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[NullForceOmega]

You know, on the point of violence vs. heroism, it's kind of funny but I rarely run a game of D&D where killing is even common.  It happens but rarely is it as straight forward as: there is an orc, it is evil, kill it for xps.  Far more often my players end up fighting humans (or elves, maybe gnomes) with different goals to their own, not because they are evil.  They do sometimes come up against 'savage' humanoid enemies, but they only occasionally have to kill them, often they can disable a few key guards and sneak by.  Every once in a while tho' they'll have to unload on a large group of hostiles (often in the form of ambush) and there will be substantial bodycounts.  I tend to think of that as being more 'realities of conflict" than good or evil.  Sometimes those acts are good or evil, but that is rarely obvious to the players.

RIFTS, on the other hand, generally devolves into straight up overblown ultra-violence.  Eventually the collateral reaches idiotic levels and you just have to accept it.

[Trekkin]

So we can put Jimmy down as a solid "let the discussions of expanded matters run mostly free."

You can put me down there as well. RPGs are not going to survive as a hobby if we don't acknowledge that they're created entirely by people, some of whom have overtly terrible intentions and many of whom are unknowingly writing things that can make people uncomfortable but all of whom benefit from the tacit endorsement provided by unwillingness on our part to examine the problems with their content, and we can't fully understand those problems, let alone how to do better, without a human context for those decisions.

[Kagus]

Chris Fields, of course, is exclusively a force for good in the universe.

[Mephisto]

Chris Fields, of course, is exclusively a force for good in the universe.

Furries and tentacles (and probably furry tentacles, or am I remembering HC SVNT instead?) are people too!

Also, completely distinct individual who is not this Chris Fields. Now that I know about this "innovative dice-based tabletop roleplaying system that allows for an extensive range of character customization and personal choice", I may have to pick it up and see what it do.

[Kagus]

Chris Fields

Dammit, I knew I should've included the "A for Abomination"... Curse you generically-named people and your shared names!

EDIT:

Select your character’s species from one of 44 distinct choices

Holy fuck. First you had my attention, now you have my consternation.

EDIT2:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Yes hello, I am a Normal Human Adventurer. Would you be so kind as to point me towards the nearest Normal Human Quest?"

[MrRoboto75]

You know, on the point of violence vs. heroism, it's kind of funny but I rarely run a game of D&D where killing is even common.  It happens but rarely is it as straight forward as: there is an orc, it is evil, kill it for xps.  Far more often my players end up fighting humans (or elves, maybe gnomes) with different goals to their own, not because they are evil.  They do sometimes come up against 'savage' humanoid enemies, but they only occasionally have to kill them, often they can disable a few key guards and sneak by.  Every once in a while tho' they'll have to unload on a large group of hostiles (often in the form of ambush) and there will be substantial bodycounts.  I tend to think of that as being more 'realities of conflict" than good or evil.  Sometimes those acts are good or evil, but that is rarely obvious to the players.

RIFTS, on the other hand, generally devolves into straight up overblown ultra-violence.  Eventually the collateral reaches idiotic levels and you just have to accept it.

I wonder if removing gold as XP and NPC morale checks makes more killing in newer D&D than AD&D.

[Criptfeind]

If you make it so that people get rewarded for killing, they'll kill people. If they get rewarded for not killing people, they won't kill people. It all depends on your reward structures. So, kinda yeah, but there's no need to set up a reward structure for killing in newer D&D either, although that is a basic assumption that has a lot of support built for it, the game also includes support for other reward structures.

If you make a gold as exp system in particular, the reward system becomes focused on whatever makes gold. If killing makes gold, the players will still kill a lot.

[Kagus]

But what if killing people is just an inherently rewarding activity?

Asking for a friend.

[Mephisto]

I wonder if removing gold as XP and NPC morale checks makes more killing in newer D&D than AD&D.

I'd lean toward older games having a smidge more killing. I mean, at a certain point, they added "non weapon proficiencies." That implies that you're intended to do two things - combat and not-combat. And before those proficiencies, the "not-combat" bit was just DM fiat. So maybe there was more roleplaying and less mechanization. I wasn't around then so I can't really say.

