll.
> 
> Say what you will about the danger of 1e AD&D, I have had far more glorious combats using 3e D&D than I ever had in 1e AD&D, which for all the fun we were having on the whole tended toward the grindy, the random, or the anticlimactic.  Possibly things would have been better with more OD&D power level of PCs, but at the time I lacked the knowledge to adjust things.




Of course I assume the players are going to use some of their own experience when they are playing this game.  I don't expect them to do stuff they know is wrong and die.  And no Rot grubs are not a staple in games like stirges, dire striges, undead dire stirges, the stirge king, and giant dire epic stirges.  But they have led to some fun moments and I like to throw them in now and then. 

I had some good fights running 3e but mostly it made me stop running D&D until I got the group to switch to a different edition.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> Is tokeplay how they do it in Mass since its been legalized?




And I do know people who play that way. But I don’t smoke or drink


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> Well, to me, its as vague as succeed and fail are - they get about the same.
> 
> I mean, if i am climbing a treacherous hillside do i fall on a fail or just get bo ehere? If i succeed is ot one check for the whole climb or one per my half speed climb segment?
> 
> Basically, i do not see the progress with setback as any less detailed than the other two options - each is left to the gm to define based on circumstance in the PHB ability score.




There's always some level of judgment needed, yes, I agree. But I think that "success" and "fail" are inherently a bit more clearly understood than "partial success" or "success with a complication". I think that no matter what, you will have things playing out differently from table to table, but I think a lot more so with the partial success. 

So if the rules had gone into more detail about what a partial success could be, if they had a more structured system in place that allowed for partial success, and offered examples of what it could mean in different cases, then I think the system expands the potential outcomes more clearly, and the GM has more to lean on to determine what a partial success may be. 

I think that you can achieve this with a rules system like 5E....as I said, in my game we've adopted these kinds of elements. But I think a game that's designed with this mode in mind is more likely to do the job cleanly.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 18, 2019)

Hussar said:


> I would LOVE to see these mythical AD&D tables where even 40% of encounters were not resolved by combat.




I ran an AD&D campaign recently, using a modern dungeon, and although I had to terminate it early, my players consistently avoided combat. Some of the combats they were clearly outgunned, but even when they were not, they much preferred to talk, find out information and trade, if possible. Looking back, I think the design of the adventure facilitated this, specifically:



*Encounters are not guaranteed to be "level-appropriate"*. If you know you always can fight, then quite often you do. If you know that sometimes the enemy will insta-squish you, you tend to hide and observe at the very least before attacking
*Denizens have agendas and needs.* If players are used to finding possible people/monsters that want things, then they start thinking "maybe I can make more profit fulfilling their wants than by killing them". This also means they do not auto-kill things they can, because maybe that goblin knows where the lich is hiding that ruby the dragon wanted.
*Encounters are entertaining*. If you have a room full of orcs that have no personality, then the fun you can have is pretty limited. You see them, they do nothing interesting. You kill them. Instead, if you find them arguing about which orc is the most handsome, maybe you decide to offer to be a judge, and soon you are not killing them, but accepting bribes in a beauty contest ...

When you write encounters, don't start with stats and combat info. Start thinking "what will make this worth interacting with -- what will be fun, what opportunities for profit, what information can be learned". If you as a GM start with the assumption that combat isn't the default option, it'll work its way into your players


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## 5ekyu (Jun 18, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> There's always some level of judgment needed, yes, I agree. But I think that "success" and "fail" are inherently a bit more clearly understood than "partial success" or "success with a complication". I think that no matter what, you will have things playing out differently from table to table, but I think a lot more so with the partial success.
> 
> So if the rules had gone into more detail about what a partial success could be, if they had a more structured system in place that allowed for partial success, and offered examples of what it could mean in different cases, then I think the system expands the potential outcomes more clearly, and the GM has more to lean on to determine what a partial success may be.
> 
> I think that you can achieve this with a rules system like 5E....as I said, in my game we've adopted these kinds of elements. But I think a game that's designed with this mode in mind is more likely to do the job cleanly.



"But I think a game that's designed with this mode in mind is more likely to do the job cleanly."

See, this is where we just have to disagree... It seem to me that 5e was built with all three modes in mind. Could they give more pre-defined use-cases for each - sure - but they went with a less rigid more "ruling" based push for all of them. 

It was built from ground up with ability checks particularly being much more gm situational resolutions with non-binary outcomes. Ruling over rigid.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

5ekyu said:


> "But I think a game that's designed with this mode in mind is more likely to do the job cleanly."
> 
> See, this is where we just have to disagree... It seem to me that 5e was built with all three modes in mind. Could they give more pre-defined use-cases for each - sure - but they went with a less rigid more "ruling" based push for all of them.
> 
> It was built from ground up with ability checks particularly being much more gm situational resolutions with non-binary outcomes. Ruling over rigid.




That's fair. And I don't mean to seem like I'm disagreeing with you. But I'd be surprised if most tables don't just rely on succeed/fail without giving consideration to partial success.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't know if I agree with this.




A lot of people don't.



> I don't think the presence of social mechanics means that actual roleplaying will be replaced by dice rolls.




You'll note, I don't either.   What I actually believe is something much more controversial.



> Certainly your examples of "I try to intimidate the guard" and "I try to persuade the Baron" can both be used in a game that has no social mechanics just as easily as one that has them.




I think "I try to intimidate the guard" replaces actual roleplaying, and that social mechanics are a problem only to the extent that they encourage these anti-cinematic social propositions.   If your RP/social encounter tends to replace conversation with rules propositions, that is what the problem is, and not that there is an underlying system for guiding the GM on how to adjudicate social interaction.



> Neither is right or wrong, but also neither is dependent on the presence of social rules.




Like I said, my position is more extreme than that.  I do think one is more wrong than right, and that while you are correct that social rules do not in themselves create the problem, to the extent that they encourage the table to bypass actual roleplaying, I think they are diminishing the enjoyment of the game.   

That said, I can't objectively prove that a more immersive more cinematic game is one that is better, and if you are like, "Those aren't even important aesthetics of play.", then OK.  But I don't believe anything is gained by ignoring those aesthetics of play, and indeed, they are one of the most essential aesthetics of play.  If you ignore them, you might as well play a cRPG, but I'll note that even cRPG's try to create something like a cinematic transcript of social interaction and that you'd miss that if it was gone.



> In my experience, such mechanics actively promote focusing on the social aspect more, which winds up enhancing those scenes. People are more willing to get involved when there are engaging mechanics involved. I mean in meaningful interactions that will have an impact on the fiction....convincing the Baron to lend troops, to use your example. Let's say a game has some kind of meaningful mechanics to support an attempt to convince a NPC to do something, and that it can involve more than one roll and one character....it's not just "have the bard try and convince him to help" but instead it's having the party convince him in a number of ways. Hopefully, this would make the attempt to convince the Baron a more involved encounter rather than simply boiling it down to rolls.




In theory I agree with you, though achieving the goal of having a whole party equally engaged by social interaction _at the same time_ is more challenging that you make it seem here - especially if what we are not doing is IC conversation (and it's hard enough even if conversation).  

All of gaming boils down to two things - choices and rolls.  The problem with anything boiled down to some dice rolls is that means it had no meaningful choices.  A combat that lacks meaningful choices of tactics, positioning, weapons and so forth is I think rather boring and greatly to be avoided if at all possible.  And if it can't be avoided, then it should be resolved quickly.  I judge social systems by the same standards.  If there really aren't a lot of meaningful choices of approach, then keep the resolution simple.  A conversational approach at least involves a night infinite number of choices to make.  Even if all those choices come down to just a plus or minus 1-3 modifier on a die roll, according to how well the GM thinks you made the case, that's at least something.   A more complex scenario, so that you get a -5 modifier if you engage in flattery (because the Duke hates sycophants) but a +5 modifier if you appeal to his honor (or vica versa) and the PC's must figure out from what they know of the Duke what sort of approach to use, or else realize that because the Duke is a compulsive gambler that they could get the Duke to make some sort of wager and stake the outcome on a contest, or else that they could persuade the sympathetic Duchess (DC 15 rather than DC 25) more easily than the Duke provided they could get an audience, and the Duke in turn is easily persuaded by the Duchess (50% chance), and so forth just requires planning out the scenario with the detail you'd otherwise lavish on a dungeon.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> And no Rot grubs are not a staple in games like stirges, dire striges, undead dire stirges, the stirge king, and giant dire epic stirges.




We're in full agreement on stirges.


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## Umbran (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> We just see things differently then. The GM deciding what happens when the players do something in the world, I file that under adjudication. I think we just have fundamentally different ways of thinking about play Umbran.




I don't think there's anything fundamental, here - I'm talking more about categorizing, and setting expectations.

I just think about it, and realize there are parts of play where the GM is acting more like a judge/referee, and parts of play where the GM is acting more like an author.  The former I'd call adjudication, the latter, not.  There's connotations to "adjudication" that I don't think apply to the authoring moments, and failing the expectations is not good for the table (broadly, speaking).


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 18, 2019)

Umbran said:


> I don't think there's anything fundamental, here - I'm talking more about categorizing, and setting expectations.
> 
> I just think about it, and realize there are parts of play where the GM is acting more like a judge/referee, and parts of play where the GM is acting more like an author.  The former I'd call adjudication, the latter, not.  There's connotations to "adjudication" that I don't think apply to the authoring moments, and failing the expectations is not good for the table (broadly, speaking).




Okay but this is subjective. This isn't objective categorization. What you consider authoring, I consider adjudication.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> Okay but this is subjective. This isn't objective categorization. What you consider authoring, I consider adjudication.




I think that there probably is an objective difference.  I could easily write a computer program to adjudicate, in the same way you could write a program to play chess and determine what was or wasn't a valid move.  But I don't think I could so easily write a computer program to author.  And if I could write a program which engaged in authoring, it would be at least quantitatively different than one that could adjudicate.   Present cRPGs are very good at adjudication, but authoring in the sense that Umbran means it is beyond our understanding.  We can attempt to simulate authoring through what is called procedural generation of content, but the very fact that it is procedural and therefore bounded, suggests that even this is more like adjudication than what Umbran is calling authoring.

Adjudication seems to relate to some sort of finite set.  While authoring seems to be boundless, or at least a set so large it would be beyond our ability to even imagine constraints.

So I offer this objective definition.   If the process is procedural, then it is adjudication.   But if the process cannot be defined by any presently known procedure, and seems to require that element we call imagination, then at the point it requires imagination it is authoring.  

I do agree that certain systems have no adjudication by this definition, as in some systems the GM is empowered always to imagine a resolution based on undefined categories and never really has an outcome imposed on them.   These 'wheel of fortune' systems never really say what happens, but instead generate very vague hints like 'Fumble', 'Failure', 'Partial Failure', 'Success with Complications', 'Success', 'Critical Success' and so forth, and leave it up to the GM or some sort of non-procedural negotiation among the participants to decide what that hint means.

You can imagine my opinion of that sort of system.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> A lot of people don't.
> 
> You'll note, I don't either.   What I actually believe is something much more controversial.
> 
> I think "I try to intimidate the guard" replaces actual roleplaying, and that social mechanics are a problem only to the extent that they encourage these anti-cinematic social propositions.   If your RP/social encounter tends to replace conversation with rules propositions, that is what the problem is, and not that there is an underlying system for guiding the GM on how to adjudicate social interaction.




I don't think it replaces roleplaying. It's just a more straightforward version of roleplaying. What you seem to be advocating is speaking in character as a more cinematic version of roleplaying; does that sound right? I would say that may be the case just as if the DM makes a snarling face when he describes the gnoll that your party has just encountered. But if he describes the gnoll without making the face, I don't think he's not roleplaying. 

I think as long as the player is advocating for their character, an they're engaged in the stakes and what's happening, then anything additional like speaking in character is just that...additional. I can understand that for some, speaking in character can be a very immersive element of the game. That's fine. I don't agree that it's essential to roleplaying. Nor do I think it's essential to a cinematic experience. 

By your reasoning, it would seem that combat is non-cinematic? During combat, most players begin to declare actions in very rules proposition kind of ways, no? 




Celebrim said:


> Like I said, my position is more extreme than that.  I do think one is more wrong than right, and that while you are correct that social rules do not in themselves create the problem, to the extent that they encourage the table to bypass actual roleplaying, I think they are diminishing the enjoyment of the game.




Like I said, I don't think that such rules really encourage people to bypass roleplaying. I think that having rules in place simply makes such encounters more structured, and lets players know what their options are, and how to go about those options, and some sense of the possible outcomes of the actions. 



Celebrim said:


> That said, I can't objectively prove that a more immersive more cinematic game is one that is better, and if you are like, "Those aren't even important aesthetics of play.", then OK.  But I don't believe anything is gained by ignoring those aesthetics of play, and indeed, they are one of the most essential aesthetics of play.  If you ignore them, you might as well play a cRPG, but I'll note that even cRPG's try to create something like a cinematic transcript of social interaction and that you'd miss that if it was gone.




I would't really disagree with this other than that what is immersive can vary from person to person, and the same for what is considered essential to play. But I do value immersion and cinematic play, so those are important to me. 



Celebrim said:


> In theory I agree with you, though achieving the goal of having a whole party equally engaged by social interaction _at the same time_ is more challenging that you make it seem here - especially if what we are not doing is IC conversation (and it's hard enough even if conversation).
> 
> All of gaming boils down to two things - choices and rolls.  The problem with anything boiled down to some dice rolls is that means it had no meaningful choices.  A combat that lacks meaningful choices of tactics, positioning, weapons and so forth is I think rather boring and greatly to be avoided if at all possible.  And if it can't be avoided, then it should be resolved quickly.  I judge social systems by the same standards.  If there really aren't a lot of meaningful choices of approach, then keep the resolution simple.  A conversational approach at least involves a night infinite number of choices to make.  Even if all those choices come down to just a plus or minus 1-3 modifier on a die roll, according to how well the GM thinks you made the case, that's at least something.   A more complex scenario, so that you get a -5 modifier if you engage in flattery (because the Duke hates sycophants) but a +5 modifier if you appeal to his honor (or vica versa) and the PC's must figure out from what they know of the Duke what sort of approach to use, or else realize that because the Duke is a compulsive gambler that they could get the Duke to make some sort of wager and stake the outcome on a contest, or else that they could persuade the sympathetic Duchess (DC 15 rather than DC 25) more easily than the Duke provided they could get an audience, and the Duke in turn is easily persuaded by the Duchess (50% chance), and so forth just requires planning out the scenario with the detail you'd otherwise lavish on a dungeon.




This all seems to assume the core structure is that of D&D. And that's fine....I think you can achieve what I'm talking about with D&D, but you have to work to make it happen, and I don't think that the rules are designed with it in mind. 

But there are other systems that function in a different way than the DC/skill roll mechanic. There are systems that may allow players to contribute fictional elements that could affect the outcome that in D&D are entirely the purview of the DM; certainly that could engage a player, I'd say. There could be group checks or something similar, which allow multiple characters to be involved in a given roll in some way. There could be varying numbers of successes needed, with some actions adding more successes than others. 

All this could be daunting if you had to constantly make a bunch of rulings on exactly how to handle it.....but if the actual mechanics already exist, then I don't think you have to do nearly as much prep as you are implying. You just keep the NPC's goals and traits in mind, and then you lean on the mechanics to help resolve the matters. If they do this, that happens, and so on. 

I agree with you about the amount of choice and how much time you spend on an encounter. I look at combat encounters the same way....how much does the outcome matter and how much do the players have to think about how to win? If it's not all that deep, I consider how to resolve it quickly, or if it's even worth table time. I do the same with social encounters, or skill based challenges. So I think we agree on that. 

But I guess I'm just struggling with the idea that combat can be cinematic and engaging when boiled down to action declarations, some dice rolls, and maybe some dialogue, but social encounters become non-cinematic when boiled down the same way.


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## ParanoydStyle (Jun 18, 2019)

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 SPARRRRTAAAAAA -- 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.



Umbran said:


> I just think about it, and realize there are parts of play where the GM is acting more like a judge/referee, and parts of play where the GM is acting more like an author. The former I'd call adjudication, the latter, not. There's connotations to "adjudication" that I don't think apply to the authoring moments, and failing the expectations is not good for the table (broadly, speaking).





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.




> There's a fine line between fun happy combat and ... um ... uncomfortable colonialist massacre of women and children, if you catch my drift.




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.


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

hawkeyefan said:


> What you seem to be advocating is speaking in character as a more cinematic version of roleplaying; does that sound right?




Yes, that's pretty much the essence of it.



> I would say that may be the case just as if the DM makes a snarling face when he describes the gnoll that your party has just encountered. But if he describes the gnoll without making the face, I don't think he's not roleplaying.




So, here comes the stickler.  I'm not really interested in arguing the qualitative.  I'm arguing for essentially the quantitative.  In other words, whether or not the DM is roleplaying isn't really an interesting contention.   While I might agree that there is some diminishing point at which the GM is not roleplaying at all, that's not to me the essence of the issue.  The point is that he is roleplaying "less well"/"more badly" than the first GM.  And as a mature form of art, we ought to be pushing toward the skillful play of the GM who brings the gnoll more to life and creates the more interesting characterization.  



> I think as long as the player is advocating for their character, an they're engaged in the stakes and what's happening, then anything additional like speaking in character is just that...additional. I can understand that for some, speaking in character can be a very immersive element of the game. That's fine. I don't agree that it's essential to roleplaying.




I do think it is essential to roleplaying, and that a game in which it is not essential at all to be immersive isn't a RPG.  Thus, you can speak in character in the game of monopoly, but doing so is no part of the game.  Thus, it's not a roleplaying game.   I'm not going to argue at what point immersion so disappears from play that it isn't an RPG any more, but I will argue that less important it is to your process of play, the less of a RPG you are playing, and the more you are moving toward playing a wargame or some sort of board game.



> Nor do I think it's essential to a cinematic experience.




But I'm contesting that whether it is essential or not, by the definition I outlined I can objectively show that it is the more cinematic experience.



