What is with the entitlement? (shadzar stay out)

[Shadow Balls]

See DMs are actually fudging all the time. We do it by making tactical choices which will give the players a fighting chance. We don't make them fight the who village in a single go. We don't have all the archers turn the mage into a pin-cushion and leave the poor fighter for last. In the rocket-launcher-tag world of 3e, every time your not TPKing the party during any challenging encounter, you are probably holding back the full potential you could unleash on the players. And why do you do that? Because you want them to be able to win and continue the story.

I'm not sure what part of this is the most insipid - your words, the DM and party so shitty that a merely "challenging" encounter would kill them all, the DM again for deliberately playing enemies dumb, or the mage for not being able to lol at the silly archers.

This post is a great example of everything that is wrong with D&D though. Blind leading the blind would be an insult to those with severely impaired visual abilities.

Tussock is right about everything but this.

Tussock: If you have ever had your PCs "running for their lives" in a 3.X game, I strongly suspect that you were in fact coddling them. Successfully getting away from more powerful enemies after they've had a chance to demonstrate their superior power is almost impossible in Third.

On this point, Orion is the right one. Best to not engage at all in such a case.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm not sure what part of this is the most insipid - your words, the DM and party so shitty that a merely "challenging" encounter would kill them all, the DM again for deliberately playing enemies dumb, or the mage for not being able to lol at the silly archers.

This post is a great example of everything that is wrong with D&D though. Blind leading the blind would be an insult to those with severely impaired visual abilities.

hi roy

[Swordslinger]

It's easy to fall into the trap of saying "X is good, and Y is bad, therefore the system should do more of X and eliminate Y", but it's virtually always poor logic - if you are thorough in your analysis, you find out that X is sometimes good, and Y is sometimes bad, but that there are mitigating factors for both and unforeseen consequences to what you're trying to do. People are attempting to make the argument that character death is un-fun (usually without really exploring all of the ramifications of the statement), but the fact remains that it's a poor argument, especially since fun is highly subjective. Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

Yes. The fact is that if you do too much of something, it gets boring and old, and loses its novelty. If victory is always assured then victory becomes meaningless.

I'm drawn back to that Twilight Zone episode with the gambler in the casino who always wins every game he plays. He discovered he's actually in hell and his torture is the pure monotony of always knowing how things are going to come out.

I feel much like that playing in a D&D game where winning is always assured.

If you want to actually disagree with us (well, me; I can't say quite as much about K's position, but this was my impression), the argument you have to make is that "mechanics which exclude players from the game contribute to the experience," and there are actually fairly compelling arguments you could make there, and I would disagree with their necessity and we could get into that. But this shit about "oh boo-hoo, players fail; get over it" is getting to be super-obnoxious because it's got fuck-all to do with the topic and isn't a refutation of anything anyone has said here.

The real question is... what punishment do you use that's logical to the story and also makes them care about getting dropped in combat?

You could run a capture scenario, but that also involves them being removed from play (and usually for longer periods than if they just died and rolled up a new dude).

You could have them get some kind of injury like losing a hand, which is either trivial if they can heal it, or totally gimps them if they can't. Arguably if you like the character, you may think this is a bit better of an outcome, but many people won't like playing a permanently gimped character.

You could also rob the character of all his magic items, which in many cases is equally a fate worse than death, and doesn't make sense in all scenarios.

Instead of trying to eliminate character death, you may just want to offer the PC outlets of doing something. For instance, give the PC party some retainers or hirelings. If you die, you get to run some other PC's cohort. That's enough motivation that most people don't want to drop, but it still lets them do something.

[K]

Instead of trying to eliminate character death, you may just want to offer the PC outlets of doing something. For instance, give the PC party some retainers or hirelings. If you die, you get to run some other PC's cohort. That's enough motivation that most people don't want to drop, but it still lets them do something.

Honestly, I'm an RPGer and not a wargamer. Between the option of token participation in the combat minigame and no RPGing as a cohort or Smash Brothers and waiting for a character to get worked in, I'll take Smash Bros. I mean, why even play if you just get to roll some dice for someone else's character?

I honestly think this argument boils down to differences between wargaming and RPGing. The wargamers run adventures like set battles and RPGers have events and NPCs respond to story cues, and that's why the wargamers don't care if a character dies and the RPGers see it as a pointless interruption in a heroic story.

As a RPGer DM or as a player, a PC permanent death is a huge disruption to the campaign and adventure that's rarely is worth the pay-off, but to a wargamer it's just the only victory/loss condition they recognize because the story exists to get them to the next set battle.

I honestly wonder if this is one of the core issues that's killing the RPG business and sending people to cRPGs and MMOs. I mean, those mediums seem to care a lot more about player fun and keeping people invested in their characters and are wildly popular as a result, but RPGs still seem to be chained to Gygaxian notions of punishment to their own detriment.

[Chamomile]

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

Success vs failure is a strawman because you can have failure without player exclusion (see every videogame in existence).

