What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[Swordslinger]

None of those actions make player action more relevant because the DM decided which of those actions had a chance to succeed.

He could have decided the ranger's guild had false information because they banned their members from going in and they spread misinformation in the town to keep others out. He could decide the spell would give a cryptic answer because of an ancient spell that created the Banemire. He could choose that PC knowledges weren't high enough to understand the true dangers of the Banemire (a DC 40 check that the PCs can't make to know that dread wraiths with PC levels that can rape the party are in there, but a DC 20 to hear that "shadowy creatures" live there.)

Yeah you could be playing with a Gygaxian ass who declares everything you do as a failure. The DM could throw you a riddle with no answer or a detective story with no clues. A video game developer can do the exact same thing by creating a keypad puzzle and never putting in any clue that tells you what the code is. Yes I'm aware of all these dick moves that bad DMs might do. But it's just that, bad DMing.

And it's not even worth planning around contingencies for bad DMing, because there's really only one tried and true solution: find another game.

If the DM is fair, he'll give you a fair puzzle to solve. That means that finding a solution is possible.

You are arguing that the DM should reward PCs for trying to be careful and more prepared by making those actions meaningful. I happen to agree, but that's off-topic to any issues we are talking about.

Actually no. That's exactly the issue we're talking about. If the PCs can exercise sound preparation and care and are no safer than PCs who go about a problem recklessly, you've eliminated any incentive for people to play cautiously. To get people to play smarter, you need to create incentives. That means rewarding good play and punishing bad play, and most importantly, letting them know where they went wrong. So long as you keep advocating some kind of "It's all the DM's fault" bullshit, then players have no reason to do anything different. They never make stupid moves, and if things go bad, they just finger point to the DM. And once you start down that slippery slope, you can just forget about anything ever getting any better.

You can't say "Okay, you guys are newbies, I'm going to coddle you" because then they never learn. People go with tactics that work and if they never run into problems doing what they are doing, they'll never change. If you let the PCs know upfront that you won't kill them, that means that they won't care if the banemire is the most dangerous place in the setting or not. There's no reason for them to be careful, because they're never in any real danger.

At most for newbies you should be making the problem more obvious, but not the solution. For instance, mentioning that it probably would be a bad idea to just guess which path to take.

[DSMatticus]

No. Actually it's just another premise to reach the conclusion. I know this is complicated for you, because there's more than one premise here, but let me lay this out for you as simple as I can.

That's hilarious. You fail at logic. Those are not separate premises that lead to a single conclusion, they are separate arguments which lead to the same conclusion twice (and each argument may or may not be flawed). The argument for verisimilitude and the argument for punishment are entirely disjoint. Because you can have verisimilitude without punishment, and punishment without verisimilitude.

Wolf jail does not fail based on #1, it fails on #2.

And this is the cincher; if wolf jail fails irregardless of the truth status of premise #1, then premise #1 is irrelevant to your argument. That is the definition of an extraneous logical statement. You just admitted that "arguing from verisimilitude does not depend on the argument from punishment," and that means we can cut premise #1 out of that argument without affecting it at all, and all you are left with only the argument from verisimilitude.

To reformulate:

Code: Select all

1) The game needs reward and punishment mechanisms.
2) Character death is a punishment mechanism.
C) The game needs character death.
(Fallacious, because there are punishment mechanisms other than death; going from a general case to a specific element.)

1) The game needs verisimilitude.
2) A lack of character death destroys verisimilitude.
C) The game needs character death.
(Totally valid, but #2 is a premise I would contest).

Now, in your argument you tried to do some thing like this (except your's wasn't a logically valid argument, because neither premise #1 nor premise #2 mentions character death at all and somehow it magically appears in the conclusion with handwavium):

Code: Select all

1) The game needs reward and punishment mechanisms.
2) Character death is a punishment mechanism.
C1) The game needs character death. (still fallacious)
3) The game needs verisimilitude.
4) A lack of character death destroys verisimilitude. (still contested)
C2) The game needs character death.
C3) C1 or C2.

Combining the two arguments like this is valid, but in this case it's irrelevant because 1,2,C1 and 3,4,C2 are independent of eachother and if either is true then C3 is true. You don't need both to make a coherent argument, so what you actually have is two arguments that you have smashed together in an awkward Frankenstein monster. And one of those arguments is straight up logically fallacious as well as unnecessary.

All that's left is 3,4,C2 and that is the argument from verisimilitude.

[DSMatticus]

Except for the part where I didn't say that

I refer you to yourself:

You're supposed to be invested in what is happening. And while you can play a video game and blow up mobs and not care if they blow you up, in a game you are supposed to take seriously it is an objective requirement that actions have appropriate consequences.

Which is it? Do failures exist other than PC death? Because I'm asking you "why do we need death?" and your response was "consequences." But as I have pointed out repeatedly, PC death is a small subset of possible consequences.

Team Fuchaducks wants to always win, no matter what

No one has said that. He said "I don't like character death," and now you're reading that as "I always want to win." See what I mean when I tell you you can't tell the difference between failure and PC death? Because everytime someone says they hate PC death, you say they hate failure.