> By your reasoning, it would seem that combat is non-cinematic? During combat, most players begin to declare actions in very rules proposition kind of ways, no?




Combat certainly can be non-cinematic, and often is non-cinematic.   To understand how it does not have to be non-cinematic, you have to go back to my definition of cinematic which is, "Creates a shared imaginary space which the participants can each concretely imagine what is going on and will each imagine much the same thing."    So consider the common rules proposition, "I [try to] attack."   This is a very uncinematic and unimmersive proposition.  The participants are given little sense of what to imagine by such an abstract proposition, and neither are required to imagine what happens nor are prompted to imagine what happens.  Likely all that will be mentally considered by the participants is some mechanical result, such as the deduction of abstract hit points from a pool of hit points to be abraded away.  But now consider the following rules propositions: 

"I step to the side and attempt to cleave the legs out from under the orc with my battle axe."
"I trust my shield into the orcs face and attempt to hurl him backwards over the cliff."
"With my blade locked with the orc, I attempt to hook my leg around his, and trip him over backward."
"I leap up on to the altar, and with an overhead smash, bring it down on the orcs helm."
"Stepping back from the fray, I cast a spray of magic missiles into orc horde."

These are all highly cinematic rules propositions.  Everyone participating in the game is prompted to imagine something concrete by such propositions, and each is likely to produce a transcript of their play experience that is similar because they all imagined nearly the same thing.   Whereas with something abstract like, "I attack.", who knows.   

My contention is that a game system is improved if it tends to encourage more cinematic propositions because there is an onto mapping between cinematic propositions and the rules systems that adjudicate those propositions.  In other words, it matters if you leap onto the alter, or step to the side, or whatever because it changes the outcome or at least the odds in the outcomes.  

Now of course, we don't live in a perfect world.  In an idealized system such highly cinematic propositions are well and good, but as a practical matter in the real world highly cinematic systems tend to be granular by definition and granular systems tend to have high complexity and slower resolution of play.   So in a real system, you have to make a trade off in cinematic versus speed of play.  But in a hypothetical system where everything was equally simple and equally fast, we'd always tend to prefer the more cinematic system because having a shared imaginary reality filled with concrete actions always ALWAYS produces the more exciting transcript of play (essentially, what you remember of the game) than merely abstractly whittling down a pool of hit points by rote action.

There are of course techniques for turning abstract declarations into more cinematic resolutions, but the problem with that process is that the player's choice matters less to the outcome, which over time reduces player interest in the game. 



> Like I said, I don't think that such rules really encourage people to bypass roleplaying.




They can, if they encourage people to substitute more abstract metagame declarations for more concrete in game declarations.  If for example, the mechanics encourage you to simply state your social move as a metagame classification, without ever providing some idea as to what actually happened in the game when you performed that move, then you have a process where some rules generated an outcome, but no roleplaying necessarily took place.  No one will have a clear idea what happened in the game reality, only that you transitioned from one game state to another after a move was made.  And at that point, you are playing a board game, because part of what makes a board game a board game is the reality it is modelling does not need to be and usually is not concretely imagined.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I find most consciously created Nar games terrible at actually creating Narrative and the experience of being in a story.



> I would't really disagree with this other than that what is immersive can vary from person to person, and the same for what is considered essential to play.




Well, by my definition you could do some sort of double blind study, and if the participants could at a higher percentage rate agree to what the essentials of an action had been based on the proposition, then we could prove within a certain confidence interval than one sort of play had been more immersive than the other.  

For example, for the proposition, "I attempt to persuade the Duke.", if two separated participants independently reported afterwards the same words said to the Duke, then that was immersive.   But I think it is clear they'd do a much better at agreeing what had been said with a proposition like, "Your Grace, you have always been known as a man of honor.  If you do not lend your strong aid now, and tragedy ensues, what will your loyal subjects say of you?"



> But there are other systems that function in a different way than the DC/skill roll mechanic. There are systems that may allow players to contribute fictional elements that could affect the outcome that in D&D are entirely the purview of the DM; certainly that could engage a player, I'd say. There could be group checks or something similar, which allow multiple characters to be involved in a given roll in some way. There could be varying numbers of successes needed, with some actions adding more successes than others.




All of which is irrelevant.  That's just the underlying mechanical engine which the GM then cranks the handle of to decide whether or not the Duke is persuaded.  The point is the proposition.  The underlying mechanical engine only matters to the extent that it pushes the game toward abstract declarations by prioritizing the meta-declaration over the proposition itself.



> All this could be daunting if you had to constantly make a bunch of rulings on exactly how to handle it.....but if the actual mechanics already exist, then I don't think you have to do nearly as much prep as you are implying. You just keep the NPC's goals and traits in mind, and then you lean on the mechanics to help resolve the matters. If they do this, that happens, and so on.




Point is, you have to define the NPCs goals and traits.  Some systems encourage you to do that and provide a framework for it.  Others provide no such encouragement or framework, but as I'm hopefully showing - even in systems that traditionally don't define NPC social traits in a mechanical way - you still can define those traits in a mechanical way.



> But I guess I'm just struggling with the idea that combat can be cinematic and engaging when boiled down to action declarations, some dice rolls, and maybe some dialogue, but social encounters become non-cinematic when boiled down the same way.




Well, I direct you back to the start of this line of argument for why combat and social challenges are inherently different in a TRPG context, and why therefore attempts to treat them as exactly the same tend to fail, and are quite possibly poor design because they are more unalike than they are alike. (https://www.enworld.org/forum/showt...-RPGs/page10&p=7621872&viewfull=1#post7621872)


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## Celebrim (Jun 18, 2019)

[MENTION=6984451]ParanoydStyle[/MENTION]: I don't agree with all you have to say, but I would subscribe to your newsletter.


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## Beleriphon (Jun 18, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I'm really not a fan of FATE, and the only part of FATE that I'd ever advise anyone to borrow is less its system than the description it provides for outlining in some concrete way the elements of the game and challenges.  The system itself leaves me cold for a ton of reasons, but it does in its advice to the GM push you toward good preparation to play.  Unfortunately, I really think too often this good foundation is ignored and at most people attempting to play the game do no more than a rough draft and build nothing on it, thinking that they can get away with little or no preparation.   Based on what I've seen from play run by even the designer of the system, this is not a great idea.




I get not liking FATE, its not for everybody, but it does a good job of explaining why you want to setup your social encounter and lay out what the moving parts are in advance. As you noted of course. 

FATE can be played off the cuff, for a physical fight, but it works best with at least a bit of setup. This can be with or without player input. A social encounter needs the same kind of work, but requires much more description because you need clear ideas about what will work, what might work, and what will not work.

I can think of a few ways that we can look at using D&D similar ways without dramatically changing the way skills are used, but as you noted Celebrim it requires a substantial amount of prep work, and it requires a willingness to explain why the perfect speech you ginned up actually insulted the Duke after the dice are rolled. Which isn't that different than combat, where you figure out why your attack didn't actually do anything (on a descriptive level) after you know the results.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think that there probably is an objective difference.  I could easily write a computer program to adjudicate, in the same way you could write a program to play chess and determine what was or wasn't a valid move.  But I don't think I could so easily write a computer program to author.  And if I could write a program which engaged in authoring, it would be at least quantitatively different than one that could adjudicate.   Present cRPGs are very good at adjudication, but authoring in the sense that Umbran means it is beyond our understanding.  We can attempt to simulate authoring through what is called procedural generation of content, but the very fact that it is procedural and therefore bounded, suggests that even this is more like adjudication than what Umbran is calling authoring.
> 
> Adjudication seems to relate to some sort of finite set.  While authoring seems to be boundless, or at least a set so large it would be beyond our ability to even imagine constraints.
> 
> ...




But that isn't what adjudication means. Adjudication is just making a judgement. I would agree there are different kinds of adjudications. There is a distinction between a rules adjudication and a setting adjudication. But they are both judgments the GM is expected to render. I think framing them as authoring is actually something of a problem. The GM should always be mindful in my view of his or her role as a referee who is supposed to make fair and reasoned judgements. Authoring suggests a GM being a much more active force in shaping the campaign, which I think can lead to railroading issues.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I do agree that certain systems have no adjudication by this definition, as in some systems the GM is empowered always to imagine a resolution based on undefined categories and never really has an outcome imposed on them.   These 'wheel of fortune' systems never really say what happens, but instead generate very vague hints like 'Fumble', 'Failure', 'Partial Failure', 'Success with Complications', 'Success', 'Critical Success' and so forth, and leave it up to the GM or some sort of non-procedural negotiation among the participants to decide what that hint means.
> 
> You can imagine my opinion of that sort of system.




But this seems very much not objective because you are defining away games you don't like. I think this is a classic problem in gaming taxonomy and nomenclature where we often frame the language in a way that gives primacy to our preferred playstyle and minimizes other play styles.


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## Lanefan (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Death?  Energy Drain?  Save or die sucked and was all over the place with poison, and energy drain was hell.  It had no save and you never got back all of your experience, even if you were lucky enough to be drained within a day of someone who could cast restoration.  And you started encountering a lot of energy drain undead well before the party could cast restoration itself, assuming your cleric wasn't also drained.



Yeah, a swarm of wraiths could really mess up your day.



> Sure, if it just hung out on the ground ready to duke it out.  Played intelligently, that dragon would destroy a 9th level party.  I also like how you made it a party of 6-9 NPCs, rather than the typical 4.  Double the party size and you double the monsters.  So 8 PCs against a pair or three of ancient red dragons.



In fairness, 1e did generally assume a larger party size: parties of 6-9 PCs were commonplace.  Most 0e-1e modules were written with this kind of party size in mind - check their intro notes and you'll see.

It wasn't until 3e that the party of 4 PCs became the standard.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, that's pretty much the essence of it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Good roleploy, as in invested in the character and with strong advocacy, does not require acting.  Acting may be sufficient (although I don't believe it is), but it is certainly not necessary.  You are arguing a preference as objective fact.

And it's a fine preference.  I enjoy acting in character as much as the next person.  But roleplaying isn't defined as or by acting.


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> You are arguing a preference as objective fact...But roleplaying isn't defined as or by acting.




You are stating that as if it was an objective fact.  I at least have an argument for why it isn't.  I could make further ones.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 19, 2019)

As a referee/DM I really don't differentiate between someone saying to me as if they are a PC and I'm the king, "Your grace, your honor and integrity are legendary thought your realm, as is your sense of justice and mercy...etc, etc." and "OK Aaron, Bill (the players PC) is going to go talk to the King and I'm going to play up how honorable and merciful he is by reputation and try to butter him up a bit that way while making my appeal for help...etc etc"  Both accomplish the same goal.


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## Maxperson (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> The question I have for that statement is, "Is relying on Save or Die or Energy Drains to challenge PCs fun?"




It was and wasn't for me as a player.  As a player I enjoyed risk and took great pains to scout and avoid ambushes, as well as avoiding undead when possible.  Then 3e came out and saves were allowed against energy drain.  At first I was very happy.  Then I noticed how easy those saves were, how you got two chances to make them, and how easy it was to get restoration.  I played 3e from the day it came out, until about a year ago.  Not once did I ever lose a permanent level.  Maybe once or twice poison got a PC of mine.....maybe.  

I stopped being as careful, because the game became waaaaaaay easier.  There was far less challenge than in the prior two editions, which did take away from my fun.  So while it wasn't fun to lose a ton of PCs to poison, and while it wasn't fun to lose tons of levels/exp, it also spiced up the game in a way that 3e and 5e don't really have.  



> The problem started in 1e Unearthed Arcana.  Fighters post UA were dishing about twice as much damage at a given level as the game had been built around, but even before UA AD&D had a problem that almost everything in the game was a glass cannon capable of dishing out far more damage than it could take.   I used to joke that the initiative roll was the mid-game of AD&D combat, and that round 1 was the end game.  Any monster that went last in the round would never get an attack off.
> 
> Still there are a variety of things you could do about that.  The most important is to not put your fights in 'tournament spaces'.  Instead of arenas with flat floors, you put the fight where the PCs are at a disadvantage of some sort.  And you use the sort of monsters that can actually manage to challenge PCs.   You can also tweak monsters from the MM's a bit and end up with good challenges, which works well in any edition.  For example, taking a standard Ogre and giving it better than normal equipment like plate mail and a two-handed sword can on its own make an encounter much more challenging.  I wrote a short guide.
> 
> I left AD&D in the early 90's, frustrated by the amount of rules and changes that I felt at the time I'd need to make to get the game to work.  In many ways, it's a terrible game.   In many ways it's brilliant.   I get occasionally struck by nostalgia for the game, and want to run it with the knowledge I've accumulated since the time I left it.





We didn't allow UA stuff for the most part.


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## Maxperson (Jun 19, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> Yeah, a swarm of wraiths could really mess up your day.
> 
> In fairness, 1e did generally assume a larger party size: parties of 6-9 PCs were commonplace.  Most 0e-1e modules were written with this kind of party size in mind - check their intro notes and you'll see.
> 
> It wasn't until 3e that the party of 4 PCs became the standard.




Well, my example was for 4.  If you're at 6-9 we up the number of dragons and treasure is all.  The math still works out the same as far as XP from monsters vs. XP from treasure.


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## Hussar (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> A bag of holding or four.  It's not as if most of that didn't come from gems, jewelry and platinum anyway.  One of the largest bags of holding could hold 150k of the 250k with 1000 pounds left over.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




See this is why I have such a hard time taking you seriously [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. You obviously never played adnd. 6-9 pcs was the standard group. Four pcs is a 3e thing.


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## Hussar (Jun 19, 2019)

Whoops double post. My bad.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See this is why I have such a hard time taking you seriously @_*Maxperson*_. You obviously never played adnd. 6-9 pcs was the standard group. Four pcs is a 3e thing.




AD&D for us back in the 80's was 3-6 players.  Though most modules were written for 6-10 PC. We just never had that many people to play.


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## Maxperson (Jun 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> See this is why I have such a hard time taking you seriously @_*Maxperson*_. You obviously never played adnd. 6-9 pcs was the standard group. Four pcs is a 3e thing.




Well darn.  I guess I need to call up my 3 gaming buddies and tell them that all those years of playing 1e and 2e didn't count, because we didn't do it your way.


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## Hussar (Jun 19, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> AD&D for us back in the 80's was 3-6 players.  Though most modules were written for 6-10 PC. We just never had that many people to play.




Yeah, I realized I said PC's and I should have said "characters".  There would likely be 3-6 players and a mitt full of NPC's as well.  At least, that's what the presumption was.




Maxperson said:


> Well darn.  I guess I need to call up my 3 gaming buddies and tell them that all those years of playing 1e and 2e didn't count, because we didn't do it your way.




Your the one telling me that the presumption was 4 PC's.  That an encounter should have multiple dragons because I have so many PC's.  But, that's not true.  I had the standard number of characters that was expected by the game.  4 PC's as a group wasn't a standard presumption until 3e.  Sure, I played with less than that many characters too.  But, we're talking about the game, not the game you played at your table or the game I played at my table.

That's one of the biggest problems I always have with talking about AD&D.  Folks presume that whatever way they played back in the day was the "norm" and anything deviating from that was just a corner case exception.  Never minding what the game ACTUALLY SAYS.  No.  The game is whatever some particular DM happened to play and everyone else is wrong.

Makes actually discussing older versions of D&D so bloody difficult.


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## Lanefan (Jun 19, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> AD&D for us back in the 80's was 3-6 players.  Though most modules were written for 6-10 PC. We just never had that many people to play.



3-6 players can easily play 6-10 PCs - nothing limits them to one each...


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## Maxperson (Jun 19, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Your the one telling me that the presumption was 4 PC's.  That an encounter should have multiple dragons because I have so many PC's.  But, that's not true.  I had the standard number of characters that was expected by the game.  4 PC's as a group wasn't a standard presumption until 3e.  Sure, I played with less than that many characters too.  But, we're talking about the game, not the game you played at your table or the game I played at my table.




Below is the presumption from 1e.  You guys are looking at modules, often created for tournament or convention play, where you had more players than normal.

From page 7 of the 1e PHB:

"The game is ideally for *three or more adult players*: one player must serve as the Dungeon Master, the shaper of the fantasy milieu, the "world" in which all action will take place."

That's it.  That's the presumption.  Three or more.  And if the minimum three still qualifies "ideal," then encounters would have to be based around that number or close to it.  Four anyone?


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## billd91 (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Below is the presumption from 1e.  You guys are looking at modules, often created for tournament or convention play, where you had more players than normal.
> 
> From page 7 of the 1e PHB:
> 
> ...




Why not three players and a GM? That's even closer than 4 in this case! Honestly, you're reading *way* too much into that statement. It *comes nowhere close* to making the same statement about the number of players that 3e does with its 4 player design assumption.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> You are stating that as if it was an objective fact.  I at least have an argument for why it isn't.  I could make further ones.



Well, yes, that's how it works -- your preference isn't objective just because you have it.  And having an argument doesn't make it so, either.  If acting is the superior form of roleplay as you claim, where is the evidence for such?  I'm a bit surprised that you're actually arguing this.

You've already acknowledged that roleplaying includes non-acting performances, so let's both ackowledge that roleplaying is broader than acting.  Fundamentally, roleplaying is about assuming the role and motivations of a character.  Now, it would seem to follow that the closer one can approximate the character's role and motivation, the better the roleplay.  Agreed?

Your argument is that this is accomplished by acting out the character in 1st person.  I agree this can be so, but disagree that it is always so.  Acting is a skill that isn't evenly distributed, and poor acting can act to distance or seperate a person from the character.  From the other side, ut's possible to strongly empathize with a character without acting in first person -- ie, a character may be fully and faithfully represented in the 3rd person.  Therefore, it stands to reason that acting may be sufficient for roleplay, but it is not necessary, and this carries through all levels of skill at roleplaying.

