Quote from: san dee jota;981724Believe it or not, I get that.  But what's the win condition of D&D?

Survival, typically.

In older editions, reaching name level and transitioning to a different scale of game (realm conflict).

Killing players is a bit tricky for me because I don't want to be the guy who pulled "lol this room randomly has a beholder in it, you die, the end." So I will pull a punch if I feel like I made a major miscalculation.

5e is also kind of bad about monsters who OHK weaker characters, a feature I am finding increasingly annoying.

I enjoy AD&D for many of the same reasons I enjoy(ed) sitting down to play a game of Civilization.  The obvious difference being that I'm "building" through a single-person perspective instead of an abstract civilizational perspective.  But yes, I'm playing a game.  I want to see how far I can take my character against true, unbiased adversity.  Combat is a huge part of that.  What makes AD&D great is the whole is greater than the sum of any part.  It's different than a pure wargame, or a shooter game, or character acting because it includes all three.  It also includes the risk of all my effort to date being wiped out by bad luck, poor planning, or a combination of both.  That skin in the game is the juice that brings me back time after time.  

I don't enjoy playing with people who react badly to their efforts not turning out as envisioned, usually through death of a character.  I don't connect with whatever it is that draws them to RPGs because it originates from somewhere far outside what draws me.  If I have nothing to lose - my previous investment of effort - then I'm bored as shit and don't really care to waste my time attempting to play.  I'm not sitting here because I want to think about characters per se.  They are a tool to do things, but no more than a tool.  The adventures I have using them, and the dynamic I have with the real people around me at the actual physical table (or whatever), is valuable.  But the fictional character itself?  Very little value at all.  It's a fungible collection of stats and abilities that simply channels my participation in certain ways while I'm using them.  They are valuable so far as they facilitate the actual out-of-game experience of play.    I don't value imagining a "cool character" or a "cool story" and then participating in it.

I see PCs dying as an opportunity to roll up another.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981726To do well. To excel. To succeed where previously you have failed.

You can't do well with a coin toss.  

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981727But that's at the heart of the issue: the (I think silly) notion that a PC's death "should" only happen when "dramatic" or "makes sense in the story" or similar. It's rooted in a play-style that seeks to emulate the structure and outcomes of literature or film: acts, story arcs, etc.

Stupid gamers, using an RPG to try and tell a story.  

Seriously though, there is another approach: let death be random, but have the results of the death have meaning.  In my Genlab Alpha game, there was a TPK due to bad decisions and bad dice, shortly before the campaign's end.  Rather than let the PCs simply die though... I turned them into mindless robot slaves to the forces that defeated them (mechanically they were all out of action, so I let the die decide if they were killed or converted).  Then the new PCs (and some NPCs) later encountered the now-converted characters as foes, making for a more interesting story than if they had just died and been left to rot (trust me, it was more interesting).  Point being, the story emerged from the dice, but the story is still the focus.

I know some players are like "oh no!  Bob the Paladin died!  Now his mechanically identical brother, Rob, will have to take his place and continue where he left off!"  But that's effectively no different than removing death from the game, with maybe a time-out penalty until Rob can meet up with the other PCs (assuming the story matters enough that the group doesn't just have Rob show up down in the dungeon ex nihilo).    

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981727It also tends to reflect the opinion that somehow RPGs are fundamentally different from any other game: if you make poor decisions and roll poorly in a boardgame, you lose. If you make poor decisions and roll poorly in an RPG, you should fudge those rolls, pull some punches, and otherwise let things slide so that "the story" "feels right".

Fair enough.  RPGs -are- different from other games though, in that (by definition) they're the only ones where you're expected to play out a role.  I can respect differing attitudes towards whether a story can ignore dice or not (I try to lean towards not these days), but without the emphasis of the shared story it's just a video game where you bash on the DM instead of the controller.  

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981729Survival, typically.

So... it's about combat then?

James II of Scotland was a fairly significant historical figure and died when a cannon blew up next to him, severing an artery in his leg.

Sometimes random shit happens, and important people die.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se. So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not.

Just want to chime in to say that this is the absolute worse to me.  I'd rather it just be on easy mode swinging through if there's no real threat of death.  If everyone just wants to be safe and play a story, that's fine, but faking danger by making encounters really difficult but pulling the fatal punches - can't stand that at all.


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Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Added:

Actually, I forgot to mention. I had joined a Sabbat game many years ago (it was my first and best introduction to VtM). The group were all really good mates and serious RPers. The notion of the GM killing off character was a total ‘no go’. The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I’d never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I’ve ever played to this day…

You really shouldn't play with people that would use physical violence as a response to winning or losing at a tabletop game.  No gaming is better than assault and battery.

Quote from: san dee jota;981734You can't do well with a coin toss.  

Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.  It is calculated risk and playing probabilities.  You put yourself in situations where the dice favor you, or where the dice aren't necessary, and avoid situations where the odds are against you or where the consequences of improbable outcome can be recovered or are less than catastrophic.  There are tons of decision to make in playing the odds, and that's how you game with randomness.  

I've seen that it is a current fad in boardgaming to poo poo games with dice as "random," like Axis and Allies for example, but such games are a lot more complex than a coin toss and there are constant decisions that ultimately put you in control of that probability.  Can you lose a game of Axis and Allies due to a coin toss, a single roll of the dice, or a string of bad rolls?  Theoretically you can, but there are tons of things that you can do to control the odds of such things defeating you.

