I admit that I could be completely wrong here, but I feel like the quality of RPGs would be incredibly improved if everyone at the table had experience in killing mammals or reptiles.
Whether it be hunting, butchering, or soldiering, any of these would really make sure everyone at the table understands what taking a life actually means.
This should of course crossover to book writer side as well. If your RPG features brutal combat, then you should know what it's like to kill.
I sort of wonder what your games are actually like.
Usually with a lot of diplomacy and alternate solutions to problems. The most recent campaign was a post apocalypse survival/adventure game though we're looking at doing a fantasy campaign that's kind of basic with an adventuring guild and such, as a fun little diversion since not all of us will make every session this month. I staeted to wonder on this topic because my players
>Grew up in a hunting family and doesn't have the guts for it after shooting his first (and only) deer
>Used to work on a farm and decided he didn't want to have to see anymore animals die
>Is an Iraq war vet
I get that.
Admittedly I have a farm background as well, so there are times where I find myself having to explain things I thought were obvious or just handwaving them because it would drag down the game too much to go into details that the players aren't familiar with.
There's nothing criminal about butchering chickens/pigs, nor am I suggesting anything criminal by saying people should have a real experience.
I did include reptiles because while I haven't personally killed one I remembered when I was a kid and visiting my godfather he shot a rattlesnake that was under a man's truck.
If you're curious, snakes have too many bones to be fun to eat.
>shot a rattlesnake that was under a man's truck
lol just move the truck and chop its head off with a shovel
>There's nothing criminal about butchering chickens/pigs, nor am I suggesting anything criminal by saying people should have a real experience.
It's certainly not illegal, and I (that anon) have hunted and field-dressed deer and elks.
But "everyone should have to kill something before they play a game involving killing" is definitely edging into Silence of the Lambs territory.
that's a bit overmuch
can meet that quota by just pushing drunk homosexuals into the canal in manchester
I think you're right. My soapbox is more fighting - getting punched in the face in boxing, getting ragdolled in wrestling, tapping out in jiujitsu than hunting.
If you have a concrete conception of what violence actually entails, you're less inclined to murderhobo. It's the the nerds that have never been punched in the mouth that often jump to violence and bizarre sadism in ttrpgs.
Great idea!
Unrelated, where do you live? General region is fine, once I call the police they should be able to do an IP trace.
I live in ur mom's house
>"players should share an experience that informs them when they play"
>anon freaks out and tries to play internet tough guy
I'm inclined to agree. It's just that I'm so rural the thought of that not being the case at the table has never occurred to me. This is a very interesting thought and a very interesting thread.
Kek, pussy
It's frustrating to me because I grew up handling animals, riding horses, etc. and none of my players ever have any experience beyond "watched western movies" so there's a real barrier between their understanding and what I'm able to convey.
I quite literally spend almost a year to organise and take my group on a 2 week long vacation, for the sole goal of finally getting them into the barest of bare basics of sailing, as it was a cruise and I was a captain. All of it so I don't have to deal with talking to complete laymen. As a bonus, we did a fully immersive campaign that's build on a premise of laymen being dragged into a sailing cruise to charter the unknown area. At least they quickly learned how real the "d3+1 wait due to no wind" or "you get stuck in water weeds for d6 hours" can get.
Oh, and as for the horses? One of the women in the group spend almost all of her life riding. I learned very fast to never, ever get horses of any kind in the games I run, because you can see the frustration on her face when (apparently) moronic shit happens and people are clueless.
I had a game with a horse dude (he was raised on a ranch and was literally riding before he could walk).
But he was able to remind himself that it's just a game instead of getting upset all the time like a programmer playing a Cyberpunk game.
Yeah, except our group first game to play and constant bonding experience was a party of Bretonnian knights.
