What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[echoVanguard]

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?

There's been a couple of interesting ideas brought up, but they keep getting plowed under by the back-and-forth ad hominems and rhetorical potshots. At this point I think people in the thread are a lot more interested in calling their opponents jerks than actually attempting to investigate workable solutions.

echo

[DSMatticus]

The problem is that the failure states people are suggesting are just not very believable in the context of the game and strain verisimilitude.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that everytime someone says PC death your response includes "man up and accept losing." If you want to argue from verisimilitude, knock yourself out. But "man up, losing happens" is not an argument from verisimilitude. It is an argument that PC death is essential for the game to have failure states. Except we have adequately explained to you that you can create failure states without PC death, and everyone here against PC death is fine with the existence of failure states, so at this point it is nothing more than a blatant and deliberate attempt to misrepresent our position. It's not ridiculing a particular quirk of the position for its apparent funniness despite being actually reasonable [predators dragging off living but crippled prey (actually happens) -> animal jail (sounds funny)], it's attempting to ridicule the position for something it does not actually fucking assert.

So if you want to argue from verisimilitude, maybe you should restrain yourself to doing that and not injecting your posts with unhealthy doses of irrelevant or fallacious bullshit.

Now, as for the actual argument from verisimilitude, at this point you're mostly just showing us your own lack of creativity. There are problematic examples where things get trickier and solutions may very well stretch verisimilitude, but "wyvern jail" just makes you look stupid because that one is easy. Even before Man_In_Black's latest round, K posted a few way back when. The entire dumb beast category is really, really easy. And it doesn't strain verisimilitude at all, because there is precedent in the real world and genre-relevant fiction.

[Shadow Balls]

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.

Dude, what the fuck? I can ignore when the idiots straw man me with bullshit, as I know that they cannot help themselves but now you're doing it. Explain yourself.

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.

Well, you're smart here at least.

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.

And then people like you show up and whine about death is too harsh, so let's channel James Mother Fucking Jacobs and implement something worse than death, and that is totally helpful and useful.

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.

They paralyze you with what? The CON, and not Dex damage poison that either weakens you but leaves you able to move or flat out kills you?

So after making a literal you die scenario into a you don't die scenario, you get to be a baby dwaggy snack... or not, and that being after mom beat you up and took your stuff, so you're basically helpless in addition to already being dead.

Do you see yourself type?

[Swordslinger]

Dude, what the fuck? I can ignore when the idiots straw man me with bullshit, as I know that they cannot help themselves but now you're doing it. Explain yourself.

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you there, I was just speaking to his outrageous misconceptions about you and making the point that even if he was correct where you're some kind of Tomb of Horrors style killer DM, it's still better than the kind of crap he's running because at the very least you're giving PCs a choice to choose their outcome. So even in K's worst case scenario, it's still going to end up creating more player agency than his style will, where the adventure literally just changes around the PCs to ensure they selected correctly.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that everytime someone says PC death your response includes "man up and accept losing." If you want to argue from verisimilitude, knock yourself out. But "man up, losing happens" is not an argument from verisimilitude.

So wait, you want me to explain how it's believable that people stabbing each other with swords may end up killing each other?

Maintaining verisimilitude by dying to deadly weapons is obvious. The burden of proof is on people trying to get away with crap like paralyzing people out with Con damage poison, having wraiths drag bodies and having people survive getting run over by 10,000 tons of acidic goo that is designed to sweep stuff up that's in its path and engulf it.

People here don't want to remove death from the RNG because it breaks verisimilitude or isn't logical. They want to remove it because people can't handle having their characters die. And to that I simply say: "Hey dude, man up."

I feel like I'm at a boxing match where one of the boxers says "Hey what the fuck man, that guy just punched me in the face!"

[DSMatticus]

And then people like you show up and whine about death is too harsh, so let's channel James Mother Fucking Jacobs and implement something worse than death, and that is totally helpful and useful.

You have no idea what any of the arguments actually are. Despite having them explained to you several times. And everyime you open your mouth this is more and more obvious. For one, how is a minute of event description ("the wyvern drags you back to its nest to feed you to its hatchlings, [blah blah blah, it does something else like go find food for itself], but before they begin tearing at you, you feel movement coming back to your limbs") and 2-3 skill checks (climb, jump, blah blah) worse than death? Because you don't have your shiny magic sword anymore? The wyvern didn't eat it, it's right back where the battle was.

They paralyze you with what? The CON, and not Dex damage poison that either weakens you but leaves you able to move or flat out kills you?

"The rules say you died, ergo the argument that the rules should say you should not have died is invalid." Hint: the anti-death crowd is probably interested in not killing you at -10 HP, because 10 damage is a really tiny amount. And they're probably interested in not killing you at 0 CON, or on a single save, or any of that shit. Because when you're anti-death, presumably you are against mechanics that lead immediately and irrevocably to unsalvageable PC death. "But X is" is not a response to "X should be." This was really fucking stupid.

So after making a literal you die scenario into a you don't die scenario, you get to be a baby dwaggy snack

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.

Are you not reading the posts, or just choosing to ignore the parts that conflict with the way you want to interpret what we're saying?

it's still better than the kind of crap he's running because at the very least you're giving PCs a choice to choose their outcome

This is exactly the shit I'm talking about. PC agency and death are entirely separate.

Scenario 1: Why death does not necessarily imply PC agency:
The orc rolls a critical and one-hits the unlucky rogue. Where is the PC agency? No where. This is an example of death in spite of PC agency.

Scenario 2: Why PC agency does not necessarily depend on death:
The party can choose to side with the Kingdom of Blahsterston or the Kingdom of Gobbowobbia. Neither situation necessitates PC death, yet is meaningful player agency.

Until you propose someone the literal options: "death" or "something else," and they choose death deliberately and knowingly, death has not added any player agency what-so-fucking-ever. By definition.

where the adventure literally just changes around the PCs to ensure they selected correctly.

