Slashdot Mirror
Dungeons & Dragons and the Ethics of Imaginary Violence (hopesandfears.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Are people just naturally inclined to be destructive when there aren't any real consequences? Should we be worried about people who imagine such violence? Writer Clem Bastow spoke to D&D experts, psychologists and others to answer these questions. It turns out that playing out violent fantasies in D&D is not only healthy, but could even teach players how to be a better person. “Rather than playing an extension of who you or I are within the game, I see it more as playing a fantasy character who can do whatever they want, and who doesn’t feel inhibited by social anxiety or fear of punishment or rejection. It’s an exaggerated version of how [the player] would like to be, but can’t. The game is a safe way to be this other person,” says Clinical psychologist and games designer Dr. Owen Spear.
Will still get parroted by the press - whether it's D&D or GTA or Halo.
I know some people who would say, word for word, the exact same thing about marriage. So perhaps the problem isn't the game, but how you play it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Dungeons & Dragons...
Cool - hopefully it'll be...
Oh shit - here we go again.
I've certainly had those types of campaigns. The simplest answer is that being a good Game Master can be a lot more work than people realize. Managing players with different concepts, playstyles, and expectations is a skill that a GM has to develop. But it's one that even a mediocre GM like myself can find useful, especially when dealing with office politics as an adult.
This wasn't especially news in the 80s during the "Satanic Panic" years, and it's far less news now. Peer reviewed studies were done then, showing that roleplaying games build social and problem solving skills. There's nothing new or obscure here.
I had friends who wanted to rape, plunder and blow up the local town than face off the godforsaken monster in the dungeon. One of them went to prison for chasing his girlfriend with a shotgun.
If you ever encounter someone who insists on banning some form of media because it supposedly causes those who consume it to become violent/sexist/etc., say that you wholeheartedly agree with them and ask when they will be banning the Bible (or better yet Quran) as that's been responsible for all sorts of violence/sexism/etc. It seems that most of the people who try to make an argument in favor of banning media for such reasons are either religious-hardliner nut-jobs from the Christian conservative camp that will flip shit at the thought of any attack on their Jeebus or wacko authoritarian cultural-Marxist leftists who would never want to appear to say anything bad about Islam.
The mental contortions that follow are spectacular to watch.
I enjoyed playing D&D during undergrad. My wife wasn't much for it so it has fallen by the wayside. Her family is super into sports and I've picked up enjoying the games of a particular college team. You know what I've found out from her family: enjoying watching sports is almost exactly the same thing as playing a tabletop RPG. You get together with people you know. You learn a lot of statistics and rules. You argue or discuss different decisions with them and complain about the officiant. You snack and probably drink together. You pick up a lot of obscure trivia as you go along. Everyone enjoys themselves enough to do it on a regular basis.
I had friends who wanted to rape, plunder and blow up the local town than face off the godforsaken monster in the dungeon. One of them went to prison for chasing his girlfriend with a shotgun.
Shotguns are not allowed, except in the despised 3.5 expert edition.
So the relatively new indie fad PC game Undertale makes some pretty interesting statements in this arena. It gives the player every chance to kill monsters along their path, but puts you in a world that is reasonably shocked and horrified if you actually do that. I've never seen a game so expertly make me feel guilty for resorting to violence instead of searching for another path, and it's pretty emotionally rewarding to finish a pacifist run. If you go the other way, it bends the fourth wall to explore the motivation behind a serial murderer.
D&D does cause violence. I want to punch people who play D&D.
I don't respond to AC's.
The woosh was in the air.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Although I'm happily married, I always think of this Bill Murray quote when someone asks about marriage:
"When someone is murdered, they always investigate the spouse first. And that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about marriage."
Lol.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The old adage is:
Rule 0: The gamemaster is always right.
Rule 1: The only way to do it wrong is to not have fun.
But I would reverse those, because the silent and invisible part of Rule 0 is "even if the gamemaster is the only one left in the game because he's a dick."
His problem wasn't gaming. His problem was that he was a psychopath.
Because he's a moral fraud. And gun control has nothing to do with D&D or violence prevention for that matter.