You can probably guess where his is going
Give us an example so we might learn something
NTA but the big one is that you don't just get off of a horse and forget it. Even in a hurry the field, at the very least you're going to take its saddle off (though you may put it back on later), make sure it has access to water and to food, and examine (and maybe clean) its feet. You'll probably also remove the bridle, groom its coat, generally inspect it all over, make sure it has a soft clean place to lie down (despite the myth, horses sleep lying down), maybe throw a blanket over it if it's cold. I might be missing some.
Then in the morning you don't just hop on. You wake up the horse, say good morning, inspect it a little, possibly groom it, put on the bridle and adjust, put on the saddle and adjust, feed and water it again. If you didn't inspect them yesterday, you need to inspect the feet. You might have to get off and adjust the saddle a few times as you get started.
Even with practice, each of these processes takes a non-negligible amount of time.
Of course, I personally think this is an acceptable thing to gloss over since we don't normally talk much about the time to put on and adjust armor, or cook dinner, etc.
There's also things like the fact that a horse won't get anywhere near violence unless it's a trained war horse and only the most hardened charger will run straight at the enemy.
>If you have a concrete conception of what violence actually entails, you're less inclined to murderhobo. It's the the nerds that have never been punched in the mouth that often jump to violence and bizarre sadism in ttrpgs.
I have absolutely never found this to be true.
In fact, most of the murderhobos I've known have hunted. I don't think that they were murderhobos because they had developed a taste for killing or anything stupid like that, but they definitely didn't get an appreciation for life and death.
I admit that I could be completely wrong here, but I feel like the quality of RPGs would be incredibly improved if everyone at the table had experience exploring each others' bodies.
>The quality of [media] would be incredibly improved if everyone [in the audience] had [shared cultural experience to draw upon and find common ground with]
No shit, really?
I suppose it is a bit obvious.
I think you're right on. People who don't expect videogames/make videogames. They have no sense of strategy, no sense of danger, they just like running up to things and rolling dice. Enemies don't flee, they fight til they're burger, stupid stuff like that.
I think to describe nature well you have to walk around in it, think in a physical space instead of a game space. I'm not a hunter or an outdoorsman. OP what should I kill to get started? Can i speedrun it and just go after the most dangerous game, start with local outdoor pets, or do i wait for rabbit season or duck season? I know it's deer season but I'm not killing deer, they taste like shit and if I'm killing it I'm eating it.
>I know it's deer season but I'm not killing deer, they taste like shit and if I'm killing it I'm eating it.
If you can't figure out how to cook venison you don't deserve fresh meat anon.
birds are the easiest starter
just check your locals laws on what/when you can shoot and also make sure it's actually something safe to eat and not a diseased shitbird
If there are hunters in your area there's also a lodge or group or society or something that'll gladly teach you all you need to know and probably hold your hand throughout it.
>I'm not a hunter or an outdoorsman. OP what should I kill to get started?
Just ask your dad to show you how to shoot one of his guns.
>venison is gross
Nice way to out yourself as a troony
Personally I wish my players read anything other than generic genreslop and twitter. It's a b***h running games for them because we have a really different knowledge base most of the time.
Motherfricks didn't even know what a switchback was.
>Motherfricks didn't even know what a switchback was
Cities truly have become a cancer.
Depends on what your idea of quality is. I don't think my players will have fun when they have to weigh up the moral implication of every monster or orc bandit they kill.
>fat c**t op hasn't ever even stepped foot in maccas, c**t just orders on ubereats and gets it delivered via ubereats
>just fetishes adminresults
>I admit that I could be completely wrong here, but I feel like the quality of RPGs would be incredibly improved if everyone at the table had experience in killing mammals or reptiles.
You're completely wrong. One of my groups is veterans. Everyone one of us has killed. Our games are still full of nonsense and gallows humor.
>Everyone one of us has killed
found the cooks
Most of us can cook! Our in-person games (twice a year now) are basically an excuse to have a potluck feast with the spouses. Only one of us was ever rated as a cook. How he ended up as a cook is a fun story (that is his to tell), but he cross-trained out of it when he made E-5.
But if you're implying we can field dress game, that's accurate.