Bugger all, I just got done explaining this. Here is Echo's bullet points with some context:

Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

1. Players enjoy getting magic items.
2. Players don't enjoy losing magic items.
3. Therefore, players should receive a new magic item every session, and all magic items should be invulnerable to harm or loss.

or even:

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

Emphasis mine. The bolded very heavily implies that Echo does not think anyone believes either of these two conclusions to be valid. He is taking the train of thought that players should not die because death is unpleasant and attempting to reduce it to the absurd by saying the same argument could be made about any kind of failure at all. That sounds like slippery sloping to me, but it's not strawmanning.

The actual argument Echo attributes to his opponents is:

People are attempting to make the argument that character death is un-fun (usually without really exploring all of the ramifications of the statement), but the fact remains that it's a poor argument, especially since fun is highly subjective.

To put it in the same format as his other arguments (which are universally held to be false and echo knows it, because that was his point):

1. Players enjoy survival.
2. Players don't enjoy death.
3. Therefore, players should never die and always survive.

I realize I'm repeating myself here, but this whole post is repeating myself, so what the death, here we go one more time: The above argument is what Echo believes everyone else is arguing. The two arguments he quoted are obviously false arguments using the same logic, thus reducing his opponent's position to the absurd.

[ckafrica]

Instead of trying to eliminate character death, you may just want to offer the PC outlets of doing something. For instance, give the PC party some retainers or hirelings. If you die, you get to run some other PC's cohort. That's enough motivation that most people don't want to drop, but it still lets them do something.

Honestly, I'm an RPGer and not a wargamer. Between the option of token participation in the combat minigame and no RPGing as a cohort or Smash Brothers and waiting for a character to get worked in, I'll take Smash Bros. I mean, why even play if you just get to roll some dice for someone else's character?

I honestly think this argument boils down to differences between wargaming and RPGing. The wargamers run adventures like set battles and RPGers have events and NPCs respond to story cues, and that's why the wargamers don't care if a character dies and the RPGers see it as a pointless interruption in a heroic story.

As a RPGer DM or as a player, a PC permanent death is a huge disruption to the campaign and adventure that's rarely is worth the pay-off, but to a wargamer it's just the only victory/loss condition they recognize because the story exists to get them to the next set battle.

I honestly wonder if this is one of the core issues that's killing the RPG business and sending people to cRPGs and MMOs. I mean, those mediums seem to care a lot more about player fun and keeping people invested in their characters and are wildly popular as a result, but RPGs still seem to be chained to Gygaxian notions of punishment to their own detriment.

Well I'd say I'm both but I like my war games to be war games and RPGs to be rpgs.

But the difference is why this conversation is pointless the people treating DnD more like a war game are going to keep on insisting that units must be able to die, and those of us that don't will insist that it sucks. All that has been achieved is I know at least a dozen Denners who I'd probably not want to play with (though most had already proved that fact). It has made ideologies clear and probably more than a few longer ignore lists.

[echoVanguard]

Even though Chamomile did a good job explaining my intent, I wanted to take a few seconds to respond to DSMatticus here, because he seems genuinely interested in contributing to the dialogue.

Nobody here has argued that the game shouldn't have failure states. What has been argued is that failure states should not result in exclusion from the game if it is not otherwise necessary.

First off, a bunch of different people have argued a bunch of different positions in this thread, so it's important to make the distinction of which position you're advocating.

I just care that everyone who shows up to play the game should actually spend that time playing, and mechanics which interfere with that are bad.

The requirement that "everyone who shows up to a game spend that time playing" is actually pretty broad - a lot of people have the opinion that rolling up a character constitutes playing, and a slightly different (but probably overlapping) subset of people think that investiture is playing, even if your character isn't actively doing anything (complete with a bottomless pit of semantics regarding what is and isn't playing your character). More to the point, both of these groups are comprised of subjectively valid viewpoints that need to be taken into account.

Furthermore, the argument "mechanics which interfere with me playing my character are bad" is a dangerously sweeping generalization which can logically be applied to any number of circumstances. If some other character casts Time Stop in a 3.5 game, they suddenly get to take the equivalent of 4 extra turns, which means that if I'm next in the initiative order after them, I'm waiting 4 times longer to declare and adjudicate my character's action. Should one player be punished or admonished for casting Time Stop because it prevents other players from playing?

And none of anyone's arguments are that "the game should be composed entirely of nothing but enjoyable experiences." As a matter of fact, a game that is nothing but constant positive reinforcement turns out to be boring as shit and people will stop playing fast. The only actual argument that's been made is that whether players are failing or succeeding, they should be playing rather than not-playing, and mechanics should align with this goal. Enjoyment has not been the issue. Failure has not been the issue. These statements are just a shit ton of straw in a vaguely humanoid shape. Stop it.

If you want to actually disagree with us (well, me; I can't say quite as much about K's position, but this was my impression), the argument you have to make is that "mechanics which exclude players from the game contribute to the experience," and there are actually fairly compelling arguments you could make there, and I would disagree with their necessity and we could get into that. But this shit about "oh boo-hoo, players fail; get over it" is getting to be super-obnoxious because it's got fuck-all to do with the topic and isn't a refutation of anything anyone has said here.

