Killing in the Game

[finnmckool]

biddies are old women.

[tallgrrl]

biddies are old women.

Well, yeah, I agree that's the most common meaning, but in the context below, it just doesn't track.  Just a typo I think but a little ambiguous in this case.  I do think that devonapple is right though and it's meant to be baddies, because bodies would be able to 'run to emissaries of power'.

    One way to encourage players to be more careful with leaving biddies in there wake is to let them run to emissaries of a large power that they can't continue there normal life and persuading goals after making a mortal enemy of. One off my Hunter the Reckoning games became a game of being on the run from the cops and the FBI after shooting at the cops from a car licensed in there name. After that they where able to interact with the world in a less D&D way.

[pulphero]

it looks like I was getting to fast and loose with the spell check  I meant bodies. leaving a trail of old women in you wake might be problematic but at least you won't be dodging paternity suits.

[tallgrrl]

LOL or hens!  Biddies is also a way of saying hens if you're a 'chicken person'!   Thanks for clearing it up though pulphero, even though we were having fun with it for a while 

[finnmckool]

Old women and hens are often synonymous.

And this just isn't a setting conducive to INDISCRIMINATE hack n' slash.

Scourge of vampires? Kindness of zombies? Knock yourself out. Heck, even certain corners of the Nevernever are rife for "culling."

But a big major aspect of the world is consequences. Every action, no matter how justified, has an equal but opposite reaction. Bitch vampiress got you over a barrel? Sure, burn her ass to the ground and salt the earth as warning to others. But you'll start a war.

Kill a mortal, risk the wrath of the White Council (all things depending of course).

Go monster hunting in the Never? Cool, but you may have just killed some Greater Power's favorite pets. You may ending up owing a favor you never wanted to owe.

And there's the WHICH mortal are you killing, question. Joe Blow citizen caught in the crossfire? The cops are gonna start getting interested. Member of law enforcement who's making your life difficult? As before but up by a factor of ten. Mobsters? They don't call it a family for no reason, and again, the cops. Even an evil wizard is a possible homicide investigation. And that's not even getting into the magical community. Human servitors of major powers, the obvious White Council reasons. It can't be stated enough that any Accords Signatory has every right to take a chunk outta your ass if you kill any of their "people" especially if they are on "company business." Now that may be about a quarter million dollar fine (rough estimate of a weregild from the books) or it could be a duel for blood.

[newtinmpls]

Harn is also called Harnmaster; it's a % based RPG that goes for graphic realism i.e. when you are damaged, you are damaged for "16 points to the left forearm" (15+ means it's broken and you can't use it ill healed below that number). You are more likely to die of infection after a wound than the wound itself. Very cool - but all this means that there is a lot of work, game mechanics wise, when putting together a campaign.

Killing in any game universe is something I use to gauge the players (not just the characters) and myself. While I think that some of the constraints of the Laws are not conducive to certain universes (like transformation and such), they do make overt some ideas that can be easily glossed over - like what you do (even "what your character does") shapes you.

[Richard_Chilton]

Since Harn's combat system is deadly you have to play smart.  Any combat could leave your PC crippled or dead.  The setting is also closer to the real middle ages, where there were slaves, serfs, etc all the way up to the nobles.

A while ago, on one of the main Harn sites, I stumbled over a file with 101 story seeds.  (Note - I went looking for it when I was writing this post and found it at: http://www.lythia.com/2007/12/101-encounters/ - but I typed the examples below from memory and hope that they match up with what's really in that file.)

They aren't "Orcs come to town and..." type adventure seeds.

Here's one that stuck in my mind...
The party is going somewhere and they stumble on this young (12 -13 year old) girl who's on the verge of panic.  Her dad took her out into the woods, got her lost, then pointed her to the next village and vanished.  She has a couple of days worth of food - and that's it.  And she really wants to go home.

If the PCs return her to her village her parents are relieved to see that she's all right, but not happy that she came home.  See, the local lord has a thing for girls around her age so they smuggled her out of the village.  Everyone in the area knows about the lord, but since he only bothers peasant girls and is otherwise a good lord the rest of the gentry ignore how he treats young girls because, well, they are just serfs.

If the PCs smuggle the girl back out of the village then they are stealing a serf from his lands.  If they turn her over to him they will be rewarded for returning a runaway serf.  What will the PCs do?
(Note - since Harn is close to the real middle ages in some ways, killing the Lord is not an option.  No, killing nobles (even with a good reason) will get the PCs hunted down and killed.)

Another encounter - you stumble across some escaped serfs living in the woods - what do you do? Leave them alone (for no reward) or turn them into their lord (they'll be flogged but you'll get a minor reward).

While near a beach you stumble across the shipwrecked son of a noble; pirates are in the area hunting for him - what do you do?

The ale served at a rustic inn is making people sick - but since they don't know there's a dead rat in the ale barrel they think it's a warlock laying curses.  They burned "the warlock" before the PCs arrive in the village, but since people are still getting sick the local lord is now looking for his apprentices.  Do the PCs investigate enough to find that it's the ale making people sick? And if so, do they try to convince the locals that there's no warlocks (after they already burned one) - and everyone knows that only a warlock would define warlocks so the PCs must be warlocks... Or do they set up someone as the Warlock? Or...

Well, you get the idea.  Since the combat system is realistic most players prefer to think over fighting.

Richard

[newtinmpls]

"Since the combat system is realistic most players prefer to think over fighting."

That is Harn in a nutshell; play smart or die. My vague worry with Dresden Files is that it's so hard to die or kill, that the PC's may lose that immidiacy of reality... but then I suppose "The Laws" and wardens can be used to compensate for that.

