Quote from: Manzanaro;914584It explains why I don't generally want to deal with this kind of thing in an RPG. It's not fun.

Fair enough, but framing that discussion in terms of whether people "enjoy roleplaying child murder" or not is like framing this post as if you and I "enjoy talking about child murder." It's a bit bizarre.

What does "framing the discussion" mean?

Does it include a single mention of something at the end of a series of several posts?

Or is it that you are trying to "frame" my comments in a certain light?

And no, I do not agree that the enjoyability of roleplaying a child murderer in a game has any valid correspondence to the merit of discussing whether such a game would be enjoyable. Entirely different things on a categorical level.

Quote from: Manzanaro;914597What does "framing the discussion" mean?

Does it include a single mention of something at the end of a series of several posts?

Or is it that you are trying to "frame" my comments in a certain light?

And no, I do not agree that the enjoyability of roleplaying a child murderer in a game has any valid correspondence to the merit of discussing whether such a game would be enjoyable. Entirely different things on a categorical level.

Well, first of all, there's the question of Murder vs. Killing.  
Second there's the question of roleplaying a character in a situation where they have to kill a child vs. enjoying doing it.
Thirdly, if the whole idea is that a pre-adult demon, orc, goblin, whatever youngster, is irretrievably or irredeemably evil, then calling it a "child" for the purpose of drawing false equivalency to a human child (which carries with it the idea of innocence) is simply sophistry.

Yeah, someone who enjoys roleplaying a character at the moment they are murdering human children who are innocent might not be mentally stable.

Absolutely nothing in this thread so far even remotely fits that description prior to you bringing it up, which is probably where the "having to do with anything" part comes in.

So saying the killing of immature goblins, which may or may not grow up to do evil no matter what you do with them, has anything to do with the murder of children, is doing some deliberate framing to set up that false equivalency.

Quote from: Manzanaro;914548Nevertheless, I would still highly question the inclusion of goblin children and etc. in a typical RPG of violent escapism in which the concept of violence as heroism is largely accepted without examination.

I'll need a page reference on that one.  Don't think I've ever seen an RPG designed to simply be violent escapism or set up to consider the concept of violence as heroism, or that tells you accept this without examination.

That's a trifecta of complete and total made up bullshit.  Everything you're pointing to is the creation of the players and GM, which may be done with any RPG ever made....or you know, not.

D&D rules tell you what happens when you swing the sword.  They don't tell you why.

Edit: Oh, yeah there was that one stupid ultra-violent slaughter RPG made as a joke.  You know there are more, right?

Uh-oh, looks like we got a SJW storygamer.

Killing baby goblins is just like killing human children, eh? Next we'll hear about how going into a dungeon and killing orcs is just like a gang of white supremacists going through minority housing projects and murdering them all.

Begone, foul beast! Back to rpg.net Tangency with you!

One thing I really like about Internet forums[1] is how you will occasionally get to read a well reasoned post that makes you think - wow its great to read something that is logical, reasonable, on point, and sounds better than what I might have written myself if I spent a bunch of time analyzing and then choosing just the right words in the right order and then the very next post demonstrates such a colossal misunderstanding of the great post, the topic addressed in it, the prior post(s) that it was in response to that I just have to shake my head and wonder why Chimpanzees, Orangutanss, and Gorillas who also have opposable thumbs, don't rule the world like in Planet of the Apes.



[1] And when I say "really like" I mean "find incredibly tiresome and disappointing."

I'll just note that early on I said, 'In a fantasy world, there may be races that are inherently and unalterably evil." But even in such cases I would prefer not to roleplay killing the young of those races, feeling that it would very likely add nothing to the game in most cases.

Please note that throughout my statements, I have been very careful to use qualifying statements such as "in a typical RPG" and "generally speaking". And again, in an earlier post I said "I would prefer to avoid such subjects unless a game is as serious as art." I do take art seriously. I do take some RPGs seriously. The intersection is nowhere near 100%.

And Kyle Aaron? Satire or outright stupidity? Or don't even you know anymore?

Quote from: CRKrueger;914613I'll need a page reference on that one.  Don't think I've ever seen an RPG designed to simply be violent escapism or set up to consider the concept of violence as heroism, or that tells you accept this without examination.

How many bodies of sentient beings does a typical 10th level fighter have in his body trail?

I was speaking from experience. If your RPG experience has lead into a deep understanding of real world violence and its implications? Good on you. But most RPGs I have played involve killing a whole lot of shit without a whole lot of thought, other than tactical considerations (and the tactical considerations of killing shit do indeed tend to be where the focus of many games' rules lie).

Quote from: Manzanaro;914628How many bodies of sentient beings does a typical 10th level fighter have in his body trail?

I was speaking from experience. If your RPG experience has lead into a deep understanding of real world violence and its implications? Good on you. But most RPGs I have played involve killing a whole lot of shit without a whole lot of thought, other than tactical considerations (and the tactical considerations of killing shit do indeed tend to be where the focus of many games' rules lie).

Do RPGs have lots of rules of combat because the game is supposed to be about combat or do RPGs have detailed combat rules because Killing Shit has a flipside, namely Being Killed By Shit, potentially removing a PC from the game, so probably shouldn't be left to a coin toss or freeform narration?

Most games have way more pages devoted to magic, or classes, or skills then they do to combat.

That's one of the old canards that really needs to go.

No, I've never needed rules in a game to not act like a 2-color character.

