What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[Shadow Balls]

If the player can't attend a session, presumably there's a reason for that. It might be good, it might not be good, but that's a social thing and not a game thing. Presumably you know the details of that situation better than any random person on the Internet, so you can just deal with that in whatever manner is most appropriate to the situation.

In situations in which the character is shut down, but the player isn't... they can still do stuff. Out of game help for instance. If it's not too long then they remain involved. If their character dies, then presumably they are making another. Still involved. Or they're waiting for a rez, in which case see the first idea. It's somewhat implied there though that players only pay attention when it is currently their turn. I don't know if that is what was actually meant, but if it is that is a very narrow view to take.

[FatR]

This logic is so bullshit I'm speechless. It would be like saying that demanding a teacher effectively teach their students is unreasonable because they have to do a lot of prep work and have almost total authority of how they present the material required.

Demanding a teacher effectively teach their studends for free is unreasonable. That's why this isn't generally done, by the way. Teaching is a fucking job, for which you're being paid, and therefore your employers have a right to make demands about quality of your teaching, or fire you, if they aren't met. Oh, and by the way, teachers, at least where I live, actually have quite limited authority on presentation of material.
Now, GMing is a hobby. GMs (generally) do it for fun. This does not mean that a GM gets the right to be rude and insulting to players, or deceive them, or use the game to screw with their minds. This does, however, mean, that the main thing keeping a GM at the gaming table is his own entertainment, therefore if a GM does not find a game entertaining there will be no game, and therefore a GM gets the right to run his games in a way that he likes (within above-outlined boundaries of a standard social contract, meaning, among other things, being honest with potential players about what they can expect). And this is just a fact of life. Would you react kindly if players attempt to press you into running a game that goes against your preferences, say, using a system that you hate, or, indeed, a game where character death is entirely outlawed, regardless of characters' actions, as K advocates here? Yet acquiescence to demands of other people in such situations - for no reason other than you already shouldering most of the work associated with running a game - is what K's position on GM's obligations, as stated upthread, actually means. This is bullshit, and this is not going to work IRL.

[tzor]

If the player can't attend a session, presumably there's a reason for that. It might be good, it might not be good, but that's a social thing and not a game thing. Presumably you know the details of that situation better than any random person on the Internet, so you can just deal with that in whatever manner is most appropriate to the situation.

The problem isn't with the player; I'm assuming that there is always a good reason. The party is generally "balanced." Take out the party healer, or the party rogue, or the party fighter and the wheels start to fall off the wagon. The character is essencial, but you don't really want to do anything that could FUBAR the character while the player isn't there.

I really don't know why people insist that it takes 24 hours to get back to play after a character death ... it took me on the average 45 seconds to get a new character and that was because I often waffled among the alternative characters I had previously statted up. The real problem is always new character integration; I mean they just don't sit around in the middle of a dungeon waiting for a party to pass by, do they?

[fectin]

1. A good RPG is fun.
2. It isn't fun when a character dies.
3. Therefore, if characters die, the RPG isn't good.

3 is a textbook example of the hasty generalization.

[K]

Says the guy who went from complaining about relativism to a straw man about how anyone that lets a character die is out to get them, and then launches into another straw man here about how story and character doesn't mean anything to someone because they want... actual risk. And that if there is a chance to lose, that chance must be 100%. If it were not for your grammar being readable, and I did not look at the name, I would be unable to distinguish your post from one of shadzar's.

It's not a straw man because Swordslinger has clearly stated that the risk of failing the quest or not meeting story goals means nothing to him, and the only form of risk that he enjoys is permanent character death (and wanting that means that he's not so attached to characters that he considers losing one forever unacceptable). This is literally in the post I quoted in that post before you cropped it.

Seriously. No other fail conditions are acceptable to him except character death, and he's saying that in his post. It's a stupid position, but unless he's stawmanning himself, my repeating of his argument can't be a strawman.

[tzor]

I'll disagree with premise 2. It's a lot like a ride in an amusement park or watching a horror movie. You want that adrennelin heart pumping feeling while knowing that you are safe and secure. Your characters are an extension of you but are not you.

Yes crappy death's are always crappy. But HOLY SHIT deaths are bragging rights for at least a week. If you could hand wave the problem of character death and really make every death over the top WTF HOLY SHIT deaths you would have ... well you would have Parinoia actually.

[K]

Go play chess, but remember that every time you lose a game you lock the board in a cabinet for 24 hours.