I haven't bothered to make that argument, because it is a waste of everyone's valuable time. I am sufficiently secure in my knowledge of how risks and rewards work that I derive no benefit from any possible result of a discussion of that question.

Also, "boo-hoo, players fail, get over it" has never been my position (and if you look back at my posts, you'll see that), but it's perfectly understandable if my position has gotten conflated with the positions of some other posters who share my viewpoint (but not necessarily my reasons).

a PC permanent death is can be a huge disruption to the campaign and adventure that's rarely is worth the pay-off

It can definitely disruptive to the campaign (but that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint), and it can most definitely cause problems in some situations. At the risk of repeating myself, this is why a well-designed system provides avenues for both styles of play.

I honestly wonder if this is one of the core issues that's killing the RPG business and sending people to cRPGs and MMOs. I mean, those mediums seem to care a lot more about player fun and keeping people invested in their characters and are wildly popular as a result, but RPGs still seem to be chained to Gygaxian notions of punishment to their own detriment.

I wasn't aware the RPG business was currently in the act of being killed. Which is interesting, since it's kind of my business to know whether or not that assertion is true.

It isn't. Adjusted for recession, per-capita sales of tabletop RPGs and associated products are increasing at a steady (if slow) rate. The main problem reducing revenue of TTRPG products is the weak correlation between purchase and use, which is a problem intrinsic to the product model.

Lastly, I want to add that there's definitely a lot of unexplored territory for increasing player agency in narrative evolution - FATE does some interesting things with this with regard to its concession and consequence systems. However, these aren't panaceas, and come with their own set of pros and cons.

echo

[K]

Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

1. Players enjoy getting magic items.
2. Players don't enjoy losing magic items.
3. Therefore, players should receive a new magic item every session, and all magic items should be invulnerable to harm or loss.

or even:

1. Players enjoy succeeding.
2. Players don't enjoy failing.
3. Therefore, players should always succeed at everything they attempt.

Emphasis mine. The bolded very heavily implies that Echo does not think anyone believes either of these two conclusions to be valid. He is taking the train of thought that players should not die because death is unpleasant and attempting to reduce it to the absurd by saying the same argument could be made about any kind of failure at all. That sounds like slippery sloping to me, but it's not strawmanning.

It is strawmanning.

The first argument should conclude with "people should get magic items and not lose them.", but he exaggerates the argument by saying "people should get a magic item every session and they should be invulnerable to harm or loss."

Nothing in the premises says how often people should get magic items, or that people might not enjoy magic items being harmed as long as they are not lost. Those two exaggerations of the position are what makes it absurd and easy to attack... by definition a Strawman argument.

By the same token, all of his other conclusions are exaggerations.

Players may enjoy succeeding and hate failing, but it doesn't mean that they'd enjoy having impossible actions succeed or won't accept limitations to their actions. That just does not follow from the premises, but if it did the argument would be much easier to attack (the very reason you'd make a strawman argument).

And finally to the permanent death argument: people hate permanent character death and like surviving, but it doesn't mean that they won't accept any number of other failure conditions for their actions as a means of enhancing play or preserving verisimilitude. The very idea that they want "invulnerability" or "cheat codes" hasn't even been brought up except in strawmans.

Overstating a position until it becomes absurd is a strawman. It's no different than someone saying "the death penalty is cruel and we should stop it" and your opposition comes back with "you want murderers roaming the streets and killing babies and mothers!" Clearly, the removal of the death penalty does not affect life terms in prison or any other aspect of the criminal justice system, and does not even speak to any desire for specific criminal action, but the position sounds much worse when it's grossly exaggerated and is much easier to attack.

Defending him for exaggerating people's positions is defending a strawman. There is no hidden rhetorical technique here, just someone who is really bad at making good-faith arguments.

[Swordslinger]

Honestly, I'm an RPGer and not a wargamer. Between the option of token participation in the combat minigame and no RPGing as a cohort or Smash Brothers and waiting for a character to get worked in, I'll take Smash Bros. I mean, why even play if you just get to roll some dice for someone else's character?

Sure, you could do that. I was suggesting that as a solution to Matticus because he made a big deal about the player doing nothing.

I honestly think this argument boils down to differences between wargaming and RPGing. The wargamers run adventures like set battles and RPGers have events and NPCs respond to story cues, and that's why the wargamers don't care if a character dies and the RPGers see it as a pointless interruption in a heroic story.

Some of the most dramatic moments in games happen to be when major characters die. Everyone remembers in Final Fantasy 7 when Aeris gets killed. To remove the possibility of character death is removing a big opportunity for dramatic storytelling. Most people will tell you that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star Wars movies, and that involves Luke losing a hand and Han getting frozen in carbonite (effectively removing him from play for a while).

If I can't tell a story like that, I'll be very upset.