Quote from: Bren;914622One thing I really like about Internet forums[1] is how you will occasionally get to read a well reasoned post that makes you think - wow its great to read something that is logical, reasonable, on point, and sounds better than what I might have written myself if I spent a bunch of time analyzing and then choosing just the right words in the right order and then the very next post demonstrates such a colossal misunderstanding of the great post, the topic addressed in it, the prior post(s) that it was in response to that I just have to shake my head and wonder why Chimpanzees, Orangutanss, and Gorillas who also have opposable thumbs, don't rule the world like in Planet of the Apes.



[1] And when I say "really like" I mean "find incredibly tiresome and disappointing."

What I like as in hate, is people talking shit and calling people out namelessly.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914633Do RPGs have lots of rules of combat because the game is supposed to be about combat or do RPGs have detailed combat rules because Killing Shit has a flipside, namely Being Killed By Shit, potentially removing a PC from the game, so probably shouldn't be left to a coin toss or freeform narration?

I feel like this misses the point that I was making. To the extent that I have no idea what kind of response you are looking for from me. A defense of freeform narration?

QuoteMost games have way more pages devoted to magic, or classes, or skills then they do to combat.

And how many of those spells, skills, and class abilities are directly related to combat applications?

Anyway, this is a tangential issue and one I spoke from based on many years of personal experience with RPGs. If, in your experience, RPGs do not tend to focus on the violence of heroic figures, with largely unexamined implications, then that is your experience. You speak from your experience, and I speak from mine, and that makes for a conversation. There's no need to question each other's experiences, as far as I can see.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914634What I like as in hate, is people talking shit and calling people out namelessly.

Were you actually confused as to which posts I was talking about? If so, I'm happy to clarify.

This post was really well written.

Quote from: CRKrueger;914613Well, first of all, there's the question of Murder vs. Killing.  
Second...

This one was not.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;914617Uh-oh, looks like we got a SJW storygamer.

Killing baby goblins is just like killing human children, eh? Next we'll hear about how going into a dungeon and killing orcs is just like a gang of white supremacists going through minority housing projects and murdering them all. [/qtueo]

Begone, foul beast! Back to rpg.net Tangency with you!

Even if they are people too, the essential difference between orcs and modern minorities is that the orcs really are genocidal maniacs.  It's not just a question of whether they have occasional bad leaders or extremists.  It's that they will be coming to kill you and they won't have qualms about eating your children live.

Sure you could envision Warcraft's noble warrior orcs.  You could envision cute and funny goblins or even Yrth's mercantile goblins.  But on the whole, when we're talking about evil we're talking about races with no capacity to live in peace with their neighbours.  It's all well and good to philosophize when the wolves are at someone else's door.

Can you save the children?  Perhaps, will you risk your life and the lives of your own children to find out?  Probably not.

Heck even attempts at reeducation have the nasty reflection of Canada's residential schools where native children were horribly abused, ostensibly to beat the "Indian" out of them.

It's an old question that goes well beyond gaming.  Ask a Christian how they feel about the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament.  You'll get a wide range of answers but you'll get a lot of people telling you that it was okay for the Children of Israel to massacre every man, woman, child, and beast of the field in Canaan because God told them to.

For the most part I agree that it is entirely reasonable to assume there are goblin children as part of a world system but that can be achieved without setting up adventures that require the players to face that choice.

I meant to mention this earlier. Assuming that the setting does not cast certain races as irrevocably and irredeemably evil (or perhaps even in such cases), I could actually imagine a game where the PCs come across a bunch of young kobolds (or whatever) after killing the parents, and feel terrible, and decide to take those kobolds and raise them, abandoning the "dungeon" or whatever adventure they had been on at the time. I could also imagine such a turn of events leading to a lot of fun and interesting roleplaying opportunities and situations.

However, I also have to wonder what portion of GMs would be totally unprepared for such a turn of events, and would see it as the players fundamentally derailing the adventure, or spoiling the game. And this is partly why I say that I think many GMs would be best served by simply not including such elements in the first place, especially if what they have in mind is a high violence tactical dungeon crawl, which is far more typical of RPGs in my experience than exploring the trials and tribulations of raising kobold babies would be (though I sure know which one I would find more potentially entertaining).

Quote from: David Johansen;914637Even if they are people too, the essential difference between orcs and modern minorities is that the orcs really are genocidal maniacs.

First, the question was not about orcs, it was about goblin children.

QuoteSure you could envision Warcraft's noble warrior orcs.  You could envision cute and funny goblins or even Yrth's mercantile goblins.  But on the whole, when we're talking about evil we're talking about races with no capacity to live in peace with their neighbours.

Second, the topic wasn’t about evil per se, it was about whether killing goblin children was evil.

QuoteIt's an old question that goes well beyond gaming.  Ask a Christian how they feel about the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament.  You'll get a wide range of answers but you'll get a lot of people telling you that it was okay for the Children of Israel to massacre every man, woman, child, and beast of the field in Canaan because God told them to.

I hope the Christians who believe that never think that God is telling them who to go out and massacre.

The thing about orcs and goblins is orcs and goblins are cool.  I would rather be friends with a bunch of axe-wielding pigmen or a bunch of bomb-toting gremlins than a bunch of scottish midgets.  So you ask me, would you exterminate their children I'm like shit dude, I think I'd recruit them for my followers.  Hell I'll pay for their kids to go to Orcaversity.