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

[Umbran]

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.

Not at all denying your experience - trying to dig around a little to see if we can see the root of that experience.

Like, first off, where are you playing - in open game-store play? With friends in your own home?

 

[Umbran]

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.

With raise dead and such, it totally is D&D for a lot of folks.

That said, I'm going to go out on a (I believe, incredibly sturdy limb) and suggest this has little to do with supers/not-supers, and has a lot more to do with what folks want to get out of play, and/or possibly respect for the GM and/or the table.

 

[overgeeked]

Not at all denying your experience - trying to dig around a little to see if we can see the root of that experience.

Honestly, I think it’s mostly down to there being a lot of toxic advice, behavior, and expectations in RPG communities that passes for accepted wisdom. But we can’t talk about that because it’s “badwrongfun” so even when someone’s fun is toxic, we have to smile and pretend it’s not toxic.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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

How is it not metagaming? If I tell you, the player, that I will not kill your character unless you say you want your character to die, and the very next thing you do is have your character strip naked and jump into a zombie pit because "haha I'm immortal" how is that not metagaming?

Or are you trying to say that metagaming is not frowned upon in non-storytelling games? Because I fundamentally disagree with that statement.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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!”

Honestly, that just sounds like being abusive. Just because I offered to buy you dinner doesn't mean that you need to see how expensive you can make the meal, just for the lolz. Just because I'm trying not to have character death massively disrupt the narrative and ruin people's fun, doesn't mean you need to go skinny-dipping in zombies.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Love Sentinels. I've been having issues running it, because the style is so different, but I'm a massive Sentinels Nerd

 

[Charlaquin]

Or are you trying to say that metagaming is not frowned upon in non-storytelling games? Because I fundamentally disagree with that statement.

It depends. “Non-storytelling games” is a very broad category, and there are groups within it that frown on “metagaming” and groups within it that don’t.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not normally a big fan of XP to Level 3, but I found this video amusing and relevant:

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly, that just sounds like being abusive. Just because I offered to buy you dinner doesn't mean that you need to see how expensive you can make the meal, just for the lolz. Just because I'm trying not to have character death massively disrupt the narrative and ruin people's fun, doesn't mean you need to go skinny-dipping in zombies.

Then we agree. But that’s exactly how my players would treat it. So character death stays in the game.

 

[Hussar]

Then we agree. But that’s exactly how my players would treat it. So character death stays in the game.

Which is perfectly fair.

But for those of us without such problems, playing a no death game isn’t a problem.

Heck had a very brief character death today in the game. Beholders can be brutal. One round kill on a pc. Half hour later brought back with raise dead.

How was death in any way impactful In my game?