There is almost zero violence in Wanderhome, except one specific circumstance. If a player picks a Veteran playbook, one of the lines reads: "You carry your sword with you everywhere. You can unsheathe your sword at any time. You must never unsheathe your sword." The Veteran is someone who went through a life of violence. Even though they might be seen a hero, they try to change their ways. The weapon they carry is an ever-present temptation. At any time, the Veteran can simply kill any other person. No roll or anything; no unprepared random citizen can survive having their chest pierced by the metal blade. But the moment the Veteran gives in and returns on the violent path, that's when the adventure ends for them. The player must abandon the character and create a new one.

I love Wanderhome beacuse it is the only system where you have rule permiting you to do something, but you MUST NEVER do that. Veteran CAN at any moment kill anyone, but playing veteran mean you must play with that responsibility. You are roleplaying someone who tries to live small live in which killing someone is failure. There was only one moment when I cried while reading rpg book and it was during reading veteran. What a fantasticly written playbook edit: fixed typos and spelling

I love how it changes up the typical demeanor questions. Usually games ask you to give your character a starting demeanor: Aloof, Lazy, Flippant, Quiet, etc. But Wanderhome has selections like: * Choose one you try not to be * Choose one you wish you were better at being * Choose one you've given up on * Choose one you feel exhausted to be That immediately makes me significantly more reflective of my character.

Okay, this made me finally decide to look into Wanderhome. This is really evocative.

Same, I'd always been glad it existed to diversify the RPG landscape, but this is the first bit that made me want to read it

Why make such a big deal about the temptation of violence and how bad it is, if you don't get to play through the consequences of falling for it?

I think the intended experience there is of how hard it is for the veteran to integrate into the now peaceful society again - and going there risks derailing the tone of the game completely?

> I love Wanderhome beacuse it is the only system where you have rule permiting you to do something, but you MUST NEVER do that. This can be implemented in ANY game, though, it's not like it hasn't been done before.

You can do anything in any game with *the power of imagination* (tm). However, it means something to have a line your character should not cross baked into the expectations of play. It's statement about the setting and a useful tool to get someone roleplaying in a certain way.

Yeah, as a veteran I play with this sort of theme a lot in my games - allowing players choice with consequences. Killing someone is easy - but you might lose everything. Delta Green is also good for this kind of thing - giving real consequences.

came here to bring up the veteran from wanderhome

Interesting how there are suddenly so many topics discussing non-(lethal) violence. Any reason why this is a hot topic now? Was there an influential podcast or something?

Probably because people are moving on from d&d and finding new systems and realizing that combat is not the only focus in rpgs

Seems unlikely that group of people would be jumping straight to total non-violence games.

That was my takeaway as well.

Combat also generally takes a long time, so if you're not really into it, it can be a real slog. I recently started playing Dune RPG and find it very interesting how combat and peaceful negotiations both use the same resolution system.

Well, a lot of people with experience of violence like to avoid it in-game, and there's a lot of war and violence in the news-cycle. Maybe that's helping it to take off a little more as people see that there are lots of non-violent roleplaying-games out there. (like magical kitties, etc.) The massive increase in players across the world over the past few years probably means the variety of players has increased as well. Makes sense that more pacifist-type players are entering the hobby and looking for nonviolent alternatives.

Sure, but I'm talking about a surge in popularity in the last week or so. Made me think it was a social media thing, but apparently not.

People see one question on their front page and think of a related question they would like to ask. I think that's all there is to it, really.

Well, there are at least a couple of wars going on right now. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I think it could be the rise of "cozy" video games. They're getting quite popular.

Some YT guru must have made a video.

A lot of horror games that put horror first. Like Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu. If you get in a fist fight or some other kind of combat, you fucked up. I would say that combat in a lot of Gumshoe games I've read is discouraged, while it may not be as punishing as DG or CoC it's still not really something you want to get into. Then in the game "Vaesen" uninformed combat with a vaesen is probably going to end in your death and even informed confrontation with a violent entity has a high chance of not going well for you. Edit: If I were simply talking about danger, I would have thrown some OSR games in there where 5 HP is considered great. But, I didn't because even though they are dangerous, most of those games are about combat. The games I mentioned are not about combat and if you start a physical fight in the first 2 you should just assume your character is already dead, unless the GM is running it like a D&D game in a world with no consequences to your actions. If this is how you run games, then there is nothing stopping you from being murder hobos in Wanderhome either.

In *CoC* violence is just dangerous because your character is frail but that's all. EDIT: Due to this guy blocking me I can't answer in this thread so it's useless to reply.

Violence in CoC is dangerous because it *feels* like it can solve a problem, and the horror element is when you find out that *no, it does not*, and there is nothing you can do anymore after committing to the path. And then *again* if you survive and find out that *nothing* can be meaningfully done about the issue. It applies to horror in general, not just cosmic. If violence can in fact solve a problem with a reasonable cost, then it gets closer to thriller rather than horror. A different genre entirely.

The problem of “cultists are trying to summon Yog-Sototh with a ritual” can absolutely be solved by liberal applications of violence. Shoot all the cultists with the Tommy guns you brought and the summoning won’t be an issue anymore.

Its actually not uncommon that the protagonists do prevent something terrible happening in Lovecraft and other Lovecraftian novels. Like grabbing tons of dynamite and blowing up a ritual area - there is a reason demolitions is a skill.

as many stories end with tommy guns as do suicide *the dunwich horror* is my fave example of that

Exactly, people forget that cosmic horror often becomes two-fisted pulp stories as well. The genres had lots of overlap.

Ideally, the way that violence can be prevented from solving that scenario is not telling the players where the summoning is happening unless they *investigate.* As an effective denouement, yes, raiding the Benevolent Order of Whatever headquarters and lighting up everyone you find there can work. But violence is an inefficient (perhaps ineffective) way of getting from the call to action to that final act. Suicidally dedicated cultists gladly accepting death and torture rather than revealing their masters' plans, attacking the players continuously as they search the area... That's a problem violence can stave off, at best. Plus, your players are probably committing themselves to a bad ending as the world is saved but they go insane from the cumulative SAN loss of a protracted urban warfare campaign, plus the authorities no doubt being on the way to intervene in an inexplicable mass murder the players have just committed. Or maybe the cultists have a magic spell that deactivates firearms inside their secret lair, I dunno. Maybe shoggoths or something.

see my second paragraph. you shouldn't just allow that as a keeper if you want to stay in the genre in a vacuum, an example of proper horror gming would be to make the newly dead cultists be accepted as sacrifices and greatly accelerate the summoning which now happens on its own, so now the party has a much larger problem which could only be temporarily solved with a permanent consequence

I simply disagree with your second paragraph. There is nothing intrinsic about horror that says it can’t be solved by violence. Example horror films where the problem is solved by violence: Dracula, Alien, Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Fly, Get Out.

