Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1133095Individual characters have gotten more detailed and more important to the 'narrative,' and thus less disposable.

But that's why D&D has Raise Dead. Your PC dies, your corpse gets dragged to a temple, next week you're back in the dungeon.

Here's what confuses me. There's no Raise Dead in most non-D&D RPGs, even most other fantasy games...and yet we don't hear about these issues with those games.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133193Here's what confuses me. There's no Raise Dead in most non-D&D RPGs, even most other fantasy games...and yet we don't hear about these issues with those games.

Except for Traveller, but then you just keep on creating new characters until one survives the generating process.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133193But that's why D&D has Raise Dead. Your PC dies, your corpse gets dragged to a temple, next week you're back in the dungeon.

Here's what confuses me. There's no Raise Dead in most non-D&D RPGs, even most other fantasy games...and yet we don't hear about these issues with those games.

How big is the sample of non-D&D (and non-Pathfinder) games compared to D&D/Pathfinder games? Mainly I mean in games being actually played, not just shelf queens.

Except Raise dead and a few other raise spells are not "do-overs" and theres a little, or a-lot of loss from it depending on the spell used and the edition.

You have to actually work usually to get a dead character back to life and in older editions of D&D there might be a recuperation period after. Or loss of EXP or other setbacks. Even if its just the cost to have them raised. This on top of getting the body back to a place a raise can be done, and finding someone agreeable to performing the casting. You did not do anything over. You picked up the pieces and continued on. This on top of any other repercussions from all this.

And not all settings for D&D actually have raise dead as an option.

As for other games.
Autoduel for Car Wars had clones.
Cyberpunk and Shadowrun I believe had medivac units if you payed for the services.
Paranoia had clones.
Believe Torg and Rifts had some manner of raise dead?

and so on.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133193Here's what confuses me. There's no Raise Dead in most non-D&D RPGs, even most other fantasy games...and yet we don't hear about these issues with those games.

Few non D&D games have routine PC death as the default fail state. Running & playing D6 Star Wars the only time PCs ever died was when they got in a spaceship... which was pretty in-genre.

Quote from: S'mon;1133230Few non D&D games have routine PC death as the default fail state. Running & playing D6 Star Wars the only time PCs ever died was when they got in a spaceship... which was pretty in-genre.

Weird. I ran D6 SW2eR&E not too long ago and we had a PC die in a single shot from a sporting blaster. He was out of CP and his 3D Strength didn't hold up against the 4D+1 damage of the blaster when the PC rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Strength and the shooter rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Damage. The character was dead and the player thought it was pretty awesome that there was a real element of risk in a gunfight--something that had been almost totally absent from his FFG SW experiences.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133241Weird. I ran D6 SW2eR&E not too long ago and we had a PC die in a single shot from a sporting blaster. He was out of CP and his 3D Strength didn't hold up against the 4D+1 damage of the blaster when the PC rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Strength and the shooter rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Damage. The character was dead and the player thought it was pretty awesome that there was a real element of risk in a gunfight--something that had been almost totally absent from his FFG SW experiences.

I've only GM'd 1e Star Wars d6. Though I GM Mini Six now which plays closer to your story.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1133241Weird. I ran D6 SW2eR&E not too long ago and we had a PC die in a single shot from a sporting blaster. He was out of CP and his 3D Strength didn't hold up against the 4D+1 damage of the blaster when the PC rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Strength and the shooter rolled a 1 on his Wild Die for Damage. The character was dead and the player thought it was pretty awesome that there was a real element of risk in a gunfight--something that had been almost totally absent from his FFG SW experiences.

I'm always really worried when I run a particularly killy game like Dungeon Crawl Classics or Dark Sun, but so far, the players are usually excited when they realize that I'm willing to let a character die instead of GM intervene or play softball with them.

Characters being at risk of dying is what makes them worth playing.

Quote from: S'mon;1133230Few non D&D games have routine PC death as the default fail state.

Traveller? Cthulhu? Gamma World? Cyberpunk? Warhammer? All have plenty of PC death.

In Paranoia, your clones are basically hit points since insta-kill is really common.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1133385Traveller? Cthulhu? Gamma World? Cyberpunk? Warhammer? All have plenty of PC death.

In Paranoia, your clones are basically hit points since insta-kill is really common.

Default fail state - Cthulu you go mad, Cyberpunk they kill your girlfriend. Traveller you have to take out a new loan on your ship mortgage. Warhammer you go mad, they kill your girlfriend, they set fire to & sink your ship, and you die.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1133378Characters being at risk of dying is what makes them worth playing.

  correct, and after surviving a few harrowing adventures where someone else did die, or you almost did creates a value and investment in that character.  I feel there is waaaaaay too much trying to make a "backstory" for a character,  a beginning character has no backstory, they are one of many.  Their adventures and exploits as they play CREATES their backstory.  Not sitting down to write a bunch of being awesome and having never accomplished shit.

Quote from: oggsmash;1133427correct, and after surviving a few harrowing adventures where someone else did die, or you almost did creates a value and investment in that character.  I feel there is waaaaaay too much trying to make a "backstory" for a character,  a beginning character has no backstory, they are one of many.  Their adventures and exploits as they play CREATES their backstory.  Not sitting down to write a bunch of being awesome and having never accomplished shit.

As a counter point, has anyone ever really felt the same way for say Mario?

We know he can't die, he will always re-spawn or we re start the game and play again. He's always the same guy doing the same things over and over again.

The sense of accomplishment there is about you as a player learning how to beat the game. While in a TTRPG you get truly invested in your character and it changes, grows as time passes and you find who him/her is.

In my AD&D2e campaign the DM recently mentioned my wizard having more moral qualms about letting our fallen comrade's body to be eaten by bugs or monsters in a cavern. I have not written anything about him having such morals, it just happened while we were playing.

In the end I won the argument and the Dwarfs and Mutants we just rescued helped us carry his body out of the cavern, easy enough t convince them since he was a Dwarven Cleric.

Quote from: S'mon;1133390Cyberpunk they kill your girlfriend.

I remember one time my buddy rolled on the Lifepath generator that his girlfriend has been kidnapped, and then rolled his response to the event as "the relationship was over anyway." We decided right there that his PC was the coldest mofo in Night City.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1133378Characters being at risk of dying is what makes them worth playing.