What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[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.

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?

Actually, you pronounced a death sentence the instant you included a closet troll that would result in a high chance of character death if charged. Closet trolls are iconically unfair monsters that kill PCs.... that's what the name means, so if you included one you said to yourself "well, if the PCs make the wrong choices I'm killing someone this encounter."

It's no different that the old Tomb of Horrors "walk through this gate, but if you walk back you are destroyed with a no save sphere of annihilation" trap. It's a death calculated to kill a PC for making a choice only the DM knows is bad.

I am also amused that you think being a dick only a few times a campaign is justified. I mean, if I kicked you in the nuts as hard as I could once every three months, would you still call me a good friend? How about if I murdered a close friend only twice a year? Robbed you of all your worldly wealth every five years?

I am also amused that you seem to think that getting to play 70% of the time playing with 10-20 mins for each downtime is the same as spending four solid hours not playing. Nice false equivalency.

[echoVanguard]

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.

No, it means that there is a ~98.44% chance that at least one character will die, which is not a certainty - there is a ~1.66% chance that after 6 combats, no characters will have died. You can successfully argue that it becomes extremely likely, but as long as P < 1, you cannot make the absolute claim (and if the chance of a character dying is always less than 100%, P will always be less than 1).

Also, you're moving your goalposts. Your initial argument was, and I quote, "When a PCs[sic] dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons." Your argument is too specific for a claim of hyperbole, so it's clear that you meant exactly what you said - that 100% of the time, regardless of other factors, all player death is the result of the DM's declaration for his own reasons.

Lastly, it seems like you're arguing that since "the existence of any DM influence on the matter amounts to DMs pronouncing death on your character for their own reasons", I'm pretty puzzled as to how you envision an ideal TTRPG - your argument can be used as a slippery slope for any and all situations a player finds unsatisfactory, up to and including all outcomes of any interaction that are less than the player's ultimate wish fulfillment. I'm not saying that you're arguing that, but I am saying that the ground you're standing on is pretty shaky from a rhetorical point of view.

echo

[echoVanguard]

Also,

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

You made a global claim. I disproved it with a specific example. That's the danger of making a global claim.

echo

[K]

Also,

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

You made a global claim. I disproved it with a specific example. That's the danger of making a global claim.

echo

Actually, you changed the argument by adding conditions, then disproved the changed argument. That's fallacious.

[Seerow]

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.

No, it means that there is a ~98.44% chance that at least one character will die, which is not a certainty - there is a ~1.66% chance that after 6 combats, no characters will have died. You can successfully argue that it becomes extremely likely, but as long as P < 1, you cannot make the absolute claim (and if the chance of a character dying is always less than 100%, P will always be less than 1).

That's a pretty nit picky argument. I mean, increase the number of combats to 7 instead, and it's below 1 now.

It still takes 13.33 encounters on average to level. This means every level the group increases, on average two people in the party will die. So you expect basically a full party turnover every 2 levels. What sort of cohesive story do you expect with that kind of death rate?

[K]

Also, you're moving your goalposts. Your initial argument was, and I quote, "When a PCs[sic] dies in a RPG, it's the DM pronouncing a death sentence on your character for his own reasons." Your argument is too specific for a claim of hyperbole, so it's clear that you meant exactly what you said - that 100% of the time, regardless of other factors, all player death is the result of the DM's declaration for his own reasons.

Including any chance of character death is 100% the doing of the DM, therefore all deaths are the doing of the DM. It's not a hard idea to grasp and it's not moving goalposts, merely a rephrasing of the same argument.

If the DM simply decides "there is no chance of character death because that's a dick move," then no characters can die and that's his choice too. IF he decided to do a full attack on the unarmored Wizard by the closet troll and not the heavily armored Fighter, then that's his choice too and he probably knows he's executing the Wizard.

