Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sir Elton 06-11-06, 08:42 AM	"No sex, no violence, just adventure." I know this toes the Wizards' party line, but this is a mature subject that should be accessible for everyone. My question is: is it possible to run a successful adventure without violence? I mean, avoiding killing stuff and only use your weapons as a deterrent. Has anyone gone through an entire official wizards' adventure without using your sword or your magic to cut something or blast something? I know some beings are evil, but what if all the "natural" intelligent races were actually treated as neutral? This obviously leaves out the majority of the mind flayers. It's June 11th, so I'll repost this question in a different form tomorrow morning.
Silverthumb128 06-11-06, 09:26 AM	Well, if you take the fighting out of the campaign, all you've got, basically, is walking around and talking. ... ... ... Cool, I wanna play a Fighter. Or Barbarian. Cleric will be pretty helpful, I'll be doing a lot of healing without all the fighting going on, and there'll be a lot of people to heal who aren't fighting. Etc, etc. That would sort of make the majority of the classes obselete, wouldn't it? You'd just be discovering places, finding treasure that nobody wants, and everyone would probably be friends with each other, if there wasn't fighting. I'm taking my Paladin, I'm fairly sure there's an Evil Outsider trying to control the Material Plane here.
Raun 06-11-06, 09:27 AM	It is possible, but you have to have really good bluff and diplomacy checks =P How would you handle a group of 15 zombies trying to pin the PCs against a wall? You could turn some of them... Then it becomes an issue how industurious and creative your PCs are.
Khael 06-11-06, 09:31 AM	It's possible. Remember the DM gives out XP for getting round problems, not neccessarily cutting it down. All you need is high bluff skills, diplomacy etc. The problem is of course, if a monster wants to fight, and overcomes your bluff you have to fight or flee. A sort of heist-styled group of PCs may be useful for this (where the objective is to steal/secure something, and since slealth is partamount, dead bodies tend to be a give-away...) That or give someone the exalted vow of non-violence for example so those in the party who decide to go on killing sprees suffer penalties for there actions without resorting to railroading. And on the neutral intelligent races: I'd say that needs a lot of thinking out, based on the races themselves i.e. if orcs aren't violent, they will rule since their birth rate is though the roof, traditionally the thing that keeps them limited in numbers is the fact they are a blood-thirsty pack of bullies after all...
stealth_monkey 06-11-06, 09:33 AM	If you're going to try this, I'd really suggest a different system. DnD is designed specifically around combat from the ground up. Remove combat and all you've got is cha, bluff, intimidate and diplomacy. Might I suggest a move to the white wolf system? This, I've found provides excellent rules for the type of game you're wanting, although it might be some work to change the setting to a fantasy one
hmmmm 06-11-06, 09:41 AM	I did this once. I took the Vow of Peace and went through an adventure with out hurting anything.
celtredleg 06-11-06, 10:18 AM	I think it would be hard to find a group of players that would want to try it. It may be possible, for a short time. It most likely would need changeing the monster mix to get rid of anything mindless or under some sprt of compultion to fight.
Sir Elton 06-11-06, 11:14 AM	Notice I said "without gratuitous violence." I recognize that violence is a solution to some problems, but not all of them. :) There is such a thing as the pornography of violence. What I was talking about is adventures with the minimum amount of violence possible.
Selebius 06-11-06, 12:11 PM	It is possible. I once run a game, kind of whodunit meets haunted house which lasted about 10 sessions and had minimal combat. No one got killed, only one fight and it resulted out of misunderstanding. Sel
Bulletproof_Condom 06-11-06, 12:18 PM	'Course it's possible. Such a game would rely heavily on social skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, and probably stealth to some extent. Of course it's also possible for Kevin Smith to make a movie with no cursing in it, but what's the point?
Serielle 06-11-06, 02:45 PM	I've ran most of my games with the intention of only throwing combat in when it advances the storyline, though there have been a few cases when I popped up a random encounter because the players wanted combat. I don't think I really understand the question. You can still run a combat heavy campaign and still have none of it be gratuitous. If you're asking if it's possible to run an adventure with violence only being there when it's neccesary, then it's trivially easy. If you mean an adventure with little to no violence, then D&D probably isn't the best system for it. As for official adventures, yes, but they require extensive modification. Most of them seem to be of the "enter location, slaughter everything, pick up clues, work out backstory" variety, so they're not well suited to that type of game without some serious structural change.
