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Drache64
2020-07-03, 01:54 AM
That's the question: When is character death appropriate?

My philosophy is that a character death should be earned by a series of bad decisions, or in a fair combat with a series of bad rolls.

But that's not gospel to me, I am open to others and would love some more perspective. Should character death be inflicted upon players if they misbehave? What about used for plot purposes? Can a DM kill a party member just to shake stuff up?

What do you guys think?

NichG
2020-07-03, 02:51 AM
In systems with raise dead/etc, I think character death is fair game as long as it could have reasonably been prevented somehow and is not just vindictiveness on the part of the DM. E.g. it's not okay to decide 'I'm going to kill this character', just like it's not okay to decide 'this character is going to be successfully captured'. But it's fine to say 'this situation is dangerous, and the enemy is going to focus-fire on the weakest character in the party to try to inflict some damage that's hard to heal to soften them up for their boss' or 'this trap is designed to kill since just injuring someone is a temporary inconvenience and not really a protection; so if someone sets it off then its straight to the save or die'

For cases where it's a more permanent end, I'd say that there should always be some kind of significant exchange, trade, or consequence to the arc of the campaign associated with the events of the death - this character sacrificed themselves so that another might live; or they got themselves killed overreaching for a power that is now running wild over the world; or they were betrayed by someone the party thought was an ally and now the direction of things moves towards obtaining vengeance. But with permadeath, getting killed by a random encounter with boars just encourages a 'disposable character' mentality.

Silly Name
2020-07-03, 03:41 AM
First of all, this question heavily hinges on what system you're using and what tone you want to convey. For example, if you're running an AD&D dungeoncrawler, players will know their characters can die to a bad roll or a no-save trap or any number of brutal obstacles they'll meet, and will act accordingly. Likewise, if you're playing Call of Cthulhu we all know we came here for supernatural eldritch horrors that can unravel our bodies and/or minds with a mere touch or even their sole presence.

But maybe we're playing a session of DungeonWorld or D&D 5e or Exalted, and the players are a bit more attached to their characters and their role in the overall plot of the campaign. Deaths that feel random and lack dramatic contribution don't really fit with the base assumptions of those games. You can still die to the dice or by making exceedingly dumb decisions, but we expect those events to be a rarity and to not be sprung on the players without warning.

I think your base assumption, however, is a very good one: no matter system or tone, players should never perceive character death as the consequence of the GM "punishing" them, or purposefully creating unwinnable scenarios. Using it as a tool to keep a party in line screams dysfunctional social skills and evokes tales of horrible GMs.*

Character death as a plot point can be one of those fair moments, too - but, again, how you go around handling it depends on the baseline assumptions I spoke of above: going back to Call of Cthulhu for a moment, players know their characters are likely to die in the course of an adventure, but also know those deaths can integrate in the plot (compare to the hypothetical AD&D dungeoncrawler, where expectations of dramatic, plot-affecting death scenes are low). So in a CoC campaign, the GM doesn't need to worry particularly about character deaths.

In other types of games, like 5e, an usual tidbit of wisdom is that you should make sure the player is ok with their character dying because the plot demands so. Either by discussing this with them, or because you assume you know them well enough they'll be ok with it, but I'd still recommend talking about it even in this case.

I also know you can run DungeonWorld and 5e as highly-lethal dungeoncrawlers, but it's not the usual type of game you'd run in those systems - both system and agreed-upon style of play matter, with some systems being better suited for certain styles and tones.

In short, make sure everyone's on board with how you are planning to handle character deaths, don't be a jerk about them and remember that we play games to have fun.


*Also note there's a difference between actual fairness and perceived fairness: while we tend to accept "screwed by the dice" as nobody's fault but statistics', if you spend a whole session getting screwed by RNG you probably won't think it's fair.

arrowed
2020-07-03, 04:47 AM
Silly Name's statement is good.
System and individual game inform a lot of where Character Death should be in prominence.

Something that I've learned over my experience with RPGs is that death is an easy consequence to write, but often unhelpful to actually follow through on. The threat is compelling because the actuality of character death is BAD. Your plot threads are cut short, you lose not just the character but all the ways they connected to the world, and your equal-level-appropriate-equipment replacement is still going to play catch-up to the rest of the group.

There are 2 games that spring to mind for how they deal with this: Torchbearer and Spellbound Kingdoms.

Torchbearer is a dungeon-crawler, with limited inventory, risky and fickle magic, and a very gritty feel. Dealing with goblins is generally done in a Conflict, but a Kill Conflict is only one type next to Drive Off, Trick, Flee, Capture, etc. You absolutely CAN try to massacre every goblin in sight, but if your team loses all of you will die, and even if you win, if you don't win perfectly, some of you might still die. 9 times out of 10 in play, the people I've played with have chosen to Drive Off rather than kill, and use traps, strategy, and environment to keep our enemies out for good. Importantly, outside of a Kill Conflict, your character CANNOT die in one roll. This is specifically stated in the GM section. You might get cursed, become injured, become sick, etc., but unless you literally leap off a cliff or otherwise bypass the 'make a roll' step, you have at least 2 rolls to make to not die.

Spellbound Kingdoms is a game of Swashbuckling. It is the setting I'd use to run Dragon Age oddly enough, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean or the Princess Bride. All Characters in Spellbound have a Heart Score, which determines how many Inspirations they can take. If one of your Inspirations is 4+ in intensity, you will not die an unnatural death. Regardless of whether someone tries to stab, poison, or drop a warship on you, Fate will intervene and you WILL survive. You might lose an arm or an eye, or something similar, but you will not die. Importantly, PCs are always capable of hitting the magic 4+ inspiration. As long as they don't intentionally build to NOT have such an inspiration, they will have literal plot armour. The only way to get around this is to destroy an inspiration (e.g. killing a beloved, destroying their pride) or being a high-level assassin. As a GM you have to go out of your way to have your enemies be able to kill the players.

My opinion's mostly that it depends on game, players and setting, but that the game is more interesting where the consequences of failure both in and out of combat are regularly more varied than Character Death. A DM should never just kill a party member to 'shake things up', unless their player is looking to retire them and specifically co-ordinates with the DM. There are 101 better ways to inject excitement into a campaign. Character Death is merely one of the most universal aspects. Killing a Character might create buy-in for 5/6 or 3/4 of your players at the price of utterly butchering it for another.

I'm going to stop here, because I could write like 10 more paragraphs and I need to do other stuff.

MoiMagnus
2020-07-03, 05:48 AM
First, character death and player elimination are different things.
A character can die, but if the universe has resurrections (high level D&D) or cloning (Paranoia), that's not a character death.
If the players play a family or a guild or some sort, individual character are just the face of the entity played by the player, and the player will just come back with an heir to continue. (BTW, some players will use that trick when their character die and they don't want to lose all the efforts put in the background: just bring a family member to seek revenge).
Conversely, a character heavily injured in a realistic system can result in the player being eliminated without the character dying. And even if the system assume character death is meaningless and you should just reroll a new character in 10min, the player might feel otherwise because of his emotional bond with the character.

Character death is not a problem per itself, as it's just a game mechanics. As every other game mechanics, it should be used fairly. And depending on the system, player can have significant agency on it (no death if no mistake or willing sacrifice), or have few control on it (random rolls can instantly kill you), or anything in between.
[Note: Character death is also frequently linked to failure. But "When is PC failure appropriate?" would be a full thread on its own. But a very important point is: just because you chose that your PCs cannot die for meta reasons does not mean your PCs cannot fail.]

Player elimination is very much one. It usually forces the player to be reintroduced into the game (through a new character), with all the usual problem coming with introducing a player in a campaign (difficulty of linking the new character to the old ones, feeling of unbalance, ...). It potentially put the player out of the game for the remaining of the session, which is never fun. In the end, player elimination is something to be very careful with, and you'd rather have player agreement for it.

Quertus
2020-07-03, 08:53 AM
It feels like I really ought to have a pithy one-liner for this, like "balance to the table" or "knows your group" - but, if my senility is to be believed, I don't.

As an advocate of Player Agency, and an opponent of railroading, unless the system says otherwise,

Do this:



My philosophy is that a character death should be earned by a series of bad decisions, or in a fair combat with a series of bad rolls.

Not this:



Should character death be inflicted upon players if they misbehave? What about used for plot purposes? Can a DM kill a party member just to shake stuff up?

If the system *does* encourage narrative railroading, you should make sure that the players understand and buy into that. Really, making sure that the players understand the system's and your own stance here really sound like they're a part of a balanced breakfast successful session 0 one way or another.


it's not okay to decide 'I'm going to kill this character', just like it's not okay to decide 'this character is going to be successfully captured'. But it's fine to say 'this situation is dangerous, and the enemy is going to focus-fire on the weakest character in the party to try to inflict some damage that's hard to heal to soften them up for their boss' or 'this trap is designed to kill since just injuring someone is a temporary inconvenience and not really a protection; so if someone sets it off then its straight to the save or die'

Strongly agree.


But with permadeath, getting killed by a random encounter with boars just encourages a 'disposable character' mentality.

Just? I disagree. A death of logical consequences of events outside players' control can also encourage the players to play smarter, whether that's attempts to predict these events (Divinations, Gather Information), attempts to control these events (some random encounter systems activate at different rates or with different encounters depending upon player actions), better ability to handle random encounters (specific preparations, or straight-up stronger characters), better tactics, better contingency plans (one-offs, willingness to retreat, hirelings to throw under the bus as you retreat, etc).

Railroad death, OTOH, probably *only* encourages that "disposable character mentality".

-----

An interesting offshoot of this thread is, is "save or die", "one failed roll and you're dead" good game design?

Pauly
2020-07-03, 09:03 AM
Firstly it depends heavily in the system. In some games The characters are very squishy (warhammer RPG comes to mind, as well as some of the more realistic modern systems) and players understand and accept that there will be casualties if you’re playing that type of system.

You may be playing in a hardcore setting of a usually more forgiving system, for example a D&D setting with very limited access to resurrection. Again the social contract in entering that arena is that character death is a real risk and the players understand and modify their actions accordingly.

However, generally speaking RPGs are very forgiving to characters. The DM will question Leroy Jenkins if he really wants to do that, healing is plentiful and easy, other party members will try to prevent character death from happening, resurrection is an option. In a forgiving environment character death needs to be unusual and extra-ordinary. Players will feel cheated if death is sudden, arbitrary or capricious.

In a traditional RPG players need to feel that it was their agency that caused the death. A series of bad decisions, an extra-ordinary run of bad rolls, a noble and heroic sacrifice, having the rest of the party turn against them, etc. Players should be able to recognize, unprompted, 3 or 4 opportunities they had to prevent the death.

