Do you properly convey the gravity of taking a life in your games, Veeky Forums?

Puyo.

>the gravity of taking a life
People put too much importance on that anyway. It's like getting a flu shot at the doctor; the buildup is the worst part, but once the needle's in your arm you realize how much of a pussy you were being.
>t. Guy who shot and killed an armed burglar in self defense

It's justified if they violate the NAP.

Trail of Cthulhu has it so killing a person gives you a huge hit to sanity.

Well, Burning Wheel has being involved in violent conflict being a test for Steel. So if you fail you'll either stand and stare, break down or faint (or with a certain trait: belly laugh)

Take one of the player's lives each time it happens.

In a post-apocalyptic game I ran as a side-campaign for my group, one of the characters who was introduced as being held prisoner by a group of bandits, broke out and defeated the leader in combat. Then while she was unconscious he grabbed a scalpel nearby (it was in a hospital) and cut her spinal cord so she'd be paralyze from the legs down. So in return for this edgy action I proceeded to describe every single bit of her suffering as they kept her wheeling her around with them in a wheelchair or throwing her in the back of their truck like an animal. It got to the point where the player who did it handed me an IRL note (and his character handed her a note from some paper and pen he found in an abandoned house) saying he was sorry for what he did to her. Not that it matters because not only can she no longer control her body from the waist down but she is also dying from spinal infection. We left off with them returning to their little village and her laying in bed slowly dying. Next time we go back to that campaign, I am going to ask find some med-fags and ask them to give me as gruesome and horrific description of death by spinal infection as possible. Also will probably have her ask them to put her down with a shot to the head and hopefully feel bad about it for a long time. It's all about how you roleplay these things. Death is cheap in RPGs and that's usually for good reason, but if you want it to have weight it's not that hard to do.

...

>players
>not player's character
IF YOU DIE IN THE GAME YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE

You're dead, Blackleaf! You don't exist anymore!

>human life has intrinsic value...
Only if you're playing in a setting where the characters' morality comes from a society that follows the equivalent of judeo-christianic/buddhist ethics.
"Wereguild" or blood-debt societies view it more along the lines of depriving the victim's clan/family of the value of their potential work output, which is surprisingly similar to the "property damage" view of slave deaths in some cultures...

Knowing Unknown Armies it's likely you're playing the burglar and the robbery is probably the least fucked up thing you've done that week.

In nwod 2e, killing is a breaking point at -4 or -5... but witnessing non violent supernatural phenomena is a breaking point at -2. In other words, humans will make breaking points almost continuously, no matter what (on the forums there's an example of a promethean who became human and the next session went all the way to 1 integrity).

If you want to maintain integrity, you probably want to optimize your Resolve + Composure rolls (which are in general useful anyway).

But the most important part? It has rules for being too hurt to keep fighting, and for surrendering, so that PCs don't necessarily HAVE to kill all enemies.

Whereas in most RPGs people tend to always keep fighting to the last and players have no idea whether its even possible to show mercy.

The system we're trying out has magic stemming from life itself. You're allowed to defend yourself with it, but using it for cold blooded murder has some nasty feedback

It's written by Greg Stolze, it's less holier-than-thou and more tongue-in-cheek. Also it's written for a modern urban fantasy game where both police and a cult dedicated to keeping magick a secret are a thing.

Players always seem surprised when police show up to there character's workplace after they fail to hide bodies and erase security tapes.

>But the most important part? It has rules for being too hurt to keep fighting, and for surrendering, so that PCs don't necessarily HAVE to kill all enemies.
Earlier editions of D&D also recognized this in including morale stats for monsters as well as reaction tables. Not every encounter had to be a fight unless the players decided to be murder-hobos. Then 3e came along. Obviously a smart GM can and will take monster morale into account in 3e and later, but with xp being tied to killing monsters, players are incentivized to pursue goblin genocide rather than just assault and robbery.

This.
Life is as precious as society decides it is. We just happen to live in a cushy society.
Killing should have all the impact that it should given the setting (probably very little outside a modern setting)

Like men. With guns.

>tfw you'll never get to duel with flintlocks over a matter of honor
This time period is shit.

...

I killed an Afghani in the military once and didn't feel anything afterward, but that's probably because I'm a piece of shit more than anything.

>but that's probably because I'm a piece of shit more than anything.
Naw. Lots of people killed hajis and didn't feel bad about it.

You could still be a piece of shit.

Probably a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B if I'm being honest with myself.

>Dodge until he's out of bullet.
I agree with the principle of deescalating conflict and searching for alternatives rather than being a murderhobo.
But that's pretty dumb.