The above is also not objective fact, but it does put paid to tge idea tgat your formulation is.  What I find actually distasteful about your formulation on superior roleplay is that it takes ability in acting and uses this to tell players they aren't as good at roleplaying.  This fails miserably if a player is playing a character with abilities outside of their own such that it is impossible for them to act out those abilities in person.  It also is saying that the declaration of, "Bob the Sage casts Augury by making the sign of the outworlds to call on Fgthan the Demure," is less roleplaying than acting out making the sign of Fgthan, especially when no one has any idea what this involves.

You may noy be surprised that I also strongly disagree that social mechanics reduce interaction.  Free Kreigspeil is not inherently superior.


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## Maxperson (Jun 19, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Why not three players and a GM? That's even closer than 4 in this case! Honestly, you're reading *way* too much into that statement. It *comes nowhere close* to making the same statement about the number of players that 3e does with its 4 player design assumption.





How is reading what is says straight out as what it says straight out as "way too much?"  If the game is ideal for three of more, a single dragon cannot be balanced against 6-9.  That would not be ideal.  Rather, one dragon is balanced against around three so as to be ideal and if you have more players than that, you add more dragons.


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> I stopped being as careful, because the game became waaaaaaay easier.




This not at all my experience.  ''Ease" or "difficulty" is entirely a matter of the DM.  I can make a killer dungeon in any edition.  I can run through a stack of photocopied character sheets in any edition.  It's not particularly hard in any edition to make the game difficult.   So I'm having a hard time understanding how you can judge which edition was easier.   

Is poison less immediately a "save or die" sort of thing?  Sure.  But that doesn't make 1e harder than later editions.  It just meant as a DM you had to be more careful about how you handled creatures with poison, and as a player how you fought them.  Energy drain is similar.  Honestly, the rate which I had PC's lost to poison and energy drain hasn't changed much between the two editions.   That's probably not a ubiquitous experience, but for example with poison most DMs (including myself) in 1e either carefully handled poisonous monsters or if we were going to not carefully handle them, made sure that the resources like Slow Poison, Neutralize Poison, and Keotougm's Ointment necessary to mitigate poison were available in sufficient quantities that if the PC's were careful, they would be able to deal with bad luck.

All you are really showing is that 3e was less arbitrary than 1e.  As far as difficulty goes, there are a ton of things in 3e that are vastly more difficult than 1e.  Monsters don't top out at effectively 'CR 10'.   The rules include standardized methods for increasing the HD and difficult of foes through advancement, templates, and character levels.  In 1e, after a party hit name level there were only a few things in the MM that even represented much of a threat to the party.  Monsters now explicitly have strength, dexterity, and constitution.  In 1e, a fighter would often have more hit points than anything he encountered.   In 3e, you often encounter things with 2-3 times as many hit points as the party fighter.  With strength scores, all monsters can hit like a truck, and not just a few high end monsters like giants.  One of the ways that 3e is vastly harder than 1e, is that it was comparatively easy in 1e to buff AC to the point that monsters almost never hit you.  They rarely had bonuses to hit, and they topped off at 16 HD on the standard chart.   It was fairly easy to get to the point that pretty much every thing you encountered would need a 20 or nearly a 20 to hit.   But in 3e, monsters have more HD, better THAC0, and almost always have additional bonuses to hit from high strength.   And on top of that, monsters can critically hit you, turning fights that should be easy into suddenly nervy moments.   Yes, more things get saving throws, but those saving throws don't have static DC's.  A few things in 1e had -2 or -4 penalties to saves.  In 3e, the save difficulties get ludicrously high so that even high level characters are rarely going to pass their saves.  That one change alone in my experience made 3e much harder than 1e, because high level 1e characters could reliably pass saving throws with only a minimal amount of magical boosts.  Plus 3e really stressed all sorts of new challenges.  Swarms for example became a standardized thing and brought new terrors to the game.   

Or lets take an example from 5e: 11th level fighter with typical stats and equipment for an 11th level fighter in a solo fight again 1st level fighters with typical stats in equipment.  In a recent thread, someone claimed that in 5e the 11th level fighter could defeat about 11 1st level fighters.   You want to talk about a difficulty spike.   Back in the day I had written a combat simulator for D&D on my Commodore 64 in Basic, and I frequently ran those sort of scenarios - 10th level fighter versus kobolds, 10th level fighter versus orcs, 10th level fighter versus bugbears, etc.   The numbers for a 1e AD&D 11th level fighter versus 1st level fighters would have been around 100.  I seem to remember a scenario where the fighter could get his back to the wall, and he'd go through over 300 orcs assuming they didn't have any ranged or reach weapons.   Name level parties could literally take on armies all on their own in 1e.   Now just a dozen mooks are dangerous?  That's a huge change in difficulty, moved to a different place in the game, granted, but still a huge change. 

In short, this is all a DM thing.  It's about how the DM uses his tools, crafts his challenges, and how he expects the party to use the resources he provides to overcome those challenges.  How hard things are depends on how stingy the DM is resources, how harshly he rules, and how much he stacks the odds against the party.



> We didn't allow UA stuff for the most part.




I've noticed that there is a huge gulf in experience between players that used UA and those who didn't.  While my play goes back to about 1981, I really didn't have a full group and the maturity to really run the games until 1984 or so.  So naturally, UA was just treated as a ordinary thing by me and most groups I met with players about my age.   Slightly older players who had been playing since the OD&D days who didn't adopt UA, had a much different experience.


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## jasper (Jun 19, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> AD&D for us back in the 80's was 3-6 players.  Though most modules were written for 6-10 PC. We just never had that many people to play.



Every table I sat at had a few players running two pcs to get the party to 6 or 8 pcs to solve the manpower problem.


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> Well, yes, that's how it works -- your preference isn't objective just because you have it.




Nor is it merely a preference and subjective just because you claim it is so.   

Even the very definition of role-playing suggests a strong and natural connection between acting and the act of role-playing: "the acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for example as a technique in training or psychotherapy"  To suggest therefore that this connection is therefore only a preference, and not in some way closely connected to the act of role-playing and in particular to the degree and quality of the role-playing requires a very high burden of proof on your part.   At the very least, you have to address the argument I have developed showing why it was the "superior form of role-playing" (as you put it).   And though I'm not one, I'm inclined to think that a therapist or an occupational trainer would agree and encourage the more immersive, more literal experience, for much the same reasons that I've outlined.   For one thing, when you are applying role-play to train a person for some real life experience, you need that person to act as much as they would in real life as possible.

Likewise, "it's possible to strongly empathize with a character without acting in first person -- ie, a character may be fully and faithfully represented in the 3rd person.", may in fact be true, but it in no way is a counter claim to what I've said.  Empathizing with a character isn't what is at stake in the argument.   I can fully empathize with a character in a novel or a movie, and yet I think we both agree that no role-playing is going on while I watch a movie or read a novel.   You can empathize all you want, but the more you actually act out the role, the more you are role-playing by definition.   I'm not going to draw a hard line and say, "Oh, for this little amount of acting you are no longer roleplaying."   But I am going to insist that the more you act, the more you are actually role-playing and that such a line where insufficient acting occurs to call it role-playing exists, otherwise everything is role-playing. 



> Now, it would seem to follow that the closer one can approximate the character's role and motivation, the better the roleplay.  Agreed?




Agreed, but that statement doesn't demonstrate your claim, but mine.

"Well, that's just like your opinion, man.", is itself something you have to prove.

Look, I'm well aware that this argument makes people uncomfortable.  You are correct that role-playing skill is not equally distributed, and everyone who plays is sensitive about their ability to role-play and no one likes to think that they are less of a role-player than someone else.  Groups are in certain comfort zones and have ways of doing things, and that's fine so far as it goes.  But we're adults in this room, and it's time to recognize that though we certainly shouldn't be judging anyone for lack of skill in role-play, we should always be nurturing and encouraging growth in skillful play just as actors want to be better actors, athletes want to be better athletes, and chess players want to be better chess players.



> This fails miserably if a player is playing a character with abilities outside of their own such that it is impossible for them to act out those abilities in person.  It also is saying that the declaration of, "Bob the Sage casts Augury by making the sign of the outworlds to call on Fgthan the Demure," is less roleplaying than acting out making the sign of Fgthan, especially when no one has any idea what this involves.




No it doesn't, and no it isn't.  If you'll have read my argument up to this point, it ought to be especially obvious why neither statement is true.


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## jasper (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Below is the presumption from 1e.  You guys are looking at modules, often created for tournament or convention play, where you had more players than normal.
> 
> From page 7 of the 1e PHB:
> 
> ...



oh! Oh! Mr. Kotter. What about kid players do they count. Or
from saltmarsh 1981
The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is the first installment in a series of three modules designed and developed in the United Kingdom, for beginning adventures with the AD&D rules. The adventure can be played by 5-10 characters of levels 1-3. This module contains large-scale maps, full background information, and detailed encounter descriptions for the players and DM....

danger at dunwater
..Danger at Dunwater" is the second part in a series of three modules designed and developed in the United Kingdom for beginning adventurers with the AD&D rules. Its plot follows direct from that of the first part (U1: "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh"). This adventure can be played by 6-10 characters of levels 1-4. This module contains large-scale maps, full background information, and detailed encounter descriptions for the players and DM......

Anybody else remember when the modules told about how many pcs you needed to run in the adventure?


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> How is reading what is says straight out as what it says straight out as "way too much?"  If the game is ideal for three of more, a single dragon cannot be balanced against 6-9.  That would not be ideal.  Rather, one dragon is balanced against around three so as to be ideal and if you have more players than that, you add more dragons.




I have no stake in this "how many players is the right number of players" side discussion, and by quoting you I'm not at all asserting that you are being particularly or especially ridiculous compared to some of the other things that have been claimed.  But, the whole argument strikes me as ridiculous, and this sort of claim just seems well beneath the logic and insight you'd normally bring to a thread.   

1 Dragon = 3 PCs?  Really?  Is that how you think it has ever worked?  Are dragons and PC's as standardized as coins?


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

jasper said:


> Anybody else remember when the modules told about how many pcs you needed to run in the adventure?




Yes.  But I also remember how unreliable those guidelines were, how hard they could be to interpret in practice, and that they were guidelines.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 19, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> 3-6 players can easily play 6-10 PCs - nothing limits them to one each...




We never ran hirelings or henchmen until my current S&W game and usually ran one PC, one power gamed out, min maxed, "sure I rolled those stats..." PC each. 

But we didn't run though a lot of the classic modules.

Wish I had.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Nor is it merely a preference and subjective just because you claim it is so.
> 
> Even the very definition of role-playing suggests a strong and natural connection between acting and the act of role-playing: "the acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for example as a technique in training or psychotherapy"  To suggest therefore that this connection is therefore only a preference, and not in some way closely connected to the act of role-playing and in particular to the degree and quality of the role-playing requires a very high burden of proof on your part.   At the very least, you have to address the argument I have developed showing why it was the "superior form of role-playing" (as you put it).   And though I'm not one, I'm inclined to think that a therapist or an occupational trainer would agree and encourage the more immersive, more literal experience, for much the same reasons that I've outlined.   For one thing, when you are applying role-play to train a person for some real life experience, you need that person to act as much as they would in real life as possible.
> 
> ...



The best firm of your argument I can divine is that, given equal empathy and faithfulness to the character portrayed, that speaking in first person with affectations of mannerism and accent, is prima facie superior to presenting the character in 3rd person.  Both characters presentations are equally "true" reoresentations of the character, but one adds a performative act the other lacks, and that this performative act elevates the one to be a superior representation of the character. That acting is necessary to achieve the highest tiers of roleplaying.

I disagree, for the following:
1) performative acts by themselves do not increase the honesty and fidelity of the reoresentation of a character.  Else it would be true that all stage or screen representations of a given character from a novel would be superior to the written character. 

2) given 1, if performative acts cannot, by themselves, elevate roleplay, consideration of how they can is warranted.  This really boils down to ways in which performance can increase character fidelity.  And, yes, it can increase character fidelity, if done well.  If done poorly, then it can decrease character fidelity.  Again, considering 1, this would mean that performance can only improve roleplay in cases where it improves character fidelity.  Ergo, the key element here is not performance, but increased character fidelity.

3) other forms of media that do not include acting can present extremely well formed character representations.  Acting does not always improve these representations when the character is transitioned to a new medium.  Therefore, acting cannot be the best form of representation if a character by default.  It may be, but is not guaranteed to be so, even when gifted actors are involved.

4) Point 3 becomes even more obvious when the character becomes more fantastical and representation is outsude the physical abilities of the actor.  In the case of very fantastical things, acting cannot be said to be a more accurate representation of the character than a non-acted description of behavior may be.  The sound of a dragon's roar, for example, can have more fidelity as a description than as acted out by a participant.

5) Acting also tends to place more of the actor into the role.  There's a reason many good actors have a niche if characters they portray (Ben Affleck is a fine actor so long as he's playing a jerk).  This often results in a reversion to mean when acting -- tge further away a character's trait is from you, the less well it will be acted.  Hollywood can escape this by having scripts and directors, but still fails at times.  RPGs have no such controls, and player acting will always revert to closer to the player over time than to the character.  

The above show cases where acting dies not result in the best roleplay.  I've already acceded that acting can be a natural way to improve character fidelity, but it is not sufficient or necessary to do so.  I like acting, I'm good at it (for tabletop purposes), and tend to prefer it as my approach.  I harbor no illusions, though, that my preference is the GoodRightFun of roleplaying, and try to pay attention for those places where acting out decreases fidelity.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> This not at all my experience.  ''Ease" or "difficulty" is entirely a matter of the DM.  I can make a killer dungeon in any edition.  I can run through a stack of photocopied character sheets in any edition.  It's not particularly hard in any edition to make the game difficult.   So I'm having a hard time understanding how you can judge which edition was easier.



 Well, starting with 3e there were explicit encounter guidelines.  They may not have always delivered a consistent level of difficulty, but they could be said to tend one way or the other?    

Prior to that you could go off tone, advice, and some vague sense of HD ~= level, sorta.  




Celebrim said:


> Even the very definition of role-playing suggests a strong and natural connection between acting and the act of role-playing: "the acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for example as a technique in training or psychotherapy"



Is that a dictionary definition?  Because, if so, it's more likely alluding to Therapy and er.. 'games' that don't involve dice... OK, probably, I've seen some dice that... nevermind.  

However, in the context of a TTRPG, the 'role' may be as prosaic as 'meat shield,' and playing it may just be declaring your character interposing himself between the monsters and his allies.  

When you go back to the roots of TTRPGs, you find wargaming, not improv.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, that's pretty much the essence of it.
> 
> So, here comes the stickler.  I'm not really interested in arguing the qualitative.  I'm arguing for essentially the quantitative.  In other words, whether or not the DM is roleplaying isn't really an interesting contention.   While I might agree that there is some diminishing point at which the GM is not roleplaying at all, that's not to me the essence of the issue.  The point is that he is roleplaying "less well"/"more badly" than the first GM.  And as a mature form of art, we ought to be pushing toward the skillful play of the GM who brings the gnoll more to life and creates the more interesting characterization.




So the more a GM does to try and portray the NPC, the better off the game is. I mean, I get the idea in general. But what if he's so bad at doing character voices that it actively undermines his goal? 

This is my point. I understand yours and would agree with a general "do what you can to enhance immersion" kind of approach. But I think what will increase immersion is very different from table to table, as these discussions always display. 

So for me, a more suitable approach is to tailor how you try to enhance immersion to the specific participants. 



Celebrim said:


> I do think it is essential to roleplaying, and that a game in which it is not essential at all to be immersive isn't a RPG.  Thus, you can speak in character in the game of monopoly, but doing so is no part of the game.  Thus, it's not a roleplaying game.   I'm not going to argue at what point immersion so disappears from play that it isn't an RPG any more, but I will argue that less important it is to your process of play, the less of a RPG you are playing, and the more you are moving toward playing a wargame or some sort of board game.




I think I was a bit unclear....I didn't mean immersion wasn't essential to roleplaying. I meant speaking in character dialogue wasn't essential to it. People can indeed roleplay just fine by describing what their character does. Can speaking in character dialogue help add to that? Sure, for many people. For others, it's a distraction, or it's something they struggle with and so their immersion is lessened because their enjoyment is lessened. And so on. 



Celebrim said:


> But I'm contesting that whether it is essential or not, by the definition I outlined I can objectively show that it is the more cinematic experience.




I don't think you can objectively show this. Even with your specific definition of cinematic.



Celebrim said:


> Combat certainly can be non-cinematic, and often is non-cinematic.   To understand how it does not have to be non-cinematic, you have to go back to my definition of cinematic which is, "Creates a shared imaginary space which the participants can each concretely imagine what is going on and will each imagine much the same thing."    So consider the common rules proposition, "I [try to] attack."   This is a very uncinematic and unimmersive proposition.  The participants are given little sense of what to imagine by such an abstract proposition, and neither are required to imagine what happens nor are prompted to imagine what happens.  Likely all that will be mentally considered by the participants is some mechanical result, such as the deduction of abstract hit points from a pool of hit points to be abraded away.  But now consider the following rules propositions:
> 
> "I step to the side and attempt to cleave the legs out from under the orc with my battle axe."
> "I trust my shield into the orcs face and attempt to hurl him backwards over the cliff."
> ...




So those action declarations are all a bit more than simply "I attack" and that's great....that's very much in line with how my group tends to handle that stuff. However, they do all basically boil down to "I attack". If someone were transcribing the game, they'd likely say "and then Sir Smite attacked the orc chief" rather than saying "Pressed by the brute, Sir Smite deftly sidestepped, and brought his longsword to bear". 

I don't know if it's essential that everyone at the table be picturing exactly the same thing in their heads when they picture the action of the game. Hopefully, it's fairly similar. But even with your examples, there's still plenty of room for people to picture things differently. And why shouldn't there be? 

I don't know if immersion requires everyone to be picturing exactly the same thing. I think there is plenty of fiction that we can point to where descriptions are sparse, and yet engaging and immersive. I don't agree that it's different for gaming in this regard. 