Remember when I said you have no fucking idea how to tell the difference between failure and PC death? Here it is again.

Scenario 1: Bad decision with failure and with PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff. The dragon destroys him and he dies.

Scenario 2: Bad decision with failure and without PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff. The dragon horribly mauls him and he sits out the rest of the combat and if the party fails the encounter the dragon eats the princess and the king isn't going to reward them and probably will in fact hate them.

Scenario 3: Bad decision without failure and without PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff and sticks it through his eye, killing it instantly. Because FUCK YEAH, PC'S ALWAYS WIN.

When we say "scenario 2," you accuse us of "scenario 3."

So wait, you want me to explain how it's believable that people stabbing each other with swords may end up killing each other?

No. I want you to shut the fuck up about things that have nothing to do with verisimilitude, like the above shit. Because it is blatantly fucking fallacious. If you want to argue verisimilitude, go right ahead. But right now you aren't doing that, you're trying to argue verisimilitude while taking jabs at "you hate PC loss," or "you hate PC failure," or "you hate player agency" and those are bullshit and at this point there is nothing left to attribute your insistence on using them to but stupidity or willful deceit.

The argument about verisimilitude can wait until you're through being a dumbass about everything else.

[tzor]

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).

Would you prefer he argue "Nobody likes to die?" Because no one really lies to die, it hurts, it's annoying, it's a pain all over. Not to mention that it's generally very messy.

Odd how the whole thing changes when the one dying is the monster/NPC.

Now the evil DM would have this unknown NPC approach the PC, draw a weapon and start repeating, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

[Shadow Balls]

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you there, I was just speaking to his outrageous misconceptions about you and making the point that even if he was correct where you're some kind of Tomb of Horrors style killer DM, it's still better than the kind of crap he's running because at the very least you're giving PCs a choice to choose their outcome. So even in K's worst case scenario, it's still going to end up creating more player agency than his style will, where the adventure literally just changes around the PCs to ensure they selected correctly.

Well I'm not. But the tard squad can charitably be described as selective readers, so they're going to read that, make assumptions (and you know what those are) about what my games are like, and then spew more of their bullshit everywhere.

There isn't a single person here, to my knowledge that knows what my games are like.

Here's a simple example:

The party is attacked by a large group of well coordinated enemies. Now if they choose to interrogate these enemies, and successfully do so, they can learn any and all of the following:

Their base of operations is a ruined castle. They can easily determine only one location in the area meets that description.
Their leader's name, and a general idea of his abilities.
Their subcommand's name, and a general idea of his abilities.
A vague, ominous warning that war is coming to the region.

Alternately, they can just kill all the enemies. At which point they'd learn the castle exists, if they don't already know about it but not that it is occupied, or by who and they'd learn the real danger of the situation later. But they totally could just stab all the enemies in the face, and then Leeroy Jenkins into the castle and learn it's an army base the hard way. And it would be a lot harder. Not guaranteed death harder, but a lot harder than it'd be had they taken steps to better learn of the situation.

And when they actually get there, well they can keep up the Leeroy Jenkins and fight everyone at once or they can systematically sweep it and not give them much time to react.

Neither of these will result in automatic death, but as you can imagine choosing the stupid way will result in the punishment of the enemies being much better able to hold their fortification. Conversely, choosing the smart way puts you at much less of a risk.

And despite what the idiots say, at no point is this the DM being a dick, or anything other than the REFEREE he is supposed to be.

Maintaining verisimilitude by dying to deadly weapons is obvious. The burden of proof is on people trying to get away with crap like paralyzing people out with Con damage poison, having wraiths drag bodies and having people survive getting run over by 10,000 tons of acidic goo that is designed to sweep stuff up that's in its path and engulf it.

To be fair, cubes are NOT that heavy, but that's just the idiots nitpicking because they cannot address your actual arguments.

People here don't want to remove death from the RNG because it breaks verisimilitude or isn't logical. They want to remove it because people can't handle having their characters die. And to that I simply say: "Hey dude, man up."

I feel like I'm at a boxing match where one of the boxers says "Hey what the fuck man, that guy just punched me in the face!"

I loled. So true.

You have no idea what any of the arguments actually are. Despite having them explained to you several times. And everyime you open your mouth this is more and more obvious. For one, how is a minute of event description ("the wyvern drags you back to its nest to feed you to its hatchlings, [blah blah blah, it does something else like go find food for itself], but before they begin tearing at you, you feel movement coming back to your limbs") and 2-3 skill checks (climb, jump, blah blah) worse than death? Because you don't have your shiny magic sword anymore? The wyvern didn't eat it, it's right back where the battle was.

Says the guy who constantly argues with a straw man and tilts at windmills.

And let me count the ways...

DEX damage paralyzes. Not CON.
If it were DEX damage, you recover 1 point per DAY. Which means even if Wyverns had Dex poison, and they don't, and even if they did EXACTLY enough to take you to 0 without going lower, which they probably didn't, that means you don't recover for a day, so you are a baby dwaggy snack.
Even if you ignore all that, lol at the skills no one puts points into, and lol at running around with 1 HP, 1 Dex, and 0 gear.

"The rules say you died, ergo the argument that the rules should say you should not have died is invalid." Hint: the anti-death crowd is probably interested in not killing you at -10 HP, because 10 damage is a really tiny amount. And they're probably interested in not killing you at 0 CON, or on a single save, or any of that shit. Because when you're anti-death, presumably you are against mechanics that lead immediately and irrevocably to unsalvageable PC death. "But X is" is not a response to "X should be." This was really fucking stupid.

I agree, that was really fucking stupid. So why did you write something that was so very fucking stupid?

Are you not reading the posts, or just choosing to ignore the parts that conflict with the way you want to interpret what we're saying?

Are you not reading the posts, or just choosing to ignore the parts that conflict with the way you want to interpret what we're saying?

