What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[CapnTthePirateG]

I'm fine with "this is a challenge you should be able to win". I'd just rather have my challenges faced with the threat of actual failure, not "the situation changes and you continue to do different quests".

Except you can and will fail if you don't play smart. A challenge means if you play your best and to the best of your abilities, and 'just' come out ahead. If you do so, you shouldn't ever actually be in danger of dying.

If everyone plays smart, and to the absolute best of their ability, and still dies, then what the hell, that was too hard. If that was always the case, be smart and still die, the game wouldn't be challenging, it'd be unfair.

I'm fine with that.

[K]

This thread, even taking into account that K's posts are trolling, convinces me more and more, that the original poster is mostly correct. And, like him, I disagree with people who feel that failure with actually unpleasant consequences (never mind that severity of these consequences is wildly exaggerated by anti-death crowd here) should be eliminated from RPGs. While not as unseemly, as, say, dropping from a long-commitment strategic game halfway through because you've screwed up or got shafted by RNG in an important battle, this is ultimately the same sort of sentiment, the desire to be coddled. If character death is removed, it will simply be re-aimed at imprisonment, losing gear, losing support characters and whatever, until outcomes of success and failure are functionally identical (more quests).

The outcomes for success and failure in RPGs are the same: you get to play. Your skill levels or how hard the challenges are and what you can believably overcome are irrelevant to that fact.

I mean, even in a super-lethal game where people have to keep four separate character sheets of replacement characters for each session, they still get to play even if they burn through all those characters.

The only meaningful penalty is making it so that people don't get to play. For an activity with friends, that's not cool because you are wasting people's time and if they wander off they might not come back.

I mean, some people consider failing quests and losing loot and killing beloved characters to be a penalty, but if they don't care about those things there really is nothing to can do to them and both success and failure are meaningless.

Heck, even character death, failing quests, and loot losses no longer has a sting if you do it enough.

[DSMatticus]

If character death is removed, it will simply be re-aimed at imprisonment, losing gear, losing support characters and whatever, until outcomes of success and failure are functionally identical (more quests).

That's the entire point. If the outcome of failure is "make a new character and if you're quick you might get to play some more, otherwise see you next session," failure sucks. If the outcome of failure is "changes the direction of the campaign, but you're still at the table playing," failure is fun. Though, the princess being eaten by the dragon and the princess being rescued lead to two radically divergent stories, so success and failure still have very different narrative ramifications.

The general argument is that "any TTRPG game mechanic which leads to the significant exclusion of a player is a bad mechanic." This argument only applies to PC death specifically if PC death excludes a player significantly, and in D&D 3.5 this is usually the case. You can do things like "revolving door of death," or "the adventure's been moved to the planes because somebody stole your soul," or "could everyone have a back-up character prepared incase something goes wrong," or "I'll only kill people during the climactic battle at the end of the session," that make it not the case, but for the typical group PC death does imply a non-trivial exclusion from play.

So this is the actual argument:
1) A game mechanic which leads to the exclusion of a player for an extended period of time is bad.
2) In a typical game of D&D, death leads to the exclusion of a player for potentially hours, if not the rest of the session.
3) In a typical game of D&D death is bad.

And every part of that seems really, really reasonable.

[ScottS]

If D&D isn't essentially "Murderball versus the DM", then why the wargame-like clusterfuck complexity that is the 3.x (or 4.x) combat system with all the bells and whistles? Why are people suggesting that D&D is anything but a wargame-heavy story-lite kinda-sorta-RPG? If you want ultimately non-lethal combat that's meant to service a plot rather than emulate a fantasy-themed conflict... why not play another system?

[DSMatticus]

If D&D isn't essentially "Murderball versus the DM"

1) Suppose D&D is murderball versus the DM.
2) There are opponents you cannot beat.
3) The DM decides the opponents you face.
4) You will always face opponents you cannot beat.

So, does anyone play D&D like that? No? Then D&D is not murderball versus the DM. There is no 'versus' at all in D&D.

then why the wargame-like clusterfuck complexity that is the 3.x (or 4.x) combat system with all the bells and whistles?

Because combat is the part of the game people play the most, and this is not at all a refutation of anything that's been said in this thread.