CryoSilver 06-11-06, 09:07 PM	Many of my game's sessions have been combat-free. Course, I hit on some heavy themes in those sessions, like drug use, just to keep the pressure up.
Teh Lurv 06-12-06, 01:34 PM	You can certainly have combat without much violence. Have you considered a bounty-hunter themed adventure, where the party has to capture a fugitive and bring 'em back alive? The party's weapons would be more focused on incapacitating a foe rather than killing them (chains, manacles, saps, etc) and there is a PrC which focuses on this style (Justicar).
BranWheat 06-12-06, 02:11 PM	I have never had in any of my campaigns, nor played in a campaign, that involved sex in any manner. My friends and myself have never seen the draw to having our ficitonal characters get freaky with the local wenches. As for violence, yes, it can easily be done. A lot of DM's forget that one of the biggest parts of Dungeons and Dragons is the actual Roleplaying. A few months ago an entire adventure was spent within a tavern playing a drinking game. I used the drinking game from the "One Night To Kill" module and ran with it. It was a great time, it involved every player in a creative way, and it didn't have any combat what so ever. My current campaign has the party running an adventurers for hire business out of Sharn in Eberron. One week they might be asked to investigate a murder, the next to retrieve and artifact, and after that to attend a party as security. Some weeks are dungeon crawling, some weeks are intrigue, some are pure roleplaying. It all works out.
LCD2YOU 06-12-06, 02:15 PM	There's always "Chutes and Ladders". Of course, the game of "Care Bears and the Fountain of Giving" is also a classic.
BranWheat 06-12-06, 02:21 PM	You can certainly have combat without much violence. Have you considered a bounty-hunter themed adventure, where the party has to capture a fugitive and bring 'em back alive? The party's weapons would be more focused on incapacitating a foe rather than killing them (chains, manacles, saps, etc) and there is a PrC which focuses on this style (Justicar). I ran an adventure similar to this recently in my Eberron campaign. One of the party members was returning from purchasing some blackmarket goods when a body fell from the sky (Sharn is built vertically using towers, ramps, and bridges) and landed near his feet. After having witnessed the murder that player was knocked unconscious and taken by the Boromar clan. The rest of the party was hired by the Father of the murdered man and sent out to bring the killer in alive. I absolutely loved this adventure and so did my players. It was something unique for them, being split up, and since they had to bring the person in alive they had to adjust their tactics of approach. There was a lot of intelligence gathering to find out who the killer was and where he operated out of. At the same time they didn't even know the other player had been kidnapped since it was common place for the characters to be gone days at a time doing their own jobs and agendas. Be creative and you can come up with a lot of adventures that involve little to no combat. I'm preparing a security detail for a party right now. One of the guests is going to be murdered and it will be up to the players to use their intelligence and crime solving techniques to discover who the killer really is, while at the same time trying to not implement or insult any of the influential guests.
Millennium 06-12-06, 02:36 PM	It's quite possible to run a D&D game with lots of intrigue as opposed to violence. However, it will feel very different from a "standard" D&D game, and this is something you need to be prepared for. Truth be told, I find the best campaigns to be hybrids: periods of intrigue punctuated by periods of fighting. Participating in a grand tournament, hunting the assassin who has just tried to kill the king (and is still in the castle), or even just daily sparring practice can provide ample opportunities for combat in a setting that is otherwise filled with intrigue.
Gedrin 06-12-06, 02:47 PM	Violence: I generally don't have gratuitous violence IMC. The closest thing to gratuitous violence IMC is the “random encounter”, which IMC are pre planned. Nearly all violence IMC consists of combat encounters. Nearly all violence is story/adventure driven. When a random encounter (a non-story encounter) occurs, it’s usually when the PC’s come in contact with a local hazard, such as a beast or local criminal element. Usually, I don’t throw these in without an intent to describe something about the game world. If I want to emphasize a city is particularly dangerous, I might have a mugging occur. The same goes for a terrain that I want to display as dangerous, where the PC’s might encounter a deadly beast. I rarely use violence solely to raise the tension of the game, or to create excitement without another purpose. Generally, I use it to advance the story, or to illustrate a danger in the game world. While violence is an easy and direct way to introduce a danger for the PC’s to struggle against, it is not the only way to create tension from risk. In the past, I’ve run entire game sessions without any combat. Natural disasters and hazards can make formidable physical challenges for the PC’s. I’ve used a cross country race in the past as a way to introduce challenges and NPC opponents without any particular violence. In my next campaign, combat encounters will not be appropriate in the beginning, so I’m looking particularly hard at creative ways to build this sort of tension. I’m thinking about a few different ideas such as a flood rescue/relief adventure and an adventure where the young PC’s are lost in an unfamiliar city. Sex: My campaigns aren’t generally built around romantic relationships, and the adventurer’s life isn’t exactly good for building long term romances. That hasn’t prevented the PC’s from finding random NPC’s to sleep around with but we usually just handle it Fade To Black. Occasionally, a PC even finds a husband or wife, and when that happens there’s usually an IC wedding. However, most of the actual important stuff about those relationships, or any long term relationship, doesn’t require graphic description of the sexual escapades be brought into the game.
