Why is violence a major part of traditional games?

Because conflict is a central part of storytelling.

Pretty much this. The vast majority of stories (and characters in them) are defined by conflict and change in response to it. While this doesn't mean physical violence out of hand, it's one of the most easily recognizable forms of conflict. That said, a Kafkaesque campaign where the party struggles to penetrate an incomprehensible bureaucracy to achieve their goals without getting physical would be interesting, if difficult to pull off effectively.

The subtext is there though.

>Why is violence a major part of traditional games?

Violence is natural and terribly abundant. Non-sapient animals are violent towards each other for a multitude of reasons outside of general carnivorism.

Thomas the tank engine.

Violence is one of the best and simplest ways to create conflict. It also implies danger, which is an integral part of an ADVENTURE. Not to mention that although a drama-based tabletop game would be fun, it would be very difficult to stat and work out all of the rules and mechanics, making sure it is actually a game and not just a bunch of neckbeards sitting around and pretending with no goal, danger, or rules holding the narrative together.

Violence is conflict. Conflict is what drives plots.

It's also simply the most easily understood method of conflict.

>KILL SHIT SO SHIT DON'T KILL YOU
or just
>BEAT SHIT UP SO SHIT DON'T BEAT YOU UP
is so simple even babies and animals instinctually understand it.

It's also a lot harder to plot and think of non-violent conflicts.

Violence is the most visible and straightforward of conflict.

It's one thing to have political intrigue, it's another entirely to smash some fuckers head in with a mace.

>TtTE
>no violence
Pretty sure there was an episode where a train falls off a bridge to his death.

imgur.com/gallery/Y4fxv

because violence death and suffering is very common in human history. many of our stories are shaped by this kind of conflict.

Because conflict is a major part of all cultures, it is something everyone understands on the basest of levels.

Well, except sheltered middle-class trash maybe.

There was immurement.

Broadly defined, violence can be basically anything.

More specifically, I like role-playing escapist power fantasies, so it makes sense that I'd want to use violence as a form of effective institutional conflict resolution since I can't in real life.

Parks and Recreations?

Because violence is one of the few things that *has* to be simulated by dice rolls, so dice rolling systems expend a huge amount of rules and resources on them and direct all the crunchy/gamey players that way. Then people who don't know any better assume that if 95% of the book is about tactical violence, then 95% of the game should be about tactical violence.

Because D&D evolved out of medieval wargames.

If Marc Miller had gotten Traveller out of the gate a few years sooner, y'all'd be complaining about gaming being nothing but "middle-aged dudes with mortgages" and "all this stupid economics shit".

Well, I just watched an episode of some moe animu the other day.

Research purposes. Didn't actually know what moe meant. Didn't like it.

Because a narrative requires some form of conflict and tension, and the easiest way to do that is with violence or the threat thereof.
Doing drama is hard at the table for several reasons, so instead we usually go for melodrama.

>Not to mention that although a drama-based tabletop game would be fun, it would be very difficult to stat and work out all of the rules and mechanics, making sure it is actually a game and not just a bunch of neckbeards sitting around and pretending with no goal, danger, or rules holding the narrative together.

It's been done, though. Primetime Adventures and Hillfolk both do it quite well.

There's more to it than just the rules for a drama game being hard to figure out, there's also the lowest common denominator problem, or Why Everyone Ends Up Playing D&D. If everyone in the group pulls in different directions, you end up settling for people's second or third choice of game and system to play.

Beats killing people in real life.

Why the fuck wouldn't it be? Violence and war is one of the most integral things to humans. Before humans, war was here, waiting for us.

>Before humans, war was here, waiting for us.
Fuck off you preachy wanksplat. You can say it's a part of the human condition but no more.

>ITT Veeky Forums justifies its violent fantasies

but this They're just fucking up a burrough's quote.

They can quote whomever they wish, it does not make them nor the original speak any less of a pretentious gobshite.

all entertainment boils down to things our animal side is wired for.

defend our territory
hunt out food
survive a catasrophe
reproduce

violence is the top 2.

the bottom 2 are thriller/disaster movies and porn/romance

It's easily quantifiable and definable conflict and resolution.

William S., or Edgar Rice?

>all entertainment boils down to things our animal side is wired for.

Hey look, pretentious college student has arrived. Hey, tell us the one about how there's only 6 plots in existence! Or is it 4? No wait, it was 8, right? It's always some round number that sounds deep at parties.

Because it's fun.

>violence is the top 2 and bottom 1
FIFY

You sound irrationally upset, you little faggot.

He's right, though. The quote as presented was some Deepak Chopra-level gibberish.

I'm not mad friendbro. Purple prose is for fags to sound better than they really are.

