Quote from: Simlasa;488000Technically World of Warcraft is like that too... the fastest levelling is through quests... but the vast majority of the quests are to go kill someone/something and take stuff from them...

Guild Wars has a lot more fetch quests than target practice quests, but yes, it does suffer the same problem.  GW has the (slight) advantage that they really go overboard on the scenery porn, so trekking through the countryside is at least pretty.

One thing I've never understood is why MMOs that have instanced quests can't have branching plot trees and multiple "endings", like any Bioware RPG.  There's nothing technical preventing it (GW does have class-specific side quests, but they're kind of irrelevant).

In Which I Stir The Shit.

The full essay (in drag as a meta-RPG) by John Tynes is here.  Do go and read it all, it's important.  Note you do not have to agree with it, but we need to start on the same page.

For the impatient, here is the money quote:

Quote from: John Tynes, c. 1996The actions taken by characters in [normal roleplaying games] would almost always be completely unacceptable in the real world; it is only the shoddy trappings of genre conventions that allow RPG players to consider their stories "heroic" or "dramatic." Stripped bare of themes and story arcs, RPG sessions consist of endless variations on the life of a criminal.

No roleplaying game currently in print encourages players to act out roles that are fully in accordance with the laws and customs of society, either those of the real world or of the fictional world that the RPG is set in. Murder, theft, extortion, burglary, and other serious crimes are the bread and butter of RPG storytelling; regardless of a game's higher purpose, it still amounts to story after story that consist of nothing significant other than gross criminal behavior covered in a glossy coat of genre acceptability.

When I was an undergrad, the anime fan club had a lot of trouble getting people to come out to showings because the only anime they'd ever heard of was Urotsukidoji[1] The club had a set of anime of wildly varying genres they would show to people as a demonstration that Urotsukidoji was an aberration[2], not indicative of the whole medium.

So here's a challenge: what currently in print/easily available TTRPGs would you present to someone to disprove Tynes' thesis?

EDIT:

Quote from: Peregrin;488073By easily available, I'm assuming you're excluding obscure indie titles like Shooting The Moon.

All I mean is "you could show this to someone and then say 'and here is where you can go get it' and have that process be simple".

So anything currently available on IPR or DTRPG counts, for instance.

[1] Don't Google it.  Seriously. It makes the Saw movies look like a restrained and tasteful meditation on the human condition.
[2] In more ways than one.

Pendragon?

What if you're only murdering/extorting/robbing that irredeemably evil-race/group over there? That's "fully in accordance with the laws and customs of society"... right?

This is also reminding me of that social experiment where the students were divided into prisoners and jailers... most people will tend towards bullying if there is any excuse that lets them get away with it. So surprising that games played predominantly by powerless geeks and maladroids focuses on beating up on other folks.

Most of my games involve characters that completely support society. Outlaw games are against tyranny. Only cyberpunk and cattlepunk involve much criminal behavior.

I submit d&d as the main game about heroic characters, reclaiming treasure from and holding back the terrors of the wild.

I saw that thread on rpg.net. It was a classic example of why discussion without play is so futile.

Does the poster have players who play murder-hobos when that's not what he wants out of the game? Talk to them.

Does he not face this problem, but just thinks it's out there and so wonders how to fix it? Why spend time fixing a problem that may not exist and which even if it does exist may not be a problem for those participating in that activity?

The whole thread was wank. It was perfectly clear this wasn't something he was actually experiencing in his own gaming. His concern was the theoretical possibility that people somewhere else were playing in a way he thought inferior and how to educate them out of it through game mechanics. Wank.

Quote from: Cranewings;488076Most of my games involve characters that completely support society. Outlaw games are against tyranny.

I guess the question is why does that 'support' just about always come in the form of killing and looting... vs. diplomacy, peacemaking, exploration without conquering? I can't think of any big campaigns where the goal was to make peace with the giants/orcs/Drow, rather than chopping them into bits and taking their stuff.
If RPGs had developed out of, say, the toy theaters of the 1800s... rather than wargames... would they still be so focused on combat?

