TheRPGSite

It's always a volatile topic. When do the PC die? Do you stick to the rules, disallow death (without player permission) entirely. Can PCs die from just pure bad luck of bad rolls at any time or only during appropriate time (however you define appropriate)?

There are allot of ways to handle death in games. What's your personal approach?

Spun off from this thread on TPB.  (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?755718-If-you-don-t-die-without-agency-and-you-don-t-die-from-a-bad-roll-how-do-you-die&p=18996637#post18996637)

I tune likelihood of death based on genre.  Running a magical girl game, it's generally not my job to set them up the bomb; in a ninja game, their job is often killing people, and dying is often involved.

In the above magical girl game, death is a possibility (they are taking potentially lethal risks) but not likely except in thematically appropriate situations.  If I set up fights where random were-toads could kill them, there had better be something accomplished by that fight, or it would be better if I'd lined it up differently.

In the above ninja game death is possible in many fights, likely if those fights are not approached in an appropriately ninja fashion, and close to a long run certainty.  Sometimes things just go bad, wouldn't feel right if it didn't.

I've often run games where I was more interested in (and knowledgeable of) the mechanics than many players.  When my players are invested in keeping a character alive, but have limited give-a-damn when it comes to mechanics, I'm willing to discuss at length the mechanics involved in a life-or-death situation, and the statistics of choices they outline (as their character would have some sense of this, and they're trying to get it right).

In my experience, this has been a delicate subject with some gamers.

The more laid back, funny and all around relaxed players, who also seemed to have gotten started with games like D&D 1st or 2nd, Call of Cthulhu or Rifts, never seemed to have minded it. Most of them explicitly told me that they like the added danger and didn't care about rolling up a new character. They tended to just want to hang out.

The ones who expressed great displeasure at the very concept of PC death seemed to have started later, with 3rd/4th ed D&D or WoD, and who seemed the most upset by failed dice rolls, peril of just about any kind or who got the most invested in writing up countless pages of backstory. They were the ones who prefered forum-based games where they could go into extremely detailed character development.

So I guess that it all depended on the players that I had. Nowadays, I ask before any campaign if people mind character death and get a general consensus.

All that being said, rarely did any of my players enjoy sudden death out of nowhere for no reason. The ones who just said "aw shucks" were the ones who played a LOT of Mordheim and Necromunda. They seemed used to having their favorite characters die pointlessly.

Quote from: Nexus;831310It's always a volatile topic. When do the PC die? Do you stick to the rules, disallow death (without player permission) entirely. Can PCs die from just pure bad luck of bad rolls at any time or only during appropriate time (however you define appropriate)?

There are allot of ways to handle death in games. What's your personal approach?

Spun off from this thread on TPB.  (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?755718-If-you-don-t-die-without-agency-and-you-don-t-die-from-a-bad-roll-how-do-you-die&p=18996637#post18996637)

I allow it to happen whenever.

Depends on the RPG.

RPGs like Elric are quite dark and violent with no Rez, little healing and a vicious combat.
High death rates are inevitable and people who like the Elric RPG play with this in mind.

With DnD and specifically 5E, what with the Inspiration reroll option, I feel that covers really unlucky dice rolls killing a character.
I do tend to allow some sort of "Save" roll or skill check or something if the player can think of a good reason to allow it.

PCs die when the dice say so or when they choose a suicidal course of action. Anything less wouldn't be cricket.

If they die, they die.  (Kudos to Drago)

PCs do what they want.  I try to have the world realistic-ish.  I roll in the open.  If dice say a lone goblin cuts off your pecker and you bleed out, so be it.

There are been a few threads on this. So here goes again.

As a DM (and a player) If the PCs drop then that is that.
Unless the PCs do something about it somehow. And there are times when you just cannot.

Assuming the PCs get that far. I usually place a temple who will raise dead for a fee or quest in the major cities. That may not be convenient to get to, or too far away within the time limits. Just because its there doesnt mean you will allways be able to access it.

As noted in another thread, I make Reincarnation more common and Raise less common. Which is still rare and is no guarantee. Especially in older editions where you could fail a Raise Dead. And I have had players waive a Reincarnate due to just not wanting to come back as a naked mole rat or budgie... ahem. (Actually they are more concerned with reincarnating into a body that cannot advance any further.)Which brings up the next factor that so many "Kill em all!" advocates miss.

Death is not necessarily a setback. If you can just make a new character and be back in then death potentially becomes meaningless. Conversely, living may result in a differnt sort of death. A character may come back only to have to retire due to circumstance. Such as a reincarnate, or a mission failed so badly their rep is shot to hell.

Everyone treats it differently.

28 years of DnD (eesh, gatting old), who knows how many dead PCs (ballpark estimate of one per 10-20 hours of play), and not o e of my players has ever wanted their PC to be raised.  Cleric died last session from a wraith.  Every other player pleaded with him to get raised.  Player said nope, even if they tried his soul would refuse.  The cleric died honorably in combat and he took to rolling up a new PC.

Quote from: Old One Eye;83132528 years of DnD (eesh, gatting old), who knows how many dead PCs (ballpark estimate of one per 10-20 hours of play), and not o e of my players has ever wanted their PC to be raised.  Cleric died last session from a wraith.  Every other player pleaded with him to get raised.  Player said nope, even if they tried his soul would refuse.  The cleric died honorably in combat and he took to rolling up a new PC.

That's my kind of player.  I hate resurrections. You live, you fight, you die, you roll up a new one.

Again, it depends on the game, but most often I run action-packed and/or horrific games, and I want it to be a real and significant possibility.

As far as I'm concerned, at the scale I run most of my games, it's very difficult to compete with the threat of death in terms of fear, excitement and pathos — even if all death ultimately means is that you're rolling up a new character.

As a player, too, dice-fudging to avoid character death offends me. How dare the GM cheapen my character's bravery by dulling the reaper's scythe.

The one extraneous factor I admit to influencing me to dial down the lethality, is the time cost of character generation. TSR D&D, CoC or Traveller? I throw them like so many sacrifices to the furnaces of Moloch. Runequest or WoD? Let's hope they're clever enough not to assault an enemy stronghold head-on without an army, and that they'll retreat or surrender if they are. Eclipse Phase? Bah, they'll reuse the same sheet via cortical stack, upload them all and let the TITANs sort them out. GURPS or Rolemaster? Ewwgh fuck, what am I doing running this? No, it's OK guys, it's just one goblin. Unarmed. Toothless. You kill him and he's got a huge ruby, you can all retire from adventuring, forever. Let's play something else. Yeah, that's why I don't run those two.

Despite what some complain about the death save. 5e is surprisingly lethal. Once you go to zero death can come from about anything in 2 hits. And raise is still not guaranteed even without system shock threat. Definitely enjoying the return of an actually threatening setting where lowly kobolds are a viable threat to PCs well on in levels.

Quote from: Omega;831342Despite what some complain about the death save. 5e is surprisingly lethal. Once you go to zero death can come from about anything in 2 hits. And raise is still not guaranteed even without system shock threat. Definitely enjoying the return of an actually threatening setting where lowly kobolds are a viable threat to PCs well on in levels.

I can personally attest to this. Orcs very nearly handed me my ass right at the first combat.

I started gaming way back in 1974 and death was pretty common in some DM's dungeons...and not too common in other DM's dungeons. Which shows that the fatality level is not a simple matter of the game rules.

Over time, I became less accepting of PC death. Part of that was causing a lot of PC death. I had a reputation as a bit of a killer DM back in the day (too much rules mastery and tactical sense on my part versus that of my players combined with a let the dice fall ethic, and effectively no resurrection or reincarnate in my campaigns saw a fair number of dead PCs and no one reaching higher than level 6). Then I saw plenty of near dead, maimed, and dead PCs when GMing Runequest 2 and 3. Then a number of dead and insane PCs running Call of Cthulhu.

I realized that killing PCs is way too easy for me as the GM. It's actually more of a challenge for me to create situations for the players that are unlikely to kill the PCs while still being challenging for the PCs.

In addition after playing campaigns that ran for years or decades the character connections become more important and character death becomes both more meaningful and at the same time more of a loss for all the players due to the number of connections that get severed with a PC or NPC death. So death as a likely outcome became less attractive.

Games like WEG's Star Wars D6 or Honor+Intrigue where the PCs have bennies that can prevent character death are much more appealing to me now. There is typically a cost to preventing PC death and there is still a risk (though a much lower risk) that prevention fails and actual character death results.

Summary: I like there to be an actual risk that a PC can die, the risk adds spice to the game and it aligns with my preference for games that are more grounded in reality and less gonzo, but I like the risk to be low and I like it if there is some in game or metagame mechanic (like Fortune points) that allow players a chance to prevent their character's death.

And though the question was asked about PCs, I feel pretty much the same way about NPCs. Though a lot more of them seem to end up dead somehow. ;) One nice thing about H+I is that the major villains also have Fortune Points which they can use to escape death. This has saved more than a few villains. Though not all of them.

Cop-out answer: It depends on the game.

Real answer: My preferences these days are such that lots of funny and awesome PC deaths are better than lots of precious snowflakes that must be cherished and nourished at all costs. Incidentally, this was also my preference when I was fourteen.

Me and my fourteen-year-old self also had a thing for 22-year-old college cheerleaders, so maybe there's a pattern.

I'm on of those blasphemous, coddle/cuddly GMs who started with AD&D 2e so I prefer to let my players decide when they die.  Killing Players Characters is easy, as Bren found out (so did I in my early years) and frankly, it's not so much my players that whine when they lose a character, it's that I personally lose a vital piece in my campaign.

See, I have threads and adventures wrapped around ALL my players, and when I lose one, I lose all those fun adventures that I can throw at my group to see how they deal with it.

In fantasy games, where Resurrection exists, I allow PC deaths and give them access to resurrection.

Where that isn't an option, I give the players as much opportunity to avoid death as I can, without making it impossible. In the end, if they can be at death's door for a while and then get healed, that is better for me than killing the PC.

PCs are like Doritos. Crunch all you want, we'll make more.

Just like in real life, if you're done you're done.  Personally, I honestly have no desire at all to play a game in which I get to decide if my character's death at a given time is "dramatically significant" enough to occur or whatever story game term you want to apply.  Life is a crap shoot.  You try and improve your odds as much as possible within the "rules" (whether we're talking real life or a game) but sometimes you just die an ignominious death.  Anything else really destroys verisimilitude for me...

Quote from: Bren;831353I started gaming way back in 1974 and death was pretty common in some DM's dungeons...and not too common in other DM's dungeons. Which shows that the fatality level is not a simple matter of the game rules.

Over time, I became less accepting of PC death. Part of that was causing a lot of PC death. I had a reputation as a bit of a killer DM back in the day (too much rules mastery and tactical sense on my part versus that of my players combined with a let the dice fall ethic, and effectively no resurrection or reincarnate in my campaigns saw a fair number of dead PCs and no one reaching higher than level 6). Then I saw plenty of near dead, maimed, and dead PCs when GMing Runequest 2 and 3. Then a number of dead and insane PCs running Call of Cthulhu.

I realized that killing PCs is way too easy for me as the GM. It's actually more of a challenge for me to create situations for the players that are unlikely to kill the PCs while still being challenging for the PCs.

In addition after playing campaigns that ran for years or decades the character connections become more important and character death becomes both more meaningful and at the same time more of a loss for all the players due to the number of connections that get severed with a PC or NPC death. So death as a likely outcome became less attractive.

Games like WEG's Star Wars D6 or Honor+Intrigue where the PCs have bennies that can prevent character death are much more appealing to me now. There is typically a cost to preventing PC death and there is still a risk (though a much lower risk) that prevention fails and actual character death results.

Summary: I like there to be an actual risk that a PC can die, the risk adds spice to the game and it aligns with my preference for games that are more grounded in reality and less gonzo, but I like the risk to be low and I like it if there is some in game or metagame mechanic (like Fortune points) that allow players a chance to prevent their character's death.

And though the question was asked about PCs, I feel pretty much the same way about NPCs. Though a lot more of them seem to end up dead somehow. ;) One nice thing about H+I is that the major villains also have Fortune Points which they can use to escape death. This has saved more than a few villains. Though not all of them.

This is interesting to me because my experience was shaped in the opposite direction. In my case I started in 86 and began GMing with 2E when it came out. At the time there was a general sentiment of protecting the PCs in many of the source books and advice columns (at least that was the advice that I took to heart). Both as a player and as a GM this lost its appeal to me over time (it just felt like we were not letting the "game" side come to the fore enough). We were always heavy role-players but I felt like protecting the PCs was part of this package of thought that was leading every session down the road I had planned as a GM (anything that might interfere with what I had prepped, including PC death, was something I worked against). Something about this just left me unsatisfied as a GM. It was around this time I remember reading the 1E DMG and going back to some of my older books. I realized that what was missing (for me) was the sense of surprise and allowing the dice and choice to take the game in directions I hadn't expected. My style became more freeform, and letting rolls stand became helpful to me as well. I just found it was better to let PCs die when the dice said they did. I wasn't going to try to kill them though. My aim was to be as fair as I could to the PCs, just not shield them from bad dice rolls and death.

All that said, I understand every player and group is different so I usually ask for expectations in this respect at the start of a campaign. If I have a group of players who just can't stand PCs dying (or dying without good reason) I'm fine compromising. But I definitely have more fun when that is on the table (and while PC death is often seen as a wrench in the campaign, I've come to see it as an opportunity for a new developments).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;831408I realized that what was missing (for me) was the sense of surprise and allowing the dice and choice to take the game in directions I hadn't expected.

It does seem like there was a change in expectation and play style. I'm not sure what the cause was. I may have been the linear published adventure. I've never used a published D&D Adventure. So I don't have an expectation that the PCs need to all make it to the end of some long story arc. The published Call of Cthulhu  adventures I run don't expect that the PCs will all make it to the end. And the conventions of CoC make it easy to introduce new PCs mid adventure. Local guides, doctors, and police officers may all be drawn into the PC group providing new PCs and CoC as a genre supports the notion that a new PC may be a correspondent of an existing PC who decides to show up to investigate the mysterious death of their friend and correspondent.

I use a lot of randomization in Honor+Intrigue which, when combined with the frequent crazy PC plans, leads to a lot of surprises and changes in where the game goes. Frequently I use the Mythic Game Master Emulator for deciding things where I don't know the answer or where more than one possibility can occur. That can lead to surprising results like the defeated Villain who escaped from prison and decided he didn't want get revenge on the PCs. He wants to avoid them like the plague. I think that has the potential for an interesting scene if and when the PCs eventually cross that villain's path. The villain saying something like "You lot. Again. Damn it, I moved here to avoid you and rebuild my fortune. How the devil did you find me?"

I run games like episodes of a TV show.  The stars (PCs) may face threats, but we all know they aren't in any danger of death unless the actor's contract is up (the player wants the character to die).

I'm not into RPGs for the contest of player versus GM.  I'm in RPGs for the story of the character.  It's difficult to tell new stories about a character when they're dead.  (Although there have been some occasions where that hasn't stopped things.)  Since I prefer single player games, a character kill typically means the end of a campaign.  So, other drawbacks for being defeated are immensely preferable and more interesting.