This is exactly the shit I'm talking about. PC agency and death are entirely separate.

Bullfuckingshit.

Scenario 1: Why death does not necessarily imply PC agency:
The orc rolls a critical and one-hits the unlucky rogue. Where is the PC agency? No where. This is an example of death in spite of PC agency.

Congratulations, you've proven the game before level 3 is total shit because it's pure randomness with no agency. Would you like a fucking cookie? Because I already knew that, and I suspect he did as well. The keywords though are no agency. Which is what you get when the idiots have their way. For a different reason granted, but it is what you get.

Scenario 2: Why PC agency does not necessarily depend on death:
The party can choose to side with the Kingdom of Blahsterston or the Kingdom of Gobbowobbia. Neither situation necessitates PC death, yet is meaningful player agency.

We're talking about railroaders. The same shit is going to happen anyways, so don't pretend otherwise.

Scenario 1: Bad decision with failure and with PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff. The dragon destroys him and he dies.

Scenario 2: Bad decision with failure and without PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff. The dragon horribly mauls him and he sits out the rest of the combat and if the party fails the encounter the dragon eats the princess and the king isn't going to reward them and probably will in fact hate them.

So the dragon nicely beats down the stupid smart Wizard with a nerf bat? Yeah, that totally makes your world believable, realistic, and not the generator of throwaway comedy devices.

[A Man In Black]

I'm going to break my usual rule of ignoring Shadow Ball's dribbling because he offered a perfect example.

So the dragon nicely beats down the stupid smart Wizard with a nerf bat? Yeah, that totally makes your world believable, realistic, and not the generator of throwaway comedy devices.

No. The dragon smacks the wizard flying into the opposite wall and the wizard slumps to the ground, unconscious.

You know, like in every fantasy novel, movie, television show, and comic ever.

[Swordslinger]

This is exactly the shit I'm talking about. PC agency and death are entirely separate.

Scenario 1: Why death does not necessarily imply PC agency:
The orc rolls a critical and one-hits the unlucky rogue. Where is the PC agency? No where. This is an example of death in spite of PC agency.

That's in fact, rules agency and RNG agency, another thing prevented by retconning deaths. But remember K said that 99% of PC deaths are the DM's fault. So that's not only challenging PC agency, but also the impact of the RNG and the rules too. Even if the rules declare a PC dead, basically K wants the DM to specifically override that.

Scenario 2: Why PC agency does not necessarily depend on death:
The party can choose to side with the Kingdom of Blahsterston or the Kingdom of Gobbowobbia. Neither situation necessitates PC death, yet is meaningful player agency.

This is talking about PC agency in combat, and the question of why you run the encounter at all, because that battle with the wyvern seems to hold no real purpose if the PCs aren't threatened.

Scenario 2: Bad decision with failure and without PC death:
The wizard charges the dragon with a staff. The dragon horribly mauls him and he sits out the rest of the combat and if the party fails the encounter the dragon eats the princess and the king isn't going to reward them and probably will in fact hate them.

And the problem here is verisimilitude. If the party "fails the encounter" they should probably be dead. Is the dragon going to let them all survive after it KOs them all? Are they all going to miraculously not bleed out?

Are they all going to make common practice of just getting up after a defeat where the monster flies away, leaving them for dead and conveniently with all their possessions and character wealth, all with stories of "Hey man, remember that time you got swallowed whole by that purple worm, then we all got knocked out and it just spit you out for no reason and went on its way? "

The problem you seem to be having is that beacuse I'm saying death is a possible result of failure, you seem to be interpreting it as death is the only possible result of failure. I'm not saying you can't sometimes run capture scenarios or what not, but once you take death off the table entirely, then shit gets ridiculous.

No. I want you to shut the fuck up about things that have nothing to do with verisimilitude, like the above shit. Because it is blatantly fucking fallacious. If you want to argue verisimilitude, go right ahead.

I have been and people have been blatantly ignoring it. Seriously I've yet to see a comeback to the point that heroes are no longer heroes if they can't die, or that any of these miraculous PC survivals after being run over by a 10,000 ton cube of acidic goo make any sense whatsoever.

People are just glossing over it with the implication of making the game a total cartoon reality.

Aragorn gets run over by a cube of acidic goo and leaves this steaming pancake version of himself, then Legolas picks him up and shakes him a few times, he inflates to normal size, the acid miraculously splashes off harmlessly and he's good as new. His face isn't all dissolved by acid, hes not badly incapacitated by grievous crushed bones and injuries. No. this dude is just like good to go for the next room, because god forbid a player ever have to sit out.

And everyone at the table knows he was never at risk. But that's the point everyone is glossing over. Do you really want your adventure to feel that way? Do you want PCs to treat your monsters like a joke? How will they take anything in the game seriously? How are the PCs heroes if you're not even facing death ever. I'm more of a fucking hero in real life since I have a greater chance of getting killed driving to the store to buy my friend a christmas present.

People are going to realize that the monsters are armed with Elmer Fudd's shotgun, the PCs are at no real risk of dying and yet the PCs are attacking with lethal force anyway.

And all that stuff affects verisimilitude. You can pretend it doesn't, but it does.

But right now you aren't doing that, you're trying to argue verisimilitude while taking jabs at "you hate PC loss," or "you hate PC failure," or "you hate player agency" and those are bullshit and at this point there is nothing left to attribute your insistence on using them to but stupidity or willful deceit.

Because hating PC loss is what this argument is actually all about. You're not anti-death this because you want to tell a more believable story.

You're doing it because you have PCs that whine about not being able to play or that they have to make new characters. And you're trying to appease these whiners.

And that's the only reason. Lets not fucking kid ourselves.

[A Man In Black]

That's in fact, rules agency and RNG agency, another thing prevented by retconning deaths. But remember K said that 99% of PC deaths are the DM's fault. So that's not only challenging PC agency, but also the impact of the RNG and the rules too. Even if the rules declare a PC dead, basically K wants the DM to specifically override that.

