An older article but I just came across it in Salon. Orc Holocaust: The Reprehensible Moral Universe of Gary Gygax’s Dungeons and Dragons. I love me some D&D but I can’t say the article is totally wrong. See this RPG.SE question for a related discussion.
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I read both articles and tend to agree with them in terms of how most tables run D&D and its variants. One simple adjustment is to award “story xp” only, or even just awarded levels when the GM thinks it makes sense. Once there is no link between killing and levelling, perhaps some alternative approaches will start to emerge.
Some tweaking of content to support this is normally required, as the lion’s share of encounters in published material are wrote having hostile antagonists coming out swinging on sight.
One other tool to take the video gaminess out of the equation is to make PC resurrection impossible or close to it, and making clerical healing come at some cost; perhaps as the PC’s level up, the party cleric’s deity will start directing him to certain life paths, paths that are perhaps at odds with what the party wants to do. Things like that. Not having powerful healing always at their fingertips may cause a shift in behaviour more in line with a story rather than just “mashing the attack button.”
Oh yeah, my group never uses XP any more, it’s just level when DM says to. Solves a lot of problems.