After a vacation of a lot of mostly non-RPG-gaming, I was thinking about the frequency of losing in RPGs. In board and card games, players lose a lot - like 75% of the time in a four-player. However, the games are still fun. Even in a cooperative game like Eldritch Horror or Shadows Over Camelot, it's common for there to be a more than 50% loss rate.
Even for old-school sandbox or Call of Cthulhu, my experience is that's kind of a lot. Characters may be hurt or die over the course of things, but it is definitely uncommon for an adventure to end with the PCs outright losing - such as running away with the mission unaccomplished and/or the main bad guy alive and triumphant. That's even built into many module series from the old days - where the next module can only be gotten to if the players succeed in the main mission.
It's been on my mind since in a number of times in my current beer-and-pretzels-y D&D5 campaign, we've teetered on the edge of TPK rather than just backing off and giving up the mission. We tend to mock the tendency of PCs to charge off to their death rather than run away - but I think this is pushed by GMs just as much as players. GMs and module designers don't expect or deal well with having the PCs go away without finishing.
Anyone have experience with a high loss rate that was still fun? Were there things that it needed to help keep things upbeat?
Alternately, what do you think might make a high loss rate still fun to play, hypothetically?
For card games and board games still being fun despite a high loss rate, it's because they're short games that you pack up and can forget about, and it's just as easy to start a brand new game from a clean slate.
For RPGs, you deal with the consequences for a long time, and when you get TPK'd that's a lot of time down the drain.
Now, some people might be fine with that too since the process of playing the game and roleplaying itself may be a reward as opposed to the success or defeat of the character.
As for myself, I haven't decided. Some say high lethality helps games become immersive, others say it just encourages players to think of their characters as disposable stat blocks.
Depends on game premise & chargen length. Like, Paranoia is geared for lots of death. But other campaigns want to last longer and have the option for a different grade & urgency of stakes, like a more social, explorational sandbox. And then there's those 2+ hour chargen "lovingly overcrafted" nightmares — the last thing you want is kill another whole gaming session on flipping through books and integrated backstory.
edit: I want to run a Crusade/Jihad campaign filled with mass combat battles and espionage. Pick a side, scribble up your character, go on an actual war campaign, try to find personal meaning and survive. It'd have to be a fast chargen affair, like 3d6 straight down.
In games like Call of Cthulhu or most superhero games you could argue that the players are on the losing side for most of the adventure in that while the investigation is in progress the bad guys are a few steps ahead of the players characters who are scrambling trying to catch up.
Also the notion of the players winning in the end is an artifact of the fact that the adventure often ends at the point the characters win. Say the villain's scheme involves doing A,B and C and the characters try to stop the villain at each stage, if the characters win at stage A, the adventure will tend to end there, stages B and C never happen. If the villain wins stage a the events move on to stage B. If the characters win at stage B the adventure tends to end there with the heroes winning.
Of course this analysis does not extend to all genres.
Speaking of "losing," this reminds me an alignment question I had.
In modern D&D, you can change your alignment, no problem. In old D&D, you got hit with a level punishment. Why? Was there some sort of flavorful justification for it like the character being confused and disoriented with his place in the world now, or was it just about enforcing rigid adherence to the alignment?
Was this kind of "losing" considered fun and necessary for the old alignment system, or is everybody just glad to be rid of it?
Looking at the rules for most games I play/run it seems like a fair amount of failure is to be expected if the PCs actually go out and engage the world and try to do anything interesting... unless the GM is pulling punches. I've played with GMs like that and I did not enjoy it.
I'm also not that interested in multi-year campaigns or power progression... but I certainly don't feel like my PCs is 'disposable'... even in a DCC 'funnel'.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809847For RPGs, you deal with the consequences for a long time, and when you get TPK'd that's a lot of time down the drain.
I just can't see it that way... that somehow I've wasted time playing something I enjoyed just because the character failed his mission or got killed. For me it's the journey, not the destination.
But then, I'm generally not big on character 'builds' or power progression/zero to hero type play... or stuff with really involved PC generation.
Quote from: Simlasa;809857Looking at the rules for most games I play/run it seems like a fair amount of failure is to be expected if the PCs actually go out and engage the world and try to do anything interesting... unless the GM is pulling punches. I've played with GMs like that and I did not enjoy it.
I just can't see it that way... that somehow I've wasted time playing something I enjoyed just because the character failed his mission or got killed. For me it's the journey, not the destination.
But then, I'm generally not big on character 'builds' or power progression/zero to hero type play... or stuff with really involved PC generation.
I agree, but that's just how I've seen it presented when people talk about avoiding TPKs as DMs. Usually they fudge up a way for the party to survive, but get captured and thrown in jail, or get crippled, or have their objective fail and the setting impacted negatively instead. In some ways that's even worse than dying because you get stuck with the consequences instead of just rolling up again.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809858In some ways that's even worse than dying because you get stuck with the consequences instead of just rolling up again.
Yes, and that's why I generally prefer it to death; death is too much of a "get out of consequences free" card. I'd rather the characters have to see what happened because of their failure, and deal with that.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809858Usually they fudge up a way for the party to survive, but get captured and thrown in jail, or get crippled, or have their objective fail and the setting impacted negatively instead. In some ways that's even worse than dying because you get stuck with the consequences instead of just rolling up again.
I'm not equating failure with death/TPK... death is just one form it can take. But for the failure to matter it ought to sting somewhat... something should be lost.
We didn't get back to the town in time to stop massacre... we didn't stop the cultists from handing over our daughters to the Deep Ones so they suffered a 'fate worse than death'... Ming the Merciless got away and murdered our favorite cabin boy on his way to the transporter.
From what I've experienced the GMs who won't kill PCs don't seem to like harsh consequences either... so 'failure' ends up being a minor inconvenience, hand-waved away... a 'do-over'.
Quote from: Ladybird;809860Yes, and that's why I generally prefer it to death; death is too much of a "get out of consequences free" card. I'd rather the characters have to see what happened because of their failure, and deal with that.
I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
They got into an unwinnable battle, lost a limb, and got downed. So instead of killing him, I had the bad guy take his best weapons and the leave him for dead.
I thought it would be a good quest hook for them to pursue revenge against this bad guy since it was personal now, but he wanted to just roll up a new character. When I said no, he went apeshit and quit.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
I've seen similar. For some Players the equipment IS the character.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
They got into an unwinnable battle, lost a limb, and got downed. So instead of killing him, I had the bad guy take his best weapons and the leave him for dead.
I thought it would be a good quest hook for them to pursue revenge against this bad guy since it was personal now, but he wanted to just roll up a new character. When I said no, he went apeshit and quit.
My WFRP character has been "slightly possessed" by a demonic sword for a while; I've had a blast playing it. I'm fully aware the sword is evil, but as far as he's concerned, it's saved his life more often than the rest of the party. He can trust the sword. The elf? Not so much.
In our last session, his arm got crippled in a fight with the rest of the party and some elven mages, who told him his sword was evil and tried to take it from him. It's very likely he's going to lose his arm, realise what he's been doing, and go Slayer.