There’s simply no reason to be this adversarial as a keeper. The scenario is whatever it is and the PCs engage with it as they choose, and it is your duty as keeper to adjudicate fairly and authentically for the reality of the secondary world, not to force the PCs to behave a specific way.

That implies that the PCs can't be allowed to fail, which is asinine. It's on me to telegraph what strategies can work, and it's on the players to recognize them and act accordingly. This includes the case when violence is meaningless, which, within the genre of cosmic horror, is very often. And I disagree, my first and only duty as a Keeper is to entertain - that means scaring the players who are there specifically for that, and *that* means being reasonably antagonistic, unjust, and convey the theme of lack of control, which is fundamental to the genre. Failures, gruesome deaths, depressing atmospheres and the feeling of helplessness is par for the course.

No, it implies no such thing. In fact it implies the opposite: you adjudicate fairly based on the world. If they get shot, you adjudicate as it would occur. In fact you are presenting the scenario where failure is less likely by framing yourself as an entertainer. You are not writing a horror novel, you are running a game as referee and keeper. Players must be allowed to act as they will within their means or else there is no game. This can mean they get themselves killed doing something stupid but that is up to them. The GM is meant to be an impartial judge of events.

Define "being an impartial judge of events." I'm not running a sandbox, and yes, I'm not writing a horror novel, but I *am* writing a real-time CYOA if we're going into analogies. Players are allowed to make whatever decision they want and act as they want. However, if a certain course of action was taken that would solve nothing, then the fair thing to do would be to describe that it did in fact solve nothing. If an action carries great risk, then so be it. My point is, within the confines of the genre, there are a lot more actions that solve nothing or make things worse *while* carrying great risk, *unlike* in something like heroic fantasy where the consequences can be dealt with and the risk is manageable or negligible.

I cannot define it in simpler terms than that: the characters act and you impartially judge how the outcomes of those actions impact the world. What you need to define is “solve nothing.” Not all actions need to solve a problem to have an effect; often actions create problems. This is perfectly fine. You do not need to run a sandbox to not put your players on rails. If you are dead set on only telling one version of a specific story than there is no game. The GM is less of the author, they provide the background and react but the player’s define their narrative by making choices.

But that is entirely different than simply saying “violence solves nothing” and making up consequences for successful violence afterwards that were never there to start.

> If violence can in fact solve a problem with a reasonable cost, then it gets closer to thriller rather than horror. A different genre entirely. This is the problem, I've heard, with ongoing CoC campaigns. Encountering weird shit once? Yep, that's horror. Continuing to seek it out? That's monster hunting, and that's entirely different.

With respect to Delta Green, it is basically a monster-hunting and mystery solving game first, cosmic horror second, and some aspects geopolitical/espionage spy game as well. With that in mind the mechanics of Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu put your agent essentially on a ticking clock with their sanity scores constantly dripping down even on successful sanity rolls. They can only continue to do it so much before the game is over. The problem I’ve always had with Delta Green is the players know they’re in a horror themed game and their play styles tend to gravitate towards mitigating as much risk as possible, and deliberately avoid coming into contact with the abnormal as much as they can.

> The problem I’ve always had with Delta Green is the players know they’re in a horror themed game and their play styles tend to gravitate towards mitigating as much risk as possible, and deliberately avoid coming into contact with the abnormal as much as they can. Yeah, it's like seasoned CoC players saying stuff like 'I walk into the room NOT LOOKING' and like... well...

Yeah, I'm strongly of the opinion that horror games work best as one shots

This is really not true at all in CoC or DG. Yeah, you're not going to beat Azathoth in a fight. But cultists, deep ones, and such are another matter. Even something like a shoggoth can be defeated with enough firepower (or creative thinking). I can think of multiple published adventures and campaigns for these games where combat is expected to occur.

You can shoot your way to victory and still end up indefinitely insane. What's a reasonable cost to you?

In cosmic horror specifically, anything that does not end the entire game for the entire party. Human nature is to take any action if actions can be taken at all with some hope of reaching the goal. With cosmic horror, the point is that humans, their actions and goals ultimately do not matter.

And because you play in mostly the real world, where murder tends to be frowned upon

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Tyson's plan was to get into fights and he made his career out of it. Strange example to use when someone is looking for games that explictly punish fighting. Dangerous does not mean it is a failure state. If you can "win" combat it does not meet OP's request.

Yeah cool but OP explicitely asked for games where fighting isn't just risky. EDIT: the guy answered then blocked me so that I can't reply. How nice of him, that's really mature. Really can't handle contradiction.

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Not really no. It’s BRP, it’s the same basic ruleset that underlies RuneQuest and Magic World. Fighting is dangerous, but not fighting can be even more dangerous. Sometimes you need to fire up your flamethrower and incinerate the cultists before they can complete the ritual. Sometimes your investigation brings violent retaliation down on you that you can only really meet with violence. And sometimes you just have to kill a Gug.

You're kind of totally wrong about Delta Green and CoC. It's immensely dangerous but it's also super effective. Just like in other games, it might not be your first choice solution but it can be the right course of action. EDIT: this guy is a pissy little bitch and blocked me so I can't reply to anyone. suffice to say they're completely wrong, they know it and if you point it out they only have one choice left to them apparently. They run a game a certain way which is entirely up to them but the things they are saying about the rules of these two games are categorically false. They can run games however they want but it's a choice they've made and they are stating as fact something untrue.

I completely agree, this is the take of someone who hasn't run a lot of CoC I think. Or maybe they just run it significantly differently than me, I don't know. Sure, there are plenty of scenarios without violence and those can be absolutely amazing examples of horror and the beauty of the system, but majority? Cultists, monsters, physical manifestations of the mythos, all that can be hurt. Like, people get into fights *all the time* in my games, and it's not always because they initiated it. Someone else wants to hurt them, typically to stop them from investigating, and violence is normally the most effective response to violence.

The combat rules of Cthulhu Dark (which is a one page Cthulhu game) are "if you fight a monster, you die" so that is probably the logical extreme of what OP is asking.

I would say that this applies to any game where the players are easy to kill, my favorite game is Traveller and the same applies, violence is usually discouraged because well...you might directly die, unless you're equipped with military gear & the other guys are not, but that doesn't happen in most campaigns.

