The last aspect of the GM-as-gatekeeper I want to talk about is a more extreme example of training your players. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about story and drama, and very little talking about how to handle a game mechanically, especially in terms of combat. Combat can be a tricky subject, and there’s very little consensus as to what the right amount is. Some groups
can go several sessions without any kind of combat happening, while others may be nothingbut combat.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with the group that hacks its way through every encounter, loots all the bodies, and moves onto the next challenge. If that’s your group’s preferred play style and it’s what you’re all happy with, there is no reason you should change.
However, there are many gamers who find hack and slash gaming to be ultimately unfulfilling, but nevertheless find themselves constrained to whiling away the hours in one combat after another. If this is the case with your group, there are ways to transition away from hack and slash, or at the very least make it more exciting for the players who aren’t as interested in combat.
As the GM, the first thing you should do is sit down with yourself and seriously assess what you’re trying to accomplish. In a long-standing group, it may be difficult or even impossible to transition to a more character-driven style of play. Your players will likely be—consciously or not—resistant to change. They may not evenwant to change play styles. Adding more depth to your game is not something that can happen without the cooperation of the other players, so it’s important to gauge the attitude of the group as a whole.
If your group has been hacking and slashing their merry way through life, it could be because that’s the play style they like. In this case, consider what your goals are and whether the campaign you want to run is something these players are going to enjoy. It may be that you need to find a different group. If, as is often the case, the players in your RPG group are your friends away from the table as well, you might be happier turning RPG night into board game night or video game night and doing your roleplaying with other people who share your preferred play-style.
The next step is to have a discussion with your group outside the game itself. For a number of people, hack and slash is simply how they learned to play. Players get trained very early on to react to certain situations in certain ways, and it might be the only play style they know. It’s a bad idea to spring a major shift in gameplay on people unannounced, so sit your players down and have a group discussion.
Talk about the problems you’re having with the game and the kind of changes you’d like to see. Ask the players what they want out of the game. Hack and slash as a style of play has a connotation ofmeaningless combat. The side-scrolling beat-em-up video game in pen-and-paper form. However, not every game that has lots of combat and action is necessarily a hack and
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slash. Combat withmotivation behind it can involve a lot of interesting roleplaying.
The out-of-character conversation is an important first step, but it’s far from the only step.
Moving away from hack and slash is like saying you’re going to quit smoking. The words only go so far before you need to take real action. Often you need to make many smaller changes to support the big change. Quitting smoking is often reinforced by taking up replacement activities, and avoiding behaviors which the person associates with smoking.
In the case of quitting hack and slash, you need to avoid or replace the behaviors which lead the party to killing their problems away. This starts with establishing the difference between combat and conflict. Conflict occurs in a game any time that there is an obstacle between the PCs and their objective. The objective could be anything from stopping a villain to recovering an item or even just finding out a piece of information. Combat—that is to say, violence—is just one of many methods of resolving that conflict.
Hack and slash behavior arises when combat becomes the best, quickest way to resolve any conflict. A prominent element in many hack and slash games is NPCs who are utterly ruthless and uncompromising, and will exploit any emotional attachments the characters have.
Another common element is an emphasis on action sequences to the near total exclusion of social interaction or any deeper PC motivations beyond “win and survive.”
Essentially, you create a situation where there is no reward for the players avoiding violence, nor any consequence for the characters in committing violent acts. At worst, a character is eliminated and a new one quickly introduced. With no meaningful consequence, players have no real reason not to hack anything in arm’s reach. The GM, confronted with PCs who kill everything in their path, may then resort to a simple escalation of force, hoping to scare the players into line. Faced with more vicious opponents, the players are in turn even more willing to employ violence. You enter into an ever escalating spiral of violence.
In order to dissuade players from engaging in hack and slash behavior, there first needs to be real, meaningful consequence for theplayer, not just the character. You need to affect the person sitting at the table, both by preempting the first strike mentality and by encouraging nonviolent conflict resolution.
Start by instituting a real, lasting consequence for hack and slash behavior: negative reputation. When the PCs walk into a bar, everybody gets up to leave, afraid for their lives.
They start appearing on no-fly lists. Paladins shun them, evil wizards try to hire them. The
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players may begin to realize their lives are more difficult because the world sees them as bad people.
Remember, your goal is not simply to stop the players from getting into fights. Superman is a good guy, but he still throws a few punches now and then. It’s alright for the players to get into fights when there’s a good reason.
Combat can be especially effective when getting into a fight means the party must choose between two equally desirable—but mutually exclusive—goals. Start hitting them with situations where combat might be a good idea, but would conflict with their other goals. Up the ante by giving them some good reasons to get into fightsdespite the negative consequences.
For example, you might find an NPC that the players really like and put them on the opposite side of a conflict. Make the players wrestle with having to fighting their friend. Intra-political or religious conflicts are great in this context because there usually isn’t any one right side. You might also use fewer monsters and more humanoids, and run them more like real people. Have them offer terms, surrender, run when losing, or even attempt to bribe the PCs.
The important distinction here is that you are trying to break out of the Diablo school of wading through hordes of nameless bad guys. The more you can humanize your antagonists, the harder it will be for the players to slip into kick-the-door-down habits. Having PCs that are well grounded in the world helps with this immensely. Any time that a player has to agonize over what path to take, you’re doing it right.
As an example, I was once GMing a game in which a player (and a fan of hack and slash) was running a paladin in a knightly order who specialized in smiting the impure. He was ordered by his superior to execute a prisoner legally tried and condemned for murder, but who the paladin knew was innocent—although he had no proof. In this case, doing what was lawful and doing what was good were in direct contradiction; there was no one right answer. The player later named it as his favorite moment of roleplaying ever.
Breaking out of hack and slash can be one of the hardest things for a gaming group to do, because it requires a fundamental shift in how you and your players approach the game.
However, given time and effort it can be immensely rewarding. Don’t expect a 180 degree turn-around overnight, and do be generous with the players. Make it very obvious to the players when NPCs are willing to make a deal. If they still go in guns-a-blazin’, don’t be afraid to pause the action. It may seem a little disruptive at first, but old habits die hard. Breaking players out
of their established paradigm takes time, so some gentle reminders may help.
The two key words to always remember areconflict and context. The more context you can give for a conflict, the more interesting it will be for everyone. I recall a particularly tense game session in which the players were attempting to stop both a war and a political coup. It was only several hours after the game session ended that one of the players realized they hadn’t actually fought their enemies. They had engaged in a lot of conflict resolution, there had been a hell of a lot of threats made and dice rolled, but nobody actually drew a single weapon.