I have no qualms about killing characters when the player has had the opportunities.

If a player’s death is about to arise from something they had no agency over (for example a save or die roll on crossing a bridge, another party member deliberately antagonizing the ancient red dragon in it’s lair) then I will fudge the result to a non lethal outcome.

Edit to add:
In addition to the in-game character reasons there is one situation where I feel it is OK from the meta game view for the DM to assassinate a player’s character. That is when the player is using the character to disrupt other player’s fun. If you’re being a male appendage to the other players you lose your narrative protection. If you continue to be a male appendage you will get a target placed on your back.

NichG
2020-07-03, 09:16 AM
Just? I disagree. A death of logical consequences of events outside players' control can also encourage the players to play smarter, whether that's attempts to predict these events (Divinations, Gather Information), attempts to control these events (some random encounter systems activate at different rates or with different encounters depending upon player actions), better ability to handle random encounters (specific preparations, or straight-up stronger characters), better tactics, better contingency plans (one-offs, willingness to retreat, hirelings to throw under the bus as you retreat, etc).

Railroad death, OTOH, probably *only* encourages that "disposable character mentality".


I don't think its death that actually encourages smarter play. I've been in a campaign where there were super-lethal things and we played very carefully just like you describe - use hirelings as ablative armor, never go into a dark tunnel, don't touch anything, etc. Notably, I was still playing the character I started with when that campaign ended. It wasn't actual random character death that encouraged smart play, it was very very close shaves and near survival and understanding how mistakes could lead to death.

On the other hand, I was in an L5R campaign where we were walking along the road, got ambushed with no warning or real opportunity to adjust, and got three arrows in the heart and character death during the surprise round in session 1. I definitely detached a bit from that campaign. It wasn't railroaded, it wasn't what the GM intended (in fact he even ended up retconning it since it was SO different than what he had understood about the combat system), but it also was clearly not something that any sort of reasonable attempt to engage with the premise or game could have done anything about. Since it was essentially random death, not due to a mistake or lack of reasonable preparation, it communicated 'what you do doesn't matter'.

The real art to using death is to make it 100% clear when there are things such that 'if you mess this up, you will die' but do it in such a way that the player is actually able to understand that, respond appropriately, and as a result of reacting to the world correctly, have their character survive. Seeing caution rewarded with survival is more effective than seeing death happen for a reason that may be hard to pin down or explain beyond 'the dice were unlucky tonight' or whatever.



An interesting offshoot of this thread is, is "save or die", "one failed roll and you're dead" good game design?

IMO, only if there's always a clear chain of causality leading to that moment. A good example of this might be something like the Vrock dance. You have a bit of warning and you're informed 'if you don't deal with this, you're probably going to die'. So if you deal with it or fail to deal with it, you can explain why things went that way. If I take that to Save or Die mechanics, then I'd say that Save or Die abilities should tend to occur on very iconic antagonists which leave some kind of hint or suggestion before you actually encounter them. The classic example is seeing a bunch of statues in a dungeon and then, hey, basilisk! If you get petrified in round 1, you can at least look back and say 'I should have known'.

But if you just had some cultist who happened to have a Flesh to Stone wand and was mixed in with the other cultists, and now suddenly you're dealing with a Save or Die, then I don't think that's a good usage of what that kind of mechanic is for.

Composer99
2020-07-03, 09:27 AM
That's the question: When is character death appropriate?

My philosophy is that a character death should be earned by a series of bad decisions, or in a fair combat with a series of bad rolls.

But that's not gospel to me, I am open to others and would love some more perspective. Should character death be inflicted upon players if they misbehave? What about used for plot purposes? Can a DM kill a party member just to shake stuff up?

What do you guys think?

I would say it is always acceptable for a character to die as a result of an aggregate of bad decisions and/or bad die rolls, with some systems making such events easier or harder.

I would say it is never acceptable for a DM/GM to kill a character for plot reasons without buy-in from the player, and never acceptable under any circumstance to kill a character in order to punish the player. (Once you have kicked a player from the game, then what happens to their character - dies, becomes "disappeared" in the Orwellian sense, whatever - is fine.)

Beyond that, I would say that the extent to which a character's death can be a result of seemingly capricious events ("you try to cross the rickety bridge [*player rolls badly*], but it gives way and you fall to your death") depends on both the game system and the "table culture", as it were. I would ensure, however, that you avoid "gotcha" results. Adapting the plot of, say, the Star Trek episode "Justice" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)) would be, I think, going a step too far unless it's an NPC who is under the gun. I do think that if characters are delving into monster and trap-infested holes in the ground (aka dungeoncrawling), they are doing so in full knowledge that they are taking their lives in their hands, at any rate.

The key is good communication. If the game system and table culture entail highly-lethal gameplay, it is important that players understand and accept this as a condition of their participation.



An interesting offshoot of this thread is, is "save or die", "one failed roll and you're dead" good game design?

It depends on the game and the tone it is trying to convey, I would think. If you're playing, say, Dread, then darn tootin' you're done once that tower collapses, but it's not for every game. Such a mechanic would be very off-putting in the example given of Spellbound Kingdoms.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-07-03, 10:31 AM
That's the question: When is character death appropriate?

My philosophy is that a character death should be earned by a series of bad decisions, or in a fair combat with a series of bad rolls.
That's basically my philosophy, with more emphasis on the "bad decisions" and less on "bad luck". Losing a character to stupidity feels embarrassing; losing a character to the dice feels asinine.

The campaign in question also matters, of course. Dice deaths in a dungeon crawl don't feel so bad as they would in a more story-driven campaign, for instance, while plot-mandated deaths can fit as the conclusion to a character's arc in the right character-driven campaign.


One cardinal rule: Deaths from DM incompetence are always worse. Two examples from a certain Pathfinder adventure path my local group has been running:

In the first segment, when the players are level three or so, there's a CR 7 fiend in a locked room. If the players break the lock, the fiend (who casts invisibility and some buffs when it hears people doing things) attacks anyone who enters the room. Our genius DM missed everything except "fiend" and "room," so the party was thrust into a nigh-unwinnable fight, which lead to an in-retrospect-entertaining trio of character deaths. First the cleric threw himself at the monster, telling the others to save themselves; then the barbarian joined, declaring that he wouldn't let the cleric hog the fight to himself; then the gunslinger (whose gun was shattered in the previous fight) also stayed behind, because the player didn't want to buy a new gun.
Later, after I took over from that DM (for obvious reasons), the players were attacking a fortress occupied by ogres. I had more ogres come out, a few at a time, but didn't realize how hard I was pushing the players until they started dropping. There were only two survivors. (The players generally saw it as a consequence of their own recklessness—and fair enough, some of the dead ones were being extremely reckless—but I probably shouldn't have thrown all those ogres at them at once.)

Spellweaver
2020-07-03, 12:59 PM
Any Time.

Assuming your playing a RPG with rules like attack, damage, hit points and creature/character death.

If, for any reason, you don't want character death....and the game has rules for it: You might be playing the wrong game.

Part of the fun of any game is loosing.

Also, in most games like D&D, death is not a big final ending. A character can die and come back. Ghostwalk had some fun with this.

Kill a character for a players misbehavior? Er...no. Not exactly.

Kill a character to shake things up? Er...no. Not exactly.

Kill a character as part of a plot? Er...no. Not exactly.

The plot one works....like if the player wants their character to die next week so they can play a new character or such. But for the DM to have a plot saying not matter what Bob's character will die two days from now is wrong. Though it works the other way around: the character death(s) make the plot.

For misbehavior? Well, if they like tell a joke and the DM gets mad they should not have rocks fall on a character to kill them. But like if, in game, the character attacks a huge dragon...then sure, kill the character.

Shake things up? Well, you want to shake things up....and have character death be a part of the shake up....not the end.

Tvtyrant
2020-07-03, 02:41 PM
Ask your players when they think CD is appropriate.

Personally I let players choose whether their characters live or die, instead of it being random chance.

Aneurin
2020-07-03, 03:59 PM
I treat character death as always being appropriate... when a character is in a situation that could plausibly result in their death. So, walking down a sunny street isn't going to kill someone - but I've absolutely had a character trampled to death by a horse because they got in its way.

That said, I'm not going to arbitrarily kill someone because they're crossing the street, for instance. I try and give - at a bare minimum - three points of failure before character death, one of which must be a choice that the player controlling the character makes. To take the trampling incident; the character heard the horses coming, and chose to linger in the worst possible place. The character then failed a "get the hell out of the way" test at the last moment. The horse then failed a "don't run into the idiot" test. There was also a damage roll, making a fourth failure point (the horse rolled perfectly for damage; almost anything less and the character would have lived, albeit horribly maimed). Wasn't the outcome I expected; wasn't what the player expected, but we accepted it as reasonable and moved on.

I find this extends fo combat, too; the characters can choose not to engage (fleeing, surrendering and playing dead are valid, if not always good, options), there's an enemy attack roll and their defense roll (making three points of failure total; two if your system of choice lacks an active defense) and, often, damage.




I do not, have not, and never will punish (or reward, for that matter) out of game behavior in game. I can't imagine a situation in which it would help anything.

I also don't deliberately kill characters or set them up to fail and/or die. I'll establish a scenario and turn the players and characters loose; whether they live or die is up to them, and a little luck. The only time I can think that I'd make an exception is if I knew a player wanted a character killed off rather than retired for some reason. Because at the end of the day, what is gained by a character death? It can add to the story your table is building and open a world of character development to other characters, but it's the end of one character's story and means the controlling player can't usually interact with the game until they make a new character and get them introduced - and where's the fun in that?

Quertus
2020-07-03, 06:07 PM
I don't think its death that actually encourages smarter play.

OK, fun!


I've been in a campaign where there were super-lethal things and we played very carefully just like you describe - use hirelings as ablative armor, never go into a dark tunnel, don't touch anything, etc. Notably, I was still playing the character I started with when that campaign ended.

… that sounds like "we were already playing smart", so… I'm not sure what to make of that.


It wasn't actual random character death that encouraged smart play,

Well, of course not - "rocks fall, <roll> - *you* die" does not encourage an intelligent response.


it was very very close shaves and near survival and understanding how mistakes could lead to death.

Death also shows how mistakes can lead to death (I'm picturing Lost here).

I'm not disagreeing that close shaves cannot *also* show people the importance of improvement (well, some people - others, sadly, don't learn shy of drastic consequences). I'm saying that character death can *also* be an educational experience.