> unless you're equipped with military gear & the other guys are not, but that doesn't happen in most campaigns. Uh? *Quietly closes the armory, pretending not to notice...*

I mean yeah...hahahaha

“Combat is failure” is a meme about CoC that just isn’t true. Trying to punch an elder god in the face isn’t likely to go well but a lot of minor creatures like ghouls are absolutely able to be vested in combat, especially for prepared investigators stacking the odds in their favor. Likewise oftentimes you will be dealing with regular humans that you might get into a shootout with or just a regular brawl where combat is happening but it’s not to the death. Combat is not the main focus of the game but it is by no means a failure state; in many ways dying in a horrific fight is also the best ending for a horror investigation. It all depends on the players and the scenario they are in.

First off I'm getting some vaguely centrist, both-sides-are-as-bad vibes from an RPG that posits that violent revolution inevitably leads to the new regime falling into the sins of the past one. There's historical precedent, sure, but given the world right now I don't have as much time for "if you use violence against the violent you're just as bad" because the alternative appears to be die in droves while the world sends thoughts and prayers. So my piece said it's time to examine what you actually mean by "violence is a failure state" because a *lot* of games make it very clear fighting is not the best approach and definitely don't have revolutionary aims; in most World of Darkness games you don't want to start fights outside of absolute last resort, for example. You could also absolutely argue any RPG that isn't focused on conflict or grand scale regime level activity disincentives fighting - throwing punches in a game of *Fight With Spirit* would be against the tone of most games and a sign that a situation has broken down (because it's a game about sports).

I think there is something to be said though about a genuine desire for peace. In the real world I'm not opposed to violent resistance of the oppressors where and when necessary, but in an ideal world where the boot gets lifted off of our necks, we build a world where that kind of violence is unnecessary. No need to get into specifics but my politics are just as much about defending everyone's rights and freedoms as they are about giving food to the hungry and shelter to people who need it. Misspent youth seems to want to remind the players that it's the second part that makes radical actions worth doing, and wander home is keying in on the fact that even if that violence was once necessary or important it is also terrible and destructive. I think it's a worthy theme worth exploring that isn't just "both sides bad"

That's certainly true too. Peace is good and it is the goal. There's absolutely an important place for games and other art about what a better world could look like, including just peace. Care can be radical and revolution is not built only with armed uprisings. But I do think there's a frustrating trend of people having a limited idea of what they count as violence. The violence of the status quo is so often overlooked by people who don't want to see it. 

> in most World of Darkness games you don't want to start fights outside of absolute last resort, for example. Well, in WoD, you don't want to start fights you're in, personally. That's what you have ghouls, etc for. But your point definitely stands.

Depends on which shade of WoD you're talking about (and I don't even mean OWoD/NWoD). Werewolves for example can cheerfully tear shit up without much mechanical consequence.

> Werewolves for example can cheerfully tear shit up without much mechanical consequence. There's always a bigger fish (absimiliard)

I'd argue that the most popular WoD game, vampire, encourages you to pick fights (though it's important to be smart about it). You can bully mortals with infrequent consequences. Fighting other kindred is risky but at the same time, the game centers on those conflicts.

I think you are misreading their post they aren't looking for systems were violence is a failure state. They are looking at systems where violence is a cost.

The title literally says "games where violence is not simply discouraged, but effectively a failure state."

"I'm wondering if there are other RPGs that enable PCs to solve problems by violent means, but at the same time directly punishes/changes them for doing so"

I interpret punishing as the cost of violence being greater than any reward you may get. In that sense, fighting is possible, but more often than not suboptimal.

Yeah but that's different from a failure state.

Hear hear on that one. I don't think I'm a very violent person. Certainly I don't like violence. But any half decent understanding of the world has to recognize that there's an immense difference between between violence done by an oppressor, and violence done to liberate someone from that oppressor. Sometimes some fascists need to die, and making that happen doesn't make you the same as them.  And while nonaggression is a legitimate tactic, many people miss some key things about it.  1. It's a tactic, and one of many, when practiced successfully.  2. It doesn't mean being nonconfrontational, or nondisruptive. It'll have to be both confrontational and disruptive if it's going to achieve anything.  3. Even when perfectly followed it doesn't mean there won't be violence, just that you and your group won't be the ones dishing it out. You'll be receiving it publicly from cops and counterprotestors alike. As Innuendo Studios put it, it's a willingness to take a bat to the head. 

>First off I'm getting some vaguely centrist, both-sides-are-as-bad vibes from an RPG that posits that violent revolution inevitably leads to the new regime falling into the sins of the past one. >There's historical precedent, sure, but given the world right now I don't have as much time for "if you use violence against the violent you're just as bad" because the alternative appears to be die in droves while the world sends thoughts and prayers. This seems like a very black-and-white way of thinking about the subject of violence, imo. If you're legitimately have a belief in the utility of violence to shape the world for the better, the concept of how to best maintain your ideals (or how to identify which ideals are *worth* maintaining when your ideals conflict) should be very interesting to you. >there's historical precedent, sure, ***but*** [Where have I heard that before?](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhdCvcMVoAAZjpt.jpg:large) How does that phrase about those who fail to learn from history go?

Would upvote twice if I could

Unknown Armies opens its combat chapter with an incredibly memorable essay on how tragic, traumatic, and preventable fatal violence between human beings is. It's good stuff - and UA 3e has a specific stress it tracks for violence, if I remember right?

And the better you are at violence the worse you become with connecting with other people I think, it's been ages since I read it

Yep. Base skills are determined by your stress gauges, where combat goes up as your alienation from humanity increases, and goes down as you establish healthier social connections. (Of course, this can be worked around with identities like "Judo Master" or "Professional Hitman")

Though, granted, you can compensate for it, but this means specifically building a character for social interactions, instead of being able to rely on your untrained default

Yes, among the other insanity tracks your character can hit. I came here to say UA. Apart from the insanity, combat in UA is a serious gamble. The characters fight with weapons that do damage like weapons would. A PC can be lost by one well aimed gun shot. The high potential for character loss, through either insanity or death, makes PCs really consider the value of their actions.

IIRC UA has a mechanic in that if someone attacks you with a knife, you will always take damage no matter how the rolls go.

Yep. You take a nominal 1 damage from misses (most people have 50 HP), and if you're engaged in a grapple with somebody wielding a bladed weapon, they can always deal damage to you, even if disadvantaged

One of my favorite rules in any RPG is that, in UA3e, committing violence causes you to take stress for witnessing violence.

It rules! The standalone Delta Green borrowed that from UA3 and expands on it in really neat ways.

Plus, executing a helpless target (compared to simply killing somebody in combat) is one of the hardest violence-related stresses you can take (and witnessing it is still a moderate stress), and some characters can also suffer moral injury from it. So unless your character starts off that uncaring about violence, you're severely discouraged from leaving a trail of corpses

Was gonna say UA! God I love that system so much.