Celebrim said:


> They can, if they encourage people to substitute more abstract metagame declarations for more concrete in game declarations.  If for example, the mechanics encourage you to simply state your social move as a metagame classification, without ever providing some idea as to what actually happened in the game when you performed that move, then you have a process where some rules generated an outcome, but no roleplaying necessarily took place.  No one will have a clear idea what happened in the game reality, only that you transitioned from one game state to another after a move was made.  And at that point, you are playing a board game, because part of what makes a board game a board game is the reality it is modelling does not need to be and usually is not concretely imagined.
> 
> Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I find most consciously created Nar games terrible at actually creating Narrative and the experience of being in a story.




I actually find that sometimes, speaking as a player can be far more enlightening than speaking in character. As a player, I can actually say much more about my character's motivations and desires in that moment than the character would actually say. So while the character may be limited in what he can say....he's going to ask the Duke for help....but the player can elaborate on that in the way narration does in fiction. Narration and dialogue are both important in that sense. THe character isn't going to point out how the Duke reminds him of his father, and so he's struggling not to just yell at the guy....but the player can. 

And for certain a player could speak both in character and then also speak out of character....i expect this is probably how most games function. But given the depth to which a player can really go to out of character....and can even involve other players and their opinions on the subject....I don't see how in character dialogue is essential to immersion. It can certainly help, and I'm all for it. But its absence does not necessarily diminish immersion or roleplaying. 



Celebrim said:


> Well, by my definition you could do some sort of double blind study, and if the participants could at a higher percentage rate agree to what the essentials of an action had been based on the proposition, then we could prove within a certain confidence interval than one sort of play had been more immersive than the other.
> 
> For example, for the proposition, "I attempt to persuade the Duke.", if two separated participants independently reported afterwards the same words said to the Duke, then that was immersive.   But I think it is clear they'd do a much better at agreeing what had been said with a proposition like, "Your Grace, you have always been known as a man of honor.  If you do not lend your strong aid now, and tragedy ensues, what will your loyal subjects say of you?"




Sure, but getting a general consensus on an opinion is still an opinion. It's just the prevailing opinion, not objective fact. 



Celebrim said:


> All of which is irrelevant.  That's just the underlying mechanical engine which the GM then cranks the handle of to decide whether or not the Duke is persuaded.  The point is the proposition.  The underlying mechanical engine only matters to the extent that it pushes the game toward abstract declarations by prioritizing the meta-declaration over the proposition itself.




I don't think it's irrelevant at all. The mechanics of a game and how they attempt to push the game in specific ways is vitally important. If the players are able to have input on the fictional elements involving the Duke, then they're likely very engaged and immersed. Others may find that to lessen immersion because it gives them too much influence as a player....and that's a valid view, as well. 

But to dismiss the mechanics and the procedure and their impact on play as irrelevant seems to me a pretty odd contention. 



Celebrim said:


> Point is, you have to define the NPCs goals and traits.  Some systems encourage you to do that and provide a framework for it.  Others provide no such encouragement or framework, but as I'm hopefully showing - even in systems that traditionally don't define NPC social traits in a mechanical way - you still can define those traits in a mechanical way.




I'm not sure I follow what you mean here....do you mean relying on generation of NPC goals of some kind? Rather than a GM determining the goals, or them being stated in a game book? 



Celebrim said:


> Well, I direct you back to the start of this line of argument for why combat and social challenges are inherently different in a TRPG context, and why therefore attempts to treat them as exactly the same tend to fail, and are quite possibly poor design because they are more unalike than they are alike. (https://www.enworld.org/forum/showt...-RPGs/page10&p=7621872&viewfull=1#post7621872)




Sure, I just don't accept the distinction as all that meaningful. I think the similarities are more meaningful than the differences. I think that when descibing a physical action, it will produce an image in another person's mind that can still signifcantly differ from another's mental image despite the amount of detail provided. They'll be picturing something close enough for the purposes of a game. If someone describes a non-physical action, and instead summarizes what they want, I the shared imagining will be sufficient for the purpose of a RPG.


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## Celebrim (Jun 19, 2019)

Tony Vargas said:


> Well, starting with 3e there were explicit encounter guidelines.




Sure.  But they were guidelines, and even if I was inclined to rigidly follow someone else's guidelines, it's trivial matter to show that two groups of 13 encounters with the same encounter levels have vastly different difficulties.  Likewise, not even published modules rigidly adhered to those guidelines.

More to t he point, if you read the 1e DMG, while Gygax doesn't give as detailed of accounting of the math underlying the system, he does give guidelines regarding finding a balance between challenge and the ability to achieve success, and disparages DMing that veers to far to either side.   He also gives what amounts to dungeon construction guidelines in the appendixes, regarding what level of monsters are to be encountered by players of a particular level and in what proportions.  So all the basic ideas in 3e encounter guidelines are still there, he's just not as forward with his math.



> Is that a dictionary definition?




Yes, the first one I found.  I could look for more, but they'd likely be of the same character.



> Because, if so, it's more likely alluding to Therapy and er.. 'games' that don't involve dice... OK, probably, I've seen some dice that... nevermind.




Role-playing is role-playing whether it is done as a leisure activity or for some other more serious purpose.



> When you go back to the roots of TTRPGs, you find wargaming, not improv.




The two things aren't mutually exclusive.  The direct ancestor of Blackmoor, the first RPG in the modern sense, was a Braunstein - which was an entirely improvisational wargame.  And a Braunstein is directly the descendent of professional war games which were used for occupational training, and which - importantly to this conversation - would have featured participants required to give and write orders as if the situation they were in was actually occurring for real.   And while you are trying to explain to me what the ancestors of an RPG are, I think it would be instructional to think about why they represented something new and not just another sort of wargame.   While I don't think there was a conscious decision to marry a wargame with theater games, almost everything about an RPG can be found one or the other in games that preexisted the modern RPG.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 19, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Role-playing is role-playing whether it is done as a leisure activity or for some other more serious purpose.



I can't agree.  Both the 'role' and the 'playing' refer to quite different things depending on whether you're roleplaying with a therapist, a friend-with-benefits, or a GM...
...or a director.



> The two things aren't mutually exclusive.



 You can improv all you want in the context of a TT wargame - or not at all - it'll have no effect on play, and at worst might annoy your fellow player & the judge, if any.  
I don't think there's a lot of wargaming at improv theatre groups, nor that they'd be impressed with the thespianism of the guy in the bicorn hat, commanding his tin soldiers.




> The direct ancestor of Blackmoor, the first RPG in the modern sense, was a Braunstein - which was an entirely improvisational wargame.



 From the little I've heard of it, sounds more like a spiritual predecessor of LARPs and quasi-RPGs like Fiasco.
And, D&D is generally accepted as the first TTRPG or FRPG, in the modern sense.



> I think it would be instructional to think about why they represented something new and not just another sort of wargame



 OT1H, they /are/ just another sort of wargame: small scale, generally cooperative on some level, with more players, and the judge's role sucked in & subverted.  OTOH, some of those difference are notable.  The judge becoming the GM, for instance, and the closely related (but not exactly fast or even) move towards being less competitive & more cooperative, for instance.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 19, 2019)

They had the original Braunstein stuff at GaryCon and it seemed far more like LARP than anything else to me.   LARP with props, which I think is just LARP.


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## Lanefan (Jun 20, 2019)

Flexor the Mighty! said:


> They had the original Braunstein stuff at GaryCon and it seemed far more like LARP than anything else to me.   LARP with props, which I think is just LARP.



Pretty much - Braunstein is often cited as the first RPG but it's more accurate to say it's a more direct predecessor to LARPs than to TTRPGs; and it took Dave Arneson (who learned via Braunstein) to jump from the Braunstein stepping-stone to the tabletop.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> This not at all my experience.  ''Ease" or "difficulty" is entirely a matter of the DM.  I can make a killer dungeon in any edition.  I can run through a stack of photocopied character sheets in any edition.  It's not particularly hard in any edition to make the game difficult.   So I'm having a hard time understanding how you can judge which edition was easier.




It's really easy.  I played 1e, 2e and 3e extensively with a variety of DM types.  3e was far easier across the board.  I worried in most combats in AD&D.  I worried in relatively few combats in 3e, and most of those were when facing things with CRs 2 or more higher than the party.



> All you are really showing is that 3e was less arbitrary than 1e.  As far as difficulty goes, there are a ton of things in 3e that are vastly more difficult than 1e.  Monsters don't top out at effectively 'CR 10'.   The rules include standardized methods for increasing the HD and difficult of foes through advancement, templates, and character levels.  In 1e, after a party hit name level there were only a few things in the MM that even represented much of a threat to the party.  Monsters now explicitly have strength, dexterity, and constitution.  In 1e, a fighter would often have more hit points than anything he encountered.   In 3e, you often encounter things with 2-3 times as many hit points as the party fighter.  With strength scores, all monsters can hit like a truck, and not just a few high end monsters like giants.  One of the ways that 3e is vastly harder than 1e, is that it was comparatively easy in 1e to buff AC to the point that monsters almost never hit you.  They rarely had bonuses to hit, and they topped off at 16 HD on the standard chart.   It was fairly easy to get to the point that pretty much every thing you encountered would need a 20 or nearly a 20 to hit.   But in 3e, monsters have more HD, better THAC0, and almost always have additional bonuses to hit from high strength.   And on top of that, monsters can critically hit you, turning fights that should be easy into suddenly nervy moments.   Yes, more things get saving throws, but those saving throws don't have static DC's.  A few things in 1e had -2 or -4 penalties to saves.  In 3e, the save difficulties get ludicrously high so that even high level characters are rarely going to pass their saves.  That one change alone in my experience made 3e much harder than 1e, because high level 1e characters could reliably pass saving throws with only a minimal amount of magical boosts.  Plus 3e really stressed all sorts of new challenges.  Swarms for example became a standardized thing and brought new terrors to the game.




Are you talking about epic levels in 3e?  Because I played several campaigns to 16-20th level and saves were not all that hard to make.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

jasper said:


> oh! Oh! Mr. Kotter. What about kid players do they count. Or
> from saltmarsh 1981
> The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is the first installment in a series of three modules designed and developed in the United Kingdom, for beginning adventures with the AD&D rules. The adventure can be played by 5-10 characters of levels 1-3. This module contains large-scale maps, full background information, and detailed encounter descriptions for the players and DM....




Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that modules were different.  You shouldn't look to them for what the base game expects.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> 1 Dragon = 3 PCs?  Really?  Is that how you think it has ever worked?  Are dragons and PC's as standardized as coins?




3-5 depending on the PC mix and dragon, yes.  You don't encounter half a dragon, and a dragon is an encounter for PCs of X level, depending on the age of the dragon.  Given that 3 or more is the ideal number of players, you won't see encounters that are going to be auto death for 3 players.  That's just not ideal.


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## Hussar (Jun 20, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that modules were different.  You shouldn't look to them for what the base game expects.




Why not?

It's not like AD&D had a "core rules" divide.  The modules were just as "official rules" as anything else.

Now, if most modules were 2-3 PC's, then I might agree with your point.  However, most of the modules were of the "6-9" characters variety.  Dragonlance baselined with 8 characters.  

And, I would point out that this is precisely what I was talking about - people's experiences with AD&D vary really wildly depending on whether you were a module junkie like me or not.  Again, it also points to the schizophrenic nature of AD&D.  If 2-3 players (plus a DM) was expected, why the need for a "caller"?   The example of play in the DMG includes 5 PC's plus a thief NPC.  I'm thinking that a DM plus 2 PC's was probably not the presumption of the game.


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## jasper (Jun 20, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that modules were different.  You shouldn't look to them for what the base game expects.



Yup Missed that. But you missing the part where ALOT of us use the modules as OFFFICAL WAY TO PLAY. It wasn't until I saw some of Gary's posts here mention lots of hirelings in a dungeon was one way to play.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Why not?
> 
> It's not like AD&D had a "core rules" divide.  The modules were just as "official rules" as anything else.




They were not rules at all.  They were adventures.



> And, I would point out that this is precisely what I was talking about - people's experiences with AD&D vary really wildly depending on whether you were a module junkie like me or not.  Again, it also points to the schizophrenic nature of AD&D.  If 2-3 players (plus a DM) was expected, why the need for a "caller"?   The example of play in the DMG includes 5 PC's plus a thief NPC.  I'm thinking that a DM plus 2 PC's was probably not the presumption of the game.




The game itself says it is, though. Iideal begins at 3 total players, so that number has to be part of the presumption or it is not ideal.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

jasper said:


> Yup Missed that. But you missing the part where ALOT of us use the modules as OFFFICAL WAY TO PLAY. It wasn't until I saw some of Gary's posts here mention lots of hirelings in a dungeon was one way to play.




I've always gone with the rules as the official way to play, but that's just me I guess.  Three or more includes 6-9, but doesn't require it or make 6-9 the baseline.  The baseline presumption of the game is that 3 is as ideal as 9 is.  Modules are a different beast.  Many of them were written for convention and/or tournament play, and I suspect others just followed that model.  Perhaps they figured it was easier to tone down a module for 3 players, than it is to beef it up for 9.


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## Hussar (Jun 20, 2019)

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you realize you have it backwards right?  The tournaments came first THEN AD&D.  AD&D was an attempt to codify what was happening at tournaments.  That's why tournament play is actually mentioned more than a few times in the AD&D DMG.  

Look, we get it.  You played AD&D with 3 people.  Great.  Can you not understand that that wasn't typical of the time?  Tournament tables were MUCH larger than that.  Heck, my home game was anywhere from 6-13 players for many, many years.  You'd think that if most of the games were only 3 players, then they'd market the modules for 3 players.  Seems kind of strange to baseline the game at 3 players and then produce absolutely nothing for that baseline.


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## Maxperson (Jun 20, 2019)

Hussar said:


> @_*Maxperson*_, you realize you have it backwards right?  The tournaments came first THEN AD&D.  AD&D was an attempt to codify what was happening at tournaments.  That's why tournament play is actually mentioned more than a few times in the AD&D DMG.
> 
> Look, we get it.  You played AD&D with 3 people.  Great.  Can you not understand that that wasn't typical of the time?  Tournament tables were MUCH larger than that.  Heck, my home game was anywhere from 6-13 players for many, many years.  You'd think that if most of the games were only 3 players, then they'd market the modules for 3 players.  Seems kind of strange to baseline the game at 3 players and then produce absolutely nothing for that baseline.




Hey.  If you wanted to house rule the game based on modules(not rules) and ignore the actual rules(3 plus players = ideal), that was your call.  The rules were there to serve you, not the other way around.


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## lowkey13 (Jun 20, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Ilya Bossov (Jun 20, 2019)

Classic D&D presumes a lot about the party and the game master, but colonialist themes observation is spot on. The party is supposed to be good, the monsters are supposed to be evil, and following tradition of Tolkien's presumptions of all members of this species (it's really wrong to call them a race) being evil is a little awkward, isn't it? How many kobolds does it take for a lawful good paladin to get to the next level and also lose their alignment?

Modern D&D is a lot better about this. Take Curse of Strahd for example. It's not just some faceless orcs you're killing. The main villain is a creep and the land is suffering because of him, so players are truly heroic figures standing up to a monster with powers of a demigod.

But yeah, XP should be a measure of risks taken and dangers survived, not scalps and ears count.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Classic D&D presumes a lot about the party and the game master, but colonialist themes observation is spot on.




Why?  



> The party is supposed to be good, the monsters are supposed to be evil, and following tradition of Tolkien's presumptions of all members of this species (it's really wrong to call them a race) being evil is a little awkward, isn't it?




No.  For example, there is a connection between the word 'orc' and the world 'orcus'.  Is it presumptuous to assume demons are evil?  Are we not allowed to incarnate good and evil in a fantasy?  I mean it would be one thing if humans and elves were the incarnation of good, but they are not either in Tolkien (where many of the villains are human or elves) or in D&D.   The PC races are the people, the ones capable of both good or evil, and they are in contests with evil as represented by things like demons, dragons, giants, and orcs and advised and aided by powers of good.  



> Modern D&D is a lot better about this. Take Curse of Strahd for example. It's not just some faceless orcs you're killing. The main villain is a creep and the land is suffering because of him, so players are truly heroic figures standing up to a monster with powers of a demigod.




OK, you do realize that 'Curse of Strahd' is just an elaboration on I6: Ravenloft, a module written in 1982 and published in 1983, right?  That was 35 years ago, and at the time published RPG were less than a decade old.   So what you are bragging about as "modern" as a way of slandering the writers and creators of the past, is actually much closer to the beginning of RPGs as it is to the present day.  

There is a certain level of narcissism in this whole "colonialist" meme, in that what really seems to be going on is patting ones own back about how much better we are now than what we were like then, when as a community we seem to forget that we were out giving awards to abusive content creators whose work in my opinion clearly hinted at his unhealthy attitudes toward women (and people in general).  Yet we are going to praise ourselves as being so much more enlightened than the Gygax, Tolkien, Arneson, Weiss, Hickman, Niles, Moldvay, Morris etc. because of some fantastically constructed idea that they were advancing 'Colonialist' ideas.  

I'm sorry, but this claim that is being tossed around requires a much higher standard of proof than it's being tossed around with.   If 'Curse of Strahd' isn't colonialist, then 'Ravenloft' isn't either.   So where are all these colonialist modules?  Aerie of the Slave Lords?  Is opposing slavers "colonialist"?  Saber River?  Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh?  Dragons of Despair? Steading of the Hill Giant Chief? Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth?  Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?  Beyond the Crystal Cave?  When I played 'Desert of Desolation' I never thought, "Yeah, I'm colonizing the desert.", nor do I think there was any such intention.   The factions are interesting, and you are quite possibly a native of the region.  Certainly your ethnic background is not prescribed to you, nor are you facing off against orcs or whatever.  In "Dwellers in the Forbidden City", spoiler, the bad guys turn out to be colonizers of a sort, manipulating native peoples.  Just how contorted do you intend to make this argument that early D&D was colonialist?  I'm struggling to think of anything I encountered that had "colonialist" ideas as a central theme during the early days of D&D, but if for the sake of argument the early modules of TSR were rife with colonialist thinking, then given the fact that WotC seems unable to generate original adventure ideas but simply reprints the old content, everyone who is convinced by this whole 'colonialist' argument ought to for the sake of the consistency of their thinking, boycott WotC.