If I want the challenge of leveling up a character with the omnipresent spectre of permanent elimination, I'll play something like Wizardry or a board game featuring player elimination mechanics.  I feel those kinds of games better deliver on that kind of competition and challenge structure than RPGs can possibly aspire to.  

The problem is the term "game."  In full honesty, I don't see RPGs as "games" with the connotation of competition or proof by merit.  I see them as pastimes.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831422I run games like episodes of a TV show.  The stars (PCs) may face threats, but we all know they aren't in any danger of death unless the actor's contract is up (the player wants the character to die).

That's fine.  As a player though, I hate going into it knowing that my character is "the star of the show."  For me, if every character is the star of the show, then no character is special.  At the end of the run, I will remember the story of the character that made it the farthest...

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;831424That's fine.  As a player though, I hate going into it knowing that my character is "the star of the show."  For me, if every character is the star of the show, then no character is special.  At the end of the run, I will remember the story of the character that made it the farthest...

If I recruited players, I'd be pretty up front about it.  

I'm reminded of that old webcomic, The GM of the Rings.  It ended up with the fate of the entire world hinging on the roll of one die.  The player of Legolas was absolutely ecstatic about that.  The concept of life or death, the fate of his entire involvement in the game, hinging on that one die roll was fantastic to him.  I'm definitely not the type of player represented by the character of Legolas in that strip (in multiple ways, but that particular instance in particular).

Quote from: Gabriel2;831428If I recruited players, I'd be pretty up front about it.  

I'm reminded of that old webcomic, The GM of the Rings.  It ended up with the fate of the entire world hinging on the roll of one die...

I'd love that.  :D  Hopefully, I'd have managed through play to give myself better than a 50/50 chance of success.  :)

I wouldn't consider running or playing in a game in which the probability of PC death was engineered (other than by the intrinsic dangerousness of the environment). To me, that sort of game feels like playing chess where only one side can take the other's pieces.

I'd say more like playing chess with a house rule under which my opponent isn't allowed to capture my Queen.  For me, the challenge (and the fun) of playing a rpg is in trying to survive the many dangers of the world I'm exploring.  If character death is basically off the table then I don't feel like there's a reason to play.  It feels like I've "won" the game before we even start playing...

I generally play Rpgs where PC death naturally occurs as the result of die rolls, poor decision, and circumstance. I run Call of Cthulhu more than any other Rpg, so my players don't have any expectations that their investigators will survive or remain mentally stable - sometimes from session to session - and I don't ask permission to have random chance or circumstances affect them. (That seems the antithesis of any horror campaign).

I have played a few Rpgs that incorporate Fate/Hero/Force points, which certainly alter the survivability rate of the game. I don't mind that approach, because there's less of a feeling of 'player-may-I'. Players make the choice on whether they want to have a chance of fate intervening, using a limited resource.

To me, an RPG session or even campaign is not a game of chess.  My analogy would be that it's like cooperatively using blocks to build something.

From most responses, what many here want out of an RPG is a "role playing GAME."  What I'm after in an RPG is a "role PLAYing game."  Play, not competition.  My interaction with the rules is not a way to enable competition, but is just like those sections in the opening of most RPGs say about the rules being there to prevent "I hit you!  No you didn't!" etc.  They provide a structure and common language for things to be described.

Another big difference from what I see here a lot is that I largely only care about the world as a set for the characters to inhabit.  I'm concerned first and foremost with characters.  I do care about "the world" to the extent that it has to have a feeling of verisimilitude and genre appropriateness, but I'm not interested in running the world as the only recurring and important character.

I'm fine with the PC grinder in appropriate games.  I'm also fine with less deadly games.

Even in less deadly games, though, I prefer to handle that through having fewer "one hit kills", and giving players the chance to escape and lick their wounds, rather than "you can only die when you want to."  If you push your luck hard enough, you may die, but you'll know you're pushing your luck that hard.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831422I'm not into RPGs for the contest of player versus GM.  I'm in RPGs for the story of the character.  It's difficult to tell new stories about a character when they're dead.  (Although there have been some occasions where that hasn't stopped things.)  Since I prefer single player games, a character kill typically means the end of a campaign.  So, other drawbacks for being defeated are immensely preferable and more interesting.

If I want the challenge of leveling up a character with the omnipresent spectre of permanent elimination, I'll play something like Wizardry or a board game featuring player elimination mechanics.  I feel those kinds of games better deliver on that kind of competition and challenge structure than RPGs can possibly aspire to.  

The problem is the term "game."  In full honesty, I don't see RPGs as "games" with the connotation of competition or proof by merit.  I see them as pastimes.

Most rpgs (including D&D) are NOT designed or intended to be player vs GM type games. The game is the players vs the environment. The GM is not a player and thus cannot "win" by eliminating characters. In a game where the GM can just announce " ok there is a rockslide and you all die" the very idea of competition of players vs GM is silly.

There is still plenty of room for an actual game of surviving in the game world while exploring it and growing in power & influence. A character dying is simply akin to drawing a "go back to start" card in a board game. A campaign has no defined end beyond what the participants desire so starting over multiple times works just fine.

Having death on the table doesn't mean you are competing against the players. This and the inclusion of things to surprise alive doesn't take away RP. I am all for RPG and my sessions revolve heavily around it. What I want to avoid though is the sense that things are being scripted or that we know how they'll turn out (both for the GM and the players).

I'm never trying to kill PC's but if it happens it happens. I design a dangerous world how well they survive it is largely up to them. My group has never really cared about getting killed off, they typically end up laughing about it later. It's interesting though that my players are fairly reckless at first level but once they get a character to 2nd level they start playing smart and getting a bit attached. Even then they don't mind dying.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831439Most rpgs (including D&D) are NOT designed or intended to be player vs GM type games. The game is the players vs the environment...

Exactly.  When I watch Road Warrior, my thinking is never "I wish I could re-enact Mad Max's story arc."  It is always "I wish I could explore that world and try and survive those challenges."  I don't see how character death negates role-play.  I don't want to help write/create the world or the story other than by reacting to and surviving (or not) the challenges presented by it.  

The idea of sitting across the table from a GM and taking part in a mutual narrative story-telling exercise in which my character faces multiple deadly circumstances (but not really) isn't what I'm after.

When I run a campaign, I almost never want any of my player's characters to die (occasionally, there have been exceptions, but even then I think I have been mostly fair). My understanding of the role as a fair gamemaster basically requires that I usually run the game in a way that the players always have a chance to prevent death without needing to read my mind or come up with extra clever strategies or being ultra paranoid about traps and the like. In my games, there are virtually no "save or die" situations, but I don't pull punches, either, and most games I play have quite lethal rules (Runequest, HarnMaster, Midgard...) and virtually no ressurrection rules, but PC death is still very rare.
However, using these survival options and actively preventing their character's demise is the task of the players, not mine as the gamemaster; if they insist on being stupid and suicidal, or the dice really, really hate them and they push on anyway, there is the potential for a bad outcome. And thus, when a PC dies, it may be unfortunate, but it should normally feel well deserved.

I also believe that a gamemaster that doesn't allow the PCs to die when they well deserved it, does a great disservice to his setting's credibility but also to the players themselves: without the option to truly and spectacularly fail, they cannot truly and spectacularly earn their victories, either.

I'ld say, if you want a non-dangerous game, create a non-dangerous setting. Creating a dangerous looking setting and then sucking all the danger out of it by DM-assisted immortality is like giving kids trophies for just showing up.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831435From most responses, what many here want out of an RPG is a "role playing GAME."  What I'm after in an RPG is a "role PLAYing game."  Play, not competition.[...]
Another big difference from what I see here a lot is that I largely only care about the world as a set for the characters to inhabit.  I'm concerned first and foremost with characters.  I do care about "the world" to the extent that it has to have a feeling of verisimilitude and genre appropriateness, but I'm not interested in running the world as the only recurring and important character.

I see it a bit differently, at least in my default assumption and preference. (I can adjust if the parameters are laid out and executed well.) The importance of PC death isn't a matter of RPGs being competitive games, but of preserving the sense of in-character point of view. If the characters think something is a mortal danger, then the players should, too. The same goes for the sense of challenge. Granted the old saw that there are ways of "failing" without dying--and it's a valuable consideration whether in rules construction or scenario development. However if the main risk in a situation, from PC POV, is death, then taking that off the table can lead to a sense of just going through the motions in my experience. I.e., take any plan of action, and the GM will ultimately ensure it works out. Or pander to the GM or group consensus of what is AWESOME!1!, and the GM will let it slide. I feel this leads to gonzo, which isn't necessarily what I signed up for.

Quote from: Bren;831415It does seem like there was a change in expectation and play style. I'm not sure what the cause was.

I started in the '70s with a frankly immature group, probably around 11-13 year old peers. There was a lot of nonsense killer DM stuff such as repeatedly running into rooms with Yellow Mold and no way to avoid it, or on one occasion a 10'X10' room with dozens or even hundreds of Purple Worms. When I DMed I avoided this stuff and tried not only to make the game "fair" but more importantly to make it "real". Consequently death was very much on the table, and frequent in D&D.

The downsides were familiar:

--Occasional hurt feelings
--Loss of PC continuity
--Risk of campaign implosion on a TPK

And one other: I wanted to see PCs make it to high levels so the cool shit could come into play.

Consequently I tended to play hard but then give second chances either through cheap resurrections (maybe on credit), or with TPKs it was "you all had a bad dream." Later I started working on the idea of a dungeon with training wheels, a 1/2th-level dungeon if you will, both to stack the odds and give players a chance to learn basic strategy and tactics.

That never actually materialized, but when I went to college I encountered a completely different set of expectations. The people I played with obviously hated PC death, although they didn't openly say so until I challenged them on it a couple years in. This was circa 1984-86, so I don't think it came from modules. It seemed they had just stumbled onto the idea of a semi-railroaded, largely fudged style. (The players had sometimes more, sometimes less control over overall goals and actions within scenarios or scenes, but GMs always found a way to keep PCs alive.)

I enjoyed these games but as I mentioned, I raised the issue of death a few times; my friends responded with "PC death is no fun" or even, "It hurts when my PC dies." The person who said the latter also reinforced my concern about taking death entirely off the table--I gave her a hypothetical where her character was caught flat-footed and told to surrender, and she said she'd opt to run. In that case I knew I'd have no choice as a GM but to either turn her PC into a pincushion, or let her have her way always.

This is why I really liked and still do like the idea of hero points, which I ran across originally in Top Secret. Within a couple years I saw the idea expand. Depending on the implementation, it gives the players a buffer that they can use in various ways, without removing risk entirely, and maintains a sense that PCs have something to lose.

I also think it's important that players be able to opt to use them--they should be ignorable until you hit a point in the game where it would be unpleasant not to use them. For my default game style, I don't care for the idea that you need to use them basically to do anything.

I'm willing to kill PCs in any game. But the time and place matters (although the players won't know this.) I will avoid "cheap deaths". I was in one game, a GURPS Space campaign, where the PC died when he looked around a corner and a computerized gun targeted him. One roll and his head disintegrated. I didn't agree with that death and vowed I wouldn't do the same. Likewise I'd prefer that the PCs don't get killed by random beasts or thugs or guards. But if they are taking on the lair of the Big Bad then it could happen that way too. I would prefer that a named NPC does the deed.

Quote from: Beagle;831449I also believe that a gamemaster that doesn't allow the PCs to die when they well deserved it, does a great disservice to his setting's credibility but also to the players themselves: without the option to truly and spectacularly fail, they cannot truly and spectacularly earn their victories, either.

As a GM and a player I agree with the former. Death needs to be possible for the setting to be credible to me. (I've no interest in supers settings where Manhattan can get trashed by Hulk, Thor, or the like but no one gets killed even though buildings fall down onto busy city streets.)

I think the latter statement, "without the option to truly and spectacularly fail, they cannot truly and spectacularly earn their victories," is really significant in examining why different players look at death differently. For some players earning victories is important. So the risk of death is an important aspect of earning the victory. As a player I feel that way, at least a bit. Death being entirely off the table makes the game less engaging for me.

On the other hand, there are players who really aren't very (or at all) interested in the thrill of earning victories. They may just want to play a character they like. Some of those players are just as happy (or even happier) to have lower stakes in game. Both lower stakes in the sense of PCs being like TV series characters and almost never dying, but also lower stakes as in sessions that are not about life and death struggles saving the world or even saving a village. If the session is about something less heroic or more mundane (shopping for a birthday present, going out to dinner, celebrating an anniversary, asking someone out on a date) then the risk is now appropriate to the stakes and death is kind of unreasonable as a risk.

Quote from: Larsdangly;831456I'ld say, if you want a non-dangerous game, create a non-dangerous setting. Creating a dangerous looking setting and then sucking all the danger out of it by DM-assisted immortality is like giving kids trophies for just showing up.

While I am occasionally tempted to attribute people not wanting their characters to die in a RPG (or any other old thing I don't like about how someone else plays games) to the overly privileged and entitled upbringing of kids younger than me, I don't think that expressing that notion is helpful to a reasoned discussion. And at least anecdotally it isn't true. The oldest person I game with doesn't want their characters to die and being older than me, that player is definitely a boomer and not from some alphabet generation.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831422I run games like episodes of a TV show.  The stars (PCs) may face threats, but we all know they aren't in any danger of death unless the actor's contract is up (the player wants the character to die).

I'm not into RPGs for the contest of player versus GM.  I'm in RPGs for the story of the character.  It's difficult to tell new stories about a character when they're dead.  (Although there have been some occasions where that hasn't stopped things.)  Since I prefer single player games, a character kill typically means the end of a campaign.  So, other drawbacks for being defeated are immensely preferable and more interesting.

If I want the challenge of leveling up a character with the omnipresent spectre of permanent elimination, I'll play something like Wizardry or a board game featuring player elimination mechanics.  I feel those kinds of games better deliver on that kind of competition and challenge structure than RPGs can possibly aspire to.  

The problem is the term "game."  In full honesty, I don't see RPGs as "games" with the connotation of competition or proof by merit.  I see them as pastimes.

Sounds more like the problem is you'd be happier writing a script with your players and then acting out your story than actually playing a game.

Quote from: Matt;831465Sounds more like the problem is you'd be happier writing a script with your players and then acting out your story than actually playing a game.

I think your reading is unlikely and ungenerous.

I'd say he isn't very interested in the challenge of earning victories. He just wants to play out a series of adventures for the same group of characters. That's more fun and interesting for him if he doesn't lose established characters.

We played our Star Trek game that way. Since the adventures were like episodes of TOS or TNG not having main characters die seemed genre appropriate. It also meant we didn't spend time overly planning out actions or  worrying about why the PCs beamed onto a derelict ship in their uniforms instead of in a full environmental suit. A Star Trek game where there was more than an insignificant risk of main character death wouldn't fit the genre.

It's not my favorite type of RPG, but it can make for a fun campaign now and then. You don't have to like it. Nobody has to like it. After all it's not like the less dying in RPG squad will come in and force you not to let PCs in your games die.

But some people really like those sorts of games. Criticizing games other people like without actually understanding why they like what they like is unproductive to a discussion. Making fun of what other people like without even understanding what it is they like and why is even less productive.

I'd say if Gabriel2 is happy with his players and game, then mission accomplished. I might not be happy in his game but since I am not playing with him it doesn't matter.