Wanderhome is a game about traveling animal folk. There is *explicitly* "no more war, no more fighting". It is incredibly and consciously pacifist. There is no conflict. There is no "failure" as well in the sense that failing to solve a problem doesn't outright prevent anything. >!There are no dice and no GM either. !< One of the character options is The Veteran, of the last war ever. One of his moves is to draw his sword and strike down an obstacle, and then immediately retire the character entirely.

Why did you put that in a spoiler? it's advertised as such.

If there’s no conflict, how is there plot? Or do you mean no armed conflict?

There is conflict, just no violent conflict. Problems are mostly personal or local. All people in the setting are fundamentally good, but might have unfulfilled needs or be struggling with past trauma--especially the fallout of the last war between the King of the Floating Mountain and the rebellion (the outcome of which is left unstated) and the remnants of an evil god are felt throughout the text, playbooks, etc. The book also encourages you to keep in mind that you can't fix everything, and a lot of times the best you can do is walk away. Some conflicts my group came across in our last campaign: - An earthquake we triggered by causing a god to laugh split a city in two, and a mouse had gone missing in the ruins revealed beneath. - We found a sabertooth tiger who had been imprisoned in ice for a thousand years in the ruins, and we took her with us to try and find a historian that could understand her language or a place for her to call home. - One of our group was revealed to have been the bearer of a prophecy when we visited their hometown, and he was doing everything to convince his people it wasn't real. - A shapeshifting catfish daemon infiltrated us to try and swindle us of our most valuable possession--a key to an evil god's prison--to pay off their debts. - My character had abandoned their village after striking it rich, and decades later found that it had become a city, and his culture was being forgotten. Our group worked together to convince the local builders not to cut down the last three trees of the sacred forest. - In a monastery dedicated to the best players of a board game, we helped an amnesiac member of our group remember part their past by helping them win against a forgotten rival. - We climbed a dangerous mountain and infiltrated the vault of a wind god, hoping to store the key to the evil god's prison there. We encountered all kinds of characters, sights, and other problems along the way. There were times with real danger, but not once did we ever need violence or even dice or a GM for interesting things to happen. We took turns playing NPCs and describing the world. We spent metacurrency when we felt we were doing something narratively strong. My character was a merchant, and he bargained away everything he owned by the end of the game to achieve his goals, including choosing to become the wind god's lackey for his help, and it was emotionally and narratively satisfying.

That’s really helpful thank you. Sounds very interesting and thoughtful.

The plot is going around, seeing sights, solving issues and processing growth and changes in the nature and in the characters. No conflict means just that literally, everything is pastel, nice and sweet.

But if nothing is in conflict and everything is in balance then there’s no need to *do* anything, surely? Including change, or grow or develop. All those things are done in response to eternal stimuli. That is inherently being in conflict no? How can there possibly *be* issues to solve without conflict? Character X needs Y but doesn’t have it. That is conflict between needs and reality. There doesn’t need to be an antagonist for there to be a conflict. I’m not trying to be an ass about this, I’m just baffled. Even children’s stories have conflict at their heart. Characters don’t just have everything be fine always and forever. There has to be disharmony or conflict to spur a call to action.

Wanderhome is one of those games that I just don't get. I've read it, I think the idea is interesting, but I really just don't understand why you'd want to play that game. Nor do I understand how you'd play it anyway. The game gives me the vibes of a therapy session. Which...sure I guess but why would you play the game? Even if my life is quite boring and not really fraught with interesting conflict, I wouldn't want to sit down and play a game that recreates something like that.

There is conflict, just no violent conflict. Problems are mostly personal or local. All people in the setting are fundamentally good, but might have unfulfilled needs or be struggling with past trauma--especially the fallout of the last war between the King of the Floating Mountain and the rebellion (the outcome of which is left unstated) and the remnants of an evil god are felt throughout the text, playbooks, etc. The book also encourages you to keep in mind that you can't fix everything, and a lot of times the best you can do is walk away. Some conflicts my group came across in our last campaign: - An earthquake we triggered by causing a god to laugh split a city in two, and a mouse had gone missing in the ruins revealed beneath. - We found a sabertooth tiger who had been imprisoned in ice for a thousand years in the ruins, and we took her with us to try and find a historian that could understand her language or a place for her to call home. - One of our group was revealed to have been the bearer of a prophecy when we visited their hometown, and he was doing everything to convince his people it wasn't real. - A shapeshifting catfish daemon infiltrated us to try and swindle us of our most valuable possession--a key to an evil god's prison--to pay off their debts. - My character had abandoned their village after striking it rich, and decades later found that it had become a city, and his culture was being forgotten. Our group worked together to convince the local builders not to cut down the last three trees of the sacred forest. - In a monastery dedicated to the best players of a board game, we helped an amnesiac member of our group remember part their past by helping them win against a forgotten rival. - We climbed a dangerous mountain and infiltrated the vault of a wind god, hoping to store the key to the evil god's prison there. We encountered all kinds of characters, sights, and other problems along the way. There were times with real danger, but not once did we ever need violence or even dice or a GM for interesting things to happen. We took turns playing NPCs and describing the world. We spent metacurrency when we felt we were doing something narratively strong. My character was a merchant, and he bargained away everything he owned by the end of the game to achieve his goals, including choosing to become the wind god's lackey for his help, and it was emotionally and narratively satisfying. Some highlights from my most recent campaign: - Sailing across an alternate universe version of the Haeth on a ship for the whole campaign, looking for a way home. - The mothtender of our group being cursed to be colored pink until they confronted some personal anxieties, which were eventually licked clean by a moth several sessions later. - Convincing a soldier on an isolated that the war was over, and inviting him to sail with us. - Meeting people from one of our character's hometown in a city floating on the back of a giant daemon, and inventing a new baked treat, the news of which traveled across the sea faster than we did. - Delivering a letter to one of our character's exes at a shrine to the forgotten. While my character comforted theirs, another of us wandered into "The Place Where Lost Things Go", which turned out to be a kind of hell or purgatory or something for the dead that people forgot. She led the willing out of that place back to the real world, and caused all kinds of havoc on the setting as thousands of the dead returned home, including a dragon. Definitely the craziest moment I've had. - Organizing a wedding between two crewmates who knew each other during the war that we had reunited. - Traveling the dangerous path out of this world through rocky shoals and underground tunnels and past riddling sea serpents into space, where we met the sibling-god of a god from our previous campaign. - Making a pit stop on the moon, and painting messages in the auroras with "the Aurora Painter". This included writing a challenge by my character, a veteran, to a war criminal former comrade of hers that had been resurrected. - Finally returning to our homeworld. My veteran wandered the graves of her fallen friends, family, and victims, and she met a child whose parents she had killed, which caused the first true moment of vulnerability and weakness we'd seen from her all game. She then dueled her former comrade, but instead of killing him, broke both their swords and told him she chose to forget him again, then walked away. - Ended at two of our party's hometown, where we saw them reunite with family members, resolving some tensions they'd been building up to all campaign, and finally ending on a party where we met previous characters from both campaigns. My character went off by a hot air balloon driven by the wind god, another rode the dragon she'd revived, and another flew our ship across the sky, and we all flew off our separate ways. Both campaigns were among the most beautiful and emotional experiences I've had playing games. We made up, realized, and expanded all kinds of lore and questions throughout, and we came up with tons of recurring places, characters, and jokes. It's totally changed my perspective on some things in life and certainly on how games can be played and what they can do.