But on the flip side, people nowadays may say "kill them and take their stuff". The phrase itself, however, has its origins in the depths of early RPGs. One of the characters from KotDT says "I loot the bodies" so much that it's basically his catchphrase.

Spoiler: Kagus SpiderMan (click to show/hide)

We've come full-circle. This a Numenera thread again. An official supplement has PC octopi; I'm sure there are PC spiders.

[Cthulhu]

oh no were not talking about zak are we


But yes, removing gold for xp increases killing, in concert with the death of the True Megadungeon in favor of more linear experiences.  Swords and Wizardry (OD&D clone) generation averages about 75% of xp from treasure, its prudent to minimize combat.  True megadungeons also typically have a lot of strategic options in navigating the dingeon which gives the players plenty of room to avoid extra fights. 

Really there's a lot of things that encourage fighting, built into the systems.  I got in an argument on reddit over whether or not changing enemy stats behind the DM screen to make fights harder is railroading.  The idea that youre forcing the players to waste additional resources is completely lost on 5e players who dont have to manage them.   Doing that in OSR games is basically punishing the players for doing a good job, they cant chill in a cleared room and be good to go again.

Speaking of osr anybody played boot hill before?  Gygax made a western about the same time as D&D and the 3rd edition is back in print.  Great shootout mechanics and a fun minimalist campaign system, thinking about running an outlaw campaign for my irl group, i know they like westerns

[Mephisto]

oh no we're not talking about zak are we

Were. I news-dropped because I thought it was important. People can do with the info what they wish. I'm fine transitioning to talk about slaughtering elves and burning down their forests for the ecks-pees now.

Speaking of osr anybody played boot hill before?  Gygax made a western about the same time as D&D and the 3rd edition is back in print.  Great shootout mechanics and a fun minimalist campaign system, thinking about running an outlaw campaign for my irl group, i know they like westerns

The closest I've gotten to western-played-straight (meaning no funky stuff like Deadlands) is owning Aces and Eights. I'd be interested in how it goes, though. Is it basically D&D mechanics minus magic and funny ears plus ten gallon hats and whiskey?


Actually, I'll just go inform myself. I am incorrect. Editions 1 and 2 appear to be percentile systems, while 3 uses a d20-roll-under system, according to random internet people.

[Cthulhu]

Aces and 8s is very similar to boor hill 3e ive heard, with 6 second shootout turns divided into 1 second counts.

The campaign is old school, remember dnd started as a wargame.  The traditional campaign described in the book has a hex map of a fictional region in texas and people choose roles, usually outlaws and lawmen, and it's competitive, where the outlaws are trying to escape the map with 100,000 dollars and the lawmen have to catch the outlaws.  It sounds fun but is also sounds very complicated if you've got people in different parts of the map.   I will probably do something more modern but freeform, write up a bunch of org charts for gangs and organizations, flesh out the random generation tables, then do the old "what do you want to do next session" and prep something for them.  The game is minimalist enough it should be easy to just wing 90% especially with pregenerated npc factions, and ive got some ideas on how to generate racks of random npcs with excel

[Kagus]

Can you build Bob Munden as a character?

Spoiler: Kagus SpiderMan (click to show/hide)

We've come full-circle. This a Numenera thread again. An official supplement has PC octopi; I'm sure there are PC spiders.

Octobook offers them as a PC race? That makes a bit more sense as to why they had a book dedicated to octopuses...


And on another note:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Even ignoring the fact that this is a 6' Hercules beetle that's wearing pauldrons, and that he probably doesn't have the manual dexterity or joint rotational range to actually put on any of the stuff he's got on his back (let alone access it for use)... Aren't those pouches the wrong way around?

...unless... unless he actually uses his hindmost legs to handle his abdomen like many beetles do, and as such accesses the pouches from behind before then sending the item up through the ranks of legs until it reaches his field of vision. This is meta.


Shit, I might have to pick up a copy for myself to see how insane this thing gets.

[scriver]

Hehe, that brings back memories. One of the first games I played on these forums was as a giant bug called Boggotuarach. He was supposed to be able to telekinesis things around but he never got good at it.

[Cthulhu]

Can you build Bob Munden as a character?

Sure just give him 20 coordination, 6 pistol skill, and like 30 fast draw and he'll smoke anything.