Quote from: Skarg;922281

Quote from: rgrove0172;922139This forum software doesn't have the post icon for a pointing finger, for some reason.

However, I was pointing to that thread not to be negative towards you, but to point out what I see as a pattern that I think is leading us to be more hyperbolic and defensive and objecting in our replies. If you want more balanced and calm replies, and fewer rants, I suggest wording them so they don't sound like they're asking "what's the right/best way". When you ask something like "How Deadly Should Combat Be?" without acknowledging that there will be a wide range of tastes and answers, then we're going to spend a lot of time just saying there are various valid answers, and when offering what our own tastes are, we may be more inclined to argue with your logic rather than just saying our own.

Anyway, I mean to be helpful and not negative. I don't mind if you want to invite rants, though. It can be fun and cathartic to go off rantingly justifying one's gaming tastes, though it also adds a level of noise and blurs the message. Though too, part of my tastes and feelings about these things tend to come from annoyance in playing games that don't match my taste. e.g. "I just shot that teenage punk in their unarmored head twice with my 9mm! What do you mean they're fully functional and have an unimpaired 90% chance to shoot me right back immediately?"

Gotcha and apologies for being so sensitive. You may be right though, what I am wording as an invitation to open opinion and discussion may actually be inviting arguments. Instead of "How Deadly Should Combat Be?" perhaps I should have asked "How deadly is combat in your game?" or even "How deadly do you like combat in the game you play in?"

Point taken, thanks

Quote from: rgrove0172;921997Hmm, its been my experience that players in general want their characters to survive, period. Its not some silly attachment either but rather the feeling of investment, connection to the setting etc. Ive seen really good players reduced to passionless bystanders when forced to bring in a new character after their regular character died.

I suppose the longevity and risk factor are obvious in some games (Cthulu comes to mind) but in most they arent. Most players Ive known over the years enter into every game with the expectation of leveling their fledgling character up to some grand hero and eventually engaging in epic adventures. I cant say Ive ever encountered anyone that didnt feel this way. Are you guys saying some players start with the expectation of short lived characters and are cool with it?

Im asking this with a real concern over the campaign I am about to start. (Symbaroum) Without some serious tweaking I see this game as being a meat grinder for characters. Its something I havent contended with much before.

What do the players want?  Do they want to be the protagonists of created stories or do they want to play a game with varying outcomes dependent on their choices and the quality of their play? Do they want to engage in sport that can be won or lost or a storytelling experience?

Part of this is the responsibility of the GM. If the GM decides what kinds of things ARE going to happen from a story perspective then players have little choice but to go along for the ride. In this case the players are entitled to a bit of plot protection because the situations they find themselves in are the result of a treadmill driven story. The plot calls for the PCs to be ambushed by cultists at the end of chapter four and thats gonna happen come hell or high water!

If the players are responsible for the risks that they take and the consequences that arise from them then they should know that prior to the game and plan accordingly. Combat may be very dangerous and frequently lethal but so long as the players have some degree of control over how they engage in it, then fair play can be maintained. In this setup the players engage free form with scenarios rather than scripted plots. The PC's and their antagonists engage one another with limited information & resources.

With the first option you are better off going with combat as sport. The second option is ideal for combat as war.

After 3 rounds it starts to drag.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922278It was foretold in the stars that the shepherd born under the sign of the moon shall save the earth from the coming of the Arrow of Discord, a herald signifying the return of the lidless eye...with an iPhone or whatever the hell the back symbol is.

I have a bunch of these sets, they are awesome idea generators.

There's a Batman one, too.

Quote from: rgrove0172;921997Are you guys saying some players start with the expectation of short lived characters and are cool with it?

Say rather "the expectation that a character might be short lived" and you would be 100% right.  You don't fight a battle without risking troops, and if you risk your troops you're going to lose some of them.

Quote from: Simlasa;922170I generally always prefer combat to be deadly... or at least potentially deadly. Combat is only interesting to me if there is significant element of risk, otherwise why bother?
So the question for me is more, how much combat do you like in your game?
My preference for softening a game, making death less frequent, is to make combat less frequent... to always present it as a desperate and final option. To allow for solutions that keep swords in their scabbards. Combat generally isn't the most interesting part of the session... a lot of times it ends up feeling like filler that the GM throws in when they have no interesting ideas.