On the other hand, I was in an L5R campaign where we were walking along the road, got ambushed with no warning or real opportunity to adjust, and got three arrows in the heart and character death during the surprise round in session 1. I definitely detached a bit from that campaign. It wasn't railroaded, it wasn't what the GM intended (in fact he even ended up retconning it since it was SO different than what he had understood about the combat system), but it also was clearly not something that any sort of reasonable attempt to engage with the premise or game could have done anything about. Since it was essentially random death, not due to a mistake or lack of reasonable preparation, it communicated 'what you do doesn't matter'.

Well, yes, "high fatality" ("realistic") systems, where you *can't* really learn much to reduce death (beyond "don't play this game", figuratively or literally) tend to, you know, not result in much learning. However, lower-fatality systems, where you can actually make bad choices and die vs make good choices and live, where you can see "this is what I did wrong" (or, at least, "this level of bad luck is unrecoverable, and i need *and can have* a viable backup plan / exit strategy"), OTOH, can produce postmortem epiphanies.


The real art to using death is to make it 100% clear when there are things such that 'if you mess this up, you will die' but do it in such a way that the player is actually able to understand that, respond appropriately, and as a result of reacting to the world correctly, have their character survive. Seeing caution rewarded with survival is more effective than seeing death happen for a reason that may be hard to pin down or explain beyond 'the dice were unlucky tonight' or whatever.

… I'm still confused. If, say, it's "three strikes and you're out", why would getting two strikes be more educational and easier to understand than getting three strikes?


IMO, only if there's always a clear chain of causality leading to that moment. A good example of this might be something like the Vrock dance. You have a bit of warning and you're informed 'if you don't deal with this, you're probably going to die'. So if you deal with it or fail to deal with it, you can explain why things went that way. If I take that to Save or Die mechanics, then I'd say that Save or Die abilities should tend to occur on very iconic antagonists which leave some kind of hint or suggestion before you actually encounter them. The classic example is seeing a bunch of statues in a dungeon and then, hey, basilisk! If you get petrified in round 1, you can at least look back and say 'I should have known'.

But if you just had some cultist who happened to have a Flesh to Stone wand and was mixed in with the other cultists, and now suddenly you're dealing with a Save or Die, then I don't think that's a good usage of what that kind of mechanic is for.

My players tend towards the "extreme luck" of somehow targeting any such "hidden threats".

To flip this notion, though - is it fair for PC threat level to be hidden of NPCs / monsters are required to broadcast their threat? I ask because I don't play favorites, and allow both sides to play Intel games (if they want - most (on both sides) don't bother). I *allow* 5d Chess, but also allow (and usually see) much more straightforward approaches.


I do think that if characters are delving into monster and trap-infested holes in the ground (aka dungeoncrawling), they are doing so in full knowledge that they are taking their lives in their hands, at any rate.

Lol. You'd think that, wouldn't you?

NichG
2020-07-04, 12:55 AM
… I'm still confused. If, say, it's "three strikes and you're out", why would getting two strikes be more educational and easier to understand than getting three strikes?


I think this comes down to autopilot and 'standard operating procedure' ways of playing. If I've made some assumptions about how the game should be played given my character (such as, when playing the Barbarian I should Charge + Pounce + Leap Attack + Power Attack at -4), and I'm just playing that out, then when something goes wrong there are a variety of explanations and reactions:

- This is just a harder opponent/scenario than the previous ones but I'm already doing the optimal thing, so if I die that's just the statistics
- The GM is actively countering me or trying to screw me over
- Someone else messed up, it's their fault!
- I made a mistake but it was a mistake of detail - I should have delayed half a round, or I should have buffed first with a consumable, but my overall strategy is still the optimal one
- I made a serious mistake and I should have taken out my bow and fought from range, or otherwise avoided letting the enemy get a full attack, even if that reduces my damage output by 90%
- Whatever, death happens, that's part of the game. Time to roll up Bob the Second, I'm not going to try to explain it.

If I do my SOP and die, depending on how I'm feeling or what else is going on, I could pick on any of these justifications for better or worse.

Now, lets say we have the same scenario, but before rushing in I see the monster make a full attack against some NPC and get 12 attacks in the sequence, each dealing about 30 damage on average, and with to-hits in the +20 to +30 range (where my AC is 25).

If in response to seeing that, I decide 'I don't want to be in full attack range' then I've sort of already played out the previous scenario of applying SOP in my head and seen the consequences. But now, rather than half of the explanations either blaming dice or someone else for it, because I reached the conclusion that I should change my behavior by myself then 100% of my explanations will have it that it's my own decision of how to react to the situation that matters.

So if you can get someone to alter their behavior in the moment before the consequences hit in order to avoid them, I think that's much more of a teaching moment than if they rush through, suffer consequences, and then have to do a post-mortem to figure out what factors were responsible for the outcome.

If my goal is teaching smart play, places where the players succeed by being slightly smarter than they were before are a lot more valuable to that goal than places where players fail because they're insufficiently smart.

(There's a machine learning rant here to be made, but I guess I'll leave it)



To flip this notion, though - is it fair for PC threat level to be hidden of NPCs / monsters are required to broadcast their threat? I ask because I don't play favorites, and allow both sides to play Intel games (if they want - most (on both sides) don't bother). I *allow* 5d Chess, but also allow (and usually see) much more straightforward approaches.


I'm not really concerned with that kind of fairness as a matter of principle. I'll definitely have antagonists that play intel and mind games, 5d chess, and the like, but I broadcast that information as well - not the specific moves in the game of 5d chess, but the fact that the PCs are up against someone who operates that way. I'll also make sure that there are high level objectives on the board whenever that kind of antagonist is in play, which means that the PCs can get a nasty surprise when their enemy is smart and tricks them, but that surprise is that the enemy achieves something they wanted to prevent rather than the entire party waking up in Limbo after being killed in their sleep. A sort of fail-forward design.

If the opponent is an animal or magical creature, then actually broadcasting lethality is completely realistic. Poison dart frogs are brightly colored, because it means there's a chance a predator will be afraid and not eat them. If the frog gets eaten but kills the predator, the frog is still worse off from that exchange.

HappyDaze
2020-07-04, 05:45 AM
Ask your players when they think CD is appropriate.

Personally I let players choose whether their characters live or die, instead of it being random chance.

Alternately, tell your players when CD will be appropriate in your game and ask them if they want to play it.

I don't let players directly choose whether their characters live or die, but they have lots of meaningful in-game choices that can greatly influence the odds.

For me, the game needs to stay a game, so I don't fudge anything.

Tvtyrant
2020-07-04, 03:39 PM
Alternately, tell your players when CD will be appropriate in your game and ask them if they want to play it.

I don't let players directly choose whether their characters live or die, but they have lots of meaningful in-game choices that can greatly influence the odds.

For me, the game needs to stay a game, so I don't fudge anything.

Yeah but this is in the context of asking strangers on the Internet, and if you don't have strong feelings you are going to get a lot further asking your players then asking us.

Different strokes on that one. I prefer whatever will get the players to see their characters as people as much as possible, if that involves making them immune to death unless they feel their character arc has finished I'm for it.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-04, 04:43 PM
I have only ever killed characters when I had could no longer avoid it.

The worst example I have is from Shadowrun. A new player had just joined, he was new not only to SR, but to RPG's. In his first combat, he jumped out of cover onto the roof of a minivan - right in the line of sight of a drone armed with missiles. I warned him this was unwise, that cover was how smart heroes stayed alive. He insisted, then rolled atrociously when shooting at the drone.

I did not roll poorly for the drone's counter attack.

I even did the Rambo bit - with the smoking boots being all that was left behind. But he left, and never returned.

As a matter of fact, this was in 2000. 20 years ago. I ... don't think I've killed any player characters since.

Tanarii
2020-07-05, 10:07 AM
Whenever you meet the game system requirements. Or the house ruled version of them, if your table doesn't like the default version.

Jay R
2020-07-08, 11:36 AM
When the character reaches -10 hit points, or whatever the rules stipulate for death.

If the answer is anything other than what the rules state, then the players and DM need to agree to that in advance, just like any other house rules.

The more important question is how encounters should be designed, to give players the opportunity to save their PCs.

It's been a long time since a PC died while I was DMing, but it's possible, and the players know it's possible. That's why they retreat when they are losing.

The problems come when a group don't realize that death is possible, and therefore do not consider retreat as a sometimes necessary decision.

If a character dies in my game, I will consider it one of the following:

a. poor design on my part, that I couldn't fix on the fly,
b. really poor decisions by the players, or
c. an astoundingly bad series of rolls.

[If a single roll kills a PC, then that falls into category a, not category c.]

By the way, I'm speaking as somebody whose character died two weeks ago. Nobody in the party realized that the 2d6 hit points we were losing each round was a single, multi-round area effect spell, rather than a series of instantaneous attacks. So we never moved out of the area of effect. It was a Holy Storm against a 3rd-level party, and three out of five of us died. The bad decision on our part came from not understanding the situation. I don't think it was the DM's fault; we've been playing at a table for years, and are now using roll20. That format makes full communication a little harder, at least until we get used to it.

No problem; D&D goes on. Last week, our new characters avenged the old ones and are taking their bodies to a church for a proper burial.

False God
2020-07-08, 02:52 PM
It is appropriate when it is appropriate.

Drascin
2020-07-09, 04:43 AM
If you ask me when I feel a player character death is appropriate, as a GM... well, generally speaking, I feel that for a character death to be appropriate it has to involve one of two things: either the player knew perfectly well that there was a high risk of death and decided to go in anyway, or the player is actively okay and ready for the character to get straight up deaded.

Let me elaborate.

"The player knew perfectly well that there was a high risk of death and decided to go in anyway": What I mean by this is simple. There has to be at least one fully informed decision involved by the player if total character removal is to be on the table. A "random encounter" should never kill a player due to a string of improbably bad rolls (because the fun thing about being a player character is that you will make three orders of magnitude more rolls than any NPC, so law of averages says that you WILL hit the low probability disaster string at SOME point). Or if it turns out that players didn't pick up on your small clue that the vagabond was a disguised dragon and someone gets killed. Or there just was a random ass trap what kills you. Or you got into a fight you didn't expect to be this hard but retreating is damn near impossible (which, btw, is most RPG rulesets with tactical heft - I've noticed in most RPGs with an emphasis on tactical movement I've played, from D&D to Lancer, retreating is almost always way harder than engaging). And so on.

Basically, death by suckerpunch is almost never interesting. If death is going to happen, it should be in situations where players acted in full knowledge that there was a good chance of dying, but decided the matter was important enough to risk it anyway. And no, telling people that they are probably going to die in this fight after they have already engaged doesn't really count as informed decision. When in doubt, it's probably safer to lean away from killing people than not.