As this is still supposed to be about DnD - pretending to be an actual retard is an inferior form of trolling. Yesterday you still had enough subtlety to bait me.

How is it different?

In DnD, if your character dies you get excluded from the group and not allowed to play until the narrative lets you back in. If your party is in the middle of a dungeon or something and including a new character would be horribly contrived, that might mean several sessions.

Now extend that logic to any other game: every time you lose a game of chess, you now have to lock the board away for 24 hours.

How about MMOs? Every time you die there, the game would have to shut off and not run for a week.

It sounds stupid when you extend the logic to any other game because the logic is flawed on first principles and should not be in RPGs at all. The fact that you can recognize that the underlying logic is flawed is a good sign, but the fact that you can't apply the conclusion to anything else is troubling in its own way.

[K]

Now, GMing is a hobby. GMs (generally) do it for fun. This does not mean that a GM gets the right to be rude and insulting to players, or deceive them, or use the game to screw with their minds. This does, however, mean, that the main thing keeping a GM at the gaming table is his own entertainment, therefore if a GM does not find a game entertaining there will be no game, and therefore a GM gets the right to run his games in a way that he likes (within above-outlined boundaries of a standard social contract, meaning, among other things, being honest with potential players about what they can expect). And this is just a fact of life. Would you react kindly if players attempt to press you into running a game that goes against your preferences, say, using a system that you hate, or, indeed, a game where character death is entirely outlawed, regardless of characters' actions, as K advocates here? Yet acquiescence to demands of other people in such situations - for no reason other than you already shouldering most of the work associated with running a game - is what K's position on GM's obligations, as stated upthread, actually means. This is bullshit, and this is not going to work IRL.

If you can't be a good DM and don't like the system, then don't do it.

As a hobby, you are under no obligations to play if you don't want to. That being said, you also don't have a right to play for your own amusement at the expense of others because the role specifically demands that you don't do that.

I mean, it's like you were a volunteer firefighter who decided to let some houses burn because you thought it was funny and this was the only thing that made it fun for you because you resented not being paid.

It's unacceptable behavior, plain and simple. The correct decision in both cases is to either perform the obligations you volunteered to take on, or don't volunteer at all.

[Shadow Balls]

The problem isn't with the player; I'm assuming that there is always a good reason. The party is generally "balanced." Take out the party healer, or the party rogue, or the party fighter and the wheels start to fall off the wagon. The character is essencial, but you don't really want to do anything that could FUBAR the character while the player isn't there.

I really don't know why people insist that it takes 24 hours to get back to play after a character death ... it took me on the average 45 seconds to get a new character and that was because I often waffled among the alternative characters I had previously statted up. The real problem is always new character integration; I mean they just don't sit around in the middle of a dungeon waiting for a party to pass by, do they?

I am going to assume you are discussing a non D&D system in which party roles are balanced and meaningful even though you aren't, as otherwise that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But reasons why a player would not attend a session has everything to do with your relationship with the player and nothing to do with the game itself. Yes, if they aren't there to run their character that might be a problem, but someone else could. Whatever the case, it's an out of game thing.

I am also confused about the 24 hour quotes. Even if you don't have extra characters ready, it really doesn't take that long. The people most likely to spend a lot of effort in character building are also familiar enough with it to do it quickly. Getting them in the party takes a bit longer, but I don't think anyone here is discussing a campaign in which character death is frequent so there isn't that much of this going on.

It's not a straw man because Swordslinger has clearly stated that the risk of failing the quest or not meeting story goals means nothing to him, and the only form of risk that he enjoys is permanent character death (and wanting that means that he's not so attached to characters that he considers losing one forever unacceptable). This is literally in the post I quoted in that post before you cropped it.

Seriously. No other fail conditions are acceptable to him except character death, and he's saying that in his post. It's a stupid position, but unless he's stawmanning himself, my repeating of his argument can't be a strawman.

I'm not sure if that is actually what he meant, and he can argue his own points (or not). The second part of that though is a relatively reasonable position to have, as just about any other fail conditions are liable to be worse than death. Literally.

But if you do die for whatever reason, and have to sit out for a while it's unlikely to be 24 hours, or a week or whatever other long time frames were being discussed.

MMOs are actually harsher (despite having no real death penalties at all) as chances are it would take you longer to get back to the raid boss after it killed all of you than it would to make a new D&D character after the old one died for some reason. And said raid boss is more likely to kill everyone than all but the most brutal of campaigns are likely to kill one person. Given that, even if the person really is just sitting there doing nothing while everyone else continues to play D&D the fact that even death nonpenalties are worse means that they're really getting off quite easily.

