Over on RPG.net, the fashionistas are talking once again about how awesome rpgs that have "no violence" are, even though they can't really name many. There are certainly some that discourage violence; and the one they are all head over heels for over its progressiveness is Doctor Who with its initiative system that basically rewards talking, running, or taking any other action besides fighting by letting those things go first. They talk about it like it was the innovation of the century.
It isn't. I know because I basically invented that initiative system. And my suggestion for it came out of the oldest source of inspiration in the books: D&D. Far from "radical indie design" or shit like that, I was just following an emulation-specific iteration of the Basic/Expert D&D's initiative order. My goal there wasn't do to it to send some kind of political or universal message of "violence is bad, m'kay", but simply to create a system of initiative that effectively emulates the TV show.
And that's why Dr.Who doesn't suck. Or at least, that mechanic doesn't. Because its goal isn't to be preachy, or to punish you for wanting to kick ass.
Can anyone think of any other RPG where there's some kind of mechanical discouragement of violence, that doesn't completely suck as a result?
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;443965Over on RPG.net, the fashionistas are talking once again about how awesome rpgs that have "no violence" are, even though they can't really name many. There are certainly some that discourage violence; and the one they are all head over heels for over its progressiveness is Doctor Who with its initiative system that basically rewards talking, running, or taking any other action besides fighting by letting those things go first. They talk about it like it was the innovation of the century.
It isn't. I know because I basically invented that initiative system. And my suggestion for it came out of the oldest source of inspiration in the books: D&D. Far from "radical indie design" or shit like that, I was just following an emulation-specific iteration of the Basic/Expert D&D's initiative order. My goal there wasn't do to it to send some kind of political or universal message of "violence is bad, m'kay", but simply to create a system of initiative that effectively emulates the TV show.
And that's why Dr.Who doesn't suck. Or at least, that mechanic doesn't. Because its goal isn't to be preachy, or to punish you for wanting to kick ass.
Can anyone think of any other RPG where there's some kind of mechanical discouragement of violence, that doesn't completely suck as a result?
RPGPundit
I have run a campaign or two where violence was not a good option because of the nature of the situation, but in all such campaigns, violence remained an option. My players enjoyed them very much, because there was a lot of conflict and player ability to deal with situations as they saw fit. The systems I used were traditional, and not story games. The players refrained from using violence, not because they couldn't use violence, but because violence would not have been the most useful response in that situation, and there were non-violent means at their disposal which would give more productive results.
-clash
From my own French perspective, it all started in France with a certain conception of Call of Cthulhu. Not that Call of Cthulhu is fundamentally non-violent, it certainly can be played in many different ways, but CoC in France immediately started to appeal to pseudo-historians and failed academicians who saw there a chance to show their scenaristic brilliance. CoC contrasted with D&D for them in the way it was making use of actual history. You were playing "normal people" faced with mysteries, it seemed more subtle, more "adult," more "mature." That's an optic that gained momentum and basically made the bed for later games, like Vampire: The Masquerade.
I ran a sci-fi game in which the characters all played news reporters and the scenarios were based on investigating (and getting enough proof to print) stories against a tight deadline. It worked well enough.
I'll be sure to send you a copy of Courtesans when it's released Pundit.
Though you can invest in beating up or murdering your Admirers there is no violence beyond a sharp slap to the face done by your Character personally.
Tough Justice has violence but it is never lethal it just hurts a lot!
Quote from: Benoist;443969From my own French perspective, it all started in France with a certain conception of Call of Cthulhu. Not that Call of Cthulhu is fundamentally non-violent, it certainly can be played in many different ways, but CoC in France immediately started to appeal to pseudo-historians and failed academicians who saw there a chance to show their scenaristic brilliance. CoC contrasted with D&D for them in the way it was making use of actual history. You were playing "normal people" faced with mysteries, it seemed more subtle, more "adult," more "mature." That's an optic that gained momentum and basically made the bed for later games, like Vampire: The Masquerade.
That only works until a ghoul shows up. :)
Quote from: RPGPunditCan anyone think of any other RPG where there's some kind of mechanical discouragement of violence, that doesn't completely suck as a result?
Classic
Traveller's discouragement (the often long-term inconvenience of getting shot once, and the likelihood of a second shot being deadly), along with encouragement to pursue ambitions related to civilization (rather than realized in a monster-infested underworld or other war zone), has in my experience tended to put the emphasis on non-sucking activities other than firefights.
