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Growing older and RPG violence

Interesting thread and question.

For me I have to agree that I tend to be less violent overall in my RPG play. I am 47 now and I enjoy the story more then when I was in my teens and just wanted to "level".

However I have also noticed that when the group desides violance is needed we are much harsher and more violent. We tend to pull out all the stops once we go there.

One other thought, the newer RPG offerings also offer a greater range of options for play and the older games tended to reward violent acts above other actions. That could have an impact on the shift as well. Just a thought.

Daniel
 
I never considered an adventure a success unless we went the whole session without a shot being fired.
Oh, theres been a few severe beatings, several near fatal accidents and the odd stray explosion, but zero gunplay.
 
I have created a Traveller scenario where the Adventurers are responsible for SAVING an important NPC framed for a murder he did not commit.

#1. Scenario requires zero gunplay, zero violence on the part of the characters.

#2. Scenario does require investigative/detective work. It requires the PCs to gather evidence in order to vindicate the NPC they are trying to save, and prove that their client is innocent of the charges leveled against him. If the PCs fail to prove their client's innocence, the client will be executed for a capital crime quickly, since this occurs on a Planet with a high law level, and the client in question is an ethnic minority (thus has limited legal rights).

#3. At the final part of the scenario, the PCs having gathered enough evidence, must act as Legal representatives in a local planetary Court of Law. They must use Legal skill (or Admin skill) to plead their case, and present their convincing evidence. I force them to role-play this. Rolling skill checks is not good enough for me. ;)

#4. The only violence in the scenario? An NPC villain, part of the cabal that framed the "suspect NPC" gets 1 quick opportunity to 'ASSASINATE' the one Player-Character who is chosen as the lead defense counsel to the framed NPC. This assassination/sniper attempt occurs right before the Characters are due to attend the trial.

A couple of my players told me they absolutely enjoyed this kind of scenario. Scenarios that required intelligent brainwork, rather than senseless gunplay. I might upload it in PDF format sometime soon. Or maybe just have it freely published in some fanzine.
 
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ravells said:
I wondered whether others have found that they prefer less violent solutions in rpgs as they've got older?
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Some random thoughts on the subject:

As a player, while I do still sometimes enjoy playing mindless gun-bunnies (aka Jayne), I have recently played alternative non-violent characters. For example in a recent AD&D game my character was stuck in an Alamo-style siege and in the night before the final battle snuck out and arranged a peace deal. Later in the same game the party had to rescue a hostage of some lizardmen ... the party recon'd the lizardmen camp and while the rest of the party discussed tactics I walked in, heard out the lizardmens' grievances, and negotiated the safe return of the hostage. Combat avoided. Strangely this was not appreciated by the other players.

But as a Referee I've not shied away from violence as I've got older but preferred, where appropriate, to change its style. I now prefer less Hollywood glamour gore and more personal, nasty, and ugly. Including post combat ramifications. (In one Traveller game I ran a female character who had received servere abdominal trauma, after eventually being discharged from hospital had to confront her parents and explain to them why they'd now never be grandparents.)

However, as a Referee you have to tailor your approach to the group and its environment. With a large group of younger players in a noisy game club then one or more Hollywood combat scenes per session is expected. But with a smaller group of more mature players in a quiet setting you can explore other aspects of role playing.

Maybe its a boredom thing. As you get more experienced as a player you've done the violence for the sake of violence thing (many, many times). Now you want to explore some of the implications of violence and of alternative non-violent resolution of violent conflict. And even of non-violent conflict.
 
I haven't noticed too much of a change for me. I reckon that I've always seen RPG's as a hybrid of wargames and story-telling and I want to have both elements present each time.

The thing that keeps me coming back to the violence-based games as a GM is not so much "killing for the love of killing" (to paraphrase the evil guru from Gunga Din) is that it can serve so many functions for various players. Some are stuck in the 16 year-old "killing stuff is cool" mindset. Others just love the puzzle aspect of making the right tactical move, it's a problem to be solved. Others just like the idea of winning, beating the NPCs. As a player, I myself am a showboat, I like to try crazy stunts.

While it's certainly possible to fufill all those aims in non-violent games, the danger and violence raises the level of concern, the level of vicarious fear or risk, so it simply does it the easiest possible way.

On the other hand, I do admit I do react quite differently to movie violence than I did 25 years ago when I was in high school. I tend to feel bad for the nameless extras who get killed, even if it's just "window dressing" not crucial to the plot (usually just when they're on the good-guys side, but still it's a bit of a buzz-kill).
 
Hemdian said:
However, as a Referee you have to tailor your approach to the group and its environment. With a large group of younger players in a noisy game club then one or more Hollywood combat scenes per session is expected. But with a smaller group of more mature players in a quiet setting you can explore other aspects of role playing.
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I think this is a good observation. The level of violance has more to do with the make up of the group and what kind of game the group is looking for then the ages of the players or GM. A group that is looking for a more "wargame" or boardgame like experiance would enjoy a lot more combat then a group looking for a shared story experiance.

One other thought, I think the level of violance and the post combat ramafications also vary in the same way. I was in one group that loved combat each game meeting, but if they "healed" too fast they felt it was somehow Odd.

Daniel
 
As a player I think I solidified my style in my late teens/early twenties. I don't mind violence in the game - I think that it pushes the stakes up, and generates drama. But I like the role-play aspect of gaming, and when violence happens I tend to want it to have emotional or social consequences.