Quote from: rgrove0172;921988Ive played a spread of games where the longevity of PCs varied widely. In some a player had to screw up pretty bad (either tactically or with the dice) to ever get a character killed while in others it seemed almost an assumption that characters would die, maybe several in an adventure, and the quest was the priority over keeping any one personality part of the game. In my most recent RPG purchase the rules call for each new replacement character to be awarded with XP so as to 'keep up' with the luckier ones. Character's HP never really increase and even at high level a mook can take you down with a couple of lucky hits.

So where do you think the balance point is? Are the PCs the heroes that are basically SUPPOSED to live through the adventure except for an unfortunate and unexpected loss or are they disposable?

I personally have a spectrum that spans like so:

Immortal Beings, Player Signed, Dramatic Deaths, Stupidity Kills, Everybody Dies.

I've trained up my GMs and advised others on that same spectrum. In general, every game falls into one of these. Letting players know at the outset what side of the spectrum you gravitate to or what point you will maintain means you don't get any bullshit later when a player's character dies usually (there are always exceptions, entitled crybabies mostly).

My go-to are the last two. In reality, it tends to flit between the middle and middle-right. More players than I like expect the middle-left for their own character and the right side for everyone else (for some reason, the extreme left is too "unreal feeling" for them). As I run a club, I constantly stress the lethality level and difficulty level we are playing at because it's all too easy for a player to slip into this mode of thinking and then I get a vibe that they'll winge or throw a fit even though it was their own actions and lack of asking questions that got them their character killed.

If I was to try and impart the sense for my fellow auditory-learners/musically-inclined peeps, remember the chills you got from the BGM of the 1st level from Fear Effect. That's how you want your players to feel constantly in dangerous or hostile situations. Violence truely is a way of life in real-life: if you don't live it, or practise it, you will lose and you will die. It's that simple -- so avoid it, if you can.

I suppose the next logical counter-question to you (and the others) would be: where do you generally place yourself on this spectrum?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;922329I suppose the next logical counter-question to you (and the others) would be: where do you generally place yourself on this spectrum?

I don't have a general place. It depends on what I'm running/playing. Also my view is Stupidity Kills is almost always, always a factor.

OD&D/AD&D and Runequest 2 & 3 is somewhere between Stupidity Kills and Everybody Dies. Everyone does not, in fact, die, but bad luck kills a character just as dead as does player stupidity. And bad luck includes a random encounter with some NPC who is a shit load tougher than your PC or some trollkin crit hitting your Rune Lord and getting max damage followed by your Runelord failing his Divine Intervention.

Call of Cthulhu has insanity as another failure state in addition to death, so I try to run the death part with a somewhat lighter touch. However, death and even more so insanity cannot fully be mitigated against by making decisions that aren't stupid. Can't even be fully mitigated against by making only smart and clever decisions. I recall the PC who failed their Sanity roll and still only lost 2 or 3 points of Sanity seeing Cthulhu. They rolled really low on the D100 Sanity loss. But that 02 or 03 could just as easily have been a character ending, sanity blasting 83. In CoC  the universe is uncaring so your character may always end bathetically or pathetically rather than heroically.

Star Wars D6 I run a lot like the original movies. The heroes fail now and then but they are supposed to win in the end. So only a couple of PCs died. To be fair, the PC play in Star Wars had very little in the way of stupid decision making so that helped keep the death toll low. So Star Wars probably falls somewhere between Player Signed and Dramatic Deaths. As the GM I'm more trying not to kill the characters (or expecting them to use Character Points or Force Points to avoid getting dead) than I am trying to play the NPCs to the peak of my tactical ability.

Honor+Intrigue has mechanics that tend to stack the odds in favor of the PCs except in a climactic encounter. In addition another mechanic uses bennies to effectively save vs. death. So a player would need some combination of bad luck (or good luck by the opponent), stupid choices, and being outclassed by the opponent(s) to get a fatal result. They would then need to either be out of bennies or choose not to use them to get a dramatic left for dead kind of result. I'd call this sort of Player Signed, though if stupidity includes continuing to risk your character after you run out of fortune points, then stupidity kills is still on the table.

Star Trek is squarely in the Player Signed area of the spectrum. Nobody important died nor did we expect any of the main characters would die except in very unusual circumstances e.g. like Spock's "death" where a player effectively chose to have their PC die. This is probably the game that comes closest to ignoring any sort of stupidity kills caveat. A certain level of genre appropriate stupid is expected in Star Trek.

I think I understand what "Player Signed" is but please talk about it a bit more explicitly.

Also, as Bren points out, I have different expectations for different genres.

I recently had a player who said RPGs should be like TV series. I agreed, but told him that in my game, the studio gave us one season and no corporate oversight, so we are going to put the pedal to the metal and see what happens. Oh, and your PC is played by a no-name actor on a day-to-day contract and we blew the budget on blood, monster costumes and body parts.

