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OK, so I recently came across some controversy on Vincent's blog, in his post on http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/anycomment.php?entry=222">Paintball and little boy bullshit.  This was followed up by http://www.livejournal.com/users/benlehman/75704.html">Heroes Live, Cowards Die, and apparently stemed from an Adept Press thread on The Forge, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15415">Sorcerer Doesn't Scare Me. What's Wrong with Me? -- though that thread is closed.  

To bring this to a point about RPGs, I wanted to talk about theoretical approaches toward more non-violent role-playing.  I'm not saying there is anything wrong with violence, but I would like to look for ways to encourage non-violent resolution.  This is what Emma Wieslander addressed in her article "Positive Power Drama" for Beyond Role and Play.  On Vincent's blog, Matt Wilson wrote:

Quote from: Matt WilsonRPGs typically set up the rules so that violent acts of aggression are a superior means of resolving situations, and that turning away is failure. There's cool exceptions, though, like Dogs and TSOY.

I found this peculiar, because Dogs in the Vineyard struck me as a highly violent game.  Every resolution can potentially be won by escalating to physical violence.  So I expect that not only will it be common, but every resolution has the threat of violence behind it.  I haven't played The Shadow of Yesterday.  It's mechanics are defined generically that they can be applied to violent and non-violent resolution, but mechanics like "Bringing Down the Pain" and damage are extremely suggestive of violence.  

Again, nothing wrong with violence in a game.  These are fine games.  However, I'd like to do more for interesting non-violent resolution.  The same applies to games like The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, and My Life With Master.  

I guess I'd start with examples.  I think http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~ecboss/bti/">Breaking the Ice and http://www.halfmeme.com/nicotinegirls.html">Nicotine Girls are fairly good examples of non-violent games.  While I'm not very active in game design, my Water-Uphill World game was entirely non-violent.  It concentrated on the kids growing up and exploring the alien world.  In Vinland, about half of the sessions involved violence of some sort.  At those time, there was matchmaking and social relations, which was usually about winning someone's respect, proving yourself.  (My more recent two games, Buffy and James Bond, were much more violent, though -- possibly why I'm interested in a change.)  

Let me start with some ideas:
1) Overwhelmingly, the most important thing has nothing to do with combat.  It has to do with providing interesting scenarios which don't involve combat.  In particular, I think it's important to downplay interpersonal conflict and competition.  I think Breaking the Ice does this pretty well, for example.  

2) To categorize more broadly: one option would be having a generic resolution mechanic which doesn't connote or emphasize violence.  Another is providing specific resolution mechanics, like Breaking the Ice's relationship mechanics or Ars Magica's magical research.  

3) As for combat, one option is simply only providing non-combat resolution, with no options for combat.  This is essentially what I did for Water-Uphill World.  Another would be to provide a combat system, but make it unrewarding.  

So, my question would be examples and ideas for interesting, engaging non-violent games.  I know that's pretty broad, but on the other hand, non-violent RPGs are pretty rare.  I'm sure that there have been prior threads on the topic, but it seemed topical to recent discussion.

Are you talking about games that reward non-violence, or simply games that don't give violence preferential treatment in the mechanics?

Because almost any game that was designed with attention paid to Mike's Standard Rant #3 will avoid giving mechanical preference to violence.  That includes: DitV, Sorceror, InSpectres, Capes, PrimeTime Adventures and probably many, many others I'm less well-versed in.

Quote from: TonyLBAre you talking about games that reward non-violence, or simply games that don't give violence preferential treatment in the mechanics?

Because almost any game that was designed with attention paid to Mike's Standard Rant #3 will avoid giving mechanical preference to violence.  That includes: DitV, Sorceror, InSpectres, Capes, PrimeTime Adventures and probably many, many others I'm less well-versed in.

I'm talking about games that actively encourage and promote non-violence.  Actually, I'm not convinced that including a generic mechanic that handles both violent and non-violent action inherently does that.  For example, DitV's escalation mechanic explicitly says that while some problems with luck can be solved without violence, violence can solve any problem if non-violence doesn't.