Most PC deaths are a Kobiyashi Maru set up by the GM. The dice roll numbers, the PCs make decisions, but the upshot is that the GM set up a bad situation for the GMs and when he had an opportunity to fix it, he did nothing.

Are they all going to make common practice of just getting up after a defeat where the monster flies away, leaving them for dead and conveniently with all their possessions and character wealth, all with stories of "Hey man, remember that time you got swallowed whole by that purple worm, then we all got knocked out and it just spit you out for no reason and went on its way? "

Set up purple worms as puzzle monsters, Leviathan-style. Expect that PCs will lose to them, and have to figure out how to escape via indigestion. It's a little arbitrary for my tastes, like figuring out that trolls are weak to fire and acid, but it's a start on brainstorming. As for the dragon, it's the standard territorial/sadistic/greedy trifecta.

Aragorn gets run over by a cube of acidic goo and leaves this steaming pancake version of himself, then Legolas picks him up and shakes him a few times, he inflates to normal size, the acid miraculously splashes off harmlessly and he's good as new. His face isn't all dissolved by acid, hes not badly incapacitated by grievous crushed bones and injuries. No. this dude is just like good to go for the next room, because god forbid a player ever have to sit out.

No, one person regains consciousness, and starts waking people up. Whoever's in the best condition starts improvising crutches, bandages, and slings, they bandage up their wounds, then slowly and laboriously dragass back to somewhere safe (or back to somewhere they can hook up with someone) and start recuperating.

[Shadow Balls]

So the dragon nicely beats down the stupid smart Wizard with a nerf bat? Yeah, that totally makes your world believable, realistic, and not the generator of throwaway comedy devices.

No. The dragon smacks the wizard flying into the opposite wall and the wizard slumps to the ground, unconscious.

You know, like in every fantasy novel, movie, television show, and comic ever.

Ah yes, those things that no one takes seriously because they're just the author masturbating in public and no one wants to see that. Great argument! Truly, you are a Real Man of Genius(tm)!

As for the whiners, Sword there is dead on about them. Ultimately, the basket weavers themselves are the biggest reasons to crack down on basket weavers. All their strawman esque parodies of how games go when people die when they are killed? While they are exactly that, twisted parodies their ranting is a good case for making games like that, deliberately, just to make them cry like the bitches they are.

[Stubbazubba]

Aragorn gets run over by a cube of acidic goo and leaves this steaming pancake version of himself, then Legolas picks him up and shakes him a few times, he inflates to normal size, the acid miraculously splashes off harmlessly and he's good as new.

I lol'd.

But, to be serious, the real problem with your appeal to verisimilitude is that D&D as-is breaks it in half already; you have this ridiculous abstraction called HP which allows you to confidently jump off of 200' cliffs and then run into combat with a dragon totally unimpeded, and that's not even epic level yet. The whole game is a smack to the face of verisimilitude, if you want it to be, and thus described as follows:

His face isn't all dissolved by acid, hes not badly incapacitated by grievous crushed bones and injuries. No. this dude is just like good to go for the next room, because he still has 6 HP left.

It's already a cartoon reality; the rules simply do not maintain verisimilitude as-is. Consider the fact that wolves typically don't fight to the death; if the party is capable of defending itself from them for more than a round or two, they should flee because no wolf pack is stupid enough to take 80% casualties.

Even with the level of lethality that is already present, the game is already a cartoon reality; a bunch of murder hobos go around and never fail in combat until the time they die, they never pause to consider the world around them at all because the only fail state they will ever encounter is death, so anything less than that is a victory. So long as someone in the party survives (and sometimes not even that), the princess and the kingdom are all but rescued already.

I don't see the offense in changing that to a different imaginary world where wraiths simply can't kill you so easily, and wolves stockpile food. Protecting monster traits at the expense of real-time player involvement and more importantly, the real possibility of character failure and the development that can come from it, doesn't seem like it's worthwhile to me. I would choose the latter every time.

[Archmage]

So the dragon nicely beats down the stupid smart Wizard with a nerf bat? Yeah, that totally makes your world believable, realistic, and not the generator of throwaway comedy devices.

No. The dragon smacks the wizard flying into the opposite wall and the wizard slumps to the ground, unconscious.

You know, like in every fantasy novel, movie, television show, and comic ever.

Ah yes, those things that no one takes seriously because they're just the author masturbating in public and no one wants to see that. Great argument! Truly, you are a Real Man of Genius(tm)!

You're right! No one wants to watch movies or read books! How could we have been so blind!?

[Shadow Balls]

And no one takes those things seriously. Hell, this very board bitches about how plot armor renders accomplishments invalid, even as people here demand the same damn thing.

You have dumbass mother fuckers saying shit like this with a straight face:

Most PC deaths are a Kobiyashi Maru set up by the GM.

Translation: If you die, it's because the DM set up a bullshit, mindfuck near impossible scenario, that was only designed that way because that game has save states and D&D does not. It couldn't possibly be that the player was at fault, or the character, oh no. We can't have people taking responsibility for their own actions!

And then, a decade from now when America has a Chinese dick up their ass, we will turn to people like him, and we will say:

Fuck you, you fucking fucker.

[TGFBS]EDIT: Wishing death on someone is forbidden[/TGFBS]

[DSMatticus]

DEX damage paralyzes. Not CON.
If it were DEX damage, you recover 1 point per DAY. Which means even if Wyverns had Dex poison, and they don't, and even if they did EXACTLY enough to take you to 0 without going lower, which they probably didn't, that means you don't recover for a day, so you are a baby dwaggy snack.
Even if you ignore all that, lol at the skills no one puts points into, and lol at running around with 1 HP, 1 Dex, and 0 gear.