If you want ultimately non-lethal combat that's meant to service a plot rather than emulate a fantasy-themed conflict

Wait, so you're trying to say that if it's non-lethal it's not really combat anymore? That's the only thing I can get out of this. That somehow, by magic, if D&D's combat is less lethal it turns out it isn't actually combat, after all.

Nevermind the fact that are dozens of modern sports based around non-lethal combat. I take it you watch boxing for the story since it's non-lethal?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I take it you watch boxing for the story since it's non-lethal?

I dunno about boxing, but Pro Wrestling is all about the story. Or so I've heard.

[DSMatticus]

I dunno about boxing, but Pro Wrestling is all about the story. Or so I've heard.

That would be why I didn't choose that example. There's also no lose or win conditions there: you go out and put on a play. You can at least fail a D&D combat or a boxing match.

[ScottS]

1) Suppose D&D is murderball versus the DM.
2) There are opponents you cannot beat.
3) The DM decides the opponents you face.
4) You will always face opponents you cannot beat.

The CR/EL mechanics (as flawed as they are) are supposed to provide some kind of objective gauge for difficulty. The DM doesn't pick "opponents you cannot beat"; he looks on a CR table and builds an encounter at an EL that he thinks will generate a "challenging fight".

then why the wargame-like clusterfuck complexity that is the 3.x (or 4.x) combat system with all the bells and whistles?

Because combat is the part of the game people play the most, and this is not at all a refutation of anything that's been said in this thread.

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

If you want ultimately non-lethal combat that's meant to service a plot rather than emulate a fantasy-themed conflict

Wait, so you're trying to say that if it's non-lethal it's not really combat anymore?(...) I take it you watch boxing for the story since it's non-lethal?

I don't box if I don't want to risk getting my face smashed in.
D&D is a game which models "people trying to murder an angry dragon before it murders them".
I don't play D&D if I don't want to risk my PC getting murdered before he can kill the dragon.

[Damocles]

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

Nope. Combat is 'played the most' because thats the part you need rules for. If you need rules about how to act like your character, for those good old campfire sessions or just in general talking amongst NPCs and such, you must have a terrible imagination.

People dont need rules for social expeditions, just rules for when things get hairy.

[DSMatticus]

The CR/EL mechanics (as flawed as they are) are supposed to provide some kind of objective gauge for difficulty. The DM doesn't pick "opponents you cannot beat"; he looks on a CR table and builds an encounter at an EL that he thinks will generate a "challenging fight".

You're making my point: it is not "PC's" versus "DM," because the DM is arbitrarily tying his hands behind his back to lower his chances of winning. So when you say things like "murderball versus the DM," you're just flat-out wrong. There is no versus the DM, at all, anywhere.

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

How are you not seeing that this is completely tangential to the issue of lethality? Even if you successfully demonstrate that combat is the biggest part of D&D (which it is), that says absolutely nothing at all about whether or not combat should have a lethality mechanic.

I don't play D&D if I don't want to risk my PC getting murdered before he can kill the dragon.

That's just dumb: there is no risk. Your character is not some persistent entity which exists and things happen to it. You aren't "gambling" with your PC everytime you sit down at the table, because outside of that table the PC doesn't even exist to begin with. This idea of "you knew the risk when you stepped up to the table" is just retarded.

But more importantly, it's also irrelevant. You're still creating this false dichotomy where we either have to let the players win or kick the losers out of the game for a few hours, and that's dumb. The actual argument is that you still allow players to lose the combat minigame, but you don't allow loss to mean "go hang out on my couch for a few hours."

[ScottS]

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

Nope. Combat is 'played the most' because thats the part you need rules for.

You don't need 3.x/4.x rules-bible-length systems if all you're trying to adjudicate is "who said bang first in Cops and Robbers". People want the length and complexity because they want to sink their teeth into a combat-based rulesburger. The fighting's the thing.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Can we agree loss can equal death IF by death we don't mean "play smash bros" the rest of the night? Because from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to always be captured and escape from all kinds of traps.

I have been trying to advocate for "you die, but you can bring in a new character ASAP" as the default model, but this may stem from my hatred of idiotic imprisonment/bond villain stupidity in stories.

Also, even if D&D isn't necessarily against the DM, we still have the EL tables the DM is supposed to enforce, leaving it as more of a challenge between the players and the game system. A level 7 character should be able to fight a CR 7 monster, and if you can't do that you've failed. Straight up what the game says.