Fundamentally, even the best attempts to advance this tripe seem to be taking a few small passages out of context and elevating their importance to greater than the rest of the text.  I haven't seen any take on D&D this ridiculous since reading a Jack Chick track.



> But yeah, XP should be a measure of risks taken and dangers survived, not scalps and ears count.




Errr... when was it not?  I mean, heck, the whole XP primarily equals killing thing wasn't even a feature until 3e, so if that's your problem, then it's not old school games you have a problem with but modern ones.


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## Xaelvaen (Jun 20, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> I'm just ... curious ... as to what other people think. I mean, I understand WHY (IMO) violence is part of the scene (legacy of wargaming, advancement through XP, fantasy tropes, etc.), but I'm curious as to what people think of it now?




First, love the topic - kudos.  I can understand how certain groups or audiences need to pay attention to, and alter these aspects.  I'm all for the freedom to express yourself in RPGs, for all people, provided you know your audience - that's always the key.

Secondly, a personal anecdote - My players (21 years together this year) have come to bloody love kobolds.  Perhaps it is the influence of Deekin from Neverwinter Nights, or the 3.5 supplements that gave Kobolds several pages of in depth information, or our love of ugly things and calling them cute (like certain dogs).  Regardless, they love kobolds and hate killing them.  Any time there's a kobold den, a wizard either pretends to be a dragon and makes a thunderous voice convincing the kobolds to back down, or someone else finds a way to try and not kill the little pests until they can be reasoned with.  So in your particular adventure path (don't believe I've ever played it ), it just reminded me of my players not worrying about killing the women and children, they want to befriend them all!  In fact, in our current campaign, they found a small kobold den that had recently suffered the loss of all their females to disease, so they were aggressive.  Here comes the saviors - "aww, don't worry little kobolds, we'll find you some females.  Just give us all the useless gold and silver you mine - you keep the gems.  Everybody's happy."  Then here comes the natural 20 on persuasion.

Anecdote aside - here's thirdly.  I've never, not once since 1989, been in a group where anyone would murder innocents for any reason.  I've even had evil alignment in the party (typically lawful evil, mind you) that knew better.  Not because of morals, but for their own personal justifications.  I've just never experienced that mentality, so I can only answer the question of 'violence in RPGs' with a moral compass.  I've never seen anyone killed, monsters included, that didn't deserve justice to be wrought swiftly - and even then, there's those occasional paladins who'll arrest anything of sentience instead of wanting it dead.  Had a Priest of Tyr one time have a team of horses and a jail wagon travel around with our group.  He spent so much damn money on prisoner food.  I never had the heart to tell him that the courts just sentenced them all to death anyway...


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## billd91 (Jun 20, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> 3-5 depending on the PC mix and dragon, yes.  You don't encounter half a dragon, and a dragon is an encounter for PCs of X level, depending on the age of the dragon.  Given that 3 or more is the ideal number of players, you won't see encounters that are going to be auto death for 3 players.  That's just not ideal.




You're not? You could roll up a red dragon encounter with 4 of them, the mated pair being on the larger size and ancient. That might not be survivable for 3 players depending on their levels. And the encounter tables... not really keyed to character level.

Or, given your disdain for house rules in determining how a game *should* work, how exactly are you determining the game is designed around a dragon being an encounter for PCs of X level?


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## Ilya Bossov (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> No.  For example, there is a connection between the word 'orc' and the world 'orcus'.



This is a false connection. Just because two words are similar-sounding in one language, it often means very little regarding their origins or roots. Orcs have more in common with orcas, I believe. In Tolkien's writing, they were creations of a fallen god/angel equivalent who tried to emulate elves but ended up creating ugly and pitiful creatures. 



> Is it presumptuous to assume demons are evil?



Yes. Tieflings would like to have a word.




> The PC races are the people, the ones capable of both good or evil, and they are in contests with evil as represented by things like demons, dragons, giants, and orcs and advised and aided by powers of good.




Since we're talking about Tolkien's works, there's an interesting book that offers a unique, alternative perspective. If you're struggling to find colonialism in D&D or in Lord of the Rings, you should probably read The Last Ringbearer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Cheers.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 20, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Modern D&D is a lot better about this. Take Curse of Strahd for example. It's not just some faceless orcs you're killing. The main villain is a creep and the land is suffering because of him, so players are truly heroic figures standing up to a monster with powers of a demigod.
> 
> .




Celebrim made this point but neither was the original Ravenloft module about killing faceless orcs. That sort of became Ravenloft's whole thing with dark lords (which Strahd was the model for). 

I don't know I think people are often under the mistaken assumption if they can make their violent entertainment more wholesome or more morally appropriate, that will somehow fix the world. I think people in my age group, who lived through years of 'very special episodes' and who saw things like the Satanic Panic, are pretty wary and cynical about these kinds of efforts.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 20, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Since we're talking about Tolkien's works, there's an interesting book that offers a unique, alternative perspective. If you're struggling to find colonialism in D&D or in Lord of the Rings, you should probably read The Last Ringbearer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
> 
> Cheers.




I don't want to rehash this argument, because there is a closed thread dedicated to it (and I am still finding that discussion very unpleasant to think about). But I think this is a very strange way to make an argument. Number one, this book isn't even translated into English (at least not commercially). But more importantly anyone can write a book like that to make something look bad. But he is creating new material in order to build an argument. That doesn't reveal anything about Tolkien as much as it is a creative exercise. It is fine. I think that can be a cool thing to do (let's tell the Harry Potter Story from the perspective of Voldemort). But it is like shooting fish in a barrel because the author is in total control of the material.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

Xaelvaen said:


> Secondly, a personal anecdote - My players (21 years together this year) have come to bloody love kobolds.




One of my homebrew adventures involves the PC's investigating a series of attacks perpetrated by kobolds following a village festival.  The PC's are meant to treat this as stereotypical murderous banditry from an aggressive group of non-persons.  Certainly everyone in town is ready to pay the PC's to murder kobolds, and as inhabitants of the town they are certainly meant to sympathize with their neighbors.

But, as the dig a bit further, the twist is that there is more going on than the obvious, and that there is more than one side to the story.  Turns out that the kobolds moved into the area like 40 years before resulting in violence between the two communities, and the young burgomaster of the town decided that rather than witnessing the death of more young people in the town, he'd secretly form a peace pact with the kobolds.  He created a treaty where by, on the night before the festival, he'd leave several barrels of the famous beer manufactured in the town in an unlocked and unguarded warehouse.  The kobolds would then take the beer away.  In return, the kobolds would stop raiding chicken coups, stealing sheep, and invading peoples homes in the middle of the night.  Since the kobolds were terrified of the humans, this suited the kobolds just fine.   Two years prior, the now elderly burgomaster died, leaving instructions to his successor to put the beer in a particular unlocked and unguarded warehouse on the night before the festival.   The first year the new burgomaster did just as he was asked, and things went fine.  But the second year, the burgomaster decided that the whole thing was stupid, as he was now out the cost of several barrels of expensive beer.  Instead, the burgomaster sold the beer at a fine profit, and the kobolds showed up, decided that the lack of beer meant the humans were about to declare war on them, and some of the more impetuous warriors of the tribe decided that cunning was the best part of valor and they'd engage in a preemptive strike.   The kobold leadership for their part is anxious to renegotiate a treaty.

The point is, even if kobolds are sneaky evil git, injustices can still be perpetrated against them.  This is big part of my campaigns, if only because I find that subverting stories in this way makes for interesting twists.   The obvious sneaky evil git may not in fact be the one that has perpetrated a crime worthy of death, or the one that is actually threatening you and your community.  Regardless of predilections or appearances, even non-persons (and kobolds are explicitly non-people in my game, for reasons of cosmology and mythic backstory) deserve to be judged by their actions, if only for the sake of your honor if not theirs.  

Kobolds tend to be more or less neutral in my games.   They are basically intelligent vermin, and there is no more particular reason to kill one than there is to kill a rat that isn't in your barn eating your winter stores.   I mean, the same could basically be said for sprites in my game as well, and they are (sorta) persons or at least cosmologically have more claim to the title than kobolds.  On the other hand, goblins are explicitly persons, people, and a PC racial option in my game and have been since the late 1980s.   In fact, I've run games where everyone was required to start out as a goblin or a kobold, and I've had two hobgoblin PC's in my most recent campaign.

None of that was done out of any conscious impulse to be racially conscious or sensitive or any such crap.  In fact, the only change I've ever made in that regard was making Drow pale skinned, and that was done not because I think dark skinned elves were some sort of racial commentary, but because in the first I thought troglodyte peoples would tend to loose color and not gain it, and in the second because I wanted to be free to tell stories with Drow without some self-entitled idiot coming along and doing pop racial analysis on my stories and missing the point.

Anyone that thinks hobgoblins are some sort of stand in for a real world ethnic group in my game is in my considered opinion, an idiot.  For one thing, I'm not very fond of direct analogies.  I don't do the 'Orcs are minorities' thing that you see in a movie like 'Bright'.  Unless something has a one to and onto relationship between the thing and the thing it's referring to, chances are it isn't referring to that.  And for another thing, you haven't experienced my game and thus are in no position to judge.   And finally, I refuse to concede that you have some sort of privileged standing as a "reader" to tell me the living author what what I create actually really means.   If you want to read something into my work personal to your experience, I cannot stop you from doing so, but not only is doing so in my opinion a failure of empathy and understanding on your part, but it inherently only says something about you and nothing about me or my work.



> Anecdote aside - here's thirdly.  I've never, not once since 1989, been in a group where anyone would murder innocents for any reason.




I can't think of an incident where any player consciously did this either.  There have been murders by PCs in my game, but the persons in question were not innocent, or else the player didn't mean to kill them, or else the player had freaked out and acted impulsively.

In my current campaign, the PC's have murdered the following individuals:

a) A mortally wounded cultist who had moments ago been trying to murder them, and who had earlier in the even killed a number of innocent people.  The cultist lost consciousness from bloodloss while trying to open a door out of the dungeon, and the PC's began debating whether they should let her die or render medical aid.  After a round or two of this, one of the players, acting on their own, had their character stab the wounded woman in the back with a dagger.  The other players/PCs were too shocked by this turn of events to react.   Afterwards, a few of the PC's privately expressed to each other how shocked they were by this act and debated what to do about it, but decided that since this was a literal murderess that still had the blood of townsfolk on her person at the time she was killed, that no one in town was going to disapprove of the action and most of the town would have in fact been so angry at that point that they'd probably hail the PC as a hero.  So they decided to let the matter drop.

b) While investigating a dungeon seeking one group, the party uncovered the lair of a completely different group of villains.  After a pitched combat, they managed to capture one of the cultists.  A debate then proceeded as to what they should do with the captive, who as best as they could tell was part of some nihilistic Cthulan end of the world cult.  The captive however was right there listening, and I always reserve the right to treat table chatter as in character/in game.  When it became clear to the captive they were contemplating killing him, he tried to run away, and sprinted off down a tunnel with his hands tied behind his back.  Afraid that he'd get away, one of the PC's shot him in the back with an arrow, killing him.   I should note, on several occasions these debates over captives have resulted in the PC's releasing the captive on parole, so it's not inevitable that they have bloodthirsty ends.

c) After tracking down a necromancer to his lair, one of the players - acting on his own - decided that the best solution was to simply burn down the lair.  The necromancer escaped through a secret tunnel in his laboratory, but a (relatively) innocent and pregnant domestic servant in the household died in the fire. 

d) While trekking through a deadly jungle filled with undead, dinosaurs, and evil fey, the party came across a pair of strange lemur creatures sitting on a boulder.  When the archer perceived that the creatures were intelligent and armed, he decided the best thing to do was preemptively shoot one before it could attack.   As it turns out, these creatures were friendly and good.  The murder of one of their own by the PC's spread through the jungle, and thereafter the party found itself bitter foes of the lemur people.  It was only much later that the party worked out that they had indeed murdered an innocent and the lemur people had legitimate cause to fear and hate the party, but that was only after they'd slaughtered scores of them in a series of pitched battles.  Most of the party felt deeply grieved at that point, and made every effort afterwards to avoid contact with the lemur people and handle them with nonlethal force when possible.  

e) The party was exploring a catacomb, and had been told by the local temple of the God of Death that the objects in the catacomb were cursed, and that anything that they brought out of the catacombs had to be cleansed (for a fee) by the temple before it was taken anywhere else.   The first foray went well and the party dutifully turned over the coins that they had liberated and paid the fee, but the second foray was a disaster and in the confusion the party forgot to turn things over to the temple's representatives and instead turned the coins over to the parties factor for investment.  Unbeknownst to the PC's, this has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of persons and will continue to kill people for years until the cursed coins slowly leave circulation.  

I don't think anyone in the group is necessarily "okay with violence" and I've only had a couple players prone to murder-hobo-ism.  All the above cases are bad, and ultimately evil acts.  But they are also I think very human acts and instructive of how you don't need to be a snarling villain with expressly evil intent to commit evil.   At one level, I'm sympathetic to the question by the OP.  Incidents like the above show just how badly things can go wrong when violence is in your tool box and you're used to using it to solve problems.   War coarsens peoples morals, even if they have high honor and morals to begin with.   

But on the other hand, I'm not sure we are "ok with violence" in the way that is meant or that the particular reasons advanced why we ought not be "ok with violence" are as thoughtful as say the average Amish minister or 60's civil rights advocate advocating peaceful resistance would advance.   Or really, thoughtful at all.

I feel that since at least 1988 or so and I had the maturity to consider the question, my game has always had a nuanced take on conflict and violence, and that D&D has always allowed and sometimes even promoted these nuanced takes.   I don't agree that the stereotype is as pervasive as implied by some of the judgments here, and I bristle at the moral panic that seems to have developed or be developing around RPing.  Didn't we do this back in the 1980's?  It seems some of the people the least sympathetic to the feelings behind the moral panic in the 1980's are committing the same mistakes with this one.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Since we're talking about Tolkien's works, there's an interesting book that offers a unique, alternative perspective. If you're struggling to find colonialism in D&D or in Lord of the Rings, you should probably read The Last Ringbearer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer




I have read 'The Last Ringbearer'.  I consider it a distasteful, derivative, mockery of good which a person deluded by Morgoth might create.  It is no more nuanced or reasonable criticism of Tolkien and his works than 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is of Judiasm.  And quite frankly, I believe it exists to serve the same purpose.

If you can't create something interesting that stands on its own merit, don't purloin the work of someone else and distort it to draw attention to you that you'd otherwise not recieve.

UPDATE: And as others have noted, it's bizarre to claim you are trying to understand one person's works, by reading a work by someone else entirely.  If you can find "colonialism" in "The Last Ringbearer" it proves nothing about "The Lord of the Rings".


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Is it presumptuous to assume demons are evil?





Ilya Bossov said:


> Yes. Tieflings would like to have a word.



 Yeah, they have diabolic ancestry, not Demonic.  Totally different.




Celebrim said:


> I mean, heck, the whole XP primarily equals killing thing wasn't even a feature until 3e, so if that's your problem, then it's not old school games you have a problem with but modern ones.





lowkey13 said:


> Counter-counterpoint.
> 
> Typical play for AD&D was whatever I was playing.
> 
> Atypical play for AD&D was whatever you were playing.




Typical play wasn't.  

All we can go on, for sure, is the written rules at the time (& commentary, there was a lot of Gygaxian commentary woven into said rules), albeit, with the caveat that virtually no one used all of them, exactly as written, nor was there any given crazy rule that absolutely everyone ignored.

At very beginning, you got big chunks of XP for killing monsters.  Very quickly (Greyhawk!) that was reined in, and XP given for treasure, as well.  That was roundly criticized, and eventually became optional, then went away (as above, with 3e it was gone, replaced by Quest XP).  But, even when it was the law of the land, FWIW, along with huge gobs of gp being paid out for training to level up, the explicit rules-codified-in-B&W way of getting treasure, from the 1e MM in 1977 on, was to kill a monster with a nice Treasure Type.

Sure, many of us thought XP for gp was silly and dumped it, many of us thought treasure types were dumb and overruled them placing treasure in other ways, many of us added more elaborate rules for classes getting XP specifically for doing things related to their class abilities - but, as the rules themselves stood, FWIW:  XP for Gold, Treasure for killing the right monsters.


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## Xaelvaen (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> One of my homebrew adventures involves the PC's investigating a series of attacks perpetrated by kobolds following a village festival.




I love adventures of this vein, and use them quite readily myself, though this one in particular is an interesting take on money being valued more than safety - cleverly done.



Celebrim said:


> Anyone that thinks hobgoblins are some sort of stand in for a real world  ethnic group in my game is in my considered opinion, an idiot.  For one  thing, I'm not very fond of direct analogies.  I don't do the 'Orcs are  minorities' thing that you see in a movie like 'Bright'.  Unless  something has a one to and onto relationship between the thing and the  thing it's referring to, chances are it isn't referring to that.  And  for another thing, you haven't experienced my game and thus are in no  position to judge.   And finally, I refuse to concede that you have some  sort of privileged standing as a "reader" to tell me the living author  what what I create actually really means.   If you want to read  something into my work personal to your experience, I cannot stop you  from doing so, but not only is doing so in my opinion a failure of  empathy and understanding on your part, but it inherently only says  something about you and nothing about me or my work.




I had to read this one a few times, then check my previous post, to ensure I hadn't somehow offended you or even implied any judgement haha.  I'm not the sort to judge; creative freedom for everyone.  In truth, I agree with you whole-heartedly with regards to the living author and their creative direction.  Obviously, your players enjoy heartily that which you create, and who else is worthy of judgement of a GM's work?  None.  Also, your notation about the Drow rings true as well - we've done the very same thing purely based on the setting in which we all wanted to play.



Celebrim said:


> I can't think of an incident where any player consciously did this  either.  There have been murders by PCs in my game, but the persons in  question were not innocent, or else the player didn't mean to kill them,  or else the player had freaked out and acted impulsively.




