Your character died. Big deal.

[roguerouge]

Sorry, I am influenced by this and this. Which gives me the impression that this might have been what it originally stood for, but was later changed into something a lot more specific (and that's what giving GNS it's bad name.)

For those of us not members of that community, please explain. They won't let us in without a password.

 

[jensun]

I really can't believe that we've made it this far into this debate without this analogy.

In the most popular serial narratives on earth, death of the PCs is a very rare thing and almost always dramatic rather than in a random, non-plot advancing encounter.

I'm referring to TV.

To which you can add novels, films, plays and almost every other form of storytelling.

Of course now howandwhy will come in and tell us that if we are trying to tell a story then we arent actually roleplaying.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

For those of us not members of that community, please explain. They won't let us in without a password.

Basically, the critic leveled against GNS seem to come from a certain degree of elitimsn among Edwards and his fans, and that some (especially Ron Edwards himself) seem to try to redefine terms so it becomes harder to understand then, and that they possibly even change the meaning of what was originally understood by the terms. What a "normal" role-player would understand on casually reading the terms no longer is how they are being defined, confusing even Forgeists, and seemingly making the whole theory less useful, for reasons I don't understand.

Especially seems Ron limit narrative play to "discussing" morality or ethics in the game, which constricts its meaning and makes others, "narrative-seeming" aspects work less well. The example I remember is that a Star Wars game is "simulationist" if anger leads to the Dark Side, and good triumphs over evil, and narrative (but no longer really Star Wars) if you allow evil to triumph or anger (or the Dark Side) lead to good results.
But this would mean that the "Death Flag" might be something you could find in both types of games - Simulationist or Narrativist, since the player in the "Anger leads to the Dark Side" Simulation game might not want his angry Jedi to die before he has turned to the Dark Side - and he might exactly choose to Raise the Death Flag in the scene where the character has the chance to redeem himself...

 

[Raven Crowking]

But if an enemy wizard beats your initiative and fires off a death spell, many players feel they didn't have any real chance of avoiding it. One roll and they're done.

Just for those of us who are numerically challenged:

1 Init roll + 1 save = 2 rolls, not one.

IMHO, most "one roll" deaths (if not all) are actually multiple roll deaths. Just as in this example, the aggrieved party "drops" one or more rolls when counting.

RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I really can't believe that we've made it this far into this debate without this analogy.

In the most popular serial narratives on earth, death of the PCs is a very rare thing and almost always dramatic rather than in a random, non-plot advancing encounter.

I'm referring to TV.

But RPGs are not TV Shows! How dare you compare them! If I would want to watch a TV show, I'd turn on the TV, not get my character sheet out!

Comparisions like this usually work for me. But maybe what's really in question here is that RPGs are supposed to be "serial narratives" in the first place, or should try to emulate anything in them.

Maybe the only answer to this is to say - you play your games with your goals, I play them with mine.

Unfortunately, this might not settle the issue, because in the attempt to finding the perfect definition of role-playing games, we have to FIGHT TO THE DEATH* on whether MY GOAL IS BETTER THEN YOUR GOAL*, and I am not actually playing a "story-telling" or "acting" game instead of an role-playing game and which of these D&D has, should and will always be.

*) pardon my Cirnoismn

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Just for those of us who are numerically challenged:

1 Init roll + 1 save = 2 rolls, not one.

IMHO, most "one roll" deaths (if not all) are actually multiple roll deaths. Just as in this example, the aggrieved party "drops" one or more rolls when counting.

RC

2 Rolls you don't have any control about. They happen immediately after each other, without you making any decisions in between. (And of course, traps don't require rolling Initiative - or skill checks. Only a rogue (or other classes with the Trap Sense feature) is allowed to detect certain traps at all, and he usually has to consciously search for them.).

 

[billd91]

I have no idea if this is aimed at me (I support taking death off the table) but I dont treat treat the game as about nothing more than killing things and taking their stuff. I am not sure where you would have that impression or is this just one of those "lets take an unsupported general swipe at people" things?

Don't get your back up. There's a lot of arguing that "D&D is fundamentally about killing things and taking their stuff" going on in other threads recently. It's not an unsupported general swipe at people.