[toturi]

(Note - since Harn is close to the real middle ages in some ways, killing the Lord is not an option.  No, killing nobles (even with a good reason) will get the PCs hunted down and killed.)

Assassinate the lord. Leave no trace of their being there at all. Or poison him and tell him unless he leaves the young girls alone, he's never going to his little lordship to stand up ever again.

Killing is always an option, you just need to do it right. Kill stupid and you deserve what comes to you, kill smart and you get your just rewards from God and him alone.

[Watson]

What I think is quite interesting, compared to other RPG's, is the fact that PC can't say that they just "happened to kill a NPC" as a result of the dice (i.e. just happened to roll a very high damage roll). To kill an NPC in the DFRPG, most of the times, the player have to choose to do so after getting a "taken out" result in combat. I like that! No more hiding behind the dice...

[Richard_Chilton]

Assassinate the lord. Leave no trace of their being there at all. Or poison him and tell him unless he leaves the young girls alone, he's never going to his little lordship to stand up ever again.

Killing is always an option, you just need to do it right. Kill stupid and you deserve what comes to you, kill smart and you get your just rewards from God and him alone.

Few Lords of that era walked alone, ate alone, or even slept alone.  Meaning that there would be men-at-arms who had to die and maybe some of the Lord's family members and servants.  All that combat is risky (realistic combat system) when a lucky sword swing can kill or cripple you.

As for leaving no traces...
The girl knows your faces and probably your names.  Ditto her parents and rest of her family, probably some others in the village do as well.

If you don't kill them then the word will spread.  All it takes is someone who knows that the girl was brought back (in a small town or village there's always someone who knows - probably several someones) to point the finger at them and they won't have a choice... Okay, the choice is to be flogged, watch your wife be flogged, then your children as they try to beat the answers out of your family OR tell the legitimate authorities about that band of murderers who you have no real connection to.

But killing the people you wanted to save is always an option.  That girl might die but the others that the creep would have bothered won't be victims, so that's a plus, right? Leave enough bodies behind and it will look like a bandit raid.  And with all those men-at-arms dead, a bandit raid is believable.

And his men-at-arms would fight for him.  He's not a real monster like Gilles de Rais was (who had loyal servants and men-at-arms) - just a run of the mill perv who doesn't bother anyone important.

Yes, a lot of bodies there - if you go that route.

Richard

[Richard_Chilton]

What I think is quite interesting, compared to other RPG's, is the fact that PC can't say that they just "happened to kill a NPC" as a result of the dice (i.e. just happened to roll a very high damage roll). To kill an NPC in the DFRPG, most of the times, the player have to choose to do so after getting a "taken out" result in combat. I like that! No more hiding behind the dice...

The players can, but the characters don't make that choice... So the PCs can regret the fact that the lucky bullet killed that NPC while all the players can agree that the witness had die.

Sometimes leaving people alive can open a really good (story wise) kettle of worms.

Richard

[newtinmpls]

"Sometimes leaving people alive can open a really good (story wise) kettle of worms."

Which is all the more reason to do it. I find that having NPCs willing to talk to the PCs tends to defray the fighting, or at least delay it. Somehow the act of having a conversation makes the PCs less likely to physically attack. I like that.

[Seb Wiers]

"Do PCs keep the violence to a minimum or do they treat mortal threats like they are orcs?"

A question like this comes from a "orcs as items" mentality. My PC's are transplants from the HARN game system, which has so much detail that you simply cann't get away with the sort of killing too many "o level monsters" the way D&D allowed.

Anyone dies in my campaign, any campaign, there are consequences. Family may come after the killers, or maybe it was done because the PC's work for the guarde and this was an outlaw. I just think that there shouldn't ever be anyone that it's somehow "okay" to kill.

All that being said, I also love the "obscure death rule" which says that if the baddie fell off a cliff or for some other reason the PC's did not get to witness the death "for sure" - well, he, she or they are probably not really dead. But he/she/they now intend to make the PC's which they were.

Dian

As a player in this campaign, having gotten a glimpse of who the current "boss enemy" might be, this immediately came to mind.  Sure, we know (or have been told) the bad guy is a red court vampire, but she's also a major land-owner, so obviously has full legal status.  If we straight up murdered her somehow (not that any of us is any good at that- no ex-marine snipers or demolitions experts in the group, for some reason) then there would STILL be a big legal investigation, property passing on tho hiers, etc- in addition to any allies / superiors she has getting pissed off.

Really, I'm kinda curious how people who play this game DO deal with that.  Dresden might get off with "self defense" if needed, and has a police contact, but what happens when folks go out and get in fights and end up killing some well known local figure who happens to be a monster?

[Amseriah]

As a player in this campaign, having gotten a glimpse of who the current "boss enemy" might be, this immediately came to mind.  Sure, we know (or have been told) the bad guy is a red court vampire, but she's also a major land-owner, so obviously has full legal status.  If we straight up murdered her somehow (not that any of us is any good at that- no ex-marine snipers or demolitions experts in the group, for some reason) then there would STILL be a big legal investigation, property passing on tho hiers, etc- in addition to any allies / superiors she has getting pissed off.

Really, I'm kinda curious how people who play this game DO deal with that.  Dresden might get off with "self defense" if needed, and has a police contact, but what happens when folks go out and get in fights and end up killing some well known local figure who happens to be a monster?

A simple answer is, as stated multiple times in the novels, the supernatural community never wants to involve mortal authorities if they can get away with it.  This leads to every side trying to cover up things so they don't get noticed.  As far as the well known and respected vampire, you can always have her chase you into the NeverNever, where your friends are there waiting to gang up on her.  If she is killed there she doesn't leave a body.  No body, no crime.