I'm guessing that were we playing D&D or Jovian Chronicles, things might not go well, but if we played Mythic or The Shadow of Yesterday we might find a happy medium.

Quote from: Arminius;831458The person who said the latter also reinforced my concern about taking death entirely off the table--I gave her a hypothetical where her character was caught flat-footed and told to surrender, and she said she'd opt to run. In that case I knew I'd have no choice as a GM but to either turn her PC into a pincushion, or let her have her way always.

Character focus is the answer here, "act like the character."  Or if that fails the sniff test, then the "don't be a dick" rule.  This sort of action might come about because of a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  If it were a player doing it solely because they felt there were no consequences, then I would view that the same as someone cheating at the table by lying about dice rolls or modifying their character stats.  It boils down to the person I play with wouldn't do that kind of thing with the goal of flaunting their script immunity.  Or at least they wouldn't do it intentionally.  And if it's just a mistake, then it's something that can be solved by a little bit of talking.

More likely the scene would be something like what plays out in many fictional scenes of a character with a gun trained on them.  If the gun wielder was close enough, the player would have to come up with a description of how they distract or surprise the gunman and then run.  

Failing that, then they get shot.  They go unconscious.  In most of my games there is medical technology or magic available to revive them.  Now they're in a shittier situation, but they're still not dead.

So, it sounds like we're on the same page or at least somewhere in the same book.  I can't help but feel that part of the issue is calling this state DEATH.  If easy restoration of the character is possible, then I don't view it as death.  It's just a case of unconsciousness.

Well, I don't care for requiring players to self-police genre or realism because I feel it's a bit like self-censorship. If they're seeing things from the PC's POV then they should try to get away with whatever they can. Not everyone may feel this way but I have had times where I felt some players were running roughshod and I conversely was over-restraining myself because to do otherwise would be boring.

Again, I like the idea of hero points as a way to deal with the issue. In the example I gave, had the tool been available, the player might have expended a point anywhere in the encounter to try to effect an improbable escape, or if they tried to run without using a point right away, then a point could be spent to avoid a lethal result if necessary. Of course if the game mechanics explicitly allow a wide band/buffer of incapacitation before death, then there'd be less of an issue--though PCs would rarely surrender without a struggle.

The more overt method would be some form of conflict resolution. Again, based purely on reading, I think TSoY does this well although it takes accidental death completely off the table unless players explicitly decide to risk it to get their way. There are other games where you can remove PC death as a direct consequence of losing "the conflict" but leave it as a possible side effect of the conflict resolution mechanic, but the ones I've seen have been unsatisfying in other ways.

Quote from: Arminius;831483Well, I don't care for requiring players to self-police genre or realism because I feel it's a bit like self-censorship. If they're seeing things from the PC's POV then they should try to get away with whatever they can. Not everyone may feel this way but I have had times where I felt some players were running roughshod and I conversely was over-restraining myself because to do otherwise would be boring.

The problem, from my POV, was more the players who were running roughshod over the genre or realism.

I'm quite happy with players who decide that their character puts their hands up and surrenders because they are caught flat footed. I have a few players who will do that without requiring a lot of prompting. After all putting up your hands is a pretty normal human reaction to a loaded gun. It is also what we see 95% of the time for action heroes who aren't bullet proof.

Players who ignore guns because they think they are bullet proof "a wheellock pistol does 1d6+1 and my PC has 10 Lifeblood so I just charge him" annoy me. A lot. I avoid that behavior by trying not to play with those folks and by using rules like Honor+Intrigue, Call of Cthulhu, or heck even WEG D6 where point blank pistol shots can kill your PC.

Also, if I am playing a swashbuckling game like Honor+Intrigue (or an espionage game like 007) it may be a lot more useful to go along with the guy pointing the pistol at you so you can find out who he is and what he wants than to run away or try to turn the table on him. Going along for now may be your best chance to find out what is really going on and who is really behind the attacks on your PC.

Quote from: Bren;831475I think your reading is unlikely and ungenerous.

I'd say he isn't very interested in the challenge of earning victories. He just wants to play out a series of adventures for the same group of characters. That's more fun and interesting for him if he doesn't lose established characters.

We played our Star Trek game that way. Since the adventures were like episodes of TOS or TNG not having main characters die seemed genre appropriate. It also meant we didn't spend time overly planning out actions or  worrying about why the PCs beamed onto a derelict ship in their uniforms instead of in a full environmental suit. A Star Trek game where there was more than an insignificant risk of main character death wouldn't fit the genre.

It's not my favorite type of RPG, but it can make for a fun campaign now and then. You don't have to like it. Nobody has to like it. After all it's not like the less dying in RPG squad will come in and force you not to let PCs in your games die.

But some people really like those sorts of games. Criticizing games other people like without actually understanding why they like what they like is unproductive to a discussion. Making fun of what other people like without even understanding what it is they like and why is even less productive.

Get off your soapbox and show me where I criticized. Seriously you need to work on your reading comprehension if you couldn't understand what I wrote. Maybe less time on the lecture circuit and more time in remedial English is called for.

Quote from: Matt;831492Get off your soapbox and show me where I criticized.

That would be here.

Quote from: Matt;831465Sounds more like the problem is you'd be happier writing a script with your players and then acting out your story than actually playing a game.

Accusing someone of wanting to write a script instead of play an RPG because they don't play like you was clearly meant as a criticism.

If you really didn't intend that to be read as criticism then you are less articulate than your posts make you appear.

Quote from: Nexus;831310It's always a volatile topic. When do the PC die? Do you stick to the rules, disallow death (without player permission) entirely. Can PCs die from just pure bad luck of bad rolls at any time or only during appropriate time (however you define appropriate)?

There are allot of ways to handle death in games. What's your personal approach?

Spun off from this thread on TPB.  (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?755718-If-you-don-t-die-without-agency-and-you-don-t-die-from-a-bad-roll-how-do-you-die&p=18996637#post18996637)

Depends on the type of game I'm trying to run. There's 3 main categories in my head.

#1. By the book, deadly.
This is how I run DCC. Dice rolls out in the open, no fudging rules. Now, even this approach I discovered that PC death is pretty rare. I didn't have any character deaths after the funnel. Ressurection is rare and difficult to get.

#2. By the book, forgiving.
This is how I run 2nd ed, more story-ish games. Dice rolls out in the open, no fudging rules, but house rules to make death even more rare. Like using -10 hit points, or three death saves. Basically a buffer between 0 HP "mostly dead" and "really dead". Note that even DCC has the "turn over the body" rule, so it's technically in this category as well. Ressurection at this point is uncommon but doable.

#3. Fudgetastic.
Haven't run this way, but this is where I, as a DM, would allow the #2 level of forgiving death, and then creatively interpret events to make them even less final. A dead character is mostly dead, and if there's a way to avoid the buffer, then I'd take it. Hard to fudge a disintegration, but death by poison could be fudged by a near-death state, and the character is just in a coma. That kind of thing. Ressurection at this level is common for PCs.

Quote from: Nexus;831310It's always a volatile topic. When do the PC die? Do you stick to the rules, disallow death (without player permission) entirely. Can PCs die from just pure bad luck of bad rolls at any time or only during appropriate time (however you define appropriate)?

There are allot of ways to handle death in games. What's your personal approach?

Spun off from this thread on TPB.  (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?755718-If-you-don-t-die-without-agency-and-you-don-t-die-from-a-bad-roll-how-do-you-die&p=18996637#post18996637)

I set rules at the start, possibly more lenient than RAW (eg in my Classic D&D game it's dead at -10, in my 5e game you die at negative max hp, with a death save only after 1 hour to wake up). Then I stick with that rigorously - let the players know fear! No raise dead in my 5e game's campaign area* and my Classic players only seem dimly aware it might be an option. PCs absolutely certainly can die from bad luck, as well as stupidity, bravery, heroism etc.

*Nearest Cleric-9s are a thousand miles away.

I'm glad this topic came up because I was researching it myself the last few days. My group mostly likes "dice fall where they may" type rules, but at least one player is way more into having a "fantasy novel" style adventure where you can build character relationships and not worry about your character getting killed by random mooks.

Now my counterpoint to that is that you should be able to do that just fine in a game with more lethality, but I understand that for some people the prospect of losing their PC means they don't put investment into the character. And I want to avoid that.

So I've been trying to figure out what the best way to run a game would be, one with letting PCs die or one where I conspire to make them live and promote other consequences. Granted, I would still try to find other ways to complicate their lives even in a game where the dice fall where they may, but still.

The problem is I can see the same scenario playing out in a game with only complications. Suppose they lose their arm or go blind. They didn't die, but the PC might feel this is worse than death and lose interest in the character. Now I would have to deal with people wanting to re-roll because of inconvenience instead of character death.

Re Raise Dead - I have it some campaigns, but I like it to be a big deal. The man who has "Been to the Darkness", per Game of Thrones, is not going to be the same again - and IME the Reaper has a tendency to reclaim His own... OTOH in one campaign (4e) the PCs are Champions of Mielikki; Hope and Rebirth are major themes, and it works well thematically for the ex-PC Green Regent of Mielikki, who went into the Shadowfell and defeated the Reaper of Cyric in single combat to save the souls of Zhent-murdered innocents, to be able to wrest the souls of fallen PCs from Orcus' Hell.

Quote from: Larsdangly;831456I'ld say, if you want a non-dangerous game, create a non-dangerous setting. Creating a dangerous looking setting and then sucking all the danger out of it by DM-assisted immortality is like giving kids trophies for just showing up.

I think a non-physically-dangerous setting in which there are other dangers, such as social humiliation, is a great idea for death-averse GMs. I'd love to do a Vanity Fair campaign some time.

Doing dungeon-fantasy with no risk of death seems pointless to me, but doing a Soap Opera game with minimal risk of death seems perfectly valid.

Quote from: Bren;831464While I am occasionally tempted to attribute people not wanting their characters to die in a RPG (or any other old thing I don't like about how someone else plays games) to the overly privileged and entitled upbringing of kids younger than me, I don't think that expressing that notion is helpful to a reasoned discussion. And at least anecdotally it isn't true. The oldest person I game with doesn't want their characters to die and being older than me, that player is definitely a boomer and not from some alphabet generation.

Yeah, the nice young folks in my Classic D&D game have assured me they are fine with PC death. :D

I have had young players freak out over PC death, but most recent was 2008 & 2009, and they both had 'issues', as they say.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831368See, I have threads and adventures wrapped around ALL my players, and when I lose one, I lose all those fun adventures that I can throw at my group to see how they deal with it.

You gain new adventures to throw at them when they have to.deal.with changes in the PC or NPC lineup.  Seeing how they deal with a situation becomes a lot less interesting when everyone knows "and one of us dies" will never be an option.

As the OP states, a volatile topic.  Certainly we see the proof of that, given the heap of strutting and jeering above, along the lines of "MY type of gamer --" separated out by arbitrary distinctions of age, game system, and type of campaign "-- is the only right thinking gamer, as opposed to THOSE pussy losers."

For my part, my campaign has always had a low mortality rate; I don't think there've been more than a dozen fatalities in the last twenty years.  Part of that is playing GURPS, with a combat system very unforgiving to the "What's the problem, there are only a hundred mook guards?" mentality.  Part of it is that resurrections are desperately rare and difficult in my setting -- it's happened exactly once to a PC in the last thirty years.  Part of it is that my campaign is strongly RP-oriented, and players are expected to be invested in their characters.

But mostly I think it's what I've come to think of as the Tasha Yar Rule: I do not believe in throwaway, meaningless deaths.  A PC cashing out should be through heroic action (or, alternately, through deliberate choice or the predictable result of stupidity), not because a faceless schmuck orc had great dice luck.  Getting incapacitated and/or captured?  Not hard at all.  Getting killed because you decided charging a ballista head-on was a worthwhile tactic?  That can happen.  Getting killed when you yell to your comrades, "You guys save yourselves, I'll hold the bridge as long as I can!" or because you're dueling the Queen's Champion?  The minstrels are writing up your ballad even as I type.

Getting killed because Guard #11 rolled a 3 at the wrong time?  Nah.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831509I'm glad this topic came up because I was researching it myself the last few days. My group mostly likes "dice fall where they may" type rules, but at least one player is way more into having a "fantasy novel" style adventure where you can build character relationships and not worry about your character getting killed by random mooks.

The funny part is that "the dice fall where they may" offers a very wide range of lethality, based on the system in play.

There's a great bit in Amber Diceless about how you can have a very, very harsh game that isn't dependent on PC death.  Amber Diceless really seems to have been the inspiration for quite a number of games.  I know for a fact it was a huge influence on Fate.

Quote from: robiswrong;831531The funny part is that "the dice fall where they may" offers a very wide range of lethality, based on the system in play...

another funny thing is that "the dice fall where they may" doesn't eliminate the potential for RP.

Quote from: CRKrueger;831525You gain new adventures to throw at them when they have to.deal.with changes in the PC or NPC lineup.  Seeing how they deal with a situation becomes a lot less interesting when everyone knows "and one of us dies" will never be an option.

The problem I have with random death being possible is that players often end up treating characters as playing pieces, rather than caring about what happens in the adventures.

At that point, you may as well play monopoly, the effect ends up being the same (See we can all play that game.)  It's fine for a weekend dungeon crawl set up, where you do nothing but explore pits in the earth, but sometimes, people want something more out of a campaign.

And here's the thing, I never said that 'random' death isn't possible.  If the player decides that his character who fell into the trap of doom is dead, no ressurrection possible, I don't stop him.  I just leave it in my players hands.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;831556another funny thing is that "the dice fall where they may" doesn't eliminate the potential for RP.

I don't know if that's directed at me, but I certainly never believed it did.

I've seen plenty of RP in both high and low lethality games, and I do believe in letting the dice fall as they may.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831573The problem I have with random death being possible is that players often end up treating characters as playing pieces, rather than caring about what happens in the adventures.

At that point, you may as well play monopoly, the effect ends up being the same (See we can all play that game.)  It's fine for a weekend dungeon crawl set up, where you do nothing but explore pits in the earth, but sometimes, people want something more out of a campaign.

And here's the thing, I never said that 'random' death isn't possible.  If the player decides that his character who fell into the trap of doom is dead, no ressurrection possible, I don't stop him.  I just leave it in my players hands.

While this is totally fine if that is what you enjoy, I can assure you in my games where death is on the table and the player has no out of character say about it, it is nothing like monopoly. People still get invested in their character and the setting when death by random arrow is a possibility. My campaigns feature the occasional dungeon but the rest of the action is predominately political and social in nature.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;831556another funny thing is that "the dice fall where they may" doesn't eliminate the potential for RP.

I don't think it should either, but people who are down on lethality say that it makes investing in the character pointless.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831573And here's the thing, I never said that 'random' death isn't possible.  If the player decides that his character who fell into the trap of doom is dead, no ressurrection possible, I don't stop him.  I just leave it in my players hands.

Unless the player choosing whether or not a trap is fatal for his character is rolling dice to decide if the trap was fatal, that is not an example of random death.

QuoteThe problem I have with random death being possible is that players often end up treating characters as playing pieces, rather than caring about what happens in the adventures.