I'd say most of the original Traveller games I ran or played in had very little in the way of law-breaking; most combat was in self-defense, and there was a lot of exploration and peaceful/legal trading going on. There was a notable time when a PC chased a criminal we were after onto a bus and opened up with a shotgun (really) - he ended up as an NPC that as far as I know is still languishing on a prison planet to this day.

Any "toolset" TTRPG (GURPS, Fate, etc.) of course has no criminal element to it, but I guess that's a given.

Quote from: daniel_ream;488067So here's a challenge: what currently in print/easily available TTRPGs would you present to someone to disprove Tynes' thesis?

GURPS, BRP, Spycraft, Mutants and Masterminds...

In fact, it's harder to name an RPG that supports Tynes' thesis. Shadowrun, I suppose, would be a prime example, along with Poison'd.

Violence is common in RPGs. However, RPGs, in their rules per se, or even in their GMing advice (in my experience) don't generally encourage "Murder, theft, extortion, burglary, and other serious crimes". The only rudimentary encouragement I can find is:

1. Rules for violence are commonly detailed and fun mechanically, and often violence isn't so dangerous to PCs.

2. Some games explicitly tie experience points to successful violence--with varying degrees of wiggle room. D&D originally was a prime example of this, and has been less and more so over time. However for example I do not believe that GURPS does this.

However, the mere presence of "violence" doesn't make a "story" un-heroic, obviously.

I will have to return and read the entire essay, which I think I've read before, but the concept strikes me as, to quote myself, projecting one's own damage onto the hobby as a whole.

Also, and apologies if this has already been pointed out, but the OP at rpg.net was factually wrong. OD&D doesn't primarily reward killing things and taking their stuff. It primarily rewards getting loot, and rewards to a much smaller degree killing things. If the only way you can think of to get loot is killing stuff that says more about you than the game.

The smart player playing by the rules as written in OD&D avoids combat which is high risk and instead sneaks, cajoles or does whatever else is necessary short of actually risking their own neck to get the loot. If they can grab the money and run, they do. If they can get some other guy to fight, they do.

If they're playing just for the XP, which they most likely aren't because people aren't robots blindly responding to reward mechanics.

Original D&D didn't have thieves because all the characters were thieves. The idea that the game primarily rewarded killing stuff is a misremembering of the actual mechanics.

Tynes' point is somewhat undermined by the fact that the actions of the protagonists in most action-orientated entertainment media would be uancceptable in the real world.

His point holds pretty good for action movies, comics, certain genres of novels and so on.

It's a good essay in that it's thought provoking, but it's not (and I don't think it's intended to be) holy writ. It's meant to make the reader think. I'm not sure Tynes necessarily expects agreement or even himself agrees.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;488083In fact, it's harder to name an RPG that supports Tynes' thesis. Shadowrun, I suppose, would be a prime example, along with Poison'd.

Despite being generally horrible, I don't think the latter supports it at all.

The essay was originally included with Costikyan's Violence RPG, and, IIRC, the point of that game wasn't to say you shouldn't have violence or criminal activity, but to acknowledge that the acts of your character can be and sometimes are heinous and not something that should be idolized or empathized with.  In fact some people interpreted it as a call to take in-game extremes even further under the acknowledgement that "Yes, this is fucked up shit, but I am not my character and should not necessarily hold their values."

Poison'd, if I understand the game correctly, does the usually arm's length between character and self that story-games tend to have, and actively encourages the judgment of characters through its rules, which is what I think sets it apart from the type of dynamic Tynes talks about (hence the label Schizo Psychopath for the meta-game versions of characters in Powerkill).

Quote from: D-503;488087Tynes' point is somewhat undermined by the fact that the actions of the protagonists in most action-orientated entertainment media would be uancceptable in the real world.

It seems to me that action movies are what a lot of modern RPGs (and video games) are trying to emulate... enabling that sort of behavior without real world consequences. Is it all some reflection of people being frustrated that they can't beat on each other? Did Fight Club have the right idea?

I can sort of see that Sim, but is the essay's issue with violence and crime itself, or with the preference for violence and crime that (in the author's view) the demographic displays?

Am I crazy or is the same exact discussion happening on the swine thread. Sounds like the evil orc debate from a month or so ago.