Mechanics that disappoint you in every conceivable manner

[nockermensch]

Spider Man never dies because of the plot, he risks his life all the damn time. Your proposal is for characters to never risk their life, which rules out a large number of stories that your RPG could tell.

From the perspective of people living inside the Marvel Universe, Spider Man is dancing with the real risk of death all the time. From the perspective of the Spider Man writers and readers, he is never in real risk, unless there's a plot demand for a death (that with Marvel being Marvel, will be reversed anyway).

The characters in a RPG should believe they're risking their lives, but why the hell do the players also need to buy into that?

And don't give me the "but people couldn't roleplay otherwise" bullshit, because everybody roleplays just fine when a bunch of 1st level nobodies descends into an unknown dungeon, knowing full well that 95% of the monsters in the game would just crush them. You just trust that the DM will follow adventure design guidelines and not give the party more than they can chew, so the disconnect between what the characters and players feel about character mortality is already disconnected.

Adding "you can fail but can't actually die" to the disconnect shouldn't change much.

[K]

Only the character thinks he's in danger. The audience knows that he can't die because the story won't give him anything he can't handle.

Spider man did die though. It was a big deal and received a lot of marketing. Also, the reason main characters tend not to die is that stories tend to end when they do. RPGs don't have that problem. Edit: Besides, in an RPG you aren't a spectator. You are supposed to be roleplaying that character.

A. Spider Man is alive. I saw him in a movie last week.

B. You can roleplay a character who thinks he is risking his life.

Do you also play cRPGs and uninstall the game after the first death?

The cases are not at all similar. cRPGs simply don't have much replay value, there isn't much point to starting over. TTRPGs have infinite replay value.

I didn't say "play over." I said "uninstall," where you never get a chance to see that story unfold because it's not on your computer any more and you'll never play it.

You don't uninstall cRPGs because you'll never get that story if you do.

And that's what character perma-death is. It's telling someone "hey, you never get to do Neverwinter Nights II because the lizardman in the first scene killed you. Uninstall the game and install a new game for a different story."

Now, some people aren't attached to stories and one is as good as the other as long as they are the star, but some of us really do think the story we are trying to tell with our character is interesting.

[Cyberzombie]

Do you also play cRPGs and uninstall the game after the first death?

Of course not, but I also expect a different experience from a CRPG than I do from a tabletop RPG. If I wanted to play a computer game, I'd play a computer game. I really don't see your point.

[Drolyt]

B. You can roleplay a character who thinks he is risking his life.

Yes, I can roleplay a character that thinks he is risking his life even though he is not. Such a character would be mentally unbalanced. I think what you really want is for characters to have the same sort of plot armor action movie heroes have, and for that I think you want a literal plot armor mechanic like hero points or edge, not a game where characters literally cannot die.

I didn't say "play over." I said "uninstall," where you never get a chance to see that story unfold because it's not on your computer any more and you'll never play it.

You don't uninstall cRPGs because you'll never get that story if you do.

And that's what character perma-death is. It's telling someone "hey, you never get to do Neverwinter Nights II because the lizardman in the first scene killed you. Uninstall the game and install a new game for a different story."

This is not analogous. The proper analogy to rolling a new character in a TTRPG is rolling a new character in a cRPG, not uninstalling the game. Stories go on after character death all the time.

Now, some people aren't attached to stories and one is as good as the other as long as they are the star, but some of us really do think the story we are trying to tell with our character is interesting.

This is more of a valid point, but once you are admitting that different players have different preferences aren't you also admitting that your prescription against perma-death is maybe also a matter of preference?

[Dean]

When we say perma-death sucks what we really mean is random perma death sucks. Which it does. It's bullshit. It's a mechanic used and reported dishonestly and only survives unquestioned as an RPG staple because of the ridiculous machismo that has been attached to it. I used to have a strong anti-death stance (in line with K's I think) but I have softened slightly. I'm now of the opinion that my systems should allow the possibility of PC death but should make it so hard to make occur that it would be impossible to happen by coincidence or happenstance. That if a PC died you would know one of 3 things were true:
1: The player intentionally made their character to die for the purpose of a death scene.
2: The DM was being a blatant cock and you should leave the game. A 20 Balor surprise attack could still kill you but that's basically just your DM saying that Rock's Fall.
3: The player accepted the chance of death by ignoring every failsafe and alternative. They have knowingly brought some nail biting fight into triple overtime and they are either going to win here or die here. By allowing the player to have willingly tossed away multiple chances to lose but not die I hope that they would be more accepting of their death if it then did occur. By including this option into the story but making it freakishly unlikely you would allow character death stories but you would make them accepted as something incredibly uncommon. Instead of PC death being touted as totally normal and almost never actually happening in play because people actually hate that shit.