I've have not noticed the effect you mention. And I have GMed and played RPGs for a long time with levels of lethality ranging from 0% to at least 70%. Players who treat their PC as a playing piece seems mostly a factor of how the player plays more than  a factor of how lethal the game is.

I do think that players tend to get more attached* to characters they enjoy the longer they play those characters. So a lower lethality game makes it more likely that a PC will survive long enough for a player to develop the maximal level of attachment to that character for that player. But here we are discussing different degrees of attachment not total lack of attachment where  the PC is a disposable playing piece.


* Players can also tire or become bored with a character over time. A low lethality campaign will also increase the chance that this can happen. Playing multiple PCs or alternating PCs can mitigate the overplay factor that can occur in a low lethality long term campaign.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831585I don't think it should either, but people who are down on lethality say that it makes investing in the character pointless.

Yeah I just don't get that.

At most it may mean that your character is like a sand castle on the beach. Ephemeral, transitory, here today and gone tomorrow. That doesn't mean that creating a sand castle can't be entertaining or is utterly pointless or futile.

You might build a sand castle as an embodiment in three dimensions of mortality and impermanence or to struggle against the chaos and destruction of the sea, striving for a time to hold off the relentless wash of the tide, but ultimately knowing that you can only succeed for a while until the remorseless tide washes away all trace of your actions, or maybe its just an afternoon's activity of having fun playing in the sand.

It's OK if you don't want to make sandcastles. It just seems weird to act like sandcastle making is some bizzarro leisure activity. But I feel the same way about people who totally fail to understand why someone might enjoy building a cathedral of stone instead of a castle of sand.

I like lethal combat because it encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

Quote from: David Johansen;831590I like lethal combat because it encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

Uh, no it doesn't.  It means people over-think every little detail, often to the point of dragging the session down.

Good game design encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831592Uh, no it doesn't.  It means people over-think every little detail, often to the point of dragging the session down.

Good game design encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

If the system is sufficiently lethal players tend to avoid combat and engage in problem solving in my experience. Lethality can definitely be used to encourage that kind of play if you desire it (though it isn't the only method). Games where players can amass buckets of hp are not really lethal in my view. Games where everyone (PC, npc, etc) has pretty much the same ability to withstand a knife to the throat or a gun shot to the head (and where those things stand a chance to kill in a single roll) change how players interact with the world in a big way.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;831594If the system is sufficiently lethal players tend to avoid combat and engage in problem solving in my experience. Lethality can definitely be used to encourage that kind of play if you desire it (though it isn't the only method). Games where players can amass buckets of hp are not really lethal in my view. Games where everyone (PC, npc, etc) has pretty much the same ability to withstand a knife to the throat or a gun shot to the head (and where those things stand a chance to kill in a single roll) change how players interact with the world in a big way.

Yeap, by sniping their problems at range.  At least that's been my experience.  It hasn't actually stopped the killing, just changed how it's done.

IME, Its not having death as a possibility that causes a reduction in character investment. its having death as some that is frequent and easy, even constant. Games with allot of one hit kills, save or die, etc, situation that can encourage a more Beer and Pretzels outlook. Not all the time and not unavoidably but generally, at least in my observation.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;831403Just like in real life, if you're done you're done.

I got better! :eek:

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831573The problem I have with random death being possible is that players often end up treating characters as playing pieces, rather than caring about what happens in the adventures.

It's a problem if players feel forced to play high lethality adventures. In a more sandbox setup where they can choose their own threat level it should be less of an issue.
All my games have the possibility of random death; I tend to see very good roleplay & investment from my players though.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831585I don't think it should either, but people who are down on lethality say that it makes investing in the character pointless.

Yes I know they do, and I disagree.

I'm not in favor of dickish behavior on the part of the GM though.  The previous example of someone looking around the corner and getting capped in the head by a homing laser would be a totally unfair thing afaic unless the GM had made sure the players were aware of that possibility upon entering the facility.  If he's done that, then looking around the corner in that fashion would be a dumb move on the part of the player and getting lasered a more reasonable consequence.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831598Yeap, by sniping their problems at range.  At least that's been my experience.  It hasn't actually stopped the killing, just changed how it's done.

In my experience it greatly reduces killing. If the system is genuinely lethal, the idea of just wading through a dungeon and killing everything in sight is utter suicide, so you don't do that. And killing at a distance comes at risk as well. Certainly killings might take place, but people are going to hedge their bets a lot more when they do kill, kill as a last resort when safer options have already been explored, and problem solve or engage in diplomacy if they can. That is a much different game from a standard D&D dungeon though. But I've definitely found where you set things like health levels and damage in a game greatly impact player behavior. If everyone in the setting is walking around with 4 HP and normal weapons can do up to 4 damage, people start to behave a bit more like they do in real life.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831598Yeap, by sniping their problems at range.  At least that's been my experience.  It hasn't actually stopped the killing, just changed how it's done.

Thus the mechanics encourage a more intelligent approach to getting the job done.

Does a soldier on the battlefield sling his rifle and engage the enemy in hand to hand because it would be more heroic? Not if he cares about survival. Likewise utilizing cover, flanking, suppression fire, & other tactics because, generally surviving the mission is a good thing.

When the players know that their characters are at real risk and combat is suitably dangerous, ingenuity becomes standard operating procedure if the players are invested in their characters at all.

Back to Arminius's comment about players abusing their script immunity...

Something happened recently in the game I play in that might have qualified for this.  I decided to ask my friend/GM what he had thought about the situation.

What happened was my character turned around to see four gunmen with M-16s trained on him.  Surrendering would have meant abandoning all my goals for the whole episode.  Ultimately, it would probably have led to my character being implanted with a mind control parasite, as well as other unpleasant things.  Despite all the guns, I didn't see surrender as a viable option.

My course of action was to knock the gun of the nearest gunman out of aim.  This caused him to fire wildly and the other gunmen to duck in order to avoid friendly fire.  I also tried to use the gunman I just attacked as cover against the other three.  Then I attempted my escape.  It succeeded, and my Dodge skill was good enough that I only got tagged by one bullet on my way out which luckily rolled low damage.

So, last night I asked the GM if he felt my actions were flaunting my script immunity.  He replied that the thought never occurred to him.  He told me that he just wanted to see how I'd deal with the gunmen.  In fact, he felt I took the hard way out.  See, the gunmen were all mind controlled by parasites, and I knew this.  I could have tried to use my assault rifle to blow them all away (they were unarmored).  Instead, I tried to find a solution where I didn't kill my attackers so they could be cured of the mental control later.  He felt that it was overall a good event which showed my character was trying to be heroic.  He didn't see it as out of character, or particularly reckless (no more reckless than anything in an action movie type thing).

I mentioned to him how people online felt that since there was no chance of my character getting killed, then there was nothing I had to lose in that scene, and there was no point in him GMing it.  He replied that it was a good thing those people didn't play in our games, and found their fun elsewhere.  He asked if I didn't feel there was anything at stake in that scene, and I replied that I definitely felt there were things at stake there.  He pointed out that I took a little extra time to come up with my course of action in that scene, and that I was clearly thinking, weighing my options, and taking it seriously.

So that's my anecdote.  That's the way we look at it and how it works for us.

Quote from: Originally Posted by BedrockBrendanIf the system is sufficiently lethal players tend to avoid combat and engage in problem solving in my experience. Lethality can definitely be used to encourage that kind of play if you desire it (though it isn't the only method). Games where players can amass buckets of hp are not really lethal in my view. Games where everyone (PC, npc, etc) has pretty much the same ability to withstand a knife to the throat or a gun shot to the head (and where those things stand a chance to kill in a single roll) change how players interact with the world in a big way

.

Yes.
I work with games with high lethality and high consequence.  And maybe it does not work too well for others, but there is very, very little script immunity.  Nor do my players want it.  

And by consequence, maiming and other permanent damage happens as well, which is often overlooked.  Recently, in the online game, a player lost a hand to a rat. I hate it when PCs regularly take major damage or nearly die, but no actual harm comes to them.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831668I mentioned to him how people online felt that since there was no chance of my character getting killed, then there was nothing I had to lose in that scene, and there was no point in him GMing it.  He replied that it was a good thing those people didn't play in our games, and found their fun elsewhere...

yeah, well...duh.  :)  I'd say its a good thing too.  Doesn't sound like my kind of game.

As far as your anecdote goes, all I can say is OK glad that worked out for you.  For myself, knocking one gun of four aimed at you doesn't seem like all that creative a solution, and it seems pretty unlikely that it would be successful.  As a player, I'd expect to have a reasonable chance of ending up dead in that situation.  I'd be inclined to surrender, and hope for an opportunity later to face a single baddie or 2 instead of 4 and to attempt an escape then against better odds.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831668Back to Arminius's comment about players abusing their script immunity...

Something happened recently in the game I play in that might have qualified for this.  I decided to ask my friend/GM what he had thought about the situation.

What happened was my character turned around to see four gunmen with M-16s trained on him.  Surrendering would have meant abandoning all my goals for the whole episode.  Ultimately, it would probably have led to my character being implanted with a mind control parasite, as well as other unpleasant things.  Despite all the guns, I didn't see surrender as a viable option.

My course of action was to knock the gun of the nearest gunman out of aim.  This caused him to fire wildly and the other gunmen to duck in order to avoid friendly fire.  I also tried to use the gunman I just attacked as cover against the other three.  Then I attempted my escape.  It succeeded, and my Dodge skill was good enough that I only got tagged by one bullet on my way out which luckily rolled low damage.

So, last night I asked the GM if he felt my actions were flaunting my script immunity.  He replied that the thought never occurred to him.  He told me that he just wanted to see how I'd deal with the gunmen.  In fact, he felt I took the hard way out.  See, the gunmen were all mind controlled by parasites, and I knew this.  I could have tried to use my assault rifle to blow them all away (they were unarmored).  Instead, I tried to find a solution where I didn't kill my attackers so they could be cured of the mental control later.  He felt that it was overall a good event which showed my character was trying to be heroic.  He didn't see it as out of character, or particularly reckless (no more reckless than anything in an action movie type thing).

I mentioned to him how people online felt that since there was no chance of my character getting killed, then there was nothing I had to lose in that scene, and there was no point in him GMing it.  He replied that it was a good thing those people didn't play in our games, and found their fun elsewhere.  He asked if I didn't feel there was anything at stake in that scene, and I replied that I definitely felt there were things at stake there.  He pointed out that I took a little extra time to come up with my course of action in that scene, and that I was clearly thinking, weighing my options, and taking it seriously.

So that's my anecdote.  That's the way we look at it and how it works for us.

I actually like this. The hard part is having players who see it the same way. Someone else who is powergaming or whatnot would just see it as an opportunity to be exploited. It requires the ability from the player to immerse himself in the situation and ignore the metagaming aspect of it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831573The problem I have with random death being possible is that players often end up treating characters as playing pieces, rather than caring about what happens in the adventures.

At that point, you may as well play monopoly, the effect ends up being the same (See we can all play that game.)  It's fine for a weekend dungeon crawl set up, where you do nothing but explore pits in the earth, but sometimes, people want something more out of a campaign.

And here's the thing, I never said that 'random' death isn't possible.  If the player decides that his character who fell into the trap of doom is dead, no ressurrection possible, I don't stop him.  I just leave it in my players hands.

The interesting thing about the hobby is people can put in what seems like diametrically opposed inputs and receive similar results.  All the things you say you enjoy about the less-lethal approach...
-Investment in Character
-Depth and meaning in a campaign
-Roleplaying and engagement
...all of those in my experience have always been increased with using a more lethal system and a hands-off approach to death.  It's really no surprise though, players who are more engaged by a cinematic system will be more engaged by a cinematic approach to death.  Players who are more engaged by a less cinematic more verisimilar system will be more engaged by that approach to death.

CRKruegar made two really good points that deserve repetition.

Quote from: CRKrueger;831689[P]layers who are more engaged by a cinematic system will be more engaged by a cinematic approach to death.  

Players who are more engaged by a less cinematic more verisimilar system will be more engaged by that approach to death.

This difference is also why some of these conversations about RPG death have a lot of people on both sides who just can't seem to grasp why the other side disagrees with them about roleplaying experiences.

Quote from: Bren;831719CRKruegar made two really good points that deserve repetition.

This difference is also why some of these conversations about RPG death have a lot of people on both sides who just can't seem to grasp why the other side disagrees with them about roleplaying experiences.

yeah, its really a pretty fundamental difference in the way we "see" the games...

Is this something innate to the player though or is it the way they were taught to play?

The issue here is that some people are coming off as their way is the only way to play.

And I want to reiterate that in my case at least it isn't, there's no right or wrong here to my eyes.

Personally, I've played where death can happen at any time, and randomly, and given the circle of players I've frequented (whom are all friends) one of two things occur, one they run away from everything, and given how some of the older games I used to play, that meant very little character progression.  Or they go all in, and risk everything to kill the enemy before they get killed by the enemy.

But if you put death into the player's hands (Again, in MY CIRCLE of gamers) they will do things like Gabriel2 did, because there's no chance of an action resulting in a quick, one shot death.  Be removing some of the risk, it opened up options that they normally would not have considered.

Again, if the player wanted to have his character die, I have no say in it.  It's what they want.

I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to play their games.  If you're having fun you're doing it right.  I'm just trying to explain why I like it a certain way.  I'm trying to shed light on the reasoning from my pov...that's all.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831738Is this something innate to the player though or is it the way they were taught to play?

It does seem to be something fairly innate actually.  The psychological underpinnings of it might make for an interesting research paper.  :)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831738Is this something innate to the player though or is it the way they were taught to play?

Akin to the nature nurture problem I'd say.

It seems like some players are influenced by what game they learned, but that could just be a selection factor.

Most players who liked and played system X were innately predisposed to favor, or at least tolerate, the play experience that system X best or most easily supports. So even if predisposition was innate, it would still look like people were influence by their early gaming because most people for whom their early gaming was a not a good fit would go find some other hobby. Absent exposure to another style of play, they would not remain roleplayers.

It seems reasonable to assume that some people might like a different style that what they are playing better, but that they just haven't been exposed to a style that would be a better fit for them. Also comfort with system and not wanting to learn a new system without some compelling reason or good pitch seems very common amongst gamers. So I'd be surprised if what you were exposed to didn't have some influence on what you like or are willing to play.

Moreover a fair number of players don't seem to have an immensely strong preference for cinematic or realistic games. They are willing to go along with what the group likes or the GM runs. So if never exposed to an alternative style they just go with what the group does.

Also, it is useful to remember that the vast majority of players don't read, much less post in, online forums so the opinions you get are unlikely to be representative of gamers at large.

Gabriel2,

Reading your anecdote, I was thinking,

Okay, seems a bit improbable he could get away with that, but it's the kind of thing that happens in movies and it could work, especially as the idea was to act decisively and distract. I think a hero point or two would give a reasonable chance of success by providing some bonuses or rerolls. Or I wonder if the GM went with "rule of cool" and fudged it...

What? He knew going in there was no chance of dying? Sorry, not interested.

See, you weren't abusing the game reality or making it gonzo, but if I were playing under those terms, I'd feel completely outside the character and fully dependent on the "collaborative writing exercise" mode...but without the benefit of spitballing and without the suspense generated by some form of "hard" resolution. (I mean in Mythic you can collaboratively throw out ideas and then use the dice to see how they work out.)