Lastly, it seems like you're arguing that since "the existence of any DM influence on the matter amounts to DMs pronouncing death on your character for their own reasons", I'm pretty puzzled as to how you envision an ideal TTRPG - your argument can be used as a slippery slope for any and all situations a player finds unsatisfactory, up to and including all outcomes of any interaction that are less than the player's ultimate wish fulfillment. I'm not saying that you're arguing that, but I am saying that the ground you're standing on is pretty shaky from a rhetorical point of view.

echo

For better or worse, all accomplishment in a TTRPG comes from the DM. He sets the win conditions and decides whether he wants to follow them, including whether PCs should get booted from the game on rolls of the dice.

Now, the DM including a chance of failure and the danger of failing the quest makes the game more fun, and one can argue that the risk it produces is worth the occasional disappointments. Depending on the DM, they are more or less successful in convincing players that their actions matter in deciding the outcome of a quest.

You can't successfully argue that PC death makes the game more fun because it's a loss that comes only from the DM's action. It's like playing poker, but the dealer just takes your cards sometimes in the middle of a hand and tells you that you've lost all your money regardless of what your bet was.

I mean, when the DM sees that you have 6 HPs left he can cause the enemy to turn to attack someone else, or he can negate your hundreds of hours of play and story-building and make that next attack that will kill you. Pretending that he's "just playing the monster like it should be played" is a lie to cover his execution of the character.

[Red_Rob]

Actually, you pronounced a death sentence the instant you included a closet troll that would result in a high chance of character death if charged. Closet trolls are iconically unfair monsters that kill PCs.... that's what the name means, so if you included one you said to yourself "well, if the PCs make the wrong choices I'm killing someone this encounter."

Wait, now you're against having bad consequences for making bad decisions? So, you don't actually want to have a tactical combat game at all? What the actual fuck?

If the players make the wrong choices they suffer failure and defeat. That's the essence of a game with meaningful choices. The DM's job is to make sure those choices are clear to the players, however if the DM describes a slavering death beast and the players charge it they have to suffer the consequences otherwise the choice has no meaning.

I am also amused that you think being a dick only a few times a campaign is justified. I mean, if I kicked you in the nuts as hard as I could once every three months, would you still call me a good friend? How about if I murdered a close friend only twice a year? Robbed you of all your worldly wealth every five years?

You are imparting a level of personal responsibility to character death that is not warranted. By playing in a game that allows characters to die i am implicitly accepting that my character may at some point die. As a player, I trust the DM to make encounters as fair as possible according to the guidelines within the rules. If it seems the DM has specifically targetted me for unavoidable death through either the encounter design or enemy actions, or if i die with amazing regularity, sure I'll get pissed. But otherwise? i trust the DM is trying his best to make the game fun and I accept that although the point of my death may suck for me right at that moment, that the extra tension and excitement that the possibility of that death brings to the rest of the players for the rest of the game is worth it.

Because I'm an adult and i can rationalise future long term gains against short term displeasure.

[K]

Actually, you pronounced a death sentence the instant you included a closet troll that would result in a high chance of character death if charged. Closet trolls are iconically unfair monsters that kill PCs.... that's what the name means, so if you included one you said to yourself "well, if the PCs make the wrong choices I'm killing someone this encounter."

Wait, now you're against having bad consequences for making bad decisions? So, you don't actually want to have a tactical combat game at all? What the actual fuck?

If the players make the wrong choices they suffer failure and defeat. That's the essence of a game with meaningful choices. The DM's job is to make sure those choices are clear to the players, however if the DM describes a slavering death beast and the players charge it they have to suffer the consequences otherwise the choice has no meaning.

The tactical combat minigame exists to deplete resources and create a narrative.

You including trap options is just you being a dick. Your specific example of "well, I described it as a slavering death beast and they charged anyway so they were stupid and died" is a perfect example of a trap choice.

You see, there really was no choice. The players in the example didn't know it was a closet troll, so the perfectly normal action of charging now results in a player death. That arbitrary and cruel, and it's your fault as the DM. You just executed PCs for nothing and they have no fault in it.

I mean, a more meaningful choice is something like "if you don't get to the mountaintop by midnight, the princess dies." Then, if the PCs don't want to push their dwindling resources to make it to the top in time, they have made a choice that means they failed the adventure on their own. Maybe they fought encounters to get loot when they should have avoided them, but they understood the implications of their options when they did it and that's what makes it meaningful.