Holy shit, you did it again. Seriously, do you not understand how stupid the shit you're saying is? We're discussing the need for some change to D&D, and your response is "but things are currently X, therefore X is best."

Judging from the exact next thing you said, the fact that your argument is literally "status quo, ergo status quo" went completely over your head.

Blah blah blah, more bullshit... Here's something:

Congratulations, you've proven the game before level 3 is total shit because it's pure randomness with no agency. Would you like a fucking cookie? Because I already knew that, and I suspect he did as well. The keywords though are no agency. Which is what you get when the idiots have their way. For a different reason granted, but it is what you get.

Save or dies exist. Apparently, the game is pure randomness with no agency the entire way through.

Also, scenario: The level 3 players can choose to pursue the enemy wagon train carrying prisoners, or attempt to head off a group of raiders headed for a nearby village. OH MAI GAWD. PLAYERS HAD A CHOICE AT LEVEL 3! AGENCY!

So the dragon nicely beats down the stupid smart Wizard with a nerf bat? Yeah, that totally makes your world believable, realistic, and not the generator of throwaway comedy devices.

So you can't imagine someone being horribly mauled (I just googled elephant attack, they're big) and surviving unless the animal was made of nerf bats. Congratulations, you are now denying things that actually happen in the real world to explain why they're impossible in D&D.

That's in fact, rules agency and RNG agency

Full stop. There are two problems here.
1) You don't know what agency is. Agency is deliberate action. A d20 roll is not expressing agency. A coinflip is not expressing agency. The rules for monopoly do not express agency. Agents playing the game of monopoly and interacting wth their random d6 express agency by making decisions based on their environment around them. Something neither rules nor dice do. This is just not what agency means. You may as well say rocks have agency.
2) This goes back to Shadow Ball's "status quo, ergo status quo." What if the rules (and the associated RNG's) just don't have death on the table? Now, whatever you actually mean by "rules agency" and "RNG agency" is upheld because the result space is not being restricted externally.

Again, you're doing this weird thing where we say, "we should take death off the RNG and limit the rules surrounding it," and you see "we should retcon every death that happens into nonexistence." And then attacking that, even though that has nothing to do with anything.

This is talking about PC agency in combat, and the question of why you run the encounter at all, because that battle with the wyvern seems to hold no real purpose if the PCs aren't threatened.

You don't have to threaten people with death, you threaten them with loss and any other of limitless consequences you can imagine. The PC's all have goals. The game has a story. Because the PC's can choose to side with Blahsterston and lose and then Blahsterston stops existing. And when the results of individual combats have effects on campaign goals, the battles are meaningful. If they were moving through the wyvern's territory to reach some place, and the wyvern runs them off, this path is now blocked to them and they have wasted time and supplies and that may mean failing such an objective.

Now, if you play D&D as a beer & pretzels "get together and stab monsters, nothing you do matters beyond the kill or be killed," yeah. This is hard to do. But adding significant death to a game like that is taking it to seriously to begin with; that's why they call it beer & pretzels. It's not serious.

Because hating PC loss is what this argument is actually all about. You're not anti-death this because you want to tell a more believable story.

I don't think you really understand the ramifications of what you're arguing. The game is about superheroes with magic (at least by the level where you're fighting dragons that aren't the size of large dogs/tigers and "10,000 tons" of gelatinuous cube), and you're saying you can't understand them surviving tremendous injuries that sometimes don't even kill normal people (see vicious animal mauling survivors)?

[RadiantPhoenix]

But, to be serious, the real problem with your appeal to verisimilitude is that D&D as-is breaks it in half already; you have this ridiculous abstraction called HP which allows you to confidently jump off of 200' cliffs and then run into combat with a dragon totally unimpeded, and that's not even epic level yet.

STOP SAYING WORDS!

Verisimilitude and realism are not the same thing! Verisimilitude means that the story makes sense given the premises, not that it would sound plausible if someone claimed it happened in real life.

Realism went out the window in chapter zero when they mentioned 'spells'!

[Swordslinger]

Most PC deaths are a Kobiyashi Maru set up by the GM. The dice roll numbers, the PCs make decisions, but the upshot is that the GM set up a bad situation for the GMs and when he had an opportunity to fix it, he did nothing.

This idea needs to die in a fucking fire.

If you die just because an orc happened to roll a natural 20 with a greataxe and kill you, that's just D&D. That's not some unwinnable situation, it could be 4 PCs on 1 orc and that shit could still fucking happen. And that's the majority of deaths in D&D. It's somebody fails a roll against a beholder's death ray or somebody gets hit with a lucky critical.

If you want to blame the designers for poor game design, that'd be one thing, but blaming the DM is total bullshit and a copout for whiners who don't have the spine to admit that they played poorly or even just had bad luck.

The DM is supposed to throw dangerous monsters at the PCs! It's the basic premise of the damn game.

Stop fucking trying to pretend that everyone here is running Tomb of Horrors and 95% of PCs are killed by rule-defying, no-save deathtraps. That's not the case and you know it.

If you want to bash Monte Cook for designing a shitty game where character death is too common, go ahead, but don't bash a DM for running the fucking game how it's supposed to be run.

[Shadow Balls]

Holy shit, you did it again. Seriously, do you not understand how stupid the shit you're saying is? We're discussing the need for some change to D&D, and your response is "but things are currently X, therefore X is best."

I understand how stupid the shit is you're saying. You're saying break the rules in very obvious and very retarded ways, hiding behind the facade of houserules so that people do not die when they are killed.

Save or dies exist. Apparently, the game is pure randomness with no agency the entire way through.

By level 3, you have actual abilities. So you aren't just stuck hoping the enemy rolls under 10, or that you roll over 11. You can actually do things to counter enemy moves. So no, no it fucking isn't you fucking dumbass.

Also, scenario: The level 3 players can choose to pursue the enemy wagon train carrying prisoners, or attempt to head off a group of raiders headed for a nearby village. OH MAI GAWD. PLAYERS HAD A CHOICE AT LEVEL 3! AGENCY!