I'm wondering how long you've gamed with this other person and how often you game with anyone else. Because I'll bet this style depends on a lot of trust, a huge amount of shared vision, and a lot of nonverbal communication.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;831440Having death on the table doesn't mean you are competing against the players. This and the inclusion of things to surprise alive doesn't take away RP. I am all for RPG and my sessions revolve heavily around it. What I want to avoid though is the sense that things are being scripted or that we know how they'll turn out (both for the GM and the players).

Same here. I want a plot to explore. I do not want a script I am locked into.

This is the thing some module haters overlook. Not all modules are a script you must follow.  

One of the bemusing things about the Hoard of the Dragon Queen module was the sheer number of complaints of players who walked into the start of it gunz-a-blazin and promptly got massacred by some kobolds.

Quote from: Arminius;831763I'm wondering how long you've gamed with this other person and how often you game with anyone else. Because I'll bet this style depends on a lot of trust, a huge amount of shared vision, and a lot of nonverbal communication.

Those are all good things though. If you don't have them at the table any form of game is going to fail.

True. And every group has its microculture. It just seems to me that "gaming dyads" sometimes develop which outsiders have a lot of trouble comprehending.

Quote from: Bren;831490Players who ignore guns because they think they are bullet proof "a wheellock pistol does 1d6+1 and my PC has 10 Lifeblood so I just charge him" annoy me. A lot. I avoid that behavior by trying not to play with those folks and by using rules like Honor+Intrigue, Call of Cthulhu, or heck even WEG D6 where point blank pistol shots can kill your PC.

Actually rushing the guy with the gun used to be pretty common in film and still gets used. Apparently it is also a valid combat tactic under certain circumstances.

And the wheelock example is probably valid. The ball probably wont kill you because your character knows just enough of how the things work to get outside of its effective kill point. What the player fails to think through is that sure they rushed the pistol and took 4 damage maybe. But now they are A: Wounded, and B: About to get fist or pistol beat. How much does a fist or small club do? One two hits and they could be down?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831739The issue here is that some people are coming off as their way is the only way to play.

And I want to reiterate that in my case at least it isn't, there's no right or wrong here to my eyes.

You say that, but here's an exchange where you do something almost exactly the same as saying your way is the only right way, namely that other people's experiences that may not match your own never happened or didn't occur.

Quote from: David Johansen;831590I like lethal combat because it encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831592Uh, no it doesn't.  It means people over-think every little detail, often to the point of dragging the session down.

Good game design encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

Now if someone didn't autofill in 'In my Opinion", "In my Experience", "for me" etc when they read your reply, what you said seems pretty One True Wayist.  You're directly contradicting a statement someone made which he started with "I like" by using unequivocal language implying an objective statement not a subjective one.

Did you mean he was wrong, and that his perceptions are actually an illusion he's telling himself?  No, of course not, but your sentence surely reads that way going on just the words, since you added no language of subjectivity there.

So when you read a similar sentence by someone else, are they being "One True Wayist" or are just writing in the same way you did?

When people say "Roleplay" even within the context of the tabletop hobby, the definition of what exactly they mean by that differs, sometimes drastically and fundamentally.  This difference of mindset and frame of reference leads to a great deal of the Sturm und Drang on forums about topics like death, realism, genre emulation and other literary elements, etc.

If two people are coming from different frames of reference, of course they could easily experience the exact same thing differently.  Comparing apples to oranges and all the confusion and misplaced assumptions that come from such an exercise become a lot more prevalent when the person talking about apples and the person talking about oranges are both using the noun tomato to describe them.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;831738Is this something innate to the player though or is it the way they were taught to play?

Seems innate, with a dash of background.

Some players just really click to it all and grock a certain style of play like it was second nature. The idea of the character getting offed and having to make a new one is perfectly fine. They love the random element and may even look forward to playing something new each time.

For others though it creates an intense disconnect. Usually if the frequency his a certain threshold. Past that and they stop investing in the characters anymore as it is obviously pointless. Seems to happen more with DMs who really are playing to "win" by racking up a body count.

Others invest in a character quite a bit. Its a-lot more common that some expect and death of a character like that does not come lightly. For one of these its not that death is a problem. It is pointless death that is a problem. They wont mind if they go out in a blaze of glory, or at least doing something heroic or fitting to the character. The disconnect is vs pointless death. Frequency may even not phase them as long as it isn't pointless.

Then there are those who invest possibly a liiiitle too intensely in a character and for whome any sort of character death is a game breaker. They do not want a new character. They like the one they have and that is that. Some you can work with and weave that into epic "quest the afterlife." adventures to get them back. Or other things that make the characters death enguaging or not the end. Others seem not to be able to take even that.

Being a frequent player of AD&D and BX magic users I was VERY used to dropping if something so much as looked my way. But even I have my threshold where I start to disconnect.

I agree PC death rate should fit the genre emulated and the players should understand what that means pre-game.

For me, I like running fast paced, lethal games. PCs die thanks to bad dice or bad decisions, and my players really enjoy when they dodge the bullet thanks to smart decisions or lucky dice.

However, my Superhero games or Big Damn Hero style games are low-lethality BUT high risk of failure because I play my villains smart. In that genre, the "pain of loss" is failure against the villains, not PC death.

Quote from: Omega;831775Actually rushing the guy with the gun used to be pretty common in film and still gets used. Apparently it is also a valid combat tactic under certain circumstances.

I don't think it is a very smart tactic though. My understanding from reading on police and FBI shooting data is that it works if the shooter hesitates or misses. It may result in both people being wounded or killed if the charger is motivated and the bullet (and any follow up attacks) doesn't stop them or drop them. Otherwise you end up with corpse clutching a knife. in his cold dead hand.

QuoteAnd the wheelock example is probably valid. The ball probably wont kill you because your character knows just enough of how the things work to get outside of its effective kill point.

Outside wheellock range is well outside stabbing range though. If you are closing on the shooter you are moving into range not out of it. To be too close you'd have to be wrestling.

What I would expect PCs to do is to go along for now and wait for or engineer a distraction, if they can't get a distraction then go along and hope the situation changes or that the reason they didn't already shoot you is because the want to talk to you (a staple action of all sorts of adventure fiction), and only in the last resort would I expect them to go for the high risk strategy of charging a ready shooter.

There's a saying, "Charge [or rush] a gun and run from a knife." Happy to say I've never had to put the theory to the test, though I've had a gun pointed at me a couple times. (I took the third option, give the guy my money.)

Quote from: Arminius;831797There's a saying, "Charge [or rush] a gun and run from a knife." Happy to say I've never had to put the theory to the test, though I've had a gun pointed at me a couple times. (I took the third option, give the guy my money.)

You can't outrun a bullet so it makes sense if you think they plan to kill you. But as you can attest, killing people isn't the only reason someone points a gun. Charging that person may just initiate that killing thing you were ostensibly trying to avoid.

To come back to the point I was making, I don't enjoy players whose only response to someone threatening their character is combat. It's often unrealistic. And usually it's boring.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;831592Uh, no it doesn't.  It means people over-think every little detail, often to the point of dragging the session down.

Good game design encourages problem solving and roleplaying over combat.

One or two serious fatalities and even the worst hack and slashers start to look for other options or leave the group which generally suits me just fine.

I also like slow and detailed character creation because people are more attached to their character if they don't want to spend two hours making another one.

I also like social skills and rules because players faced with DM fiat blocking will generally turn to killing everything they see.

And yeah, I DM just about every Saturday, so that's working just fine for me.

Quote from: Gabriel2;831668Back to Arminius's comment about players abusing their script immunity...

Something happened recently in the game I play in that might have qualified for this.  I decided to ask my friend/GM what he had thought about the situation.

What happened was my character turned around to see four gunmen with M-16s trained on him.  Surrendering would have meant abandoning all my goals for the whole episode.  Ultimately, it would probably have led to my character being implanted with a mind control parasite, as well as other unpleasant things.  Despite all the guns, I didn't see surrender as a viable option.

My course of action was to knock the gun of the nearest gunman out of aim.  This caused him to fire wildly and the other gunmen to duck in order to avoid friendly fire.  I also tried to use the gunman I just attacked as cover against the other three.  Then I attempted my escape.  It succeeded, and my Dodge skill was good enough that I only got tagged by one bullet on my way out which luckily rolled low damage.

So, last night I asked the GM if he felt my actions were flaunting my script immunity.  He replied that the thought never occurred to him.  He told me that he just wanted to see how I'd deal with the gunmen.  In fact, he felt I took the hard way out.  See, the gunmen were all mind controlled by parasites, and I knew this.  I could have tried to use my assault rifle to blow them all away (they were unarmored).  Instead, I tried to find a solution where I didn't kill my attackers so they could be cured of the mental control later.  He felt that it was overall a good event which showed my character was trying to be heroic.  He didn't see it as out of character, or particularly reckless (no more reckless than anything in an action movie type thing).

I mentioned to him how people online felt that since there was no chance of my character getting killed, then there was nothing I had to lose in that scene, and there was no point in him GMing it.  He replied that it was a good thing those people didn't play in our games, and found their fun elsewhere.  He asked if I didn't feel there was anything at stake in that scene, and I replied that I definitely felt there were things at stake there.  He pointed out that I took a little extra time to come up with my course of action in that scene, and that I was clearly thinking, weighing my options, and taking it seriously.

So that's my anecdote.  That's the way we look at it and how it works for us.

It was a great scene. As player or GM, for me it would have been so much better if there was a real risk of PC death. My heart would have been pounding with excitement. Everyone at the table (or in the game chatroom) would have been on tenterhooks. If the PC survived it would have been one of those memorable moments that went down in history, not just another encounter.

Quote from: Omega;831775Actually rushing the guy with the gun used to be pretty common in film and still gets used. Apparently it is also a valid combat tactic under certain circumstances.

It used to work pretty well IRL - high risk, but you'd often hear on the news about shooters being disarmed by unarmed civilians. You don't hear it any more (since about 2000?) IME - either civilians have been trained to be passive, or guns & gunmen have got a lot more reliably deadly. Twenty or thirty years ago something like the Fort Hood Jihadi massacre probably wouldn't have happened, someone on the base would have disarmed Major Hassan after he had killed a few people, typically 4-6.

Re 'charge a gun, run from a knife' - the effective accurate range of many pistols (especially snub-nosed revolvers) is or was so low that running (with an initial zig-zag, since DAR revolvers have a hard pull it takes a moment from 'decide to fire' to bullet exiting barrel) would often be quite an effective tactic. It's not likely to work with an assault rifle or (probably) SMG at short range though; you're generally not going to survive those whatever you do.

Quote from: Old One Eye;831323If they die, they die.  (Kudos to Drago)

PCs do what they want.  I try to have the world realistic-ish.  I roll in the open.  If dice say a lone goblin cuts off your pecker and you bleed out, so be it.

What a visceral way to describe your games haha. But, yeah I agree. We like more realistic settings. I want my players to be attached to their characters, knowing full well that they can't just be gungho all the time and expect their actions to have no consequences.

So when a player death does occur, it means something and is felt by the party. This can occur randomly, because the player made a really poor judgment decision, or sometimes even planned.

Either way in a role playing setting, death is part of the experience and can truly add depth to campaigns.

When it comes to dealing with death, I actually like what was written in this article: http://www.madadventurers.com/setup-for-success-dealing-with-death/

Again it's to ensure that death is not trivialized but cherished in a way.

Quote from: David Johansen;831815One or two serious fatalities and even the worst hack and slashers start to look for other options or leave the group which generally suits me just fine.

I also like slow and detailed character creation because people are more attached to their character if they don't want to spend two hours making another one.

I also like social skills and rules because players faced with DM fiat blocking will generally turn to killing everything they see.

And yeah, I DM just about every Saturday, so that's working just fine for me.

I play the same type of game, and I go through periods where we lose a character every third session.  My main online game now is a low fatality scenario, but the one before was higher fatality, 17 PCs lost in 140 sessions.  So, mileage may vary.

The thing is that there are things you can do with good, experienced players and there are things you can do with groups where the experience and skill of the players is very mixed and there are things you do with groups of utter newbies.

I've mostly been running games for teenagers at my store lately and they're extremely sensitive to failure and character death so we've played a lot of Heroes Unlimited.  They're also like D&D5e better than any other edition or version we've tried But bit by bit they're rounding out and we might be able to advance to something more of "a thinking man's game."

Quote from: David Johansen;831896The thing is that there are things you can do with good, experienced players and there are things you can do with groups where the experience and skill of the players is very mixed and there are things you do with groups of utter newbies.

I've mostly been running games for teenagers at my store lately and they're extremely sensitive to failure and character death so we've played a lot of Heroes Unlimited.  They're also like D&D5e better than any other edition or version we've tried But bit by bit they're rounding out and we might be able to advance to something more of "a thinking man's game."

What about the idea that you could run games with death to desensitize them from the failure?

Quote from: David Johansen;831896The thing is that there are things you can do with good, experienced players and there are things you can do with groups where the experience and skill of the players is very mixed and there are things you do with groups of utter newbies.

I've mostly been running games for teenagers at my store lately and they're extremely sensitive to failure and character death so we've played a lot of Heroes Unlimited.  They're also like D&D5e better than any other edition or version we've tried But bit by bit they're rounding out and we might be able to advance to something more of "a thinking man's game."

I have faith in your ability to read them; that can be a tough audience.

This was me and my friends playing with the college kids back in 76-78.  And we did die more than they did; but it is true we had some older players do make us feel better about our losses.  

But that online group has all levels of experience, so don't give up hope.  Every PC deathterrified me i'd lose a player, but they all came back from those.  Even the near TPK with the green dragon.

I like my risk of death real. However I try to make sure people are aware of the dangers. And that DOES include orc #11 rolling a 3 and then a great critical hit which adds up to some PC's death.

It doesn't happen often at all. In the games I've run with full roleplaying (as opposed to combat games), I don't think any PC's have died to pure fluke bad luck. Few have died at all, and they were being pretty stupid or extremely foolhardy or reckless. I did have one major ally NPC die due to a missed climbing roll during an unarmed escape attempt leading to hand-to-hand combat on a ladder up a very tall shaft - that sucked, but was also dramatic and made the risk of death real, which is what I want. If I were playing a game supposedly about weapons and violence, but really the main characters were going to be shielded from real risk of death thanks to GM intervention - that would remove much of the point of why I'm playing that kind of game.

I really like the GURPS injury system with advanced optional bleeding rules for this. It makes the risk of death much more of a calculated risk, with escalating degradation of abilities, as opposed to games where hitting zero means death, but all damage before that has no effect on anything.

This preference has thankfully kept me from wasting too much time on computer RPGs which expect you to savescum when you die. I tend to play those until I die once, and then decide I lost and stop playing.

I don't provide any protection from death in my games.  If I want there to be less RISK of death, I use a less-lethal system to begin with.

Quote from: RPGPundit;832616I don't provide any protection from death in my games.  If I want there to be less RISK of death, I use a less-lethal system to begin with.

Matching the system to the desired outcomes?  Insanity!

Please forgive me I haven't read all 11 pages, I only read the original post and then everything from page 7 onwards.