I honestly wonder if this is one of the core issues that's killing the RPG business and sending people to cRPGs and MMOs. I mean, those mediums seem to care a lot more about player fun and keeping people invested in their characters and are wildly popular as a result, but RPGs still seem to be chained to Gygaxian notions of punishment to their own detriment.

You need punishment to have meaningful reward. If the game is only going to award people for filling a seat and not for good decision making, then the people who actually make good decisions are going to feel like they wasted their time, and the people making poor decisions are going to feel like they haven't earned whatever rewards they got.

[A Man In Black]

Everyone remembers in Final Fantasy 7 when Aeris gets killed.

But nobody much remembers the time Barrett gets taken down to zero HP by three evil houses and a mutant goblin of some sort. You just used a Phoenix Down on him then, though.

Because it was a fucking random encounter.

The point that K and I are making is that "Aeris dies" is not a result you should be getting from the RNG. It's something that the GM and the players should be deciding as part of the story of the game.

First, your basic argument is wrong. Possibilities are not all inevitabilities (example: each session a party has a 1/(16*level^2) chance of losing a player. How many sessions before there is a 90% chance of having lost one?) Then you fall back on the third fallacy (it is less fun in an immediate sense, therefor the game must be less fun overall), and make an arguement which is equivalent to "losing checkers sucks. If possible and practical, it's a good idea to change things so that game sucks less." (I know that's a ridiculous oversimplification because of complexity and investment in each game, but if you can't defend the principle, you can't defend the application).

Your second point doesn't seem to answer mine, unless you're saying that suckiness is somehow conserved. You do raise an interesting point here, but it says that there may be an optimum death rate.

Third, I disagree. Tritely, cheating death is fun, and you can't cheat death if there is no death. Removing that source of unfun inherently removes that source of fun. You could try to make an arguement that there is no mix which is a net positive, but "character death is unfun when it happens" by itself doesn't say anything about it's effects overall.

Possibilities are by definition inevitabilities for the game as a whole. Not for individual campaigns or individual players' experiences through multiple campaigns, but your argument that a low chance of death in an RPG makes death irrelevant is idiotic unless that chance is infinitesimal. Not just that, but it's flat out silly to say that a character isn't going to die unless the GM makes some sort of effort to avoid doing so in in 2e and 3e and 3.5 and PF and GURPS and RIFTS and SR and GURPS and HERO and what the fuck ever RPG you want to name, so your first point is just flat out nonsense.

My second point is that if the failure state were less shitty, if it were more like hockey penalty killing and less like baseball penalties, then players wouldn't mind it quite as much. Someone (Swordslinger?) compared player death to getting blinded by Glitterdust. Thing is, getting blinded by Glitterdust kicks you out of the game for 10 minutes, tops. That's not as bad for getting kicked out of the game for between a half hour (quick reroll, quick reintroduction) and a month (miss two sessions in a bi-weekly game).

Cheating death is fun and all, but RPGs are cooperative games. You can keep risk in the game without balancing that risk against the maintenance of a RPG group. The real risk of permanent character death is not "pointy eared elf character dies permanently", but instead "people lose interest and drift away, causing the group to fall apart."

[Red_Rob]

As a RPGer DM or as a player, a PC permanent death is a huge disruption to the campaign and adventure that's rarely is worth the pay-off

Oh right, sorry, my mistake. I was thinking RPG's were an emergent effort between the DM and the players in which noone can really predict the flow of the game, but actually you know how its all going to go down and it would be terrible if the finely crafted story were "disrupted".

One of the great joys of an RPG is that you never know how things are going to turn out. It is impossible to "disrupt" the story, because the story is whatever happens at the table. If, as a DM you come up with cool plot hooks relating to the characters, that's fine, but if you can't spin just as many plot developments out of a character's death then you aren't really much of a DM.

A character dying (as long as it's not too common an occurrence) can add a lot to an RPG story. It can add pathos, makes the enemies seem actually personally dangerous to the players, gives the party a vendetta against whoever killed them, and can open up a whole host of roleplaying opportunities.

The point that K and I are making is that "Aeris dies" is not a result you should be getting from the RNG. It's something that the GM and the players should be deciding as part of the story of the game.

That's fine for a certain style of game, but D&D has always been about combat and having dangerous adventures. If there is no threat of death it makes it all seem too safe and easy. It makes it less heroic if the guy risking his life to save the village isn't really risking his life, he's just risking some experience points or a temporary setback.

[tussock]

Tussock: If you have ever had your PCs "running for their lives" in a 3.X game, I strongly suspect that you were in fact coddling them. Successfully getting away from more powerful enemies after they've had a chance to demonstrate their superior power is almost impossible in Third.

There are innumerable spells which make it hard for critters to follow and easy for PCs to move, if anyone bothers to prepare them, cast them when trouble is possible, and run early and often. You don't have to slow or out-move every critter, just enough to split their forces for a round or two should they chase you down, find a place with better cover, crawlspaces vs the big guys, set off illusions for them to follow, whatever.