Similarly, sometimes players are actively alright with characters dying. Perhaps it would be a good cap to their character arc to pull a Skurge and die heroically holding the bridge. Perhaps they feel it would be hilarious if their death seeker warrior died in the most anticlimactic fashion possible. Who knows! There's as many reasons for character death to be a good idea as there are possible characters. But again, it's a player's decision. I as GM don't get to just go "oh, I think Character A dying would be really neat and make for a good story". It has to be player prompted.

Democratus
2020-07-09, 08:16 AM
Character death is appropriate when something happens that kills them.

The rules of whichever game you are playing will explain how death occurs.

Other than that, you must lean on the social contract of the game table.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-07-12, 08:20 PM
The real art to using death is to make it 100% clear when there are things such that 'if you mess this up, you will die' but do it in such a way that the player is actually able to understand that, respond appropriately, and as a result of reacting to the world correctly, have their character survive. Seeing caution rewarded with survival is more effective than seeing death happen for a reason that may be hard to pin down or explain beyond 'the dice were unlucky tonight' or whatever.
This argument isn't wrong, but it's supporting the wrong point.

Having your character die for unclear reasons doesn't teach anything—that is 100% true. But the problem isn't the death; having your character survive for unclear reasons isn't any better. The problem is the unclear reasons. Dying for clear reasons is an excellent way to teach people!



Character death is appropriate when something happens that kills them.

The rules of whichever game you are playing will explain how death occurs.

Other than that, you must lean on the social contract of the game table.
No offense is intended, but this is the worst answer in the thread, even worse than the tautologies. You simultaneously say that death should happen if and only if the rules say the characters die, and that the social contract of the game table determines when characters should die. These two answers aren't inherently contradictory, but they are unrelated.
It's not quite as bad as simultaneously asserting deontological and consequentialist morality, but it's close. Maybe it's more akin to simultaneously asserting deontological and subjective morality?

Tanarii
2020-07-12, 11:28 PM
No offense is intended, but this is the worst answer in the thread, even worse than the tautologies. You simultaneously say that death should happen if and only if the rules say the characters die, and that the social contract of the game table determines when characters should die. These two answers aren't inherently contradictory, but they are unrelated.
It's not quite as bad as simultaneously asserting deontological and consequentialist morality, but it's close. Maybe it's more akin to simultaneously asserting deontological and subjective morality?
No offense intended, but amazing. Every word of what you just wrote was wrong.

The rules define death, and when those conditions are met. Unless you house rule them.

Other than that, the social contract at the table defines when you'll avoid or apply those rules. Things like "no gotcha insteadeath traps should be in the game" or "wandering encounters should never be difficult enough it's possible to result in death from them" or even "all encounters should be planned so a wandering encounter can't result in death" are all social contracts in how to apply the rules.

The social contract is about when and how to apply the rules. Or if you should modify them. Or cheat in certain circumstances.

NichG
2020-07-13, 12:44 AM
This argument isn't wrong, but it's supporting the wrong point.

Having your character die for unclear reasons doesn't teach anything—that is 100% true. But the problem isn't the death; having your character survive for unclear reasons isn't any better. The problem is the unclear reasons. Dying for clear reasons is an excellent way to teach people!


I'd still say any kind of retrospective analysis will be less effective than if the player is able to see those reasons why their character might die just far enough in advance of making their decision that they can change course, and then feels compelled to actually change course in advance of the event.

Or maybe to put a rhetorical spin on it, if you think the reasons why a certain course of action would lead to death are clear, but the player still follows that course of action and the character then dies, it's likely you've overestimated the clarity of those reasons.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-07-17, 11:21 AM
No offense intended, but amazing. Every word of what you just wrote was wrong.

The rules define death, and when those conditions are met. Unless you house rule them.

Other than that, the social contract at the table defines when you'll avoid or apply those rules. Things like "no gotcha insteadeath traps should be in the game" or "wandering encounters should never be difficult enough it's possible to result in death from them" or even "all encounters should be planned so a wandering encounter can't result in death" are all social contracts in how to apply the rules.

The social contract is about when and how to apply the rules. Or if you should modify them. Or cheat in certain circumstances.
This is not the same argument as you made the first time. This one clearly establishes the rules as a subset of the social contract, rather than treating them as independent entities. Which is true, but not obvious from "The rules of whichever game you are playing will explain how death occurs. Other than that, you must lean on the social contract of the game table." After all, the "other than that" implies that the social contract and the rules of the game are separate entities, which is a common way of understanding them.



I'd still say any kind of retrospective analysis will be less effective than if the player is able to see those reasons why their character might die just far enough in advance of making their decision that they can change course, and then feels compelled to actually change course in advance of the event.

Or maybe to put a rhetorical spin on it, if you think the reasons why a certain course of action would lead to death are clear, but the player still follows that course of action and the character then dies, it's likely you've overestimated the clarity of those reasons.
You're basically arguing that failure is an inherently ineffective teaching method, because if it was an effective teaching method they would know before you taught them. Could you try rephrasing what you intended to mean?

Democratus
2020-07-17, 11:55 AM
This is not the same argument as you made the first time. This one clearly establishes the rules as a subset of the social contract, rather than treating them as independent entities. Which is true, but not obvious from "The rules of whichever game you are playing will explain how death occurs. Other than that, you must lean on the social contract of the game table." After all, the "other than that" implies that the social contract and the rules of the game are separate entities, which is a common way of understanding them.


They are two separate things that must both be taken into account.

When a character reaches a state where the rules say they are dead, death occurs. However, if the social contract at the table precludes the particular kind of death then it doesn't happen.

An example would be when I'm running a game for children. There's a different social contract at a table with young kids than with adults. And the kinds of character deaths (if any) that are allowed is constrained by that contract.

NichG
2020-07-17, 11:32 PM
You're basically arguing that failure is an inherently ineffective teaching method, because if it was an effective teaching method they would know before you taught them. Could you try rephrasing what you intended to mean?

I mean, I wouldn't disagree with the part of the statement 'failure is an inherently ineffective teaching method'. If you're stuck in the mode of teaching someone who has absolutely no clue how to be successful at all on their own, asking them to try random things and punishing them every time something doesn't work is never going to teach them anything at a reasonable rate. At best you'll teach them how to have a thick skin and be persistent, at worst you'll make them not care.

The way you get out of that kind of situation is by providing guidance rather than by providing feedback. Feedback works when there's a clear sign of some attempts being better than others and where the credit assignment problem of 'why was this better than that?' has easy solutions - that means dense feedback rather than sparse, and as little randomness and hidden information as possible. Tabletop games aren't a good setting for reinforcement because consequences can be quite delayed (all the way back to character building choices in session 0), dice add randomness, and the DM is a big pool of hidden information waiting to impact the game.

So instead of feedback, you provide guidance. Guidance can be demonstrations of positive behaviors that should be performed (an example of this is if there's a mechanic in the system your players are ignoring, you can have an NPC use it effectively), or by using some sort of auxiliary partial feedback that's already familiar and which kicks in before the extreme sparse consequence does (e.g. before they random walk themselves off a cliff, you have a 'Are you sure you want to do that? You'll fall and die.' prompt). If there's something that they know would have been a failure and, via prompting or guidance or whatever, it is turned into success because of a single change in planned behavior, then that immediately solves the credit assignment problem and makes it clear at least in that one instance what sorts of actions are reasonable and what sorts of actions are not. There's still an abstraction that needs to occur - they need to recognize that same kind of action or strategy in new situations - but it's much, much easier than the general credit assignment problem.

GreatWyrmGold
2020-07-20, 10:08 AM
They are two separate things that must both be taken into account.

When a character reaches a state where the rules say they are dead, death occurs. However, if the social contract at the table precludes the particular kind of death then it doesn't happen.

An example would be when I'm running a game for children. There's a different social contract at a table with young kids than with adults. And the kinds of character deaths (if any) that are allowed is constrained by that contract.
That is also not the argument I was originally criticizing. It is different than that one, and both it and your second attempt actually solve the problem I was criticizing. Why are you trying to argue with me? I don't disagree with you anymore, unless you're trying to claim your current iteration is logically identical to what you initially typed.



I mean, I wouldn't disagree with the part of the statement 'failure is an inherently ineffective teaching method'.
Naturally. That's your conclusion. I was not disputing that it was your conclusion. I'm curious why you felt the need to say that you agree with your own conclusion.


If you're stuck in the mode of teaching someone who has absolutely no clue how to be successful at all on their own, asking them to try random things and punishing them every time something doesn't work is never going to teach them anything at a reasonable rate. At best you'll teach them how to have a thick skin and be persistent, at worst you'll make them not care.
This is demonstrably incorrect, in everything from lab rats to Dark Souls players. You'll need to do better than asserting that learning from failure is impossible.


The way you get out of that kind of situation is by providing guidance rather than by providing feedback. Feedback works when there's a clear sign of some attempts being better than others and where the credit assignment problem of 'why was this better than that?' has easy solutions - that means dense feedback rather than sparse, and as little randomness and hidden information as possible.
I agree with everything here except the first sentence. Guidance and feedback are not separate; the only fundamental difference is that guidance can come before action, instead of after.


Tabletop games aren't a good setting for reinforcement because consequences can be quite delayed (all the way back to character building choices in session 0), dice add randomness, and the DM is a big pool of hidden information waiting to impact the game.
Then why does learning by failure work in video games? Consequences can be delayed (all the way back to character-building choices before the first cutscene, in some cases); randomness and de facto randomness are present in more games than not; and no DM is such a deep well of hidden information as a video game with intricate plot and mechanics.

Yet, from puzzlers to platformers, from stealth games to shooters, from Fire Emblem to XCOM, and especially with basically every game citing Dark Souls as an inspiration, learning by failure works even when they fall short of your criteria of clarity.

Obviously, not all video games pull this off. From Sierra adventure games to the clumsier Soulsborne wannabes, there's no shortage of video games where failure is just failure. But these games make it clear that the trait most required to learn from failure isn't immediate consequences, absolute determinism, or even relevant information being obvious. The trait most required is predictability.

"Predictability" doesn't mean "an absence of randomness," though extreme randomness can certainly detract from it. It means that a player can look at a situation, draw on their past experiences, and predict what is likely to happen if they do X. This can be on a vague macro scale ("if I let any archers get in range of my pegasus knight, she'll probably die"), on an instant-to-instant scale ("if I don't dodge-roll right now, that big attack will hit me"), or anything in between.