My approach to death depends on the tone and style of game I'm running. When I run a long term fantasy Pathfinder game, I don't care if people die. The dice will land where they land. I do make once exception which is if you go from conscious to dead you get 1 round in which you're considered dying.

If I'm running a highly narrative game then I'll likely go for an alternative.

In a high fantasy, superpowered or science fiction themed game I would be more than happy to include an alternate rule to dying:
Fight On
When you die you you can choose to remain alive but receive a debilitating effect. This could be the loss of an arm, an eye or losing 2 levels. Whatever the effect, it should have a mechanical effect (e.g. can’t use a two-handed weapon, can’t use a second weapon, can’t use a shield, moves at half speed or has disadvantage on wisdom (perception) checks and attack rolls), that can be overcome with time but should represent a significant expenditure of resources to overcome (e.g. the price of a raise dead).

----
In a game where wealth isn't tracked, the significant expenditure would be story related (you get full functionality, but you owe a bad person a big favour or you have an alien piece of technology grafted to you that you don't understand the nature of it).

The reason I wouldn't run this rule in a low fantasy game is because having magical cyborgs running around is counter to the feel of the setting. So a significant penalty would be difficult to overcome making the character unfun to play long term.

Whatever rule I was running I would ensure the players are aware of it at the start and are on board with that approach to the game.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;831667Does a soldier on the battlefield sling his rifle and engage the enemy in hand to hand because it would be more heroic?

I love playing in the D&D genre (I feel it's got enough quirks and derivative games that it genuinely is it's own genre now). I've done so for the past 7 years and I've had a blast. My approach to D&D is that the rules of the universe exist outside of the players and that the players are in a lethal high stakes game where they work togther towards a common goal that involves protecting something they all care about.

The approach I would take to Traveller is completely different. I would find Traveller unsatisfying if I played it like a dungeon crawl. Similarly I would prefer a different style of playing in a superhero game. In a superhero game I'm not looking to play murder hobos or dungeon delvers. I'm looking to play a game of heroic actions where the stakes at play are larger than getting treasure or XP. I want a game that puts narrative before mechanics and we're encouraged to do things not because they're smart but because  they're heroic.

I can enjoy multiple types of roleplaying games that have a fairly wide array of styles. Some people have a narrower range of RPGs they enjoy while some have just as wide a range as me (if not wider), but it's in a different range then mine. For example I don't think i could enjoy Call of Cthulhu. It just doesn't appeal to me.

On an earlier poster's mention of 'play' and 'game', I'll say that to me it's a matter of the role.

Superman isn't at risk of death from much, and is usually more concerned with making the choices he can live with. Most other people, more vulnerable, are not perpetually engaged in activities bringing a high risk of sudden death.

A free ride of risk-free mayhem, slaughtering others in droves, is something some people like a lot as a way to blow off steam. In that context, I'm not sure why they would feel a need to pretend to fool themselves (but really not) that the figures they're manipulating are at risk.

Some characters may well live in worlds in which they know they're part of a story and must survive to appear in the next chapter. That's not my cup of tea, but it's not as far away as taking the perspective of a third party who knows it when they don't -- which pretty well negates the role-playing that is central to the appeal that rpgs hold for me.

The risk of death must always be present and when PCs die players had better be invested enough for it to really bother them.
Actual death however should be rare.

From my current campaign. the party are exploring some catacombs after being attacked by 12 skeletons with 2 minor demons for back up 3 of the 4 party members were at the one more hit and we are dead stage. One demon escaped casting a wall of fire to block his flight. The 3 injured PCs were unable to follow the other PC thought the guy might be back with reinforcements and a tiefling knew he had some fire resistance so he dived through the flames and pursued. He took 5d8 halved but survivied with 3hp left so he engaged the creature.
Death was palpably close - 3rd level rogue versus a demon they knew could cast hellish rebuke and was weilding a firey whip.
One of the other PCs had an unknown potion he drank it and his skin took on the sheen of silvered iron. The player had no idea what this meant but reckoned it gave some protection (in fact a potion of invulnerability they had been carrying for a while that had been randomly rolled) He had 4hp left but he lept through the flames anyway as the rogue was obviously dead in a round. I made him roll 5d8 and only then told him that he took no damage. The two of them beat the demon but only just.

So the key here was that the PCs completed the battle all 1 hit from death their resources expended. Death was a sucessful attack or a single bad choice away from each of them. However, none of them died. That is the sweet point you need to get to. Play the bad guys as well as you can within their own "world knowledge" pull no punches and drive each PC to the precipice but don't kill the but don't make any obvious attempt to save them.

In this campaign we have only had 2 PC deaths and they were killed by the other PCs.

Quote from: jibbajibba;833099The risk of death must always be present and when PCs die players had better be invested enough for it to really bother them.

I don't necessarily agree with this, depending on the genre that's being played. In a high action superhero RPG I would expect death to be next to non-existent and only happen due to reasons of plot (and the character could, at any point in the future, come back to life). However that doesn't mean fights don't have something at stake. However in a high action game I expect those stakes would be:

• Death of civilians and innocent bystanders.
• Escape of the villain.
• The combat being delayed long enough for the villain's plan to work.
• Loss of respect in the community at large.

Since D&D 3rd edition the idea of combat's being random and there being a high risk of death has been de-emphasised in favour of challenge appropriate fights. In D&D 4th edition I knew there was next  to no chance of dying. That didn't stop me from enjoying the campaign though.

It sounds like you're talking from the perspective of dungeon bashing (using D&D 5th edition rules by the look of it). The traditional dungeon bashing as played in the OD&D-AD&D 2nd edition era definitely involved high stakes in each and every fight with death being a very real concern.

However D&D as it's presented in Pathfinder's Adventure Paths, D&D 4th edition's adventures and D&D 5th edition's megamodules, death is no longer the focus of the game. Dungeon bashing occurs. But the stakes aren't "you die" but are instead "You fail and the bad guys win and the world goes down the toilet." Death has been negated to suffering a  minor inconvenience that (depending on the rules) eats into your WBL and gives you an in-game time penalty that potentially translates to plot penalties.

Can you play D&D 5th edition, 4th edition or Pathfinder as a good old dungeon bash? Sure. And depending on the group, the ruleset and how closely the rules are followed you'll have varying degrees of success. But that is no longer the primary focus of the game. The focus of the game is saving the town/kingdom/world/multiverse with dungeon delving being used to pursue that goal. Your character's life isn't on the line, the town/kingdom/world/multiverse is.

Quote from: JohnLynch;833137D&D 5th edition's megamodules, death is no longer the focus of the game. Dungeon bashing occurs. But the stakes aren't "you die" but are instead "You fail and the bad guys win and the world goes down the toilet." Death has been negated to suffering a  minor inconvenience that (depending on the rules) eats into your WBL and gives you an in-game time penalty that potentially translates to plot penalties.

Can you play D&D 5th edition, 4th edition or Pathfinder as a good old dungeon bash? Sure. And depending on the group, the ruleset and how closely the rules are followed you'll have varying degrees of success. But that is no longer the primary focus of the game. The focus of the game is saving the town/kingdom/world/multiverse with dungeon delving being used to pursue that goal. Your character's life isn't on the line, the town/kingdom/world/multiverse is.

Actually. As noted in a older thread here. In 5e you can die appallingly easily. And there is no guarantee of a safety net of a local temple raising you unless the DM places that net there for you. And the Hoard of the Dragon Queen was noted for the early complaints that the very start of the module was way too lethal. Which was bemusingly the whole point of the start. To weam players off the idea that they were invincible. And to get them to think and try methods other than brute force.

I agree though that 5e offers more ways of "death" than physical. Since a catastrophically failed mission can potentially result in the death of the adventurers career or at least their rep. Which could end their adventuring days.

Quote from: JohnLynch;833137I don't necessarily agree with this, depending on the genre that's being played. In a high action superhero RPG I would expect death to be next to non-existent and only happen due to reasons of plot (and the character could, at any point in the future, come back to life). However that doesn't mean fights don't have something at stake. However in a high action game I expect those stakes would be:

• Death of civilians and innocent bystanders.
• Escape of the villain.
• The combat being delayed long enough for the villain's plan to work.
• Loss of respect in the community at large.

Since D&D 3rd edition the idea of combat's being random and there being a high risk of death has been de-emphasised in favour of challenge appropriate fights. In D&D 4th edition I knew there was next  to no chance of dying. That didn't stop me from enjoying the campaign though.

It sounds like you're talking from the perspective of dungeon bashing (using D&D 5th edition rules by the look of it). The traditional dungeon bashing as played in the OD&D-AD&D 2nd edition era definitely involved high stakes in each and every fight with death being a very real concern.

However D&D as it's presented in Pathfinder's Adventure Paths, D&D 4th edition's adventures and D&D 5th edition's megamodules, death is no longer the focus of the game. Dungeon bashing occurs. But the stakes aren't "you die" but are instead "You fail and the bad guys win and the world goes down the toilet." Death has been negated to suffering a  minor inconvenience that (depending on the rules) eats into your WBL and gives you an in-game time penalty that potentially translates to plot penalties.

Can you play D&D 5th edition, 4th edition or Pathfinder as a good old dungeon bash? Sure. And depending on the group, the ruleset and how closely the rules are followed you'll have varying degrees of success. But that is no longer the primary focus of the game. The focus of the game is saving the town/kingdom/world/multiverse with dungeon delving being used to pursue that goal. Your character's life isn't on the line, the town/kingdom/world/multiverse is.

No.

This is the first Dungeon game I have played in 20 years. I am doing it because my players are new to RPGS (well they were 2 years ago) and I have done sandbox Sci Fi, Diceless Fables , Marvel Superhero and wanted to give them experience of a traditional dungeon game so they can make an informed opinion of the sort of game they like.

In all these games even Fables (from the comics, I modded an Amber diceless engine to run it) which has inherent resurrection based on your fame in the mundy world have the risk of death. With Supers when the super evil Dr Whatever is battling the Five Amigos over New York I want to keep the threat of death firmly on the table. The party have more "toys" and the game is stacked in their favour but I will never remove the threat entirely. If Lex Luthor is just trying to frustrate Superman then he devolves into Dr Doofensmirch.
I will always run my NPCs from their in game perspective. Luthor hasn't spent 4 months building a Kryptonium death ray because he doesn't think it can kill superman he is convinced it will work. You have to play the game and his actions from that perspective.

In a fantasy game, I think the risk of death should always be present.  In other games, it MAY be possible that this is taken off the table, or at least reduced to an incredibly rare occurrence.

Quote from: Omega;833141Actually. As noted in a older thread here. In 5e you can die appallingly easily. And there is no guarantee of a safety net of a local temple raising you unless the DM places that net there for you. And the Hoard of the Dragon Queen was noted for the early complaints that the very start of the module was way too lethal. Which was bemusingly the whole point of the start. To weam players off the idea that they were invincible. And to get them to think and try methods other than brute force..

And they then backslid in Rise of Tiamat. In this WOTC has taken a quite explicit approach to not caring about PC death. They combine the DM stacking the deck against the party with directives to not go easy and to kill them ... and then follow it up, in several places, with "but its ok if they die or even if there is a TPK. The Council will raise them."

This is the WORST possible outcome. Killing the party AND making it meaningless. Why even try?

Yay, you're back! Are you doing any more module reviews? :)

Quote from: bryce0lynch;833512And they then backslid in Rise of Tiamat. In this WOTC has taken a quite explicit approach to not caring about PC death. They combine the DM stacking the deck against the party with directives to not go easy and to kill them ... and then follow it up, in several places, with "but its ok if they die or even if there is a TPK. The Council will raise them."

This is the WORST possible outcome. Killing the party AND making it meaningless. Why even try?

"Jesus had a temporary loss of consciousness for your sins!"

What about killing the party and letting a new party pick up where they left off? Is that bad?

Death is a kind of failure. One of the things players need to do is to accept failure because a lot of the time it makes for a better story. A heroic or tragic death can lead to memorable funerals, eulogies, vows of revenge against the thing that killed their friend, etc. That said, I haven't managed to kill a single character in Shaintar Savage Worlds. I killed Hiraltki but he returned to life from the only rez card in the action deck and I took Grundy's arm, but they managed to regrow it through Greater Healing. But taking Grundy's arm made the fight better as he used his off hand to still manage to kill one of the enemy leaders.

But there is genre appropriate death. Shaintar is a high fantasy game, which can have character death as the group goes up against Flame and Darkness enemies of greater and greater power. Earthdawn was a fantasy and Horror game where people were not just killed, but marked by evil, changed by evil, and could even turn against their own group. We all know how deadly D&D can be. But my next Savage Worlds campaign, Necessary Evil will have the setting rule "Heroes Never Die". Which says heroes and villains do not die even when Incapacitated unless the player wants them to in some sort of heroic sacrifice.   What is appropriate in a fantasy game isn't as genre appropriate in a supers game in this instance.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;833552What about killing the party and letting a new party pick up where they left off? Is that bad?

It's not bad if it's done well.
I've seen/done it in Call of Cthulhu games. Not always the next session... and sometimes from an angle where the Players don't realize right off that they're dealing with the same threat as the earlier campaign... but then they find the remains of their old PCs and their journals... or maybe meet with one of them in a madhouse while doing research for some news story.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;833552What about killing the party and letting a new party pick up where they left off? Is that bad?

Wizardry I (a video game dungeon crawler RPG) was pretty awesome for this. If you got TPKed, and if you could make it back to where your party died, then you could find some of your character's old gear back with a percentage of it looted by monster or other adventurers.

Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

It depends.

Consequences that make the character unpalatable to play are very similar in effect to death. In both cases, the character is no longer in play. Death could well be a better outcome from the perspective of player or PC if it makes for a more satisfactory ending.

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

I would also have to go with a 'that depends'.  A lot of the time, losing a limb DOES mean retirement for the character.  I don't know of any Rogue type or Man At Arms that can keep adventuring without a leg, for example.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833624I would also have to go with a 'that depends'.  A lot of the time, losing a limb DOES mean retirement for the character.  I don't know of any Rogue type or Man At Arms that can keep adventuring without a leg, for example.

Apparently it can work if you are a pirate. Though being able to cook or navigate would help since you aren't going to be climbing any rigging no more.

Quote from: Bren;833635Apparently it can work if you are a pirate. Though being able to cook or navigate would help since you aren't going to be climbing any rigging no more.

Fair point, if you've lost a leg just at the knee, I was thinking closer to the hip, myself.  Full limb removal, for example, that makes it hard to keep 'adventuring'.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;833512And they then backslid in Rise of Tiamat. In this WOTC has taken a quite explicit approach to not caring about PC death. They combine the DM stacking the deck against the party with directives to not go easy and to kill them ... and then follow it up, in several places, with "but its ok if they die or even if there is a TPK. The Council will raise them."

This is the WORST possible outcome. Killing the party AND making it meaningless. Why even try?

But again even the Council exists only if the DM allows it. and what if the PCs get killed way out in the boonies where the Council couldnt possibly be? Lots of factors can make even those sorts of safety nets useless.

You could have a raise dead temple in every town and its going to be useless if you cant get the body back to raise it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833637Fair point, if you've lost a leg just at the knee, I was thinking closer to the hip, myself.  Full limb removal, for example, that makes it hard to keep 'adventuring'.