>If I can just avoid all six shots in the revolver, I can deescalate the situation!

youtube.com/watch?v=uguXNL93fWg

CHILDRENS CARD GAMES

THE LOSER GETS SENT TO THE SHADOW REALM

Having your soul disintegrate for all time is pretty hard core, user.

Abortion is not covered by most medical plans in my games.

came to say this
as much as I like UA, this shit is retarded
even more so since most of the time handguns are used on distances where you're not likely to get behind any sort of cover fast enough

ACTUALLY, come to think of it... Is there a way to deescalate a gunfight? Any ideas?

Afghans aren't human. It's fine.

Solid cover and a white flag? It's a fairly time proven concept.

I tried to care in a recent campaign but I wound up killing over 30,000 people by flooding an arena.

I wanted to save the same amount of people I'd killed, since I was a doctor, but uh... yea.

That's a good point.

...yeah, uh, that's usually how shoot outs work. I know this is going to blow your fucking mind, but hard cover and negotiation are, in fact, how most 'shootouts' get resolved.

>1+2+30,000+3+4+1+2=13
I think there might be a problem with your addition skills.

It depends on how much time I want to devote to it.

Yeah. People fall down when they're dead. How else would it work?

>70% more bullet per bullet

4e tried to do a bit more on that front. Reducing a guy to 0 HP is removing him from the fight rather than killing him, it can just as much be 'Forcing his surrender' or 'Breaking his morale so he runs'. It is why Psychic damage ended up also becoming a thing for stuff that breaks morale and 'healing' effects tended to focus a lot more on will to keep fighting rather than physical injuries so players can decide how far they push. There was an entire article about 'What does going to 0 HP mean?' and examples of stuff players could do (Like a mage overwhelming the other spellcaster so hard that he's temporarily stripped of all his power and thus no longer a threat) to get people thinking about it.

Then 5e went back and decided to make the bards 'I will insult fight you like it's monkey island' trick only be able to kill people if you reduce them to 0.

>Opponent with a gun?
>Dodge until he's out of bullets
sounds easy enough

I mean, most bullets miss in fights. Cover and concealment is a wonderful thing.

I don't need to. in the 8 years I've been dming for them, they've gotten bored of murderhoboing. as an example, last week their characters were undercover working in a small shop that had suffered a series of break ins. a group of dissatisfied customers came in, started threatening them for a refund for a magical item that had failed them at one point, and became violent when informed there was no refund policy. 3 of the 4 fled, blinded, and the fourth was subdued, tied, healed, and turned over to the local constable.

>rechannel

youtube.com/watch?v=fmY_LzYkJCQ

>xp being tied to killing monsters
It's not, actually. In 3.5 you don't get XP for killing, you get XP for overcoming encounters. So talking your way out of a fight/sneaking past the guards/tricking the enemy should all result in the same amount of experience as you'd get from fighting them. And I'm fairly sure 4e and 5e have similar rules text included somewhere.

Of course, many GMs ignore that part(and it's hardly all their fault since the rest of the system puts such a big emphasis on combat), but it's there.

Sometimes you just have to sweep things under the rug. Like 30,000 orcs.

Is it an okay thing to tell the players you're only rewarding them for treasure and then secretly give them paltry amounts of xp a la B/X?

See, this is why people read stuff like Goblin Slayer. Western RPGs are increasingly becoming some kind of ourobos of white guilt.

Yes, we take extreme pleasure in killing as many people as possible precisely because of how much of that carnage could have been avoided

It has five sanity meters, one of which is Violence. Attacking, being attacked, or getting hurt all call for low-to-moderate checks on that meter. Repeated exposure can give you "hard marks" in a meter and immunity to lower-level stresses, but that's treated as its own special brand of going insane as everything stops mattering to you.

It's a bit like Call of Cthulhu in many ways. For one, you have 1d100 HP, and guns do 1d100 damage, so you're not going to live very long if you treat it like D&D.

Isolated Amazonian tribes, 17th century American Indians, 19th century British soldiers, and middle class 21st century SJWs are likely to have a diverse set of viewpoints on that, user.

Yes, player characters earn back essence expended for the creation of a new life when they take that life back.

>Not wanting to kill people without thought is white guilt
Stick to D&D, brainlet.

Killing people is bad in most societies, user. It's simply the scope of people that changes. E.g the Amazonians of tend to define people as their tribe. It's impossible to murder nonpersons; so please keep your patriarchal Western imperialism in the relevant settings.