Violence in games

Howdy ya'll. I've been toying with game ideas and have come across an odd predicament: I don't feel comfortable with violence anymore.

Video games get a pass unless it's realistic or graphic. I think this is because in ttrpgs, I feel more a part of it - like it's actually me doing these things.

How much in the minority am I? How do others feel about this?

If I wrote a game that made violence less appealing, would the whole game be discounted by potential players?

Anyway, just had to get some other thoughts, if you'll share.

Thanks.

So be it. I don't see that as a problem. At some point, you either get fed up with it or become so numb to it that you don't even notice it anymore.

I would write something simple, with little or no violence. Anyone can add more violence themselves, according to their own taste.

So, maybe some people won't like it because of that, but others will like it all the more.

There are many non-violent campaign premises which are totally fine. A cosy mystery usually has all the violence happen off-screen before the adventure starts. Golden Sky Stories are meant to be entirely nonviolent. Then there are other mostly nonviolent campaign premises - consider something loosely inspired by relational dramas like Gossip Girl, professional dramas like Shirobako, the Crazy Ones, or Century City, afterlife bureaucratic dramas like Tomorrow, life buraucratic dramedies like Yes Minister, sports RPGs like Fight with Spirit (for nonviolent sports anyway). All of those look like promising bases onto which an entirely nonviolent campaign can be built.

So I don't think lack of violence is a reason for a campaign premise to be discounted.

OTOH, the argument that that TTRPGs feel more like you doing stuff . . . I think if I follow that logic, then I would not have much issue with violence in RPGs, because, like in real life, violence is acceptable for things like self-defence or defence of others. And in RPGs, violence seems to be predominately used in contexts such as rebelling against galactic empires, fighting off invaders, destroying rampaging demons and the like, which seem like acceptable-to-use contexts.

How do you feel about the threat of violence? A really tense story could be told, with a horrible outcome to be avoided at all costs. Gothic horror just lurking in the shadows.

Like burlesque, all tease, no sleaze.

Generally, I feel the same way. I am so fed up with violence and hatred in the real world, I want to escape into a fantasy one. Obviously, I don't expect NPCs in a game to be any different from humans in the real world, but I'd like to have the means to make them non-violent for a change. Just to say "chill" to a goblin swinging his pathetic short sword.

Still, there are foes I'd like to sadistically murder in a game, but most of the foes aren't those foes, and if they never wronged me personally, never wronged anyone I'd care about, then why in the world would I want to be violent towards them? Live and let live… or eradicate everyone equally, like the Black Death, to fight climate change.

Agreed! In addition to having a campaign with no violence in a game that has rules for combat, there are plenty of RPG's that don't have any combat at all.
Just like some of the most popular video games don't feature combat or violence.

There are non-violent games, such as Wanderhome by Jay Dragon. Other games like Gumshoe need no violence to resolve the central tension of the game.

After all, violence is just one form of dramatic tension that drives the plot of a story.

Thank you everyone, for all the feedback. There seem to be a lot of things that I wasn't considering. And as usual there are games I'm unaware of.

In my current game, players are in the final stage. There’s no killing, though there was in earlier stages. I think I’ve lost my appetite for blood and gore.

My next game will *probably* be something campy that will involve nonlethal combat. I still like action and fight scenes… but they don’t have to end with rolling heads and pools of blood.

I'm comfortable with different levels of violence as long as the group I'm playing with is also.

I wouldn't want to bring violence into a non-violent game or ban it from a Inherently violent game.

As mentioned above there's lot of options for games which focus on non-violence, and generic systems like Fate can focus on non-violence as easy as violence.

I think it's important for a game and the participants to establish what a game is about including the level of violence, if that could be an issue.

Ages ago there was quite the argument about whether RPGs could be "any good" without violence. You can imagine where that discussion went, as it was spelled out by many of us just how many games aren't violent at all. Now conflict -- I will admit that's what I'm personally looking for in many (most?) of my gaming experiences. Interesting conflict and resolution.

(And okay fine, many of my own games have moments of intense violence, but those scenes are intended to hit hard rather than be something that just eventually desensitizes everyone at the table. Constant fights with no / low stakes? Pass.)

