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From: Flatvurm

As far as the "Shoot first, ask questions later" attitude goes, I feel that it's usually a pretty simple matter to trick the players into having their characters attack someone they shouldn't. The consequences of this can be hard to enforce, though, depending on the (possibly already flagging) level of character development. If the players are into their characters, there could be personal consequences to the hasty action; the victim could have been a needed ally, a good friend, or either of the above to an ally or close friend of the characters. An NPC's NPC. :)

If the players are less motivated by character consequences, then story or system consequences are a more appropriate penalty; the victim could have been key to the success of the adventure, or the GM might want to withhold experience or other system reward points.


From: Leonel

Hi there, Johnn. Once again, congrats on your e-zine.

This time, I wanted to share with everybody some ideas about the problem of players that always favor combat instead of roleplaying. As we all know, this is a rather common thing, so here goes what I found to be of help when a GM is confronted with this situation.
• First, you should find out WHY the players do this. If this is their style of play and they just don't seem at all interested in changing, maybe you should leave them be. For some people, roleplaying is just plain boring, they'd much rather roll dice. As we all know, forcing your players towards a direction they don't want to go is asking for trouble. If that's the case, just maybe is time to find another group.
• If such is not the case, then maybe the players feel rewarded only for combat. In AD&D 2e this sometimes can be a problem: XP for character development is by far fewer than XP for killing monsters. As the recent editions of the e-zine have discussed masterfully about rewards, I'll just leave the warning : watch it, maybe you are the one moving your game towards hack'n'slash and you don't even realize it.