As a life-long tabletop gamer, I've found that Shadowrun tends to reward players who do not resort to violence. In D&D, your rewards generally come from killing monsters in the form of experience points and loot. Shadowrun on the other hand, rewards players for completing the mission. How the mission is completed is largely up to the team. In fact, sometimes violent actions in organized play can adversely affect your reward. The game actually has a reward called karma that can be spent on upgrading.
This difference between D&D and SR was made clear to me after completing a long-slog of a mission with a ton of combat. The GM said the previous group burned through the mission pretty quickly, had slightly better rewards at the end, and they never fired a shot. Incredulous, I asked how they accomplished this. The GM said the previous group simply negotiated with the hostiles...who in fact, weren't really hostile. They were just reacting to our aggression. I didn't expect that to be written into the module. If you want an RPG that teaches you violence isn't always the best solution, Shadowrun is a good one.
That said, the flaw my D&D Goliath Fighter exhibits is, "Violence is my answer to almost any challenge." and charisma is my dump stat. Peace is overrated!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
She was trying to open up enough of a gap that she could stop & reload it. Doing it on the move would incur a -2 dexterity modifier.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, there's a difference. CounterStrike puts you in a situation where killing is your only option. Choosing to play the game might be a moral decision, but it stops there. Tabletop RPGs put you in worlds where (depending on the GM) there may be many non-lethal solutions, and choosing to resort to violence above other choices is more morally meaningful while you're playing.
Good GMs will easily bypass "Absolutist Morality", will create interesting NPC backstories and motivations, and generally run a game that encourages thoughtful pcs instead of just another hack and slash dungeon crawl.
Unless of course that is all you're after...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Sounds like he actually belonged in a mental hospital, but didn't get forced in to one before that ship sailed.
Again, he problem wasn't gaming, it was mental illness.
I met a reporter from a local fishwrap once, in the early 80s, doing an article on D&D. We patiently explained what roleplaying games were all about, the social aspects, the requirement for cooperative action, the problem solving challenges, etc. The final article had supposedly first hand accounts about miniatures screaming as they melt when thrown into a fireplace (no, that's the guy who threw it there screaming as the owner of the mini beats him to death with a 50 pound miniatures case) and gamers summoning actual, physically manifesting demons in pentagrams drawn on naked women's stomachs (heh, no gamer I ever knew could concentrate well enough to do the ritual in the presence of a naked woman!).
The reality is that gaming does tend to (somewhat) attract social outcasts, who are generally more accepting of weird than most people (RPGNet excepted, of course), but you just can't play an RPG alone. It's inherently a social activity. In my experience, people who show up at a gaming club that have real emotional issues end up better for being around other people who have been there. And are more likely to get professional help if they continue to deteriorate.
Ok. In both cases the players didn't understand a very important basic rule of P&P RPG: The GM is not the enemy of the players, and the players are not playing against the GM. Even thinking that this could possibly work is insane.
The GM is "the world". And if the world wants to kill you, it can. Easily and without giving you the hint of a chance for survival. No matter how powerful you may be, "the world" is by definition more powerful than you. Twice so in a RPG world where gods are real.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It amazes me how willing people are to sleep next to someone who could profit from their death.
This is why I have no life insurance. My wife knows I am worth more alive than dead.
You like golf? Dude, don't call yourself normal. No normal or at least sane person could like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why do we let so many "abnormal" people play "real life"? That answer might actually make you a better person to ponder.
Mostly because my lawyer informed me that it's illegal to keep them from doing it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A couple of extenuating factors to consider.... the first being that money doesn't serve as an effective replacement for someone you genuinely care about,
There are people out there that genuinely care about money more than anything else.
On both sides of the sheets.
A day is 4 facets of Nature's Harmonic 4-Dimensional Time Cube, you are educated stupid to deny it, world leaders are in conspiring to prevent you from knowing the truth. I'm not sure if we're speaking the same language, but this is the closest I can get.
"He failed his save against the illusionary spell /sarcasm"
Nice!
Mod +1 Funny
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.