I agree with John about Dogs. I hope it's thoughtfully violent, but either way it's violent as all hell.

Primetime Adventures, on the other hand, is a good example of ... well, I guess it's really violence-neutral, isn't it? Its rules simply don't distinguish between violent conflicts and any other kind. Do Capes'? I don't think they do. Universalis' don't. InSpectres' ... don't, I guess - although I'd argue that in assigning stress roles we will inevitably treat violent stresses differently than non-violent stresses. Sorcerer's do. My Life with Master's do, obviously, what with half the conflicts being named "violence" and all. Trollbabe's sort of do, in distinguishing between physical, social and magical.

It's an interesting question.

Essential, I'd think, would be to make certain that in the game's non-violent conflicts enough is at stake.

-Vincent

Dead Inside encourages positive action, and in a way could say that it rewards non-violence.

Quote from: John KimOn Vincent's blog, Matt Wilson wrote:

Quote from: Matt WilsonRPGs typically set up the rules so that violent acts of aggression are a superior means of resolving situations, and that turning away is failure. There's cool exceptions, though, like Dogs and TSOY.

I found this peculiar, because Dogs in the Vineyard struck me as a highly violent game.

Emphasis mine.

Dogs doesn't do that (as far as I know) because it doesn't make violence the superior choice, it leaves it as one choice a character may take, as the player addresses premise. Using violence will say something about the character. While the game may seem a highly violent one, taking away violence from the game as a designer is saying 'No, your not allowed to say that about your character'. Which is a bit crap.

Quote from: John KimIt has to do with providing interesting scenarios which don't involve combat.  In particular, I think it's important to downplay interpersonal conflict and competition.

While I agree that coming up with a compelling scenerio/premise (little "p") is crucial, I think downplaying interpersonal conflict and competition is unneccesary. As long as the premise is one where violence is not socially acceptable (imagine the hypothetical "West Wing" RPG), then players won't turn to violence for resolution. I think its as easy as that, though that's just my opinion. I have no personal experience to back up my claim.

Quote from: NoonUsing violence will say something about the character. While the game may seem a highly violent one, taking away violence from the game as a designer is saying 'No, your not allowed to say that about your character'. Which is a bit crap.

Well, this topic is about crap, then.  Again, I'm not saying anything bad about violent games, I'm just looking for alternatives.  Make another thread if you want to discuss whether non-violent games are a bad thing or not.  

Quote from: Justin A HamiltonDead Inside encourages positive action, and in a way could say that it rewards non-violence.

OK, I'm not familiar with Dead Inside, though I've read reviews.  You get soul points for following Virtues and overcoming Vices, right?  Does it encourage non-violent games in practice?  What are adventures like?  By comparison, Marvel Superheroes has Karma Points which encouraged being "good guys" -- but there the good guys were terribly violent, so it didn't encourage non-violence but rather heroic violence plus some token non-violent acts.

I've been working on Regency Park which is modeled after Jane Austen's novels.  Physical violence isn't a big part of the genre, and I'm pretty much only looking to work with social conflict.  (I think there is ONE duel mentioned in all her novels and that was mentioned only in passing, you weren't even there.)

So I think there will be some genres where at least the expectations will lean towards non-violence.

best

Trevis

One game worth noting here is Wraith: the Oblivion. While it contains violence - or at least the potential for it - the emphasis is meant to be on the ethical ramifications of actions. And the idea of resolving things left undone in life favors exploration of emotional issues both positive and negative. Too bad most people seemed to miss how clever the game actually was in this regard.

-Jiituomas

It might not be the game you're looking for, but you could play Sorcerer with Humanity=Non-violence. Of course this would mean that the demons would be violent as hell, and the setting would probably be very violent, too. But the reward system would strongly encourage the players to look for non-violent solutions.

IME, In most fictional narratives that involve violence it is "organic" to the situation (meant in the sense that it is, for a 'good' narrative, a natural outgrowth of the characters and context). In Resivoir Dogs we know--even when we just see these guys sitting around the table eating breakfast--that they are capable of great violence and are doing things that may very well lead them to that.