I can't wait. I'm really looking forward to it. It's gonna be a blast.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
I think it comes from a sense of entitlement that they get to play the character they crafted and built up, rather than one they see as hobbled by the GM.
The original question is also interesting re the other recent threads on Fate. Fate assumes you will have a number of failures on your way to victory, and that does seem to be a mental stumbling block for many players of more traditional dungeon oriented games.
I think there are two factors at play, at least:
- An over use of the 'save the world' trope - if you fail, everything is lost so the game is usually rigged to promote success in the end. This bleeds down into requiring success in the medium and short term goals that build up to saving the world in the end.
- A common style of play where the game is about politics and manoeuvre as much or more than action adventure. In those kinds of games, death is a bigger impact as you can create another PC but you struggle to credibly insert them back into the social and political network which the game hangs on.
I'm sure there is also a significant block of players who are short on prep time so they make use of modules and the like (I know I fit in that category) and modules are typically designed so you can use as much as possible of it. If you spend money on a module where the party solves the adventure in the first scene, gets mostly wiped out 25% of the way through or some such you might feel short changed. In more home-build play these things are less of an issue in my experience (a friend has more prep time than me and his adventures are consequently much more free wheeling).
Good points raised all around. There are indeed various expectations of loss from players - some'd rather prefer to lose a character entirely, than play a one they consider "gimped." I myself'd rather prefer to play a character without an arm, than loose him to death - while his alive, the story continues, and well, there's a cool story about loosing an arm he can pass down to new characters he meets, a warning perhaps or such. I'm more than glad to oblige the players who dislike playing weakened characters with a sword to the face.
There are indeed also degrees of loss - if the campaign, as noted, is about saving the world, failing means it's game over for everything. If an adventure's focused on saving the village, running away is a viable option. It has been talked a lot why players will usually refuse to cut their losses - from the influence of video games and saves, to the influence of railroady GMs. Ultimately, I'd myself propose a simple solution I think might work - tell the players up front "Feel free to let go of any "quest" in the middle of it, if you think you'll loose more than you can earn. I'll not pull punches." It helps if you have a reputation as a tough GM.
Quote from: Ladybird;809868My WFRP character has been "slightly possessed" by a demonic sword for a while; I've had a blast playing it. I'm fully aware the sword is evil, but as far as he's concerned, it's saved his life more often than the rest of the party. He can trust the sword. The elf? Not so much.
In our last session, his arm got crippled in a fight with the rest of the party and some elven mages, who told him his sword was evil and tried to take it from him. It's very likely he's going to lose his arm, realise what he's been doing, and go Slayer.
I can't wait. I'm really looking forward to it. It's gonna be a blast.
I can relate to that. The first magical sword my character in Warhammer got...he gave back to the family of a knight it belonged to. And then went back to search for the half - vampire mistress that has been haunting his dreams.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
I never understand people who do this sort of thing.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;809888I never understand people who do this sort of thing.
Some people don't get don't get past the temper tantrums stage of development, unfortunately.
And, being more generous, we all have a bad day from time to time when our 'shit buffer' is running on empty!
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809856Speaking of "losing," this reminds me an alignment question I had.
In modern D&D, you can change your alignment, no problem. In old D&D, you got hit with a level punishment. Why?
I would imagine it was so players couldn't arbitrarily switch alignments to their advantage, rather than as an organic part of play. Like, for example, when they were NG but found a badass +5 LE Vorpal Sword? That'd be my guess anyway.
It doesn't bother me.
Unfortunately these days a lot of rpg's will say right in the intro that the game is "like a novel" or "a story of your own creation", which I think puts all sorts of expectations into a players head. "If it's my story, then I get to choose what happens to me when I want and how I want it!"
The more I think on it, the more I come around to what Estar talks about- rpgs are a game that provides an experience, not so much creating a story.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809856Speaking of "losing," this reminds me an alignment question I had.
In modern D&D, you can change your alignment, no problem. In old D&D, you got hit with a level punishment. Why? Was there some sort of flavorful justification for it like the character being confused and disoriented with his place in the world now, or was it just about enforcing rigid adherence to the alignment?
Was this kind of "losing" considered fun and necessary for the old alignment system, or is everybody just glad to be rid of it?
In AD&D the reason for it was because each character is linked to some same aligned god by their alignment even if they do not profess belief in one. So changing alignment was altering a fundamental aspect of the character and how the universe viewed the character. Worse for clerics.
If the change was involountary then then the lost level could be recovered by undoing the change. But if it was by free will then the change was permanent and there was likely no going back due to disfavour now with whatever cosmic force you just snubbed.
In the end. Like all else it vareies wildly from group to group. Much like being level drained. Some will shrug and work to regain it. Others will throw a tantrum at the obviously broken game and/or dick DM.
To try to clarify, there are different rates of losing:
1) "The PCs can't lose" - They may have setbacks, but ultimately they're going to get through the mission with at least minimal success.
2) "The PCs will lose, but rarely" - Like many old-school modules, the normal expectation is that if the players start, they will make it through to the end of the module - possibly with a number of new characters. However, it is at least acknowledged that losing is a possibility.
3) "The PCs lose most of the time" - The majority of the time (like my example of 75%), the PCs fail to achieve their primary goal in an adventure. i.e. The main bad guy is still in power, and/or the village is lost, etc.
This is
NOT a thread to be bitching about #1. What I want to know is how far towards or into #3 we can go and still be fun.
Quote from: dbm;809869I'm sure there is also a significant block of players who are short on prep time so they make use of modules and the like (I know I fit in that category) and modules are typically designed so you can use as much as possible of it. If you spend money on a module where the party solves the adventure in the first scene, gets mostly wiped out 25% of the way through or some such you might feel short changed. In more home-build play these things are less of an issue in my experience (a friend has more prep time than me and his adventures are consequently much more free wheeling).
I agree with this, but I think that modules influence the prep style of many GMs, so in my experience it is still a big influence on home-built games. For me, most GMs would prepare adventures with a similar assumption to modules - that the PCs will get through the earlier challenges and make it to the later ones.
For me, this has been true even in many fairly sand-boxy setups. The players can choose where to go - but if they go into the ruined tower in hex A7, the expectation is that they'll make it through to the key parts of the ruins. TPK and/or abandoning the mission are possible, but not expected - and even TPKs may still end with successful mission, as the new PCs take up the same adventure.
It highly depends on a number of factors.
Chargen
If it's long and onerous, death factors into a ROI for playing the game -- more work/unfun vs. whatever fun there is.
Taking it personally
Depending on a lot of factors, there are games where my character dying feels _personal_, like _I_ fucked up or was stupid. This is moreso for more wargamey stuff where you have to make really good choices or your characters die.
Given that RPGs are, for me, destressing after a week (or whatever) of stress... I don't want a game that feels like a new job.
Yes, some people enjoy engrossing challenges and whatnot, but I'm trying to recharge, not grind my mental gears more.
Cool challenge vs. stomp
When I've played PVP online, my favorite element is when things are very very balanced, when both teams are giving it their all and it could go either way.
Losing (or dying) in situations like that? I'm cool with it. I feel like I gained a lot from the entertainment, and losing a character, well, I gave it a good shot!