I use a 'Red Line' system for my game. Players are asked when they apply to join the group whether there are any aspects of gameplay that they explicitly don't want to witness in my game narrative.

* violence,
* gnomes,
* elves,
* dwarfs with Scottish Accents,
etc.

Players who state a specific 'Red Line' are then advised either to look elsewhere for a game, or the 'Red Line' is adopted by the groups as a condition of play.

So far, nobody has expressed opposition to 'Violence'. The only 'Red Line' agreed by my last group was a ban on 'Explicit Sexual Roleplay'.

Stories don't need to involve violence at all. Pride & Prejudice is generally considered an essential part of the literary canon in English, and there`s not even the hint that violence could be a possibility in that story.

I think violence is an easy way to capture plot progression through conflict/confrontation, and so it's very convenient to throw a brawl or three into a story.

It's certainly not an essential component for storytelling, though, and seeking other types of stories doesn't speak negatively of you at all. If you're looking for people to play a game not built around violent confrontation, I'm sure you'll find players.

When I GM I've tended to try not to let violence be glorified - never make it something 'fun' but always sort of horrid and grotesque and lightly upsetting. A grim necessity of conflict taken to impasse. And I tend to have badly injured parties try to escape rather than just throw their lives away on nothing. I don't think it solves your particular problem, but it's how I confronted the sort of violence-as-fun aspect of the hobby which is the bit I found a bit distasteful, and players tend to adapt without really realising. Mine tend to avoid fights, and I try to empower that (whilst throwing in the odd unavoidable one because they did invest character resources in their combat abilities.)

Most conventional stories are, at their hearts, conflicts of some kind. So you can replace violence with any other medium of confrontation without changing the core mechanics of a lot of systems. Or you could make most violent confrontations non-lethal, or unrealistic and slap-stick. Plenty of video games can tell a tonal range of stories within cartoony worlds, and many cartoons maintain a semi-serious tone without rating themselves out of a younger audience (Adventure Time?). Perhaps when the villain drops to 0 hp that's the point where you get to tie them up and foil their evil plan?

I think if you set the expectation clearly and you don't use a system that's too crunchy (and thus necessitate the removal of its built-in perception of violent confrontation with heavy mechanical adaptation - looking at you D&D/Pathfinder) you won't find many players who're put off. The ones who are are probably exactly the people you wouldn't want to play with anyway, who enjoy revelling in their graphic and splattery victories.

That said, if you try to remove or reduce the presence of all conflict in general I think you'll struggle to tell a compelling story.

So... dwarves? Just: no dwarves.

...

...

I keed I keed

I have no issue with violence at any level. A game must have some kind of conflict with consequences, or what is the point of playing? Could that conflict be something other than violence? Sure, but it is highly unlikely that I would play such a game. FWIW, I tell my players upfront that there will be violence in my games. To each their own, but I want to play Savage Worlds, not Happy Happy Friendly Worlds. The violence doesn't have to be gratuitous, unless it fits the game. In a horror game, violence is expected. Same with a Conan-esque game. I would expect blood to flow by the gallon. In a fantasy game, it doesn't have to be the focus, but I still want there to be the occasional murder or threat of violence.

There have been games that I played or PbPs that I read in which a player or two did something cruel and bizarre to a much weaker NPC. In each case, I found myself detesting the PC.

I don’t even think (at the time) it was violence itself that bothered me, but there’s a line. I can’t define it until it’s been crossed, so it’s probably best I stick to campy, cartoonish RPGs with non-lethal combat going forward.

My players do their level best to avoid unnecessary violence. They are very good at violence, when necessary, but they prefer to talk, as opposed to running in with blades flashing. And they will not hesitate to take prisoners when they can. We're playing the Kingmaker AP from Paizo and they have allied with more foes than they have killed.

Personally, I think the violence in games is therapeutic. Not unlike the manikins of the boss, some Japanese corporations allow their workers to whale upon in order to relieve their frustrations. In RPGs, players get to identify the bad guys and kill the bastards instead of having to grovel on their knees at their feet like they do in their real lives.