My take is this- maybe the players have a lot of characters bite the dust in their quest to slay the beast, rescue the prince, save the realms- ect.  But, those ones who went through all that and lived?  Man, that's really fucking awesome and a major accomplishment.  That one goes into the Great Book of Mega Deeds or something.  Not everyone wins and that's ok.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981719What? Brown Bears and ledges? Sorry, have you not heard of the RPing game Bears and Leges?? Where you constantly have to fight off Brown Bears and watch yourself falling? Sound right up your alley. Sorry, I don't generally have BB and ledges in my games. It's not a constant by any means. I was of course using, wait for it... Just using it as an 'example'. Don't take it too literally...

You seem to have missed my point.  I was using the examples you chose. You've stated dying by a brown bear would be a lame way for a character to die. I was asking the question of why you would even have a bear show up to attack the players if you found the possibility of them losing to it to be banal? If the reason you are loathe to kill players is because the competition is boring, why not create interesting competition for them to fight. If bears are too boring to be worth being killed by, they are too boring to even make an interesting encounter.

Is the bear just a way to wind down to clock on the session? "I've run out of ideas for tonight, so I will throw a... (flips through Monster Manual) bear at them to eat up the last 20 minutes, but I don't want them to get killed by a bear, so I will keep my thumb on the scale for the whole fight to keep them alive."

If you don't like the example that you chose, feel free to replace "bear" with anything else you find banal.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981690Pretty much, yeah.  "Grow the fuck up" also comes to mind.

And the fact that OP lauds this as "the best campaign I've ever played" makes all kinds of alarm bells sound.

Combined with the contempt the OP obviously feels for his players "constant player stupidity" what we have here looks pretty much to be Yet Still Another Frustrated Author.

Go write a fucking book.

Wow... What an intellectual stumper. So much so, I'm not even arsed answering it.

Were done here, mines a pint...

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981671First statement, if people are having fun, there is no problem.

Second statement, death does not have to be the fail-state (Ghostbusters RPG, for instance, pretty much does not plan for a situation where the characters can die. Even falling off a skyscraper you are expected to somehow survive). As long as players are challenged, and they can experience both failure and loss, than you have achieved the majority of what death does for the game.

"That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se."

Beaten black and blue matters exactly as much as that has any real effect. Beaten to an inch of their life (but will never go beyond that)? Means nothing. Beaten unconscious and wake up in a jail cell, awaiting trial, have to talk their way out of it, oh and now their girlfriend is dating the guy who beat them up? Meaningful.

"So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not."

At this point, I have to ask if you're being honest with yourself about this? Do you honestly think that your players have not figured this out? If they are still reacting as though they are afraid of death, it is likely because they want to (or, as I said above, you have been giving them the potential for failure and loss, even if it isn't death).

Again, if everyone is fine with the status quo, rock your bad selves out. But trying to con the players into believing that their characters are at risk for their lives when you are incapable of following through is not a long term strategy.

I think you've made a good point about beating the players black and blue and it baing a tad meaningless. But what I've also tried to do, is always let them feel like they are in danger. So, they have no real idea that they are not in a dangerous situation. However, I always attempt to have consequences for actions... But it would be very rare for it to be a fatality.

Regarding the players figuring it out... Well, I GM'd WFRP for over three years (with that group) and towards the end campaign they didn't seem to be any the wiser and they all seemed to enjoy the game (as far as I know anyway - they kept coming back at any rate). That said, I did try to obfuscate my dealings. By awarding a bit more experience than I should have, and always kept track of their fate points. So, I'd award them at apropriate mile stones of the game. So, they would always have a get out of jail free. I was'nt trying to fudge the dice all the time, however I did do it on a couple of occasions if I'm being honest.

We did talk about character death during the campaign (mid-way), because I asked what they thought of it? The census was they were happy enough for it to happen as long as it was a meaningful death. So, that for me ruled out the Bear and Ledges RPG. So your first line about just having fun makes perfect sense for our game.  

However, this was a few years ago now and I've seemed to keep up with the 'not killing PCs mentality' with some other groups that I've GMd for. So, I'm asking myself is it something I should do? I posed the question to the guys at my Deadlands Game. Again, they didn't like the idea of characters being killed arbitrarily. Unless it was again, 'meaningful'. But I can't say about the other groups. Some were one or two shots so I doubt anyone would even notice. They might have done, if it was a mini-campaign or somthing.

Ta' for the input, much apreciated. It's given me some more food for thought.

Quote from: Madprofessor;981738Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.

Sure it is.  It's just that the coins we use have more than two sides.  

But I think we digress: is there a win condition for D&D other than combat?  Because if that's all a player wants out of a game, they'd be better served playing something else.

Quote from: under_score;981737Just want to chime in to say that this is the absolute worse to me.  I'd rather it just be on easy mode swinging through if there's no real threat of death.  If everyone just wants to be safe and play a story, that's fine, but faking danger by making encounters really difficult but pulling the fatal punches - can't stand that at all.


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You really shouldn't play with people that would use physical violence as a response to winning or losing at a tabletop game.  No gaming is better than assault and battery.

That's fair enough...

However, I would not like to force something on a player. So, if I knew they wanted 'full on' then I'd do that. I guess the best thing is to chat with the players before the game and see what difficulty setting they want.

Well, I wasn't very worried about the assault and battery, to be honest. They were all good mates but I was just invited to play. But I was surprised at how much passion they played with. It definitely reshaped the way I GM'd Vampire. It was very eye opening experience. The campaign (what I played of it) was class and brutal as hell.

Ta'.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;981730Killing players is a bit tricky for me because I don't want to be the guy who pulled "lol this room randomly has a beholder in it, you die, the end." So I will pull a punch if I feel like I made a major miscalculation.

5e is also kind of bad about monsters who OHK weaker characters, a feature I am finding increasingly annoying.

Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one!