OSR, and Alternatives to Killing Things
Today, I listened to Daniel Norton’s wonderful YouTube video “Sympathetic Creatures in DnD” (on Bandit’s Keep). I’m convinced great tactics in DnD are sympathy, engagement, and other alternatives to combat and "hack n' slash." Think back to the old film “The Creature of the Black Lagoon” - Norton re-imagined him as a fourth-level merman – harassed and protecting. In the video, he seemed to be asking, ‘What’s an alternative to killing a sympathetic creature?’ It reminded me of a great player some years back.
In around 2011, I'd rediscovered DnD, and a few years later I ran the 5e module “The Lost Mines of Phandelver.” Near the adventure's end - a player found a spectacular way to handle the unwound Spectator in Wave Echo Cave.
[Illustration is from WotC's "The Lost Mines of Phandelver."]
When the party encountered the creature, it was lost in time, it misremembered even the fall of Wave Echo Mine. A player, his half-orc cleric, stood forth and said something like, “You’re the guardian here, the mine is now secure, your work is done.” It was a fantastic moment – the player had seen an alternative to fighting to the death – I rolled a simple reaction and the spectator understood - it was released to a distant plane, somewhere far away.
That player's approach is hard to learn. The moment you stop killing everything,
you have something on your hands. It opens the question, “Now
what?” In that moment, the campaign setting becomes the foreground. If a creature or non-player character has a non-hostile reaction, what happens next? If a creature or character has a hostile and someone does something to change it, what happens next? Do I even know my campaign world well-enough to react? Do the payers know their options?
I think it's something Norton's saying in “Sympathetic Creatures in DnD.” For example, I’ve read how parties in The Keep on the Borderlands form alliances and engage creatures in the Caverns of Chaos as allies. I'll bet sympathy is only one approach – others might be opportunism, following alignment, making a business deal, sorting adversaries and potential allies, escorting something/someone home, and many others.
I suspect these alternatives to combat create amazing opportunities for adventure.
Thanks for reading.
So many games (DnD, video, etc.) involve violence/killing, and for many children and youth, these games are classrooms, so it is no wonder individual's/society's response when faced with an altercation is violence/killing. It would be interesting to see this idea of sympathy/opportunism/etc. catch on.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great point JT! DnD has roots in wargames, so it's pretty rough one. I know a couple great players who sneak around and avoid trouble, and somehow a spirit of pure fun just comes out. Thanks for writing.
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