As GMs, we just feed them suitable representations of the people they would really like to kill in real life and let them enjoy themselves doing it.

Wanderhome, The Quiet Year, Ion Heart, Echo, these off the top of my head, do not rely on violence as a resolution for conflict. These games aim to achieve other goals.

Alternatively, there are games for which the violence is presented in less realistic forms, such as cartoony, or without lasting effects (ie knocked out, or removed from the scene, rather than killed or physically/mentally damaged). While such games could still have mechanics that resolve physical altercations, they may not suggest harm as we know it in the real world.

Yeah, I think I really don't enjoy doing that for people. Maybe that's something I need to be more clear about. It never occurred to me that that was kind of in the job description but I guess for many it's just an assumption.

Same, @JohnStryker. The last thing I would want to do is use my game to fulfill someone else’s revenge fantasy.


@Didz, that is actually something I suspected was going on with a player (not a GP member) whose characters (in two games we were in) both suddenly acted psychotic toward women, none of whom were villains. The player also ranted ballistically in OoC discussions, got fired from his job for anger issues, then got another job within a month and was fired within a week "for the stupidest reason." I don’t know if he was really projecting a real-life woman’s face onto female NPCs, but that honestly would have made more sense than if his actions were completely IC. From the context of the game, it made no sense.

I think that’s the danger of seeing an NPC as someone you’d "want to kill." (Without addressing the issue with fantasizing about a real person’s death,) the "justice" you’re doling out doesn’t fit the NPC’s crime. So even if the NPC is an actual villain, you’re not really playing a heroic role in the game. You’re making your PC into a self-insert and inserting others into NPCs. You might be so fixated on making that NPC scream that you miss or distort the actual in-game conflict, and that NPC’s place in the conflict.

Or you weird out other players because, no, that guard did not deserve to be force fed his own eyeballs.

Well, we all run our own games the way our respective groups prefer and expect.

My own group, 'Red Lined', explicit sex scenes, but did not ask me to remove all the violence, and seemed perfectly willing to kill the bad guys they ran into during their adventure.

If you group 'Red Lines' violence, then that's fine, it's your table and your rules.

This is an interesting discussion, and one that I have experienced in certain degrees over the years.

Regarding the red line of acceptable in-game violence, whether described or implied, I think it is a GM's responsibility to establish a hard line. There needs to be some baseline to measure what is and is not tolerated from all the players. That baseline can be as vague or as specific as needed for the group, but at the very least it should prompt a discussion between everyone.

That said, I also believe that the line should be flexible enough to account for specific situations. Sometimes people don't know what their boundaries are until they're pushed. Sometimes people might say they're okay with something, but when it shows up, they change their mind. As GMs or players, we should not tell them, "Well you said this was fine, so tough it out." Instead the group needs to take a step back, reevaluate, and resolve. Perhaps a fade-to-black instead of a visceral detailed description. Or maybe come up with an alternative action.

I was running a D&D 5e game for a person that did not like many depictions of violence. I know, "Why play D&D 5e, then? Why not run a different system?" It's because they wanted to play D&D 5e, so I did. It was an interesting experiment to say the least. The player was okay with the act of fighting, but shied away from descriptions of blood and gore, so we spent a number of combats with non-lethal tactics. The monsters sought to capture the heroes in order to demand ransom from the local lord. The heroes captured villains and had them promise to not do villain-y things; some actually turned into allies, amazed and confused at the heroes' actions.

I actually had fun, coming up with creative scenarios and really getting into the mindset of the different conflicts. It made me consider the goals and motivations for not just the Big Bad, but even the random or trivial encounters that stereotypically evolve into bloodstains and corpses. And those considerations led to a richer depiction of the world and opened avenues of roleplay one might not expect.

Random encounter of goblins ambushing travelers in the forest? They're starving and need to provide for their families the only way they know. They can't hunt for food because the local lord has banned hunting in the forest on penalty of death, so the heroes seek an audience to find out why and possibly change the lord's mind. They find out the reason for the hunting ban is because there's something else in the forest that's cursed the food supply, so they need to go in and yadda yadda.