In my games, you fight to succeed and you fight to survive. Sometimes, you only win one of those.

The advantage FOR ME to run "RPGs on Hardcore" is I get players who enjoy the bragging rights, but understand they gotta play to the hilt.

I'm almost always "right wing" on the death scale. To be accurate, I would say I run deadliness more or less like:

* Stupid risks/actions in dangerous situations, and making deadly enemies, tend to greatly increase your risk of death.
* Things are as dangerous as their description. This means a child accidentally shooting a gun may kill anyone if they get hit in the right place by chance. Even your character who just entered play, or your favorite PC you've cherished for years.
* I play low-hitpoint games (GURPS) so even Conan can die in one hit if his luck is bad enough.
* However, I strive to GM situations and to roleplay NPCs realistically, not as an adversary attempting to kill the players, or even with some sympathy for the players.
* Characters nonetheless can and often do survive for years of combat-rich gameplay, if they aren't too stupid, foolhardy or brave, and are willing to run or submit when outmatched, etc. Usual reasons are using effective tactics, not taking too many deadly risks, NPC combat allies, being careful and clever, avoiding overly deadly situations, being willing to run etc, and acquiring good defensive skills and protective equipment. Oh also, that the PCs are almost always quite good at what they're good at, usually including something for combat or at least defense, and the NPCs are not uber, so if they manage to do appropriate things using their advantages, it will usually work out pretty well, especially if they are careful and also respond appropriately to avoid death when things don't work out well sometimes.

and

* No the PCs are pretty much never gods.
* No the PCs are not heroes in a movie written/directed by main-character-death-averse people.
* No the player need not "sign" before their character might die - they do that before starting play.
* No a PC death need not be dramatic, though it can be, if it happens that way.
* No you don't get to replace your dead character with an identical new PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character have the exact experience level of your dead PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character with the same experience level as the players who didn't get their PCs killed.
* Yes you can have a kerchief to dry your tears, and I know some good grief counselors.

And yet, there really isn't that much PC death usually going on... except when there is, usually due to stupidity, folly, essentially suicidal behavior, or very deadly avoidable situations.

I know everyone has their own play styles they enjoy, but I end up feeling like the needs/wants to control and eliminate death risks are mostly counterproductive and mainly make for less interesting play. And/or they indicate a weak combat system and other weak cause & effect, because they seem pretty unnecessary to me. But I get that I have a pretty unusual perspective, style, and experience, which probably doesn't apply to many others.

Quote from: Skarg;922488I'm almost always "right wing" on the death scale. To be accurate, I would say I run deadliness more or less like:

* Stupid risks/actions in dangerous situations, and making deadly enemies, tend to greatly increase your risk of death.
* Things are as dangerous as their description. This means a child accidentally shooting a gun may kill anyone if they get hit in the right place by chance. Even your character who just entered play, or your favorite PC you've cherished for years.
* I play low-hitpoint games (GURPS) so even Conan can die in one hit if his luck is bad enough.
* However, I strive to GM situations and to roleplay NPCs realistically, not as an adversary attempting to kill the players, or even with some sympathy for the players.
* Characters nonetheless can and often do survive for years of combat-rich gameplay, if they aren't too stupid, foolhardy or brave, and are willing to run or submit when outmatched, etc. Usual reasons are using effective tactics, not taking too many deadly risks, NPC combat allies, being careful and clever, avoiding overly deadly situations, being willing to run etc, and acquiring good defensive skills and protective equipment.

and

* No the PCs are pretty much never gods.
* No the PCs are not heroes in an movie written/directed by main-character-death-averse people.
* No the player need not "sign" before their character might die - they do that before starting play.
* No a PC death need not be dramatic, though it can be, if it happens that way.
* No you don't get to replace your dead character with an identical new PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character have the exact experience level of your dead PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character with the same experience level as the players who didn't get their PCs killed.
* Yes you can have a kerchief to dry your tears, and I know some good grief counselors.

And yet, there really isn't that much PC death usually going on... except when there is, usually due to stupidity, folly, essentially suicidal behavior, or very deadly avoidable situations.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;922341I think I understand what "Player Signed" is but please talk about it a bit more explicitly.

Also, as Bren points out, I have different expectations for different genres.

The most extreme and literal example of Player Signed is in the game Tenra Bansho Zero, where there is a box on the character sheet.  If you check the box, then your character can die.  If you do not check the box, your character can not die.  All kinds of bad stuff can happen, but not death, the GM has to come up with something else.