Well we did have a Call of Cthulhu character in a wheelchair after his spine was injured making him a paraplegic. He was mostly restricted to office work, coordination, and mundane research, but that works a lot better in CoC than it would in fantasy or pre-modern games.

And your point is well taken though that losing a limb may make the character unfun to play for the player. Maybe they want a PC who can swing from the rigging and have dashing sword fights like Captain Blood not one who can only hobble around on a crutch and like Long John Silver. Similarly maybe they want to play a handsome or beautiful PC not one  whose face is a hideous travesty forcing them to wear a mask like the Phantom of the Opera.

I lost two characters to getting killed and then reincarnated. The first was the oft mentioned otter incident and had I not been killed at the end I'd have retired the character. Effectively dead. And the other being the gnoll whom I did retire after we finished the adventure.

In Gamma World we had more than a few PCs by the end either missing parts totally, or with cybernetic or mutational replacements.

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

I prefer what the (detailed realistic tactical) combat system gives me, because that's the game I signed up to play, and if the GM is going to fudge things, I'd rather not pretend to be playing a game with rules with actual risks of consequences.

Then, I roleplay the consequences. If my character is maimed, I figure out what he'd do about that, whether it mean retiring or coping or arranging revenge or whatever. If I think the character is becoming something I don't want to roleplay, I talk to the GM about having the character become an NPC.

What I don't like playing, are games with trivial healing and trivial reincarnation/resurrection. I hear about characters getting repeatedly killed and brought back each combat round in D&D 5e and think OMG no. I play CRPG's where they make it easy to die but then just reload your last save and expect you to replay where you died until you live, and I stop playing. Those CRPGs especially seem SO pointless. "Yay I won! I beat the game!" "How many times did you die and savescum?" "I dunno. Hundreds? It doesn't even keep count." Uh, great. Seems better to just watch a walkthrough on YouTube. Or just mourn the hours of wasted gamedev and gameplay time and ignore. ;-)

I think one division among players is whether "Character X is no longer fun to play" means the game is not fun (the criteria for X getting retired being another division).

There might be a "generation" weighting here. In the 1970s, it seemed to me that most players came to D&D and such with only the assumptions familiar from countless other games: that pieces might meet various fates, and finding out what happened was the fun, and one could keep playing indefinitely regardless. The sense of having "lost a match" was just what made the "wins" exciting.

Quote from: Phillip;833847In the 1970s, it seemed to me that most players came to D&D and such with only the assumptions familiar from countless other games: that pieces might meet various fates, and finding out what happened was the fun, and one could keep playing indefinitely regardless.

Also, videogames of that era were generally of the GAME OVER variety where you maybe got three tries and then death... no starting up from a save spot with minimal/no consequences.

Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

Is it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

For me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes which a real person would have a 0.1% chance of surviving, and most audiences just take it and say, "cool" while I'm thinking "OMG they made The Hobbit into Mario Brothers, and they would have all died in that fall, and if not, been killed 100 times before making it out of the goblin caves, if they were really like that."

Yeah, I think modern 'action' movies also add to the expectations.
I'm thinking Errol Flynn level stunts and they're thinking Jason Statham... even though Errol Flynn is long before my time it's what I grew up with.

The rubber hobbits bouncing down to goblin town did strain my suspension of disbelief quite a bit. Live action cartoon.

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

I think one clear source is the demographic attracted primarily by the prospect of "living the story," which may involve a character's death, but only at a dramatically appropriate point.

In other words, people want not so much to explore Barsoom as to be John Carter, and that not as he might see himself (which seems already beyond normal longevity) but as they see him in the books: certainly triumphant in the end, however many implausibilities that may entail.

When they make up figures of their own, these come likewise with some conception (however germinal) of a saga.

QuoteIs it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

The plotted scenario is easy to write, but I think demand-side expectations arose and arise independently of commercial supply -- and are also shaped by it.

QuoteFor me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes which a real person would have a 0.1% chance of surviving, and most audiences just take it and say, "cool" while I'm thinking "OMG they made The Hobbit into Mario Brothers, and they would have all died in that fall, and if not, been killed 100 times before making it out of the goblin caves, if they were really like that."

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

Is it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

For me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes which a real person would have a 0.1% chance of surviving, and most audiences just take it and say, "cool" while I'm thinking "OMG they made The Hobbit into Mario Brothers, and they would have all died in that fall, and if not, been killed 100 times before making it out of the goblin caves, if they were really like that."

It's more like they want the character's life to be like an epic story arc, and having them just die in a ditch somewhere against a random mook is anti climactic and unsatisfying for them. It's more like an author and his story.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;833871It's more like they want the character's life to be like an epic story arc, and having them just die in a ditch somewhere against a random mook is anti climactic and unsatisfying for them. It's more like an author and his story.

And I can understand that. An anti climactic death can be a downer but I feel like its also part of what makes rpgs a distinct and interesting venue from movies or novels. Nothing's set. As something (I think Old Geezer?) once put it "RPGs are like movies. Except you don't know if you're playing Luke, Biggs or Wedge* until the game is over.". That's something I like.

And if the character was fun, had an interesting run even a undramatic death can be an entertaining in its repercussions and irony.

*or even Extra #43 for some particularly gritty settings and games.

I prefer to get to drama by having drama-worthy characters. An idiot jerk who picks fights left and right for nothing is likely to die for nothing and win little more care about it from others. Have something worth fighting for, and it leaves a legacy whether you win or go down trying.

Quote from: Phillip;833880I prefer to get to drama by having drama-worthy characters. An idiot jerk who picks fights left and right for nothing is likely to die for nothing and win little more care about it from others. Have something worth fighting for, and it leaves a legacy whether you win or go down trying.

Was this directed at my post?

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

When D&D tried to stop being a full on Wargame, I figure about 1989, with the introduction of the Forgotten Realms and subsequent novels.  Dragonlance started the trend, but it really picked up when the Realms came around with The Drizzle and Elminster the Realm's Gigolo, although Curse of The Azure Bonds did leave it's mark.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833925When D&D tried to stop being a full on Wargame, I figure about 1989, with the introduction of the Forgotten Realms and subsequent novels.  Dragonlance started the trend, but it really picked up when the Realms came around with The Drizzle and Elminster the Realm's Gigolo, although Curse of The Azure Bonds did leave it's mark.

That's an interesting perspective I hadn't heard before. Thanks!

(It seems ironic to me, as it strikes me that artificially aiding PC's to be legendary, to my mind is like robbing them of the game of trying to actually be legendary. :-) )

Quote from: Skarg;833944That's an interesting perspective I hadn't heard before. Thanks!

(It seems ironic to me, as it strikes me that artificially aiding PC's to be legendary, to my mind is like robbing them of the game of trying to actually be legendary. :-) )

I remember there being a shift in thinking in the various Dragon Magazines, after all, the older guys who had start were 15 years older, and so new blood was being introduced to D&D, either by their siblings or friends, and the Dragonlance Novels were taking off, then '88 comes around and the Icewind Dale trilogy starts up, with a 'unique' character and admittedly engaging plot, just like the Dragonlance series, but here, there was a world that wasn't 'epic' in scope, like Lord of The Rings, where there was only ONE bad guy.

So, especially us younger folks started to play more like novels.  Now, the FR Box set was released in 87 and suddenly, with the Icewind Dale novels, we could play the game just like the still fan favourite Drizzt Do'Urden or Cattie-Brie, Bruenor Battlehammer and/or Wulfgar.

And while yes, AD&D 2e did have miniature rules, it focused away even further than 1e did, and 1e got rid of most of the minutiae dealing with the hex grid and stuff.  Don't get me wrong it had it, but it also wasn't beholden to it.

Again, I may be wrong, but I sincerely remember this 'cultural' shift in D&D at about that time, 87 to 89.

i think that today people think of character death as something that disrupts the story. of course, before there was story there could be no discontinuity. so, if you go for more like emergent narrative as opposed to story then death is obviously not something that threatens integrity of the game.

Quote from: ostap bender;834011i think that today people think of character death as something that disrupts the story. of course, before there was story there could be no discontinuity. so, if you go for more like emergent narrative as opposed to story then death is obviously not something that threatens integrity of the game.

Pre-written story, you mean? Because many of the storygame RPGs don't support pre-written story:).
To me, character death is part of the character's story, whether it's dying in his bed from old age, or by more violent means;).

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

Is it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

Or maybe different people just like different things?

I've been roleplaying since D&D since 1974. And since at least 1975 there have been differences in how people gamed. We had killer DMs, easier DMs, and K-Mart DMs evem way back when. In a killer DM game you were nearly always playing extra #47 and if you ever had a character reach 5th or 6th level character after hundreds of hours of play then you were damned smart and damned lucky. Whereas for your character to die in some other games you had to be pretty damned stupid and unlucky and you might also need to be the sort of socially clueless git who invariably annoyed both the DM and all his fellow players.  

QuoteFor me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes...

That would be those earn lots of money at the box office, really popular with audiences now, over the top action films?

Yeah, as I said, different people like different things. Film at 11.

I may be in an unusually cranky mood today, but seriously all you folks that keep repeating this sort of dreck on either side of the death/no-death discussion, GROW THE HELL UP! Only crybabies and insecure whiners need to claim moral turpitude as the reason why other people like things they don't.

Quote from: AsenRG;834024Pre-written story, you mean? Because many of the storygame RPGs don't support pre-written story:).
To me, character death is part of the character's story, whether it's dying in his bed from old age, or by more violent means;).

Not pre-written in my case.  Hell, half the time, I have no idea where players will go in my games, but having a player die ignominiously tends to kill the enthusiasm at the table a lot of the time.

YMMV and all that.

Quote from: Bren;834025I may be in an unusually cranky mood today, but seriously all you folks that keep repeating this sort of dreck on either side of the death/no-death discussion, GROW THE HELL UP! Only crybabies and insecure whiners need to claim moral turpitude as the reason why other people like things they don't.

Bren, do you want the traffic in Internet to go down by 90% or what:)?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;834036Not pre-written in my case.  Hell, half the time, I have no idea where players will go in my games, but having a player die ignominiously tends to kill the enthusiasm at the table a lot of the time.

YMMV and all that.

Possibly, but I was addressing ostap bender's post, not yours;).
Also, PCs can only die ignominiously if the GM doesn't narrate it as a heroic death kind of affair.

Quote from: AsenRG;834045Bren, do you want the traffic in Internet to go down by 90% or what:)?


Possibly, but I was addressing ostap bender's post, not yours;).
Also, PCs can only die ignominiously if the GM doesn't narrate it as a heroic death kind of affair.

Sometimes you can't really narrate a heroic death. Suppose a goblin or a gelatinous cube kills them. What are they going to do? It's still a goblin at the end of the day.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;834051Sometimes you can't really narrate a heroic death. Suppose a goblin or a gelatinous cube kills them. What are they going to do? It's still a goblin at the end of the day.

First, I don't have a one-size-fits-all answer to that, except to improvise.
Other than that, I've got to talk with generalisations.

With that in mind, in most games goblins are sentient beings, but the odds are weighted so harshly in favour of PCs that dropping one is no small feat for the goblin. If I want to make it a heroic affair, I'm going to describe it as an exchange of blows, with the goblin, say, stabbing a spear through the PC at the last moment. And then you have to show said goblin has gained prestige and skill. A scene where he's teaching Sir Otto's thrust to other goblins might help here, as an example.

That said, the reaction of other PCs is important as well. Our DCC game lost quite a few PCs to goblins. My warrior, barricaded behind a wall, screamed bloody vengeance upon learning a chick she liked hasn't survived. And she basically invoked all gods and demons to hear her pledge: she was going to come back, kill all the goblins, and salt the earth.
We're currently working on the second part, and I'm wondering where to find that much salt if we manage to pull the killing off:D!
Granted, that's DCC, and everybody has lost quite a few PCs before we got to be 1st level (I ended up with Jacqueline when the rest of my initial batch of PCs died). Still, I think similar attitude helps the players to feel better.

Quote from: AsenRG;834045Bren, do you want the traffic in Internet to go down by 90% or what:)?

I'm trying to free up some global Internet bandwidth. I'm running H+I over Skype tonight and I thought it might help. :)

Quote from: Bren;834069I'm trying to free up some global Internet bandwidth. I'm running H+I over Skype tonight and I thought it might help. :)

Hey, if it's in the interest of running H+I, I'm all for it:D!

Quote from: AsenRG;834024Pre-written story, you mean? Because many of the storygame RPGs don't support pre-written story:).
To me, character death is part of the character's story, whether it's dying in his bed from old age, or by more violent means;).

yes. i am not anti-story gamer. that is why i juxtaposed story and emergent narrative.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;834051Sometimes you can't really narrate a heroic death. Suppose a goblin or a gelatinous cube kills them. What are they going to do? It's still a goblin at the end of the day.

I can relate to that, especially when it takes some time to generate a character.

One memorable occasion was in a GURPS game. First scene, literally first few seconds of action, my fantasy pirate swinging across to board gets skewered by a skeleton that was probably pathetic but very lucky.

How this came about was the understanding that we were going to get into this fight because that's what the gm had prepared, with corollary expectations that it made sufficient sense for our characters and was going to yield more payoff in play than a one-round game.

Had another character been at the ready, so I wasn't excluded from participating, the loss of the figure would have been less of a drag. In old D&D, I could roll one up in a few minutes. Maybe greater familiarity with GURPS would have made the process quicker and easier, too.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;834051Sometimes you can't really narrate a heroic death. Suppose a goblin or a gelatinous cube kills them. What are they going to do? It's still a goblin at the end of the day.

You know, this is one thing that peeved me once and that the OSR sort of helped me to understand. Once you calibrate you frame of mind to see D&D dungeon crawls as forays into a mythic, cthonic underworld with the aesthetics of a 1970s drug-fueled nightmare (from Lovecraft and Leiber to Harryhausen and Hammer), getting shanked by a tiny misshapen humanoid or digested alive by a giant cuboid amoeba makes perfect sense in its lack of sense.

Quote from: ostap bender;834134yes. i am not anti-story gamer. that is why i juxtaposed story and emergent narrative.

Yet there's more than a binary choice between prewritten story and wide-open emergent narrative. In the early game--and if necessary I'll appeal to the pre-publication history--death wasn't limited to narratively significant moments.

However, I wouldn't say story/dramatic/narrative concerns were the sole reason for the shift away from PC death. I think earlier in the thread I mentioned that my friends in the mid-80s just didn't like it because they liked their characters so much, even identified with them.

This is something that I'm not sure has often been explicitly addressed in rules or scenario design; it's just become an unwritten assumption or at most a dirty little secret in GMing advice that says not to kill PCs. The evolution of Challenge Ratings in 3e through 4e seems to have reflected a desire to meet this requisite without giving up the shape of a game of tactical challenges.

About the only games I can think of that formally free the GM from having to fudge if they never want PC death are The Shadow of Yesterday and Dogs in the Vineyard. I think I outlined the former's concept of Bringing Down the Pain; anyway the rules are free if you google TSoY or The Solar System. In DitV you can basically always retreat from a mortal threat instead of "taking the blow".

In games with hero points the players can run out of points and then if they continue, they can't retroactively decide not to push their luck.