Despite this, were it an RPG that depicted only what was shown on screen, it wouldn't be "all that violent" (most of the running-time of the movie doesn't involve or revolve around gun-play).

Even more importantly: in Resivoir Dogs most of the conflict is terminated by violence but is not violent throughout (i.e. Mr. White and Mr. Orange's relationship comes to an end through several gun-shots but, really, the tension is about who trusts whom and not whether one person is a superior killer than the other).

This is an example of why I'm very dubious of the conventional wisdom that, for example, combat-systems encourage violence in games (after all: plenty of fiction 'encourages violence' and there is no "combat mechanic" for writing a book).

I'm hard-pressed to think of games that have, literally, had no violence whatsoever but I have had many games in bog-standard combat systems that might have, literally, 33hrs of play and less than 1hr of "combat activity."

I can also think of several recent games I've been in where combat activity was not the resolving action for the game. I'm not sure when you ask for ideas for interesting, non-violent games if you mean systems or instances of gaming, however.

In my experience, the formula for non-violence has been simple: non-violent characters and non-violent context. Given these, a decision to escalate to violence creates natural consequences.

In my experience the motives for violence have also been straight-forward: it's dramatic, exciting, and decisive in ways that most other things aren't (this is also why it's so tempting in fiction).

-Marco

I disagree with Marco's disbelief in the old chestnut, mainly because in my experience of playing games: rules beg to be used. As such, my answer to the non-violence question is simple: make a game where the mechanics reflect non-violent courses of action that have similarly high, decisive stakes, and similar ability to detail and strategize one's actions.

That is, violence is an easy thing to emulate mechanically, and we do it with a load of interesting detail, round-by-round action, and such. Where's a game that has social interaction mechanics that function just like combat? Or romantic relationship mechanics?

If you put the rules down, if they are interesting and have a sort of palpable texture to them, they'll be used. "Resolve it all with one roll" is not usually a good texture, however, and that is often how games handle non-combat situations or tasks. There's nothing to strategize about, no building of dramatic tension, no resources to play and manipulate.

Quote from: greyormI disagree with Marco's disbelief in the old chestnut, mainly because in my experience of playing games: rules beg to be used.

One might even say that system does matter.

Quote from: greyormWhere's a game that has social interaction mechanics that function just like combat? Or romantic relationship mechanics?

Not to simply restate two games already mentioned, but Dogs in the Vineyard has the former, and Capes has both.

Quote from: greyorm
That is, violence is an easy thing to emulate mechanically, and we do it with a load of interesting detail, round-by-round action, and such. Where's a game that has social interaction mechanics that function just like combat? Or romantic relationship mechanics?

(Emphasis added)
Here: http://www.jagsrpg.org/jags/content/GEAR/GEAR.pdf

I'm not surprised you disagree with me (after all, if the viewpoint wasn't virtually canonical here, I wouldn't have posted)--but as most traditional RPG's have at least one foot in the "shared narrative creation bucket" I think that examination of how often rolls of any sort are called for is a fairly meaningful metric when examining play in the context that in other forms of fiction there are no "combat rules" and combat is still a common integral part of the genres most represented in gaming.

I have seen games where there is fast and furious use of social mechanics (and these are bog-standard games I'm talking about here) and games where scenes of high-tension are resolved without any rolls or mechanics whatsoever (much in the same way one would play the board game Diplomacy--save that the 'moves' are based on situational knowledge rather than a map-and-turn structure).

It's easy to say that rules beg to be used (Edited to add: or to say "system does matter" and act as though the specific implications of that are in any way explict or agreed upon), I don't think it's easy to quantify it. It's easy to believe but I don't think it's the sort of assessment that can be proven.

In the end, it may be that for certain sub-sets of gamers the preference for rules-driven interaction with SIS may be far stronger than for others (and it's my belief that that sub-set of gamers is very strongly represented here). That doesn't make a universal truth, however.

Nor does it make violence or lack thereof intrinsic to the presence of a combat system. Combat is, in fact, usually the highest mechanically-driven negative-consequence creation subsystem in any traditional RPG. The risk-factor of non-combat skill rolls is usually far, far lower than combat rolls.

-Marco