[K]

Because I'm an adult and i can rationalise future long term gains against short term displeasure.

Actually, you are rationalizing your future long-term losses against short-term pleasure.

You will lose everything, and that's just straight math proving that. You will lose all your character development, your wealth, everything in your character and what it means to the overall narrative, and you are justifying it with the excuse that it makes the game a little more fun right now.

That's junkie talk, not adult behavior.

"Hey, this heroin is really great right now and there will be no long-term consequences! We need more!"

[fectin]

The DM sets the odds, not the result.

[K]

The DM sets the odds, not the result.

And by setting the odds to include character death, he's added that potential result to the game.

The fact that he can contrive any excuse to make that result not occur also makes him directly responsible when it does occur.

[Red_Rob]

You will lose everything, and that's just straight math proving that. You will lose all your character development, your wealth, everything in your character and what it means to the overall narrative, and you are justifying it with the excuse that it makes the game a little more fun right now.

No.

Assuming the odds are set up in a similar way to 3.5 probability is actually against most players dying over the length of a typical campaign. It is incorrect to say "any chance of failure means you will eventually die" because most of the time the campaign is over before that happens.

So then it comes back to there being an improbable, but statistically possible chance of dying. Which is what we have said correlates directly to greater player excitement during the game.

I really don't know why this concept is so hard for you to grasp.

[RadiantPhoenix]

The DM sets the odds, not the result.

Do you play with fair dice?

[fectin]

The DM sets the odds, not the result.

And by setting the odds to include character death, he's added that potential result to the game.

The fact that he can contrive any excuse to make that result not occur also makes him directly responsible when it does occur.

A casino sets the odds too. They could also take action to mitigate your losses (by simply returning your money, if nothing else). It takes some pretty strong mental contortions to blame them for losing all your money, even though that's the expected result.

Same thing with your later heroine example: there are plenty of situations where heroine use is not irrational (terminal cancer).

Going with a less extreme example though, do you drive? Statistically, if you drive an infinite amount, you will be killed, and you are (presumably) justifying it with the excuse that it's a little more convenient now. Your junkie-talk logic is clearly incorrect there, so what is the substantive difference between those two examples?

[Desdan_Mervolam]

A casino sets the odds too. They could also take action to mitigate your losses (by simply returning your money, if nothing else). It takes some pretty strong mental contortions to blame them for losing all your money, even though that's the expected result.

You might want to rethink your comparison. Casinos are designed to take all the money you put forth. Even if you win some, the odds are set by the casino so that over time, you will eventually not have money left. The only way to prevent this is to leave the casino.

So you are proposing that quitting the game should be a valid solution to the problem of PC death.

[fectin]

Actually, no. I'm pretty comfortable with my comparison. If you gamble for infinite time, you will lose infinite money; if you play for infinite time, you will lose infinite characters.

Nonetheless, many people enjoy gambling, even though they sometimes lose, and very often walk away after a finite time without losing any money. Likewise people enjoy playing rpgs, even though characters sometimes die, and very often walk away without a character death.

Now, there are definitely circumstances that make losing more or less unpleasant (e.g. perceived fairness of the game), but that doesn't change the fundamental point that either can be fun, despite having a bad expected result at infinite time.

[echoVanguard]

You can't successfully argue that PC death makes the game more fun because it's a loss that comes only from the DM's action. It's like playing poker, but the dealer just takes your cards sometimes in the middle of a hand and tells you that you've lost all your money regardless of what your bet was.

I don't think anyone's arguing that PC death makes the game more fun. What they're arguing is that the possibility of PC death makes the game more fun, and they're outright saying "I have more fun when I feel like more is at risk". And there are multiple people in this thread stating that they feel that way. For you to disagree with them, you have to advance one of two positions:

A - they're lying.
B - they're wrong to feel the way they do.

Which one are you advancing?

I mean, when the DM sees that you have 6 HPs left he can cause the enemy to turn to attack someone else, or he can negate your hundreds of hours of play and story-building and make that next attack that will kill you. Pretending that he's "just playing the monster like it should be played" is a lie to cover his execution of the character.