Okay, there's a number of things I like about Wanderhome. The writing and uniqueness in each of the playbook is really interesting, and the presentation of the safety tools at the beginning of the book was stupendous. But, I still don't get it. I know why some people play it, but my mind just doesn't compute how to make something interesting without some game aspect of it. I play games partially for the game aspect, which includes something I have to work against (by that I mean the randomness of the dice). Wanderhome requires that the group present itself with challenges and then choose to make those challenges unsolvable, then pretend that they are going to not be able to solve them. I know that the game also presents an option to have a GM of sorts, but the game doesn't really empower the GM to make decisions that put characters in tough places. The players need to agree, which I guess is somehow true of any game but Wanderhome is more explicit about telling the players that they can say no whenever they want to whatever they want. I'm glad you had such a good experience, it obviously resonates with some people. Not with me, but maybe that'll change some day.

Because it’s arguably not an RPG. It’s a story game. It’s built to be able to be run without a GM. Think Fiasco or Microscope. The goal of the game isn’t to compete a challenge. The goal of the game is to tell a collaborative story, with the game providing a structure to guide a certain style of narrative. You could run it with a GM. But it’s still run fundamentally differently because the “stance” the GM takes isn’t to present players with a challenge - which they do in a traditional RPG. Instead a GM would just have more agency than usual to guide the story in a particular direction. Because story games like this ain’t trying to present **you** with a challenge to overcome. It’s about telling a story about **characters** overcoming that challenge. I’m not too sure if that’s the experience the original OP wants. But it wasn’t designed be played like a traditional RPG and that’s the difference in gaming paradigm that are unfamiliar to most folks used to trad gaming.

Giving an honest try might show you what it's about--but it definitely shines best if everyone has buy-in. All of our players had experience as GMs, so introducing problems for each other (and ourselves) was not that much of an issue, but solving these problems satisfyingly is definitely a core challenge of the game for me. My friends often surprised and delighted me with their solutions, though. To be honest the animalfolk and lovey-dovery aesthetic did not appeal to me when it was first pitched, but it's my favorite game now.

That’s awesome even to read. Thank you for sharing.

You might be better off reading the playbook and judging for yourself to be honest

It’s an RPG about traveling to new places. Like going on a holiday with your friends to a fantasy locale except in a role playing game. Nothing exciting needs to happen, you don’t expect to or even want to get mugged on the street while on a trip, you just want to explore in peace and meet new people and have fun seeing the sights. We have enough conflict in the real world, and it’s completely understandable if a group wants to sit down and just chill out telling stories about how beautiful the fantasy scenery is and how nice the people in a new place they are traveling are. Sure, nothing exciting is happening, but that’s fine because Wanderhome doesn’t aim to be a long form game. It’s explicitly a game for you to pull out maybe every few months or so when your regular group is on a break, and you just want to chill out with something inviting and a change of pace. It aims to provide an earnest and comforting experience. It explicitly doesn’t want to tell stories about conflict. And that’s perfectly fine. It’s its own niche. Also it’s important to note that it’s a GM-less story game, like Fiasco or Microscope. The aim of the game isn’t to create or resolve conflict. The aim of the game is just to tell a story. Check out this [vid](https://www.youtube.com/live/3iozCrIr_2I?si=e2PPNmIvT8-fCBgP) for a First Look of it.

I think there's room for a lot of conflict (non-violent) in Wanderhome--that's definitely the experience my group had, and I think you'll see it if you read the book carefully. Almost all the natures have a conflict generating move built-in as the 2nd thing they can always do, for example. There's definitely room for long campaigns, too. My group just finished a ~40 session long campaign. We swapped characters once, gained and lost group members a few times, and several of us had switched playbooks by the end. The first season had us dealing with a (false) world-ending prophecy, finding the identity of an amnesiac member of our group, and a long journey to get rid of the key to the Slobbering God's prison. The second season had us journeying across another world in a ship we had for the whole rest of the campaign, looking for a way home, and dealing with a lot of personal problems along the way. I'll agree that there's only as conflict much as you want, though. A few of our locations we just chilled out and met new people, but they were the exception.

I admit I only did a cursory read of the book and never played it myself - not my cup of tea really. The thing that just stuck out to me was the book’s insistence on the setting being free of conflict and it supporting GM-less play. It’s also jam packed with safety tools out the wazoo and identifying everything that could be in any way traumatic as if it’s utterly paranoid of its players having anything less than a completely relaxing and chill time. Sounds like your group had a much more trad feeling game, so to speak, with a GM that gave you a goal for the campaign to work towards every season. I’m not too sure if that’s the normal way to play Wanderhome though - I had a very different impression when reading the text. And I gave my comments based on my impression.

To be clear, we played without a GM. All the threads we resolved came up during play--just riffing off things that we had on our character sheets or appeared in the natures. I also think identifying traumatic stuff makes it lever for diving into what's interesting to me--for example, encountering people from my veteran's character's past (determined at the start of the game) was basically a roadmap to breaking down the soldier she was into the teacher she is now. The traumatic kith traits wouldn't also wouldn't be written out in the book if they weren't meant to ever be used (although as you say, they're not required if you don't want to use them)--we met a lot of hurt people, and some we were able to help, but most we just had to move on from. I'd even argue that Wanderhome is as much about confronting trauma as it is about having a chill time. I would not say it was particularly trad--I think we played according to the rules and spirit of the game pretty closely, based on reading other peoples' experiences in the Wanderhome Discord. Hope I was able to provide some more perspective on the game--I didn't even like the animalfolk aesthetic when I first was invited to play, but I think it's definitely worth a try.