Where am I going with this? I guess hero points, which came in with Top Secret, were the first explicit attempt to keep characters alive for their own sake, but that goal was handled much more by GM fudging overall, and the hero point method wasn't improved on as a formal mechanic until later.

This still kinda leaves open how & why it became commonplace for people to want to take PC death off the table in the first place. Right now I'm thinking it was a bit of a natural evolution once "character identification", as a key strength of RPGs, came into contact with a wider audience who weren't as hard-nosed as the wargame hobbyists who were the first generation of RPGers.

(Incidentally I would still prefer hero points in the general case, or a system with some other kind of buffer like D&D's hit points, to the "take the blow" of DitV.)

Yeah, I had a player who made clear that at least some of his characters should keep coming back if he was to be happy. Back in the '70s, he told me, he had a magic-user who kept getting resurrected because he (the player) would be a pest until it was accomplished.

I think that actually messes with the game balance in old D&D, in which mages are supposed to die in droves. Guaranteed (or just not hard) survival tends to make the other types less attractive.

As a player I prefer my character not die, but if he does I will take it if with a better opponent, a lucky shot or my own being stupid. I generally hold to this as a GM too.

Quote from: Phillip;834246I think that actually messes with the game balance in old D&D, in which mages are supposed to die in droves. Guaranteed (or just not hard) survival tends to make the other types less attractive.

It doesnt mess with the balance so much as it messes with the flow sometimes.

I play flimsy magic user a-lot and I have lost a-lot of them. I have also had a few brought back. I NEVER demanded that and I never even asked. If the other players could pull it off. Fine. If not. Then I roll up another and hop in when I can.

The group making an effort to recover a fallen comrade is perfectly in keeping with the setting and tone of D&D. The PCs being handed a free raise dead out of the blue. Not so much so unless you are playing Crushed. In which case you have no choice. Which is the whole point of that setting.

And in some cases the group might desperately need the flimsy wizard back on his or her feet so blowing a raise dead, scroll, or backtracking to find  a temple is the only option. Or for the really desperate. Reincarnate. enter one fireball tossing otter. Which was one of those cases where the group was in a situation where not getting the wizard back was likely going to mean defeat as there was no way to backtrack or wait for a "walk in".

Situational and YMMV as usual. But personally I hate just being handed a free raise. If I am coming back from the dead it should come at a cost, take some effort or be for a good reason.

Here's a list of mechanics that in my view make death less appealing:

• Greater options in character creation extending how long it takes.
• Non-viable characters being extremely easy to make.
• Quicker levelling which makes the divide between characters even greater.
• A greater focus on the setting and making characters appropriate the game setting.
• A greater focus on a story beyond that encourages players to invest in their characters.

Here's how OD&D got around these:

• You picked a race and maybe a weapon. That was it.
• Characters had ability score pre-requisites that you had to fit or else you couldn't play it. Higher ability scores also had less of an effect on the game.
• Much slower levelling.
• There was no game settings back in the day. Or if there was it was a couple of books not numbering more than 60 pages and many of those were taken up with mechanics. What passed for settings was "You can't play race X, Y and Z" and maybe "class X, Y and Z" for later editions.
• The focus of the game wasn't on exploring a world or a grand story. It was on challenging the players and everyone enjoying the challenge and either overcoming it or failing and suffering the often lethal consequences.

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

Is it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

Games have become more involved and prolonged. An expert player can finish an old arcade game within a day. An expert player (who doesn't skip through all the movie sequences) can't finish a modern day game within the same time it takes to finish an arcade game. The more you invest into the game, the harsher the penalty of "you die. Start at level 1" becomes. It takes a ridiculous amount of time to create a character in D&D 3.5e. So people, as a general rule, normally don't want OD&D style deaths. OD&D on the other hand it'has extremely quick character creation rules.

When you look at one variable "People don't die anymore" and don't look at the context it exists within then sure, it's easy to conclude that people are simply cry babies. When you look at the whole picture, you see a different story.

It's also important to note that OSR games with old school character creation and old school death mechanics do exist and do get played. However they're not as popular as say Pathfinder which has very forgiving death mechanics and presents structured and level appropriate challenges along with an intricate story. You can speculate as to why these OSR games aren't more popular, but it's a fact they're not played anywhere near as much.

Just as I wouldn't expect the son of Darth Vader to be killed 5 minutes into the first movie or to have R2D2 and C3PO captured and pulled apart for scrap parts before they got managed to deliver their message, nor do modern day gamers expect to invest heavily in a story, learn about the game world, create a setting appropriate character and then have that character die in the second battle because the DM rolled 00 on their random wandering monster roll.

You can say "I'm running a good old fashioned high grit game" as much as you want. Unless you communicate that to your players and tell them something like "For god's sake don't create a 10 page backstory until at least level 5, don't bother naming them before level 3 and definitely don't build out your character to level 12 because it's likely a waste of time" then you're not managing their expectations.

Quote from: Skarg;833851For me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes

Dunno. I don't generally find action movies entertaining and thus don't watch them (with the exception of the Marvel movies, but then again I don't expect superhero stories to have real-to-life physics).

Quote from: Nexus;833875I feel like its also part of what makes rpgs a distinct and interesting venue from movies or novels.

That's great. But it would be just as equally valid for me to say "Back in my day we didn't have any of this non-combat mechanics stuff. We had attacks. We had spells and we had saves. If we wanted to do anything else we had to say what our characters did and if we weren't explicit enough then we got a death trap to the face. And we all laughed because we knew we deserved it. That's what makes RPGs a distinct and interesting venue from other forms of entertainment." Chainmail and OD&D had a lot of base assumptions in it. Over time those assumptions have evolved and some of them have been discarded. Depending on when you got on board RPGs and what your induction was like  will determine which elements you're more likely to identify with.

Quote from: Nexus;833875Nothing's set.

Some things are set. You're going to fight monsters. You're eventually going to get items that were better than what you started with. You're definitely going to interact with the world around you. You can have a game where death isn't on the table and still have a DM who has no idea what's going to happen by the end of it.

Quote from: Skarg;833944(It seems ironic to me, as it strikes me that artificially aiding PC's to be legendary, to my mind is like robbing them of the game of trying to actually be legendary. :-) )

Some would question your idea of legendary if it includes hobos that go around murdering sentient creatures simply to get their magic loot. Now put on a story with some stakes beyond not getting the shiny and you start to make things more legendary. Of course the more you focus on the story and the more you get the players invested in their characters and the story, the less appealing a "you rolled a nat 1 on the death trap. You die" becomes.

Quote from: AsenRG;834055Our DCC game lost quite a few PCs to goblins.

DCC is a great example. It perfectly manages expectations right from the first page. It doesn't present itself as a modern game. It's all in black and white with hand drawn and inked artwork. It tells the players to make multiple characters because they'll be lucky if more than 1 survives. DCC can be a lot of fun. When I turn up to a DCC game I've signed on to play a game in the style of DCC. When I play in a Fate game, I've signed on to play in the Fate style. When I play in Traveller I've signed on to potentially have my character not even survive character creation. If I'm playing Call of Cthulhu then I've signed on to die a horrible and grissly death and am simply trying to prolong that experience for as long as possible.

The only legitimate problem I can where people aren't just saying "I don't like other games and I think people who play them are wrong" is D&D. It started out with a game like DCC where people hired lots of henchmen because they wanted to have a backup character available, and over time (especially up to 4th ed) it was presenting huge epic stories that span multiple dimensions and worlds as the default way to play the game. D&D has changed with the times and hasn't managed expectations well. There is a vocal segment of the gaming population that want OD&D but are playing with groups (or with rules) that are aimed at the Pathfinder/4th ed crowd.

Quote from: Phillip;834212One memorable occasion was in a GURPS game. First scene, literally first few seconds of action, my fantasy pirate swinging across to board gets skewered by a skeleton that was probably pathetic but very lucky.

There is no way you could ever get me to play GURPS in that style of game unless I had a pregen someone handed me.

Quote from: JohnLynch;834726Here's how OD&D got around these:

• You picked a race and maybe a weapon. That was it.
• Characters had ability score pre-requisites that you had to fit or else you couldn't play it. Higher ability scores also had less of an effect on the game.
• Much slower levelling.
• There was no game settings back in the day. Or if there was it was a couple of books not numbering more than 60 pages and many of those were taken up with mechanics. What passed for settings was "You can't play race X, Y and Z" and maybe "class X, Y and Z" for later editions.
• The focus of the game wasn't on exploring a world or a grand story. It was on challenging the players and everyone enjoying the challenge and either overcoming it or failing and suffering the often lethal consequences.

1: And spells if a magic user, cleric or elf.
2: In OD&D they did not. That did not come until AD&D.
3: That is debatable as EXP was mostly garnered from treasure and the EXP requirements in OD&D were less at the higher levels than in AD&D. There was though a limiter on EXP you could get per adventure. Only enough to level up once.
4: Actually there is zero setting info in both Greyhawk and Blackmoor. Race restrictions is not setting detail. That was core to the game. Not any setting. In fact there is far as I could discern zero setting detail in OD&D. The start of the Men&Magic mentions the Great Kingdom, Greyhawk and Blackmoor. But only as what the writers groups played in. OD&D is more of a blank slate than BX.
5: Not sure on that. Geezer and others accounts seem to lean more to exploration. Story. Dont know. But stuff was certainly going on. That whole Egg of Coot adventure sounds alot like an ongoing tale? Probably others I am not aware of.

The boons of OD&D and BX is that chargen is absurdly fast even for the caster types (or those distributing points in BX) as there were no restrictions on stats-to-class (and finite limiters on point swapping in BX). That and even if you had to restart you were probably not a total drag on the group if the gap was not too great.

And that seems to be some later players reluctance to character death. Starting back at level 1. Especially if the rest of the group is way ahead at the time. There was an older thread here on that with various opinions on the values of starting at zero or at some higher level. AD&Ds DMG even points out that chaperoning a replacement level 1 character can be a drag and to consider either some level bumps or a level comparable to the surviving members.

I have tried both and there are times when yes. Starting at level 1 is not really a viable option. Then again even in OD&D some of the players kept around henchmen as a sort of pool of backup characters it seems.

Quote from: Omega;8347311: And spells if a magic user, cleric or elf.
2: In OD&D they did not. That did not come until AD&D.

Yeah, I'm more familiar with AD&D and assumed pre-AD&D was fairly close to it.

Quote from: JohnLynch;834736Yeah, I'm more familiar with AD&D and assumed pre-AD&D was fairly close to it.

Overall they are. AD&D is OD&D with the magazine articles collected and some adjustments for reasons unknown. Like adding in the stat requirements for classes.

OD&D though everyone had the same type of hit dice. It was the number some classes had that was the factor. Though Greyhawk introduced some changes like differing types of hit dice based on class.

Quote from: ostap bender;834134yes. i am not anti-story gamer. that is why i juxtaposed story and emergent narrative.

Sure, but I'd question whether your juxtaposition has any value to it, since a lot of, if not most of the story-focused games are actually all about the emergent narrative.
Seems to me you can easily have both. Story continuity can be preserved even in the case of a TPK, too. You just need some GMing skill, but I've been there, and almost had to do that:).
And since you can have both, it's obviously not a juxtaposition;).

Quote from: JohnLynch;834726DCC is a great example. It perfectly manages expectations right from the first page. It doesn't present itself as a modern game. It's all in black and white with hand drawn and inked artwork. It tells the players to make multiple characters because they'll be lucky if more than 1 survives. DCC can be a lot of fun.

Indeed.

QuoteWhen I turn up to a DCC game I've signed on to play a game in the style of DCC. When I play in a Fate game, I've signed on to play in the Fate style. When I play in Traveller I've signed on to potentially have my character not even survive character creation. If I'm playing Call of Cthulhu then I've signed on to die a horrible and grissly death and am simply trying to prolong that experience for as long as possible.

Apart from my understanding of some of those games differing from yours, I just wish more people were doing exactly that:p!

QuoteThe only legitimate problem I can where people aren't just saying "I don't like other games and I think people who play them are wrong" is D&D. It started out with a game like DCC where people hired lots of henchmen because they wanted to have a backup character available, and over time (especially up to 4th ed) it was presenting huge epic stories that span multiple dimensions and worlds as the default way to play the game. D&D has changed with the times and hasn't managed expectations well. There is a vocal segment of the gaming population that want OD&D but are playing with groups (or with rules) that are aimed at the Pathfinder/4th ed crowd.

Admittedly, I don't think it's a problem that hits only on D&D. There are people that want Fate, but are handed WoD games, because that's what everyone else is playing.
(I've solved this issue by getting new people to try RPGs, and presenting them their first example of RPGs as "the game I wanted to run anyway". I just wish more people would take that approach! IME, after the first campaign ends, people are ready to try something else. In the end we'd just have more people playing RPGs.)

QuoteThere is no way you could ever get me to play GURPS in that style of game unless I had a pregen someone handed me.

What else do you think templates are for:D?

Quote from: AsenRG;834863Sure, but I'd question whether your juxtaposition has any value to it, since a lot of, if not most of the story-focused games are actually all about the emergent narrative.

...within more or less constrained parameters.

Quote from: Arminius;834927...within more or less constrained parameters.

Yes, but that only moves the constraints from the GM's set-up to the rulebook, so I don't see it as a meaningful difference in the context of a discussion of "emergent narrative" vs "pre-planned story";).

It's quite a meaningful distinction in the context of this thread. The key is that modern storygames, though not generally using prewritten scenes, carry on a goal of molding the action to story concerns. The meaningless death is to be avoided, just as in the pre-storygame approach of PC death only happening if the player allows it.

All this is quite in contrast to the Ur-D&D ethos where character death "just happens" in the context of a setting-centered campaign. This is what I take ostap bender to be referring to when he or she writes "before there was story there could be no discontinuity".

Jumping in to correct this as a misrepresentation of storygames is a bit of a non sequitur. But as long as you brought it up, I doubt that story games have really increased the incidence of PC death except in hyperfocused one-shot type games such as Fiasco, MLwM, The Mountain Witch, etc.

Quote from: Arminius;835147It's quite a meaningful distinction in the context of this thread. The key is that modern storygames, though not generally using prewritten scenes, carry on a goal of molding the action to story concerns. The meaningless death is to be avoided, just as in the pre-storygame approach of PC death only happening if the player allows it.

Ahem, you're using quite the generalisations here, by assuming there is a common approach all storygames take (that's why I noted "many" or "most" where relevant:)).
What prevents you from dying in Apocalypse World, for example? How about The Sundered Land?
Both are about emergent gameplay, too:).

QuoteAll this is quite in contrast to the Ur-D&D ethos where character death "just happens" in the context of a setting-centered campaign. This is what I take ostap bender to be referring to when he or she writes "before there was story there could be no discontinuity".

Same as it is in Apocalypse World. It just happens, or it doesn't happen;).

QuoteJumping in to correct this as a misrepresentation of storygames is a bit of a non sequitur. But as long as you brought it up, I doubt that story games have really increased the incidence of PC death except in hyperfocused one-shot type games such as Fiasco, MLwM, The Mountain Witch, etc.

No, I'm not jumping in to correct a misinterpretation of storygames (because I don't care enough to do so). I'm jumping in to correct a misinterpretation of emergent gameplay, using storygames as an example.