When violence figures, it is as a means to an end (e.g., helping the natives defeat the invaders so that one can use the invaders' radio set to call for a lift off the desert planet, furthering both one's career and one's nation's cold-war cause.)
Runequest and
King Arthur Pendragon are centrally preoccupied with the warrior's pursuit of glory. While they do not "discourage violence", they do encourage
choosing one's fights -- which necessitates attention to the context that gives fights significance.
In D&D, once folks have a few normal-men's-lives worth of hit points, violence can, in my view, more easily become the first recourse in addressing any problem. The
cost is just not so great, especially when the victims are uncontroversially inhuman and inimical.
In
Call of Cthulhu, only minor monsters tend to be much inconvenienced by physical assault. "But, Your Honor, those people were devil worshipers who nearly brought on the end of the world," tends not to go far when the perpetrators of a bloodbath get caught. Again, it is not so much a blanket discouragement of violence as an encouragement of strategy.
Similarly, in the late 1980s I ran an "American Gothic" game with a premise that (IIRC) was partly inspired by an Alan Moore
Swamp Thing story arc by that title. It also came from a tongue in cheek response -- "The Twilight Zone plus Route 66" -- to musings about what old TV shows might be good grist for the fad of turning everything from Cyberpunk and Outer Space to Victoriana and Napoleonics into yet another game with Orks 'n' Elves plugged in.
Anyhow, the central game objective was one of misinformation. The players were like the opponents of Mulder and Scully in "The X Files", tasked with covering up the weirdness of the world -- because
belief itself was the power source for sorcery advancing the nefarious ends of a conspiracy the PCs opposed.
Even very nice magic was thus a problem, which in turn made sometimes for hard choices (or at least hard puzzles to resolve to full satisfaction).
Quote from: Phillip;443991Classic Traveller's discouragement (the often long-term inconvenience of getting shot once, and the likelihood of a second shot being deadly), along with encouragement to pursue ambitions related to civilization (rather than realized in a monster-infested underworld or other war zone), has in my experience tended to put the emphasis on non-sucking activities other than firefights.
That's where I was about to go. The only non-sucky non-violent games I have seen are non sucky because they are realistic in the consequences of violence. Once things escalate to violence in such a game, PCs get dead quick.
Take such a system and add suitably daunting situations and motivations for the PCs, pretty soon you have a bit of awesome.
Contrast to the typical mainstream game today in which killing PCs is designed to be rare at least, then violence becomes a more common option. Heck, some games even exclude rules for PC death except as a GM option.
Quote from: RPGPundit;443965Can anyone think of any other RPG where there's some kind of mechanical discouragement of violence, that doesn't completely suck as a result?
Hmmmmn. Amber?
Seanchai
Unknown Armies discourages violence by preventing PCs from knowing their current Body score (your current HP) and describing the injuries they take narratively. It also has incredibly deadly combat rules that allow one-shot-kills, and taking automatic damage from knives. If you roll a 01 in hand to hand, you kill the person - even if you don't want to.
The madness metres prevent you from murdering people cold-bloodedly. Your first few fights, you're likely to freeze up or run, and killing enough people will turn you into a stone-cold sociopath. You've got to go through psychological counseling and treatment to resensitise yourself, and this involves giving up the very notches on the metre that allowed you to do all that horrible shit remorselessly.
Quote from: PunditCan anyone think of any other RPG where there's some kind of mechanical discouragement of violence, that doesn't completely suck as a result?
Well, Guildschool equally reinfrces other parts of the game. I've used it to run a few games that involved little to no violence. One was a mechant campaign that I never planned to non-violent. It was a 2 player that ran for about 6 months until the semester ended for the 2 players who moved away from Boston. The deadly nature of combat (mentioned by others before), the viable options, and most importantly, the reward mechanics allowed the 2 to avoid combat and still progress in the artisan, mercantile, social, and spell casting skills.
Our CoC games are usually non-violent, well up until the last bit where everyone dies.
As has been said any game where violence has 'realistic' consequences tends to discourage it. So I played a police procedural game which I based on the oWoD ruleset and there was no violence just like in Seven which has one violent moment.
I have done investigation games in a range of systems, from D&D right through to James Bond and they all tend away from violence.
So rather than systems I think its a mode of play thing and investigation games tend to be less violent.
Quote from: flyingmice;443968I have run a campaign or two where violence was not a good option because of the nature of the situation, but in all such campaigns, violence remained an option. My players enjoyed them very much, because there was a lot of conflict and player ability to deal with situations as they saw fit. The systems I used were traditional, and not story games. The players refrained from using violence, not because they couldn't use violence, but because violence would not have been the most useful response in that situation, and there were non-violent means at their disposal which would give more productive results.