[Damocles]

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

Nope. Combat is 'played the most' because thats the part you need rules for.

You don't need 3.x/4.x rules-bible-length systems if all you're trying to adjudicate is "who said bang first in Cops and Robbers". People want the length and complexity because they want to sink their teeth into a combat-based rulesburger. The fighting's the thing.

Sure you dont need 'em, but DnD is the most accessible and most well-known RPG out there. And once someones invested, they're not likely gonna jump ship to another system when this one already works, for no real benefit.

Can we agree loss can equal death IF by death we don't mean "play smash bros" the rest of the night? Because from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to always be captured and escape from all kinds of traps.

I have been trying to advocate for "you die, but you can bring in a new character ASAP" as the default model, but this may stem from my hatred of idiotic imprisonment/bond villain stupidity in stories.

Also, even if D&D isn't necessarily against the DM, we still have the EL tables the DM is supposed to enforce, leaving it as more of a challenge between the players and the game system. A level 7 character should be able to fight a CR 7 monster, and if you can't do that you've failed. Straight up what the game says.

Death is an acceptable penalty for failing, it just depends how its handled.

Permanent death however, should only be acceptable under certain circumstances.

[TOZ]

I dunno about boxing, but Pro Wrestling is all about the story. Or so I've heard.

That would be why I didn't choose that example. There's also no lose or win conditions there: you go out and put on a play. You can at least fail a D&D combat or a boxing match.

I think WCW would argue there IS a lose condition for professional wrestling.

[...You Lost Me]

Can we agree loss can equal death IF by death we don't mean "play smash bros" the rest of the night? Because from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to always be captured and escape from all kinds of traps.

I have been trying to advocate for "you die, but you can bring in a new character ASAP" as the default model, but this may stem from my hatred of idiotic imprisonment/bond villain stupidity in stories.

Also, even if D&D isn't necessarily against the DM, we still have the EL tables the DM is supposed to enforce, leaving it as more of a challenge between the players and the game system. A level 7 character should be able to fight a CR 7 monster, and if you can't do that you've failed. Straight up what the game says.

As long as we recognize that you are arguing differently from K, who doesn't want death at all, then yes.

[MGuy]

10 pages of this. I'm truly impressed. The only thing I can see this thread being about is that K pressed on the wrong button and said something that he shouldn't have and didn't take it back so now we have all this.

As far as I can tell K said "If you're not playing "this" way you aren't playing right and should stop playing the game, even if you like it and other people join you in playing." I'd say that's all that needs to be argued over and really that's the only thing people should be arguing against. That's a bullshit way of thinking and it needs to be erased.

Sure you can say "the game is better if its lethal for players". I'd agree. I am actually personally insulted if my decisions in game didn't effect whether I could live OR die. Sure the DM arbitrates some stuff but fuck its a cooperative RPG and by being DM you're given license to arbitrate shit just like players have license to do so. If you feel the game shouldn't be lethal for players, hey that's your cup of tea.

The major problem I'm having is that arguments on both sides are dependent on taste. The feeling that failure in the form of death is necessary is just that. A feeling. One that I share but its just a feeling. Some people never want their characters to die and most people (as far as I can tell as a DM) just need to be made to feel their character might die. When I DM I openly state I will let characters die on one hand but give out Hero Points for allowing them to live in the other. Only one person has actually caught on to what I was doing but even he gets peer pressured into using them on occasion. So even as a person who wants character death to be an option I recognize that what I truly crave is the feeling of accomplishment it gives me when I don't die.

Problem with arguments against death is that the only thing not killing a character does is allow the person to not erase the name on their character sheet and draw up a new one. That's it. Every significant price, that is a price that means anything at all to anyone, of failure still puts the character out of the game until their party hits the Resurrection or Rescue button. If they are captured they are out. If they lose all their gear they might as well be a cohort for all the use they'll be against anything you care about at the time. For every time saving, story continuing, blah blah bullshit you can come up with for keeping a character alive I can point out how any significant failure does about the same damage.

[ScottS]

You're making my point: it is not "PC's" versus "DM," because the DM is arbitrarily tying his hands behind his back to lower his chances of winning. So when you say things like "murderball versus the DM," you're just flat-out wrong. There is no versus the DM, at all, anywhere.