Cause it's awesome

Because eros and thanatos are the underpinnings of the entire human soul.

I bet you can't even bench 200 pounds, bro, let's not judge.

See, now that's deep, and not gibberish. It doesn't really address why tabletop RPGs and stuff are so much more tightly focused on violence than all our other forms of media, (outside rap music) but it's got philosophical credentials.

youtube.com/watch?v=K2tgZCabTzs

yo tru

>"DUDE SIGMUND FREUD LMAO"

Besides his """"""""""""theory""""""""""""""" of unconscious brain (which he got wront anyway), everyhing he wrote was pseudo-scientific garbage that belongs in the trash bin that history has relegated it to.

An interesting, varied out combat system is a lot easier to make and you can do a lot more with it imagination wise compared to an interesting, varied social system, and doing so with stealth is even harder still.

You say that like you don't live in a society permeated at every level with sexual signalling or violence, be it ritualized or not.

So, yeah - violence IS the most easily recognizable (and most basic) conflict - but let's not pretend there aren't a shitton of others out there:

Basically, a conflict is anything that sets two sides against one another for the purpose of gaining (or not gaining) it. ANYTHING!

For example: (just off the top of my head, 'cause I'm hungry right now)
A Cookout!
Making the most delicious (and nutritious) meal for the judges at a (low) set price.
Roll vs INT to see how it tastes,
Dexterity to chop the veggies into artistic shapes,
Charisma for better score with judges,
Strenght to keep yourself from scarfing it down
and then (if failed) Constitution to keep yourself from barfing it back up.

Why is violence a major part of history, user? Why does war determine so much?
Why are you such a faggot?

Some things are just part of human nature.

Whoa dude, calm your tits. The idea that sex and death are linchpins of human existence is far older than Freud. It's just one of the many things he stole from better thinkers than him and then pretended he'd invented all along.
Because Freud was a shit like that.

...

Ants have been warring long before humans evolved, user. Suck it.

Wow you guys sperged out super hard over that, huh

Why not?

Its more that he tried to link sex and death to an unconscious/soul/inner-truth which is unified and decryptable via dream interpretation that's bullshit. Lot of sex and death going on though.

I know that you think what you just said was super deep, but it's not. Really. You can likely get away with impressing the 90 IQs regulars on Veeky Forums with excerpts from Beyond the Pleasure Principle but Freud never did an a single scientific thing in his entire life.

Hate to shatter the almost century-old bubble you've been living in but human cognition isn't an endless series of emasculation avoidance and repression. Nothing he claimed is the least bit scientific. It's the same reason why psychoanalysis isn't taken seriously anywhere in the world, besides like Argentina.

Multiple reasons.

1.) Early RPGs evolved out of wargames. Of course, violence is central to those.

2.) Conflict is key to an exciting narrative. Violence is one of the simplest forms of conflict.

3.) The stakes are easily-understood and very high, therefore exciting through empathetic thinking.

Nope, Freud's views are still taught in present day psychology classes. Even if most of his ideas were surpassed, he is still the foundation others build on.

This is the real reason, not "muh human nature". Same reason as why most modern board games are about trade and/or infrastructure; Catan did it that way and influenced the whole genre.

The only one talking about Freud here is you, Anonymous. Consider: are you projecting?

That's actually a good cover, I like what they were going for with it

>"War... war never changes."

DEEPEST LORE

>guy posts gibberish
>say "nah that's gibberish"

>wow i sperged out super hard

inorite? I bought it even though I already had a copy. I just saw it on the shelf and started getting all kinds of weird feelings.

The Odysses' cover is pretty cool too. Doesn't quite do it as well, but I partially blame the Apollo 13 movie for making it impossible to imagine tom hanks as Odysseus.

Most of the interesting things in the Iliad don't involving the fighting itself.

I can't shake the feeling you're a barely functioning autist that takes things too seriously, user

It's actually three.

>searching for treasure
>assaulting the castle
>returning home

Not literally, no.

But the work is a painful celebration of war, in all of its parts: the terrors, the glory, the honour, the devastation, the anger and even the futility of it. So no, the most of the interesting parts aren't about a guy being literally hacked to death but the thrill of reverent violence permeates everything in it

No, it's actually just two plots in existence:

>Shit happens
>Shit doesn't happen

99% of all stories can be oversimplified understood as the first one. The second isn't widely used outside of arthouse movies.

violence without transcendant purpose is brutish belligerence.

violence with transcendant purpose is martial struggle.

Achillies is the original Male Human Fighter

You ever read any classical or medieval epics? They're drenched in blood.

Waltharius, the Song of Roland, the Tain, Nibelungenlied, and pretty much every classical epic, is the story of a guy who was especially good at killing dudes, and a pretty significant portion of the text is made up of descriptions of gory and gruesome murder.