It is hardly a strawman when you have people like K literally saying that if a monster kills a PC, that is the DM being a dick.

This has nothing to do with the failure/PC death distinction you are responding to.

No, what I want is for actions and choices to matter. And that means that if you do something stupid, bad things happen.

This still has nothing to do with death. it's an argument around failure, and consequences for failure, and everyone who is anti-death that I have seen thinks failing is an acceptable outcome. Still irrelevant.

The rest of your post is more of the same. "I like death because I like consequences!" But the anti-death camp argument has been "We like consequences, but we don't like death. We should remove death from the possible list of consequences." Unless you think death was the only possible consequence, your responses are just not relevant.

[Swordslinger]

All that's left is 3,4,C2 and that is the argument from verisimilitude.

Yes, if you want to get into why death specifically as the choice of punishment, then yes, it's about verisimilitude.

The punishment part was more addressed to people like K who were making statements to the effect that all the blame was placed on the DM, and PC choices were irrelevant (therefore they should be neither punished nor rewarded regardless of what they do). I stated that punishment/reward is a good practice for PC actions, otherwise they stop caring. If making good decisions and playing well does the same thing as playing like shit, then people have no real incentive to play well.

For the counterargument of wraiths dragging people back and wolf jails, then verisimilitude is the important part.

[DSMatticus]

Yes, if you want to get into why death specifically as the choice of punishment

Considering no one has said "PC's should succeed at everything they do," this is the only argument. Even K has not said "everything should go the PC's way always," so everyone is fine with some failure of some kind. For different reasons, albeit. Failures make for good stories. Constant streams of success make for Mary Sue-ism.

For the counterargument of wraiths dragging people back and wolf jails, then verisimilitude is the important part.

The problem with that it's that a blatant strawman. People didn't suggest wolf jail, they suggested people jail when asked about people opponents, and then you said, "haha, what idiots! and if they're fighting wolves, wolf jail, amirite? LOL!" If you can't tell, that's BS. RadiantPhoenix gave a pretty obvious one for animal-like opponents (Star Wars). The limit here is your ability to come up with creative alternatives for defeat. You should even make them interesting, if at all possible.

[Swordslinger]

The problem with that it's that a blatant strawman. People didn't suggest wolf jail, they suggested people jail when asked about people opponents, and then you said, "haha, what idiots! and if they're fighting wolves, wolf jail, amirite? LOL!" If you can't tell, that's BS. RadiantPhoenix gave a pretty obvious one for animal-like opponents (Star Wars). The limit here is your ability to come up with creative alternatives for defeat. You should even make them interesting, if at all possible.

No, I am totally not making this shit up.

Man in Black suggested that wraiths that beat the party carry them off to do some ritual instead of life draining them into oblivion. Seriously wraiths. Incorporeal creatures that cannot carry anything.

Other people have suggested animals dragging away fallen PCs to eat later, which is where wolf jail comes from.

[K]

All that's left is 3,4,C2 and that is the argument from verisimilitude.

Yes, if you want to get into why death specifically as the choice of punishment, then yes, it's about verisimilitude.

The punishment part was more addressed to people like K who were making statements to the effect that all the blame was placed on the DM, and PC choices were irrelevant (therefore they should be neither punished nor rewarded regardless of what they do). I stated that punishment/reward is a good practice for PC actions, otherwise they stop caring. If making good decisions and playing well does the same thing as playing like shit, then people have no real incentive to play well.

"Good decisions" and "bad decisions" are entirely dependent on the DM even in the Banemire example.

Clearly, you as DM want the PCs to invest in skills and take the time to be super prepared before they make choices so you are going to let all their information gathering have a good chance of working. Another DM rewards boldness and would let people get through the Banemire for that reason without researching because it's scary, but will make the Banemire tough if they actually get info because that's scary too. Another DM wants to punish the players for being timid and wants the action to be constant, so he will let the villain escape if they waste time collecting as much info as possible before making the choice. Another DM wants PCs to read his mind so he's going to drop terrible hints that the Banemire is dangerous and then execute them for not following his hints (the Shadow Balls DM). Yet another DM is going to railroad in a battle with the villain on the road and is going to set that battle in the Banemire or in the mountains regardless of what the PCs choose.

There is no objectively good or bad choice unless you can read the DMs mind or have enough experience with the DM to know which choice is better in his mind.

Now, most DMs fill in areas of the map at will and then pretend that they are running some objective fantasy universe simulator, but in truth they are making choices that determine which behaviors they want to encourage or punish and what stories they are willing to tell.

I mean, if the PCs really do want to seduce the powerful Queen there is no rule in the game that says the DM has to let that happen. You can complain about bad or Gygaxian DMs, but that's not an excuse to make any one PC action have a chance for success.

[Swordslinger]

"Good decisions" and "bad decisions" are entirely dependent on the DM even in the Banemire example.