>Only one of us was ever rated as a cook
see that tells me the rest of your can actually make food, but this dudes the stone cold killer
sounds based, my group has a couple of vets, and one walt who thinks we don't know
one was widow on herrick 9, that would have sent plenty to the 72 virgins but he can't shoot for shit
was on a stag do and went shooting, c**t literally missed every fricking pull, we were in stitches
kc's probably in the hundreds. we joke he might have even got terry a couple of times
games night is an excuse for us to chat shit about the old times and let the wags have a wine night upstairs and we frick around with a bbq. good times wouldn't change it for the world
I am the sole non-Bubba in the group (I came up in the elite bubble Northeast US) except for the former cook, but once they realized I enjoyed many of the same things (fishing, hunting, barbecue, breaching, etc) and that my wife *was* from Texas, we got on famously. Former cook is from Cali (his wife is also from Texas).
So all from a small community inside of the military. We mostly goof off in games. We did play a semi-serious zombie survival game based on the premise we could only start with things we had on our person or in our vehicle (right outside). That was serious up until it wasn't. Good fun.
Playing L5R really helped my players get in a semi-sane mindset because of how deadly it was. A stray arrow could get lucky and kill a PC. So eventually they started actually trying to talk things out with enemies or at least studied the terrain and fought intelligently.
DnDroids have a really passive way of describing things where nothing is their fault, rather like women or children. EG, how many times have you hear something like "the DM sent a beholder after us"? As if the heroes weren't the ones who initiated the battle by invading the dungeon, not scouting, and kicking in the door.
More worldly people in general are more fun to game with. That Guy types are inevitably either NEETs or sheltered STEMlord types.
I admit that I could be completely wrong here, but I feel like the quality of RPGs would be incredibly improved if everyone at the table had experience in casting spells.
Whether it be summoning demons, sending curses, or hedge magic, any of these would really make sure everyone at the table understands what using magic actually means.
This should of course crossover to book writer side as well. If your RPG features spell casting, then you should know what it's like to wield arcane power.
But anon, killing isn’t real
I disagree. I'm not going to call you names or say you're an edgy somethikg or other, I just do not believe experiencing value holds any sort of inherent virtue.
I grew up in bad places, I've witnessed lynchings and killed to survive, both for food and in self-defense, and I don't think myself anything close to being better than your average Joe.
It's fine if people don't know the value of a life. Not everyone needs to carry that burden.
You could say the same thing about hiking, caving, martial arts, theft, animal behavior in general, academic research, and so on. Of course if your players are wordly people familiar with all these things you'll have an interesting game but not NEEDING that level of experience with the real life equivalents of the shit your characters are doing is supposed to be one of the draws of using a system as opposed to just freeforming it all
Look, I'm just saying you city slickers are worthless good-for-nothings. Ever see a rural democrat? There's a reason for that.
>ever see a rural democrat
Yes.
A lot.
I'm in beekeeping, and it's kind of essential to follow some democrat policies in this field, as epidemiology and global warming are very real and frick with us every year.
We're up to nearly 40% losses every year, when there AREN'T weather disasters.
The reason your gay little bees die is God punishing for supporting trannies and cucks, moron. have a nice day.
You're fricking moronic.
Christ. Sorry to hear it anon.
Attempts at country vs metropolitan classism is weirdly anathema to me, as someone who can’t stand villages, let alone cities. It always outs the instigator as a slimy toff whose daddy pays for a butler to wipe his arse, or a sub-50 IQ hick with a terrarium’s worth of chromosomes.
>Ever see a rural democrat?
Democrats represent new money and high finance like Wall St and Silicon Valley. Republicans represent old money through land-ownership like mining, ranching, farming, oil, etc.
Both are pure evil and non-rich people with more than a passing interest in politics are morons.
>Ever see a rural democrat?
Consistently, you city slicker
You don't see them until there's a gun pointed at your head. That's how they get you.
>it was a /misc/ thread all along
That's the secret. All of them were always /misc/ threads from the start. Welcome to the culture war.