Obviously, there is some overlap between predictability and determinism, as well as between predictability and transparency. But you don't need perfect determinism or transparency to achieve predictability. The player doesn't need to know exactly how much cover improves their soldiers' odds of not getting blasted into alien chum, nor does there need to be 100% certainty that getting hit will always kill them. Just knowing that a single shot takes off most to all of a soldier's hit points at this level, and that moving into cover greatly reduces the chance that the single shot will hit, is enough for them to learn.

The obvious response is some form of "That's video games, those are different". If you want to make that argument, I'd like to ask ahead of time that you explain how. What makes learning through failure viable for Baldur's Gate but not Descent into Avernus?


The last paragraph of your post is just an explanation of what you think should be done instead of learning through failure. I don't think there's anything wrong with those methods, I just take issue with the assertion that you need to do any of that because failure is somehow incapable of teaching people anything.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-20, 11:18 AM
The general concensus here seems to be that, whenever the rules say you die - you die.

Which is funny, because as far as I've been able to learn from 35 years of playing role playing games, no one really plays by the rules. House rules large and small abound, from character generation to gold and magic items, to spell effects, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

But death must be final, or .. what, the player get's a second chance at keeping his character alive? I think I can ... live with that.

Not to say that, 'oh, that hit would kill you? Well then it misses!' Rather, I've produced a wide variety of second chances, from fighting your way out of Hades, to the party rescuing their friend from the afterlife, to playing dice with the devil or making deals with 'entities' to be sent back for another shot at the BBEG.

But as far as I can tell, death is the very worst instance to hamfistedly insist on RAW. And I get the whole idea that without risk there's no real suspense either. But that suspense doesn't have to hinge on the end of the character. 'Death' isn't free in my games. It's generally avoidable, but a major hazzle.

Morgaln
2020-07-20, 11:18 AM
That is also not the argument I was originally criticizing. It is different than that one, and both it and your second attempt actually solve the problem I was criticizing. Why are you trying to argue with me? I don't disagree with you anymore, unless you're trying to claim your current iteration is logically identical to what you initially typed.



Naturally. That's your conclusion. I was not disputing that it was your conclusion. I'm curious why you felt the need to say that you agree with your own conclusion.


This is demonstrably incorrect, in everything from lab rats to Dark Souls players. You'll need to do better than asserting that learning from failure is impossible.


I agree with everything here except the first sentence. Guidance and feedback are not separate; the only fundamental difference is that guidance can come before action, instead of after.


Then why does learning by failure work in video games? Consequences can be delayed (all the way back to character-building choices before the first cutscene, in some cases); randomness and de facto randomness are present in more games than not; and no DM is such a deep well of hidden information as a video game with intricate plot and mechanics.

Yet, from puzzlers to platformers, from stealth games to shooters, from Fire Emblem to XCOM, and especially with basically every game citing Dark Souls as an inspiration, learning by failure works even when they fall short of your criteria of clarity.

Obviously, not all video games pull this off. From Sierra adventure games to the clumsier Soulsborne wannabes, there's no shortage of video games where failure is just failure. But these games make it clear that the trait most required to learn from failure isn't immediate consequences, absolute determinism, or even relevant information being obvious. The trait most required is predictability.

"Predictability" doesn't mean "an absence of randomness," though extreme randomness can certainly detract from it. It means that a player can look at a situation, draw on their past experiences, and predict what is likely to happen if they do X. This can be on a vague macro scale ("if I let any archers get in range of my pegasus knight, she'll probably die"), on an instant-to-instant scale ("if I don't dodge-roll right now, that big attack will hit me"), or anything in between.

Obviously, there is some overlap between predictability and determinism, as well as between predictability and transparency. But you don't need perfect determinism or transparency to achieve predictability. The player doesn't need to know exactly how much cover improves their soldiers' odds of not getting blasted into alien chum, nor does there need to be 100% certainty that getting hit will always kill them. Just knowing that a single shot takes off most to all of a soldier's hit points at this level, and that moving into cover greatly reduces the chance that the single shot will hit, is enough for them to learn.

The obvious response is some form of "That's video games, those are different". If you want to make that argument, I'd like to ask ahead of time that you explain how. What makes learning through failure viable for Baldur's Gate but not Descent into Avernus?


The last paragraph of your post is just an explanation of what you think should be done instead of learning through failure. I don't think there's anything wrong with those methods, I just take issue with the assertion that you need to do any of that because failure is somehow incapable of teaching people anything.

Short answer: save points
Long answer: The reason it works in video games is that video games allow you to repeat the same situation over and over, in order to analyse the situation, try out tactics and find a solution, as well as honing the skills required to overcome whatever obstacle killed you. It doesn't work that way in TTRPGs. You don't usually build a new character and then go back to face the same situation again. In addition, the situation may not even be the same. The GM might well change it, especially if whatever killed you is an intelligent being that in turn also learns from the attempts on its life. A game will always be more predictable than a human being, unless the game is so randomized that you can't expect the same thing working the same way twice; in which case all you'll not learn anything from failure either. That makes learning (and teaching) through failure extremely inefficient in TTRPGs. Not to mention that it might well be perceived as being treated unfairly by the GM and what you learn from one GM might not be applicable to the next GM you meet because they handle things differently.

NichG
2020-07-20, 02:45 PM
Naturally. That's your conclusion. I was not disputing that it was your conclusion. I'm curious why you felt the need to say that you agree with your own conclusion.


You asked me to rephrase what I intended to mean. The implication I got was 'I don't think this is actually what you're arguing, but you see to be arguing it'. I'm confirming that I was in fact arguing that.



This is demonstrably incorrect, in everything from lab rats to Dark Souls players. You'll need to do better than asserting that learning from failure is impossible.


Impossible is moving the goal posts. I said 'at a reasonable rate' after all. A pure failure paradigm is going to be extremely inefficient and has very strong limits and biases. Without a proactive element to things, you'll impart a ton of aversive behaviors but nothing actually saying what the player should do. So they're a lot more likely to just shut down and do nothing, waiting for someone else to take the risk first. Which is a big step down from players who do stupid stuff but at least they're trying things.

Dark Souls is interesting, because it explicitly involves repeating the same scenario multiple times. This lets a player evaluate counter-factuals. It's not just failures, its how failure changes in response to changes in how the player approaches the scenario ('when I do this, I die; when I do that instead, I die 3 seconds later'). That's richer information than bopping someone on the nose whenever they don't do something right. If you can evaluate counter-factuals, you can explicitly differentiate between correlation and causation, which means you have the tools to establish not just that you failed, but why.

That kind of counter-factual information is what having a player change their course of action and then having their character survive provides. They can simultaneously know 'if I did A, I would have died (confirmed by DM); but I did B instead and survived; therefore I know not just that I survived, but I also know for certain why I survived without having to infer or guess'.

In a game where there's no explicit repetition, you have to make an assumption about unchanged factors and changed factors to do that kind of reasoning. Those assumptions are hard to make well, and can lead to rationalizations about the reasons for failing (e.g. 'I failed because the DM decided I should fail' or 'I failed because my team members keep putting me in danger' or things like that).



I agree with everything here except the first sentence. Guidance and feedback are not separate; the only fundamental difference is that guidance can come before action, instead of after.

Then why does learning by failure work in video games? Consequences can be delayed (all the way back to character-building choices before the first cutscene, in some cases); randomness and de facto randomness are present in more games than not; and no DM is such a deep well of hidden information as a video game with intricate plot and mechanics.

Yet, from puzzlers to platformers, from stealth games to shooters, from Fire Emblem to XCOM, and especially with basically every game citing Dark Souls as an inspiration, learning by failure works even when they fall short of your criteria of clarity.

Obviously, not all video games pull this off. From Sierra adventure games to the clumsier Soulsborne wannabes, there's no shortage of video games where failure is just failure. But these games make it clear that the trait most required to learn from failure isn't immediate consequences, absolute determinism, or even relevant information being obvious. The trait most required is predictability.

"Predictability" doesn't mean "an absence of randomness," though extreme randomness can certainly detract from it. It means that a player can look at a situation, draw on their past experiences, and predict what is likely to happen if they do X. This can be on a vague macro scale ("if I let any archers get in range of my pegasus knight, she'll probably die"), on an instant-to-instant scale ("if I don't dodge-roll right now, that big attack will hit me"), or anything in between.

Obviously, there is some overlap between predictability and determinism, as well as between predictability and transparency. But you don't need perfect determinism or transparency to achieve predictability. The player doesn't need to know exactly how much cover improves their soldiers' odds of not getting blasted into alien chum, nor does there need to be 100% certainty that getting hit will always kill them. Just knowing that a single shot takes off most to all of a soldier's hit points at this level, and that moving into cover greatly reduces the chance that the single shot will hit, is enough for them to learn.

The obvious response is some form of "That's video games, those are different". If you want to make that argument, I'd like to ask ahead of time that you explain how. What makes learning through failure viable for Baldur's Gate but not Descent into Avernus?


I explained a bit above - being able to repeat the exact same scenario as a controlled experiment makes it much easier to evaluate causality, and it injects information which is similar in nature to what the 'interrupted failure' method I've been pushing provides in a game without explicit repeats. But I'd also say that every game you're talking about doesn't just teach through failure, it also teaches through success and rewards, often at a micro scale. In Baldur's Gate I get to know not just whether I lived or died, but how many resources I used, how easy or hard the fight felt (in terms of whether I needed to change tactics mid-stream or not), how much damage each character did, etc. In XCOM I can for example experience managing to clear a room of aliens on my turn before any get to act, or feel the difference between a panicked 'looking for a solution because I got in trouble' state and a 'this is all under control' state. Puzzle games definitely don't teach through failure, as they mostly don't have a failure state per se, just a 'not progressing' state; generally skill-ups happen in puzzle games when you capture some new concept or way of looking at the puzzle elements (I'm mostly thinking of Zachtronics-type games here, not the Sierra adventures); those reconceptualizations usually correspond to trying something and finding that the outcome isn't among the set of things you thought were the only things possible (e.g. its a partial success), which then focuses search from breadth-first to depth-first and usually ends up with the puzzle solved shortly afterwards. I don't have experience with Dark Souls in particular, but if I take something like the Touhou games which are similarly punishing, then when something kills me I'm generally on a skill plateau for awhile but the moment I first manage to successfully evade it I'm about to experience a skill jump.

You can focus on the failure bits rhetorically, but I'd say that if you removed outright failure states entirely from those games then players would still improve - and likely would improve at a pretty similar rate. And for things where there's a skill plateau like the Touhou games, going and watching a video of someone successfully navigating the level will often accelerate leaving the plateau compared to just brute forcing it with trial and error. So I maintain that a failure-focused mode of teaching is inherently inefficient. There are much better ways of going about things.