Clearly, you as DM want the PCs to invest in skills and take the time to be super prepared before they make choices so you are going to let all their information gathering have a good chance of working. Another DM rewards boldness and would let people get through the Banemire for that reason without researching because it's scary, but will make the Banemire tough if they actually get info because that's scary too. Another DM wants to punish the players for being timid and wants the action to be constant, so he will let the villain escape if they waste time collecting as much info as possible before making the choice. Another DM wants PCs to read his mind so he's going to drop terrible hints that the Banemire is dangerous and then execute them for not following his hints (the Shadow Balls DM). Yet another DM is going to railroad in a battle with the villain on the road and is going to set that battle in the Banemire or in the mountains regardless of what the PCs choose.

While it's true there are different styles, a lot of the problems can be fixed by avoiding bad DMing mistakes.

For instance, if you want constant action and don't want PCs doing much research, then pretty much don't give them a choice. Make it obvious that the banemire is the only way to catch up to the villain or that the road will get them there sufficiently fast such that there's no need to even make a choice. If you want people constantly moving, it's important to give them an Oblivion style quest arrow that always points to where they need to go. Because when people are confused as to what choice to make they're likely to spend time researching it.

While I don't blame the DM for PCs making bad choices, poor adventure pacing is almost always the DM's fault.

And of course, you'll always end up with some DMs that present you with vague clues and no real way of knowing which way is the right path who will kill you for choosing wrong. And again, that's just bad adventure design. Gygax did that with tomb of horrors and it's quite possible other DMs may design in that style.

There is no objectively good or bad choice unless you can read the DMs mind or have enough experience with the DM to know which choice is better in his mind.

While there's always going to be a certain degree of the DM's personal style going into the puzzles, that's unavoidable regardless of if you're playing Myst or D&D, and I absolutely don't think that it means that the answers become outright unknowable.

I know this because I've had PCs that are good at solving puzzles in general, whether in RPGs or computer games, and others that are just not good at it. It's not just a guessing game, it's a certain skill at logical problem solving. And putting a better problem solving player in there will make it much more likely the PCs will get the right answer. So regardless of the DM choosing the good and bad solutions, the more perceptive and skilled player is more likely to pick upon the clues and solve the problem.

If it were the case that the DM had such influence that player skill was removed, then all players would be equally likely to guess the right answer because it would be a crapshoot. But that's just not what happens. You do have some players who are better at solving D&D puzzles than others, and it typically ends up being the players who are better at puzzle games in general.

[A Man In Black]

Yeah you could be playing with a Gygaxian ass who declares everything you do as a failure. The DM could throw you a riddle with no answer or a detective story with no clues. A video game developer can do the exact same thing by creating a keypad puzzle and never putting in any clue that tells you what the code is. Yes I'm aware of all these dick moves that bad DMs might do. But it's just that, bad DMing.

And it's not even worth planning around contingencies for bad DMing, because there's really only one tried and true solution: find another game.

If the DM is fair, he'll give you a fair puzzle to solve. That means that finding a solution is possible.

And what happens when the players aren't detective geniuses and they don't solve the puzzle? What happens when they don't get the clues and the troll comes out and they melee him and they lose the fight?

The problem is that a system where you have to fudge the dice to keep from excluding someone from the game for two weeks is a bad system. I want the players to be able to fail—to have our little stupid adversarial games where they can either notice something or not—without the stakes being so high that character sheets are soaked in lighter fluid and players are being told not to come back next week.

You need to take character death off of the failure RNG in order to make these puzzles practical. You can't ask the players to juggle chainsaws.

[K]

"Good decisions" and "bad decisions" are entirely dependent on the DM even in the Banemire example.

Clearly, you as DM want the PCs to invest in skills and take the time to be super prepared before they make choices so you are going to let all their information gathering have a good chance of working. Another DM rewards boldness and would let people get through the Banemire for that reason without researching because it's scary, but will make the Banemire tough if they actually get info because that's scary too. Another DM wants to punish the players for being timid and wants the action to be constant, so he will let the villain escape if they waste time collecting as much info as possible before making the choice. Another DM wants PCs to read his mind so he's going to drop terrible hints that the Banemire is dangerous and then execute them for not following his hints (the Shadow Balls DM). Yet another DM is going to railroad in a battle with the villain on the road and is going to set that battle in the Banemire or in the mountains regardless of what the PCs choose.

While it's true there are different styles, a lot of the problems can be fixed by avoiding bad DMing mistakes.

For instance, if you want constant action and don't want PCs doing much research, then pretty much don't give them a choice. Make it obvious that the banemire is the only way to catch up to the villain or that the road will get them there sufficiently fast such that there's no need to even make a choice. If you want people constantly moving, it's important to give them an Oblivion style quest arrow that always points to where they need to go. Because when people are confused as to what choice to make they're likely to spend time researching it.

While I don't blame the DM for PCs making bad choices, poor adventure pacing is almost always the DM's fault.

I'm confused.