I've never actually had that happen either - how did they handle the news of their activities, in example the woman in the necromancer's lair?  Did the players cope well, or was it purely an in-character demoralization (if even that)?



Celebrim said:


> But on the other hand, I'm not sure we are "ok with violence" in the way  that is meant or that the particular reasons advanced why we ought not  be "ok with violence" are as thoughtful as say the average Amish  minister or 60's civil rights advocate advocating peaceful resistance  would advance.   Or really, thoughtful at all.




That, was in fact, quite thoughtful and analytical of the current atmosphere.


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## billd91 (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I have read 'The Last Ringbearer'.  I consider it a distasteful, derivative, mockery of good which a person deluded by Morgoth might create.  It is no more nuanced or reasonable criticism of Tolkien and his works than 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is of Judiasm.  And quite frankly, I believe it exists to serve the same purpose.




Shocked! Shocked I am that someone from somewhere east of Western Europe might have a different perspective of a work that treats nations that come from further east than the Men of the West as dupes of evil *at best*. 
Shocked some more(!) I am that someone might make a derivative work to rebut ideas in it.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

Xaelvaen said:


> I had to read this one a few times, then check my previous post, to ensure I hadn't somehow offended you or even implied any judgement haha.




Sorry about that.  Strictly speaking, most of the time I employ the word 'you', I'm doing so improperly when I mean the English pronoun 'one'.   But the pronoun 'one' is so uncommon in modern English, that if I employ it correctly I end up sounding like an even more stilted stuck-up person than I actually am: "And finally, I refuse to concede that one has some..."   And dropping in 'y'all' creates the opposite problem.  So by 'you', please understand I don't mean 'you' specifically, but am referring non-specifically to other parties who may have the idea being discussed.



> I've never actually had that happen either - how did they handle the news of their activities, in example the woman in the necromancer's lair?  Did the players cope well, or was it purely an in-character demoralization (if even that)?




Depends on the player.  Some take moral issues more seriously than others.   For some it's all just a game, so they just shrug or laugh about it and move on.   In the case of the woman in the necromancer's lair, in campaign one of the reasons that necromancy is evil is that anyone that dies on necromanticly tainted ground tends to become undead, so I decided it was appropriate to have the woman haunt the PC that killed her as a ghost.  She's become a reoccurring character continually reminding the PC/player of the problem.  (As an aside, attempts to weaponize Barb the ghost have resulted in some of the most spectacularly evil things that the party has ever done.  To the extent that one of the characters now has evil on their character sheet as a result of interaction with Barb.)  

The BBEG in the campaign is a necromancer named Keeropus.  One long running element of the campaign is that when they trade words with Keeropus, he always taunts them by saying that they have it all wrong - he is the hero of the story and they are the villains.  Keeropus came to the party's attention after a tsunami destroyed half of the city they were staying in.  Keeropus excused the 10's of thousands of deaths he caused by claiming it was an accident and it was all for the greater good.  The longer the campaign goes and the more things that they've done that they regret, and the more things that they do that kill innocents 'for the greater good', the more seriously they are taking this idea.  So, while the players don't all take this seriously, and don't all see things the same way I do, on the whole I think the campaign is succeeding in its original philosophical goals.

One thing I've learned over the years is the sort of focus of play you can have depends on the number of players you have.   I have six players, so I don't really have the luxury of keeping the focus of play on deep internal exploration of character, simply because we can't focus the spotlight on one player for that long.    Likewise, not every player even is interested in that aesthetic of play.   If we had half as many players, the moral aspects of the campaign would probably be more highlighted.


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## dragoner (Jun 20, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Shocked! Shocked I am that someone from somewhere east of Western Europe might have a different perspective of a work that treats nations that come from further east than the Men of the West as dupes of evil *at best*.
> Shocked some more(!) I am that someone might make a derivative work to rebut ideas in it.




We still are considered subhumans, they hate us for just existing. The book is in fact a brilliant take on the tale.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

billd91 said:


> Shocked some more(!) I am that someone might make a derivative work to rebut ideas in it.




If it actually treated with the ideas in LotR, I might be sympathetic.  But it doesn't actually.  It attributes ideas to the LotR that are not found in it, and which are often as not contrary to the text itself.  It's an ugly fabrication.  

And if a writer of some foreign nation created an original epic based on the mythos of that nation, I'd probably be very sympathetic to it.  It wouldn't disturb me in the slightest that a Russian equated Westerners with dangerous invaders.  Heck, as blatant of a propaganda piece as the Stalinist work 'Alexander Nevsky' is, it's still a great work of art, and Tolkien's work is far more nuanced than 'Alexander Nevsky'.  And among other things, Tolkien's work - to the limited extent it addresses colonialist themes at all, and for the most part it doesn't because it's grounded in medieval mythos and not colonialist or post-colonialist - it's explicitly anti-colonialist.

As a test, here is how you know you've hit the mark when bringing a different perspective to an idea.  If the person with a different perspective is required to defend as reasonable your take on things then it's truly a different perspective.  If for example Tolkien upon reading 'The Last Ringbearer' would have been inclined to argue that even with the different perspective the elves are still the good guys, then you know you've done well.  But neither I nor Tolkien need to defend the 'people of the West' as imagined in 'The Last Ringbearer'.  

Besides which, I'm wondering if you've actually read it.  On the whole, 'The Last Ringbearer' does not really take umbrage at the whole east/west colonialist thing.  In fact, this shouldn't even be particularly surprising considering the guy is Russian, and if we wanted to have a talk about colonialism and the eradication of native peoples and cultures folks from Russia would not have a moral leg to stand on with respect to lecturing anyone.  I strongly suggest anyone investigate Russia's history of treatment of the aboriginal peoples of Asia if you want to have a discussion about colonialism.  Eskov certainly isn't interested in that discussion.

No, the real thing that burns the britches of Eskov is Tolkien's Catholicism, theism, and as he would have it anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and Luddite tendency to reject technological progress.  The fight in 'The Last Ringbearer' is between Reason (as symbolized by the Orcs) and Magic (as symbolized by the Elves).   This is not a simplistic East versus West conflict in Eskov's version of the history either, at least if you mean by East and West the real world's east and west.   According to Eskov, 'The Lord of the Rings' is about the rejection of reason, and not especially about "Colonialism" or even "Racism" except to the extent that the forces of Superstition use that to advance their cause.   The book ends with magic/superstition defeated, and the survivors of the war entering into an new age of Enlightened Industrialism.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

dragoner said:


> We still are considered subhumans, they hate us for just existing. The book is in fact a brilliant take on the tale.




Who is "we" and "they"?  And what is "the tale"? 

And if by "the book" you mean, "The Last Ringbearer", have you actually read it?


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## dragoner (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> Who is "we" ... ?




An Orc? Or maybe a Hobgoblin, who knows what they will say tomorrow. The truth remains, _that I would only turn my back to find your knife there; _or at least what counts.



> have you actually read it?




Да, конечно.


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## Celebrim (Jun 20, 2019)

dragoner said:


> Да, конечно.




Good.  And indeed, you have the advantage of me if you can read it in the original.

But I still haven't the faintest idea what you are trying to say.


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## dragoner (Jun 20, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> But I still haven't the faintest idea what you are trying to say.




It does not matter, nothing I can say would change it.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that modules were different.  You shouldn't look to them for what the base game expects.



Actually that would be the first place I'd look to see how the base game is intended to be played!

As in, OK - the DMG says "this", now let's see if the official published modules agree with it; because while the DMG can say what it wants the modules are where the rubber's gonna meet the road.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Yes. Tieflings would like to have a word.



Not in my game, they won't.  Demonspawn are, after all, still demonspawn...


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2019)

Ilya Bossov said:


> Yes. Tieflings would like to have a word.





Lanefan said:


> Not in my game, they won't.  Demonspawn are, after all, still demonspawn...



 A Tiefling, a Cambion, and an Alu-Demon walk into a bar...


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## Celebrim (Jun 21, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> The best firm of your argument I can divine is that, given equal empathy and faithfulness to the character portrayed, that speaking in first person with affectations of mannerism and accent, is prima facie superior to presenting the character in 3rd person.




I think you for your considered and thoughtful response.  Unfortunately, it goes wrong right with the initial assumption.   You start out well enough, but you end up focusing on what is I think a rather minor characteristic of the concept of speaking - namely, affectations of mannerism and accent.  Now, I like acting and accents and affecting different voices for characters.  In general, I think these are all net positives, and I'd strongly encourage people to at least try these things, practice doing it, and get better at them because of the value that that those skills can bring to the table.  By all means, put points on your "character sheet".

But ultimately, that's not really what I've been focused on here.  What I've been focused on as the essential element of speaking is concrete dialogue.  In other words, the most important element of the conversation is the words actually said, and that these are much more important and much more evocative than merely stating some abstract intention.  At some point, I might develop a longer post about when you might want to use some writerly technique or cinematic cut to skip over dialogue that doesn't add anything to the story, but for the purposes of what I'm talking about, anything that involves some sort of fortune test to determine what happens that does involve a potentially important plot point in the transcript of play deserves to also have dialogue as part of that transcript.

With that in mind, I'll try to tackle the argument you develop, although hopefully you already see why I can't respond usefully to every detail of your your argument despite it's elaborate structure, because the assumption it's based on doesn't really reflect my position.



> 1) performative acts by themselves do not increase the honesty and fidelity of the reoresentation of a character.  Else it would be true that all stage or screen representations of a given character from a novel would be superior to the written character.




Here you introduce a concept close to my concept of "reification" of the action.  You want to reify the character through its representation.  And while that's a slightly different idea than I've been using, it's congruent and I don't disagree with it as a goal of role-play.   If no one could ever say what character you were playing, or if the character seemed to have no fixed identity beyond that of a playing piece, I think we both agree that's inferior role-play.   Indeed, in point two you outline something similar to my argument by noting that the performative acts you care about can indeed increase character fidelity if done well, which is a parallel structure to my argument and honestly I think if you accept that then you ought to have no particular quibble against my argument.

However, you then go astray by focusing on the visual and audible elements of a performance, which as I said for me aren't crux of the matter.  My argument applies equally if we are playing some sort of MU* or PBEM game were we can only communicate by text.   Nor for that matter am I particularly concerned about first person or third person.  What I am concerned about is the generation of actual dialogue.  For example, I don't consider, "Good morrow, Captain.  I am Sir Reginald, and as you may have discerned, I am a Knight Templar of Holy Aravar the Traveller." and "Sir Reginald says to the Captain, "Good morrow, Captain.  I am Sir Reginald, and as you may have discerned, I am a Knight Templar of Holy Aravar the Traveller." to be very different.   Indeed, while the first person construction is preferred in longer conversations, the third person construction has it's place at the table.   For example, you might use it when it's not clear whom you are addressing, or to serve as a cue to end OOC discussion, or in an early session of play as a courtesy to reinforce the name of the character to your new comrades and to get the other players to begin to think of you primarily as your character for the duration of play.   However, both the first and third person constructions of dialogue are very different than the proposition, "I introduce myself to the Captain.", and at my table, that would often by rejected as an invalid proposition and as a GM I would follow up, with a prompt like, "Ok, tell me what you say.  Introduce yourself to the Captain."   If the player is nervous and stumbles about doing this, that doesn't really present a problem.   We have his character sheet to help inform us how charismatic Sir Reginald actually is.   But not having dialogue introduces at times unsolvable problems for me as a GM, as I'm unable to determine the content of the player's action, and further produces and inferior transcript of play and an inferior experience of role-playing.  

So you see, what we are comparing isn't really a novel and a movie, but a novel without dialogue to a novel with dialogue, or a movie without dialogue to a novel without dialogue.  You might be able to think of a few movies or novels that use clever writerly techniques of narration to achieve effects that might be difficult to achieve with dialogue, but you'll be hard pressed to think of beloved stories that dispense with it entirely, and I think you'll agree that the vast majority of the most beloved stories feature dialogue.  Heck, even the ones with just a single character tend to feature a lot of monologues, either spoken or internal, because verbal communication is so extraordinarily important.



> 4) Point 3 becomes even more obvious when the character becomes more fantastical and representation is outsude the physical abilities of the actor.  In the case of very fantastical things, acting cannot be said to be a more accurate representation of the character than a non-acted description of behavior may be.  The sound of a dragon's roar, for example, can have more fidelity as a description than as acted out by a participant.




You are I think coming toward the same conclusions I have made but from a different direction.  Remember, what I said is that all things being equal, we should tend to prefer the procedures of play that most closely resemble the things we are simulating.   That there are things we cannot closely simulate with a conversation I immediately conceded.  Indeed, I right at the beginning brought up something very close to the dragon example to explain why although we would prefer to act out conversations, there are elements of a fantasy game - in my example I noted combat - where we would prefer some other device for representing them.  So if you are reduced to describing a sound you can't in fact produce, that's OK.  But, this still doesn't justify a proposition like, "I try to persuade the Baron." or "I introduce myself to the Captain" over actually producing dialogue.  Even bad dialogue is more like dialogue than the absence of dialogue, and even bad dialogue and acting would be preferred to the absence of it on the additional grounds that you will never "get good" without practice.



> 5) Acting also tends to place more of the actor into the role.  There's a reason many good actors have a niche if characters they portray (Ben Affleck is a fine actor so long as he's playing a jerk).  This often results in a reversion to mean when acting -- tge further away a character's trait is from you, the less well it will be acted.  Hollywood can escape this by having scripts and directors, but still fails at times.  RPGs have no such controls, and player acting will always revert to closer to the player over time than to the character.




This assertion fails not just because it's not really acting that I'm concerned about, but because even if it were true the very same objection could be raised to playing a character without dialogue.  Playing the character without dialogue will not stop the PC from reverting closer to the player over time.   In my experience a minority of players can play a character that isn't basically themselves.  But this isn't a real problem - most real people are interesting in themselves - and the character will still be more interesting with their own dialogue than they will be without it, even if the player is basically just saying what they might think in the same situation.  

Finally, there is a false comparison that I think you are making throughout your argument where you are insisting that there may exist some version of the preferred thing - a thing you yourself admit preferring - which is so bad that it is inferior to the best version of the non-preferred thing.  Essentially you are saying that the acting may be so bad that the player would be better of not acting.  Or if we apply this to what I have been saying, that the dialogue may be so bad that the player would be better off not using dialogue.   I have a host of objections to this claim.   First, it is like claiming that since it might be the case that an assault rifle could be jammed or corroded, that soldiers ought to prefer going into battle with high quality butcher knifes.   But this is ridiculous not only because assault rifles are so obviously superior as weapons to butcher knives, but also because the same objection can be made to the butcher knife itself.  It could be broken or dull.  In the same way, if a player's dialogue is terrible, there is no reason to assume that their non-dialogue is going to be inherently superior role-play.   Secondly, I object to the argument because settling for not playing in a skillful manner because you aren't skillful, guarantees you'll never become skillful.  I've had at least a half-dozen shy nervous players over the year begin to come out of their shell and eventually have shining moments of awesome sauce producing  moments wonderful dialogue.  It's not necessarily a steady path to greatness and often they'll go back in their shell from time to time, but it's ridiculous to just say, "Well that player can't role-play so they shouldn't even try."   And thirdly I object to the argument because for the most part the contrived situation just doesn't come up.  Even the player's nervous attempts to speak in character are better than nothing.  Even putting one's foot in one's mouth still makes for more interesting play than declaring moves instead of roleplaying.  Finally, I reject this argument because I strongly believe that there is a great deal of symmetry between what is good play for a GM, and what is good play for a player, and in my experience all these things people are claiming to prefer as play for their player because they aren't comfortable with it, is rarely what they prefer from their GM.  Sure, there are times as a GM when you might decide that the details of the conversation aren't important, and it's best to just give a summary of what an NPC says, but as a GM I long ago learned that the impact of the scene framing "The jester tells a funny joke." is vastly different than framing the scene with the jester actually telling a funny joke and nothing could change that.


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## Hussar (Jun 21, 2019)

It’s not really that hard to find colonialist themes in early dnd. 

Isle of Dread is a start as is Keep on the Borderlands. The Giants modules aren’t a bad example, nor are the Drow modules. 

While Saltmarsh isn’t too bad, the later modules are all about the (predominantly white) humans being threatened by the lizard folk and sahuagin. Finding colonialist parallels there isn’t much of a stretch. 

This shouldn’t be shocking considering the roots of dnd. Pulp fantasy wasn’t exactly the most ummmm politically correct genre.


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## Celebrim (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> It’s not really that hard to find colonialist themes in early dnd.
> 
> Isle of Dread is a start as is Keep on the Borderlands. The Giants modules aren’t a bad example, nor are the Drow modules.
> 
> ...




Amongst committed Christians there is an neurosis that sometimes develops where the person begins to perceive in more and more things that power of Satan evidenced in the world.  Soon thier thoughts become dominated by the idea that everything is in some fashion controlled by powerful demonic forces that are manifesting around them.  It's bad theology even in terms of theology, and it has often lead to some of the worst evils committed in the name of Christianity.  In even it's more benign forms, it leads to people going around denouncing Satan "in all his forms" and casting Satan out of ordinary benign and harmless things, a condition which becomes eventually indistinguishable from madness.

I feel this whole "colonialist themes" has become the same sort of thing.

It is not sufficient to draw some sort of a vague parallel, proof texted from a couple minor passages taken out of context, or relying on one possible meaning of a single word to show that something has "colonialist themes".   Yeah, finding colonialist parallels isn't too much of a stretch, but not because the documents are colonialist in intent or inspiration, but because finding a parallel between something when that's what you wanted to find and expected to find in the first place is not at all hard.  Just cherry pick your evidence, and viola.

All you have to do is ignore that the Lizard Folk in question are actually meant to be wise allies of the townsfolk, and that the PC's are intended to ultimately discover that their actions in presuming the monstrous nature of the Lizard Folk were rash and murderous, or that the Saughin are devil worshipping fish people that live under the sea and that they are most certainly and without a doubt not intended to represent any real world ethnic group.  They are freaking devil worshipping monsters.  Just ignore all of that.

