How to deal with death in RPG?

pemerton said:

To the extent that [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s Ars Magica example is meant to be a negative example, the issue would seem to be one of pacing.

WIth the Champions example, again to the extent that it is meant to be a negative example, the issue would seem to be that the one player was able to make a choice that resolved the stakes for the other players. I think that can be a big issue, especially in systems that assume group play and so group win/loss.

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Neither were about pacing.

The Ars Magica campaign had about a 5 minute conversation with the lady before one player got antsy and worried the person on point was being too circuitous as opposed to the other players who thought she was being careful and delicate, as urged.

The CHAMPIONS campaign the players were aware of the danger to several PC loved ones. The group had decided a direct frontal assault was too risky and spent maybe three minutes working out a plan when on player decided that's not an approach his character would take and he unilaterally did the whole out in the open call out.

Both were about one player trampling on the agreed approach for the group. In effect, as [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] put it: "There are times when players are trying an approach, and are frustrated, or it rubs them the wrong way. They say "screw this," and do something else."

Nagol said:

Neither were about pacing.

The Ars Magica campaign had about a 5 minute conversation

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This is a case of me misunderstanding your desscription of "The PC was slowly bringing the conversation around to the issue."

Nagol said:

The CHAMPIONS campaign the players were aware of the danger to several PC loved ones. The group had decided a direct frontal assault was too risky and spent maybe three minutes working out a plan when on player decided that's not an approach his character would take and he unilaterally did the whole out in the open call out.

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This seems to reinforce my suggestion that "the issue would seem to be that the one player was able to make a choice that resolved the stakes for the other players." And it seems to reinforce my suggestion that this can be a big issue, especially in systems that assume group play and so group win/loss.

pemerton said:

This is a case of me misunderstanding your desscription of "The PC was slowly bringing the conversation around to the issue."

This seems to reinforce my suggestion that "the issue would seem to be that the one player was able to make a choice that resolved the stakes for the other players." And it seems to reinforce my suggestion that this can be a big issue, especially in systems that assume group play and so group win/loss.

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It's not the system assuming group play. The scenario framing provided group risk. That was deliberate and appropriate for the situation the PCs had developed.
I would suggest that, for the CHAMPIONS case, had the sneakiest PC decided to break in and free just his loved ones without the mook becoming wise to the issue, the group would have had somewhat the same basic reaction though more muted. Probably about the same intensity assuming the sneaky PC screwed up, got caught, and got people killed.

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pemerton said:

To the extent that [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s Ars Magica example is meant to be a negative example, the issue would seem to be one of pacing.

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It is reductive, and over-simplification, to think of the topic as "the issue". There's a significant number of human behaviors and contributing factors that can be involved in each of the examples given.

Let us return to the start of this portion of the thread, and check in that we are still talking about the same things...

DMZ said, "My point is just that sometimes things happen in game to all of us that we're not happy with. That sometimes the players deal the gamemaster an unwelcome surprise. "

This was originally in respect to content that couldn't realistically be created on-the-fly, such that GM preparation time (and resulting emotional investment) gets tossed aside. Maybe it is a riddle game. Maybe it is a socio-economic situation that is the basis of a negotiation between the PCs and crime bosses. Maybe it is a whole wing of a dungeon populated and statted out. It could be nearly anything.

The root is not generally about pacing. The root is that GMs can, with effort, come up with some really cool stuff, but sometimes players don't engage with that stuff, or they choose to disengage once they have already bought in. The *reasons* for their disengagement will differ from case to case, so we cannot really generalize.

You might say, "Well, I never use elements in my games that I can't prep rather quickly, so this is not an issue for me." And that's fine for you. But it isn't really helpful for others who still want to use such elements.

Umbran said:

You might say, "Well, I never use elements in my games that I can't prep rather quickly, so this is not an issue for me." And that's fine for you. But it isn't really helpful for others who still want to use such elements.

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Apart from "don't over-prep, and if you do over prep don't railroad to ensure it's used", I think the best advice for preppers is to focus on elements that have high reuseability. If a sphinx is killed before she can present her riddle, you can still use that riddle in future - perhaps on a dungeon door.

Nagol said:

It's not the system assuming group play. The scenario framing provided group risk.

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That second bit is what I was trying to get at with "resolving the stakes for the other players".

I think a system that allows that to happen - D&D certainly has this feature, and so does Rolemaster, Traveller, CoC, etc, because they don't have mechanical devices for separating consequences from the extrapolation of in-fiction causation - generates expectations for how the group should work at the table. Either, as [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has suggested, intra-group dissent/unravelling is accepted (and the obvious risk here is degeneration of the game) or else there are strong norms about respecting group decision-making.

Upthread I said "My players are consscius of the need to manage group tensions, and are sensitive also to whether or not the game depends on 'party' play (see eg 4e D&D, which is, vs Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy, which is not)." That's pointing to the same general issue.

Umbran said:

The root is not generally about pacing.

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I didn't suggest any general root. It made a suggestion about a particular issue in a particular context. [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] provided more information in response (fleshing out the meaning of "slowly") which corrected my misapprehension.

Umbran said:

The root is that GMs can, with effort, come up with some really cool stuff, but sometimes players don't engage with that stuff, or they choose to disengage once they have already bought in.

<snip>

You might say, "Well, I never use elements in my games that I can't prep rather quickly, so this is not an issue for me."

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I would, and did, say that - like [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I don't have disappointing sessions. Some posters appeared to be sceptical of this.

I'm not sure what you have in mind by "really cool stuff"; and I'm not sure what your threshold is for disappointment. Just having a look through my 4e prep folder on my computer, there are 60-odd files. There seem to be about 4 that (as best I recall) I never got to use: a fey forest encounter, a haunted fey swamp encounter, an aboleth encounter and an epic-tier shadowdark encounter. Each of these might be an hour or more of work statting up creatures. (I don't think I have any unused maps.) The shadowdark encounter could potentially be stepped up to 30th level and so be mechanically usable given the current state of the campaign, but I'd be surprised if the action were ever to return to the shadowdark.

These could have been fun, i'm sure; but the stuff that actually happened was fun too. The sessions weren't disappointing because I didn't get to use this stuff, and (eg) the feywild action that eventually did happen was good stuff.

I think my approach to reuseability might be a bit different from [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s, but it probably falls into the same general ball-park. In my case, it's prep of elements (creatures, NPCs, starship, etc) and situation (eg a haunted grove in the feywild) but not plot.

pemerton said:

I think my approach to reuseability might be a bit different from [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s, but it probably falls into the same general ball-park. In my case, it's prep of elements (creatures, NPCs, starship, etc) and situation (eg a haunted grove in the feywild) but not plot.

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That's what I meant.
Personally I normally run published adventures and my prep is just reading the adventure (hopefully in advance of play!). I don't really care if material goes unused, often it makes for a better game anyway. This is particularly true of Paizo APs I find. I ran X2 Castle Amber a few years ago and had a slight twinge of regret the east wing of the Castle went unused (I wasn't prepared to railroad by preventing the discovery of the dungeon early on), but it certainly didn't mean the session was disappointing.

pemerton said:

Either, as [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has suggested, intra-group dissent/unravelling is accepted (and the obvious risk here is degeneration of the game) or else there are strong norms about respecting group decision-making.

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Generally I find that most players these days have strong norms about respecting group decision making. So I feel I'm a bit of an outlier maybe (for D&D). I'll respect the group decision making as a player, but as GM I'm fine with intra-PC conflict.