drtompki 06-13-06, 02:29 AM	I've played in groups where the fact that we were all grown up was taken into consideration. There was a female PC that got raped, one character that got addicted to drugs and was sold into indentured servitude for 6 months, and the characters of the realm had a lot of people that were not adverse to being very...friendly. It was never a central theme, though, so things never got out of control.
Sunrider 06-13-06, 04:40 AM	Try running a solo adventure with a rogue/spymaster/other secret-agent-type character. Generally a lot less blood-and-guts than a typical adventure, but, in many ways, the dramatic tension and excitement are much greater than in a typical, kick-in-the-door dungeon-crawl. Basically, with a solo character (especially such a multi-skilled one), you tend to think your way around problems rather than simply blasting your way through them (otherwise you'll be a very short-lived adventurer). Violence occurs, but much less frequently, and it's not gratuitous in anyway way or form - when it occurs, it's often because it's the only way around an obstacle (e.g. sucker-punching a guard with an unarmed strike, then sneaking in while wearing the guard's uniform...). Death, assassination, etc. all occur, but are all mission/plot driven rather than gratuitous - the emphasis is on strategy rather than tactics (of course, some sabotage operations still result in tremendous explosions, but that's still mission- or objective-driven). Makes for a very interesting change of pace, and it's been a prime focus of several campaigns I've run/played in. You can also do the same thing with a standard party, provided they are all highly-skiled characters (e.g. rogues, bards, non-blaster mages/psions) and savvy players. In such a setting, you can safely throw much-higher-level challenges than they would normally be expected to overcome; if the players are smart, they'll find a way around it (recruiting allies, subcontracting, whatever). If they play smartly, they'll level up quickly (although, in stealth-based and skill-based games, magic gear tends to play second fiddle to raw currency, with inherent stat/save bonuses (i.e. anything that casts Wish, or tomes) being of prime interests to characters, since it's hard to disguise yourself while wearing a mummified Elf hand around your neck...). If they play stupidly, they'll die very quickly.
Solik 06-13-06, 10:57 AM	I don't consider rolling dice to thwack a miniature on a grid to be "violent," so the closest thing I can think of to "gratuitous violence" in D&D would be the DM describing, in detail, some particularly gruesome scene. And that's still pretty timid. I'm not interested in sex in standard campaigns. Solo campaigns with a female? Well...
DIESCUMDIE 06-13-06, 12:51 PM	I'm not interested in sex in standard campaigns. Solo campaigns with a female? Well... In my experience those gaming sessions tend to be short - but fun. Other than that games without gratuitious violence; zzzzzzzz Pornography of violence - where do I find this, sounds cool
Victor_Phoenix 06-13-06, 12:55 PM	Running a D&D without Gratuitous violence is not only do able, its great fun if your player's and DM are into that sort of thing. Currently I am running a group of 6 people me the DM and 5 Players We are currently playing a Dragon Star game “Go to Fantasyflight.com for more details" And our group consists of a Air Genasi Sorcerer 14 Archmage 2, Gnome Artificer 16, Human Fighter 17, Half-Shadow Dragon Dark Whisper Gnome Rogue 10 Thief Acrobat 3, Shadow Ghost Elf Rogue 10. Now the group dose tons of adventures with out even lifting a blade, pulling a blaster, or whispering a spell, but the Human Fighter and Whisper Gnome Rogue get bored often with that type of play as they personally are not the strongest voices in our group. Not, to say they are not good role-players they just don’t enjoy a game session that is spent just talking to Dragon Emissaries, they enjoy killing some critter and blowing stuff up. So as a DM it is my duty to find a good medium. The game should be built around the characters, and the players’ in turn will enjoy it.