I'm a rural leftist. But yeah, frick the dems.
City slickers are the ones working in the factories building your tractors and sprinklers moron. Everything is connected.
Also most RPG writers have never held a sword or shot with a bow in their entire lives which I think is the more relevant information when you're talking about characters fighting an owlbear rather than not having experience with slaughtering cattle or hunting with firearms. Maybe if you have a player who was a rodeo clown
>ITT: Autism
What's happening here
Just like OP’s mother, this person does not exist.
older AI facegen where it didnt have a way to handle background well? seems like it anyway
I am forced to agree: I would *love* it if writers stopped writing deadly RPGs.
Though I disagree with the method, I sort of get what you mean.
Recently started a new campaign and one of the PCs made a character who was supposed to be a lawfully-aligned former judge, who, though not necessarily good, would've known that murder and such is illegal outside of capital punishment.
Another PC was the owner of a israeliteel store in the city, and was being racketeered by bandits. The judge character heard about this and decided that, with the rest of the group, he would help solve the problem.
So what exactly do they do? They have the rogue follow the group to their house and report back. Then, the group goes to that house, barbarian opens the (unlocked, in fairness) door. Bandits ask about who he is and what he's doing, barbarian says nothing and just starts attacking.
This prompts combat to begin. Even through the fight I had the bandits chime in to ask things like "What do you people want?" and "Who are you?" but the PCs never answered. They killed all the bandits and the lawful former judge character didn't bat an eye. They were so casual and blasé about the whole thing, as if their characters were experienced killers and not some juvenile delinquent, a israeliteellery maker, and a former fricking judge of all things.
In fairness, they were bandits, yes, but they hadn't directly attacked the players yet so they wouldn't legally be able to claim self defense nor do they even have the legal authority to enforce capital punishment without trial or due process.
I bet if they had ever hunted or anything before, they certainly might've stopped for a moment to think "wait a minute, we're about to take the lives of 4 humans and we haven't even TRIED talking to them yet?"
Pic unrelated but this thread needs more images
>I bet if they had ever hunted or anything before, they certainly might've stopped for a moment to think "wait a minute, we're about to take the lives of 4 humans and we haven't even TRIED talking to them yet?"
You are vastly overestimating the effect that hunting has on people.
I know any number of people who hunt and have no problem e.g. shooting squirrels with a .22 for fun.
yeah, I kill rats constantly and like, it SUCKS, but it doesn't make me some kind of empathy man.
I guess I always try to talk to things beforehand in games, but I think that's unrelated as I did it before the rat killings.
Normal people will hunt once then swear it off forever. Therefore, the only people who hunt regularly are the sociopaths that would put a bullet on everyone they see for fun if there weren't other sociopaths to shoot them in return.
That's not true. Most people I know who hunt don't enjoy the killing. They like being outdoors, they like the skill needed, and they like the food - plus if you already have all the gear, it can be cheaper than buying good beef.
But killing and butchering an animal doesn't somehow give you respect for the sanctity and value of life.
>Normal people will hunt once then swear it off forever.
Hahaha what? What are you, some kind of fricking vegan?
First time I went hunting we shot nothing and came home cold and hungry. It was great. Just hanging out with dudes innawoods whispering about how bad ass the Macho Man was.
Didn't actually shoot anything until the third hunt.
There is a joke from my country that has a punchline that amounts more or less to "Everything is a board when you're a hunter".
I assume that was meant to be *boar?
Nice to know the french make light of shooting their own hounds
Are you also ESL?
It's play on "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Are you ESL?
That statement made absolutely no sense in English, because we don't say "If you have a hammer, everything looks like a board".
Oh. You're a genuine idiot. I do apologize.
How does "everything is a board if you're a hunter" work, though?
It's not a direct adaptation of hammer/nail, and you don't normally hunt boards (or at least, I don't).
>I assume that was meant to be *boar?
I've never fired a gun in my life and even I knew what he meant.