Yes, but other than that, yeah there are "colonialist parallels".   Just set out with a thesis first, and then find the evidence.  Throw in some innuendo about the relationship to pulp fantasy and you are done, right?


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## Hussar (Jun 21, 2019)

Nice [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION].  Folks that disagree with you are now delusional.  Yeah, that's going to go over well.

Of course, it's convenient when you ignore 2/3rds of the examples I posted to fixate on the one that maybe you can argue with.  That's pretty much par for the course.

Look, it's pretty simple.  Early D&D draws very heavily from the pulps.  Yes?  We can agree on that?  Genre pulps of the early 20th century were misogynistic, racist, bigotted and deeply, deeply grounded in colonialist ideology.  So, it's not really a shock when early D&D also shows signs of being misogynistic, racist, bigoted and grounded in colonialist ideology.  I'm rather surprised that this is even contentious to be honest.  I figured that this was pretty much common knowledge.  

First half of the 20th century genre fiction was racist, bigoted and grounded in colonialist ideology should not be news to anyone.  

It's shocking how far people will go to rewrite history in order to somehow protect this idealized fiction of history that people have constructed in their heads.  Tolkien included instances of racist ideas in his writing - again, this is not news.  This is not surprising.  This is just accepted fact that has been accepted fact by anyone who isn't interested in rewriting history for decades.  It's not shocking that a writer in England at that time would have some cultural baggage creep into his writing.  It doesn't make him a bigot.  It doesn't make anyone who likes Tolkien's writing a bigot.  It just means that nothing is perfect.  We see it, we acknowledge it and we move on.

Same goes for early D&D.  Huh, shock, an American using early 20th century pulps as inspiration, writes stuff that, decades later, isn't really considered acceptable anymore.  SHOCK.  The HORROR.  Oh my god.    Good grief.  This is like saying rain is wet.  Again, it gets acknowledged and we move on.

What, exactly, are you defending here [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]?


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## billd91 (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> What, exactly, are you defending here [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]?




His right to cherrypick out of context with the best of them? The issue with the lizard men in the Saltmarsh series may be drawing the PCs into a misunderstanding (and may work against the colonialist narrative), but picking that one as if it refutes all really isn't dealing with the issues in Keep on the Borderlands, the name level privileges of some high level characters in 1e, and so on. Someone who approaches the game with a perspective of wanting to explore those issues will certainly find them (but then, literary criticism is pretty much like that).

That doesn't mean I don't find problems with the colonialist conceptual framework since, as I see it, the issues are far older than the Age of Colonization. Colonialism is mostly a convenient buzzword that fits certain other political frameworks, I think, so the people using them can avoid interrogating other parts of history.


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## Maxperson (Jun 21, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> Actually that would be the first place I'd look to see how the base game is intended to be played!
> 
> As in, OK - the DMG says "this", now let's see if the official published modules agree with it; because while the DMG can say what it wants the modules are where the rubber's gonna meet the road.




I disagree.  Modules were largely created for tournaments and conventions.  They are also not presumed by the game to be used.  They were completely optional.  It's also easier to tone down a module to make it fit a smaller group, than it is to ramp it up for a larger one.  These are reasons why modules are at the high end of the number of players the game expects.  They don't contradict the 3+ expectation at all.


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## Maxperson (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Look, it's pretty simple.  Early D&D draws very heavily from the pulps.  Yes?  We can agree on that?  Genre pulps of the early 20th century were misogynistic, racist, bigotted and deeply, deeply grounded in colonialist ideology.  So, it's not really a shock when early D&D also shows signs of being misogynistic, racist, bigoted and grounded in colonialist ideology.  I'm rather surprised that this is even contentious to be honest.  I figured that this was pretty much common knowledge.




Or else Gygax and others understood that the PCs needed something to face and just picked monsters to stand against them.  It had nothing to do with any sort of real world parallels at all.  It seems silly to me to be offended by something that isn't actually there.


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## Hussar (Jun 21, 2019)

Wow.  it just never stops does it.

A.  It doesn't offend me therefore it's not offensive.

B.  Folks are just looking for something to be offended about so they can feel good about themselves for opposing it.

C.  People are just too stupid to actually know what's really going on, but, I'm smarter than everyone else, so look at my superiority and be amazed.

Did I miss any of the typical arguments?  I probably did.  I'm just too disgusted frankly to bother to look any harder.  This is just sad.

I'm going to take the [MENTION=6943731]dragoner[/MENTION] option and bow out now.  it's just so not worth my time.


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## Michele (Jun 21, 2019)

We have no problems with violence in RPGs for the same reason why we have no problems with violence in fiction. In other games. And especially in sports.
Mind you, either it's not real violence (in fiction and games), or it's a strictly codified, limited form of violence (in boxing or football). Those are ways to vent the tendency, or at least the capability, for real violence that we have.

We are, of course, capable of real violence because until yesterday it was necessary for survival. It was necessary to fend off enemies, to find food and to secure the possibility of procreating. Survival for yourself, for your offspring, for your community and for your species.

Now it's no longer so much needed, yet we are still wired in the same way. We still have testosterone, vasopressin, adrenaline and whatnot. So violent sports (watched or practiced) and fictional violence are probably ways to sublimate the pressure. Playing a violent videogame is possibly not well accepted socially, but it does not land you in jail.

Why is it better to kill monsters in RPGs? Because it's easier to kill enemies and non-humans. Killing humans goes against the last of the commandments of survival because it attacks the species; but it is acceptable if they are enemies threathening you survival, your offspring's survival, or your community's survival.
But if they are no threat to any of the above, if they just mind their business in their cave, killing them and taking their stuff is more difficult... unless, well, they actually are not human. Then there is no attack on your own species. If they actually aren't humans, or if you can at least convince yourself that they are not humans, then they are fair targets.

"Colonialism" does not play any role here, of course, especially in the meaning that it seems to have assumed today, but not even in its proper historical sense. What we are looking for when we decide that we can assault the kobold tribe is de-humanization. Which is something we are all able of; for instance, Hutus and Tutsis called each other "cockroaches" and "snakes" - then proceeded with a nearly successful genocide of the Tutsi. The reason why it's practical to place a bag on the head of captives is that it's then easier to mistreat prisoners, or to kill hostages. If they are able to show their faces and eyes, it's more difficult to forget they're humans.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Wow.  it just never stops does it.
> 
> 
> Did I miss any of the typical arguments?  I probably did.  I'm just too disgusted frankly to bother to look any harder.  This is just sad.
> .




People just genuinely disagree about this stuff. It doesn't mean they are evil. I find the colonialism in D&D argument fairly silly myself. I don't think the people advancing the argument are bad. I just think they are seeing something that isn't there and they have an elaborate argument defending it. Personally I find the logic a bit tortured. But I find the logic for lots of things tortured. Does it really warrant disgust if people genuinely don't think something is present or that it isn't present in sufficient quantity to impact things or worry about?


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Nice @_*Celebrim*_.  Folks that disagree with you are now delusional.  Yeah, that's going to go over well.




I grew up in a very, very religious community. I think delusional is a strong word but I do think Celebrim is hitting on something that is real. There does seem to be a religious like impulse in the chasing of perfection here. And there is an ultimate evil that we are trying to purge (even when, as you yourself point out, it isn't fully evil itself, it is just imperfect---referring to your Tolkien example). And it does seem like the moment people disagree they start getting viewed as if they are the evil itself as well. I think people taking your position are trying to improve the hobby. I just think it is a misguided way to do so. And I think it gets into repressive territory that ultimately will make things worse in the long run. And when I say repressive what I mean is you are advocating for people to repress ideas that are not even consciously bad. But ones that you must interrogate to find the problem. That makes the natural free flow of creativity fairly difficult. And having grown up in a repressive religious environment, it isn't something I want to placate in my hobby.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 21, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I think you for your considered and thoughtful response.  Unfortunately, it goes wrong right with the initial assumption.   You start out well enough, but you end up focusing on what is I think a rather minor characteristic of the concept of speaking - namely, affectations of mannerism and accent.  Now, I like acting and accents and affecting different voices for characters.  In general, I think these are all net positives, and I'd strongly encourage people to at least try these things, practice doing it, and get better at them because of the value that that those skills can bring to the table.  By all means, put points on your "character sheet".
> 
> But ultimately, that's not really what I've been focused on here.  What I've been focused on as the essential element of speaking is concrete dialogue.  In other words, the most important element of the conversation is the words actually said, and that these are much more important and much more evocative than merely stating some abstract intention.  At some point, I might develop a longer post about when you might want to use some writerly technique or cinematic cut to skip over dialogue that doesn't add anything to the story, but for the purposes of what I'm talking about, anything that involves some sort of fortune test to determine what happens that does involve a potentially important plot point in the transcript of play deserves to also have dialogue as part of that transcript.
> 
> ...




This is a pretty big shifting of the goalposts from “acting” to “should provide concrete dialog, in some form.”  You’re able to dismiss large parts of my argument because you assign them to the performative aspects of acting while you try to focus on the provision of dialog – a distinction you may have intended all along but have failed to illuminate until now.  And, to top that off, you dismiss some of my arguments because you can assign them to performance and ignore that they are still talking to your dialog points.
 
 


> Here you introduce a concept close to my concept of "reification" of the action.  You want to reify the character through its representation.  And while that's a slightly different idea than I've been using, it's congruent and I don't disagree with it as a goal of role-play.   If no one could ever say what character you were playing, or if the character seemed to have no fixed identity beyond that of a playing piece, I think we both agree that's inferior role-play.   Indeed, in point two you outline something similar to my argument by noting that the performative acts you care about can indeed increase character fidelity if done well, which is a parallel structure to my argument and honestly I think if you accept that then you ought to have no particular quibble against my argument.




Yes, but CAN doesn’t imply MUST, or even ONLY.  May be sufficient but not necessary is something I keep saying. 



> However, you then go astray by focusing on the visual and audible elements of a performance, which as I said for me aren't crux of the matter.  My argument applies equally if we are playing some sort of MU* or PBEM game were we can only communicate by text.   Nor for that matter am I particularly concerned about first person or third person.  What I am concerned about is the generation of actual dialogue.  For example, I don't consider, "Good morrow, Captain.  I am Sir Reginald, and as you may have discerned, I am a Knight Templar of Holy Aravar the Traveller." and "Sir Reginald says to the Captain, "Good morrow, Captain.  I am Sir Reginald, and as you may have discerned, I am a Knight Templar of Holy Aravar the Traveller." to be very different.   Indeed, while the first person construction is preferred in longer conversations, the third person construction has it's place at the table.   For example, you might use it when it's not clear whom you are addressing, or to serve as a cue to end OOC discussion, or in an early session of play as a courtesy to reinforce the name of the character to your new comrades and to get the other players to begin to think of you primarily as your character for the duration of play.   However, both the first and third person constructions of dialogue are very different than the proposition, "I introduce myself to the Captain.", and at my table, that would often by rejected as an invalid proposition and as a GM I would follow up, with a prompt like, "Ok, tell me what you say.  Introduce yourself to the Captain."   If the player is nervous and stumbles about doing this, that doesn't really present a problem.   We have his character sheet to help inform us how charismatic Sir Reginald actually is.   But not having dialogue introduces at times unsolvable problems for me as a GM, as I'm unable to determine the content of the player's action, and further produces and inferior transcript of play and an inferior experience of role-playing.
> 
> So you see, what we are comparing isn't really a novel and a movie, but a novel without dialogue to a novel with dialogue, or a movie without dialogue to a novel without dialogue.  You might be able to think of a few movies or novels that use clever writerly techniques of narration to achieve effects that might be difficult to achieve with dialogue, but you'll be hard pressed to think of beloved stories that dispense with it entirely, and I think you'll agree that the vast majority of the most beloved stories feature dialogue.  Heck, even the ones with just a single character tend to feature a lot of monologues, either spoken or internal, because verbal communication is so extraordinarily important.




This is the goalpost shift, and, honestly, I think it cuts against your argument.  If it’s only dialogue that matters, then the manner in which that dialog is delivered should have no bearing on the representation of character.  And, yet, If I deliver the line, "Good morrow, Captain.  I am Sir Reginald, and as you may have discerned, I am a Knight Templar of Holy Aravar the Traveller," in a bored and sarcastic tone vice a cheerful and friendly tone, then a difference is had.  You’re trying to argue that the only relevant part of acting to your argument is the delivery of dialog, but this is flat out untrue.  Tone, mannerism, etc., all matter as much, as they change the intent and even message delivered.  You cannot separate dialog from acting as you’ve done and have it retain meaning.
 
You also address the poor dialog here, and say it does not matter so long as the player provides some dialog.  I, again, disagree.  What you’re doing here is ignoring poor dialog and inserting some imagined delivery and speech to get to the player’s goals.  All you’ve done re: in game dialog is force the player to accede to your preference and then, if the performance does not align with the character or the player’s intent, you actually ignore the performance and just deal with the stated intent.  You discard your own requirements.
 
And, I run into this quite often with one of my players, who can describe how their character acts in character well, but becomes flustered when having to put it into dialog and often reverts to aggressive or dismissive words in that frustration.  I do not require that they provide dialog – they choose to often because they’re working on this for themselves – because I, so often, must ignore the provided dialog and instead adjudicate the intent.  This directly cuts against your argument that dialog improves roleplaying.  It does not in this case, and you haven’t shown that it improves roleplaying in the best cases, either.  That you prefer it just means that you appreciate roleplaying with good dialog, but it doesn’t mean that this is universal or objective.
 
 


> You are I think coming toward the same conclusions I have made but from a different direction.  Remember, what I said is that all things being equal, we should tend to prefer the procedures of play that most closely resemble the things we are simulating.   That there are things we cannot closely simulate with a conversation I immediately conceded.  Indeed, I right at the beginning brought up something very close to the dragon example to explain why although we would prefer to act out conversations, there are elements of a fantasy game - in my example I noted combat - where we would prefer some other device for representing them.  So if you are reduced to describing a sound you can't in fact produce, that's OK.  But, this still doesn't justify a proposition like, "I try to persuade the Baron." or "I introduce myself to the Captain" over actually producing dialogue.  Even bad dialogue is more like dialogue than the absence of dialogue, and even bad dialogue and acting would be preferred to the absence of it on the additional grounds that you will never "get good" without practice.




This is handwavy.  The division isn’t between a well delivered flowery introduction and a bald declaration.  You’re taking the best of yours and putting against the worst of the others.  If the declaration was, “Bob the Bard introduces himself to the Baron, using his knowledge of the nobility to recite the Baron’s lineage in glowing terms, and presenting himself as a humble supplicant for favor.”  This works better for me than a partial, back and forth switch between dialog (that may be badly formed and delivered) and declarations of the things the player doesn’t know (presumably the Baron’s lineage).  It’s also, in my opinion, closer to what’s being simulated, which is Bob the Bard’s impressive knowledge of nobility and his ability to easily manipulate the vain.  The player may not have these qualities at all. 

(Not that I accept that "closer to what's simulated" is the desirable goal.)
 
And that’s not even getting into the fantastical.
 
 


> This assertion fails not just because it's not really acting that I'm concerned about, but because even if it were true the very same objection could be raised to playing a character without dialogue.  Playing the character without dialogue will not stop the PC from reverting closer to the player over time.   In my experience a minority of players can play a character that isn't basically themselves.  But this isn't a real problem - most real people are interesting in themselves - and the character will still be more interesting with their own dialogue than they will be without it, even if the player is basically just saying what they might think in the same situation.




This is valid, but it was your conjecture that acting improves roleplaying without qualification.  Showing that this is untrue in regards to your assertion is not rendered a less effective argument if it’s also untrue in regards to other assertions.  Examine: if the claim is that the sky is red, showing that it is not is not defeated if the counterargument is that the ocean is also not red.



> Finally, there is a false comparison that I think you are making throughout your argument where you are insisting that there may exist some version of the preferred thing - a thing you yourself admit preferring - which is so bad that it is inferior to the best version of the non-preferred thing.  Essentially you are saying that the acting may be so bad that the player would be better of not acting.  Or if we apply this to what I have been saying, that the dialogue may be so bad that the player would be better off not using dialogue.   I have a host of objections to this claim.   First, it is like claiming that since it might be the case that an assault rifle could be jammed or corroded, that soldiers ought to prefer going into battle with high quality butcher knifes.   But this is ridiculous not only because assault rifles are so obviously superior as weapons to butcher knives, but also because the same objection can be made to the butcher knife itself.  It could be broken or dull.  In the same way, if a player's dialogue is terrible, there is no reason to assume that their non-dialogue is going to be inherently superior role-play.




The argument isn’t the assault rifles are inferior to butcher knives, it’s that a jammed and corrodes assault rifle IS inferior to a functional butcher knife.  I don’t have to show that your assertion is wrong in all cases (and I’ve clearly not made this argument), I just have to show that your universally stated assertion is wrong in at least one case.
 
Bad acting being inferior to not-bad declaration is sufficient to defeat your statement that acting is the height of roleplaying.
 


> Secondly, I object to the argument because settling for not playing in a skillful manner because you aren't skillful, guarantees you'll never become skillful.  I've had at least a half-dozen shy nervous players over the year begin to come out of their shell and eventually have shining moments of awesome sauce producing  moments wonderful dialogue.  It's not necessarily a steady path to greatness and often they'll go back in their shell from time to time, but it's ridiculous to just say, "Well that player can't role-play so they shouldn't even try."   And thirdly I object to the argument because for the most part the contrived situation just doesn't come up.  Even the player's nervous attempts to speak in character are better than nothing.  Even putting one's foot in one's mouth still makes for more interesting play than declaring moves instead of roleplaying.




Well, as I don’t define “roleplaying” as synonymous with “providing dialog”, sure.  I also having said that acting isn’t fun, or enjoyable, or something that shouldn’t be encouraged if the players enjoy it.  So, now that we’re done with the strawmen, all you’ve said here is that practicing something means you can improve in that something.  This is trivial, and does absolutely nothing to bolster your claim that acting improves roleplaying.  It also doesn’t go to any of my points, as I’ve not made the argument that practice doesn’t lead to improvement, but that acting is not the pinnacle of roleplaying.
 