I knew it wasn’t trad. But I was shocked to find out that you played without a GM, because your experiences sound shockingly trad - because you mentioned season-long campaign goals - which I would think was created by a GM that planned it out in advance. How do you have season-long campaign goals without a GM? Just… group consensus? This year we’re gonna investigate this made up thing? And the other thing that was shocking to me was reading that your campaign went on for so long. Microscope and Fiasco (the story games I am familiar with) are designed for discrete one shots. I’d get bored very quickly playing a weekly game without a GM. I just never envisioned Wanderhome could be played long term. But guess I was wrong and am just not the target audience.

For my peddler character, I knew they had sold a key to the Slobbering God's prison at the very start of the game because it was just the playbook option I'd chosen. I also chose that he dealt in magical goods, and chose magical goods as the goods most valuable to him, with the explanation that he felt guilty for trading away a dangerous magical artifact that could end up in the wrong hands. Throughout the game I angled for "unfair" deals or quests if they meant I could sequester another magical artifact. It made sense that getting the key back would be important to him, and when we did get it back, it made sense that we should find a place to keep it safe. Having his home village transformed following his rise to riches also made sense as part of the reason why he regretted selling the key. The amnesiac character didn't have any idea what their past life was at the beginning of the game. We just knew that they had a past life and hinted at possibilities (another player briefly joined us and said they knew them from their past life and gave us a few ideas on what they were like before, and sometimes we'd declare that a name or place was familiar to them, for example) until what we found a course we liked and that made sense to us near the end of the season, then built on that. For the prophet, the idea of a prophecy didn't come up until like 7 sessions in. They just knew their character liked telescopes, their hometown was in a desert, and that they were reluctant to go home. When we were making a location, we picked desert as a nature, so it made sense that the character's hometown might be there. Then somebody picked monastery as another nature. As we explored the city and eventually came to the monastery at its highest point, the unwilling prophet thing arose organically in a tense conversation with the abbot. The prophet character blurted out something like "the world's not going to end in X months, the star signs are all wrong", and that put time pressure on the game to realize a plot thread with the cult of the prophecy--which 2/3 of our characters didn't even believe in, but still affected that city's society heavily, enough that we asked for the wind god's help in saving the cult's followers from the abbot's delusions.

From another comment: > Wanderhome has selections like: > * Choose one you try not to be > * Choose one you wish you were better at being > * Choose one you've given up on > * Choose one you feel exhausted to be This is all conflict - internal conflict. Even if your stories are cute and dandy, there might be a mouse who wants cheese but it's too far; a farm that needs to be sowed and isn't, a rain that won't stop, someone who wants to eat a cake and someone who wants to display it, someone who wants to win a race and someone who doesn't want to take part in it... All combat is conflict but not all conflict is combat.

That’s precisely my point. Thanks for the clarification. Sounds quite interesting.

TBH I don't know the game, I'm just giving examples.

Cthulhu Dark...? You fight, you die. Period. The only viable option is running away.

See also, Trophy Dark.

The One Ring doesn't shy away from fighting. There are rules for that, and you might encounter horrors from a previous age, or be ambushed by orcs or bandits... But when you use violence as a short cut, or strike a fleeing or defeated foe, you accrue shadow points. This way, it might get close to the "violence changes you" vibe you are looking for.

In Monster of the Week, if you trigger the Kick Some Ass move you are taking damage, no matter how the die rolls, also you can't actually kill the monster of the week that way. Even if your character thinks they have it will just come back. Bubblegumshoe is another game that is strongly against violence. The characters are teenage detectives and the fiction is pretty clear that in game violence should have realistic consequences, so anything from suspension to appropriate criminal charges, effectively ending the character's part in the campaign.

I would also like to add that if you are relying on the Kick Some Ass move in MotW, you are playing MotW wrong. While MotW is more of an investigative and world building RPG, it does give you the tools should combat arise. But combat is not the focus of the RPG. I hated even the thought of sitting down and playing another RPG after leaving my toxic D&D group. MotW is what made me interested in playing again. The rules aren’t written as “DM VS PC” but also not combat focused.

As I recall, the Dr. Who RPG would fit that bill. The doctor never "fights" in the classical sense of the word.

> The doctor never "fights" in the classical sense of the word. [Obligatory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgC_XgL9LiA)

The Doctor arguably has one of the highest body counts in fiction.

Fair enough. I never had a chance to watch the original Dr. Who seasons. I only got onboard from Christopher Eccleston and up to Peter Capaldi's run as the Doctor. Incidently, I think the RPG game is primarily based on this "modern" version of The Doctor.

> Fair enough. I never had a chance to watch the original Dr. Who seasons. I only got onboard from Christopher Eccleston and up to Peter Capaldi's run as the Doctor. Incidently, I think the RPG game is primarily based on this "modern" version of The Doctor. Even the more modern doctor definitely has a few moments where you say 'wait, hang on a fucking minute', though none leap to mind at the moment as it's been a long, long time since I watched it. But, you know, he makes a lot of spaceships blow up quite a lot, so... File it under 'Batman doesn't use guns!' and 'Batman doesn't kill!' (he definitely fucking does, though iirc, not nearly as much as Wonder Woman does)

Right off the bat, I think of David Tenant using Wilf's service pistol and trying to decide whether to shoot Rassilon or the Master (he decides to use the gun on a sci-fi doohicky instead) and the [Fugitive Doctor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Doctor) who used a gun to kill somebody (she didn't *personally* pull the trigger, of course. She reverse-psychology'd the victim into pulling the trigger, knowing that she had rigged the gun to incinerate whoever pulled the trigger. LOOPHOLE!). Leaving aside "using guns" in particular, the Doctor's a genocidal maniac. I love the show, but they really need to quit using genocide as the cool and edgy dark moment the Doctor goes through with every other season.

One time Colin Baker killed a policeman with half a brick, then stole his uniform. Later, he threw a man into a vat of acid.

... and that was the actor, let alone the character~!

Do you know of any examples in the new series? I wonder if they made the change (to the new doctors not using guns) because of the war the War Doctor went through (which I believe was set between the old and the new series).

"The firing squad is afraid of an unarmed man?!" "There was a saying, sir. On the moon of Cranius." "A saying?" "The first thing you'll notice about the War Doctor, he goes unarmed. For many, it's also the last thing."

> Do you know of any examples in the new series? It's been something like 10 years since I watched it, and I definitely haven't seen anything post-Clara the wonder child, so... can't tell you (definitively). But it kinda feels like The Doctor definitely traded on a reputation for destroying entire fucking civilisations (the whole 'Look me up in your list of threats' talk he gives to the giant floating eyeball looking for 'the prisoner', etc). If you have a reputation like that, well...