[Username17]

A. Spider Man is alive. I saw him in a movie last week.

And yet, the character you saw in a movie last week is very specifically not the same as the character you saw in a movie some years back. The fact that the character experienced not one but several hard reboots over the last few years means that the analogous position in a table top RPG is the player who keeps bringing nearly identical characters to every game ("Knuckles the Eighth" and all that), rather than a single character who can't die.

The fact that Bob Herzog keeps rolling Dwarven crossbowmen named Knuckles does not in any way imply that permadeath is bad. It's if anything an argument for permadeath, since apparently the players for whom it is really really important that they play a very specific kind of character can always roll up the same kind of character and increment the name slightly.

-Username17

[zugschef]

The question comes down to how you set up the system. Do you make it skill-based like Chess, or do you make the results unpredictable like Rock, Paper, Scissors?.

I've already addressed the chess part of that problem in the post above yours:

The problem that I see with that approach is that TTRPG combat cannot be like chess, unless all you want is a combat simulator -- but that's taking the RPG out of TTRPGs. Chess is a game where the initial chance to win is 50/50. If DnD combat worked like that, even though there are mostly three to five times as many PCs as MCs, the PCs would TPK almost guaranteed after four battles (which means the very first adventuring day).

[edit] Also, chess takes fuckin' hours; with a clock holding players to 60 seconds a turn, that is. TTRPGs are way more complex than chess, so good luck with building a fast enough combat engine.

Now your goal as a designer is to make the game exciting, and mostly in an TTRPG, that means that there has to be a chance that your character dies or even that your party wipes. Adding +1 on a d20 is a 5% increase of your chance to succeed on a given task. I expect that a deterministic system will be way more complex and unpredictable in combat, because we're fuckin' humans, than figuring out some numbers, unless you simplify the system to a degree where you know the outcome before the battle music even starts to play.

I think it's probably doable and possibly desirable out of combat, but in combat you'll face unmanagable complexity or dull simplicity with a deterministic action resolution.

As for rock, paper scisssors, that's a bad argument. As soon as you know that one player goes into battle with a rock, you automatically know under which circumstances he will win, lose or tie. If the player has sufficient information on his opponent, he knows in advance how battle will end. TTRPGs aren't combat simulators and you can metagame like shit, you can't even not metagame. And in high-level DnD you don't even have to metagame, because of divinations.

I really don't see how you can make a non-boring (either way too slow or way too predictable), non-ultra-lethal combat engine with a completely deterministic system for a TTRPG.

[K]

... The fact that Bob Herzog keeps rolling Dwarven crossbowmen named Knuckles does not in any way imply that permadeath is bad. It's if anything an argument for permadeath, since apparently the play...

I think it does. Bob is in open rebellion against the rules because he just wants to play his character and tell his character's story in the greater meta-story being created by the campaign and DM and other players.

It not like he is periodically rolling up new characters for kicks. He's doing it because you took away his old character and this is the closest substitute the can get for it. If you told him he couldn't do it, chances are good that he wouldn't play with you.

I understand that people don't want to play without perma-death, and I'm 100% with that because I don't want to play with those guys. I'd completely respect their choice to have death for their character, but forcing the same choice on me is a dick move.

I'm just too old to play with dickish people who want to play games that I don't find fun.

[K]

[
As for rock, paper scisssors, that's a bad argument. As soon as you know that one player goes into battle with a rock, you automatically know under which circumstances he will win, lose or tie.

Right, and that's why you don't let players know what people are going into battle with and you give everyone a lot of options so that each monster turn is not predictable.

RPG design right now makes shit monsters. They make "roles" where monsters in a role really are always tossing Rock, but that's not necessary. Why can't a Rock Golem throw stones, punch faces, and use a magic hypnotism power so that each round adventurers have no idea which defenses they should have up or which tactic is the auto-win?

Glass cannon design exists simply to hide the fact that PCs are actually more powerful than the monsters because player death every combat is not fun. Remove one problem and the other goes away too.

[zugschef]

That makes combat ultra-lethal. So what happens when you die?

[K]

That makes combat ultra-lethal. So what happens when you die?

Depends on the game. Superhero games have people getting knocked out instead of torn to bloody shreds, and that's the most generically applicable, but genre-appropriate solutions are completely available to everyone.

Eclipse Phase has backups of you mind. Paranoia has clones. DnD has quick and easy resurrection if you are in the right level range. I'm pretty fond of randomized story elements that you roll off a chart that save you, but I'm old enough to enjoy Gygax's early work and that may be my bias.