I find this funny coming from one of the railroaders.

[Stubbazubba]

But, to be serious, the real problem with your appeal to verisimilitude is that D&D as-is breaks it in half already; you have this ridiculous abstraction called HP which allows you to confidently jump off of 200' cliffs and then run into combat with a dragon totally unimpeded, and that's not even epic level yet.

STOP SAYING WORDS!

Verisimilitude and realism are not the same thing! Verisimilitude means that the story makes sense given the premises, not that it would sound plausible if someone claimed it happened in real life.

Realism went out the window in chapter zero when they mentioned 'spells'!

Actually that's exactly what verisimilitude means; that it resembles reality, or it's probable. Which is Swordslinger's beef with alternative fail states. His problem with them is that they strain the credibility of the setting (Why do wolves drag you back to wolf jail instead of killing you on the spot? Why don't wraiths finish eating your soul once they've downed you instead of incorporealy dragging you to wraith jail? Why do gelatinous cubes not crush you when they roll over you?) compared to reality, not from an in-universe standpoint. His beef is that it strains his WSoD, which is a perfectly valid concern, but I would argue that D&D is already full of WSoD-breakers as-is, and the introduction of these minor ones would fix some larger, more important ones and make the game more enjoyable as a whole.

But, leaving that behind, let's consider your definition of verisimilitude:

Using your definition of verisimilitude, then, no appeal to verisimilitude is possible; if we say wolves have wolf jail with wolf guards and wolf keys, and that's the premise, then there is no verisimilitude problem with wolf jail. Using your definition of verisimilitude, Swordslinger's example of Legolas re-inflating Aragorn after being steamrolled by a Gelatinous Cube is not a problem whatsoever, so long as the game's rules do, in fact, produce that result. I suppose Legolas and Aragorn would have to be renamed, because in Middle-earth, that wouldn't make sense, but then again, there are no Gelatinous Cubes in Middle-earth, nor are there spells like D&D's, nor is the majority of these things that we're talking about. Regardless, since we can create the universe, then what makes sense in-universe is also our decision, so it wouldn't be a legitimate objection to wolf jail. If that's what verisimilitude actually meant.

[DSMatticus]

Actually that's exactly what verisimilitude means; that it resembles reality, or it's probable.

Whoa. No, no it doesn't. That's actually a really, really important distinction. Notice that your given link doesn't use realistic anywhere, it uses "resemblance of truth." For example, in the real world someone hurling a fireball from their hands is not likely to have any "resemblance of truth." In a world with magic, it does. So D&D breaks realism in half already, and verisimilitude is unharmed because D&D is explicitly a world where high level characters can jump off cliffs and survive relatively unharmed.

So, things get weird here. Because parts of the complaints are appeals to realism, and parts are appeals to verisimilitude. For example, Shadow Balls bitching about nerf bat dragons; that's an appeal to realism. It literally ignores the fact that wizards who are fighting dragons are explicitly in-universe superheroes who take more punishment than lowly mortals. And it's a faulty appeal to realism, because normal humans can already physically survive being trampled by elephants, and that's pretty bad.

Now, the complaints about wolf jail are both an appeal to realism and appeal to verisimilitude, because it assumes fictional wolves act like real wolves (completely reasonable), and then says real world wolves would always kill their prey (this is actually debatable; there are plenty of predatorial animals that only disable prey and then drag them around for a short term or let their young play with them, and all you have to do is say that happens and then give them a few seconds to climb a tree).

So, ultimately, your original criticism of their "appeal to verisimilitude" is spot on for parts of their arguments (because they're mixing in "appeals to realism"), and less applicable for other parts. But it's certainly mislabeled.

if we say wolves have wolf jail with wolf guards and wolf keys, and that's the premise, then there is no verisimilitude problem with wolf jail.

And the reason this isn't a real complaint is that we don't actually say that about the setting. We could, but that's not the kind of setting we want to tell stories about. You can solve any verisimilitude problem by changing the underlying facts of the setting. But then you have changed the underlying facts of the setting, and you may have made it a less or more interesting place. And literal wolf jail sounds pretty stupid. That's why they keep using it as a strawman name for legitimate, real-world predator behaviors; it's not actually unrealistic, so they just want to make it sound funny because to them that's apparently almost as good as having an argument.

[DSMatticus]

You're saying break the rules in very obvious and very retarded ways, hiding behind the facade of houserules so that people do not die when they are killed.

There is really a lot wrong with this sentence.
1) "break the rules in very obvious and retarded ways"
See, the people at WOTC are fallible. I was under the impression that everyone who had ever touched any D&D product ever was aware of their retardation. If you weren't, allow me to initiate you: core casters owning everyone is not a design feature, it is a design flaw. You're just telling us "don't change the rules because the rules say X!" Didn't you take a jab at Republicans earlier? Do you find it ironic that the argument you're now presenting against change is that... it's change?

2) "facade of houserules"
So, you're bitching about house rules. At the home of the Tomes.

3) "people do not die when they are killed"
And this is pretty weirdly fallacious and circular. Again. Because if you change the rules such that X does not kill you, then you don't die when X happens. And therefore, the statement "you die when you are killed" holds because you are never killed. Funny how that works.

The rest of your post is similarly stupid (and non-responsive: "LOL U R RAILROADER"), so let me make a simple request to try and... I don't know, get you focused again. What role does PC death fulfill in D&D that cannot be fulfilled by other mechanisms?

[K]

Now, the complaints about wolf jail are both an appeal to realism and appeal to verisimilitude, because it assumes fictional wolves act like real wolves (completely reasonable), and then says real world wolves would always kill their prey (this is actually debatable; there are plenty of predatorial animals that only disable prey and then drag them around for a short term or let their young play with them, and all you have to do is say that happens and then give them a few seconds to climb a tree).