So you are agreeing that DMs decide what PC choices are meaningful or not, but you will only fault the DM for player failure if the DM doesn't adequately telegraph which choices are the right choices? Otherwise, it's PCs fault for not doing what the DM has told them is the way they should be playing?

That sounds like some crazy railroading logic.

[Shadow Balls]

I am not the one who tried to explain to others how to hunt dragons, and failing to convince anyone of his claims.

Get off of Likadik's balls. No one wants to see that.

Hit a nerve?

I dunno. Is your brain damage more or less extensive now?

But ignoring Fuchaduck, as he is proving that basket weaving is a life style by being just as worthless out of game as he is within it...

PC actions generate the story as much as DM actions, but the DM decides what actions can succeed.

I mean, are you going to cry "railroading!" when the DM tells you that your level 1 character can't seduce the Queen of the Great Kingdom because he's got a -4 to his Diplomacy roll and is 24 points away from even having a chance? How about when your level 1 character tries to kill a Great Wyrm? Maybe you think players should have the agency to suddenly determine what monsters and treasures are in the dungeons they go into and what spells enemies are allowed to cast?

Clearly, you don't believe that because it's crazy.

That's because the DM sets the stage and determines what chance of success player choices will have and what choices will be meaningful or not. If mean, if the DM decides that there is no lore on a magic disaster that is key to some mystery adventure, then it doesn't matter that you have a +30 to your Knowledge: Arcana check because your choice to hit the books is going to fail. Your choice to sneak into the castle won't mean shit if the DM decides that there is a +30 Spot creature guarding the gate the PCs are using. Your choice to enter the Banemire is suicidal if the DM stocks it with random encounters that can TPK the party and brilliant if he's decided that its danger is overhyped and it happens to be a shortcut you need to cut a villain off at the pass.

ITT: K continues to bitch and moan about how the DM is some omnipotent being that controls absolutely everything about a game, even and especially the parts that he does not control and how he's a total dick if he does anything that has any chance of killing someone or otherwise making them fail, because that any chance will be 100% oh and I totally care about story, which means railroading the party onto his plot except oh wait, if the story sucks he'll be a total dick (see: Age of Worms) and ruin it! And that's just fine but doing things that are not a dick, that inconvenience him means that the DM is being a dick.

I believe that that is what is known as a sociopath. Now K might be a sociopath, and he might not. Either way, I hardly think that indulging someone's mental illnesses is conducive to a good game.

Alternately, he should go round up the other derpers, such as Fuchaduck and Mr. Neutered and they can go play their magical power fantasy, thereby getting themselves out of the way of the good players, who no longer have to deal with their foolishness.

And regardless of what the derpers say, most players are at least somewhat capable of deductive reasoning. And that means that when you have a wooden bridge covering a river, in the middle of a swamp and that there is a wrecked wagon on the bog off to the side of the bridge, and a large snake sunning itself atop the wagon (low to mid DC Spot check) there are ways of figuring out what is going on. Such as by flying over the area at a medium altitude and looking all around, and scaring off the snake and in the process finding multiple skeletons near the wagon, once of which is wearing magical armor.

And then the party sends in an astral construct to go get the armor, and it never resurfaces. Which means that the party determines that it really isn't safe to cross the bridge. And it isn't. Of course, there are ways of getting the armor without having to deal with the snake, and there are ways of crossing the river without having to deal with the snake. And if they do have to deal with the snake, they can kill it.

So you see, we have a simple scenario in which there are multiple ways of dealing with it. And if, had everyone failed the Spot check and not noticed the snake they would not be in as good of a position as if they would if they were smart, as they were and checked around. But it isn't as if the snake would automatically kill them or anything. And yet, the same people that claim to want failure consequences other than death will whine bitch and moan that the failure conditions are "makes the encounter a bit harder to deal with, but it still most likely won't kill anyone".

[Swordslinger]

And what happens when the players aren't detective geniuses and they don't solve the puzzle? What happens when they don't get the clues and the troll comes out and they melee him and they lose the fight?

Then bad shit happens. That's just the way D&D works. You don't intentionally kill them, but you run the encounter by the rules. Maybe the PCs may suck at puzzles but be good at combat, so the wizard may come up with some useful way to disable the troll, like glitterdusting him. Maybe the fighter rolls a lucky critical with a greataxe. Or maybe somebody dies.

While it'd be nice to ultimately allow PCs more opportunity to retreat and to have combats be overall less lethal (so taking prisoners is more believable under the rules), eventually death is going to be an option. And that's good.

About players sitting out, there are ways to handle that. Good adventure pacing and design really solves a lot of the sitting out problems. Arrange that difficult battles be fought at the end of a session instead of the start, that way if someone dies, they're not sitting out the rest of the session.

If somebody wanted to start a thread over good DMing practices to ensure that players sit out a minimal amount of time and that puzzles you present are made more fair, that'd be much more productive than arguing about crap like wraiths dragging people to jail instead of just killing them right there as they should.

PCs fight dangerous monsters. Dangerous monsters kill. It is what it is, dude.