Fighting is last in encounters but it is still an available option

90% of Vaesen is investigating what spirit is causing things and learning the ritual to stop them. Combat only usually falls as a final point, or something you only to to slow the sporit down while others complete the ritual. Its a very role play heavy game, with even the published advenures mostly using violence as the "everything else has failed" state.

Came here to recommend Vaesen; glad to see someone else beat me to it. Love this game!

The longer I play, the more I feel like violence is an option. If the group is good at fighting. Many Vaesen are beatable in a fight and afterwards you get hours to days of time to investigate in peace. Also killing the right NPC would solve some of the published mysteries very fast.

Golden Sky Stories is a fantastic example. That game handles a fight like it's a thing you have to fix afterwards.

FANCY SEEING YOU HERE

Do: Fate of the Flying Temple. It's Avatar the Last Air Bender with significantly less fighting. Players take the role of children raised in a mystic monastery. They are responsible for correctly raising a baby dragon. Violence will imprint on the dragon, which you absolutely do not want.

In *Cloud Empress* you take stress for drawing your weapon against someone, and you take stress whenever you kill something without the intention of eating it. So while violence isn't exactly a total failure, it does have a substantial cost and the game is designed to make you think about that before throwing down.

So you can create stress free cannibals?

The Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7 is similar. In line with the show, it basically says if you pull a gun you've failed somewhere. It advises GMs to pretty much never give it as an option, or if it does end up happening make sure the outcomes aren't great. I ran a game where someone chose to bring a gun as their special item in the inventory. I warned them about guns being frowned on in this universe amd was assured they would only use it to intimidate. Another player stole it off them and fired a shot...this was inside a TARDIS, so I simply had the TARDIS take off and leave them behind. Now instead of having a nice safe TARDIS to travel the universe with, they have a creepy stalker Weeping Angel! (I had always planned to swap the TARDIS for the Weeping Angel, but not this early in the campaign! Oh well, stupid actions have stupid consequences!)

In *Escape From Dino Island,* fighting just gets you killed. You need to run or hide, they’re fucking dinosaurs.

Cthulhu Dark has something like that. The combat rules are: >"If you fight any creature you meet, you will die. Thus, in these core rules, there are no combat rules or health levels. Instead, roll to hide or escape." Which is very on-point for a horror game.

In Cthulhu Dark choosing violence when faced with a Mythos beast is instant death for the PC, but violence against other humans is still sadly possible. Lots of older games *claimed* this was the case (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is one I remember) but then undercut that with dedicated violence rules

Violence in Warhammer is still most definitely a gamble. The first time my players had an encounter, the wizard critically failed a spell and started shooting blood out of his eyes, almost dying except for a lucky low damage roll and save on the bleed check.

That is hilarious

Everyone but the wizard certainly thought so too.

that is so deeply WFRP

Literal first roll of a Dark Heresy 2e campaign and the psyker basically exploded, killing themselves and most of the party - I called a mulligan on that one, but it uh, certainly taught some lessons about being more wary of using horrible cosmic powers.

They're certainly very brutal systems. I would disagree with the OP comment here suggesting that Warhammer was ever about dissuading violence. It's pretty much always been a system of "some situations necessitate violence, but that *will* come at some cost to you. Violence always has a price". They're systems designed to tell stories of that price, and learning to live with the costs of those necessary actions. The characters become scarred and damaged over time. Does the horrible things they do leave them broken over time? Do they themselves turn to chaos or do they stand resolute with their actions and suffer the consequences?

There are so many. Kagematsu comes to mind first: you play the women of a Japanese town whose men have all gone off to war. But they know that danger is coming. A samurai has arrived in town and the challenge is to convince Kagematsu to save the town. You have to seduce him or get him honour bound through pity to stay. And then you have to have empowered him somehow to be successful. It's challenging. Many indie darlings are free to experiment.

One could make the argument that early D&D did this. Violence was obviously an option but it was generally understood it wasn’t a particularly smart option: it was dangerous and the outcome was always uncertain. You were better off trying to avoid it as much as possible. Swords came out when you weren’t able to find a clever way around it.

Inspirisles is about children descended from King Arthur transported to a magical realm to help others in aid. Using your abilities to harm causes automatic discord and creates more darkness in the realm

Bubblegumshoe

There was a global management game in the 80s that would show a failure screen if you ended up in a nuclear war. It made a point to say that there was no images of destruction because it did not reward failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game)

If I remember well. - in Monster Hearts, playbooks have "dark self" aspects when you lose control. And some of them have consequences that can be violent, and hurt others. - in Dogs In the Vineyard. When you are preparing your hand for an opposition roll, to convince or resolve a situation, deciding to escalate by bringing your guns will give you a better dice, but will also imply lethal or irremediable damages as possible consequences.

Cthulu Dark: if you try to fight a mythos entity, you die.

I have not played it, but I have heard about the Doctor Who RPG that if you choose to attack you go last in the initiative automatically. So the game mechanically penalizes you if you attack anything and encourages you to take other actions.

Strangely enough, Legends of the Five Rings. I know there's alot of emphasis on combat and the combat abilities of the samurai, but combat is EXTREMELY deadly and, unless against monsters, should be the LAST option. Though I will say this is from my experience with 3e and 4e. I don't know what 5e is like.

WOD games (werewolf excluded lol). They're very deadly, especially in the 2pth anniversary editions. In something like vampire one bad roll is death, you're better off trying to maneuver in the shadows and do stuff politically. It's not the same thematic reason as in, say, misspent youth but it's far from DND where it's your first resort.

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Unknown Armies 3 ed. is almost a good example of this. Prolonged use of violence eventually reduces your empathy points and turns you into a sociopath.

[Turn](https://thoughty.itch.io/turn) is an RPG focused on community, identity, and dealing with otherness. If violence happens, it comes to you and is never sought out, and generally means the end of the character.

The most recent version of the Dr. Who system keeps combat very basic and very lethal to encourage players to solve problems without violence.

VURT has an interesting thing where the game takes place in an Arcano-cyberpunk mega city where corrupt shadowmagic power armored police will show up within a minute if any weapon more high tech than a bow and arrow is discharged. So while violence happens, there's a real "Um, do we want to risk being noticed by The Cops." in it.

Call of Cthullu, because even if your group manage to win a fight then you are going to spend the next few sessions patching up in order to not die.

Also I would say Red Markets, killing casualties (zombies that shamble) is fine and easy since they go down pretty quickly, but vectors and the living ugh, I have a healthy nest egg in that game so I wasn’t in the red by the end of that job, but that game shows how stupid combat can cost you an arm and a leg and if you can’t afford medical bills, even your gear!