But I know, lots of people don't run in 3e. Ever. Seems odd to me. Probably something to do with the timed nature of my adventure sites, eventually the bad guys are going to gang up and fuck you, so you need to be able to choke/disperse that and keep moving on.

[Swordslinger]

But nobody much remembers the time Barrett gets taken down to zero HP by three evil houses and a mutant goblin of some sort. You just used a Phoenix Down on him then, though.

Because it was a fucking random encounter.

The point that K and I are making is that "Aeris dies" is not a result you should be getting from the RNG. It's something that the GM and the players should be deciding as part of the story of the game.

If people are complaining that death is too common in some games, like 3E, I would definitely agree. If people are dying left and right, then that's bad, because it takes the impact out of the death. I do think it's too easy to die in a lot of RPGs. One change I like in 4E is that they made character death something rare.

However, that does not mean that death shouldn't exist at all. Having people die during random encounters is really not unheard of. Boromir for instance dies in what is effectively a random encounter with orcs. Random encounters should certainly have reduced risk, but at the same time, there has to be some risk, otherwise, what's the point of having them?

Cheating death is fun and all, but RPGs are cooperative games. You can keep risk in the game without balancing that risk against the maintenance of a RPG group. The real risk of permanent character death is not "pointy eared elf character dies permanently", but instead "people lose interest and drift away, causing the group to fall apart."

I'd argue that risk exists if you don't have real risk too. Most people playing with invulnerability cheats get bored of a game rather quickly.

Especially in a game where you're playing a hero, it's pretty silly to me if there's no risk. As Red Rob said, D&D is a game of dangerous adventures. If killing the dragon is no longer dangerous, then a lot of players are going to lose interest. And I have no idea how you're going to keep verisimilitude at all when the wraiths knock the party out instead of killing them, unless you're just gonna run it as a Dues Ex Elminster scenario. But PCs hate that stuff.

[A Man In Black]

However, that does not mean that death shouldn't exist at all. Having people die during random encounters is really not unheard of. Boromir for instance dies in what is effectively a random encounter with orcs.

No, Boromir dies after having his will sapped by the One Ring. The orcs just deliver the coup de grace.

I'd argue that risk exists if you don't have real risk too. Most people playing with invulnerability cheats get bored of a game rather quickly.

I'm done talking to you if you cannot understand the different between "No possible risk of harm to the PCs" and "Defeat in combat results in death." You can imprison the PCs. You can take their shit. You can kill their friends, you can set their homes on fire, you can make fun of them, you can force them to run away, you can take over their lands, you can embarrass them, you can consume their resources, you can waste their time, you can cripple them temporarily or scar them permanently (crippling them permanently is probably incompatible with playing a game), and, above all else, you can stand in the way of whatever it is that they wanted to be doing that wasn't getting their asses kicked.

If you do not understand that you don't need death to motivate the players to not want to lose fights, then you are a dumbass, Swordslinger.

[Swordslinger]

I'm done talking to you if you cannot understand the different between "No possible risk of harm to the PCs" and "Defeat in combat results in death." You can imprison the PCs. You can take their shit. You can kill their friends, you can set their homes on fire, you can make fun of them, you can force them to run away, you can take over their lands, you can embarrass them, you can consume their resources, you can waste their time, you can cripple them temporarily or scar them permanently (crippling them permanently is probably incompatible with playing a game), and, above all else, you can stand in the way of whatever it is that they wanted to be doing that wasn't getting their asses kicked.

Here's the thing. I'm not saying death always has to be the punishment for any and every failure, I'm just saying it's a possibility and in some cases, an inevitability.

There are plenty of monsters in the monster manual that are just going to straight up kill you, because that's what they do. Other foes are likely to just leave you for dead. If you're bleeding and dying, the dire wolf isn't going to go down and try to bandage you. Even if Mr. wolf isn't hungry enough to eat you, you're probably going to bleed to death.

Sure, if your villain is some kind of power tripping Bond villain, then yeah, he might leave them alive, naked and humiliated. But if they're fighting wraiths or shadows? Dire bears? Sharks? Gelatinous cubes? Purple worms? Wyverns?

The point isn't that every single NPC ever that you lose against should automatically decide death is the best way to handle the problem. Bandits may decide to ransom the characters, The evil overlord may hold them for a public execution later, eccentric horny lizard men may decide they want to turn the PCs into sex toys, whatever.

But if you want verisimilitude, sometimes there is no easy way out. There's plenty of monsters in the monster manual where that's the case. There really are merciless killing machines that have no reason at all to keep you alive. Sometimes dead is dead and any other result is nonsensical and stupid.

[DSMatticus]

The real question is... what punishment do you use that's logical to the story and also makes them care about getting dropped in combat?

... What punishment does Doom use to make you care about dying? Oh, that's right; none. Does that make you any more likely to charge up to the cyberdemon with your fists because lol, who gives a shit? Well, maybe once or twice as a joke or a challenge. If you think you need punishment to make people care about winning or losing battles, you are factually wrong. There are dozens of games on my computer that do not punish me in the way you are suggesting for losing (an encounter OR the game), and yet I don't take their failure any less seriously. This is a non-issue.