Putting nerf claws on owlbears and wights instead the way to make the game better, it only trivializes the monsters you're fighting.

So you are agreeing that DMs decide what PC choices are meaningful or not, but you will only fault the DM for player failure if the DM doesn't adequately telegraph which choices are the right choices? Otherwise, it's PCs fault for not doing what the DM has told them is the way they should be playing?

Well no. The DM is determining a right and wrong answer, but the PCs still have the final say on what they do. The important thing is that right and wrong are set before the PC chooses, so the DM cannot invalidate things the PCs do. No matter how difficult or easy the choice, the PCs still have choices and that choice still makes the final say.

The only way the DM can make the PC's choices non-meaningful is by having them fail or succeed regardless of what they pick. That is, if it doesn't matter if they go the route of the banemire or the road, then you've made whatever they decide non-meaningful. They're no longer choosing their own fate. You've taken that away from them.

Even if you're running through some kind of crazy deadly adventure like Shadow Balls cave of terror where you have to constantly choose a left/right fork to decide if you live or die, the fact is that there's a right choice and a wrong choice, and what the PC chooses determines what happens to him. Even if there's no way of knowing which way to go, that's always a better choice than being offered a left/right fork and having both paths go the same place.

The game is based on choice and even a bullshit choice is better than a nonchoice.

[A Man In Black]

Then bad shit happens. That's just the way D&D works. You don't intentionally kill them, but you run the encounter by the rules. Maybe the PCs may suck at puzzles but be good at combat, so the wizard may come up with some useful way to disable the troll, like glitterdusting him. Maybe the fighter rolls a lucky critical with a greataxe. Or maybe somebody dies.

While it'd be nice to ultimately allow PCs more opportunity to retreat and to have combats be overall less lethal (so taking prisoners is more believable under the rules), eventually death is going to be an option. And that's good.

About players sitting out, there are ways to handle that. Good adventure pacing and design really solves a lot of the sitting out problems. Arrange that difficult battles be fought at the end of a session instead of the start, that way if someone dies, they're not sitting out the rest of the session.

Hey, I have a less awkward, less metagame-y way to handle that. Why don't we take death off of the RNG, so people don't die to stupid random encounters, but you can still have setbacks from challenges and let the dice fall where they may!

You just claimed that death would be good. You didn't actually explain why it would be good.

If somebody wanted to start a thread over good DMing practices to ensure that players sit out a minimal amount of time and that puzzles you present are made more fair, that'd be much more productive than arguing about crap like wraiths dragging people to jail instead of just killing them right there as they should.

PCs fight dangerous monsters. Dangerous monsters kill. It is what it is, dude.

Putting nerf claws on owlbears and wights instead the way to make the game better, it only trivializes the monsters you're fighting.

Owlbears maul you for entering their territory and leave you where you drop because they're done with you. Or they're hungry, so they maul you and if they win the fight they'll drag you back to their lair to eat you in peace... oops? Isn't that "wolf jail?"

Wights can trivially be given an agenda that isn't murder everyone on the spot. Make them torturers, make them feed on the living, whatever you want.

In the case of incorporeal undead, they suck out your soul and drag it back to their place of power to perform a ritual on it to turn you into one of them, or simply perform the ritual on you on the spot. Alternately, in the case of ghosts and suchlike, they have a territorial agenda of driving people off, not killing them stone dead.

It would require giving enemies an agenda that isn't omnicide, yes. Can you not imagine a version of D&D that wasn't Murder Hobos Versus Omnicidal Monsters?

The game is based on choice and even a bullshit choice is better than a nonchoice.

"Succeed" versus "Fail but escape with your life" is a choice.

[Swordslinger]

Hey, I have a less awkward, less metagame-y way to handle that. Why don't we take death off of the RNG, so people don't die to stupid random encounters, but you can still have setbacks from challenges and let the dice fall where they may!

You just claimed that death would be good. You didn't actually explain why it would be good.

Only it makes no sense from a story perspective. Look, sometimes in D&D you fight shit that could take you prisoner. Bandits might decide to ransom you, rivals may decide to interrogate you and hobgoblins may decide to enslave you.

But the fact is that you're facing off against crap like gelatinous cubes and assassin vines too. That shit does not carry you off places or any of that. It just fucking kills you, in some cases, it completely dissolves you.

You can make a case for making the combat system less deadly and yes, we are listening. You can make the claim that you want it to be easier to retreat, and a lot of people will agree.

But claiming that you're somehow going to make PC death an impossibility is fucking stupid and makes no sense. Even if it required a specific coup de grace to kill you similar to how it does in Mutants and Masterminds, some creatures are going to fucking do just that.

And even if you could somehow do that, I can't see many people even wanting that outcome, because it makes all the crap you're fighting seem a heck of a lot less dangerous. In that case, you're literally the only people in the campaign world ever using lethal force and the fucking black knight can then take a higher moral stance than your PC paladin.

Owlbears maul you for entering their territory and leave you where you drop because they're done with you. Or they're hungry, so they maul you and if they win the fight they'll drag you back to their lair to eat you in peace... oops? Isn't that "wolf jail?"