If you are talking about wolf attacks, you have already decided you are using fantasy wolves because the number of actual wolf attacks on people is so few that you can list the last several centuries of them world-wide on a medium-sized wiki entry and most suspiciously look like the acts of human criminals being blamed on wolves.

We don't even need to mention that DnD wolves can be as large as horses (4-6 HD normal wolf entry has them at Large) and might be as smart as a human and be able to read (Int 3 is possible at 4 HD) and might cast spells (choose Legacy feats and be 6th level), all of which are convincing arguments for DnD wolves being fantasy wolves and not real ones.

Once you've decided that DnD uses fantasy wolves, the "realism" game is over.

This reminds me of an argument I once had about DnD giant ants. The other poster tried to quote long lists of real-life ant qualities and talk about their great sense of smell and how ants were blind and both things would make them immune to illusions. I just had to keep pointing back to the monster entry that has them not having the scent ability or blindsight and having darkvision instead.

The fact that the game of DnD doesn't require permanent death and simply includes it as a DM-inflicted option also makes me think that the pro-death crew is simply trying to turn DnD into something it's not. I mean, Monopoly never ends if you don't eliminate players, but DnD simply never ends simply because it can't end under any condition apart from everyone choosing to stop playing. Even PC death just means a new PC enters play and a DM leaving means someone else gets to be DM.

The "punishment" of permanent death is getting to keep playing at roughly the same power level and wealth that you left with. There really isn't a strong argument to do it at all.

Simply stated, permanent PC death is a houserule that is a large deviation from a game where even a 1st level character can be raised from the dead. It's like playing Monopoly and deciding that the winner is the first person or team with 10,000 dollars and no one can be eliminated.... it's a pretty big houserule even if it makes the game more fun for some people.

[A Man In Black]

I am pretty sure at this point that this argument is everyone yelling at Shadow Balls and Swordslinger and SB trolling back and Swordslinger yelling back, and that's just not productive.

So I'm going lay out my whole argument and sketch a game so people can tear me a new asshole. Fair warning, I have Shadow Balls on ignore so I'll need someone to quote any salient points he might have, but I welcome Swordslinger, tzor, and... there was someone else who was arguing that removing character death was a bad idea... to tear this apart.

AMIB's Crappy Example Less-Lethal D&D
I argue that games that involve a significant amount of character investment should not generate "player character death" as a random event. Swordslinger is right, this generates verisimilitude problems if you don't do something to make combat and hazards less lethal in general. I believe D&D would benefit from making combat less lethal. This involves giving all enemies a reason to leave player characters where they drop and move on to the rest of the party, giving characters blanket immunity to "instant" death any time anyone cares, and as much as possible creating non-WSOD-piercing reasons that TPKs are not gamebreakers. The last point is negotiable, as I'm not entirely sure it's possible.

This game is basically 3e.

The first mechanical change is that there is no amount of HP or ability damage or drain that will kill a PC or non-minion NPC. What constitutes a non-minion NPC is beyond the scope of these sketch rules. Being reduced to zero HP by an attack means you're incapacitated: incapable of taking any combat action until the end of combat, knocked clear of the zone of hazard if any, and knocked unconscious if appropriate. Being reduced to zero in any ability means you're similarly incapacitated. Incapacitated is reduced to staggered, 1/10th HP (or current HP, whichever is more), and 2 in any ability score that was reduced to 0 once the combat has ended or the hazard has passed. Note that a coup de grace will still kill someone, so PCs can still be murderous bastards if they really feel the need. They just don't get any benefit out of it and even evil enemies won't be slitting throats, as explained below.

The second mechanical change is that enemies all have a "motivation" listing. This is either a standard templated term, or a custom description. In particular, it explains why the monsters would want to fight the party, and what they'd do to the party if they'd win. In particular, this is not "Slit the party's throats and walk away."

Standard template motivations:
This isn't exhaustive, but it should be a good selection? I dunno, I'm not a great designer.

• Territorial: These monsters want to beat up the party to prove a point. They will show off how scary they are, and if the party doesn't get the point and retreat, they will beat the most threatening party member into unconsciousness, then move to the next, and so on. Intelligent enemies can be territorial, and will obviously use more intelligent tactics, but still have the same basic motivation of beating the party up and leaving them where they drop, having proved the point.
• Sadistic: Sadistic enemies just want to hurt people. They are more likely to attack from ambush, and will generally go after weaker-looking targets. They are unpredictable bullies; while they may originally intend to kidnap, a bluff of strength—even after a successful kidnapping—can get them to retreat. Alternately, a few good licks might just be all the fix they need.
• Greed: Greedy enemies want your shit. They are interested in disabling the party as efficiently as possible and taking their shit. Depending on how rational or intelligent they are, the enemies may be interested in banter or barter or vulnerable to bluff or bluster. They won't stick around after a beating, no matter which way it the ball bounces, since, after all, it's just business.
• Hunger: Desperately hungry monsters will attack adventurers for a meal. They want to disable the party as quickly as possible, and if they aren't driven off, they will drag their quarry back to their lair to devour once they recover the last dregs of their strength.
• Feeder: These are similar to hungry monsters, but they're feeding a family, or hatchlings, or near-hatching eggs, etc. They fight similarly, but generally drop off their defeated prey with non-combatant young or immobile eggs.
• Inexorable: Inexorable monsters are completely oblivious to your presence. They aren't attacking the party so much as just running them over. If the party can't get out of the way and can't defeat the unstoppable juggernaut, it's just a matter of counting the broken bones and assessing the cost afterwards.

Example oddball monsters:
This isn't going to be exhaustive.

• Wraiths: Wraith are spirits of loneliness, and reproduce when they drain someone who cannot draw line of effect to any other living creature. So they are dangerous and difficult to fight, but can only truly get into your head if you are truly alone. Plus, they're stupid Gygaxian bullshit monsters, and I've wanted to take an axe to them for ages.
• Uh, other stuff. I'm tired.