Quote from: Bren;922335I don't have a general place. It depends on what I'm running/playing. Also my view is Stupidity Kills is almost always, always a factor.

OD&D/AD&D and Runequest 2 & 3 is somewhere between Stupidity Kills and Everybody Dies. Everyone does not, in fact, die, but bad luck kills a character just as dead as does player stupidity. And bad luck includes a random encounter with some NPC who is a shit load tougher than your PC or some trollkin crit hitting your Rune Lord and getting max damage followed by your Runelord failing his Divine Intervention.

Call of Cthulhu has insanity as another failure state in addition to death, so I try to run the death part with a somewhat lighter touch. However, death and even more so insanity cannot fully be mitigated against by making decisions that aren't stupid. Can't even be fully mitigated against by making only smart and clever decisions. I recall the PC who failed their Sanity roll and still only lost 2 or 3 points of Sanity seeing Cthulhu. They rolled really low on the D100 Sanity loss. But that 02 or 03 could just as easily have been a character ending, sanity blasting 83. In CoC  the universe is uncaring so your character may always end bathetically or pathetically rather than heroically.

Star Wars D6 I run a lot like the original movies. The heroes fail now and then but they are supposed to win in the end. So only a couple of PCs died. To be fair, the PC play in Star Wars had very little in the way of stupid decision making so that helped keep the death toll low. So Star Wars probably falls somewhere between Player Signed and Dramatic Deaths. As the GM I'm more trying not to kill the characters (or expecting them to use Character Points or Force Points to avoid getting dead) than I am trying to play the NPCs to the peak of my tactical ability.

Honor+Intrigue has mechanics that tend to stack the odds in favor of the PCs except in a climactic encounter. In addition another mechanic uses bennies to effectively save vs. death. So a player would need some combination of bad luck (or good luck by the opponent), stupid choices, and being outclassed by the opponent(s) to get a fatal result. They would then need to either be out of bennies or choose not to use them to get a dramatic left for dead kind of result. I'd call this sort of Player Signed, though if stupidity includes continuing to risk your character after you run out of fortune points, then stupidity kills is still on the table.

Star Trek is squarely in the Player Signed area of the spectrum. Nobody important died nor did we expect any of the main characters would die except in very unusual circumstances e.g. like Spock's "death" where a player effectively chose to have their PC die. This is probably the game that comes closest to ignoring any sort of stupidity kills caveat. A certain level of genre appropriate stupid is expected in Star Trek.

I appreciate you sticking to the spectrum in your response. I find it provides a "common ground" of understanding, as it were, for everyone involved. When I say that I do Everybody Dies, everybody else knows I mean "don't expect to walk out alive" and we don't have to get really low-level and specific because everybody already understands. If anything, I think this subject requires further discussion and more exposure across the board because it seems that every player, new or vet, comes to the table with a different expectation.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;922341I think I understand what "Player Signed" is but please talk about it a bit more explicitly.

Also, as Bren points out, I have different expectations for different genres.

Specifically and to confirm, Player Signed means that a player gives the go-ahead -- "signs-off" -- either implicitly or explicitly, that they are happy for their character to be killed or die in-game for a particular session, story or whatever space of time is being considered when they sign-off on it where otherwise their character will somehow make it through to see the next day even if realistically they'd die in that same space of time (and oftentimes, the style of death is also signed off on). In contrast to its siblings, Immortal Beings is that nobody dies pretty much ever and Dramatic Deaths is where characters may die but only in suitably cinematic or heroic ways due to an understanding between them and the GM (so being shanked to death because the PC mouthed off to their robber is off the table).

Several of my players literally have second characters ready and raring to go and even if we do joke about it a fair bit during sessions, it is firmly understood by our membership at large that the club is a Stupidity Kills outfit (otherwise they wouldn't have those characters ready to go). Hah, I'll tell you what Gronan, one of my players ended without his literal shirt on his back (the details don't matter) and he asked for one from a group of enigmatic muscle and as he took the shirtvest from them, I simply and quickly described how it felt (nothing suspicious either) and just the simple act of describing caused one of my players to remark, "The GM has successfully caused me to be scared of a simple shirt *laughs*" (and he wasn't kidding, either!). I did my job last Sunday quite well I think, hah!

Quote from: Spinachcat;922369I recently had a player who said RPGs should be like TV series. I agreed, but told him that in my game, the studio gave us one season and no corporate oversight, so we are going to put the pedal to the metal and see what happens. Oh, and your PC is played by a no-name actor on a day-to-day contract and we blew the budget on blood, monster costumes and body parts.