I hate one-sided battles, whether I'm up or down. Being taken out because oh hey everyone on that team is individually as powerful as ten folks on our team (I'm looking at you, final tier Warhammer MMO) is just... not fun. At all.
Being able to take out dozens of enemies and being in no real danger? Eh, that feels cheap, too, although sometimes it's funny and sometimes it becomes a competition with team-mates on number of kills.
Fun(ny) vs. dull
This goes toward the ROI of fun. If the death is ignominious or dull or random... eh. It's just annoying.
If death is _funny_, though, that's entertaining, even if my character is now a smear on the tarrasque's toe.
Goal denial
Sometimes I have goals for a character. Having my character die generally means anything cool I have in mind gets round-binned. That can be frustrating.
Genre expectations matter a lot. I think a lot of RPG arguments come down to people playing out different genre/subgenre with different play expectations.
There are three common playstyles I can think of:
Media adventure: playing out like an episode of an adventure story on TV. In this sort of game, players shouldn't die unless it's very interesting or important.
Dungeoncrawl: playing out like a simulation of a random bunch of folks doing shit. Chips fall where they may, and if someone dies due to appendicitis, oh well.
Call of Cthulhu: Ok, this isn't SUPER common, but I hazily imagine there are a few games in a similar vein.
Basically, the game is more a matter of seeing how long characters can survive, and then see how horribly they can bite it.
I've sometimes commented that I don't like dungeoncrawl style play, although I think what I'm frustrated by is that those games are also often 'RL skill' style games, where if you fuck up the rules, oh well, your character is toast. I suspect I'd enjoy DungeonWorld more.
I actually really enjoy CoC-style games, so it's not the death in particular that's bugging me.
Anyway, that's my self-examination.
^Dungeon World encourages going hard at the players and that PC death is expected.
Quote from: jhkim;809844Anyone have experience with a high loss rate that was still fun? Were there things that it needed to help keep things upbeat?
It kinda depends on how you define "loss".
In my 3.5 campaign, for example, the PCs wanted to steal a powerful artifact from a group of bad guys. They made significant efforts to do so on five different occasions over the course of 40+ sessions and failed each time. However, just a couple sessions ago they finally succeeded and now have possession of the artifact.
Is that five failures followed by a success? Or is it just a success with a number of setbacks? I'd go with the former.
Here's what I'd say:
The stakes can't be all-or-nothing. Success-or-death is pretty common in RPGs. So is success-or-end of the world. These types of stakes can be combined with high failure rates in a board game or one-shot because the game is over either way, but even a very tiny all-or-nothing failure rate in an ongoing campaign is problematic because it compounds over time. I'm not saying that you should never have all-or-nothing stakes; it's just that it shouldn't be your primary modus operandi.
The stakes still need to be meaningful. Failure is only meaningful if it carries consequences. These consequences should also be entertaining and interesting. For example, the longer the bad guys held the artifact the more terrible things they were able to do with it.
Failures don't have to be absolute. Lots of competitive board games games have a winner who did better than everybody else, but often the other players still accomplished things.
Have lots of different goals actively in play. My players literally failed (over and over and over again) for
four years of real time in their goal of stealing this magical artifact. That would have been completely debilitating if there weren't a half dozen other things that they were also trying to achieve at the same time.
Quote from: jhkim;809930To try to clarify, there are different rates of losing:
1) "The PCs can't lose" - They may have setbacks, but ultimately they're going to get through the mission with at least minimal success.
2) "The PCs will lose, but rarely" - Like many old-school modules, the normal expectation is that if the players start, they will make it through to the end of the module - possibly with a number of new characters. However, it is at least acknowledged that losing is a possibility.
3) "The PCs lose most of the time" - The majority of the time (like my example of 75%), the PCs fail to achieve their primary goal in an adventure. i.e. The main bad guy is still in power, and/or the village is lost, etc.
This is NOT a thread to be bitching about #1. What I want to know is how far towards or into #3 we can go and still be fun.
Recently, my group has fallen into presumption that all conflicts should be possible to overcome. This might require significant expenditure, but it would possible to overcome it as an encounter in itself. The negative consequences would be around such things as how much downtime we need before we progress further (and whether that hits us hard through the world reacting), along with how many of our consumables get used-up in the encounter.
With 5e, we have consciously moved away from this assumption and agreed as a group that some encounters may be too much to overcome so we should consider bugging out, look for alternatives to fighting and so on.
A contributing factor has been playing other games since giving up on 4e and whilst waiting for 5e to come out. Playing games with a wider range of objectives and different emphasis has helped us wake up from the rut we had fallen into. 5e is less combat obsessed than 4e was, so it feels easier to keep this wider perspective.
In that context, I would still want to succeed in the majority of encounters but I would be happy to look for a wider range of avenues to success. So if I was presented with a combat challenge that was too powerful to overcome directly (even if the fight had started) I would back out and look for alternative ways of achieving my goal. That is to say, if approach one fails I'm ok with reassessing and trying a second or third approach as needed.
Ultimately I would still want to overcome the majority of challenges unless they were clearly unattainable (no storming castles or slaying Dragons at 1st level...). But if I was losing more than a third of encounters I would be looking to re-jig my character to make them fit the campaign better. Losing more than half of the encounters would probably result in a down-time conversation with the GM to better understand what their aims for the campaign were.
Ultimately, we are often stymied in real life and since I'm not a masochist I don't want to regularly face this in my fun-time.
Quote from: Will;809933It highly depends on a number of factors.
Yeah, to the point that it's approaching one of those 'how long is a piece of string?' questions... too many variables to have anything near a one-size-fits-all answer.
I won't play in a game where I can't fail, Bob won't play in a game where he can... and all shades in between.
I like myself to be challenged, whether I play a board game or an RPG. I often loose, but I'd say I personally most enjoy it, in RPGs at least, when the loss might actually be more interesting than the victory. I also think that indeed, for there to be a genuine feeling of satisfaction in victory, there needs to be a great challenge, even some losses along the way. Getting that dastardly villain tastes much better if he defeated us previous 3 - 4 times.
Quote from: Simlasa;809948Yeah, to the point that it's approaching one of those 'how long is a piece of string?' questions... too many variables to have anything near a one-size-fits-all answer.
I won't play in a game where I can't fail, Bob won't play in a game where he can... and all shades in between.
Indeed, and that's the hardest job of a GM I think - managing all those personalities, juggling expectations so that everyone leaves the table content. Of course, to a degree, birds of feather flock together, but there'll be occasionally just a good friend who has very different expectations from the rest of the group game - wise, but, well, he's still a great guy/gal to have around.
Quote from: Simlasa;809948Yeah, to the point that it's approaching one of those 'how long is a piece of string?' questions... too many variables to have anything near a one-size-fits-all answer.
I won't play in a game where I can't fail, Bob won't play in a game where he can... and all shades in between.
I'm more positive about the discussion -- I think it's worth exploring why people like/dislike things, because there may be common ground.
For example, someone might write me off as a big pussy who can't take losing my precious characters before they've bothered to find out I have no problem losing characters in COC.