-clash
One of my VtM games was like this. I played up the Camarilla coming down hard on vampires duking it out so there was a lot of social conflict and PCs destroying the lives of npcs through creative use of contacts and retainers. It lasted a few months before the pot boiled over and the fighting finally started but they picked up a different approach to dealing with enemies I think.
Pete
Any game where combat is truly deadly qualifies, surely?
As such, i suggest CoC, Runequest and other Basic Roleplaying games.
I could easily see a Dying Earth type game where any danger was addressed by either pure bullshit, or failing that, headlong flight.
Quote from: Seanchai;444027Hmmmmn. Amber?
Seanchai
I can only agree.
The ranking system and the well known high power level of certain Elders goes a long way toward discouraging certain fights. Nobody really wants to start a fight they know they can't win so PCs will often choose another tactic or look for additional resources, edges, and allies.
The blood curse mechanic also discourages fights to the death, because it adds an extra cost to killing any Amberite.
Quote from: One Horse Town;444090Any game where combat is truly deadly qualifies, surely?
I don't think it's sufficient.
Simulated combat is probably the most entertaining thing most RPGs offer. For many RPGs it's the only entertaining thing they offer. Making it uber-deadly doesn't mean you've made anything else fun to do; it just means you've made your game suck.
Make combat deadly enough and you might encourage people to try to do interesting things largely OUTSIDE the content your game system. But this is heavily dependent upon the quality of your GM and gaming group, and has little or nothing to do with anything intrinsic to the game itself.
Quote from: Cole;444096I could easily see a Dying Earth type game where any danger was addressed by either pure bullshit, or failing that, headlong flight.
The Getting Started section of the
Dying Earth RPG from Pelgrane Press says in big bold letters:
If you’re in a fight, something has probably gone horribly wrong.
I love that.
I could imagine a Shadowrun campaign that concentrated on infiltration missions, where being discovered and having to resort to violence equals failure of the mission.
Sadly, the way the game is written the default adventure structure is meticulously planning a mission - only to be screwed and resorting to Plan B (which usually involves a lot of explosives and weaponry).
Another game that doesn't seem to suck:
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic529818.jpg)
Koyake Yuuyake is a Japanese "Feelgood"-RPG that is the antithesis to the World of Darkness.
The characters are child-like nature (animal) spirits who secretly live among humans (without any clan intrigue or what have you).
A typical adventure is similar to an episode of "Highway to Heaven" (Michael Landon): a human has a "problem of the week" and the spirits want to help.
AFAIK the game doesn't even have a combat system.
The only "problem" the game has is that it uses storygame-like scene framing. But that could be repaired, I guess.
Robin Laws' new Skullduggery can be pretty violence-free. I don't know if it's good or not; I haven't played it yet. (Speaking of Dying Earth.)
Dead Inside rewards non-violence in a pretty big way. I playtested it and enjoyed it, although I've never come back to it since.
I think Amber is full of violence, it's just not oriented towards the PCs and Elders. But most Amber games I've played have been pretty hard on the Shadows. I guess I should say you can play a non-violent Amber campaign, and it can be good, but it's not built into the game?
Bunnies and Burrows also comes to mind, but that's more of a game where you want to avoid violence than a non-violent game, if you see the line I'm trying to draw.
My impression of the Dying Earth RPG is that it was more based on the sequels (The Eyes of the Overworld, ect) to The Dying Earth than on The Dying Earth itself. There is no shortage of fighting in the the stories from the original book.
Quote from: Aos;444214My impression of the Dying Earth RPG is that it was more based on the sequels (The Eyes of the Overworld, ect) to The Dying Earth than on The Dying Earth itself. There is no shortage of fighting in the the stories from the original book.
I would agree but it addresses more than one approach
Quote from: Justin AlexanderMake combat deadly enough and you might encourage people to try to do interesting things largely OUTSIDE the content your game system.
Are you one of those blokes in whose theory "Apples to Apples" does not
have a game system?
Combat as 'the' central concern is an effect of RPGs having come
from wargames and largely getting sold
to adolescent males. The prevalence in video games reflects a similar target audience.
What deadliness directly relates to is
role identification. The role-playing game in its archetypal (D&D campaign) form involved development of
continuing characters.