Yeah, congratulations. You now know that the quality of a player is directly proportionate to how successful in life they are. Marriage, good job, actual hobbies like hunting and fishing, any sports played - these are what makes a good player. Build optimization specialists have systems specifically tailored for them and they still freeze in actual play.
So people who don't play dnd.
So... bird shooting doesn't count?
Everyone has killed a bird at some point in their life.
It's significantly easier (morally) than killing a mouse.
I've heard Bretonnians love their horses a bit too much.
>Whether it be hunting, butchering, or soldiering, any of these would really make sure everyone at the table understands what taking a life actually means.
I have killed over 2 million hogs.
I still murder goblins and orcs like its nothing.
>I admit that I could be completely wrong here, but I feel like the quality of /tg/ would be incredibly improved if everyone on the board had experience in playing games.
>Whether it be rpgs, wargames, or boardgames, any of these would really make sure everyone on the board understands what playing a game actually means.
>This should of course crossover to book writer side as well. If you write a game, you should know what its like to play one.
tfw bored vet that doesnt have any vetfrens to teach me how to larp and instead have to play hungry hungry hippos by myself in moms basement again
You can’t rp effectively unless you’ve killed fiddy men.
> quality of my game would be improved if other people at my table had the same expectations as me
Yes
> people who don't have the same expectations are having wrongfun
No
Killed mice and rats with a bb gun back when I was little and lived the in the countryside, plus occassional hare, or stray dog, and some birds (but obviously those are not mammals). I don't think the experience changed me in any significant way. You don't think of it as taking a life, you think of it as removing a pest that threatens grandma's garden. I believe you can apply the same mindset to slaying goblins and kobolds, they are just bigger pests.
Well I'm a southern boy and well I dunno much about that BIG CITY stuff but well down here in the south we do things a little differently. Y'all darn tootin' city slicker types never done did kill yerself a coyote before? Hooooo wee then how you 'posed to kill a dragon?
My niece got done bit by a copperhead.
Having read this threads honest responses, I appreciate what you're saying as something of a personhood study.
I still don't fully agree. Most people don't want to kill things, and in the event that they do, like with insects, it takes a great degree of effort. Despite how easy it is to simply crush a spider with your hands, most people will swat it or swipe it away with a brush or stick. household insecticides are spray and forget, people even close the door so that they don't have to go in and watch it die.
I think it's unreasonable to expect every author, player, or creative, to have to kill in order to fabricate fictional dead and murder. I think there are just some things that human beings are born with and all have -- with the exception of a few very abnormal individuals -- that makes the act of killing unbearable to do.
I think anyone who's seen chickens or sheep or cows will become more aware of the meat they eat, and at least try to rationalize it.
Though where I think you do have a point, and where I think most posters in this thread have missed the mark on, is that killing something isn't just like any other cultural imprint. Taking a life is a lot of mental and emotional effort, and there's no way taking a life doesn't change someone.
I don't think it's healthy.
I'm not sure it helps in being creative either. I get that experience makes the man, and how can you describe a cow, chicken, or little lamb if you've never seen them before. However, I think that the experience of taking a life can be a very important lesson to others, and a soldier who has killed sharing their story should be listened to, just to understand how it feels. We can do that as humans, it's part of what makes us an intelligent species. We may not fully understand, but we can understand what some who does know feels about it, and care.
Good thread, honestly.
>Taking a life is a lot of mental and emotional effort, and there's no way taking a life doesn't change someone.
>I don't think it's healthy.
I agree.
I kill a lot of mice in my current situation.
Every time I do, I don't hesitate, hesitation is what I used to do and that led to more suffering.
But that doesn't mean I don't feel bad about it, especially the ones that are more clever and escape traps, I especially feel bad about terminating.
I think taking a life leaves a permanent mark on the soul, especially when you do it up close.
Though as some in the thread have pointed out, at some point you either rationalize it, or accept your soul is stained, assuming you don't stop forever after the first.