Ultimately the goal of any game is to have fun. If someone is uncomfortable, they're not having fun. For those who are okay with graphic violence, it may be an opportunity to exercise our creativity in describing things differently to accommodate those who can't tolerate it. It may also be a means to further develop our characters; the short-tempered and bloodthirsty barbarian begins to learn temperance, or the assassin begins their arc of redemption.

I am so excited that I chose to be vulnerable and come to this community for this. Thank you all for your feedback and ideas. I've been out of the loop for gaming and have been wondering how to get back in. This discussion makes me even more comfortable with trying to come back.

I should have clarified that while my players did not like depictions of violence in the D&D 5e game, they still understood that it was a part of the high-fantasy world. Off-screen, people still died in horrible ways, evil warlords laid waste to towns, liches still consumed souls. I just needed to carefully ensure it didn't become an integral part of the players' experience.

I think this is where I failed as a player. Whenever I’ve been uncomfortable with something (not just violence), I role-played through it in the interest of not being a complainer.

Still, I would never expect the whole table to conform to my comfort zone, so I’ll probably be picky about what games I join.
Yazeba’s Bread and Breakfast is a fun game that is not only non-violent, but also combat-free.

TRIGGER WARNING: If you do not want to see an explicit description of a particularly vile and violent act, do NOT read the spoiler!! Just take it that it was horrible, and I did not in any way condone it.

I do red-line torture. It's one thing to kill the bad guy, maybe even make him suffer a little for all the suffering he has caused. It's quite another to (yes, I did have a player attempt this one time). That led to my ruling against descriptions of torture by NPCs or PCs. They may find evidence that such has been committed, but they will never see it happening.

I disagree with the idea that the GM should impose the standard.

My personal view is that the GM has the obligation and challenge of running a game that 'meets' the expectations of their players rather than imposing their standards and just expecting their players to conform. Fortunately, this is self-regulating as if you attempt to impose your own standards on your players and get it wrong, then they are simply going to get bored and frustrated anyway and will walk away, causing your game to flop.

I simply ask my prospective players to let me know if there are any aspects of roleplay that they would prefer me to avoid during play and then either try to deliver a game that works within the accepted 'Red Lines' defined, or if I cannot meet the players expectations it gives me the opportunity to warn them and they can chose to go elsewhere.
As stated, my own group 'Red-Lined' 'explicit sex scenes', but that didn't prevent my world having sexual content. At one point, the party even stayed at a tavern which included an integral brothel. It just meant that, as a GM, I had to avoid dwelling on the activities in the brothel more than necessary to get the point across.
I try to run a pro-active game as far as possible. So, how the players deal with the NPCs around them is left very much up to the players. I really don't have any way of dictating how the players decide that their characters are going to deal with the situation I have presented them.

All I do use are two forms of meta-currency.

ALIGNMENT: Which monitors character behaviour and records the nature of their actions to unlock the interest of the appropriate Gods. This means that characters who constantly use violence to solve every problem are likely to amass a steady accumulation of 'Evil' and 'Chaotic' alignment points that will eventually attract the interest of one of the dark gods.

REPUTATION: Reputation records the way various NPCs and NPC factions feel about your character and is influenced by how the players have their characters deal with the NPCs around them. The range varies from +10 (Honoured Ally) to -10 (Despised enemy) and affects any social interactions between that NPC or Faction and the character. So, a player can actually build networks of friends and enemies around their character during roleplay based on the way they treat them.

This is why I like to model my NPC motivations upon actual real world villians and heroes, as it makes it much easier to come up with plausible characters that way and avoid the 2D 'Big Bads' and 'Black Hat' villians that usually populate D&D games.
And I think that's the whole point as far as I'm concerned.

As GMs we should be seeking to deliver the experience that our players expect, and if we can't, then we should be honest and give the player a chance to walk and seek a GM who can.
Players should always be given the opportunity to 'Red Line' those aspects of gameplay they are not happy to experience. It's then up to the GM to be honest and admit if they are unable to work within those 'Red Lines' and deliver a gaming experience that meets their expectations. That way the player can avoid becoming involved in a game that upsets them or bores them to tears.
That's obviously up to you. If you can't bring yourself to present villains in your game as plausible characters, then you can always stick with the usual 2D monsters and black hatted villains that populate most D&D adventures. I find it much more satisfying for everyone if the villains in my game have real motivations and objectives, and that's much easier to achieve if one models them on real life.