Most characters had but brief 'lives' when a single hit could easily kill a first-level combatant. With each level, though, sudden death became less common. The longer a character was played, generally the more choices a player had to make before the character died. In D&D, even death might be but temporary as characters often could be resurrected.
A campaign with very high player-character mortality in combat thus seems to me likely either to
(A) involve less combat, with careful planning to minimize PC casualties
or
(B) basically to evolve back into a wargame.
I think that
role-playing soldiers, as opposed to treating them as mere 'units', should pretty naturally involve self-preservation measures that real soldiers take.
Quote from: Dirk RemmeckeKoyake Yuuyake is a Japanese "Feelgood"-RPG that is the antithesis to the World of Darkness....
A typical adventure is similar to an episode of "Highway to Heaven" (Michael Landon): a human has a "problem of the week" and the spirits want to help.
That was also the "Route 66" aspect of my
American Gothic game.
Quote from: Cole;444216I would agree but it addresses more than one approach
While I like the sequels, I enjoy the first book far more, but, imo, D&D and some house rules cover that territory fairly well, which is why although I am a huge Vance fan I've never bothered with the RPG.
I think it's funny that many of the recommended systems in this thread have an entire chapter of combat rules.
Quote from: danbuter;444282I think it's funny that many of the recommended systems in this thread have an entire chapter of combat rules.
Pundit said "Game or campaign." Many of us are talking campaign. Others are talking potential to run a good campaign without violence. Personally, I think any game can be run well without violence if the situation is right for it and the group is cool with the concept.
-clash
Quote from: flyingmice;444286Pundit said "Game or campaign." Many of us are talking campaign. Others are talking potential to run a good campaign without violence. Personally, I think any game can be run well without violence if the situation is right for it and the group is cool with the concept.
-clash
Also, missing the obvious, but I'm guessing you can run Tools of Ignorance without combat. :-)
Pete
Quote from: pspahn;444298Also, missing the obvious, but I'm guessing you can run Tools of Ignorance without combat. :-)
Pete
Well, there's an occasional bench-clearing brawl... A bunch of millionaires shoving each other... :D
-clash
Game-wise, I was thinking of stuff where there is something in the mechanic that either actively discourages straightforward fighting as an option, or encourages other actions. Dr.Who is an example of that.
I think "combat is really deadly" is not that, really. "there's no combat mechanic in this game" would be, but that is also kind of a cop-out, and the game will almost certainly be ass.
Campaign wise, I would say any campaign where for whatever reason combat was reduced to an absolute minimum.
In that sense, I would disagree with Amber being included, because there's nothing in the rules per se to discourage fighting, and every campaign I've ever run was full of bloodshed. Mainly of uncountable numbers of shadow-people, but also really vicious fights between amberites or chaosians.
Traveller, on the other hand, while having nothing game-wise that actively discourages combat, certainly seems to have something that lends to very low-combat campaigns. The campaign I ran that had the least combat of any campaign of mine ever was my D20 Traveller campaign, where in something like a year and a half of regular weekly play, we had only TWO actual firefights.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Phillip;444220Are you one of those blokes in whose theory "Apples to Apples" does not have a game system?
I'm not really sure how someone could possibly claim that. So... no?
I suspect you're trying to makes some point about
Apples to Apples being enjoyable because of the social interactions that happen outside of the mechanics. But that's not really true, is it? The mechanics of
Apples to Apples include the cards themselves and are specifically designed to create conceptual matching in a competitive environment. The social strategies and interactions which arise around those mechanics are all specifically tied to the mechanics themselves.
Quote from: RPGPundit;444327In that sense, I would disagree with Amber being included, because there's nothing in the rules per se to discourage fighting, and every campaign I've ever run was full of bloodshed. Mainly of uncountable numbers of shadow-people, but also really vicious fights between amberites or chaosians.
I'd go so far as to say that Amber encourages violence.
I obviously run and play in very different Amber games than other people on this thread at least as far as the amount of violence goes.
Whereas my experience with CoC seems to be quite different than many online. We always had all kinds of gunfights in the games I played of it. One game I ran started with a big firefight at a train station between a group of federal agents and a mob gang (several PCs were mobsters or mob associates). And the final part of the story arc I ran had a cult getting blowed up real good by setting fire to the oil derrick that was near their meeting place.
Quote from: Lorrraine;444344I obviously run and play in very different Amber games than other people on this thread at least as far as the amount of violence goes.
Yeah, me, too. To me, Amber has always been about a) getting to create cool characters, b) mystery, c) exploration, and d) player cleverness.