He's "lowering his chances of winning" in order to provide an interesting game. Closely-matched wargames are the most interesting; wargames that only go one way are the least interesting. People don't threaten their opponents with guns IRL if they start losing at A&A; instead they do stuff like bids, handicaps etc. in order to even the odds in advance, and then play it out regardless of how it goes.

It's always "versus the DM" to the extent that monster stat blocks don't have totally predetermined AI routines. There's no interesting combat if the DM doesn't take his (supposedly level-appropriate) monsters and try to murder the PCs with them, because the game is supposedly balanced around murder effectiveness.

Combat is "played the most" because D&D players are there to play a wargame. They want to engage with a complicated wargame-like RPG, and the developers provide said system.

How are you not seeing that this is completely tangential to the issue of lethality? Even if you successfully demonstrate that combat is the biggest part of D&D (which it is), that says absolutely nothing at all about whether or not combat should have a lethality mechanic.

"Should" isn't an issue if we're discussing the lethality of the system as-is (e.g. hp loss only having the states totally fine, "disabled", bleeding out or dead; 4e obviously modified that but since that edition has "legitimacy issues" I'm only talking about PF and pre-2008 D&D). The game has a tradition of heinous PC death, which is part and parcel of being a single-combatant-scale wargame featuring fantasy-themed good-guys and bad-guys that want to destroy each other. You can argue that that's Gygaxian dickery and that it "shouldn't" be that way, but I can make the equally valid argument that you "shouldn't" be playing D&D if you don't want to deal with infrequent dirt naps.

I don't play D&D if I don't want to risk my PC getting murdered before he can kill the dragon.

That's just dumb: there is no risk. Your character is not some persistent entity which exists and things happen to it(...)
But more importantly, it's also irrelevant. You're still creating this false dichotomy where we either have to let the players win or kick the losers out of the game for a few hours, and that's dumb.

The "risk" I was talking about was the risk of losing the wargame. You voluntarily accept losing the game as an "undesirable outcome", and you do what you can within the rules system to avoid that outcome, hence the challenge. In D&D the analogue of "losing" is "getting my PC and/or the whole party killed". Avoiding your death is supposed to be challenging because the DM is trying to make that outcome happen (again, within the rules system, and within the context of "fair encounters").

I'm not arguing for "death = forced downtime". (players should totally have backups ready and DMs should totally never be d-bags about handwaving a new PC into the story)
I'm arguing against the K/Frank position ("PC death totally sucks for various reasons; if the chance per combat of a PC dying is non-zero, then PCs will eventually die because a PC's existence is a long series of combats; therefore, the chance per combat of PCs dying should be set to zero, but we should somehow fake out the players into thinking it's still lethal").

[RadiantPhoenix]

As far as I can tell K said "If you're not playing "this" way you aren't playing right and should stop playing the game, even if you like it and other people join you in playing." I'd say that's all that needs to be argued over and really that's the only thing people should be arguing against. That's a bullshit way of thinking and it needs to be erased.

My impression of what K is trying to say is thus:
1 In D&D, character generation takes a long time
2 Even if a character isn't perma-dead, you still have to wait for a chance to get resurrected
3 D&D groups typically don't meet very often, but when they do they meet for a long time (not a larger order of magnitude than the previous 'long time's, but maybe shorter)
4 When a character dies, you stop playing for a while. Typically, this will be a significant portion of the session
5 Therefore, killing a PC means the player is getting left out of the fun for a significant portion of a session
6 This is bad
7 If you do this, you are doing bad things

And I kind of agree with this point.

There would be more to this, but I'm sleepy.

[K]

Can we agree loss can equal death IF by death we don't mean "play smash bros" the rest of the night? Because from my point of view, it doesn't make sense to always be captured and escape from all kinds of traps.

I have been trying to advocate for "you die, but you can bring in a new character ASAP" as the default model, but this may stem from my hatred of idiotic imprisonment/bond villain stupidity in stories.

Also, even if D&D isn't necessarily against the DM, we still have the EL tables the DM is supposed to enforce, leaving it as more of a challenge between the players and the game system. A level 7 character should be able to fight a CR 7 monster, and if you can't do that you've failed. Straight up what the game says.

As long as we recognize that you are arguing differently from K, who doesn't want death at all, then yes.