[Orion]

There's a huge difference between being kicked out a video game you play from your house and being kicked out of a social event with your friends that you drove to attend.

[fectin]

I'll disagree with premise 2. It's a lot like a ride in an amusement park or watching a horror movie. You want that adrennelin heart pumping feeling while knowing that you are safe and secure. Your characters are an extension of you but are not you.

Yes crappy death's are always crappy. But HOLY SHIT deaths are bragging rights for at least a week. If you could hand wave the problem of character death and really make every death over the top WTF HOLY SHIT deaths you would have ... well you would have Parinoia actually.

2 is the foundation of K's argument. If it's untrue, the whole thing is moot.

However, even if 1 & 2, you still cannot conclude 3.

Now, 3 may be true independently of his arguments, but thus far there has been no coherent (i.e. fallacy-free) arguments supporting it.

Despite all the name-calling and rabbit holes however, there has been basically no clash: K has used some strong rhetoric in claiming that anyone who likes things different than he does is somehow wicked, and most of the counter-arguements have pointed out that activities which aren't challenging get old fast.

[Red_Rob]

In DnD, if your character dies you get excluded from the group and not allowed to play until the narrative lets you back in. If your party is in the middle of a dungeon or something and including a new character would be horribly contrived, that might mean several sessions.

Now extend that logic to any other game: every time you lose a game of chess, you now have to lock the board away for 24 hours.

How about MMOs? Every time you die there, the game would have to shut off and not run for a week.

Is this hyperbole or strawman? I get those mixed up.

Death in an RPG, even the most hardcore kill-em-all GM's campaign, is not a common occurrence. It is certainly not comparable to losing in Chess (one of only three possible end states of every game). Also, a good GM will find a way to insert a new character pretty quickly. Even in a dungeon or on another plane there are lost travellers, prisoners and any number of ways to introduce someone willing to band together with the group for safety.

A game like D&D in which the characters place themselves in mortal danger is in part exciting because of the mortal danger. Take this away and the game loses something.

I can think of two direct comparisons for death in D&D. The first is gambling. When you gamble you place something you don't want to lose on the line in order to gain something you want. The excitement comes in part from the fear that you will lose the thing you bet. Every D&D session is like a little bet in which you risk something you like (your character) to gain something else you want (levels, story advancement, whatever). Gambling is incredibly popular, which tells me people like the excitement of knowing they could lose something valuable to them.

The second comparison is Counterstrike. In Counterstrike if you die, you jolly well sit out until everyone else has finished playing. On a large map this can be 10-20 minutes, during which you can just watch. Counterstrike was at one point the most popular online FPS game in the world. This tells me people don't mind a little bit of inaction as long as they feel it was at least semi related to their playing ability, and in fact having a punishment for failure seems to spur them on to do better next time.

[CapnTthePirateG]

In DnD, if your character dies you get excluded from the group and not allowed to play until the narrative lets you back in. If your party is in the middle of a dungeon or something and including a new character would be horribly contrived, that might mean several sessions.

Now extend that logic to any other game: every time you lose a game of chess, you now have to lock the board away for 24 hours.

How about MMOs? Every time you die there, the game would have to shut off and not run for a week.

Is this hyperbole or strawman? I get those mixed up.

Death in an RPG, even the most hardcore kill-em-all GM's campaign, is not a common occurrence. It is certainly not comparable to losing in Chess (one of only three possible end states of every game). Also, a good GM will find a way to insert a new character pretty quickly. Even in a dungeon or on another plane there are lost travellers, prisoners and any number of ways to introduce someone willing to band together with the group for safety.

A game like D&D in which the characters place themselves in mortal danger is in part exciting because of the mortal danger. Take this away and the game loses something.

I can think of two direct comparisons for death in D&D. The first is gambling. When you gamble you place something you don't want to lose on the line in order to gain something you want. The excitement comes in part from the fear that you will lose the thing you bet. Every D&D session is like a little bet in which you risk something you like (your character) to gain something else you want (levels, story advancement, whatever). Gambling is incredibly popular, which tells me people like the excitement of knowing they could lose something valuable to them.

The second comparison is Counterstrike. In Counterstrike if you die, you jolly well sit out until everyone else has finished playing. On a large map this can be 10-20 minutes, during which you can just watch. Counterstrike was at one point the most popular online FPS game in the world. This tells me people don't mind a little bit of inaction as long as they feel it was at least semi related to their playing ability, and in fact having a punishment for failure seems to spur them on to do better next time.

