D&D 5E [+] Questions for zero character death players and DMs…

[James Gasik]

I think @Hussar 's point (and he might answer this on the next page) is that if the Village of Hommlet is written with the plot hooks to lead you to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and you present the Temple of Elemental as a "bad place" where "bad things are happening" then there is an authored story. Because the DM clearly intends you to go to the Temple and stop the bad things.

Now, I think that the definitions are getting a little stretched and extreme, but I can see the overall point. I don't make a campaign where there is a zombie apocalypse on the rise, or growing trouble with the orcs in the north, without the expectation that the players are going to go and solve those issues. I may not know how, maybe not even why, but I have clearly set expectations in the goals. And it would be very difficult to run any sort of game where you did not do at least that much planning.

Yeah, it's not my usual way of doing things either, but he said it was "impossible", and I don't really think that it is, just takes more work.

 

[Hussar]

I think there is quite a difference between a DM providing adventuring hooks and a DM planning how the narrative must ultimately play out.

And I think everyone here would agree with that.

No one is suggesting that the DM must plan how the narrative must ultimately play out.

But, again, having DM authored story doesn't require that either. Creating an adventure is, ultimately, a DM authored story. You have plot, you have setting and you have character. That's a story. That you don't necessarily know how the story will end doesn't make it not a story. It's still a story. And, unless death is the only ultimate ending that is possible, then taking death off the table in no way changes the fact that a story can still have multiple results.

However, you cannot have a game of D&D where the DM just sits down, no setting, no plot, nothing, and asks the players, okay, what are we going to do? There are games where you absolutely CAN do this. But D&D isn't one of them. D&D leans really heavily into the DM setting up pretty much everything and that includes plot and story.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think there is quite a difference between a DM providing adventuring hooks and a DM planning how the narrative must ultimately play out.

I agree, but I can see how it is possible to interpret a statement like "A DM should never have a plan for the story" as being against plans as simple as "The players learn about the evil cult, the players find the evil cult, the players stop the evil cult" Even if that is a far different plan than "After Sir Robishar's secret crush, the wizard Larry is killed, he shall drive his sword through the heart of the cult leader in an explosion of radiant fury, this will happen on the third round of combat."

There is a lot of greyspace between those two places. And I know for myself, I certainly plan more than "find and defeat evil cult" because I like connecting that evil cult to other things in the game, so they can pursue those threads.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, it's not my usual way of doing things either, but he said it was "impossible", and I don't really think that it is, just takes more work.

I'm sorry, but, I just don't see how.

Do you have a setting? Does your setting have built in conflicts? Is there a way to communicate those conflicts to your players? Then you have a story. Keep on the Borderlands is the story of exploring the Caves of Chaos. That's the expectation and, frankly, if you don't, there really isn't a whole lot there to do otherwise. Your characters are going to go to the Caves and most likely going to kill and loot your way through the dungeons.

Yeah, sure, there's that group that organized the caves into a Neo-Marxist knitting commune, but, infinite monkeys and all that. Most people playing that module will have pretty similar experiences.

 

[overgeeked]

I think there is quite a difference between a DM providing adventuring hooks and a DM planning how the narrative must ultimately play out.

Absolutely. So how is guaranteeing character survival not, at least in part, planning how the narrative must ultimately play out?

Sure. Which monsters they fight, how those fights go...sort of, which hooks they bite, etc...and yet through it all, you know before you've even sat down to play that your character cannot die. No matter what choices they make. I can't see that as anything other than a superpower the vast majority of gamers I've played with over the decades would abuse early and often.

 

[Maxperson]

I have had a game just end because of a TPK, with the momentum just sucked out of it. And suddenly, everyone is "busy" for months. So I really consider a TPK to be something I should work to avoid as a DM.

TPKs are definitely not something I work towards! I actually almost had a TPK in this campaign after not having one for more than a decade. The party while low on resources did something to alert the BBEG that they were there, then moved only a few rooms away to try and rest. BBEG sent a demon which disrupted the rest and cost them yet more resources, then instead of going farther away to recover, they decided, with almost no resources left, to attack the BBEG in her lair. If their dice hadn't gotten hot, there would have been significantly more than the 1 PC death that there was.

I don't work towards a TPK, but if the players insist on working fairly hard to get to one, I'm not going to shy away from it.

 

[Maxperson]

True Equivalence remains True.

That's a true statement. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, RPGs just won't ever be equivalent to movies, books, plays, etc.

 

[Charlaquin]

But even something as incredibly bare bones as KotB still has a strongly implied story. Your characters are going to go to the Caves. There really isn’t anything else to do except go to the caves.

There’s a to. Of other stuff to do besides the caves! The keep itself is full of characters to interact with, there’s a decebt size of of hex wilderness to explore, there’s an evil hermit druid in the woods, and there’s the caves of mystery (left blank for the DM to be able to expand the module).

As well, KOtB is set up for Basic DnD play which specifically tells you “go to the dungeon”. There’s no game if you don’t.

The dungeon is definitely the main event, but there is other stuff to do. And if doing stuff = authored story, then the term is meaningless.

And even then the caves are set up with story. This tribe hates that tribe but is allied with the other tribe. That’s story right there.

That’s not a story, that’s just some faction relationships.

 

[Charlaquin]

I can't do that. Two of my players are reactive, and two are semi-proactive. I say semi-proactive, because they'll come up with side goals and pursue them, but if I leave them to direct the game entirely, they'll founder.

My games are run with plans for a story, but it's one that the players and I come up with during session 0 or -1, so they have full buy in before it begins. They're also free to wander off the story and into other things that happen in the world, but I keep the story there for them to glom onto when/if they want.

Which is perfectly fine and valid too.

 

[Charlaquin]

eh, not necessarily.

I had a character nearly die in a recent game. We were level 1, first bandit went down to a single firebolt, second bandit was a CR 2 Bandit captain and started wrecking us. (We weren't going to retreat, because supposedly they had kidnapped a small child. and must of it was absolutely naughty word dice. Both my character and the ranger missed every attack for 3 rounds.). I didn't die, thanks to some timely and possibly illegal healing magic, but the thing is I'd nearly guarantee that no one thinks the story would be served by my character's death in that fight.

Because it was our very first session of the game.

Everyone has been starting to build the bonds between our characters, just starting to figure out how this group fits together. My character's death would have been a massive disruption to all of that. We don't need to know where the narrative is going to know that we don't want it to go in that direction. If we did, I'd have played a different character instead of talking it out with the party before making them.

I didn’t say you need a pre-planned story to know you don’t want the story to go down a path where a given character dies. I said you need a pre-planned story to kill a character for a specific story purpose.

Anyway, it’s perfectly fine and valid that you all (would have) decided not to let that character die there. It just wouldn’t have been my choice, and I actually think that the party having a member they all knew and cared about die right away in pursuit of saving a child is a great story. Personally, I would have wanted to go down the route of letting that death happen (if the character had died), and making that part of the story.