Ancillary changes:
This pseudoedition would shift much of the character power currently invested in permanent gear to inherent character power. So "losing all/most of your gear" means "going back to town to restock" or "searching for a new source of funds", not "losing 30% of your character power permanently".

Petrification gets bumped up the scale a little bit spell-level-wise and but gets added to "Restoration" for removable effects.

End ruleset.

So. Tear away.

[tussock]

If you weren't, allow me to initiate you: core casters owning everyone is not a design feature, it is a design flaw.

You'll know both Monte Cook and Mike Mearls are on record as saying that 3e Wizards were deliberately made easy, and Clerics deliberately made so good that anyone pushed into playing one couldn't possibly feel small in the pants. The 5-foot dance and concentration save are deliberate features of the game intended to make Wizards better, more powerful. The 3e XP system deliberately makes the highest level spells come much earlier than AD&D, to let more players have at them. Monte thinks the #1 problem with 3e Wizards is that they can't cast enough spells: like every offensive spell should just be at-will, and buffs should never run out, so that they never run out of "fun" things to do.

Which was an idea that stuck around and because 4e, where Wizards are just the same as Fighters, because they'd solved for "fun", on average, mechanical variety be damned. All entirely intentional.

What role does PC death fulfill in D&D that cannot be fulfilled by other mechanisms?

You can play RPGs without death, or even without failure or consequence of any kind, if you like. What are the overriding problems with PC death that cannot be overcome by other mechanisms? Seems to come down to "Is character death an interesting thing to model in a heroic fantasy adventure game?"

I think it is. We probably just favour different mechanics for triggering death. I figure once you run out of hit points in a big way you may as well die, because alternative mechanics are less engaging. Others may consider it shouldn't happen unless the DM also declares it "dramatically appropriate" or some shit.

[Stubbazubba]

Actually that's exactly what verisimilitude means; that it resembles reality, or it's probable.

Whoa. No, no it doesn't. That's actually a really, really important distinction. Notice that your given link doesn't use realistic anywhere, it uses "resemblance of truth." For example, in the real world someone hurling a fireball from their hands is not likely to have any "resemblance of truth." In a world with magic, it does. So D&D breaks realism in half already, and verisimilitude is unharmed because D&D is explicitly a world where high level characters can jump off cliffs and survive relatively unharmed.

Reading back over what I said, it does kind of sound like I was going for verisimilitude = realism, and I apologize for that.

That link also says this at the bottom,

the semblance of reality in dramatic or nondramatic fiction. The concept implies that either the action represented must be acceptable or convincing according to the audience's own experience or knowledge or, as in the presentation of science fiction or tales of the supernatural, the audience must be enticed into willingly suspending disbelief and accepting improbable actions as true within the framework of the narrative.

I will insist that verisimilitude is what I would call "realism + X," where X is just as much fantastic elements as it can get away with based on the strength of the narrative. Verisimilitude does not equal realism, but it also can't abandon it. How much you can depart from the normal expectations of your audience is proportional to how well you can write said departure, and anything which exceeds that would be accurately described as lacking verisimilitude. Notice how the quote says that the audience must be enticed into WSoD. That generally indicates that you start from realism and then take them a little bit farther down the rabbit hole slowly (realism + X, if you will).

If the Dark Knight came without Batman Begins, we would laugh at the moment that the school bus plows through the bank wall at the perfect time to hit the clown goon, because that's laughably cartoony, but because we had all of Batman Begins first, which started us in pretty much the real world and very slowly introduced fantastic elements, our expectations were never violated to the point of breaking WSoD, so it always had enough verisimilitude for us to take it seriously. What Radiant said is that you can throw realism to the wind and as long as the narrative makes sense internally it has verisimilitude. This is not the case.

if we say wolves have wolf jail with wolf guards and wolf keys, and that's the premise, then there is no verisimilitude problem with wolf jail.

And the reason this isn't a real complaint is that we don't actually say that about the setting. We could, but that's not the kind of setting we want to tell stories about. You can solve any verisimilitude problem by changing the underlying facts of the setting. But then you have changed the underlying facts of the setting, and you may have made it a less or more interesting place. And literal wolf jail sounds pretty stupid.

This is an excellent illustration of why verisimilitude is not the same as internal consistency, and cannot be independent of realism. Settings have varying degrees of verisimilitude, based on how much they depart from the real world, the strength of the narrative which brings you to the fantastic elements, and regardless of the internal consistency of the story. Having a fully decked out wolf jail is a strain on our WSoD the moment we hear it, unless our expectations for the setting have already been stretched to prepare us for them, even though wizards with fireballs and dragons are quite a bit more fantastic, but less threatening to WSoD. WSoD is not threatened by the latter, but it is by wolf jail, because it lacks verisimilitude. Unless we are introduced to the idea of sentient wolves who have learned to construct prisons and locks and keys to go into them with a solid narrative (and thereby expand our expectations, our WSoD), if it's just dropped on us like a house out of a twister, then it lacks verisimilitude.

People surviving cliff jumps regularly is hard enough to swallow, but what's worse is that it's also not internally consistent; at level 1, you can't do that, but after a few months, maybe a year or two, your character can just confidently jump off a cliff, without ever jumping off a cliff in between. Fortunately it doesn't come up very often, but to claim that D&D games have a strong sense of verisimilitude is pretty far-fetched, no matter what definition you use.

Anyways, we're on the same side of the fence here, and I don't want to derail this into a verisimilitude debate. Suffice it to say, Swordslinger has a decent point about breaking WSoD with monsters that are hesitant to kill, but I still maintain that verisimilitude is sketchy in a D&D game to begin with, and said damage to verisimilitude is outweighed by the better game it produces where you can, as a character, fail and then grow from that failure because you're not dead and, as a player, keep playing as soon as the combat is over, even though you failed, because you're not dead.