Heroism, Traffic In Violence, Inherent Assumptions, And Getting Players On Board

[KorvinStarmast]

People attributing human thinking to their pets (or other animals) doesn't make it False. It just means they're incorrectly attributing something that doesn't actually exist.

Then how did my dogs lay that guilt trip on me yesterday when I cam home late and they had not had their breakfast yet?

Spoiler: why I was late

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(I was at church early working some charity stuff and it ran long).

[Clistenes]

Couldn't you just have the denizens from the dungeon come out at night to capture, kill and eat the villagers in the vicinity? Let them try to use diplomacy if they wish (it would probably have to be Dreadnought Diplomacy, as in, try to make their way to the boss at the bottom of the dungeon, and put a sword on their neck to make them swear not to kill humans anymore...), and have the monsters keep eating people the next week after the adventurers leave the dungeon...

[Jedaii]

Ok so the OP hasn't even responded. They summoned the "D&D is ALL combat" argument ignoring the fact that the system has social skills and PCs get XP for defeating challenges. As if certain challenges can't be overcome with social skills or player cunning.

This dated depiction of D&D is tired.

[icefractal]

Well it's not all combat, but the general assumption is that there will be at least a moderate amount of combat. While not impossible to run a non-combat campaign in D&D, it wouldn't be the system I'd choose*, and players would have to build their characters with that in mind, because many options and even entire classes will be near useless in such a scenario.

So the question of who the PCs are fighting and why (and whether the "why" is a good reason) is going to be applicable in 99% of campaigns.

* Exception: A campaign that's about fully utilizing magic on a large scale - building the Tippyverse or something like it - could be interesting, not involve any combat, and yet be particularly suited to D&D. You'd need to figure out how you're handling unbounded loops and such though.

[KorvinStarmast]

This dated depiction of D&D is tired.

Plus elventy-nine.

[Beleriphon]

Then how did my dogs lay that guilt trip on me yesterday when I cam home late and they had not had their breakfast yet?

Spoiler: why I was late

Show

(I was at church early working some charity stuff and it ran long).

Your dogs still feel emotions, but they aren't making a moral judgement about your character. They're just sad you didn't feed them like you normally do. You're the one feeling guilty because the dogs are hungry and sad. It doesn't help your guilty feeling that humans have bred dogs to do stupid stuff like make us feel guilty.