So, think about your tastes and where they came from and talk things out.
Quote from: Will;809957I'm more positive about the discussion -- I think it's worth exploring why people like/dislike things, because there may be common ground.
For example, someone might write me off as a big pussy who can't take losing my precious characters before they've bothered to find out I have no problem losing characters in COC.
So, think about your tastes and where they came from and talk things out.
There's certainly an expectation - based approach to games and mortality. Which is why there's so much ruckus regarding D&D actually, I think - because there are at least 4 different mortality expectations now (TSR D&D, 3e, 4e, 5e - all have different HP, challenge and damage curves and fight models).
Of course, it has also a good side - a game might be in fact geared to be less deadly, in order to allow players to declare more outrageous actions.
I think it would be critical that if losing = death, character creation be fast. Nothing worse than sitting at the table holding your dick while everyone else gets to play.
Other than that, I don't mind losing-- especially if I an see the consequences play out in the world. Though, it may be a bit annoying if I lose all the time due to bad luck on dice rolling or just general incompetence of the PC itself.
It may depend a lot on whether you're more of a "let the dice fall where they may and play it out" type of person or a "I want to be heroic most of the time" type of player.
Quote from: Will;809957I'm more positive about the discussion -- I think it's worth exploring why people like/dislike things, because there may be common ground.
I guess that's what I mean, like so many things it all comes down to a matter of taste... 'why red is my favorite color'. That's fine...
A difficult cooperative boardgame like Ghost Stories seems to me not that different than some 'tournament' RPG like Tomb of Horrors. You're not likely to win, but it's fun to try.
I agree that for something like that it's best to have simple/fast chargen... or have some NPC 'spares' on hand so a Player can jump back into the game.
Quote from: ArrozConLeche;809965Nothing worse than sitting at the table holding your dick while everyone else gets to play.
In our current game, if a character goes down in battle, we give that person one of the npcs to use in the meantime.
Mortality expectations and system are why I don't play Eve Online; it forced me to either be safe and not frustrated, or to do the stuff I enjoy and be constantly screamingly frustrated by losses.
RPGs are different because player and player characters are people. In the words of the Immortal Philosopher Clint, when you kill a man you take away everything he has and everything he's ever gonna have. That's the key right there. Even if your character is nothing but a murder hobo, not only have you put into that hobo probably ten times the playing hours of any card or boardgame at minimum, but you also have goals with that character. Goals that will never come to fruition if they die. With any other game, I can try that specific strategy/combination/whatever again, even though it may take a while to manifest. Unless I do a KoDT style "Knuckles the Eighth" character re-use, I'll never get to play that specific character again. The finality of game defeat which results in death affecting all future games is unique to RPGs.
Personally though, for me a character death may not be fun, it may suck total ass, but it is necessary to have it possible to happen, and the death of that character gives the setting such authenticity, that it makes Roleplaying the next character that much more rewarding, because then I know my character makes it not because of the PC Glow or not because it makes for a better story if he lives or not because the GM gets to keep running his plot, but because my character gave it his all...and did it. Also sometimes a character's death is rewarding. A Norseman falling in battle against a great foe, a Paladin sacrificing themselves, a Wizard finishing off Tiamat with a retributive strike from an overcharged Staff of the Magi...enjoyable and rewarding.
Back when I was a wee GM, before I encountered most of these discussions, my guiding principle for 'adventure gaming' was 'you're not going to die. But I might fuck you up. And don't be an idiot and push it, because then fuck it, you'll die.'
I guess that would be called semirigid plot protection or some such nowadays.
Regarding character death - I am talking about loss which is different than death. To clarify the difference: I've played a number of games that have high mortality (like some Call of Cthulhu runs) - where it was fairly expected that you'd lose characters over the course of an adventure, but it was still assumed that the PCs would complete the adventure and resolve the situation. I haven't played DCC funnel, but I've played a few old-school games which were similar. Even if all of the PCs died, sometimes we would create a new group of PCs who completed that module.
So in my experience, it has been more common for characters or even a whole party to die than for the PCs side to lose the primary mission, like not getting to the final dungeon level, and/or the primary bad guy still being active, and/or the danger coming to pass, and/or not getting the key artifact.
Justin's list of suggestions was interesting, and I thought I'd repost the key points:
- The stakes can't be all-or-nothing.
- The stakes still need to be meaningful.
- Failures don't have to be absolute.
- Have lots of different goals actively in play.
I think most of these are important for any game, not just a high-loss game. As a hypothetical example, I wonder about something like a zombie survival RPG, where you're trying to protect your people, and sometimes you save them - but a lot of them die. (The Walking Dead obvious comes to mind.) You can save some people even though some die, and you can be trying for other goals.
Quote from: dbm;809943Ultimately I would still want to overcome the majority of challenges unless they were clearly unattainable (no storming castles or slaying Dragons at 1st level...). But if I was losing more than a third of encounters I would be looking to re-jig my character to make them fit the campaign better. Losing more than half of the encounters would probably result in a down-time conversation with the GM to better understand what their aims for the campaign were.
Ultimately, we are often stymied in real life and since I'm not a masochist I don't want to regularly face this in my fun-time.
I understand and totally sympathize with not wanting to be stymied, but at the same time - I think there could be people who are OK with high loss who aren't simply masochists. It can be fun to play a game and lose - even an RPG.
Good qualifiers, jhkim. It reminds me that most of my 'the PCs don't die' actually segue into 'varying failure modes.'
Like, because of the stuff I want to avoid with characters dying, they might not die... but they have a broken leg, or are on the run, or...
Fate and a few other games help inspire some broader notions of what failure can entail, and how to make it interesting and engaging rather than 'stop having fun now.'
I think it's dependent on system, then on group, then on how the GM handles it.
There are systems that just really want the players to win always/most of the time (Hero System Champions springs to mind), regardless of challenges. Champions is a four-color pulp comics silver age sort of gaming system; sure the cover of this month's issue might show all the Avengers lying "dead" and Dr. Doom standing triumphant over their bodies but within 2-5 issues everything is back to normal, right?
Conversely, Call of Cthulhu, and to a somewhat lesser extent Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (2e moreso) are straight up: drive these people insane/kill them. The kind of things "supernatural investigators" built into a Champions game (note: not generic Hero System, but actual Champions supers) would do ("I punch the Dark Young, how much knockback does it take?") would leave their CoC counterparts gibbering on an asylum floor, or as a greasy spot on the cubic, basalt wall in a blasphemous forgotten city beneath Mt. Erebus in Antarctica. Likewise, trying to run a group of WHFRP characters through, say, G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief would have the following results: most of the group dead, a couple of spell-casters insane, and the few who made it out with that much treasure arrested for heresy immediately and all that wealth "appropriated" by the Imperial authorities.
Then you've got the middle path, earlier D&Ds, where yes death can come, but it can be overcome and with a high-enough level party, be overcome on the fly, but there's still consequences (loss of CON, optional loss of Charisma, or a limb leading to other difficulties adjudicated by the DM, and so on), but there's definitely a "Well you have slain most of the stuff in this dungeon but you're out of spells, the Clerics are dead, and you're cut off from escape and have 10 hit points between three fighters and a thief." moment at which you know you're not getting out. But unless your players are very foolish that moment doesn't come immediately, indeed, it comes after a while of adventuring, and the party may well know that they're overextending prior to that TPK.