I don't think that's a failure as a player. All gaming is a cooperative activity where we 'craft our fun' together, and there are ups and down in that process where sometimes I play along with something another participant finds fun despite being meh on it, and then it's the other way around. So long as the net outcome is sufficiently positive, and the lows don't deep below the acceptable depths of participants, that's a success as far as the campaign is concerned.

It is, of course, good to know what kinds of net average and what kinds of depths are unacceptable to which participants.

I didn’t take Stryker’s comment to mean his villains being plausible characters is the problem.

My interpretation was that he wouldn’t want his players to see villains as representative of "people they would really like to kill in real life."

As I said earlier, the times I *noticed* players indulging in some sort of revenge fantasy, their IC actions came off as needlessly cruel and inappropriately bizarre. In one case, I actually thought the PC was acting under some kind of magical compulsion because, without going into detail, that was the one explanation that would have made sense of the PC’s actions.

There *may* have been times when a revenge fantasy fit the context of the game or the Bad Guy was based on a Real Guy, and in those cases, I just stayed immersed in the game oblivious to who Sir Teammate was joyously brutalizing or who Randolph Rhintler was "supposed" to be.

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On this⬆️, we agree⬇️.

I think this is a good way to game: the recognition that it’s our game, not my game experience that matters.

If another player’s fun isn’t killing my fun, I say let ’em have fun. And when their actions do kill the fun (usually party in-fighting is the killer; rarely is it violence), I need to politely speak up OoC, something to the effect of "my character is going to walk away from the discussion, letting you keep what you just said as the last word."

I definitely have failed there as a player by telling myself it’s just IC and responding IC. Once I participate in any way, even with intent to de-escalate, I’ve become part of the problem.

One GP GM had a "rule" that was based on the PbtA rule for the GM to "be a fan of the players’ characters." His version was for players: "be a fan of each other’s characters." I think that an excellent way to convey that disagreement is acceptable and disrespect is not.

Yeah, this is what I intended. I'm good with complex, human villains. I'm just not as comfortable with those villains existing to facilitate that kind of murderous power fantasy. If I were building a vessel to vent aggression on that's probably when it actually would just be a robot in a black hat. I've heard of gaming groups who use narrating the killing blow as sort of a reward for example, and making indulging in violence a reward just feels wrong to me.

Sometimes you do have to kill the villain, but it's the 'have to' bit in that sentence that matters to me. I guess I'm realising that that's a subtlety I need to articulate without bemoaning.

It's very much an each-to-their-own thing, but that's what I was trying to get across.

This has been a really interesting thread to follow. For me, I don't shy away from violence at all. I like to use TTRPGs to tell interesting stories, and it's pretty common for violence to be an element in certain genres. Dark fantasy is one of my favorites, and it's practically a staple there. With that said, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of my lizard-brain that delighted itself in bloody spectacle. I've never put a lot of thought into why that is. Society generally glorifies violence, so I suppose it's no wonder why. Either way, I'm not above indulging baser impulses in a safe setting to do so. I wouldn't discount a game that doesn't feature it at all though. Ultimately, I'm here for the stories and the interaction more than the indulgence of my fantasies.

It's an interesting point, but given that as a GM I have absolutely no control over how the players choose to have their characters react to meeting an NPC or Faction, all I can do is present them with challenges that represent plausible situations. If they then choose to resolve that situation with violence, then that's up to them, and if they gain some personal satisfaction from their actions, then that's a personal bonus which I hope is therapeutic.

What I don't do is stage NPCs as worthless two-dimensional targets that the players can have their character attack and kill without consequence or thought. I appreciate that many RPGs traditionally do exactly that, but I prefer my NPCs to have plausible reasons to exist and motives for their actions.

How the players deal with them then becomes part of the role-playing challenge.

And I find players usually make good judgments, and even when violence seems inevitable, they will find a valid alternative solution unless (in their opinion) the NPC deserves to die.