And D&D is even better about this than any of those games, because D&D has a plot that you can change; and it's very easy to set it up such that failure prevents the PC's from changing the plot in the way they wanted. I.e., if the players fail their objectives during a big battle, they lose the battle. Even if none of the players died, they failed an objective. And that's why in Doom, you march through the whole game guns ablazing, killing everything you see; you have the objective of making it to the end, and dying counteracts that objectives. But it doesn't punish you by shutting down your game.

When you suggest you need punishment to get people to take the game seriously, nearly every videogame in existence is evidence of how wrong that is. Giving people objectives makes them want to complete those objectives, and losing battles prevents them from completing those objectives.

Even if it were true, following that train of logic leads to really terrible design decisions, such as the following:

No, no it doesn't. There is a meaningful difference between "playing and failing," and "not playing." Until you actually bother to make that obvious distinction, all of these arguments are just bullshit strawmen. Our argument does not actually lead to any of those arguments, and that's why K has been calling his "train of logic" a massive failure. Because it is.

People are attempting to make the argument that character death is un-fun (usually without really exploring all of the ramifications of the statement), but the fact remains that it's a poor argument, especially since fun is highly subjective.

And this is where the strawman is: that's not the position, because he keeps bringing up words like 'enjoy' and 'fun,' and that's superfluous bullshit. Failure is something you can feel shitty about in the moment, and in the end it makes a better overall play experience. Being excluded is something you feel shitty about in the moment, and it's a lot harder to figure out how that contributes to a better overall play experience.

Here's the actual argument form:
1) If there are no compelling reasons for a mechanic to exclude players from the game, it is objectively inferior to a mechanic which does not exclude players.
2) Death in D&D is a mechanic which excludes players from the game.
3) No compelling reasons exist for death in D&D to exclude players.
4) Therefore, death is an inferior mechanic.

1 is a gimme. If you seriously want to argue that, "I want to be able to kick players out of the game just because," you're just an ass. If you're excluding players from the game, you should be doing it because it makes the game better.

2 is not universally true; death at the end of a session (climactic battle) doesn't exclude players, not in any meaningful way. Also, if the game has phoenix downs or easy resurrection, 2 stops being true but at that point I would just say "the mechanic of death is different in that case." But you should draw from this that there are cases where death is okay, and ways to change death to make it okay, but death as it currently exists in D&D satisfies this statement.

3 is the actual point of debate. What compelling reasons are there for death to exclude players? I haven't seen a single good one so far; "gritty realism?" That's a joke. "Punishment incentive" from Swordslinger? Also a joke, there are more games without punishment than there are games with punishment.

Furthermore, the argument "mechanics which interfere with me playing my character are bad" is a dangerously sweeping generalization which can logically be applied to any number of circumstances. If some other character casts Time Stop in a 3.5 game, they suddenly get to take the equivalent of 4 extra turns

If you're going to go to bullshit extremes, you can literally just argue "other players get turns." You don't need time-stop.

Again, you're taking the actual argument to an absurd extreme, but the argument doesn't actually lead there and you're forcing it. Excluded from the game does not mean: "you have to wait while other players take their turns." Excluded from the game means: "you go sit in the corner while other people play."

[Stubbazubba]

DS is right; if you know when your next turn is going to be, that's not not playing, that's taking turns. Death is not about turn-taking so everyone can play, it's you stop playing and you do not know when you'll be able to play again. I agree with DSMatticus' presentation of the argument. I have nothing, really, to add, actually, just voicing my support of that side.

Oh, here's something to add: Monsters which have nothing better to do than to kill you is a verisimilitude problem. But the answer is easy; change the monsters so that's less likely to be the case. First, get rid of bleeding out. There's no reason to have time kill you, not unless you were hit with an ability with a bleed status effect or something. Even then. Anyways, the next thing you do is have monsters take you back to their lair or at least leave the battle field before they try to eat you. You can just fluff it to say that animals aren't stupid enough to sit around where people have been, they'll take their spoils elsewhere. This at least gives you a chance to escape or do something else before they eat you. The point is, that's not really a reason to keep PC death the way it is. It can be altered by changing just a few things, depending on how you approach the design of the game.

[K]

Oh, here's something to add: Monsters which have nothing better to do than to kill you is a verisimilitude problem. But the answer is easy; change the monsters so that's less likely to be the case. First, get rid of bleeding out. There's no reason to have time kill you, not unless you were hit with an ability with a bleed status effect or something. Even then. Anyways, the next thing you do is have monsters take you back to their lair or at least leave the battle field before they try to eat you. You can just fluff it to say that animals aren't stupid enough to sit around where people have been, they'll take their spoils elsewhere. This at least gives you a chance to escape or do something else before they eat you. The point is, that's not really a reason to keep PC death the way it is. It can be altered by changing just a few things, depending on how you approach the design of the game.