As to the group - hey, losing a character or three at a pick-up game for me has never been a problem. However if you've got another group that's looking for a new DM and they join up with you at the shop/mall/bookstore/whatever ... I think you've gotta play it to the system but before going in let them know what to expect. "Hey I play full on adversarial DM style" or "I'm a 'let-the-party's-desires-drive-the-game' kind of DM" etc. A group you've been with for a long, long time...I think you know each other well enough that unless there's some seeeerious animosity then it's "easier" to TPK or TPL them (total party losing).
Finally, I think a DM can handle it over degrees either well or poorly, and this relates back a bit to what kind of group you have. If you announce at the game store, "Okay, I'm running S1 with pregens, who wants in?" and a bunch of fellow grognards hop up and say "oh we are SO KICKING THIS MODULE'S ASS!" and they die in the most horrible ways...I think you can gloat a bit at them. Conversely, if it's a group consisting of close family and friends you don't jump up and start telling them to suck it down and that you made them all your bitches. :)
Oh, and a fourth: depends on circumstances. A TPK that ends a multi-year campaign and manages to culminate the campaign's apotheosis (heros all die draining their life force into the alien artifact that destroys Galactus and stops him from eating the universe, slay all the demon princes of the abyss but are in turn slain, etc.) can be awesome and one of those games that was talked about for years later. On the other hand, spending hours helping a group of neophyte players get a character together and then crushing them ten minutes after "Okay you all beam down to the planet's surface" is a dick move.
I think the question is interesting.
I think it is odd how many posts talk about death.
I don't have a good answer as regards how much losing is too much. Like most things it depends, obviously. I guess my analogy would be there should not be so much losing in the game that the players end up feeling as frustrated as they would if they are stuck in traffic for too long a time. How much losing is too much? Well how long is too long?
The key point of the analogy is that the frustrating things about being stuck in traffic is the perception of not making progress. Often, even if the drive takes longer, it is less frustrating to be on a side road where traffic is moving than to be on 3 lanes of interstate highway that is standing still. The feeling of progress feels better. Similarly in an RPG, the players want to feel that they are making enough progress - towards solving the mystery, advancing the plot, powering up their PC, achieving secondary goals, defeating the big bad, defeating some little bads, etc.
Quote from: Bren;810102I I think it is odd how many posts talk about death.
Personally I would put that as a side effect of the DnD "you're fine at 1 HP and dead at 0" phenomena. Games with more graduations of injury mean you could receive a lasting loss without death. I prefer those types of games personally, but my group prefers to play DnD so my mental baseline is, perhaps, skewed.
When you're roleplaying, the journey can be more important then the destination. A night "accomplishing" zero by staying in a tavern all night can be fun for the players and characters alike.
Quote from: CRKrueger;810110When you're roleplaying, the journey can be more important then the destination. A night "accomplishing" zero by staying in a tavern all night can be fun for the players and characters alike.
Good point. But normally I wouldn't equate a night in the tavern with losing. Neither would most of my characters. :)
Most of the gamers who can handle loss have moved on to boardgames and card games. Lots of what's left among RPGers expect auto-win participation trophies if they show up at the table.
I've seen too many tantrums in the past two decades.
I do wonder if these same tantrum-throwers play video games or board games where 75% loss is normal? Heck, any two player game is 50% loss.
As a GM, I encourage PCs to take actions that have meaning, but the fickle gods of fate (dice) may strike them down. For my players, if they "lose" or "die", they are generally happy if they knew they had a real chance of success, or in a campaign, a potential for a second chance.
Quote from: dbm;809891Some people don't get don't get past the temper tantrums stage of development, unfortunately.
And, being more generous, we all have a bad day from time to time when our 'shit buffer' is running on empty!
Or quite simply, being unable to make a new character when you want to is not being able to play the game you want to play. If you were playing Bob the Fighter and now - for whatever reason - want to play Bob the Thief, and aren't allowed to, it's the same as playing D&D today and wanting to play Vampire tomorrow. If you can't, why hang around?
Of course, entire new game systems all the time are a hassle. But it's rather easier for a GM to accommodate a new character than a new game system. It's a reasonable request.
The same people who say it's unfair to make a player play a character randomly-rolled rather than point-buy will turn around and say that same player must play the character however smashed-up and useless they may have become during play. So we should not put up with the character we get during character generation, but must put up with the character we get during play?
Losing is fun provided the person feels that their efforts were not arbitrarily stymied, and that there is some chance of getting it right next time. Losing is fun if victory is possible next time.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;809888I never understand people who do this sort of thing.
Some people just cannot take any sort of loss. They will freak eventually and just need a trigger.
Others though just get really attatched to a character. This can be a sign of a really good GM, or just how a player clicks. Or both.
Quote from: Will;809976Mortality expectations and system are why I don't play Eve Online; it forced me to either be safe and not frustrated, or to do the stuff I enjoy and be constantly screamingly frustrated by losses.
That is how it was with Anarchy Online too. You learned to avoid the PVP zones if you wanted to get anything actually done.
Quote from: Spinachcat;810117Most of the gamers who can handle loss have moved on to boardgames and card games. Lots of what's left among RPGers expect auto-win participation trophies if they show up at the table.
I've seen too many tantrums in the past two decades.
I do wonder if these same tantrum-throwers play video games or board games where 75% loss is normal? Heck, any two player game is 50% loss.
As a GM, I encourage PCs to take actions that have meaning, but the fickle gods of fate (dice) may strike them down. For my players, if they "lose" or "die", they are generally happy if they knew they had a real chance of success, or in a campaign, a potential for a second chance.
Hmm, to be fair, do you think your large percentage of one-shots/tournament games may skew that a bit?
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
They got into an unwinnable battle, lost a limb, and got downed. So instead of killing him, I had the bad guy take his best weapons and the leave him for dead.
I thought it would be a good quest hook for them to pursue revenge against this bad guy since it was personal now, but he wanted to just roll up a new character. When I said no, he went apeshit and quit.
Players don't like being railroaded, and rightly so. It depends on point of view. So, maybe your player decided that the character couldn't handle what happened to him; continuing to roleplay that character honestly might mean suicide. Would you have let him roll up another character
then, or would he have had to roleplay the corpse?
Quote from: rawma;810151Players don't like being railroaded, and rightly so. It depends on point of view. So, maybe your player decided that the character couldn't handle what happened to him; continuing to roleplay that character honestly might mean suicide. Would you have let him roll up another character then, or would he have had to roleplay the corpse?
Losing a battle is a pretty fucked up definition of "railroading".
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I thought it would be a good quest hook for them to pursue revenge against this bad guy since it was personal now, but he wanted to just roll up a new character. When I said no, he went apeshit and quit.
