Quote from: WillInNewHaven;983558Were the characters dead when they reached 0 HP? Back when I ran D&D several DMs in the area made up "harder to die, no (or very, very rare) resurrection" rules that I thought made our campaigns better.  I have carried that over into my current system, which is high casualty/low fatality. It doesn't have to be. A GM could easily run a high-fatality campaign and my friend Andy does.

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I think back int he day once it hits zero your dead. We usually allowed I think up to -4 I can't quite remember now. Sounds like we were in a similar camp.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983639Out of over 450 TPK's over the last 43 years, no one from a TPK has ever been brought back and out of the original 9 players who each has had roughly 550-750 characters each...

I feel sorry that your players never learned to get good at playing D&D.

Edit: But way to go having a group of 10 of you since 1974. That's ...miraculous.

That one thing that's annoying me about GOT. The resurrections... Although, I would have been pissed if Jon Snow was killed off.

But it feels that anyone now could suddenly have plot immunity if they have access to the red order or whatever they are called. At least when they resurrected the mountain - he wasn't himself. He was some kind of 'thing'. Now that I like!

Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

First, resurrection should never be easy.  It should be super expensive at least, and probably very risky as well - there should be a decent chance that Sir Gilligad comes back a little "off"...or maybe even really off.  Resurrection fits in the D&D milieu - it's a world where gods interact with men for goodness sake - but it shouldn't be easy.  But I don't think any of us are saying the game needs to be made so punishing that it isn't fun anymore.  We just want the dice to define the outcome and if they say you're dead, you're dead.  The consequence is that you have to start over again.  If the character was 5th or 6th level and died and you have to roll up a new one - even if the GM allows you to start at level 2 or something that's still a price to pay.  I mean losing a couple levels of progress hurts.

Quote from: AsenRG;983629That's true, but to some people any game with a GM that is unwilling to kill PCs fails the test for "challenging".

"Well made" and "engaging" are subjective quality measures, and I'll grant that for many-to-most gamers, a chance of death is a minimum necessary requirement to meet these criteria. "Challenging," on the other hand, at least has a touch of quantifiability--something is challenging if it is difficult for you to accomplish (in this context, a game is challenging if is difficult for you to accomplish your goals).

My point, however, is that there is no fast-track to quality.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983657The consequence is that you have to start over again.  If the character was 5th or 6th level and died and you have to roll up a new one - even if the GM allows you to start at level 2 or something that's still a price to pay.  I mean losing a couple levels of progress hurts.

And, potentially, that the initial goal/reward might no longer be available in full. Which was my initial point to the OP -- it is the consequences to failure that is the primary requirement for the game to have, and character death is only a specific example.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I've almost always played with mixed levels in a party.  For the first three or four years I never played with everyone the same level.  Hell, the OD&D differing XP for levels almost guarantees that.  Of course, there was no "party," there was "which subset of players are here this time."

And of course new PCs start at first level, period, absolutely.

And in 45 years I've never had trouble filling a game.

Quote from: Opaopajr;983500In my day ressurections costed one point of permanent CON, and when you were out you were dead foreverz! Get off my lawn! Time for my nap. :mad:

Quote from: Bren;983532So average PCs could get 10 or more resurrections before they finally died the real death? I declare that you sir are a wannabe hipster storygamer.

Runequest 2 had a pretty good resurrection mechanic. You could get divine intervention to be resurrected (assuming you weren't an initiate of the Death God, he was older than old school and didn't allow any resurrections). But as an initiate you had to roll against your Power. Which is a stat, in the same way that Wisdom or Constitution in D&D is a stat and with about the same range. If you rolled less than your Power with a d100 you got resurrected but you permanently lost the amount of Power that you rolled on the d100. If you rolled over your Power you didn't didn't lose any Power. But you remained dead.

Runelords had it easier. They rolled 1d10 and lost that much Power and got resurrected. But since they needed to have POW 15 to be a Runelord getting resurrected could take away their important Cult status.

