Do players want challenging games, with a real chance of death?

[Crimson Longinus]

My character died in my last Pathfinder game - partly bad luck (x3 crits can do an insane amount of damage at high levels) but also my own fault, as I forgot about a class ability that could have saved him. I was annoyed with myself, but fortunately the other characters stumped up the money for a Raise Dead (and even agreed to split the cost equally rather than making my character pay for it all).

Since we were playing an adventure path, it would have been jarring to have to introduce a new, high level character into the party at that late stage.

So I don't need games to be super deadly, but damn, do I hate raise dead? (Yes, yes I do!) It makes what should be a dramatic tragedy a financial inconvenience. Definitely among the first spells I ban when I run a game.

Another thing I hate is if it feels that the GM is trying to contrive reasons for my character not to die when it is obvious that they should. If I made bad choices and/or there was serious bad luck, then so be it. It is not that I necessarily like if my character dies, but if I know the GM is going to save them no matter what, it makes all the actions and decisions we take to avoid death seem pretty pointless, and ultimately is a negation of my agency.

That being said, I like games where dying in the first place is relatively hard, and not due just some one bad roll. Death should be due several things going wrong, and the players should have an opportunity to correct the course before it occurs. I am not a huge fan of games such as Rolemaster, where basically any attack has a chance to one-shot any target. My carefully crafted RM character dying a gruesomely from a first attack of first foe they encountered sure made me appreciate the defeatometer that is the D&D hit point mechanic! I also like that old school save or die effects are mostly gone from the modern D&D.

 

[Umbran]

Excellent, I hope there are enough out there that do. I'm going to start advertising my game soon and I am concerned that talking about it's challenging nature might be viewed as a negative. Interstellar Mercenary is tough!

Mod note:
Please be aware, if you want to advertise your game outside the Promotions/Press forum, you need to speak with Morrus about getting a publisher's account.

Otherwise, please don't use discussion posts here to drive people to your sales or crowdfunding efforts.

 

[Blue]

I play a number of genres where death generally isn't on the table. Having real challenges with real consequences and setbacks, but without the "oh, you've lost the personality, all of the connections, all of the character growth, character plot arcs, and the like" fits me much better than the idea of 50% character death.

If anything, a game like D&D where combat-to-the-death is a common stake holds a lot less risk for anyone who care about their characters, because the stakes aren't something that are fun to hit often. Where you get to continue with the character but live with the consequences, like failure to protect the innocents in a supers game, you can have much more risk.

 

[Celebrim]

It depends on the players. I have had two types so far, but there are reasonably some other types out there.

1) The player wants a real challenge with a real penalty of failure. Nobody really wants PC death, but the player prefers it to a game where the PCs have plot protection.
2) The player doesn't want real challenge with a real penalty of failure. The player prefers to cruise through every challenge and will cheat if necessary to do so. But the player wants to pretend to themselves that they are overcoming challenges, and as such their enjoyment would be tanked if they ever had to consciously think about the GM or the rules were preventing them from failing.

I have never had any of the following but I assume they are out there:

a) The player wants regular character death in an arbitrary and difficult game were the dice are stacked against them and no amount of good play can prevent death from stalking the party because the player prefers extreme realism to heroism and enjoys rolling up new characters. In this sort of play, the players don't have attachment to the character but to a group or organization of some sort that lives on even as individuals are chewed up by the meat grinder.
b) The player wants challenge either real or illusionary but is so attached to their character and the character's narrative that they prefer having obvious plot protection to anything that would end that narrative. Thus they don't want death, incarceration, or permanent maiming to be consequences that their character can suffer, but instead prefer that the harsh consequences of their failures fall mostly on someone else (generally an NPC).
c) The player doesn't want challenge at all and they know it. They want to be empowered and are quite happy if the rules and the GM agree that they should just be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. If the player thinks the story is more interesting if they fail, they will do so purposefully, but otherwise they want to do big cool things and exercise their imagination however they want.

 

[The Soloist]

I've been told by several different players, over the years, they want a 'meaningful death' for their characters. They want to be challenged but would be upset if their character died during a random fight with low stakes.

I call that the 'Boromir Syndrome'.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

I am usually here for the drama. I think of death as one of the least dramatically interesting consequences. I would prefer to see my character at their lowest than to get the easy way out from all the drama. What is more interesting is losing much or all that they care about it. Death lets them have peace and its often a sudden end to many interesting things that could have come.

But I agree with the talk of meaningful death as well. It can make for a fantastic point in the story where they stake their life on their beliefs and sacrifice it. Now that is some good drama.

 

[ismrpg]

It depends on the players. I have had two types so far, but there are reasonably some other types out there.

