There's a discussion on Twitter right now about whether or not D&D is a "violence simulator" and it just strikes me as such an off-mark conversation to have

Because, there's a certain sense in which, of course it is. If, for you, D&D is the thing in the core rulebooks, it's a wargame with extra things tacked on to it to make the combat asymmetric and handle out-of-combat scenarios. A third of the rules are things to fight.

But there's also a sense in which it makes little sense to say that at all. If D&D, to you, is the thing that happens at the table, it's an expression of what the players find interesting. It's a way to give players a kind of power they don't have in their real lives. The rules put limits on that power so that it's satisfying to gain more - more gold, more magic items, more class levels, more political power.

So what we end up arguing about is which semantic level we're speaking on - something we should just acknowledge and frame the conversation around in the first place.

If your players want to do violent things - players here including the game runner - they will build that kind of story, in D&D or Heart: The City Beneath or Microscope or Dream Apart. If your players are interested in finding non-combat solutions, they will find, execute, and enjoy those plots, in whatever game you pick.

And it's worth noting that the worst conflict happens when your ideas about this are misaligned. If one player wants to eat nachos and kill orcs, and the other players want an epic tale of romance and want violence to be rare, dramatic, and consequential, *they will come into conflict*. It's even worse if the player with the differing assumptions is the game runner.