How would you humanize enemy mooks even if the players have to put them down at the end of day? How do you make it so that players leaving piles of corpses in their wake is not a trivial matter?
Explain in detail why you want to do this.
>>97384268Just want to set a tone.
Make them all female.
while in the middle of combat a little boy comes running in to try and help his mook father
>how do I x in y
>>97384224Everytime an enemy dies, you stop the combat to read a short obituary about the fallen, what was their childhood, what they did before becoming an armed mook, what aspirations were cut short, whom they left grieving.Do this enough times and players will think of non-lethal solutions really fast.
Consequences.Warrant for the arrest of the adventurers murdering law enforcement.Memorial placards of lost military.Increased recruitment drives taking any able bodied people regardless of interest.Suddenly that village they saved has lost all men 13 and older.That kid they saved? Killed in action.
>>97384224I wouldn't because that sounds fucking stupid.
>>97384329>while in the middle of combat a little boy comes running in to try and help his mook fatherDidn't stop me in Khan Yunis IRL, not gonna stop me in a game of make-believe. You can't humanize subhumans.
>>97384682That's the player's choice of course. It's simply a tool that makes the mook seem more real and alive.
>>97384224Show a scene of orcs with "office politics" like Tolkien did:Make them grumble about how "the Big Bosses" make mistakes and then expect the "poor orcs" to fix them with "small thanks." They express a genuine fear of the big undead monsters, saying they "give me the creeps" and "skin the body off you."Then have another wistfully suggests that once the war is over, they should slip off and set up on their own "with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses." And the other respons with a genuine smile like: Ah! Like old times."Show them scoffing at elves for being dishonourable cunts who abandon their own, or complain about serving the Dark Lord and discussing deserting and going off to Tolkien did. You may make this hypocrites and projecting their own cruelty on elves when they themselves themselves left a fellow Orc to be eaten by the giant spider because they didn't want to deal with the hassle of rescuing him.
>>97384224https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1DlP_f3ur4
>>97384224Mechanically, penalize excessive violence or excessive participation in violence. Either through classic PTSD style trauma, or (more appropriately for your murderhobo-types) dissociative violent outbursts that the player isn't in control of anymore. Upside is this will mechanically enforce negative feelings towards violence without completely creating nonsense consequences; downside is that this measure takes control of the character's mentality away from the player, which is often disliked by the players.Practically, the more important thing than any direct mechanical consequence is players buying into a grittier game where rampant slaughter of their enemies isn't going to be consequence-free. It is incredibly difficult to make someone care deeply about something when they don't care at all to begin with.
>>97384224I just present them as human. It's that easy. Have them try to flee when things go bad, have them plead for their lives when caught, have them do mistakes or panic in battle. Treat them as living things, not pieces on a battle board.It's that simple.>>97384329In gangland or frontier settings, this is a fantastic idea.
>>97384386Yes. And?
>>97384224Show a little scene of a group of otherwise evil gang how one is fucking off because what this particular subgroup is doing something too evil for his/her tastes.