In my games, you fight to succeed and you fight to survive. Sometimes, you only win one of those.

The advantage FOR ME to run "RPGs on Hardcore" is I get players who enjoy the bragging rights, but understand they gotta play to the hilt.

I always love seeing my players smiles on their faces when they know they just got past a fucking mess with everyone still alive. I remember once in my LA Mage chronicle, the PCs had a meet where they were making an exchange with a merc cabal (cash for artifacts) on behalf of their Adjutant (equiv to street boss/lieutenant) and it went south quick and they really could have died there but one of my dearest players did some real John Woo shit and they made it out ALIVE, just before the police arrived on-scene as a result of gunfire disturbance callout.

Quote from: Skarg;922488I'm almost always "right wing" on the death scale. To be accurate, I would say I run deadliness more or less like:

* Stupid risks/actions in dangerous situations, and making deadly enemies, tend to greatly increase your risk of death.
* Things are as dangerous as their description. This means a child accidentally shooting a gun may kill anyone if they get hit in the right place by chance. Even your character who just entered play, or your favorite PC you've cherished for years.
* I play low-hitpoint games (GURPS) so even Conan can die in one hit if his luck is bad enough.
* However, I strive to GM situations and to roleplay NPCs realistically, not as an adversary attempting to kill the players, or even with some sympathy for the players.
* Characters nonetheless can and often do survive for years of combat-rich gameplay, if they aren't too stupid, foolhardy or brave, and are willing to run or submit when outmatched, etc. Usual reasons are using effective tactics, not taking too many deadly risks, NPC combat allies, being careful and clever, avoiding overly deadly situations, being willing to run etc, and acquiring good defensive skills and protective equipment. Oh also, that the PCs are almost always quite good at what they're good at, usually including something for combat or at least defense, and the NPCs are not uber, so if they manage to do appropriate things using their advantages, it will usually work out pretty well, especially if they are careful and also respond appropriately to avoid death when things don't work out well sometimes.

and

* No the PCs are pretty much never gods.
* No the PCs are not heroes in a movie written/directed by main-character-death-averse people.
* No the player need not "sign" before their character might die - they do that before starting play.
* No a PC death need not be dramatic, though it can be, if it happens that way.
* No you don't get to replace your dead character with an identical new PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character have the exact experience level of your dead PC.
* No you don't get to have a replacement for a dead character with the same experience level as the players who didn't get their PCs killed.
* Yes you can have a kerchief to dry your tears, and I know some good grief counselors.

And yet, there really isn't that much PC death usually going on... except when there is, usually due to stupidity, folly, essentially suicidal behavior, or very deadly avoidable situations.

I know everyone has their own play styles they enjoy, but I end up feeling like the needs/wants to control and eliminate death risks are mostly counterproductive and mainly make for less interesting play. And/or they indicate a weak combat system and other weak cause & effect, because they seem pretty unnecessary to me. But I get that I have a pretty unusual perspective, style, and experience, which probably doesn't apply to many others.

You know what I've started doing recently? Random action rolls for my NPCs in combat. It's insanely awesome because it essentially kills all arbritray-ness (the more important being any level of bias I might have in decision-making for that NPC) and yet it stills feels as though the NPC is acting tactically because the random roll is fairly concentrated into a few key areas. At the moment, I have Attack, Power, Combat Factor (so special moves), Retreat, Cover and some have sublists. I love it, it's lethal but fair for both sides. And as anyone who knows me know I'm all about the non aribtrary-ness.

Quote from: CRKrueger;922496The most extreme and literal example of Player Signed is in the game Tenra Bansho Zero, where there is a box on the character sheet.  If you check the box, then your character can die.  If you do not check the box, your character can not die.  All kinds of bad stuff can happen, but not death, the GM has to come up with something else.

You're fucking with me... no, no... seriously Krueger? Are you serious? For real?

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;922506You're fucking with me... no, no... seriously Krueger? Are you serious? For real?

Why not? If it fits the genre, the group, and what you are trying to achieve, why not? Story gaming, drama gaming (can only die in an important way), 'PG-movie' style gaming (the old Ghostbusters RPG, I believe, you literally couldn't die, even if you fell off a skyscraper). There are plenty of reasons to have this function. Remember, dying isn't the only way you can fail to achieve your goals in the game. Non-death =/= auto-win.

As to why this game has a checkbox on a character sheet instead a shared understanding between the players and GM, I don't know.