> Finally, I reject this argument because I strongly believe that there is a great deal of symmetry between what is good play for a GM, and what is good play for a player, and in my experience all these things people are claiming to prefer as play for their player because they aren't comfortable with it, is rarely what they prefer from their GM.  Sure, there are times as a GM when you might decide that the details of the conversation aren't important, and it's best to just give a summary of what an NPC says, but as a GM I long ago learned that the impact of the scene framing "The jester tells a funny joke." is vastly different than framing the scene with the jester actually telling a funny joke and nothing could change that.




Oh, I strongly disagree with this.  I am a GM mostly, and I bounce between description and dialog all the time, but the crux of my job isn’t dialog, it’s description.  The jester telling a joke, for instance, strikes me as badly off as an example.  The point of the scene I’m framing is not the joke the jester is telling, it’s something else, and the jester’s joke is a minor detail to that point.  Wasting time actually telling a joke, which may or may not be found funny by the players (and, given my propensity to Dad jokes, likely the later, although I’ll be amused), actually acts to obfuscate the important points of the scene I’m framing.  I can hardly think of a better example of where dialog actively harms the play of the game but yet may greatly aid the enjoyment of the performance of the GM.  It so well illustrates the underlying premise of my point – that acting is your preference because you enjoy it (doing it and observing it) and that this doesn’t mean it’s the best for roleplaying in general.


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## Maxperson (Jun 21, 2019)

Hussar said:


> Wow.  it just never stops does it.
> 
> A.  It doesn't offend me therefore it's not offensive.




If you have to invent something that doesn't exist, like a real world connection that isn't there, how is it offensive?



> Did I miss any of the typical arguments?  I probably did.  I'm just too disgusted frankly to bother to look any harder.




Not looking is probably why you are making connections that don't exist.


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## Maxperson (Jun 21, 2019)

Bedrockgames said:


> I grew up in a very, very religious community. I think delusional is a strong word but I do think Celebrim is hitting on something that is real. There does seem to be a religious like impulse in the chasing of perfection here. And there is an ultimate evil that we are trying to purge (even when, as you yourself point out, it isn't fully evil itself, it is just imperfect---referring to your Tolkien example). And it does seem like the moment people disagree they start getting viewed as if they are the evil itself as well.




Yep.  As soon as I pointed out that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is jumping at shadows, he demonized me and then left the thread to get away from "Satan."


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## Celebrim (Jun 21, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a pretty big shifting of the goalposts from “acting” to “should provide concrete dialog, in some form.”




I didn't move the goal posts.  You did.  At no point did I ever include acting, accents, or mannerisms in my discussion until you brought them into it.   When I provided examples, it was always contrasting dialogue with its absence.  How can you accuse me of moving the goalposts?   At this point you are arguing with yourself, and you don't need my help for that.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 21, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> I didn't move the goal posts.  You did.  At no point did I ever include acting, accents, or mannerisms in my discussion until you brought them into it.   When I provided examples, it was always contrasting dialogue with its absence.  How can you accuse me of moving the goalposts?   At this point you are arguing with yourself, and you don't need my help for that.



You clearly said "acting" in your earlier posts.  If you had a narrower definition, that was the time to present it.  If you wait until a response addresses "acting" to clarify, that's moving the goalposts.

And, to boot, dismissing the entirett of my argumeny because you don't nean funny voices us ignoring that the performance of the dialig is still critically important -- sarcastic vs bored vs excited all change the exact same dialog to very different meanings.  Try "I believe you," each way for reference.  This means even your ckarification of "dialog" is incomplete.

That said, I addressed the just dialog aspects and the complete performance aspects above, so adjust as needed to whichever you mean at the moment.


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## Celebrim (Jun 21, 2019)

Ovinomancer said:


> You clearly said "acting" in your earlier posts.




This claim so shocked me that I did a text search over the last 140 posts, just to see if I had misspoke or what I had written that had so mislead you.   And you know what I found?

Despite being a wordy often overly verbose writer, I hadn't used the word "acting" except when quoting you.   In fact, other than you, no one was regularly using the word "acting" in the same sense as you are until you introduced it.  Whenever someone else was talking about it, they used in the sense of "doing" such as a GM "acting in the role of referee".  

In particular, please start with post #200 where I began to outline my viewpoint with respect to why combat and social interaction needed different proposition declarations.  When you initially quoted me in post #264, the entire post you quote doesn't contain the word "acting", yet you respond 4 times with the word "acting" in your brief refutation.  Then when I replied and you started to develop your argument, you used "acting" 10 more times even though I still hadn't mentioned it once.  Only in post #281 do I start using the word "acting", but the 5 occasions are either quotes of the dictionary or otherwise only in refutation of your claim that acting is unrelated to role-playing and only because I had to that point assumed you were using acting in a way synonymous with my earlier claims and not to specifically to mean mannerism.   I still was unaware how far we were diverging in the conversation.   When you respond, you use acting 13 more times, and now start insisting that acting includes mannerism and the like, which I don't refute, but never considered particularly important.  Only at that point did it hit me that you considered the essential part of acting as you were using the word to be the performance aspects.  Acting has always been your thing in this thread not mine, and it's very easy to go back and read the last 140 posts (or just our exchanges) and see how you have been from the start trying to hijack what I was saying with "acting", something I admit I never realized until you outlined a detailed counter-argument that depended on contrasting books with movies (!!!).  

Yes, I concur.  Fidelity through acting would be great when it can be achieved.  Good acting would be superior to poor acting.   But those statements, while true, don't address my point (which is why I'm happy to agree with them).  Further, you continue to try to treat my argument as a binary qualitative one (either it's necessary or not, for example) and not a quantitative argument.   So whenever you admit to "better", whether you know it or not, you agree with me.   Nor does one counter-example in this case refute me, and if you go back to post #200 you'll see why when I explain for example why it's not a counter example to claim that my position would require RPers to be LARPers.

Again, what I am talking about and have always been talking about works pretty much the same way whether we are at a table together or playing a MUSH.   So I can separate dialogue from acting.  All your issues of mannerism and description and what have you can be addressed just as well in text as live performance, and pretty much anything that can be written can be stated in play to address gaps in the players ability to act - which again I consider largely irrelevant to the conversation but has, as I've demonstrated, been your thing.


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## Ovinomancer (Jun 21, 2019)

Celebrim said:


> This claim so shocked me that I did a text search over the last 140 posts, just to see if I had misspoke or what I had written that had so mislead you.   And you know what I found?
> 
> Despite being a wordy often overly verbose writer, I hadn't used the word "acting" except when quoting you.   In fact, other than you, no one was regularly using the word "acting" in the same sense as you are until you introduced it.  Whenever someone else was talking about it, they used in the sense of "doing" such as a GM "acting in the role of referee".
> 
> In particular, please start with post #200 where I began to outline my viewpoint with respect to why combat and social interaction needed different proposition declarations.  When you initially quoted me in post #264, the entire post you quote doesn't contain the word "acting", yet you respond 4 times with the word "acting" in your brief refutation.  Then when I replied and you started to develop your argument, you used "acting" 10 more times even though I still hadn't mentioned it once.  Only in post #281 do I start using the word "acting", but the 5 occasions are either quotes of the dictionary or otherwise only in refutation of your claim that acting is unrelated to role-playing and only because I had to that point assumed you were using acting in a way synonymous with my earlier claims and not to specifically to mean mannerism.   I still was unaware how far we were diverging in the conversation.   When you respond, you use acting 13 more times, and now start insisting that acting includes mannerism and the like, which I don't refute, but never considered particularly important.  Only at that point did it hit me that you considered the essential part of acting as you were using the word to be the performance aspects.  Acting has always been your thing in this thread not mine, and it's very easy to go back and read the last 140 posts (or just our exchanges) and see how you have been from the start trying to hijack what I was saying with "acting", something I admit I never realized until you outlined a detailed counter-argument that depended on contrasting books with movies (!!!).





The below is the post of yours immediately before my enumerated argument.  Emphasis mine:


Celebrim said:


> Nor is it merely a preference and subjective just because you claim it is so.
> 
> *Even the very definition of role-playing suggests a strong and natural connection between acting and the act of role-playing:* "the acting out of the part of a particular person or character, for example as a technique in training or psychotherapy"  To suggest therefore that this connection is therefore only a preference, and not in some way closely connected to the act of role-playing and in particular to the degree and quality of the role-playing requires a very high burden of proof on your part.   At the very least, you have to address the argument I have developed showing why it was the "superior form of role-playing" (as you put it).   And though I'm not one, I'm inclined to think that a therapist or an occupational trainer would agree and encourage the more immersive, more literal experience, for much the same reasons that I've outlined.   For one thing, when you are applying role-play to train a person for some real life experience, you need that person to act as much as they would in real life as possible.
> 
> ...




I hope this clears up your confusion on this matter.



> Yes, I concur.  Fidelity through acting would be great when it can be achieved.  Good acting would be superior to poor acting.   But those statements, while true, don't address my point (which is why I'm happy to agree with them).  Further, you continue to try to treat my argument as a binary qualitative one (either it's necessary or not, for example) and not a quantitative argument.   So whenever you admit to "better", whether you know it or not, you agree with me.   Nor does one counter-example in this case refute me, and if you go back to post #200 you'll see why when I explain for example why it's not a counter example to claim that my position would require RPers to be LARPers.



I actually do address why your argumeny is not quantitative but qualitative, you just keep ignoring it.  Also, as I've been sayin that acting may be sufficient but is not necessary, I fail to understand hiw you could categorize that as "binary."  You've made a clear absolute statement -- that "acting," however defined, is necessary for superior roleplay.  I only have to show thus false in one particular to defeat it.  This isn't a false binary, it's how you argue against absolute statements.
[Quite]
Again, what I am talking about and have always been talking about works pretty much the same way whether we are at a table together or playing a MUSH.   So I can separate dialogue from acting.  All your issues of mannerism and description and what have you can be addressed just as well in text as live performance, and pretty much anything that can be written can be stated in play to address gaps in the players ability to act - which again I consider largely irrelevant to the conversation but has, as I've demonstrated, been your thing.[/QUOTE]
I deny this is true.  Again, take the text, "I believe you."  Delivered in a sarcastic tone, the meaning conveyed is actually opposite of the literal meaning.  It's also very different from the same text delivered in an awed tone, or a fearful one.  You cannot claim that dialog alone conveys all necessary meaning.  You have to include the performative aspects because, once you insist on performance, it's a package deal.  You are declaring that you ignore performance when it is not sufficuent and then argue performance is necessary.  Can't have it both ways. 

Look, wanting performance at your table is a perfectly valid preference.  I have no idea why you're insisting your preference defines GoodRightFun for roleplaying.  I quite often find my game is sometimes improved be my not acting out parts and instead just describing, on both sides of the screen.


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## TallIan (Jun 21, 2019)

Michele said:


> We have no problems with violence in RPGs for the same reason why we have no problems with violence in fiction. In other games. And especially in sports.
> Mind you, either it's not real violence (in fiction and games), or it's a strictly codified, limited form of violence (in boxing or football). Those are ways to vent the tendency, or at least the capability, for real violence that we have.
> 
> ...[snip]...
> ...




I wonder how much western childhood education (education here means parents teaching their kids as well, not just formal education) comes into this?  My wife is a primary school teacher and takes an absolute approach of "violence is wrong".  This is line with most education systems I have come across.  They leave no wiggle room for self defense, self preservation, mutual consent or other justification.

Then as the child grows up he is exposed to violent sports, such as rugby or american football (where mutual consent to limited violence is key to this not being a crime), then bloodsports, such as boxing (again mutual consent and fewer limitations), then TV and film (fictional volence), where violence steadily increases with age limits (even My Little Pony has fight scenes) with the violence having almost no consequences for young audiences (the attacked usually suffers very little ill effect) to violence simply being a solution to the hero's problem.  The mooks are entirely dehumanised, they are merely an obstruction that disappears after a punch or kick.

All the while they are told, "Violence is Bad!"

So we are left with a simple moral question of "Is he bad? Yes. Kill him."  But the definition of bad is essentially "not the same as me." and many adults are ill equipped to actually deal with the moral question of, "When is violence acceptable?" because the only answer they can give is, "When is not against a person." and this allows all kinds of media to perpetuate violence by labeling the victims of violence as monsters.

Now compare that to something where morality is not so complex.  Sexual violence is always wrong and IMX very, very few groups will accept it in a game and even then usually only in the vaguest of terms and usually as a way to dehumanise the bad guys.  There is even a thread on this forum (I think, it might be GitP) about a DM getting thrown out of a convention for having it in his game. Because everyone is well equipped to deal with this particular moral question, even if it is simpler.

I limit my theory here to western cultures because African (I speak from close - though thankfully not eyewitness - experience, having grown up there); Middle Eastern (Second hand experience from friends in the army) and Oriental (from a medium term work placement away from tourist areas) Cultures have a different (IMO a much more callous) view of human life or violence.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (Jun 21, 2019)

Violence can be bad, but it can also be very necessary. In D&D its usually very necessary to get those GP and XP.


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## Michele (Jun 21, 2019)

TallIan said:


> All the while they are told, "Violence is Bad!"




There is nothing wrong in providing fictional bad examples of bad things.




> So we are left with a simple moral question of "Is he bad? Yes. Kill him."  But the definition of bad is essentially "not the same as me." and many adults are ill equipped to actually deal with the moral question of, "When is violence acceptable?" because the only answer they can give is, "When is not against a person."




Well, no. I disagree. It is entirely possible to say "bad = enemy", and as I mentioned above, staying with the basics, an enemy may well be another human, if he threatens your survival, the survival of your offspring, or the survival of your community. And I disagree this is not a thing in the West. Self-defense, legitimate defense, are very strong in the public opinion in the West, and will not be absent in the life of the mind of a kid as he grows. And not all fiction portrays the victim of violence as an innocent pedestrian who's just crossing the street as the protagonist speeds away on his stolen car; pretty often, the plot makes it clear that the opponent of the protagonist is a legitimate enemy.



> and this allows all kinds of media to perpetuate violence by labeling the victims of violence as monsters.




As mentioned above, that's the way out when you can't credibly portray them as enemies.


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## dragoner (Jun 21, 2019)

TallIan said:


> ... Cultures have a different (IMO a much more callous) view of human life or violence.




[video=youtube;dMeZCPbM6bA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMeZCPbM6bA[/video]

One country stands out in being the most violent and warlike.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> I disagree.  Modules were largely created for tournaments and conventions.  They are also not presumed by the game to be used.  They were completely optional.



In theory, yes.  In practice, not so much: after about 1978 did anyone anywhere run a D&D campaign (or nigh any other RPG campaign, for that matter) without using at least one published module?

Yeah, didn't think there were all that many. 

Which means, there's a whole lot of DMs - and, by extension, players - who cut their teeth on the published modules and were thus informed on a few general expectations of play: big* parties and some level variance within those parties.

* - by today's standards.



> It's also easier to tone down a module to make it fit a smaller group, than it is to ramp it up for a larger one.



I've always found either conversion to be about the same amount of work, that being not much.



> These are reasons why modules are at the high end of the number of players the game expects.  They don't contradict the 3+ expectation at all.



Many games give a range for number of players, but fail to note where in that range the game works best.  Monopoly says "from 2 to 8 players" but doesn't say that a game with just 2 players doesn't work very well nor that a game with 8 players can be pure hell.

D&D can be played with just 2 people, for all that: a DM and a solo player.  The game recommends 3+ so as to have 2+ players and thus allow for PC interaction, which is great.  But what's not made clear until one looks at the modules is that, although it says 3+ on the box, the expectation (and thus, design assumption) is that there will either be several more players or that players will be running more than one PC each.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2019)

It's a truism of internet discussion that if you make a general statement about what people have done, someone will pipe up with a testimonial to the exact opposite.  

This time, it's me.



Lanefan said:


> In theory, yes.  In practice, not so much: after about 1978 did anyone anywhere run a D&D campaign (or nigh any other RPG campaign, for that matter) without using at least one published module?



 My longest-running AD&D campaign went from '85 through '95, and used not a single published module.  But then, I never ran modules after the first year or two with the game. 
I played in enough - and in a campaign that was essentially an endless random dungeon, for crying out loud, talk about desperation - in the early years, but I was always more intent on creating something of my own when I ran.


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## Maxperson (Jun 21, 2019)

Lanefan said:


> In theory, yes.  In practice, not so much: after about 1978 did anyone anywhere run a D&D campaign (or nigh any other RPG campaign, for that matter) without using at least one published module?
> 
> Yeah, didn't think there were all that many.
> 
> Which means, there's a whole lot of DMs - and, by extension, players - who cut their teeth on the published modules and were thus informed on a few general expectations of play: big* parties and some level variance within those parties.




We ran modules once in a while, but not as part of campaigns usually.  The vast majority of our campaigns were with adventures we created in worlds we invented.



> D&D can be played with just 2 people, for all that: a DM and a solo player.  The game recommends 3+ so as to have 2+ players and thus allow for PC interaction, which is great.  But what's not made clear until one looks at the modules is that, although it says 3+ on the box, the expectation (and thus, design assumption) is that there will either be several more players or that players will be running more than one PC each.




It doesn't say "can be played with 3+"  It says, "Ideal with 3+"  Games like Monopoly are not ideal with 2 players.


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## dragoner (Jun 22, 2019)

Maxperson said:


> We ran modules once in a while, but not as part of campaigns usually.  The vast majority of our campaigns were with adventures we created in worlds we invented.




We played most of the modules, in the World of Greyhawk setting as a campaign, adding stuff too; we also war gamed the little states using the rules and counters from TSR's Battle of Five Armies. Played MERP, converted it first to AD&D then to RuneQuest. I still think that the D1-3/Q1 were pretty great series of modules.


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## aramis erak (Jun 22, 2019)

I know that the US in general  is more tolerant of violence in other media and less tolerant of sexual content than the rest of the English speaking world, and Gygax and Arneson both were in the US.

past that, I've never bothered thinking about it.


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