While as a player I'd probably be OK with renaming my character Lefty or Peg-leg and pursuing his quest for vengeance against his nemesis the evil Count von Limbinator as a GM I can't always predict what other players are going to find fun and I figure there isn't a lot of point in insisting somebody runs a character they aren't enjoying anymore. That said, going ape shit and rage quitting sounds extreme.
Quote from: Brad;810152Losing a battle is a pretty fucked up definition of "railroading".
The railroading is demanding a player play a character they don't want to play.
Quote from: rawma;810154The railroading is demanding a player play a character they don't want to play.
I got that.
Quote from: Bren;810155I got that.
Brad didn't.
Quote from: rawma;810156Brad didn't.
Yeah. I noticed that too.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the traditional Runequest response to delimbed PCs is to get together with a few other limb-lost PCs and open up a bar that caters to adventurers.
Quote from: rawma;810154The railroading is demanding a player play a character they don't want to play.
You've never played Amber, have you?
Quote from: Brad;810159You've never played Amber, have you?
Yes, I have. I didn't much care for it, but nobody forced me to play a character that I didn't want to play, so I don't think it's intrinsic to Amber.
Quote from: Bren;810157I forgot to mention that the traditional Runequest response to delimbed PCs is to get together with a few other limb-lost PCs and open up a bar that caters to adventurers.
Maybe they're government subsidized as a kind of PSA: Scared Straight for adventurers.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;809888I never understand people who do this sort of thing.
Neither do I. On the other hand, I don't try to "force" a player to play a character if he doesn't want to anymore, for whatever reason. I wouldn't stop playing a character after he getting crippled, but if someone wants to I'm not objecting.
Quote from: CRKrueger;810110When you're roleplaying, the journey can be more important then the destination. A night "accomplishing" zero by staying in a tavern all night can be fun for the players and characters alike.
Absolutely. Speaking for our group, we come at RPGs with a strong "game" perspective. Which is not to say we don't love the role playing too, but the game bit is first.
We are all lovers of tactical games too, but rarely have time for lots of gaming at the moment so a more technical combat challenge scratches an itch for us.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;810121Or quite simply, being unable to make a new character when you want to is not being able to play the game you want to play. If you were playing Bob the Fighter and now - for whatever reason - want to play Bob the Thief, and aren't allowed to, it's the same as playing D&D today and wanting to play Vampire tomorrow. If you can't, why hang around?
Of course, entire new game systems all the time are a hassle. But it's rather easier for a GM to accommodate a new character than a new game system. It's a reasonable request.
That isn't "rage quitting" to me, that's shaking hands and going separate ways. I was responding to the concept of someone throwing a tantrum as their shiny got dented.
As a GM I would always allow a player to retire their PC if they were no longer enjoying it. If your campaign (the generic you, not you specifically) is based on the same cast of PCs going from start to finish as they were "the chosen ones" or some such then it is incumbent on you as the GM to invent and acceptable reason as to why the PC cast can change a bit at least to account for losses and people simply getting bored with their current character.
We played a 4e campaign in this vein, and I simply lost interest in my character about a quarter of the way through. Our solution was for two players to swap characters (and we kept personality drift to a minimum) but it was tricky.
Quote from: rawma;810154The railroading is demanding a player play a character they don't want to play.
Wouldn't it let players avoid consequences of their actions though if they just get rid of their new character and start from a new slate every time something happens they don't like? That's why.
Or like, making a new character that's identical to the old one with a slightly different name or something.
Although to be fair, if this was a normal D&D campaign it would be another thing entirely. In this case we were playing an Amber style Throne War type game where it was PvP and we had a set number of participants -- bringing in a fresh new character is like getting a second life, so to speak, which is why I didn't let them make a brand new character and they knew this going in.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;810182Wouldn't it let players avoid consequences of their actions though if they just get rid of their new character and start from a new slate every time something happens they don't like? That's why.
I don't see it like that. As I said before, I wouldn't stop playing a maimed or dispossessed character, but I respect that other people may feel differently. If the player prefers to pass on the dramatic chances the character offers, is up to him or her.
QuoteOr like, making a new character that's identical to the old one with a slightly different name or something.
I don't usually allow that. Different characters must be different in some way. But anyway, with most systems is really difficult to obtain that, specially if random chargen is involved.
QuoteAlthough to be fair, if this was a normal D&D campaign it would be another thing entirely. In this case we were playing an Amber style Throne War type game where it was PvP and we had a set number of participants -- bringing in a fresh new character is like getting a second life, so to speak, which is why I didn't let them make a brand new character and they knew this going in.
Fair enough. Then I would probably rule the same.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;809862I actually had a player ragequit the game because of that once.
They got into an unwinnable battle, lost a limb, and got downed. So instead of killing him, I had the bad guy take his best weapons and the leave him for dead.
I thought it would be a good quest hook for them to pursue revenge against this bad guy since it was personal now, but he wanted to just roll up a new character. When I said no, he went apeshit and quit.
I actually come closer to your view on it, though our GM usually allows the players to choose. Which is a bit more fair, and I'd do it too. We're gearing up to end the campaign and start up a new one, switching from Pathfinder to Iron Kingdoms RPG, and I get the impressions that the IKRPG GM may be fine with us just rolling up new characters if they die (it's a lot more perma-lethal than PF).
We also are running Edge of the Empire RPG, and I think the GM for that may be more willing to let us have the option of either dying or new character making, but EotE is also more perma-lethal.
Ragequitting is a bit extreme though. He should have tried to convince you first. (It's the getting so upset that bothers me, not the quitting.)
Edit: Losing or not losing in an RPG is also a bit tough to call. In PF, we've had a few defeats on the order of "this thing is too tough and is running us roughshod! Let's retreat!" Which is a loss, but we tend to go under the theory of "what do we do next time?"
In IKRPG or EotE, the loss can be different, e.g. "you lost your safehouse" or "your business partner is screwing you over." Which is fine, and it's story development, so you figure out how to respond to it and keep the story moving.
In our group that may be a bit hard because our group isn't really good at getting together and planning. But that's how group roleplayers are - herding cats.
Quote from: CRKrueger;810143Hmm, to be fair, do you think your large percentage of one-shots/tournament games may skew that a bit?
Absolutely!
Its one of the reasons I only sorta-miss having a regular crew attached to a long term campaign. Even players who are predisposed to becoming whiny bitches can usually hold their shit together for 4 to 6 hours.
But since I've seen too much whiny bitch/entitlement behavior even at one-shot events (FLGS, cons, or friends of friends at home games), I make sure I preface all my games with "trigger warnings" about my GM style, aka my villains will strive against you, my monsters want to eat you, the gods may fuck with you* and the dice will do what they will.
* My "the gods may fuck with you" speech is important for when I run Mazes & Minotaurs because I portray the Greek Pantheon as superpowered teenage drama queens just a couple steps more rational than the Computer from Paranoia. Except for poor Athena who got cursed with wisdom.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;810182Wouldn't it let players avoid consequences of their actions though if they just get rid of their new character and start from a new slate every time something happens they don't like? That's why.
Or like, making a new character that's identical to the old one with a slightly different name or something.