1) The player wants a real challenge with a real penalty of failure. Nobody really wants PC death, but the player prefers it to a game where the PCs have plot protection.
2) The player doesn't want real challenge with a real penalty of failure. The player prefers to cruise through every challenge and will cheat if necessary to do so. But the player wants to pretend to themselves that they are overcoming challenges, and as such their enjoyment would be tanked if they ever had to consciously think about the GM or the rules were preventing them from failing.

I have never had any of the following but I assume they are out there:

a) The player wants regular character death in an arbitrary and difficult game were the dice are stacked against them and no amount of good play can prevent death from stalking the party because the player prefers extreme realism to heroism and enjoys rolling up new characters. In this sort of play, the players don't have attachment to the character but to a group or organization of some sort that lives on even as individuals are chewed up by the meat grinder.
b) The player wants challenge either real or illusionary but is so attached to their character and the character's narrative that they prefer having obvious plot protection to anything that would end that narrative. Thus they don't want death, incarceration, or permanent maiming to be consequences that their character can suffer, but instead prefer that the harsh consequences of their failures fall mostly on someone else (generally an NPC).
c) The player doesn't want challenge at all and they know it. They want to be empowered and are quite happy if the rules and the GM agree that they should just be able to accomplish whatever they set out to do. If the player thinks the story is more interesting if they fail, they will do so purposefully, but otherwise they want to do big cool things and exercise their imagination however they want.

I'm definitely not talking about scripted death in the OP. I'd also be surprised if players want a guaranteed death too. I think game sessions, for the most part, are enhanced by players knowing there is a chance of death. I doubt players ever want to die but surely they want to be challenged generally?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this thread has a flawed premise, in that it lumps together two things that don't intrinsically go together.

"Challenge" and "risk of death" are not directly connected. You can have a game that has relatively little challenge but where the failure state is still death. And you can have challenging games where death is pretty much off the table, but other forms of loss are.

 

[Celebrim]

I think this thread has a flawed premise, in that it lumps together two things that don't intrinsically go together.

"Challenge" and "risk of death" are not directly connected. You can have a game that has relatively little challenge but where the failure state is still death. And you can have challenging games where death is pretty much off the table, but other forms of loss are.

Someone always makes this claim in threads like this and it never rings true to me in the slightest.

Let's take an extreme but relevant example. Suppose all your players are playing in pawn stance and suppose their sole aesthetics of play have to do with advancing their pawn and as such they are motivated to play the pawn as a ruthless sociopath only concerned with their own self-interest. Then I contend that the only forms of failure that count as failure from their perspective are things that stop them from playing their pawn which is ultimately either death or a few typically rarer and more unlikely things that are congruent to death such as incarceration for a timespan longer than the campaign, or permanent maiming or disability such the character is no longer playable in a competitive game.

Now that's an exaggerated case but it's a relevant case because in a lot of play you do have players that at least partly conform to that description. They will have other aesthetics of play and things that they value, but that's all secondary. Those tradeoffs are valued only in as much as they don't think they are risking real failure in order to engage with them.

And in general, in games where you had failure states other than death that were actually relevant, if you were to start regularly throwing out stakes like, "Would you rather take death or this other failure state" the vast and overwhelming majority of the time the player would take the other failure state no matter their aesthetics of play. I've never had a chance to test this but my suspicion is that in a mixed group of players where you had those stakes, in the long run any player that regular chose death as their failure state for some story reason or other aesthetic would gradually become dissatisfied with the game and with their choices when they got to watch players continually sacrificing to keep their character in the game and how much more rewarding that would ultimately be in the vast majority of cases.

So no, they are directly connected. You can't pretend "Oh you sacrificed the life of your nephew and now you are conflicted" is in any way a game state failure that is proportional to death unless "Conflicted" is such a steep penalty on the character that they are effectively in game maimed and unable to function as a playing piece. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down!" is not a failure state for a game compared to, "My playing piece been removed permanently from the game." Pretending that you can substitute one for the other and it's equivalent failure is just pretending. "Oh noes the orphanage burned down" is only a failure state in that more serious stakes were taken off the table so it's what you have left. This is "I prefer all the harsh consequences of my failure to fall on someone else." mode of gameplay.

 

[Kannik]

Someone always makes this claim in threads like this and it never rings true to me in the slightest.

RPGs are not like (NNNN)ball-type sports. There are aspects to it that people play for that go beyond just the score -- hence the Role Playing aspect of it. Losing or suffering something other than death can still be a very motivating challenge and rich (perhaps even richer, since it isn't kept at arms length) as death.

Are there players and groups that don't engage with the character/fiction/narrative/story aspects of RPG and remain more disassociated from their characters, engaging with them more like a token in a board game or an athlete on a sports field? Sure. And for those players, then a mechanical penalty will be more impactful. But this isn't universal, and to me therefore it isn't a compelling case to conflate death as the only real way for there to be challenge in an RPG.

Secondly, the other thing I take from Tomas' post is that there can be games that have plenty of death but little challenge (mostly due to lack of agency granted to the players).