FabulousFizban
2020-07-20, 04:35 PM
I'm more of a let the chips fall where they may DM. You do something stupid and roll bad? Roll up a new character buddy.

Drascin
2020-07-21, 03:28 AM
The general concensus here seems to be that, whenever the rules say you die - you die.

Which is funny, because as far as I've been able to learn from 35 years of playing role playing games, no one really plays by the rules. House rules large and small abound, from character generation to gold and magic items, to spell effects, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

But death must be final, or .. what, the player get's a second chance at keeping his character alive? I think I can ... live with that.

Not to say that, 'oh, that hit would kill you? Well then it misses!' Rather, I've produced a wide variety of second chances, from fighting your way out of Hades, to the party rescuing their friend from the afterlife, to playing dice with the devil or making deals with 'entities' to be sent back for another shot at the BBEG.

But as far as I can tell, death is the very worst instance to hamfistedly insist on RAW. And I get the whole idea that without risk there's no real suspense either. But that suspense doesn't have to hinge on the end of the character. 'Death' isn't free in my games. It's generally avoidable, but a major hazzle.

Personally, I have never found easy character death to be suspenseful. When their character can just die at any time people simply... disconnect. When I killed characters easily and by RAW, players just followed my lead and started treating characters like Warhammer pieces, sacrificing them for the quest without a second thought and having backups.

Having to live with consequences, on the other hand, has had a much better success rate on the whole.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-21, 03:36 AM
Personally, I have never found easy character death to be suspenseful. When their character can just die at any time people simply... disconnect. When I killed characters easily and by RAW, players just followed my lead and started treating characters like Warhammer pieces, sacrificing them for the quest without a second thought and having backups.

Having to live with consequences, on the other hand, has had a much better success rate on the whole.

Yes. To be invested in a character requires, well, investment. The more close scrapes you manage to get through, the more the character generally matters. Although character fatigue remains a thing, even then.

Democratus
2020-07-21, 08:37 AM
The general concensus here seems to be that, whenever the rules say you die - you die.

Which is funny, because as far as I've been able to learn from 35 years of playing role playing games, no one really plays by the rules. House rules large and small abound, from character generation to gold and magic items, to spell effects, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

House rules are still rules. If you use house rules, then a character is dead whenever the house rules say it is dead.

As to whether someone can become invested in a character who faces mortal peril with little special protection - that will vary from player to player. The early seasons of Game of Thrones showed how removing "plot armor" from important characters can increase engagement with a story rather than diminish it.

Much depends on whether the game you are playing has some kind of managed plot (most published modules) or instead utilizes emergent storytelling (sandbox, character-driven campaigns).

Kyutaru
2020-07-21, 09:42 AM
The general concensus here seems to be that, whenever the rules say you die - you die.
Pretty much. That's how I've been doing it since 2nd edition, and that edition was a meat grinder for PCs with plenty of monsters able to outright kill you in a single attack. Some things didn't even allow saves, like Power Word Kill or Imprisonment. Look at how these spells have changed over the years to accommodate a soft approach...

Power Word Kill used to kill a 20th level wizard without save, then in 3.5 it barely affects a wizard with an average constitution score with plenty of spell protections against it, then in 5th edition it's even less likely to work with wizards having d6 hp.

Imprisonment on the other hand has gone from no save at all in 2E to requiring a failed Will save in 3.5 to requiring a failed Wisdom save AND having limited duration AND taking 1 minute to cast in 5e.

DMs and players that played the old editions were used to losing characters and brought spares. Surviving to high levels was part of the challenge and glory and learning what monsters did what helped you on the next pass. Players used to be exceptionally paranoid and master strategists, always carrying a 10-foot-pole that they used extensively and something made of silver, because they learned from failure and loss of characters. It really sticks in your brain when you're in the same situation that got one of your past characters killed and make a different choice with different results. Being an adventurer was a hard job full of risk and peril and it was frequent that the tale comes to a gritty end.

But then that's also part of the fun. The player didn't die, his character did. This is now the end of one character who has a tragic tale to tell for the party and the beginning of a new tale for Replacement Cleric #27 that they just hired. Taking bets on if the newbie survives his first encounter with a beholder.

---

Modern D&D players want to treat their characters like protagonists. Immortal heroes that will always save the day and get the princess in the end. They just roll dice to act out the movie scenes and if someone dies then it's Peter Parker levels of drama and tears.

Old school D&D players treated their characters as soldiers. Fitting since D&D evolved from a tabletop war game. Like soldiers, they were expendable and prone to death. They were caught up in literal battles with monsters and rarely possessed the sort of demigod powers that allowed Hercules and friends to do the same. These were fairly simple and ordinary folk, especially if you used the REAL stat rolling method, who decided hunting monsters and saving villages was what they wanted to do -- what they NEEDED to do in a crazy monster-filled world of chaos and death. Surviving a dungeon was like surviving a war in the trenches and everyone who made it out alive was thankful that they had each other's backs.

kyoryu
2020-07-21, 09:49 AM
Overall, the characters die when the rules and/or social contract agree that they do.

Practically, I think a few things are required for this to work:


The player should know the situation is Actually Deadly
It should either be the result of a large series of bad decisions, or a knowing risk the player is taking
Death should not be the only consequence for failure, to help support the above
It should never be purely the result of chance, and doing Generally Safe things and the dice just betrayed you


The threshold for Generally Safe can vary from game to game, depending on just how much you want the game to involve "finding every possible threat and making the most safe plan you can think of". Some people enjoy that - others don't.


In XCOM I can for example experience managing to clear a room of aliens on my turn before any get to act, or feel the difference between a panicked 'looking for a solution because I got in trouble' state and a 'this is all under control' state. Puzzle games definitely don't teach through failure, as they mostly don't have a failure state per se, just a 'not progressing' state;

Failure can teach, for sure, but failure doesn't have to mean death. Death shouldn't be the only tool in the toolbox for "failure", as once you open yourself up to other types of failures you can have the players fail more often. I think you're conflating "fail" and "lose" too much. Not making progress is still, reasonably, "failing". Failing out of a scene and having a setback (without death) is still failing for sure.

Being able to completely repeat the exact same thing is by far the most ideal way to learn from mistakes, but I don't think it's a requirement.



As to whether someone can become invested in a character who faces mortal peril with little special protection - that will vary from player to player. The early seasons of Game of Thrones showed how removing "plot armor" from important characters can increase engagement with a story rather than diminish it.


But it didn't, really. It just misdirected you at who the protagonists were. Once you knew that (and the major antagonists), they had complete and utter plot armor. The "shocking" deaths really had to happen for the story to unfold. While they were surprising at the time (because of the protagonist misdirection), knowing the full story they were inevitable.

And even then, they only really died after fairly long series of horrible decisions (horrible in the practical, not moral, way). Nobody died from a random axe to the head. Ned died from a desire to be noble and spare Cersei, as well as literally trusting someone that told him not to. Robb died from insulting a major lord, that was known for holding grudges, and then going to his castle anyway. Catelynn died for supporting her son in this and following him no matter what.

These are all, in my mind, really good models for RPG deaths (in certain types of games, of course). Yes, you can die, but it won't be from a random arrow. It'll be from making long-term, major mistakes that diminish your support and put you in vulnerable situations.

Kyutaru
2020-07-21, 09:56 AM
It should never be purely the result of chance, and doing Generally Safe things and the dice just betrayed you
This kind of means traps are worthless. It wasn't uncommon for players to spring a deadly trap in 2nd edition that murdered them out of the blue. You signed the "It's Actually Deadly" waver the moment you entered the crypt.

NichG
2020-07-21, 10:40 AM
Traps can still destroy information or potential loot, transport rather than kill, diminish resources (stat drain), reconfigure the dungeon to be less convenient (collapsing corridors, flooded rooms), and be used as battlefield preparations by an active enemy to soften up a target. They can also act as alarms or information sources, breaking a stealthy incursion.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-21, 11:22 AM
House rules are still rules. If you use house rules, then a character is dead whenever the house rules say it is dead.

As to whether someone can become invested in a character who faces mortal peril with little special protection - that will vary from player to player. The early seasons of Game of Thrones showed how removing "plot armor" from important characters can increase engagement with a story rather than diminish it.

Much depends on whether the game you are playing has some kind of managed plot (most published modules) or instead utilizes emergent storytelling (sandbox, character-driven campaigns).

Well - the house rule is 'you don't die if you don't need to'. What that generally means is that most of the time, I remind players they have Fate points to spend, or they forgot to roll for Dodge, or - conversely - remind them that they rolled to hit, but forgot their modifiers, so actually the enemy about to kill them would actually be dead already, if they were paying attention.

So mostly, I don't need to fudge anything to save a players life. But when someone really cannot avoid taking lethal damage, they'll pretty much certainly have some chance at a comeback. Whether it's cybernetic reconstruction, or some other way - there'll be some sort of cost/benefit consideration, and then they can play on if they so chose.


Pretty much. That's how I've been doing it since 2nd edition, and that edition was a meat grinder for PCs with plenty of monsters able to outright kill you in a single attack. Some things didn't even allow saves, like Power Word Kill or Imprisonment. Look at how these spells have changed over the years to accommodate a soft approach...

Power Word Kill used to kill a 20th level wizard without save, then in 3.5 it barely affects a wizard with an average constitution score with plenty of spell protections against it, then in 5th edition it's even less likely to work with wizards having d6 hp.

Imprisonment on the other hand has gone from no save at all in 2E to requiring a failed Will save in 3.5 to requiring a failed Wisdom save AND having limited duration AND taking 1 minute to cast in 5e.

DMs and players that played the old editions were used to losing characters and brought spares. Surviving to high levels was part of the challenge and glory and learning what monsters did what helped you on the next pass. Players used to be exceptionally paranoid and master strategists, always carrying a 10-foot-pole that they used extensively and something made of silver, because they learned from failure and loss of characters. It really sticks in your brain when you're in the same situation that got one of your past characters killed and make a different choice with different results. Being an adventurer was a hard job full of risk and peril and it was frequent that the tale comes to a gritty end.

But then that's also part of the fun. The player didn't die, his character did. This is now the end of one character who has a tragic tale to tell for the party and the beginning of a new tale for Replacement Cleric #27 that they just hired. Taking bets on if the newbie survives his first encounter with a beholder.

---

Modern D&D players want to treat their characters like protagonists. Immortal heroes that will always save the day and get the princess in the end. They just roll dice to act out the movie scenes and if someone dies then it's Peter Parker levels of drama and tears.