It's not that the situations demand character death for verisimilitude, it's that the wargamers lack the ability to preserve verisimilitude and need a super-railroady version of a narrative to get them to the next battle.

I mean, in a situation where one character drops and the rest of the party is up, there is no verisimilitude reason at all to permanently kill a character. The downed player is down and the monster attacks the next person because that person is up and it still a threat. Character death at that point is just dickery for the sake of dickery.

In the super rare event of a TPK, there are any number of reasons you can use. You can say that the dire bear no longer considered them a threat and left because it's a dumb animal who lacks the medical training to discern death vs unconsciousness. You can say the wyvern was not hungry or wanted the bodies to rot a bit to flavor them up, but it's an intelligent monster so just about any reasoning works. You can say that the intelligent undead wraith or shadow didn't want to create more undead spawn that reminded it of its own suffering or just wanted to torture the characters rather than kill them or any other response you can expect from an intelligent creature.

The number of reasons is literally endless and most lead to a cool twist in the story, but the wargamers actually can't use any of them because they aren't that creative.

I mean, I'd love to see the Empire Strikes Back version done by wargamers. Luke and Han would get killed by Vader for "verisimilitude" and the Return of the Jedi would involve some other Jedi taking Luke's place and some newly introduced forehead alien as the Princess's love interest.

Of course, in the wargamer version Luke would probably be killed by the ice monster in the beginning of the movie, so even Empire would have ended about ten minutes in.

No... wait.... the Princess would have been killed before even the first movie, so no version of Star Wars would exist if wargamers were telling the story. We don't even have to address the number of combats where they could have been ignominiously hit by crits from Random Stormtrooper #4.

[Swordslinger]

Matticus: Doom has the punishment of not letting you progress in the game until you win. Thus you're forced to do well or you don't proceed. That's a pretty common failure point for video games.

Your story can't continue until you win that fight.

Oh, here's something to add: Monsters which have nothing better to do than to kill you is a verisimilitude problem. But the answer is easy; change the monsters so that's less likely to be the case.

That's a lot of changes, because quite a few monsters in D&D fall under the realm of beasts. And what would you do about wraiths and other life draining incorporeals? Why would they suddenly just stop draining you?

First, get rid of bleeding out. There's no reason to have time kill you, not unless you were hit with an ability with a bleed status effect or something. Even then. Anyways, the next thing you do is have monsters take you back to their lair or at least leave the battle field before they try to eat you.

Even if they did. You become conscious again with 1 hit point and your weapon was probably left back where you were initially because you got KOed and dropped it. So what are you going to do, beat the wyvern to death with your fists?

[Red_Rob]

It's not that the situations demand character death for verisimilitude, it's that the wargamers lack the ability to preserve verisimilitude and need a super-railroady version of a narrative to get them to the next battle.

Wait, characters being able to die at any time regardless of story concerns is now "railroady", whilst ensuring that characters important to the story have "plot armour" is not? So you are explicitly just assigning bad words to the opposing argument to paint it in a bad light, is that it? I understand you are trained as a lawyer, which figures i guess.

In the super rare event of a TPK, there are any number of reasons you can use. You can say that the dire bear no longer considered them a threat and left because it's a dumb animal who lacks the medical training to discern death vs unconsciousness. You can say the wyvern was not hungry or wanted the bodies to rot a bit to flavor them up, but it's an intelligent monster so just about any reasoning works. You can say that the intelligent undead wraith or shadow didn't want to create more undead spawn that reminded it of its own suffering or just wanted to torture the characters rather than kill them or any other response you can expect from an intelligent creature.

The number of reasons is literally endless and most lead to a cool twist in the story, but the wargamers actually can't use any of them because they aren't that creative.

"The death of a character can have a great impact on a story and lead to loads of cool twists, but pro-lifers actually can't use any of them because they aren't that creative." Any event in the game can lead to cool twists. What's your point?

I mean, I'd love to see the Empire Strikes Back version done by wargamers. Luke and Han would get killed by Vader for "verisimilitude" and the Return of the Jedi would involve some other Jedi taking Luke's place and some newly introduced forehead alien as the Princess's love interest.

Of course, in the wargamer version Luke would probably be killed by the ice monster in the beginning of the movie, so even Empire would have ended about ten minutes in.

No... wait.... the Princess would have been killed before even the first movie, so no version of Star Wars would exist if wargamers were telling the story. We don't even have to address the number of combats where they could have been ignominiously hit by crits from Random Stormtrooper #4.

In Star Wars Obi Wan dies half way through. "Old master" was explicitly a character template in D6 Star Wars. Obi wan's death galvanised Luke into becoming a Jedi and gave a personal edge to Luke's battle against the Empire. Any characters death in an RPG can do the same.