[K]

That makes combat ultra-lethal. So what happens when you die?

Also, you can just just let PCs be more powerful than monsters. Cutting your way through lots of weak monsters who are slowly depleting your resources so that you might not be able to accomplish a quest is pretty genre-appropriate.

[zugschef]

If losing or winning a battle makes no difference in your game then you have created a fundamental problem. There will be players who still want to win every battle because they love the combat tactics and competitive part of the game, and players who don't care because losing can be just as much fun as winning because it can make for awesome stories. That's a guaranteed conflict. You're basically hardcoding two camps of players, minmaxers and grognards, into the system, so to say.

Losing the fight or dying (not perma-death) needs to be somehow less desireable than winning (or the reverse if you want to go for something weird).

[Mord]

Losing the fight or dying (not perma-death) needs to be somehow less desireable than winning (or the reverse if you want to go for something weird).

Fights that only happen for fighting's sake absolutely fall into this problem. But if you're fighting for some kind of story-related reason, well, that's entirely different.

Losing without dying should mean either that your quest failed and things are about to get a lot hairier for the characters, or that accomplishing your quest will now be more difficult in some way.

As long as there's a compelling narrative reason for winning to be better than losing, both of your two player camps will be on the same page.

[Red_Rob]

If losing or winning a battle makes no difference in your game then you have created a fundamental problem.

How did you get that from "no permadeath"? K is saying that rather than "die", a PC is instead saved from death by some contrivance when death would otherwise occur. This could be a blow turned aside at the last minute, the PC being stunned and left for dead, or being severely wounded and unable to fight on without actually dying.

No-one is suggesting that at the end of a battle the script proceeds to the Victory screen even if all the PCs were taken out.

[Cyberzombie]

Fights that only happen for fighting's sake absolutely fall into this problem. But if you're fighting for some kind of story-related reason, well, that's entirely different.

The problem is that you assume the PCs really care about the story. Most casual players only care about XP, treasure and not dying. They're not going to be broken up over the village burning down or the princess getting killed, they're just going to shrug and say, "Can't win em all."

[Stubbazubba]

Fights that only happen for fighting's sake absolutely fall into this problem. But if you're fighting for some kind of story-related reason, well, that's entirely different.

The problem is that you assume the PCs really care about the story. Most casual players only care about XP, treasure and not dying. They're not going to be broken up over the village burning down or the princess getting killed, they're just going to shrug and say, "Can't win em all."

Then withhold the XP and treasure. 2/3 is probably still motivation enough for casual players.

Re: Diceless

One diceless system (the early 2000s Marvel Universe game) gave each character energy tokens that they split up between actions and defense. You and your enemy kept these secret from each other and then revealed them simultaneously. Whoever had the higher speed score resolved their actions first. So that's a fairly RPS-like approach that I thought had potential, even though MURPG's specific implementation left a lot to be desired.

[Cyberzombie]

Then withhold the XP and treasure. 2/3 is probably still motivation enough for casual players.

The problem there is that without punishment, you ultimately encourage the PCs to take very high risk, high reward endeavors. It also lets them try to beat their enemy by pure attrition if they know that only the enemy can die. I guess you could go with a comic book reality where heroes and villains are both immortal, but that just feels too video gamey to me.

One diceless system (the early 2000s Marvel Universe game) gave each character energy tokens that they split up between actions and defense. You and your enemy kept these secret from each other and then revealed them simultaneously. Whoever had the higher speed score resolved their actions first. So that's a fairly RPS-like approach that I thought had potential, even though MURPG's specific implementation left a lot to be desired.

I don't really know what the point of adding rock-paper-scissor mechanics to an RPG to make it dice-less. Basically it seems like the designers are trying to create a quasi-random result using people, which ends up taking way longer than just throwing a d20. And that's assuming the ideal situation where each of the RPS choices are equal. If you're going for any kind of depth, chances are there's going to be a superior choice, so what you probably get is a scenario where everyone picks rock 100% of the time.

[Aryxbez]

I guess you could go with a comic book reality where heroes and villains are both immortal, but that just feels too video gamey to me.

Could you explain how a common genre function of Superhero comics is "too Video gamey"?

Otherwise, I've generally liked the concept of the "TKO", that other modern RPG's had even started implementing (calling the status "KO'd" opposed to DEAD, like in Dragon Quest). Basically where in combat, where a PC would've died, they instead are "TKO'd" out of the fight, and only special abilities, or certain powerful healing magic would jump them back into the present combat (I'm sure tough-warrior type would have power to negate TKO and come back X HP, or for X rounds, another to fight as a ghost for a time, soul jump into a foe or body & fight as that, "combat revival" so on). Of course, PC's can still be coup-de-graced and such, but by that point, it's likely a TPK anyway. Oddly enough, "Edge of the Empire", by virtue of its crit table, PC's don't necessarily "die" when HP is downed, and so opponents would have go out of their way to "coup de grace" you repetitively to ensure your death (assuming no crit-fishing shennagans are going on anyway).