I can relate numerous examples from my own games where encounters that were intended to lead to violence didn't, and those that weren't intended to lead to violence did.

In one instance, two characters in my game were assisting the City Watch to track down the murderer of a local Halfling Drug Dealer. They had a lead that the halfling was a frequent patron of 'The Mermaid' tavern located on the waterfront in Altdorf and decided to visit the tavern along with the Halfling representative from 'Quinsberry Lodge' who was demanding that the victim's murderer be brought to justice despite the fact that they were only a halfling, and accusing the watch of dragging their heels because they didn't consider the death of a halfling very important.

Anyway, the investigation team entered 'The Mermaid' Tavern and spoke to the Innkeeper, who admitted that the victim was a regular patron but denied any knowledge of drug dealing. As far as he was concerned, the victim was just a nuisance who didn't spend much money and spent most of his time harassing 'Petal', the tavern's halfling waitress and cook.

The players then tried to have their characters interview 'Petal', to check the innkeeper's story and find out if she knew anything useful about the victim and his business dealings. However, she was less than forthcoming and decidedly nervous about being questioned, and the more they pressed her for information, the more hostile the locals in the bar became.

The Tavern itself marked the frontline in a docklands war between rival gangs of stevedores and was currently the primary drinking hole of 'The Fish', an unguilded stevedore organisation that was allegedly run by the local thieves guild and was gradually taking over the business along the waterfront from the official 'Water Rat' gangs employed by the Merchants Guild.

They seemed very hostile to the idea of 'Petal' being questioned, and eventually, the players decided to vacate the tavern and try to question 'Petal' alone when she finished her shift. They headed for the door, but realised that a large group of at least seven burly stevedores were moving to prevent them from leaving.

There was a race for the exit, the PC's lost, and the stevedores got to the door first and created a cordon beyond the door to stop them from leaving. The two PC's were Salundra von Drakenburg (Noble/ex-Soldier) and Gunnar Hrollsson (Dwarf/Slayer), and they were faced with seven human thugs.

My expectation at this point was that there was going to be violence. The party had been slow to react to the obvious hostility and allowed themselves to get trapped in the tavern. I was expecting them to try and fight their way out.

But they didn't. Gunnar burst through the tavern doors, which he noticed opened outwards into the street, as the tavern used to be a riverside warehouse. and in doing so sent the two thugs standing on either side of the doors waiting to pounce on them from behind reeling with badly bruised toes and shins.

He and Sali then marched through the doors and apologised for being so clumsy and confronted the remaining five thugs.

There was a tense moment as Sali used her authority as both a noblewoman and an ex-officer in the Imperial Army to demand that the thugs step aside and let her and Gunnar pass. Her intimidation roll was successful, and already down two members who were sitting on the floor, clutching their feet and shins, the leader of the stevedore gang stepped aside only saving face by making the threat that there would be trouble if Sali and Gunnar showed their faces in 'The Mermaid' again and that they were to leave 'Petal' alone.

That was a potentially violent encounter averted by clever roleplay.

But sometimes the reverse becomes true.

In another Sali and Gunnar encounter, they were travelling through a forest with a party of five Drakguard Knights, when their path was blocked by a raiding party of twenty goblin wolfriders. The leader of the Goblins hailed Salundra and announced that the forest was tribal land and that if they wished to pass through it then Salundra would have to give him her impressive feathered bonnet as toll.

Sali could see that many of the Goblins were wearing human hats of various types and styles, including the women's bonnets and children's hats of the merchant family they had found dead by the roadside the day before. Nevertheless, I expected that I had so heavily pitched the odds against the players (7 v 40 (including the wolves)) that Sali would hand over her hat.

However, I had reckoned without taking into account the knowledge of Gunnar's player about Warhammer Lore and the fact that Dwarfs hate Goblins, and so even before Sali could open her mouth, Gunnar had leapt into action, screaming a battle cry and chasing Goblin wolfriders all over the forest.

Amazingly, he survived but ended the encounter looking like a Goblin pincushion with five arrows in him. But the party actually fought their way through the forest.