Your Empire example is hilarious given your earlier comments about railroading. It really is telling that the only thing you can think to do when a character dies is to continue the same plot threads but have a new character act as a bad fill in for the previous one. If Luke and Han get killed by Vader then the story becomes about how Princess Leia gets her Sarah Connor on and then gathers a rag-tag bunch to avenge the death of her lover and brother. It becomes Kill Bill in space. That's what RPG's are about, not having the story you necessarily expected, but making it awesome nonetheless. You seem to want to come up with a story at the start and never deviate from it till the end. I really don't know what to say if you think that is how RPG's should be played.

To say how much you rail against strawmen, I don't think I've seen anyone in this thread include quite so many per post. You might want to work on that.

[DSMatticus]

Matticus: Doom has the punishment of not letting you progress in the game until you win. Thus you're forced to do well or you don't proceed. That's a pretty common failure point for video games.

Your story can't continue until you win that fight.

Ding, ding, ding! That's exactly right. You lose a fight in Doom, and you fail to complete an objective. In Doom, that doesn't even matter because you quickload and attempt that objective again. In D&D, failure already actually matters, because once the dragon eats the princess/you lose the battle, the princess is dead/the battle is lost and you can't reverse that, you just find new objectives that try to salvage the situation.

If we don't need to send someone into timeout to tell them "dying = bad" for Doom, why do we need to do it for D&D which already has steeper, more permanent failure states without exclusion? You're not making your point here, you're making mine.

[Swordslinger]

Ding, ding, ding! That's exactly right. You lose a fight in Doom, and you fail to complete an objective. In Doom, that doesn't even matter because you quickload and attempt that objective again. In D&D, failure already actually matters, because once the dragon eats the princess/you lose the battle, the princess is dead/the battle is lost and you can't reverse that, you just find new objectives that try to salvage the situation.

Dude what? Have you ever actually played Doom? You can't fail objectives. The only ending is either the happy one or the one where you die and turn off the game. There is no ending where you survive but also fail the mission.

Your comparison is full of fucking holes bro.

[Orion]

DSMatticus is using "You" to refer to the player, not the character. The penalty a real life human being suffers for dying in doom is restarting the level. The penalty a real life human pays for failing in D&D is steeper.

[Red_Rob]

DSMatticus is using "You" to refer to the player, not the character. The penalty a real life human being suffers for dying in doom is restarting the level. The penalty a real life human pays for failing in D&D is steeper.

In Doom you are expected to die once every 20-30 minutes. In D&D you die maybe once per campaign. These are not equivalent situations. Although, depending on your hardware you could be looking at loading screens for a longer total time in a video game over the course of the game than you spend dead in an RPG

[DSMatticus]

Ding, ding, ding! That's exactly right. You lose a fight in Doom, and you fail to complete an objective. In Doom, that doesn't even matter because you quickload and attempt that objective again. In D&D, failure already actually matters, because once the dragon eats the princess/you lose the battle, the princess is dead/the battle is lost and you can't reverse that, you just find new objectives that try to salvage the situation.

Dude what? Have you ever actually played Doom? You can't fail objectives. The only ending is either the happy one or the one where you die and turn off the game. There is no ending where you survive but also fail the mission.

Your comparison is full of fucking holes bro.

Oh for fuck's sake. Every contribution you have made to this thread has been to misunderstand a slightly ambiguous problem, and it's getting really annoying, so let's cut through the ambiguity:
1) "Failing" a battle in Doom means you (the player) hit quickload and resume playing instantaneously.
2) "Failing" a battle in D&D might mean your character dies.
3) If your character dies in D&D, that means you can't play for some time. You cannot resume playing instantaneously.

So let's understand that, right from the get go. Failing in Doom never means "kicked out of the game." Failing in D&D can mean "kicked out of the game."

Now, you said this:

The real question is... what punishment do you use that's logical to the story and also makes them care about getting dropped in combat?

This was a statement made in context of character death in D&D, i.e. "if we don't kick people out of the game when their characters die, how will we make them care about dying or not?"

But Doom doesn't kick you out of the game when your character dies, yet people still play Doom trying not to get their character killed. If your argument is that we need exclusion as a punishment, you are wrong and that is the counter-example. There are hundreds if not thousands of others, single-player and multi-player.

And then since you asked for examples of how to make people care about getting dropped in combat, I gave you some: D&D has a shapeable story, and when players lose battles they stop being able to shape that story the way they want. Doom doesn't even have that.

In Doom you are expected to die once every 20-30 minutes. In D&D you die maybe once per campaign.

This is actually irrelevant to the current use of Doom as an example. Swordslinger said "D&D death is the punishment that keeps people caring about whether they try to win the battle or not." And I responded: "Doom exists."

So your statement is completely correct, but it's irrelevant to this part of the discussion. But even if it weren't: less of a bad thing is still worse than having none of a bad thing and you'd have to find a compelling reason to have PC death to begin with. See:

1) If there are no compelling reasons for a mechanic to exclude players from the game, it is objectively inferior to a mechanic which does not exclude players.
2) Death in D&D is a mechanic which excludes players from the game.
3) No compelling reasons exist for death in D&D to exclude players.
4) Therefore, death is an inferior mechanic.

What's your compelling reasons?