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

[doctorbadwolf]

I’m honestly jealous. Any game where the players knew their characters couldn’t die would immediately turn into Blade of the Immortal combined with Jackass.

Ouch. That sucks. Even with good friends, I’d just…not run games, if that were the case. Which would really suck because games are my main hobby.

Which brings up the point that "No character death unless agreed" generally is referring to actual loss of the character. If the party have the resources for a revivify or similar available, "no death" DMs are often more willing to let the character kark it.

Sure.

There's a difference between "not always" and "never".

In terms of what the rules say about a thing…not really.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I’m honestly jealous. Any game where the players knew their characters couldn’t die would immediately turn into Blade of the Immortal combined with Jackass.

And I don't get that. To use an analogy (which always goes poorly) that's like you saying that if you knew I was willing to buy dinner for you, you'd purposefully buy the most expensive items you could just so I would be forced to spend more money.

There is no reason to do it, except that you feel you can, and I don't get that. Especially since metagaming is generally frowned on, and "The DM doesn't want to kill our characters, so everyone do the stupidest, most risky things possible since there are no consequences" is quintessential meta-gaming.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I don't get that. To use an analogy (which always goes poorly) that's like you saying that if you knew I was willing to buy dinner for you, you'd purposefully buy the most expensive items you could just so I would be forced to spend more money.

There is no reason to do it, except that you feel you can, and I don't get that. Especially since metagaming is generally frowned on, and "The DM doesn't want to kill our characters, so everyone do the stupidest, most risky things possible since there are no consequences" is quintessential meta-gaming.

Metagaming is frowned on in narrative group storytelling. That's not what's happening in these games.

 

[overgeeked]

And I don't get that. To use an analogy (which always goes poorly) that's like you saying that if you knew I was willing to buy dinner for you, you'd purposefully buy the most expensive items you could just so I would be forced to spend more money.

There is no reason to do it, except that you feel you can, and I don't get that. Especially since metagaming is generally frowned on, and "The DM doesn't want to kill our characters, so everyone do the stupidest, most risky things possible since there are no consequences" is quintessential meta-gaming.

That sums up my experience running most games over the years, but especially 5E game over the last near-decade. I’ve run for a few hundred players over this edition and that fits to a T the overwhelmingly vast majority of them. They take every advantage that they can simply because they can. Push everything as far as possible just because. Apparently the fun of the game comes directly from taking as much advantage as possible and doing everything you can to break the game simply because you can. So yeah, absolutely, “Oh, we can’t die…watch this…yeehaw!”

 

[tetrasodium]

And I don't get that. To use an analogy (which always goes poorly) that's like you saying that if you knew I was willing to buy dinner for you, you'd purposefully buy the most expensive items you could just so I would be forced to spend more money.

There is no reason to do it, except that you feel you can, and I don't get that. Especially since metagaming is generally frowned on, and "The DM doesn't want to kill our characters, so everyone do the stupidest, most risky things possible since there are no consequences" is quintessential meta-gaming.

Social norms play a big impact on things like that pay for dinner thing, it's even common enough for there to be at least one term for it (first google result). Getting away from the dating example though I'm another voice who can say that exact type of behavior of taking every advantage & pushing as far as possible just because they can is very very common in d&d5e beyond small closed groups of friends who know each other outside of d&d and are subject to pressure away from the table after violating social norms. It was always a thing but there was more that players needed from the GM & there was incentive to not act that way simply to keep from endangering those things.

 

[Umbran]

I’m honestly jealous. Any game where the players knew their characters couldn’t die would immediately turn into Blade of the Immortal combined with Jackass.

I just ran a short stint of Sentinel Comics RPG for my group, in which character death only happens if the player wants it to. This is superheroes, with all kinds of shenanigans attendant, and they didn't get silly about it.

Every genre has its silly quirks, and if folks don't buy-in to not violate genre, things go badly.

 

[Maxperson]

Also doesn’t the DMG talk about “dead” not always actually being the end? I can’t recall if it’s there or elsewhere.

It's probably there. The 5e DMG is very good at the shotgun effect of different ways to play. They say a little bit about a ton of different ways to run the game, and that seems like something that would be there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just ran a short stint of Sentinel Comics RPG for my group, in which character death only happens if the player wants it to. This is superheroes, with all kinds of shenanigans attendant, and they didn't get silly about it.

Every genre has its silly quirks, and if folks don't buy-in to not violate genre, things go badly.

Superhero games are a different beast. Nearly a century of source material in favor of death being a speed bump at best. That's not D&D.

 

[overgeeked]

I just ran a short stint of Sentinel Comics RPG for my group, in which character death only happens if the player wants it to. This is superheroes, with all kinds of shenanigans attendant, and they didn't get silly about it.

Every genre has its silly quirks, and if folks don't buy-in to not violate genre, things go badly.

Yes, of course. I play a lot of games, too. Any game fails if the players don’t accept or engage with the expected genre conventions. Granted.

People disagree about genre conventions and expectations all the time. Superheroes can mean anything from Batman ’66 to The Boys. As long as you’re all on the same page, it works. VtM has two big camps, the people who RP their characters to the hilt and those who play it supers with fangs. As long as everyone’s on the same page, it works. Etc.

Oddly, I haven’t experienced players who gleefully and actively fight against genre conventions like this outside of 5E players. Then there’s the 5E players I’ve experienced. It seems to be a uniquely 5E experience to have players actively and gleefully fight against whatever expectations and conventions are in place. They seem to take a perverse joy in being contrarian and burning games down. Yes, obviously my experience is not representative. Thankfully. But it’s still my experience.

ETA: I've been playing and running games for almost 40 years. It wasn't until the breakthrough popularity of 5E that this kind of thing became common.

 

[Vaalingrade]

VtM has two big camps, the people who RP their characters to the hilt and those who play it supers with fangs.

These are the same picture.