 

[Mallus]

But D&D IS meant to have deaths.

I imagine Dungeons and Dragons is meant to have, well, dungeons and dragons, and I've ran whole multi-year campaigns with neither. Perhaps you've noticed that people play the game differently. What's integral in one group's campaign is discarded in another's, and yet they're both still playing D&D.

Heck, the whole point of the game, according to many, is to simply find new and interesting creatures and kill them.

Don't make too much that little chestnut. It's a just a clever shorthand. Well, usually.

Lastly, while you can have consequences that aren't death, don't you think it really starts to stretch it a bit?

The entire game is contrived (like the utterly unrealistic fiction that informs and inspires it). What's one more contrivance?

... and easily popped a new character in to replace them, neatly and easily fitting into the storyline.

Some people have more difficulty creating characters that they're interested in playing. They need a PC to click -- if you haven't guessed, I'm one of them. So it's not always merely a question of seamlessly inserting another character off the PC assembly line.

 

[Fifth Element]

Just for those of us who are numerically challenged:

1 Init roll + 1 save = 2 rolls, not one.

Yay for pedantism!

IMHO, most "one roll" deaths (if not all) are actually multiple roll deaths. Just as in this example, the aggrieved party "drops" one or more rolls when counting.

I already posted an example of a literal one-roll death. Many traps are literal one-roll deaths. But you're reading it too literally and missing the point. See Mustrum_Ridcully's reply above.

 

[Barastrondo]

Sorry if I'm offending people, but I honestly am flabbergasted (That's a fun word). I can understand completely that other games have no deaths, in the example of the Teenagers thingie. Seriously, I back that 100%, if the game isn't meant to have deaths, go for it.

But D&D IS meant to have deaths. That why we have raise dead spells and rituals, and rules for when you're unconsious and when you die. Heck, the whole point of the game, according to many, is to simply find new and interesting creatures and kill them. Unless you never kill anything else, I don't see why they'd hold back from killing you. And if you DID kill everything else, well, CE is still CE ;p. Lastly, while you can have consequences that aren't death, don't you think it really starts to stretch it a bit? I mean, just how many times are the bloodthirsty rampaging orcs going to knock you out and decide not to kill you?

Sure. But play styles vary even within a game, as people learn what they like.

Say, for example, that people play a pretty low-lethality fantasy game. Maybe it's D&D, and the DM is very soft on the players, secretly fudging rolls. Maybe it's another game that's nudged to be a little less lethal (including, these days, 4e). There are still consequences within the game, though: but they might be social ones or world-changing ones rather than PC death. You fail, and a hamlet is razed or you turn a noble into an enemy or a friendly NPC becomes hideously cursed.

Now where you start to get divergences is sometimes people who play games in that vein like them. If a gamer plays in both a traditional "failed your save, roll up another character" game and a lower-lethality "I'm not going to kill you unless you really do something stupid, but if you screw up you may lose things in the world that you care about," one of three things can happen. The player may decide they like the traditional game better. She may decide she likes both styles equally, and would enjoy alternating. Or she may decide she likes the latter style better, even though she likes the other trappings and tropes of D&D.

So let's say we have a gamer who likes elves and dwarves and dragons and hippogriffs and beholders and mind flayers and drow and fireballs and flaming swords, but who isn't that interested in a high-lethality style of play. You can't really argue that he should play some other game: D&D still has 90% of the stuff he likes, he just wants to mess with a 10% that somebody else finds to be absolutely sacred. But that's what everyone does with D&D. Everyone drops out something in their 10% that somebody else finds vital and invigorating, be it drow, gnomes, dragonborn, a given setting. And the game still works.

Honestly, I'll admit I see people talking about styles of gaming I'm not into a lot, and I wonder exactly what it is that they see in it. But the thing is, my default assumption is they must be doing something right. They must be doing some good gaming in order to prefer that style, or they probably are good at identifying what they like and acting on it. The attitude that they're doing it wrong... that's something you can only invoke if they're not having any fun. If they are, then it's just crazy egotism to assume they'd have more fun if they did it your way.