They're not going to be broken up over the village burning down or the princess getting killed, they're just going to shrug and say, "Can't win em all."

Eh, Failure states should be possible, it can provide an interesting angle to the story. Having to deal w/repurcussions of Dead royalty, or lesson of humble hero's did their best, and becomes something they flashback to "never let happen again", even if that's just the next village that'll get burned down.

[Username17]

I am an unabashed supporter of less lethal combats. Characters should escape, get captured, surrender, and so on and so forth. Having player characters run around murdering each and every fallen kobold is both uninteresting and kind of gross. Having the player characters fight to the desperate last because it's TPK if they lose is corrosive.

Things would be better, not just from a playability standpoint, but from a moral standpoint if the default assumption was that when you came into conflict with the Orcs, the losers of the battle would be ransomed back to their village for territorial concessions.

But while I think that RPGs should move past the idea that it is acceptable or normal to slit the throats of all captives taken in battle, to really be a role playing game and not a computer game the option still has to exist. The incentives should point the other way. Murdering captives should be a bad option that players consciously avoid. But it should in fact be there. Indeed, it needs to exist.

I am totally on board with instituting alternate failure states and a less lethal, more realistic model of war. I totally accept that it would be a good thing if players were basically told that win or lose they weren't going to die. But it would be a terrible disservice to everyone to lay it out that their characters literally could not die. Won't Die is fine, Can't Die is not.

-Username17

[Longes]

There is a narative problem with perma-death that I think was overlooked in this thread - replacement goldfish.

PC party usualy doesn't take companions for a long time. But when one of the party members dies, they meet a random stranger and in one session he becomes new best friend. Steve is dead, long live the Steve!

[kzt]

PC party usualy doesn't take companions for a long time. But when one of the party members dies, they meet a random stranger and in one session he becomes new best friend. Steve is dead, long live the Steve!

A guy I met who played SR was a USAF Pave Low pilot in real life. He joked that in the real world, before they send him on a mission he has a hundred guys spending a month working up the mission, looking a sat photos, etc; then the team would rehearse it all the way through multiple times. In SR he'd met some random guys in a bar and two hours later they would be carrying out some crazy job for peanuts.

[Drolyt]

Otherwise, I've generally liked the concept of the "TKO", that other modern RPG's had even started implementing (calling the status "KO'd" opposed to DEAD, like in Dragon Quest). Basically where in combat, where a PC would've died, they instead are "TKO'd" out of the fight, and only special abilities, or certain powerful healing magic would jump them back into the present combat (I'm sure tough-warrior type would have power to negate TKO and come back X HP, or for X rounds, another to fight as a ghost for a time, soul jump into a foe or body & fight as that, "combat revival" so on). Of course, PC's can still be coup-de-graced and such, but by that point, it's likely a TPK anyway.

So what do you do in a genre where the heroes are expected to kill a bunch of mooks? The mooks all wake up a few hours later? I think a better solution is for characters with 0 hp to be "dying" so that they can be rescued with first aid/healing magic/a bacta tank/genre equivalent but would otherwise die.

[silva]

I know its not a mechanic, but I hate sorcery as an academic endeavor. I prefer when it is dirry, taboo or demoniac like seen on Howard and Lovecraft stories.

[Mask_De_H]

Otherwise, I've generally liked the concept of the "TKO", that other modern RPG's had even started implementing (calling the status "KO'd" opposed to DEAD, like in Dragon Quest). Basically where in combat, where a PC would've died, they instead are "TKO'd" out of the fight, and only special abilities, or certain powerful healing magic would jump them back into the present combat (I'm sure tough-warrior type would have power to negate TKO and come back X HP, or for X rounds, another to fight as a ghost for a time, soul jump into a foe or body & fight as that, "combat revival" so on). Of course, PC's can still be coup-de-graced and such, but by that point, it's likely a TPK anyway.

So what do you do in a genre where the heroes are expected to kill a bunch of mooks? The mooks all wake up a few hours later? I think a better solution is for characters with 0 hp to be "dying" so that they can be rescued with first aid/healing magic/a bacta tank/genre equivalent but would otherwise die.

They don't kill the mooks, they incapacitate them. They could be left for the buzzards or they can be captured as POWs or pressganged into working for the PCs or they just scatter and don't come back.