Combat doesn't have, as far as a recall, voluminous or unique mechanics. It relies, like everything else, on the player to leverage his or her imagination against the situation.
In my experience, that's not attractive to folks who enjoy combat - they want static numbers, set maneuvers, a drawn out battlefield, etc.. They want outcomes to be determined by the numbers, it seems to me...
Seanchai
Quote from: Justin Alexander;444342I'd go so far as to say that Amber encourages violence.
Its one of the things I love about the game.
RPGPundit
Quote from: danbuter;444282I think it's funny that many of the recommended systems in this thread have an entire chapter of combat rules.
But this is in comparison with games that have nothing but rules for conflict. Writing a chapter or 2 about combat in a rule book of 15 chapters would indicate a game where combat can happen as one means of resolution. A game where 12 chapters of 15 are based on combat would indicate another sort of game.
Quote from: Justin AlexanderI suspect you're trying to makes some point about Apples to Apples being enjoyable because of the social interactions that happen outside of the mechanics.
No. I'm trying to make the point that "game mechanics" don't always involve number crunching and dice rolls. Sometimes -- as in AtA -- they involve someone passing judgment.
This is very often the case in RPGs. Some people try to claim that using rules other than the aforementioned "crunchy" ones constitute "not really playing the game". Actual
role-playing would be a prime example.
What is really determinative is what the game is about.
There are no rules for glacis slope or shaped charges in Monopoly, because it's not about shooting tanks in Atlantic City.
When some guys decided that they wanted to add shootouts to Clue, naturally they had to add rules for the pieces to get hurt.
The possibility of injury or even death is part of the human condition of most roles that people play in role-playing games. If that is accounted for, then combat merely consists -- as in the real world -- of doing things to cause injury to other beings.
If the game prohibits injury or death, then it's a stranger world with stranger roles in it than those assumed in old D&D.
However, the overwhelming majority of RPGs have been inspired by fiction genres -- heroic fantasy, duelists in Paris, western, space opera, crime, espionage, horror, pirates, superheroes, etc. -- that put special emphasis on risk of injury in general and on fighting in particular.
Turn to Chivalry & Sorcery or King Arthur Pendragon, and you'll find special attention paid to dynastic issues: courtly romance, marriage, pregnancy and birth, bastardy and order of inheritance, titles and lands, fealty and alliance, influence and intrigue, armies and castles, grain and gold.
A game meant primarily as a "bodice ripper" and family intrigue might utterly invert the priority of what gets worked out in detail and what gets treated simply.
The ancient computer-game version of Nine Princes in Amber had notably complex systems for fencing both literal and (most strikingly) conversational. The physical puzzles -- focused on the interactions of objects -- that were the preoccupation in most "Adventure" type games played a much smaller part in the Amber game.
Quote from: jgants;444346Whereas my experience with CoC seems to be quite different than many online. We always had all kinds of gunfights in the games I played of it. One game I ran started with a big firefight at a train station between a group of federal agents and a mob gang (several PCs were mobsters or mob associates). And the final part of the story arc I ran had a cult getting blowed up real good by setting fire to the oil derrick that was near their meeting place.
Dude, there's nothing wrong with that type of CoC game at all, as far as I'm concerned. :)
Sometimes I like careful investigations and much talk going on at the game table, and sometimes I'll enjoy this type of game just as much. I think CoC's versatility is one of its greatest assets, point of fact.
Quote from: Benoist;444436Dude, there's nothing wrong with that type of CoC game at all, as far as I'm concerned. :)
Sometimes I like careful investigations and much talk going on at the game table, and sometimes I'll enjoy this type of game just as much. I think CoC's versatility is one of its greatest assets, point of fact.
Oh sure, I've always had plenty of investigation and non-gunfighting action, too.
There was a hilarious scene at the beginning where the guy playing the undertaker was rooting through the office of a reporter for clues, but managed to completely miss them all.
Another time the two mob guys tracked a clue down to an old house, but when they opened the door a severed head came rolling down the main stairway inside and inhuman sounds could be heard from upstairs. They decided to run for it.
We even had a chase scene where one guy was trying to chase after a guy in his car. He ended up running into a tree and drifted in and out of consciousness for hours before the other PCs finally located him.
Quote from: Phillip;444435What is really determinative is what the game is about.
This is received wisdom in the indie world but I think it's deeply questionable.
Firstly, a fairly traditional view of game design was that the rules were there for those things which weren't capable of being simply roleplayed.
