Some time ago, a friend and I were discussing RPGs and violence. The context of the discussion was a sense that the “expectedness” of violence, the casual approach to killing and blowing stuff up, was getting distasteful. We’d both played in some World of Darkness games that were as violent, if not more violent, than your stereotypical D&D game, and somehow felt more wrong because they were set in present-day New Orleans, where we were living. That’s part of what led me to create such a dangerous and ugly damage system for the Tarafore System - I didn’t want to trivialize violence by just ticking off hit points or health levels. I wanted characters to be in danger of bleeding out - I wanted the characters to have to immediately deal with the consequences of a wounded comrade, who might bleed to death right in front of them if they didn’t act quickly. I wanted the possibility of instant death, so that violence would feel kind of violent, and there would always be a risk involved.

For all my concerns about casual violence, I worried that without action, the games would get boring. Nathan reminded me that there was a difference between violence and action, and that it was action that kept things interesting, not necessarily violence. Now, making that happen is easier said than done, and I won’t claim to have perfected it. However, I’m going to write about it anyway, in the hopes that I can at least get a conversation started.

To a large degree, this post assumes you’re not running in a Simulationist-Immersive style, because the players’ actions and approaches will largely control the flow of action and violence in that case. I’ve found these games to have little to no casual violence, as the players are usually unwilling to take unnecessary risks (because the characters are usually unwilling to roll the proverbial dice with their lives unnecessarily), but when violence happens, it tends to be brutal, R-rated, and about as honorable as the love child of Niccolo Machiavelli and Manchester Black.

So, let’s assume we’re running a game in a more laid-back style, one that allows some gamist or narrativist/dramatist intervention. And let’s assume that we want to keep the excitement that combat brings to games without the “life is cheap” esthetic that so often arises out of RPG combat (“Let me kill this one; I only need 15 more XP to level up!”). Maybe you want to play this way, or maybe you feel you need to, because you’re running a game for young children, who don’t need to be exposed to this level of violence.

We all know that part of the fun of RPG combat is the idea of going up against an intelligent, active opponent. It’s hard to write rules in which a skill challenge is as exciting. “Man vs. Nature” often comes down to a few die rolls. But even if it comes down to a series of die rolls, without intentional opposition, it just feels drawn-out a lot of the time. No matter how dashing the description, without the tension of an opponent, you just don’t get the same suspense and energy (in my experience).

Social “combat” rules can be good, but sometimes can create a difficult distance between the player and the character, as the character’s beliefs and emotions become the results of a series of die rolls. It can be very hard to get back into a character’s mind after that. However, if they’re done right (as I’ve seen in some Wushu hacks), and you make sure the stakes are never the PCs’ mindsets or opinions, but rather the opinions of NPC’s the PC’s are trying to influence, then you can keep the players pretty deeply in-character while also having the suspense of a mechanically interesting “combat” system. When they work, they work because of their combat aspect - the intelligent opposition. So that’s a major key to making action feel like action. An intelligent opponent. And that’s also the hard part. Because any time two people are competing that closely, that physically, one of them can always punch the other, or pull out a gun, and suddenly: combat.

This means the GM’s going to have to work on his or her nonviolent imagination, thinking of ways to create situations and set pieces with the thrill level of combat, with intelligent opposition, with high stakes, but with little or no possibility of degenerating into an actual fight. I know that’s easier said than done, and it requires the players to go along with you, but here are a few ideas:

• First, make sure the players are on board with this. One knee-jerk reaction (“I shoot him!”) can throw the whole tone off. And if the players enjoy RPG combat, and don’t want to give this a shot? Forget it. You can’t drag them along.
• Make sure the characters are appropriate. Give them attitudes that are reluctant to resort to violence. But give them physical abilities that are appropriate to (non-violent) action sequences - running, jumping, climbing, swimming, etc.
• Think set pieces - the cooler the environment, the more enthusiastic the players will be to play along. Movies are really good for this, both Hong Kong action and Western adventure movies. The Indiana Jones series could be a great place to start.
• Think stakes - high stakes are great motivators. In combat, the stakes are pretty much always life and death. For PC’s who care about people/causes/values more than themselves, the stakes could be even higher.
• Think intelligent opposition. The opponent doesn’t have to be physically there - she could have set up traps or obstacles and be observing (and commenting) from afar via magic and/or technology. But the presence of the opponent needs to be there - the signature of his or her personality. And it helps if they can talk back and forth - gloating, threatening, bargaining, etc. You could even combine a set-piece action with a social combat.
• Think cooperative effort. You’re going to have a group of PC’s, presumably with different abilities that can complement each other, if they work together. The cartoon Transformers: Rescue Bots does a great job of creating non-violent, but still high-stakes situations in which four Cybertronian and five human characters (very different abilities and personalities) have to work together to “save the day.” It’s definitely aimed at small children, as you can tell from the animation style, but it really is fun watching the scenarios play out.
• Finally, make sure you’re not playing a game where magic can make just about anything else irrelevant. You can’t have much of a race if you’re teleporting everywhere, for example.

So, what do you think? How do you do non-violent action scenes?