And even if you implement wolf jail, you've separated the party and have one PC at 1 Hp whose sword got left behind at the battle spot. Considering that the owlbears fought the entire party at full strength and won, the odds of a badly injured PC with no weapons doing anything helpful are not very promising.

These aren't big villains that pass you onto lesser guards that you might be able to trick or beat unarmed, these are the exact same monsters that raped your ass the first time, only now you're facing them wounded and without your main weapons.

In the case of incorporeal undead, they suck out your soul and drag it back to their place of power to perform a ritual on it to turn you into one of them, or simply perform the ritual on you on the spot.

If they've sucked out your soul, then you're dead anyway... seriously. At that point, the entire party died, or they left you for dead. Meaning, yeah you're boned.

At most all you can really do is have it such that some monsters take longer to coup de grace you. But you wouldn't be in that predicament at all if the rest of the party hadn't bailed on you.

But seriously, why bother even going through all these lengths and stretching verisimilitude to the limit? Why not just tell your PCs that death sometimes happens and to man up? I mean yeah, it sucks, but dude, get over it. It's not like you just lost your life savings at the roulette table, it's the death of a fictional character in a fictional world. I just don't see it as all that big a deal.

[A Man In Black]

Only it makes no sense from a story perspective. Look, sometimes in D&D you fight shit that could take you prisoner. Bandits might decide to ransom you, rivals may decide to interrogate you and hobgoblins may decide to enslave you.

But the fact is that you're facing off against crap like gelatinous cubes and assassin vines too. That shit does not carry you off places or any of that. It just fucking kills you, in some cases, it completely dissolves you.

Gelatinous cubes (on top of being a stupid joke monster that got out of hand) are an easy fix. Gelatinous cubes exist to clean shit out of dungeons, and are completely oblivious to your presence. They just run you over. Losing to one means your shit is completely ruined and you have some really awful acid burns and scars and you are probably a laughingstock.

Assassin vines are not at all iconic and easily dropped. Even if you don't, they are a trap, not a monster, and a low-level one at that. Losing to one is like "losing" to a rope snare.

You can make a case for making the combat system less deadly and yes, we are listening. You can make the claim that you want it to be easier to retreat, and a lot of people will agree.

Who the fuck are "we" in this case? You haven't proposed any game design of any sort, and indeed have only proposed contradictory roadblocks and other stupid shit.

And even if you implement wolf jail, you've separated the party and have one PC at 1 Hp whose sword got left behind at the battle spot. Considering that the owlbears fought the entire party at full strength and won, the odds of a badly injured PC with no weapons doing anything helpful are not very promising.

These aren't big villains that pass you onto lesser guards that you might be able to trick or beat unarmed, these are the exact same monsters that raped your ass the first time, only now you're facing them wounded and without your main weapons.

The point is that if the owlbear beats one party member but is then defeated, that party member isn't stone dead. I'm ambivalent about what happens when the party as a whole is wiped out, but I do think it's important to give enemies a motivation not to murder everyone on the spot. (You've got a good point about also giving the party a motivation not to murder everyone on the spot, but that's a different discussion.)

But seriously, why bother even going through all these lengths and stretching verisimilitude to the limit? Why not just tell your PCs that death sometimes happens and to man up? I mean yeah, it sucks, but dude, get over it. It's not like you just lost your life savings at the roulette table, it's the death of a fictional character in a fictional world. I just don't see it as all that big a deal.

Because you're telling the player "You're not going to get to play, man up!" and they're going to say, "Okay, fuck D&D, I'm going to go get drunk next week, and probably all of the weeks after that. Have fun, guys!"

And that's not good for your group or the hobby as a whole.

[Swordslinger]

. I'm ambivalent about what happens when the party as a whole is wiped out, but I do think it's important to give enemies a motivation not to murder everyone on the spot.

Oddly I'm more interested in preventing TPKs rather than individual deaths. An individual death isn't really a huge deal. The guy just makes a new dude and rejoins the group, but the story pretty much remains the same, because other people exist to carry on the story.

In Conan the Barbarian, Valeria dies and Conan ends up avenging her death by killing everyone. It could just as easily be the story that Conan dies and Valeria ends up avenging his death.

In the case of a TPK though, you really are starting from square one.

Because you're telling the player "You're not going to get to play, man up!" and they're going to say, "Okay, fuck D&D, I'm going to go get drunk next week, and probably all of the weeks after that. Have fun, guys!"

And that's not good for your group or the hobby as a whole.

I already talked about minimizing the time people sit out through intelligent design of the adventure and good pacing. Just by scheduling difficult battles for the end of an adventure you can solve a great deal of problems of some guy sitting out.

As far as people complaining that their guy died, that is seriously an issue of manning up. Nobody likes to lose. Nobody, but it's just not something people should be complaining about.