For most RPGs, you'd be losing all of the advancement the previous character had: if not experience/levels, then at least knowledge, connections to NPCs, belongings (even if the new character inherits from the old, charge a stiff inheritance tax in whatever form). I prefer advancement in my RPGs and some measure of random character generation (neither is really an Amber thing?).
QuoteAlthough to be fair, if this was a normal D&D campaign it would be another thing entirely. In this case we were playing an Amber style Throne War type game where it was PvP and we had a set number of participants -- bringing in a fresh new character is like getting a second life, so to speak, which is why I didn't let them make a brand new character and they knew this going in.
What would you have done if the character
had died? From the player's point of view, the character motivated by his loss that excited you may have just looked like keeping the game going at that player's expense. Sort of like being the player who goes bankrupt in Monopoly but has to keep playing on and on with no property when the game is expected to last another 12 weeks. A PvP game where one player's character becomes non-viable needs some kind of exit strategy.
The getting angry part is bad. I won't defend that, no matter the circumstances; he should have just quit without drama if that's where it was going. And you should probably be glad he quit; consciously or not, he probably would have trashed the game from then on if he'd continued.
I don't expect my characters to have no setbacks; I played a D&D character for four sessions or so who was missing one arm. His Illusionist skills were mostly useless as were some of his Thief skills. But that was my choice (a regenerated arm was likely, whether he sat at home while I played another character or not), and it was a cooperative game so the other characters took up the slack (and he was perhaps as good without an arm as the substitute character would have been with two or more arms).
Quote from: dbm;810174That isn't "rage quitting" to me, that's shaking hands and going separate ways. I was responding to the concept of someone throwing a tantrum as their shiny got dented.
We've just heard from the DM. The
player is probably on some forum somewhere saying
the DM threw a tantrum and insisted he play a crippled character.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;810299We've just heard from the DM. The player is probably on some forum somewhere saying the DM threw a tantrum and insisted he play a crippled character.
I actually gave the player numerous chances to try and pick things back up -- like allying with one of three different powerful factions who could help them out. But it felt more like the player (who fancies themselves a writer) had some sort of literary arc planned out in their mind and got frustrated when it was disrupted by the consequences of their decision.
It was almost like a bad relationship, really. I bent over backwards over and over and over to try and accommodate them but they always threw it back in my face. So when they finally quit it was kind of a relief and the rest of the group was happy too.
You're right though, that player thinks it was all my fault.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron;810299We've just heard from the DM. The player is probably on some forum somewhere saying the DM threw a tantrum and insisted he play a crippled character.
Sure. I'm commenting on the behaviour, not judging the person. I think we've probably all seen it, or know someone who has (think about that ;)).
Quote from: jhkim;809844Anyone have experience with a high loss rate that was still fun? Were there things that it needed to help keep things upbeat?
Alternately, what do you think might make a high loss rate still fun to play, hypothetically?
Yeah, I like high loss rates. To me, the questions are "how high of a loss rate", "why do they lose", and "how severe of a loss".
A loss where you couldn't do anything isn't much fun. Losing a character every week isn't much fun. Losing every single time isn't much fun.
Frequently escaping with your lives, while the bad guys get to advance their agenda, making your lives even more difficult but not impossible? That can be a shitload of fun, especially if it's because of bad planning or bad luck or even not wanting to sacrifice enough for the win.
Exactly, as said in other threads. Getting killed in a fight or to a trap that could be found is one thing.
Getting killed by a trap that there is no warning at all is there is a totally different matter. Or being first level and the DM rolls on the random wilderness table and gets a dragon and just has it attack rather than using the reaction chance or any other sort of thought to mitigation.
Quote from: jhkim;809844Anyone have experience with a high loss rate that was still fun? Were there things that it needed to help keep things upbeat?
Alternately, what do you think might make a high loss rate still fun to play, hypothetically?
i think a better way to approach this issue might be using different terms than absolutes like "win" and "loss". i would prefer looking at the problem as a ratio of achievements and failures. a game can still be fun as long as the ratio doesn't tipp too badly towards failure. the tipping point will of course be different for every group. achieving something at great cost can be fun, but i doubt many players enjoy having the feeling of never really accomplishing anything.
as long as you win some, it's fun to lose some.
Quote from: jhkim;810069- The stakes can't be all-or-nothing.
- The stakes still need to be meaningful.
- Failures don't have to be absolute.
- Have lots of different goals actively in play.
i think this list sums up some good ideas that help keeping the ratio balanced. especially #4.
Interestingly, my group found that DnD 4e balanced things very well on a knife edge in terms of tension and risk of failure. We regularly came through encounters by the skin of our teeth, with only a fraction of HP remaining and significant resources expended.
I hypothesise that, whilst it's unpopular with some people, resetting to "almost full" after each encounter makes it much easier to make every encounter challenging in its own right; whilst retaining some kind of higher level attrition (healing surges, daily powers, consumable magic items) that has an impact in the longer term means that something tangible is at stake.
The problem with a traditional (non-4e) DnD attrition model is that the first encounter of the day pretty much has to be a cake-walk if there is to be a second, third etc. encounter that same day. 4e did get past that, and you could be on your knees at the end of the first encounter (fearing imminent loss, to keep it relevant) whilst having the ability to bounce back and come at a second encounter and have a similar roller coaster for every encounter. And they were roller coasters, in my personal experience, with lots of tense results.
So DnD 4e allowed you to mostly fail all day, to mangle a quote. ;)
Quote from: dbm;810654The problem with a traditional (non-4e) DnD attrition model is that the first encounter of the day pretty much has to be a cake-walk if there is to be a second, third etc. encounter that same day. 4e did get past that, and you could be on your knees at the end of the first encounter (fearing imminent loss, to keep it relevant) whilst having the ability to bounce back and come at a second encounter and have a similar roller coaster for every encounter. And they were roller coasters, in my personal experience, with lots of tense results.
It's not a cake walk if you've lost resources that were vital to later objectives; the outcome in doubt is what it cost to win, not whether you're going to win. And the good treasure is usually with the later objectives. Bad luck or bad planning in OD&D could lead you to having to make "save or die" saving throws -- if you pass them, you're still good for the next encounter -- not to mention critical hits (admittedly a house rule) that make any encounter risky without necessarily consuming resources since they usually don't happen. And some older games distinguished fatigue (recovered after each encounter) and wounds (which persisted).
I won't go so far as to point out that roller coasters are just railroads that present an illusion of danger*, because I do like a mix of resource recovery from short rests and long rests and resources you can't access during encounters like rituals and hit dice.
*But I do like
writing roller coasters are just railroads that present an illusion of danger, so I'm going to write it** again. Just don't take it personally.
**"it" being roller coasters are just railroads that present an illusion of danger. "I have said it thrice:" :teehee:
Quote from: rawma;810681It's not a cake walk if you've lost resources that were vital to later objectives
The problem with that, I would suggest, is that it's very hard for players to work out that kind of relationship and cause and effect are very far apart. Based on my experience I would also suggest that a daily attrition rate is very much a cerebral challenge where as we found the encounter attrition model was much more of an emotional challenge. By that I mean we weren't thinking about whether we would run out of resources later on, but worrying about whether we will die in the next couple of rounds.