+1.

In all seriousness, I usually (as a DM) have a few deaths happen. Maybe this is (as K said) the equivalent of burning down a few dudes' houses. The important thing is that as soon as a new character gets made, I work him in. I had a shitty DM (the same one I mention around here) who made you sit out the whole session if you died. I agree, that's bad, but hey, if can't take on monsters of your CL, you're playing it wrong.

[Fuchs]

I have made the experience that if I have to fear character death, the game loses somethig. I don't play for fun, but for keeps, and minmax/optimize/play cautious and to make sure there's the least risk possible, all to avoid losing a character.

Not that much fun.

[K]

In DnD, if your character dies you get excluded from the group and not allowed to play until the narrative lets you back in. If your party is in the middle of a dungeon or something and including a new character would be horribly contrived, that might mean several sessions.

Now extend that logic to any other game: every time you lose a game of chess, you now have to lock the board away for 24 hours.

How about MMOs? Every time you die there, the game would have to shut off and not run for a week.

Is this hyperbole or strawman? I get those mixed up.

Yeh, it's pretty obvious that you don't understand either term since my argument isn't either.

You are free to argue that the DM is going to get a person back into the game nearly instantly, though. That's not a crazy position, even if most DMs are going to wait for downtime rather than do something silly like try to say that there was a prisoner in full equipment being held in the bottom of a undead-infested tomb or something who had somehow gotten past all the traps without disarming or setting them off.

I mean, if you have a DM and players who don't care about the narrative or verisimilitude at all, inserting a new character is trivially easy. I mean, you could be in the middle of the climax fight with a red dragon and suddenly an old friend of the PCs (the new character) suddenly shows up thousands of miles from civilization and past an entire dungeon of threats to help them out, and they all instantly trust each other because his appearance is not considered weird by anyone.

That being said, most DMs are going to wait for downtime where everyone goes back to town, and for most groups that happens every 1-3 sessions. (Feel free to argue that this is not the case.)

[K]

I have made the experience that if I have to fear character death, the game loses somethig. I don't play for fun, but for keeps, and minmax/optimize/play cautious and to make sure there's the least risk possible, all to avoid losing a character.

Not that much fun.

I hate to break it to you, but you are only in as much danger as the DM decides you are in and you are not beating objective challenges in a TTRPG.

TTRPGs are not CRPGs. In a TTRPG, the DM is literally deciding who gets targeted and who doesn't, what attacks are being used, and whether or not to throw more monsters or fewer at you. This means that every time the DM has an intelligent Spellcraft-using monster not attack the lightly armored Wizard and attack the heavily armored fighter, he is nerfing the game to make sure the party wins because he's deliberately picking the substandard choice (by the same token, choosing to always target the Wizard because he has the worst AC would be another deliberate choice to kill the PCs).

Heck, the fact that DMs rarely focus fire on single characters is the biggest reason that PCs win fights. I mean, even with a CR-equal threat, focused fire can easily drop a PC every combat (though sometimes they focus fire on the high AC, high HP guy because that means the monsters do almost no damage).

I see this delusion that PCs win objective fights a lot on the Paizo forums. People argue until they are blue in the face that Fighters are "tanks," then backpeddle when they can't name even one ability that actually forces monsters to attack the Fighter and not anyone else. Somehow, they think that the fact that their DM always attacks the fighter first in every combat is some rule in the game and not the DM trying to blunt a monster's potential damage on the party while maintaining the illusion of objectivity.

Now, in a CRPG there are complicated enmity mechanics where the scripting of the game forces the monsters to attack some characters over others and no person is making the fight easier or harder. That's an objective challenge.

But any "danger" or "risk" in an TTRPG is an illusion created by the DM. This means that when a PCs dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons.

[Fuchs]

I have made the experience that if I have to fear character death, the game loses somethig. I don't play for fun, but for keeps, and minmax/optimize/play cautious and to make sure there's the least risk possible, all to avoid losing a character.

Not that much fun.

I hate to break it to you, but you are only in as much danger as the DM decides you are in and you are not beating objective challenges in a TTRPG.

TTRPGs are not CRPGs. In a TTRPG, the DM is literally deciding who gets targeted and who doesn't, what attacks are being used, and whether or not to throw more monsters or fewer at you. This means that every time the DM has an intelligent Spellcraft-using monster not attack the lightly armored Wizard and attack the heavily armored fighter, he is nerfing the game to make sure the party wins because he's deliberately picking the substandard choice (by the same token, choosing to always target the Wizard because he has the worst AC would be another deliberate choice to kill the PCs).

