Author: Lysando DeDanaan (---.brainbench.com)
Date: 10-15-2002 16:30
I enjoyed your article. I belong to a religious group which has a pacifist/nonparticipant stance towards service in the military, war and violence in general. This has not always sat very well with my participation in games which, to a larger or smaller extent, involve violence. As the years pass, I've begun to have a broader view of what roleplaying games can involve. RPGs are really about storytelling, which sometimes (often? always?) involves conflict. However, conflict is really just another way of saying "problem-solving". And there are multiple ways of solving most problems. In the early days, RPGs were all about buffing up and killing things. As time passes, RPGing has become more sophisticated. RPGs are now capable of modelling the solving of problems via politics, diplomacy, nonviolent action, stealth, etc. In some ways, it can be an interesting challenge to try to figure out how to solve a problem without using violence, which is sometimes just the "easiest way". How about "Gandhi: the RPG"? You laugh, but what a challenge it would be to try to free a country from oppression without bloodshed. I'm currently working on a module which is based on a real-life adventure of a friend of mine. He had made some converts to Christianity in a country where converting to Christianity is punishable by death. One convert had already been executed, and the rest were in mortal peril. So he smuggled the other x converts out of this country, with all sorts of dangerous perils. No violence involved, though plenty of threat of same against them....There's an exciting adventure for you....
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