Old school D&D players treated their characters as soldiers. Fitting since D&D evolved from a tabletop war game. Like soldiers, they were expendable and prone to death. They were caught up in literal battles with monsters and rarely possessed the sort of demigod powers that allowed Hercules and friends to do the same. These were fairly simple and ordinary folk, especially if you used the REAL stat rolling method, who decided hunting monsters and saving villages was what they wanted to do -- what they NEEDED to do in a crazy monster-filled world of chaos and death. Surviving a dungeon was like surviving a war in the trenches and everyone who made it out alive was thankful that they had each other's backs.

I've played D&D since before it became advanced. I do remember being concerned about Save or Die spells back in the day - but I also recall always considering that BS. To me, the game was never about the GM screwing over the players - give me a fighting chance, or I'll play something else. I dropped the older versions of D&D (in part) for precisely that reason, to play games less BS, but no less murderous - Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Warhammer, and so on.

Like ... take two NPC's: Strahd von Zarovich, and Lord Soth. One is a character with a rich background, unique abilities, depth of character, and so on ... the other is a walking death save. Why the devs came up with the latter is frankly beyond me. And I'm not unaware that Lord Soth also has a backstory. It's just crap.

I hope you don't actually like Lord Soth - I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade. He's just a good example of everything I feel is wrong in RPG's =)

kyoryu
2020-07-21, 11:27 AM
This kind of means traps are worthless. It wasn't uncommon for players to spring a deadly trap in 2nd edition that murdered them out of the blue. You signed the "It's Actually Deadly" waver the moment you entered the crypt.

That's why there's a bunch of text I wrote about "depending on the game and the context."

The problem with random traps (not in "places likely to be trapped") is that it slogs the game down as people 10' pole every stinking step, because otherwise a failure to do so can result in instant death.

If that's the game you're going for, great!

OTOH, the treasure in a treasure room, or the idol? Those are great places to put traps because they make a lot of sense, and the characters should already be being extra cautious.


Traps can still destroy information or potential loot, transport rather than kill, diminish resources (stat drain), reconfigure the dungeon to be less convenient (collapsing corridors, flooded rooms), and be used as battlefield preparations by an active enemy to soften up a target. They can also act as alarms or information sources, breaking a stealthy incursion.

Exactly, and this goes into the "breaking the idea that death is the only consequence" point.

Also, I think it's really a good idea for traps to make sense from the viewpoint of the critters that are using or have used the area. If there's traps in an orc den, how are the orcs navigating them? Does what they'd have to do to bypass the trap really make sense based on the likely usage patterns? What does that mean to the denizens, or the past denizens if the place is abandoned?



I've played D&D since before it became advanced. I do remember being concerned about Save or Die spells back in the day - but I also recall always considering that BS. To me, the game was never about the GM screwing over the players - give me a fighting chance, or I'll play something else.

To me, I think that saving throws in general are used when you've already screwed up. They're the last ditch effort to not suffer the consequences of your actions.

I consider a situation where you have no choice but to make a saving throw to be poorly designed.

Drascin
2020-07-21, 03:32 PM
This kind of means traps are worthless. It wasn't uncommon for players to spring a deadly trap in 2nd edition that murdered them out of the blue. You signed the "It's Actually Deadly" waver the moment you entered the crypt.

I mean. Yes. Instakill traps ARE worthless. I kinda realized that like five years into my DM career, tops. They bring nothing of use to the game. "Poof, you failed your Find Traps roll, so you die, spend the next hour making a character" is not a consequence, it's a waste of everyone's time and energy. The best traps are the ones that cause complications that the characters have to deal with.

kyoryu
2020-07-21, 03:50 PM
I mean. Yes. Instakill traps ARE worthless. I kinda realized that like five years into my DM career, tops. They bring nothing of use to the game. "Poof, you failed your Find Traps roll, so you die, spend the next hour making a character" is not a consequence, it's a waste of everyone's time and energy. The best traps are the ones that cause complications that the characters have to deal with.

"Traps" is a big category. Instakill traps with no logic behind them are useless. "Oh, hey, the main entrance to this fortress that is logically the most used one has a 20' pit trap with no way to disable it. That's fun."

Interesting traps are part of the environment, and make sense within the intended function of the space. Rando instakill traps just end up requiring that people prod every 10' to avoid sudden death. The amusing part is GMs that use said traps and then get mad at the part for playing paranoid and checking every move before they make it. That's what you've taught them to do, dummy.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-21, 03:59 PM
To me, I think that saving throws in general are used when you've already screwed up. They're the last ditch effort to not suffer the consequences of your actions.

I consider a situation where you have no choice but to make a saving throw to be poorly designed.

Really?

So meeting Lord Soth - who can CW: Kill at will, as I recall - is somehow the players fault, not the GM's? Or, to be slightly more fair, the designers?

Or do you rather mean to imply that it's the players job to know such (GM) details as that Lord Soth can CW: Kill all day, every day, and come prepared for that?

Maybe save-or-die spells are just BS. That's my view.

kyoryu
2020-07-21, 09:44 PM
Really?

So meeting Lord Soth - who can CW: Kill at will, as I recall - is somehow the players fault, not the GM's? Or, to be slightly more fair, the designers?

Or do you rather mean to imply that it's the players job to know such (GM) details as that Lord Soth can CW: Kill all day, every day, and come prepared for that?

Maybe save-or-die spells are just BS. That's my view.

That's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you're in a situation where you have to make a save, and it's not the result of something that you could have avoided, especially with save or die, that it's a bad usage of the mechanic.

So, yes, Lord Soth being able to just CW: Kill at will with no defense is poor design, and a bad use of a save.

What's a good use of a save is a PC opening something above them dropping hot lava on them (especially if there were clues), being underneath it, and then trying to jump out of the way and letting that be a saving throw. They screwed up by being under the thing when they opened it, and the saving throw is a chance at recovering from their screwup.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-22, 01:34 AM
That's exactly the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you're in a situation where you have to make a save, and it's not the result of something that you could have avoided, especially with save or die, that it's a bad usage of the mechanic.

So, yes, Lord Soth being able to just CW: Kill at will with no defense is poor design, and a bad use of a save.

What's a good use of a save is a PC opening something above them dropping hot lava on them (especially if there were clues), being underneath it, and then trying to jump out of the way and letting that be a saving throw. They screwed up by being under the thing when they opened it, and the saving throw is a chance at recovering from their screwup.

Ah. Yes, I see. I read your post with the mindset of 'he's only saying this to counter what I said'. But then we're in complete agreement. Yes, if the door is ajar, and when you listen there's a sound like sizzling, a sound that makes you think of something very, very hot - if you then jump through, and get a bucket of hot, burning magma spilled over you ... then a saving throw is right in it's place.

Vahnavoi
2020-07-22, 04:49 AM
A word about permanent death and inability to attempt the same scenario again:

It's pure convention. It's a design decision, sometimes informed by limitations of the medium, but just as often it's just tradition.

Roguelikes - the video game genre most interested in faithfully emulating the dungeon crawling experience - frequently still maintain permanent death and randomized play scenarios. Trial and error are only possible over multiple attempted playthroughs.

By contrast, not a lot of tabletop games allow a player to return to an earlier game state - "saving" and "reloading" - but there's no principled reason why they couldn't do this.

This is not, in any shape or form, a hard distinction between tabletop and video games. It's only a distinction between two game set-ups, a distinction that could as well be implemented between two different tabletop games - even when the two games otherwise use the same system, just like Baldur's Gate and tabletop game can both use 2nd edition AD&D rules!

Mutazoia
2020-07-22, 10:06 AM
"Traps" is a big category. Instakill traps with no logic behind them are useless. "Oh, hey, the main entrance to this fortress that is logically the most used one has a 20' pit trap with no way to disable it. That's fun."

Interesting traps are part of the environment and make sense within the intended function of the space. Rando instakill traps just end up requiring that people prod every 10' to avoid sudden death. The amusing part is GMs that use said traps and then get mad at the part for playing paranoid and checking every move before they make it. That's what you've taught them to do, dummy.

This just boils down to play style.

If you prefer the "Characters are the invincible heroes who always win" playstyle then an insta-kill trap is not right for you. Traps and encounters are just fun little speed bumps in your epic story about your heroes always coming out on top and saving the world, then insta-kill traps are stupid and random encounters should always be slightly challenging but ultimately a breeze.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you prefer the dark, gritty "Death is a real consequence of your actions and there are just some things you can encounter that you will not survive without a good plan." playstyle, then the insta-kill traps are valid, and random encounters could actually kill you. Yes, you train your players to prod every 10' with a pole, and no you don't complain when they do because you all know the consequences if you don't. (Although in all honesty the insta-kill trap should be a rare thing, to begin with, and never more than one in any given dungeon.)

There is a lot of space between those two play styles. You can include an insta-kill trap in the first playstyle and have it triggered by an NPC to add some drama to the game that doesn't actually hurt the PCs, either right before their eyes, or they come across some poor adventurers that have triggered it ahead of them and it didn't reset. (Think of the spike trap at the beginning of "Raiders of the Lost Ark.") A random encounter could lead to the PCs getting captured and a whole new plot arc.

Now, personally, I find the first style of play to be boring. If I know I'm going to win, why play? For the story? I can just go read a book or watch a movie. But then I started playing when Elf was a class, not a race. I cut my teeth on the very real possibility of character death. We had to get downright Machiavellian to survive most encounters, and fighting was usually the last resort. Nowadays players go leaping into combat like John Wick wanna-be's and expect said combat to work out for them pretty much the same as it does for Wick. There's nothing wrong with that playstyle if that's what you enjoy. There's nothing wrong with a game where character death is a very real possibility either if that's what you enjoy.

kyoryu
2020-07-22, 11:09 AM
Now, personally, I find the first style of play to be boring. If I know I'm going to win, why play?

The options are not "win" and "die".


For the story? I can just go read a book or watch a movie. But then I started playing when Elf was a class, not a race. I cut my teeth on the very real possibility of character death.

Wow, congrats. Me too. There's a reason my avatar is the OLD GUY. Can we discuss the game instead of trying to out-grognard each other now?


We had to get downright Machiavellian to survive most encounters, and fighting was usually the last resort. Nowadays players go leaping into combat like John Wick wanna-be's and expect said combat to work out for them pretty much the same as it does for Wick. There's nothing wrong with that playstyle if that's what you enjoy. There's nothing wrong with a game where character death is a very real possibility either if that's what you enjoy.