And a low Power sucked since that was the upper limit of your resistance to magical attack and your ability to attack others or to power other magic.

I started with TFT, where resurrection requires a very recently-slain and intact body, a _very_ powerful wizard who happens to know that spell and be willing to cast it on your dead pal, a lot of fatigue, a success roll, and costs five attribute points (which are a big deal - it's about like losing 5 D&D levels). I remember one character who was resurrected twice - the first time she wasn't her old self, and the second time she became a fairly annoying/appalling mentally/behaviorally challenged embarrassment. It was something of a mercy when she died the third time, though I also felt rather guilty since it was my character who accidentally killed her trying to help her by hacking at the foe she was grappled with and accidentally dealing her a killing blow.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I completely agree that insta-replacements at same level removes the consequences. To my mind, it also ruins the sense of what's happening: if the idea is this is a story about interesting remarkable people, but when one dies, his clone brother (or even just another similarly-special hero) appears out of nowhere, to me that completely undermines the premise, the believability, the sense-making, and my interest all at once. I'd probably _prefer_ a miraculous resurrection to a "his identical cousin shows up and joins the party".

However in my experience no, it's not rare at all to start replacements at starting level (or even, less than starting level if the game started with strong PCs), for those reasons. Groups tend to be mixes of levels and it's not a problem because there game systems don't have so steep an experience curve.

Also, I don't even have new PCs just "appear" except when it makes sense that the group is someplace where there would be new people to enlist (and the typical NPCs in a party also helps have this be normal rather than artificial).

Quote from: S'mon;983642I feel sorry that your players never learned to get good at playing D&D.

Edit: But way to go having a group of 10 of you since 1974. That's ...miraculous.

Sorry 9 total counting me. Two have passed away, so only seven of us left, four of us still game together and the other three show up 4-6 times a year, now down to 3-4 times per year. Unfortunately several of the guys are in poor health. We have had a regular game night since back in the 1950's. I don't play a lot but I do play. Also my players play just fine, my game is Arduin Bloody Arduin deadly and always was from the beginning. But I am getting soft now from what it was 25 years ago, the first 18 years were brutal but has gotten a little less brutal so it is not full-blown Arduin style anymore.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I always start people at Level One regardless of the level of the rest of the party.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983657there should be a decent chance that Sir Gilligad comes back a little "off"...or maybe even really off.

I like this, a lot, wish I had thought of it.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983821I like this, a lot, wish I had thought of it.

It's wise for the rest of the party to have weapons at the ready during the incantation, just in case Sir Giligad sits up and immediately starts trying to rip the flesh off anyone within reach.  

Restarting at 1st level is where I put all my softy side outside the game play proper, and stay relatively mean within it.  For example, I'll usually have an accelerated XP gain plan, if the game mechanics themselves don't already handle that.  In D&D 5E, I'll give +20% XP to anyone less than the max level in the party, plus award XP more often, maybe every couple of hours.  Recently, we had a new player go from 1st to 4th in 7 hours, playing with a bunch of 5th and 6th level characters.  But it's up to the group to manage how to keep that character alive during the transition.  If they leave a new character exposed to something nasty, the obvious will happen.  We see that situation as a challenge to the players with experienced characters.  Sure you take on that nest of gnolls, and probably slaughter them.  Can you do it and keep two green replacements alive at the same time?

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983843It's wise for the rest of the party to have weapons at the ready during the incantation, just in case Sir Giligad sits up and immediately starts trying to rip the flesh off anyone within reach.  

If I had thought of this, then my players might be really into raise dead, since it would be a different type of challenge where you never know what is going to happen and there would be some many ways to play it, so no obvious warning until it goes sideways. I may have to add this in.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983882If I had thought of this, then my players might be really into raise dead, since it would be a different type of challenge where you never know what is going to happen and there would be some many ways to play it, so no obvious warning until it goes sideways. I may have to add this in.

Well yeah, then it becomes a boss raid.