And maybe you do get people to leave, but honestly, you can just as easily get people to leave if your story is stupid and they feel like the DM is babying them by not having them die when they should. I do not want to have a victory handed to me, or be patronized by letting me survive when I clearly should not have. If anything, I'll probably make a new character anyway, because that character is humiliated beyond belief at that point.

I likely have no further desire to play that character anymore, because he's a loser. At the very least killing him off lets him go down with a warrior's death and some dignity, as opposed to living on in shame in some obvious DM pity scenario that shows he's only alive because the gods took pity on his pathetic existence. Instead of playing out some humiliating nonsensical capture scenario, just describe a good death scene for the guy and let him go down with honor. I'd rather remember a memorable death as opposed to turning my character into some kind of joke.

"Hey dude, remember that guy of yours that kept getting thrown in wolf jail? Then that gelationous cube ran over him and dragged away his magic armor leaving him naked for the rest of the adventure."

As far as introducing people to D&D, they need to learn that character death is just a natural thing that happens in the game. When you play Monopoly, sometimes you run out of money. When you play chess, sometimes you get checkmated. When you play D&D, sometimes your character dies. It's just how the game goes.

[A Man In Black]

As far as people complaining that their guy died, that is seriously an issue of manning up. Nobody likes to lose. Nobody, but it's just not something people should be complaining about.

And that is narrowing the appeal of an already narrow-appeal game even further to people who don't mind playing on hardcore mode and who don't mind sitting out for two weeks when the GM fucks up and doesn't get the pace right. Sorry, I'm not really accepting your "Well, the GM can fix it" answer as a solution. Nor am I accepting your "Well, D&D is as bad as Monopoly, suck it up" answer, either.

If you want to let a character who loses die, you can totally just let him die. Lethality becomes an opt-in situation. "He dies of his wounds" is a player-agency option, rather than the default situation any time a PC is dropped in combat. If you personally enjoy that, fine. But don't be such an egomaniac to assume that every player everywhere ever enjoys that all of the time.

[DSMatticus]

Nobody likes to lose.

Shut the fuck up already. Everytime someone says PC death, you jump at the first opportunity to replace those words with "failure" or "lose" or any other stupid shit, after having had it explained to you countless times that everyone in this thread who is anti-PC death still accepts the existence of failure states (i.e. loss).

This is getting really old, really obvious, and you should shove it up your ass. It is a really pathetic, transparent strawman that you have refused to stop using after having its utter fallacious shoved in your face.

[Josh_Kablack]

think the issue comes down to two conflicting implied contracts.

Firstly: In the game of D&D, the rules explicitly lay out the chances of character death, and so it's reasonable for people who agree to play a game of D&D to expect that those rules will be followed and there will be an honest chance of character death.

Secondly: In any role-playing game, people are there because it's entertaining for them to play the role of a character. If it's not entertaining, they'll go play smash brothers or chess or cello or something that is instead. In this context, it's reasonable for participants to expect that they will be entertained and have the opportunity to play their character. PC death is often contrary to both of these expectations and so it's kinda unreasonable to expect players to be cool with it.

The easy way out is to just play RPGs that aren't D&D and have reduced or nonexistent chances of PC death - because in that case expectations are not in conflict.

Have the subsequent 23 pages of posts brought up any additional insights on either side?

[A Man In Black]

Have the subsequent 23 pages of posts brought up any additional insights on either side?

Well, one.

D&D is currently designed (mostly) with the permanent-death, booted-from-the-game, character-investment contract until higher levels, when character resurrection is cheaper and accessible. However, it's not impossible to conceive of a D&D designed to the alternate character contract, although it would require not only redesigning the combat and hazard RNGs, but also redesigning the behavior, motivations, and abilities of many monsters. Things haven't advanced to the point where there could be any sort of discussion/argument about whether that game would bear any resemblance to D&D.

[tussock]

@Tussock, that's actually not actually a defense of Shadow_Balls' claim {...}. You're saying something completely different than what he did.

Well spotted. I am not Shadow_Balls, and I am not making his argument for him. I disagree with the anti-deathers here for my own reasons.

I think we all agree on this, though:
1) Failures are acceptable outcomes. PC's can and occasionally should lose.
2) Permanent failures are acceptable outcomes. When PC's lose, that should have lasting consequences.
3) Killing someone's character is a terrible permanent failure and not an acceptable outcome.

I say 3 because D&D favors lengthy character creation that kicks unprepared players out of the game. K says 3 because D&D favors lengthy character creation that encourages investment. Fuchs says something along those lines, maybe. I'm not entirely sure. And I'm not sure who else is around that says what.

1&2) You can't fail D&D. It doesn't really work like that. The game can end, people get bored of it and stop making the time to turn up, but if you're still playing it's all good. I know that's meta-game, but so are your concerns about character death.

OK, so you want in-game penalties with minimal meta-game costs. Me too, I just consider that no death has a big meta-game cost, promoting the sort of boredom (and feelings of getting screwed when the DM does declare a death real) that are a threat to the game.