Wouldn't that be Gilgamesh?

Yeah, actually you're right. Enkidu is the original Male Human Barbarian

Because that's how things get done.

>Iliad
>celebration of war

lmao ok. That's why everyone important loses in the end.

You know I'm not usually one to be in a position to accuse like this but jesus you sound like a pseudo-intellectual try hard.

You like wargames. Okay, good for you, but it's not ever going to be as profound as you pretend. Most good compelling literary conflict is psychological not "I hit it with a stick".

>"Dude isn't it funny how for 2,000 years, everyone got it wrong about the Illiad?! It's totally a post-modern, subversive critique of war! Funny how that interpretation agrees with my precise 21st century sensibilities!"

The Greeks very much celebrated war. They even had two major deities who embodied it. Fucking retard, now go scamper back to the "Interpretations" section of the Illiad's wikipedia page.

> Most good compelling literary conflict is psychological not "I hit it with a stick".
So much this. Violence as a major part of the story is a crutch for the lazy or mentally deficient.

>They even had two major deities who embodied it.

One of which was noble and motherly, and represented war for defense, and the other was a thuggish monster who was the embodiment of war at its bloody worst.

Ares was widely celebrated by the Spartans. Only Athens, Corinth and Thebes "reviled" him.

Athena also, embodies defense in so much as foriegn armies invading Greek towns - not passive self defense as a universal principle. As a matter of fact she also favoured courageous, bold assault.

Stay mad and retarded pleb

>Only Athens, Corinth and Thebes "reviled" him.

That doesn't help your earlier simplistic post that the Greeks "very much celebrated war."

Because violence without the actual consequences or risks thereof is fun.

When I was a kid, I used to play pretend that I was a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, and obviously a cop. Only the cop will deal with physical violence, and not on a daily-basis. All of those roles are interesting to engage in.

I know a good deal of games that don't have physical violence in them and are awesome. Better : most sessions of my D&D game don't include people murdering the shit out of each other for no reason. Most of the time, people are talking, planning, negotiating, sneaking, et cetera. But fighting? That's a last resort, so no, it doesn't happen each session, because my players are efficient at treasure hunting and adventuring.

Yes... it does? I put "reviled" because hoplites from every city, no matter what, performed rites before battles regardless of who their patron deity was. Athens had a massive temple dedicated to him before the Romans disassembled it and built it again for themselves.

What are you evem arguing about at this point? Just doing it for the sake of it?

>They

see
Campaign needs conflict, excitement. Violence is the easiest way to do it. Everything else gets boring quick, mostly because of the increasing complexity.

Violence portrayed in a fantastical manner is fun. Especially if the things you are hitting are morally reprehensible.

>I have no attention span.

>When NPCs start talking to me, I just stab them.

>Coming this Fall on HBO: Confessions of a Murderhobo

>"Haha, these boorish simians are still entertained by primitive fantasies of violence. Such barbaric savagery like violent tabletop games and urinating while standing up must be done away."

because violence was a major part of history?
I mean, violence is a thing that happens.

Why violence? Because we're all victims of the digital age and can't into anything else. I wish I could sit down and write a good campaign but I cannot bring myself to sit still for that long.

YOU deserve a gold star. There was a time when RPG's involved more than being a group of murderhobos, when the plot was more than a string of battles, when there were puzzles and intrique and complexity. There was a time when role-playing was fun for its own sake: to act out situations from another point of view, to be something or someone you could never be.

Star Trek: TNG, The Witcher (first one at least), these are prime examples of the role-playing spirit in other media. Not every problem needs to be solved at the point of a sword nor is there always an obvious solution. Watch TNG and compare the pacing of episodes to ANYTHING on TV today... it's so much slower and more deliberate.

Shut up you whiney pretentious bitch, if you get triggered by violence don't watch it. Nobodys forcing you too. There is plenty of contemporary film and literature available that doesn't involve a single act of physical violence. There also plenty of campaign books, independent and official, for various systems that focus on non-violent conflict like court politics and governmental management.

Hate this holier-than-thou attitude. It's cool that you're a whiny fucking retard who only watches violent media seemingly to complain but don't pretend you're doing it as an ironic statement.

Because conflict is a universal concept and violence is a convenient means to explore it user.

>Shut up you whiney pretentious bitch, if you get triggered by violence don't watch it.
>but don't pretend you're doing it as an ironic statement.

Did you mean to reply to my post...?

>"victims of the digital age"

We live in the most peaceful era of mankind. This is neither a weighty philosophical statement or accurate assessment of modern geopolitics.

Regardless, I can tell by the way that you write that you do not belong here and should immediately go back to R eddit.