Heck, the fact that DMs rarely focus fire on single characters is the biggest reason that PCs win fights. I mean, even with a CR-equal threat, focused fire can easily drop a PC every combat (though sometimes they focus fire on the high AC, high HP guy because that means the monsters do almost no damage).

I see this delusion that PCs win objective fights a lot on the Paizo forums. People argue until they are blue in the face that Fighters are "tanks," then backpeddle when they can't name even one ability that actually forces monsters to attack the Fighter and not anyone else. Somehow, they think that the fact that their DM always attacks the fighter first in every combat is some rule in the game and not the DM trying to blunt a monster's potential damage on the party while maintaining the illusion of objectivity.

Now, in a CRPG there are complicated enmity mechanics where the scripting of the game forces the monsters to attack some characters over others and no person is making the fight easier or harder. That's an objective challenge.

But any "danger" or "risk" in an TTRPG is an illusion created by the DM. This means that when a PCs dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons.

Yes, K., I know. But that doesn't mean no DM will kill your character - 20 years ago we had DMs in our group who gleefully killed off characters "if the dice rolled right" - and of course that caused me to play in a way to make sure the dice were rolled rarely if at all against us.

[K]

I can think of two direct comparisons for death in D&D. The first is gambling. When you gamble you place something you don't want to lose on the line in order to gain something you want. The excitement comes in part from the fear that you will lose the thing you bet. Every D&D session is like a little bet in which you risk something you like (your character) to gain something else you want (levels, story advancement, whatever). Gambling is incredibly popular, which tells me people like the excitement of knowing they could lose something valuable to them.

Would you gamble if you knew the house was picking when you won or lost? In DnD, that's what's happening.

As for Counterstrike, I think 10-20 minutes of being forced to go make a sandwich or something doesn't really compare to being told "hey, for the next four hours we are going to be playing and you can hang out, but can't play."

I mean, 10-20 minutes just means you run down to the store and grab a new soda, and if that was the amount of time character death in DnD lasted it wouldn't be an issue.

[Orion]

Just as a curiosity, I thought I'd mention another reason DMs don't use focus fire. A lot of players don't feel like their character is "in the game" if enemies aren't acknowledging their presence. And they don't feel challenged or threatened by a fight in which they never go low on HP. It's just simple courtesy to make sure to do a few points of damage to every PC who participates in a significant battle.

[K]

Just as a curiosity, I thought I'd mention another reason DMs don't use focus fire. A lot of players don't feel like their character is "in the game" if enemies aren't acknowledging their presence. And they don't feel challenged or threatened by a fight in which they never go low on HP. It's just simple courtesy to make sure to do a few points of damage to every PC who participates in a significant battle.

True, but that doesn't mean that they don't know that it's not a wildly substandard tactic.

Also, it just reinforces the point that DMs should spend time making players have fun rather than killing them.

[K]

Yes, K., I know. But that doesn't mean no DM will kill your character - 20 years ago we had DMs in our group who gleefully killed off characters "if the dice rolled right" - and of course that caused me to play in a way to make sure the dice were rolled rarely if at all against us.

You are going to have to explain your point more, because it sounds like you are contradicting yourself in this sentence.

[echoVanguard]

But any "danger" or "risk" in an TTRPG is an illusion created by the DM. This means that when a PCs dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons.

This is demonstrably false. Let us assume that the PCs engage a monster with known capabilities (in other words, no A Wizard Did It powers), and all combat rolls are made in the open. One of three things will happen:

1. If the monster's combat modifiers are so high compared to the PCs that they have absolutely no hope of winning the encounter (as in, greater than the entire RNG), then your statement is true.
2. If the monster's combat modifiers are so low compared to the PCs that it has absolutely no hope of beating them, then it isn't a combat, it's a guaranteed kill. Again, the DM engineered this outcome.
3. If the monster's combat modifiers are within the same range as the PCs', then the DM is intrinsically incapable of predicting how the combat will end. Depending on the tactics used, the delta between each sides' modifiers, and the compatibility between ability types, the PCs might have a higher or lower chance of success, but the outcome is still not predictable with 100% accuracy.

Your argument - that the DM controls every event and that therefore every undesirable outcome is born of malicious intent - is both specious and fallacious. The DM has a very high level of influence over outcomes in all games, but only in certain circumstances does that participant have complete control.