QuoteI won't go so far as to point out that roller coasters are just railroads that present an illusion of danger*
You have obviously never been on the 'Mouse Trap' in Blackpool, which has thrown cars off at least twice!
That is a disingenuous parallel, even if it is amusing, as it wasn't a foregone conclusion that we would succeed, and party members did get put down and killed from time to time. My point is we had to do everything we could (and there are some very, very skilled players round our table) to scrape a victory. If we hadn't been playing hard people would have died regularly. That (i.e. potentially every encounter being able to challenge immediately) is extremely unlikely to happen in a game which only has 'daily' or consumable resources like DnD for most of its history.
Quote from: dbm;810692The problem with that, I would suggest, is that it's very hard for players to work out that kind of relationship and cause and effect are very far apart. Based on my experience I would also suggest that a daily attrition rate is very much a cerebral challenge where as we found the encounter attrition model was much more of an emotional challenge. By that I mean we weren't thinking about whether we would run out of resources later on, but worrying about whether we will die in the next couple of rounds.
The problem I have with that is that if the risk of dying is always there, every encounter, then it's either a fake risk (nearly zero) or you don't get many encounters or the party would have died already.
The tracking of resources isn't that big a challenge if it's the big stuff: the wish scroll, the wizard's best spells, the fighter's HPs, etc; the stuff you (try to) save for major objectives (usually the early encounters in a single adventure are wandering monsters or guards and the later things have more treasure and more meaning to events in the world). I agree that if it all hinges on using arrows 5.3% too fast then it's sort of a tenuous thing. But people mostly don't track arrows and common spell components and so on.
QuoteThat is a disingenuous parallel,
Which is why I said I wouldn't go that far. :o
Quoteeven if it is amusing
Which is why I said it anyway, three times. :D
I'm not saying every single fight was on a knife edge; the GMs did mix in some lower risk challenges to change the pace and keep things fresh. But every encounter could be challenging in an immediate sense if you wanted it that way. And the majority were tough.
But the main thrust of my point was that it's a mechanism where you can regularly feel like you are 'losing' but still pull things back.
Another interesting mechanism is the 13th Age Escalation dice which means that you always start off feeling like you are under powered in a combat encounter but by the third round the balance starts to shift and you begin to get the upper hand. Again, it make you sweat in every combat encounter.
Quote from: dbm;810708I'm not saying every single fight was on a knife edge; the GMs did mix in some lower risk challenges to change the pace and keep things fresh. But every encounter could be challenging in an immediate sense if you wanted it that way. And the majority were tough.
And in "traditional (non-4e)" D&D there were plenty of risks to make the encounter challenging and intense: save-or-die, unknown or unexpected monsters or abilities (the second dragon is a spellcaster and is invisible; the ogre is an ogre mage; half the ghouls are ghasts), critical hits that could drop someone (if you have critical hits), etc. The threat (of unlikely bad stuff) is stronger than the execution, because the latter too quickly results in the execution of the player characters.
QuoteBut the main thrust of my point was that it's a mechanism where you can regularly feel like you are 'losing' but still pull things back.
Hmm, I remember feeling that way when the dungeon room [STRIKE]was[/STRIKE]
seemed empty. My main thrust was that it's mostly an
illusion or your characters would be dead. As I said, I like disparate resources, such as some only accessible between encounters or between adventures or recovered at different rates, and there's got to be a risk, but I don't want Hollywood-style dial-it-up fake intensity.
QuoteAnother interesting mechanism is the 13th Age Escalation dice which means that you always start off feeling like you are under powered in a combat encounter but by the third round the balance starts to shift and you begin to get the upper hand. Again, it make you sweat in every combat encounter.
Does this lead to delaying tactics on the side that gets stronger? Or do they only get stronger if they're fighting (or even succeeding) rather than parrying or whatever? My preference is that the side that starts it be at a disadvantage, to discourage a race for first attack and encourage talking to at least some of the enemies. But it seems like a shifting balance would be hard to balance (death spirals are usually discouraging), so I'd like to hear more about how 13th Age worked.
Quote from: rawma;810743Does this lead to delaying tactics on the side that gets stronger? Or do they only get stronger if they're fighting (or even succeeding) rather than parrying or whatever? My preference is that the side that starts it be at a disadvantage, to discourage a race for first attack and encourage talking to at least some of the enemies. But it seems like a shifting balance would be hard to balance (death spirals are usually discouraging), so I'd like to hear more about how 13th Age worked.
Only the PCs or certain monsters (for example Dragons) get the benefit of the escalation dice. You don't see people stalling in the early rounds, but they do hold back their 'big guns' until later in the fight when they are more likely to hit. It stops the round 1 nova and also stops fights from running on for ever (the dice starts at zero and counts up to six; I've never seen it get to six yet).
13th Age uses an evolution of the 4e ADEU power system, so most classes have a range of at will, encounter and daily abilities (though not all). So people hold back dailies until later in the fight and don't even use encounter powers until round 3 or so unless things are desperate. It works well as a pacing mechanism in our experience. It's the single biggest innovation in the system in my opinion.
ETA: another interesting factor is some powers interact with the Escalation dice. So, for example there are abilities which only work on an even value of die, or others which have additional benefits when the die is above a specific number.
Quote from: dbm;810756Only the PCs or certain monsters (for example Dragons) get the benefit of the escalation dice. You don't see people stalling in the early rounds, but they do hold back their 'big guns' until later in the fight when they are more likely to hit. It stops the round 1 nova and also stops fights from running on for ever (the dice starts at zero and counts up to six; I've never seen it get to six yet).
13th Age uses an evolution of the 4e ADEU power system, so most classes have a range of at will, encounter and daily abilities (though not all). So people hold back dailies until later in the fight and don't even use encounter powers until round 3 or so unless things are desperate. It works well as a pacing mechanism in our experience. It's the single biggest innovation in the system in my opinion.
ETA: another interesting factor is some powers interact with the Escalation dice. So, for example there are abilities which only work on an even value of die, or others which have additional benefits when the die is above a specific number.
I downloaded the SRD; a quick perusal finds "If the GM judges that the characters are avoiding conflict rather than bringing the fight to the bad guys, the escalation die doesn't advance. If combat virtually ceases, the escalation die resets to 0." I like it so far, given your report from actual play (this would probably be a case where whiteroom analysis would be untrustworthy). Further study planned, when I get through everything else that's already in the queue. :)
Quote from: rawma;810783I downloaded the SRD; a quick perusal finds "If the GM judges that the characters are avoiding conflict rather than bringing the fight to the bad guys, the escalation die doesn't advance. If combat virtually ceases, the escalation die resets to 0."
I think our GM threatened to decrement the dice once when we were prevaricating in a combat; we soon changed our approach. ;)
I never do anything to diminish the chance of the PCs losing, and they know that in my games they are never guaranteed a win. But still, more often than not, what I'm surprised about is just how often they do manage to win, and just how creative they are about doing it.
I can't help but assume that if they felt sure they'd 'win' no matter what, they wouldn't bother to be that creative.