3) Because I see no harm in character death itself (as an in-game construct, y'all are doing some risky shit), and place a high value the threat it carries to the players, I quite happily work with whatever helps the meta-game issues it might raise. Like fixing slow character generation, making saves easier at high level, foreshadowing the BBEGs, being open and honest with player inquiry and building clues into the world that make it reasonably navigable.

Like using organic rolled stats, in order, swap 2, +2/-2 where you like for race, pick a class, and go. If the stats are crap, roll another one and play both. Feats, skills, spells and so on picked as you play, gear is an arbitrary pile of weight until you specify it. Give it a name, gender, alignment, and optimisation tweak some other time. Invest in characters you've spent hours playing, not building.

Though I did drive myself nuts trying to follow the creation rules to the letter for a couple years back in the day, but they're far less important than something like running out of spells or hit points. Preparing for the game vs playing it.

[K]

think the issue comes down to two conflicting implied contracts.

Firstly: In the game of D&D, the rules explicitly lay out the chances of character death, and so it's reasonable for people who agree to play a game of D&D to expect that those rules will be followed and there will be an honest chance of character death.

Secondly: In any role-playing game, people are there because it's entertaining for them to play the role of a character. If it's not entertaining, they'll go play smash brothers or chess or cello or something that is instead. In this context, it's reasonable for participants to expect that they will be entertained and have the opportunity to play their character. PC death is often contrary to both of these expectations and so it's kinda unreasonable to expect players to be cool with it.

The easy way out is to just play RPGs that aren't D&D and have reduced or nonexistent chances of PC death - because in that case expectations are not in conflict.

Have the subsequent 23 pages of posts brought up any additional insights on either side?

Yes.

The first position thinks that DnD is an objective and adversarial game with fixed benchmarks like Monopoly that punishes objectively bad choices. All of their issues stem from that easily dismissed position.

They also deny the existence of DM agency or attribute it to "bad DMs," another easily dismissed position. It's also a weird position because I'm not sure what they think DMs do other than rolling dice and consistently failing to kill their awesome characters in an adversarial fashion.

[tussock]

D&D is: a world to explore, full of horrors to destroy and treasures to recover from them. Players explore via specific characters.

DMs do: build said world, provide as much information about it as might be reasoned, and play said horrors as opponents of the PCs should they interact.

When the PCs get a "Woe" and open the door on the closet troll anyway, that's also fun, and players get good at running if they know they'll need to do it. IME.

[Swordslinger]

Shut the fuck up already. Everytime someone says PC death, you jump at the first opportunity to replace those words with "failure" or "lose" or any other stupid shit, after having had it explained to you countless times that everyone in this thread who is anti-PC death still accepts the existence of failure states (i.e. loss).

This is getting really old, really obvious, and you should shove it up your ass. It is a really pathetic, transparent strawman that you have refused to stop using after having its utter fallacious shoved in your face.

The problem is that the failure states people are suggesting are just not very believable in the context of the game and strain verisimilitude. 10,000 ton cubes of acidic gelatin runs over your character and he's fine. Wyverns carry you off to wyvern jail, where you're expected to somehow escape while badly wounded and without your weapon, even though you lost against the thing while you were fully healed and fully armed.

I wonder how many failed escape attempts you give PCs before you decide the wyvern finally eats them or if they're stuck in a never ending loop of getting KOed and waking up in wyvern jail.

Seriously, dudes, who the fuck are you guys kidding?

Those failure states are either ridiculously stupid as to lose all believability or they're mechanically impossible to the point that you might as well be dead anyway, because you're set up for an escape scenario that you cannot complete.

And to make matters worse, the PCs are the least heroic people in the damn setting because they're the only ones ever using lethal force and they themselves cannot die. For a game of heroic fantasy where PCs are supposed to feel like heroes, that's inexcusable.

[A Man In Black]

The problem is that the failure states people are suggesting are just not very believable in the context of the game and strain verisimilitude. 10,000 ton cubes of acidic gelatin runs over your character and he's fine. Wyverns carry you off to wyvern jail, where you're expected to somehow escape while badly wounded and without your weapon, even though you lost against the thing while you were fully healed and fully armed.

The problem here is that your game has incredibly stupid shit. Elephants don't weigh ten thousand tons (more like five), and gelatinous cubes are smaller and not nearly as dense. People totally do survive being trampled by elephants, although they're severely injured and incapacitated.

Wyverns paralyze you and a bunch of other animals and dump you in the nest for when the hatchlings emerge, and if the poison wears off before they hatch or the hatchlings are sated before they get to you, well, it looks like you lucked out. Alternately, you have the one-size-fits-all explanations of "wyverns are territorial and want to beat you up to make a point", "wyverns want to beat you up and steal your shit", or "wyverns are just sadistic bastards and like to hurt people". There are four perfectly functional explanations of why wyverns don't just kill people outright.

I've taken apart every single scenario you described as impossible to explain, Swordslinger. The problem is your failure of imagination. When your entire argument rests on the idea that only a "bad GM" would ever fail to give the players enough clues to succeed, that's pretty damning.