So your character Erik the Blue Raider gets killed by a hungry ogre, so you immediately bring in Erik the Yellow Raider except he's priced as a new PC and so loses a little XP and maybe a level, and has to live with minimal treasure for a character of his level (but hey, Erik the Blue Raider's treasure is just sitting on a corpse, so you really could just add that to Erik the Yellow Raider's pool or give it to players as a bonus for letting a PC die).

Whee! You've recreated resurrection costs, but in a more broken form!

Bringing a character immediately into the play is exactly the same as taxing the character some treasure and maybe a level to get thier character back, which takes us back to asking why don't we just use resurrection or avoid PC death entirely so that players can use the same character for RP purposes.

[K]

As far as I can tell K said "If you're not playing "this" way you aren't playing right and should stop playing the game, even if you like it and other people join you in playing." I'd say that's all that needs to be argued over and really that's the only thing people should be arguing against. That's a bullshit way of thinking and it needs to be erased.

My impression of what K is trying to say is thus:
1 In D&D, character generation takes a long time
2 Even if a character isn't perma-dead, you still have to wait for a chance to get resurrected
3 D&D groups typically don't meet very often, but when they do they meet for a long time (not a larger order of magnitude than the previous 'long time's, but maybe shorter)
4 When a character dies, you stop playing for a while. Typically, this will be a significant portion of the session
5 Therefore, killing a PC means the player is getting left out of the fun for a significant portion of a session
6 This is bad
7 If you do this, you are doing bad things

And I kind of agree with this point.

There would be more to this, but I'm sleepy.

Basically.

In general, I disapprove of being a dick when there is no upshot to it and only downsides.

[Fuchs]

If someone claims to need the threat of death to care about his PCs, and yet replaces them without any problem each time they die, then I cannot consider them being honest, their actions belie their words.

If death has no sting, if getting a new character is so easy, and has no cost, why should you worry about not having characters die?

Either death stings - in which case it's bad - or it does not sting, in which case it's not needed.

[K]

If someone claims to need the threat of death to care about his PCs, and yet replaces them without any problem each time they die, then I cannot consider them being honest, their actions belie their words.

If death has no sting, if getting a new character is so easy, and has no cost, why should you worry about not having characters die?

Either death stings - in which case it's bad - or it does not sting, in which case it's not needed.

The problem is that the more character deaths you have, the less invested in them you get.

I mean, let's say that the character I've been playing for a few months gets eaten by a purple worm. I am going to be broken up about it, but I'll suck it up and make a new character and next session be up and running.

But guess what? If the PCs suddenly needed a scroll of plane shift, I'd totally suicide so that my third character that rolls up just happens to have one. I can do that because with half a session under my belt and a recent character death, I don't care anything about the new character.

And that's the point: the player is already immortal and will continue the story, even if the character is not. PC death just becomes a tactic to abuse if you aren't invested in the RP aspects of your character.

Heck, you can just be invested in the overall story and just send character after character into the grinder once you stop caring about your actual character. That's a lesson you learn pretty quickly when you play a game like Paranoia.

[MGuy]

If people want to play with the death option seriously fuck off. That's really all that needs to be said.

If failure has any significant penalties that you care about at all your character is then gimped in such a way that they might as well be an NPC or dead. If you are ok with failure being significant you are pretty much ok with someone's character dying.

"Character generation takes a long time" is the only consequence that deserves any attention and even here I'm forced to shrug and say "so what?" Death doesn't happen often enough for this issue to come up much. If it is then something is terribly wrong or you are obviously ok with it happening. "Sitting out of the session" occurs whenever you encounter significant failure. If you're ok with this then, as stated, you should be ok with death. If you just don't like death for whatever uncomfortable reasons that's fine.

However, K said in his own words, "If you don't play his way you should stop playing." I've typed all this shit and I'm not going to bother scouring the thread to find the quote. That's the only thing I didn't like.

[K]

However, K said in his own words, "If you don't play his way you should stop playing." I've typed all this shit and I'm not going to bother scouring the thread to find the quote. That's the only thing I didn't like.

I actually didn't say that. That being said, if you can't be bothered to read, then I can't be bother to correct you.

[MGuy]

If you can't be bothered with an actual counter argument then you are welcome to not correct me. In your words "To DM is to make the player's have fun". I DM to entertain myself. If I at all feel like its a job then I won't do it. If someone wants to be Gygaxian and motherfuckers still show up at their table then that is there choice and though you are welcome to not like it it isn't anyone's place to tell them to stop playing the game.