You are totally correct when you say 'it is bad when a DM intentionally kills a player's character'. However, your follow-on argument - that any time a player dies, they were intentionally killed by the DM - is 100% incorrect.

echo

[Red_Rob]

That being said, most DMs are going to wait for downtime where everyone goes back to town, and for most groups that happens every 1-3 sessions. (Feel free to argue that this is not the case.)

This is not the case.

Firstly, as previously stated character death is not that common, therefore it doesn't stretch versimilitude very far to have the occasional person turn up in unlikely circumstances. Secondly, whilst you are trying awfully hard to come up with situations in which it would be hard to shoehorn in a new character, the simple fact remains that wherever the party are, they got there somehow. This means that others could have got there too.

Let's say there are 3 character deaths in your campaign. 1 of these is somewhere easy to slip in a new character, 1 is somewhere you have to work a little, and the last involves something that seems contrived. That's once during the entire campaign that you have had a coincidence or random event happen that seemed fortunate, but you know what? If the players are going to bitch and moan that having a coincidence happen once per campaign ruins their interest in the game, its not the DM who's being a douche.

But any "danger" or "risk" in an TTRPG is an illusion created by the DM. This means that when a PCs dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons.

You assume an amazing amount of foresight on the DM's part for a game involving dice. If i calculate that there is around a .005% chance that a player will die in a given fight, and therefore over the campaign that about 2 characters will die, is it really me "pronouncing a death sentence" when a PC mistakenly charges a closet troll and misses?

As for Counterstrike, I think 10-20 minutes of being forced to go make a sandwich or something doesn't really compare to being told "hey, for the next four hours we are going to be playing and you can hang out, but can't play."

I mean, 10-20 minutes just means you run down to the store and grab a new soda, and if that was the amount of time character death in DnD lasted it wouldn't be an issue.

This is another false analogy (happy with this term?). The 10-20 minutes of downtime happens about once every 20-40 minutes in Counterstrike. If you multiply it out against the chance of dying in D&D I would expect you spend more total time waiting vs. time playing in Counterstrike unless you are one of the very top players.

Look K, just admit you don't like games where you can die as you hate not being involved in the game more than you enjoy the rush of the risk. There's nothing wrong with that (i have a friend who feels the same). Just stop all the BadWrongFun accusations against people who do enjoy the risk. Death has been a part of every D&D for 40 years, if noone thought it added anything to the game I'm guessing it would have been removed long before now.

[Fuchs]

Yes, K., I know. But that doesn't mean no DM will kill your character - 20 years ago we had DMs in our group who gleefully killed off characters "if the dice rolled right" - and of course that caused me to play in a way to make sure the dice were rolled rarely if at all against us.

You are going to have to explain your point more, because it sounds like you are contradicting yourself in this sentence.

Cause those DMs wanted to kill PCs, but restrained themselves somewhat. So, the ones who played smart and cautious escaped, while the ones that were not as quick to point out how they were hiding and such, and trapping the bathroom, and having their guard up, and checking the meals for poison where dead.

[K]

But any "danger" or "risk" in an TTRPG is an illusion created by the DM. This means that when a PCs dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons.

This is demonstrably false. Let us assume that the PCs engage a monster with known capabilities (in other words, no A Wizard Did It powers), and all combat rolls are made in the open. One of three things will happen:

1. If the monster's combat modifiers are so high compared to the PCs that they have absolutely no hope of winning the encounter (as in, greater than the entire RNG), then your statement is true.
2. If the monster's combat modifiers are so low compared to the PCs that it has absolutely no hope of beating them, then it isn't a combat, it's a guaranteed kill. Again, the DM engineered this outcome.
3. If the monster's combat modifiers are within the same range as the PCs', then the DM is intrinsically incapable of predicting how the combat will end. Depending on the tactics used, the delta between each sides' modifiers, and the compatibility between ability types, the PCs might have a higher or lower chance of success, but the outcome is still not predictable with 100% accuracy.

Your argument - that the DM controls every event and that therefore every undesirable outcome is born of malicious intent - is both specious and fallacious. The DM has a very high level of influence over outcomes in all games, but only in certain circumstances does that participant have complete control.

Actually, your argument is fallacious because it only concerns a single combat and demands 100% control.

If you run a 50% chance of a character death per combat, then within 6 combats someone will die. That's statistics, and including any chance means it will happen eventually.

This means that even if all the monster and PC stats line up so that the PCs have an advantage, the existence of any DM influence on the matter amounts to DMs pronouncing death on your character for their own reasons. It may not be this combat, but the will the one in the near future.