A does not necessarily follow from B. If I'm fighting an enemy I know to be intelligent, ruthless, and bloodthirsty who never leaves foes alive, I would be outright insulted if the creature suddenly behaved in a totally inconsistent manner just to cater to me as a player. I would feel that the verisimilitude of the encounter was completely destroyed, and I would be much less likely to continue to play. On the other hand, if my character was killed, I would have probably dealt with the consequences like an adult, either waiting for a resurrection or rolling up a new character.

echo

[K]

You will lose everything, and that's just straight math proving that. You will lose all your character development, your wealth, everything in your character and what it means to the overall narrative, and you are justifying it with the excuse that it makes the game a little more fun right now.

No.

Assuming the odds are set up in a similar way to 3.5 probability is actually against most players dying over the length of a typical campaign. It is incorrect to say "any chance of failure means you will eventually die" because most of the time the campaign is over before that happens.

So then it comes back to there being an improbable, but statistically possible chance of dying. Which is what we have said correlates directly to greater player excitement during the game.

I really don't know why this concept is so hard for you to grasp.

I understand the concept, I don't give it any credit because it's junkie talk.

What you are saying is "well, because the odds of it happening to my character is really bad, I shouldn't care that it happens."

Use the same argument on anything else. "Hey, the chance of catching AIDs from using a contaminated needle is only 1%, so I can go my whole life as an intravenous drug user and I'll be fine." "Hey, blackjack odds are almost even so I should be able to play forever with the same stake." "Hey, this street is almost always abandoned, so I'm going to take off all my clothes and play with myself right here three times a day."

Under that logic, you are broke, in jail for indecent exposure, and have AIDs within a few months.

But hey, you knew the odds and thought it wouldn't happen to you, right?

[Kaelik]

Alternatively, it might be the case that the statement:

"I have more fun when I think things are a risk." is true, but the statement:

"The game is more fun when PCs can and do have a substantial chance of dying." is false.

DM skill is just lying to your players to make them think that 1 is true, while making sure that 2 never occurs.

[RadiantPhoenix]

"Hey, this street is almost always abandoned, so I'm going to take off all my clothes and play with myself right here three times a day."

I would just like to point out that some people do find the possibility of someone walking in on them exciting...

[K]

You can't successfully argue that PC death makes the game more fun because it's a loss that comes only from the DM's action. It's like playing poker, but the dealer just takes your cards sometimes in the middle of a hand and tells you that you've lost all your money regardless of what your bet was.

I don't think anyone's arguing that PC death makes the game more fun. What they're arguing is that the possibility of PC death makes the game more fun, and they're outright saying "I have more fun when I feel like more is at risk". And there are multiple people in this thread stating that they feel that way. For you to disagree with them, you have to advance one of two positions:

A - they're lying.
B - they're wrong to feel the way they do.

Which one are you advancing?

Nice false dichotomy.

That being said, you can't divorce PC death in the game from the possibility of PC death, so I don't even know what you are trying to do. Your argument is illogical on first principles because they are the exact same thing (unless you are arguing that people should feel like they can die, but never actually do... that'd be weird considering your earlier position, but whatever...).

I mean, if people enjoy other people's PCs dying and not their own, then they are just hypocrites. If they want the potential for PC death, but they think they can beat the odds, then they are mathematically deficient. If people think that their skill is preventing their own death and it's not the DM executing them, they are delusional.

Pick your poison, really.

I mean, Swordslinger has come out and actually said that the potential to fail the adventure and fail story and character goals means nothing to him. Of course, Swordslinger also sets his battles at EL +4-5 of PC character level, so he might just be a sadist and on the periphery of this argument.

[tzor]

You might want to rethink your comparison. Casinos are designed to take all the money you put forth. Even if you win some, the odds are set by the casino so that over time, you will eventually not have money left. The only way to prevent this is to leave the casino.

Not exactly true, but the only games with odds that are slightly in your favor are the ones very few people know how to play or want to play.

Besides, the purpose of a casino is "entertainment" ... go anywhere and you will eventually have no money left. The only question is how entertained you are in the process.

[A Man In Black]

I don't know what Swiss style is. But by your own admission the serious ones do it not because of some concern about people sitting out but to make it more about skill than luck.