If my character makes it out of a firefight alive, he's going to be pretty hepped up on adrenaline, panicky and hyper-alert. If he kills or loses friends, he's going to be kinda freaked out. If he or other PCs kill people in cold blood, it's like "Wow. You're kind of psycho..." and he'll have problems with it.

Violence is useless if it's just a case of "Okay, you shoot the guy, his head explodes, and you move on to the next room." It's an event that should sear itself into the memories of the characters. If that happens, then violence can add to the story, make PCs more interesting and inform their motivations.
 
atpollard said:
Sounds interesting, but a jail break might be faster. ;)
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DOH!! LOL, now *that* would be the pro-violence and pro-confrontation option. :p

The way the scenario is set up, there is really no need for a jailbreak. The Courts are fair. The legal system is fair. It is simply a matter of finding evidence that proves that the client is innocent of the charges leveled against him.
 
One of the things I like the most about Traveller was that gunplay has consequences. The wild, wild west attitude got people killed or inprisoned. In Traveller, it is real easy to die. Therefore, my groups always kept gunplay down to a minimum. Most of the violence was a beat-down.

My group was always looking to make money, legally or otherwise. The best campaign my group ever ran had absolutely no violence. Well, up until the point we blew up the Haunting Thunder (An AHL Cruiser we salvaged from Querion) during a 3-way attempted hijacking.
 
sfchbryan said:
One of the things I like the most about Traveller was that gunplay has consequences. The wild, wild west attitude got people killed or inprisoned. In Traveller, it is real easy to die. Therefore, my groups always kept gunplay down to a minimum. Most of the violence was a beat-down.
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I think a possible factor may be that as the Referees get older, said refs may be more willing to play out and enforce the not-so-nice consequences of violence, therefore making it somewhat less desirable.
 
Combat has been a part of every RPG I've played. It's often the easiest way to manage confrontation in a dramatic setting... which is why it's so often used in TV and movies.

I found it easier to run non-violent games in Traveller than in any other game.

One example was in the 80s (yes, I'm in my 40s as well). I ran a game where there was a plague on a planet. The characters were stuck, not allowed to leave. They discovered political intrigue, some stealing, and eventually that hte plague was a created disease. The entire thing was 80% RPing and figuring stuff out and then 20% the combat (they decided to storm the lab, steal the antidote and run off).

I ran one game that was just trading. It was just specualtive trading, buying, figuring out where to go, travelling, RPing on planetside. The only time combat entered in the game was the party taking a hit to their ship, then mis-jumping into deep space.
 
Much much less than as a teen. I didn't want complex entanglements back then. I'm more prone to reading Homer or Maya Angelou now. Back then I wanted nothing to do with them, because they were boring. I reckon Babylon 5 would have put me to sleep...

D&D targets youthful vigor, and therefore wins the teen and adult markets...
 
ravells said:
I'm not sure if it's just me, but as I've grown older (ripe old 42 now), I've found myself avoiding violent confrontations in rpgs (unless absolutely necessarry) than actively going out to look for them (which I did when I rpg'd in my teens). In real life I've always avoided violence (at any age), but I wondered whether others have found that they prefer less violent solutions in rpgs as they've got older?

Just curious

Ravs
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I try to avoid them, but other players usually start them and I have to save them or figure out a way to win. Kind of hard to avoid when other players are trigger happy or think with their emotions and use their anger.
 
Norman King said:
I try to avoid them, but other players usually start them and I have to save them or figure out a way to win. Kind of hard to avoid when other players are trigger happy or think with their emotions and use their anger.
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Yes, use their anger. Let them come to the Dark Side. Mwahahahahahha!
 
ravells said:
I'm not sure if it's just me, but as I've grown older (ripe old 42 now), I've found myself avoiding violent confrontations in rpgs (unless absolutely necessarry) than actively going out to look for them (which I did when I rpg'd in my teens).
Click to expand...

Yep, it is the same with me. The older I get, the more I like a quote from
Isaac Asimov: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
 
Violence has its place in any story. I have always tended towards characters that are either extremely peaceful or problematically violent. Even in the case of the problematic ones, I always try to make it fit, and never have it be gratuitous.

But, when its on, its on.

Thought exercise: You are on an old, but functional space vessel. You are used to space travel, but still in the animal back of your mind the knowledge is there that only a thin wall seperates you from death. Suddenly, your routine is interrupted by a sudden appearance of armed strangers cutting through the airlock... Pirates!

In the above, I would imagine that the fight or flight reflex would be triggered so strongly, that combat between both sides would be as quick and as bloody as possible. There would be no mistake that it is life or death stakes.

It is my opinion that if you are going to have games with combat and combat systems, then it is both the GM and Players' responsibility to show it as "real" and as consequential as possible. War, Battlefields, and Violence can all be described objectively and have just as much dramatic impact as they would be being described gratuitutously. People shouldn't just turn into ice cream when they get shot or stabbed. It has to have impact on the storyline.

"Hack and Slash/I kill everyone in town" is quite frankly, kid stuff. Players that play homicidal characters tend to have a hard time fitting into a group, and disrupt the flow of the game to say the least. Even when playing James Bond, an Assassin, or a Vampire, you still have to have the sense to know when and under what circumstances to kill. It should never be wantonly for a PC.

This is a great topic!
 
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