Analyse what any game designed on that basis is about by reference solely to the rules and you'll go wildly off base. "Hey, there's no rules for social conflicts, clearly this game isn't about those" just doesn't follow with this kind of design theory. If the assumption is that social conflicts are the point of the game and so don't need rules as they'll be roleplayed you've just missed the whole point of the design.
Secondly, it's often used to argue that D&D is about combat because it has rules mostly about combat. That's wrong though because most of D&D's rules in the majority (maybe all) editions aren't about combat. When you look at the large number of non-combat spells and the exploration stuff in earlier editions (plus what you got xp for, combat was not an effective means of gaining xp in earlier editions compared to theft) the fact is D&D's rules aren't mostly about combat. People drifted it to that.
The key point though is that this ignores the fact that what's not present in the rules is sometimes as important for how the game is meant to be played as what is present. I find rules dull. I want the rules out of the way when I rp. Accordingly, I dislike games where the rules step in to actively support the stuff I want most to do. I want the rules mostly there to help resolve the stuff that doesn't interest me.
I'm not universal in that preference, but nor am I rare. Your philosophy would miss the point of almost every game I enjoy playing. It's fine for indie games where mechanical support of the core elements of play is a given, but not for other design philosophies.
Quote from: D-503Your philosophy would miss the point of almost every game I enjoy playing.
You do not appear to know thing one about what my philosophy is, and this is definitely not for any want of my having expressed it. You seem simply not to have bothered to read what I had written.
Quote from: D-503This is received wisdom in the indie world but I think it's deeply questionable.
I think it's deeply questionable that some jerk who is determined not to play the game at hand gets invited back again, at least in the circles with which I am acquainted.
"I want to buy a hotel."
"You can't."
"Why not? I've got a full house."
"Because this is P O K E R, not Monopoly!"
I am just amazed at the dysfunctional attitudes of so many gamers online. The main reason that old D&D doesn't have in the books any treatment of sheep herding or cheese making, or zillions of other occupations, is that those are not what the game was designed to be about.
Ditto the lack of pixies and sorcerers and giant transforming robots in
Boot Hill.
Now, no book is an exhaustive definition of any "the game" except the particular theoretical one it describes. Game Master Gary may well have sixgun-toting sorcerers and robot-riding pixies in "the game" that is the
actual process of play that he moderates.
The obverse may be true as well: some things found in some books may be
absent from some actual games, or present but with different particulars.
This is so obvious and makes such common sense that the claims of some people not to get it were at first hard to believe. The accumulated weight of evidence suggests to me that birds of such a feather flock together because nobody else will tolerate them.
There seems thus to be a sub-culture of gamers who only ever experience RPGs as fought over -- much more than actually played! -- with others of their bull-headed ilk.
Quote from: D-503"Hey, there's no rules for social conflicts, clearly this game isn't about those" just doesn't follow
It is necessary to READ THE WHOLE THING, not just pull out of context the empty spaces between words. This should be no startling revelation, whether one is reading an RPG text -- or a series of posts in a thread!
I addressed above to Jason Alexander the very point that not all rules are formulated in terms of numbers and dice rolls. This, however, has nothing really to do with the perennial insistence in some quarters that old D&D has "no rules for social interaction" --
despite the explicit numbers and dice rolls in the very first book, and the huge tabulation of factors in 1st ed. AD&D.
Uninformed opinions are a dime a dozen.
Also pretty much common sense and based on experience is the observation that people's personal hobby horses tend to get extra attention. Not everybody was as keen as Gygax on the nomenclature of polearms, or even ever thought of "fish tickling" at all prior to the presentation of a system for it in
The Chivalry & Sorcery Sourcebook.
Some people want lots of added details about guns and ammo, or wrestling, or ships and sailing, or commercial speculation, or the Astral Plane -- or any of countless other topics -- while others just have no use for those.
There IS usually a correlation between the significance of a question and how much the answer is formalized, because
the formalization entails an investment of time and energy.
A question that is not likely to get asked because everyone but a few nuts is trivially in agreement is not worth the effort. Neither is one for which arbitrarily different answers are not likely to matter much to anyone but a few nuts.
The particulars of that calculation are of course different when one's own group happens to be just those very few nuts!
In short, I can only wonder on what basis you figure that a game that is not presented as being about violence should be assumed to be about violence. All I see in evidence is an absurd little-boy-ish myopia, on par with a little-girl-ish myopia that would insist that a game called Hackers & Slashers 'must' involve tea parties.