It has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with how the structure of Swiss-style tournaments doesn't lend itself to high-stakes play.

In a Swiss-style tournament, players are never eliminated for losing. Instead, each round is reseeded based on the players' record so far in the tournament, and the victor in the tournament is the one with the best record, against the hardest opponents if there is a tie.

Swiss tournaments are relatively vulnerable to collusion or "gaming" the tournament by throwing games or forcing ties to manipulate your seed. They're fine for qualifiers, where the top X people qualify for the real tournament, or for casual tournaments, where nobody cares enough to manipulate placement. Obviously, you don't even want the appearance of possible manipulation in a high-stakes tournament.

Also, the other reason high-stakes tournies run single/double elimination is because people totally do sit down and watch to see who wins. Nobody cares who wins Friday Night Magic at your local FLGS, but a Pro Tour event is a spectator sport if you're the kind of player who's into MTG seriously enough to have participated and been eliminated.

The tl;dr of this is that Swiss style is unsuited to high-stakes tournaments for reasons unrelated to skill or participation, and that the tournaments that do actually resemble your D&D game all run Swiss style to keep everyone playing.

The point of this being that in addition to people dying because they are being stupid, sometimes people die through no fault of their own because they are simply unlucky. People like K are not only saying that it is wrong for characters to die for being dumb, but that it is wrong for them to die for any other reason as well. And that it is wrong for them to fail their saving throw vs Glitterdust. Because all of those things result in a player sitting out for an extended period of time. And I'm not just saying that because of that one post, as he has been fairly consistent in his viewpoint throughout the thread.

You're confusing player incompetence with character stupidity. Sometimes, players just fucking do not know better, including being bad at tactics, being bad at optimization, or just not being very bright in general. Punishing that player to make some sort of abstract point about not being bad isn't fun for anyone but possibly a sadistic or particularly superior GM, and both of those are qualities which discourage fun.

As for Glitterdust, it kicks you out of the game for the remainder of the combat. That's 10 minutes at the top end. Death kicks you out of the game until the group gets somewhere that they can take on a new character. That can be weeks. There's possibly a decent discussion in how fun you-lose-your-turn or you're-out-of-the-combat effects are in general, but being told that you're done playing D&D with this group for weeks almost always means that person fucks off and stops coming to D&D night for good.

A game where there's a significant chance of a PC dying through no fault of their own is a badly-designed game, and a GM that isn't actively working to compensate for that flaw is a bad GM. I don't care what K's saying. That's what I'm saying.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Oh for the love of fuck.

K, stop acting like having an imaginary elf die is like burning down a dude's house, taking heroin, kicking your friend in the nuts, or murdering people. It's a damn game where you pretend to be an elf. Maybe you have a stick. Regardless, the only real world result is:

a: an imaginary elf is dead. (Hint: NO ONE CARES).
b: a person has to wait an indefinite amount of time. Maybe he has to play Smash Bros, and being forced to play videogames is like being stabbed in the nuts. Yep.

Now, I agree you shouldn't have the guy sit out the entire session, but for the love of fuck, stop justifying it "because the story said so." Most RPG stories, are, in my experience, not exactly the works of Earnest Hemingway. I don't think anyone is going to give a shit if a different imaginary elf just broke out of the Jail of Evil and break into an armory coincidentally before the PCs arrive. It's probably going to read more like the Sword of Shannara anyway. Stop acting like you're a master storyteller because its a damn game.

[Gx1080]

Ok.

There's an argument of "PC shouldn't die, no matter what". Which is Gygaxian DM-ing multiplied by -1, aka an extremist position.

Honestly, this is one thing that should be talked with players before starting a game. What happens if they die? Do they are gone for good, or just reach a town and get rezzed? Is an answer that varies between groups.

Pretending to have character death but fudging rolls to avoid it is basically having your cake and eating it too, also is lying to players. And what happens when someone sees through the bullshit? Do you make an exception and kill him? Then you are as arbitrary as a Gygaxian DM, and railroading players in your carefully-crafted tale. That's as deceitful as your average hidden trap on Tomb of Horrors.