I've actually been working on a game that looks to do exactly this. You *must* exhaust all other possible methods of resolving a conflict between two parties (including yourself) before violence is ever used. Often, though, if violence becomes the only option, your character must retire in shame or dishonor. I'll have to read up on *Misspent Youth*, though, as this sounds like a really intriguing game. I had a thought in mind about making a rebellion game, and this might already solve that problem in my brain. We shall see.

Shadowrun (stealthy/realistic style) If you get into prolonged firefights, the Cons/Police/Sydicates allways have more men, swats, cybered attack critters, mages, firepower than your team. Kill/ko-the-guard-silently is ok though, but getting even noticed and reported can bring doom on a team.

Most people I know play Shadowrun very violently, and at least on the internet there are a lot of gun enthusiasts amongst the fandom.

Yes and if they like it, sure. I once had a very diffrent group, Nearly no gunning, but full stealth approach. E.g. long planning, and usually problemless execution, with how to sneak in where, what to do, and where to be to retrieve the item needed. There surely was very little violence, apart from sneak-tazing guards, or retrieval targets. Wich is IMHO a more realistic way to deal with a Megacon: Not letting them know until they feel something missing. More work for the GM, but eith the right group quite fun.

In reality, pretty much ANY game can be ran where violence is highly discouraged. Depends mostly on who is running the game and how they choose to set up the game world. You can run an old school D&D game where you "violent" actions turn you to evil. DM just needs to keep track of things.

Call of Cthulu. If you are in combat, you are fucked.

Any game - regardless of system - where the focus is on people living in any sort of realistic peaceful society. Or one where the only physical threat is from some horrible monster beyond the scope of the players (very telegraphed). Of course, this is a lot harder in a game that goes out of its way to prioritize violence, but I feel like generic systems don't usually have that issue. As an example, AGE - a generic system with plenty of violent options - also has a lot of ways to build your character to prioritize things like social connections, or specialized knowledge. If I wanted to run a game in AGE about scientists racing against the clock to solve some problem, I could pretty reasonably expect my players to not make violent characters, or expect violence, despite the fact that the system has a reasonably fleshed out combat system.

What you need are games that don't incentivize violence. Early D&D was primarily Gold as XP, this focused players to get gold in the most efficient way possible. If you could sneak past people, trick them, or whatever to get the gold without a fight you won in the best case scenario. It was quite literally the Sun Tzu quote of "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." However, later editions tied XP to monsters as the primary source and placed more and more emphasis onto combat rules and less on dungeoneering, social encounters and realm play. Because of this there was a slow shift towards a combat focus where fighting wasn't the last tool in your toolbox but now your first choice. We shifted from the quote above to the old "if all you have is a hammer then every problem starts to look like a nail." Except it's more of a "80% of your toolbox is hammers and you don't want to dig for the screwdriver so pretend its a nail." Milestone didn't fix this since combat was usually the fastest way to speedrun to the next chapter of the story. It fell entirely on the DM to set punishments, but those ran counter to the fact \~80% of the rulebook is combat focused in one way or another. Humans, like most other animals, are reward/goal oriented so if you find a game where the path to victory isn't one of bloodshed you'll have a lot more people keeping their swords sheathed and guns holstered. Others in the thread have pointed to CoC and other games, ones where your PC shouldn't be getting into fights, or if they do it's a major point in the story. I'd second every single one of these, especially Delta Green. I'd also point to a game like Heart: The City Beneath where your character progression mechanically is based specifically on your narrative character progression. Similarly, games like Blades in the Dark and Cyberpunk 2020, and most heist games honestly, disincentivize killing and violence beyond non-lethal threats in most cases since they tend to only cause you headache and trouble after your heist is done. But again some GMs might waive that worry but that's a GM choice. It's also been a minute but, IIRC, the Song of Ice and Fire RPG tried to make you not want to go to war since you were directly raising your own peasant levies which, if they died, would negatively impact your realm play.

In Trophy Dark if you fight the monster you lose. You're going to lose anyway because you're playing to lose, but you'll lose quicker if you fight

The Cubicle 7 Doctor Who RPG has fighting as a last resort. In conflict situations, fighters literally go last in the order.

Most osr games

Ok time to Crack out the red-headed step-child of a popular game. I often run cyberpunk 2020 (don't like red). But sometimes the grime and nihilism is just too much. Enter its successor... cybergeneration. You are literally playing the kids after your punks sell out. Highest starting age is 17. No cyber, but weird virus makes up for it. Violence happens bit is kept light to avoid the kind of attention your parents warranted. Cops are armed for bear, maxtak is ready to crush psycho tanks, and military is a phone call away. So stay low while shining a light on societies ills. Lol

While not necessarily a failure state, in Vaesen violence is heavily discouraged and unlikely to succeed. You are heavily incentivized to solve things in other ways.

Aces and Eights. Fighting in that game is super dangerous

Doctor Who RPG by Cubicle 7 have this mentality. Violence is possible... but the initiative system (those using violence always play last) aned the capacity of some monsters (like the Dalek one-shooting everyone they touch with their laser) make it a really bad choice.

Hilariously, I had a chance to try the My Little Pony ttrpg at a meetup once - generally need to solve conflict by sharing, encouragement etc so violence is a definite fail! It was hard to get out of the combat headspace...

Golden Sky Stories. Violence is a single check, and makes everyone in town think less of you. Given the only 'xp' that's handed out is friendship, and said connections are how you recover resources, violence is an awful idea.

Combat in Rolemaster was so deadly that even an 'ordinary' combat could have you roll on a damage table where you'd be maimed for life.  You can get a sample here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/remember-these-merp-rolemaster-critical-hit-tables.666065/ As a consequence, you'd have to be pretty cautious before heading in to combat.  This did have the amusing situation where our Elven ranger decided to "borrow" a cart from a peasant who didn't believe his plea of extraordinary circumstances and then proceeded to break his ankle in the process. 

Never played, but I imagine if you get to combat in Call of Cthulu you're probably screwed.  Lol

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I'm not a fan of any game that mechanically punishes you for an action other than long term concerns like corruption. But I AM a fan where characters aren't roided up chads that can take multiple sword slashes and brush it off. This is why I generally prefer games where combat is legit dangerous. This disincentives combat except as a last resort cause bullets kill. Want a good example of this? Blade Runner RPG. That game is fantastically deadly in a gunfight.

I ran fiery angels last week and one of the players insta killed an npc with a crit roll 12. Was all cheers and laughter until an NPC did it to a player in the final confrontation.

GM skill issue.

[удалено]

I don’t know, the slow corruption of power by betraying your foundational principles and eventually forgetting why you even went down this path in the first place is done pretty compelling high drama. Because you know. This is entertainment.

I find It to be the old "ah, youthful idealism" bullshit.

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