Well, and I'd agree that people should play what they like. But again you're coming up with this false dichotomy between "always winning" and "characters dying". When I run games like Fate, characters lose all the time. And they lose important things, and have consequences that aren't reversible, and things go awfully. That doesn't mean they die any more (or, really, any less) than most other games I run, but at the end of the day they lose more than most any other game I've ever run. And this makes every scene tense, as they know there is always a very, very real possibility of failure and loss.

Thayborne
2020-07-22, 12:16 PM
That's the question: When is character death appropriate?

My philosophy is that a character death should be earned by a series of bad decisions, or in a fair combat with a series of bad rolls.

But that's not gospel to me, I am open to others and would love some more perspective. Should character death be inflicted upon players if they misbehave? What about used for plot purposes? Can a DM kill a party member just to shake stuff up?

What do you guys think? Kill a Player Character just to ".... shake stuff up"? You can but you should not. A Dungeon Master must be neutral. What do you mean by "misbehave"?

Kyutaru
2020-07-22, 01:22 PM
This just boils down to play style.

If you prefer the "Characters are the invincible heroes who always win" playstyle then an insta-kill trap is not right for you. Traps and encounters are just fun little speed bumps in your epic story about your heroes always coming out on top and saving the world, then insta-kill traps are stupid and random encounters should always be slightly challenging but ultimately a breeze.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you prefer the dark, gritty "Death is a real consequence of your actions and there are just some things you can encounter that you will not survive without a good plan." playstyle, then the insta-kill traps are valid, and random encounters could actually kill you. Yes, you train your players to prod every 10' with a pole, and no you don't complain when they do because you all know the consequences if you don't. (Although in all honesty the insta-kill trap should be a rare thing, to begin with, and never more than one in any given dungeon.)

There is a lot of space between those two play styles. You can include an insta-kill trap in the first playstyle and have it triggered by an NPC to add some drama to the game that doesn't actually hurt the PCs, either right before their eyes, or they come across some poor adventurers that have triggered it ahead of them and it didn't reset. (Think of the spike trap at the beginning of "Raiders of the Lost Ark.") A random encounter could lead to the PCs getting captured and a whole new plot arc.

Now, personally, I find the first style of play to be boring. If I know I'm going to win, why play? For the story? I can just go read a book or watch a movie. But then I started playing when Elf was a class, not a race. I cut my teeth on the very real possibility of character death. We had to get downright Machiavellian to survive most encounters, and fighting was usually the last resort. Nowadays players go leaping into combat like John Wick wanna-be's and expect said combat to work out for them pretty much the same as it does for Wick. There's nothing wrong with that playstyle if that's what you enjoy. There's nothing wrong with a game where character death is a very real possibility either if that's what you enjoy.
I wholeheartedly agree. The playstyle is just not up to the tastes of some of the modern crowd. But it's part of the enjoyment and the cost of adventuring was well known. The whole game was built off tabletop war games on the tail end of the Vietnam War so the fascination with war games was high. D&D just gave people another battlefield with magic and knights instead of guns.

Mutazoia
2020-07-22, 02:11 PM
The options are not "win" and "die".

I never said those were the only choices. I gave polar opposites and then said there is a lot of room between the two.




Wow, congrats. Me too. There's a reason my avatar is the OLD GUY. Can we discuss the game instead of trying to out-grognard each other now?

Huh? Who's trying to out-grognard whom?



Well, and I'd agree that people should play what they like. But again you're coming up with this false dichotomy between "always winning" and "characters dying". When I run games like Fate, characters lose all the time. And they lose important things, and have consequences that aren't reversible, and things go awfully. That doesn't mean they die any more (or, really, any less) than most other games I run, but at the end of the day they lose more than most any other game I've ever run. And this makes every scene tense, as they know there is always a very, very real possibility of failure and loss.

As I said, there is a lot of room between the "Always win" and "Characters can die if your not careful" playstyles. The "You lose everything except your life" playstyle is one of them. Just because I said I prefer a more gritty, possibly lethal playstyle does not in anyway mean that I am holding that up as the "one true way to play." I think you are projecting a bit.

RedheadDev
2020-07-22, 04:29 PM
I'm fully on board with character death for plot or thematic purposes, so long as it's agreed upon by the player, with the exception being that their actions would obviously have greater consequences for them, i.e. severely breaking the law, making mind blowingly stupid game decisions like walking into the villains castle alone, etc.

I've seen players sacrifice their character during big plot moments in order to save an NPC for example, but that was brought up by the player themselves, and they knew what was going to happen as a result.

Tanarii
2020-07-22, 10:33 PM
So, yes, Lord Soth being able to just CW: Kill at will with no defense is poor design, and a bad use of a save.
Clearly you screwed up by allowing Soth in the same general area as you, then giving him a chance to cast a spell.

I agree that spells that are Save or Die definitely break the purported Gygaxian design claim (as in actually made by Gygax) that saves should be a last chance for situations in which you already were dead anyway, and they are just an out from an impossible you're already dead situation.

OTOH he came from wargaming. It's entirely possible he thought that if your character was in a position for an enemy to cast a lethal high level spell, that was indeed fully your mistake or screw up. Or possibly he didn't believe saves were related to "mistakes" ... just any situation you were already dead in anyway. Mistake or not.

Kyutaru
2020-07-23, 12:21 AM
It's entirely possible he thought that if your character was in a position for an enemy to cast a lethal high level spell, that was indeed fully your mistake or screw up. Or possibly he didn't believe saves were related to "mistakes" ... just any situation you were already dead in anyway. Mistake or not.
He did but he also believed in divination and campaigns. If you went into the room of the big bad evil guy and fought him NOT knowing what he was capable of then you screwed up in the preparation stage. Do people really think rushing headfirst into a fight with a necromancer, beholder, or dragon is supposed to be fair to the player to handle blindly? Threats like Lord Soth are something you hear rumors about how terrible and powerful he is then actively spy on him and research his powers. Asking the gods for help was huge in the old days with divination mattering more than evocation. Someone throwing around death spells is exactly like 2nd edition's banshees constantly wailing you to death. Going into an undead dungeon without Negative Energy Protection and Death Ward is just suicide and deaths are rightly deserved for being foolish. It's like if someone tried to invade a dictator's palace in real life without knowing his security. You're begging to lose men.

Similarly, not knowing slimes divide can be death. Not knowing how mushroom spores work can be death. Not knowing about mindflayers or umber hulks can be death. Not knowing a vampire's weaknesses can be death. Not knowing an adamantine golem is immune to all weapon damage except magical crushing and immune to all spells except electric that slows it and fire that heals it can be death. There were monsters that were flat out cheats because if people tried to fight one it would naturally be very deadly unless you were prepared.

Vahnavoi
2020-07-23, 05:47 AM
To paraphrase and condense the argument:

"Instant kills" weren't, because at every point there were actions you could take to receive a warning and plan around the threat.

On the other hand, in honest-to-God wargames (the kind actual militaries use), true instant kills do happen. These by and large are not a result of "mistakes", they're results of unknown unknowns. A classic example would be an artillery strike from outside the fog of war killing your entire squad.

In casual tabletop games problems arise when scenario designers think they made the former, but by accident made the latter. This creates a blame-shifting argument where players are accusing a GM of deliberately making an unwinnable scenario, while the GM is accusing players of poor play, because they don't acknowledge the players couldn't actually have taken the action to beat the scenario that the GM meant them to.

As a funny aside, it has been shown in psychological experiments that people engage in this kind of blame-shifting even when they should know better. That is, even when playing a game they intellectually know to be totally random, winners of the game will emotionally attribute their success to something they did, and consider the losers to have "done something wrong". Keep that in mind when talking of what constitutes player skill in silly elf games. :smalltongue::smallwink:

Kelb_Panthera
2020-07-23, 01:12 PM
On the gameist - simulationist - narrativist triangle, I lean very hard toward gameist. Death happens to PCs at my table very strictly as a matter of their failures or sheer dumb luck of the dice, barring a deliberate self-sacrifice. I don't fudge rolls and I don't inflict automatic, no avoidance deaths -ever- and my players know that.

If a player's engaged in a behavior that would warrant punishment, we have words and he gets to decide if he's gonna play ball or take a hike.

If anybody is dying for plot reasons, it's either an NPC or me and the character's player have discussed it beforehand. In the latter case, the dice still fall where they may so failure to achieve the intended death is very much possible.

Jay R
2020-07-24, 03:16 PM
Do not confuse the goals of designing a scenario with the goals of running the game.

When I design a scenario, I'm firmly on the players' side. I'm trying to produce encounters that they have every legitimate chance to win (and that poor play and bad decisions can still lose).

Similarly, when I teach statistics or algebra, or when I design a test, I'm firmly on the students' side. I want them to learn the material, get the questions right, and all make As. I'm trying to create test questions that they have every legitimate chance to answer correctly (and that if they haven't learned the material, they will still get wrong).

But when I am grading the test, I'm a fair and neutral judge of the answers they have written. If those answers lead to an F, then that's what I have to give them. And when running the scenario, I'm a fair and neutral judge of the PCs' actions. If those actions lead to PC death, then they do.

Encounters should be designed so that good players can virtually always defeat them or get past them. An encounter where a party with good players making good decisions has a high chance to lose is a bad encounter -- just as bad as an algebra test that good students with a good command of the material have a high chance to flunk.

But once the dice are being rolled, the rules must determine what happens, or they were never really playing the game.

[Just to avoid the red herring, I am also judging the test or the scenario. I've been known to throw out a test question, or change an encounter, if it's clear that it didn't match the level I was aiming for. But I won't do it because the students didn't learn the material, and for the same reason, I won't do it just because the players made poor decisions.]

Ideally, the possibility of a character death should be ever-present, but an actual PC death should be extremely rare. Most encounters should look more deadly than they are. And the deadliest ones should be either avoidable (you can go around the dragons) or changeable (the army is camped at the bottom of a cliff where you could start an avalanche).

What the players want today is a quick, easy victory. But what they will want tomorrow is to have faced insurmountable odds, finally defeating an enemy who they thought was about to kill them.

Tanarii
2020-07-25, 12:00 PM
Ideally, the possibility of a character death should be ever-present, but an actual PC death should be extremely rare. Most encounters should look more deadly than they are. Agreed on this. One trap it is easy as a DM to fall into is thinking the encounters are too easy, when the players feel exhilarated to have survived.

For example, in D&D 5e, many DMs seem to feel if a character doesn't hit 0 hit points, it was a cakewalk. Because that's actually a quite survivable state, taken by itself. (But depending on overall resource usage so far in adventuring day, it may indicate you've overextended.)

But most importantly players rarely feel the same way, and if they reach that point they'll often go into hyperdrive survival mode. And they'll manage to feel many other situations that don't involve "character dropped to 0hp" were still scarily dangerous.