Weak Deaths

[Raven Crowking]

Maybe this makes me sound coldhearted, but -eventually- I'm going to get fed up with trying to help the citizens of the local village if every session revolves around me being their only hope. There are several reasons for this, but the two easiest to express are: a) if it's really that dangerous to live there, why do they not move; b) the people of said village seem to be using me as a crutch and not making any effort at all to defend themselves.

Actually, this is where the modern comics angst of "The villians are only here because of you!" comes from.

Because we know that actual death is taken off the table for Hero X, we threaten everything around Hero X to create stories. You can break Batman's back, but he'll get better. You can kill him with the most potent anti-life equation, but he'll get better. Superman will rise from the grave. Hawkeye will come back again and again. Captain America? We all knew that his death was temporary. Heck, even his sidekick came back from the grave!

The whole thing becomes a farce.

Then, sooner or later, we notice that Braniac never attacks Chicago; clearly he is drawn to Metropolis by Superman's mere presence. We get the angsty-"Why do I have to have so many powers?" stories. We have stories that claim that Joker would stop killing folks if only Batman went away. And that works for a while, but it becomes a kind of a farce too.

Comics sales decline, and the writers go for "edgier, darker, more graphic", and that is working for a while.

But what we'd really like to see, deep in our comic-reader hearts, is a story that actually means something. That changes the world of the heroes in a fundamental way. That isn't simply written away a year later.

The Killing Joke isn't a classic just because Alan Moore wrote it. It is a classic because, in part, Barbara Gordon is still in that chair! Captain Marvel's death wasn't a landmark just because he died of cancer, but because he stayed dead for so long (although, Marvel has screwed that up recently).

Bruce Wayne's "death" was fairly meaningless, OTOH, because we all knew he would be back.

Meaning comes from both context and consequence. It is not enough to have only context; it is not enough to have only consequence. Without a healthy dose of both, no comic, no book, no movie, and no rpg has meaning. The more you pare away context, and the more you pare away consequence, the more you pare away meaning.

It really is that simple.


RC

 

[Zhaleskra]

New gamer, never played 3.5 before, joins a mid level 3.5 game. Spends several hours creating a character. Dies in the first round of the first encounter, before even acting.

Never plays D&D again.

There's really not enough information here for me to decide whether that's a problem with the person or if it was a problem with the presence of death. Because this person never played again, there is no way to find out.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Also, might be related to "spent several hours creating a character"! Yeesh!

A couple of hints for DMs addressing first-time players:

(1) If using a system that requires several hours to create a character, have some pregens to choose from ready. Then, if his first pregen dies, he can get right back on that bicycle with pregen #2, etc.

(2) Don't start the player at mid-level. 1st level is a training ground, where the decisions don't have to be that complex.....and the consequence of making a slightly sub-optimal decision don't have to be so dire.

(3) Don't assume that the player should be facing EL-equivilent foes. For a new player, a dire rat or a skeleton can be an exciting foe.

(4) Don't throw the player in with the old hands, where his ability to make decisions may very well be drowned out. A solo session may well be in order.

(5) Be prepared to follow what is interesting to the player, even if that means an hour or so spent simply wandering around the Keep on the Borderlands and never making it to the Caves of Chaos.

(6) Not all foes wish to kill defeated PCs; but every defeat should cost the PC something noticeable. OTOH, if the circumstances dictate that the PC should die, then let the PC die. Likewise, don't hesitate to reward the PC for good decisions. There is nothing that ruins a potential player so much as learning that his decisions don't really impact his PC. Don't be a DM who teaches that lesson!

 

[Zhaleskra]

Also, might be related to "spent several hours creating a character"! Yeesh!

I'm reminded of the worst review of the World Tree role playing game on Amazon.com. A 2 star review where the reviewer says making any character takes hours . . . I have to wonder if English is his first language or if he just has terrible reading comprehension.

I did spend a few hours (about 3 total) building the first World Tree character I made. The reasons for that were 1. the Michigan/Canada blackout of 2003, and 2. making sure the spells I chose were mostly ones the character would have the skill to cast in play. Having a very limited amount of light to work by didn't help either.

It has been suggested several times to have something like a "session buffer", like in the first 3 sessions your character participates in no permanent harm will come to him. Doesn't mean he won't get messed up, but it does give him a 3-day "get out of death free" card. And, for the umpteenth time: ASS SAVER POINTS!

 

[Raven Crowking]

So long as the player understands that the buffer is temporary, or that the ASP are limited, and the decision to play with padded weapons is in their court, I am fine with that.

The important thing here is to teach that player decisions matter within the context of actually playing the game.

Hours of character gen might interest old hands, who are used to a system or who want to explore its intricacies. As a way to interest potential new players, though, that's an extremely obvious epic fail.

Hours of character gen, followed by making no decisions while having that character gen undone, followed by the prospect of more hours of character gen, is an even more obvious epic fail.

Who in their right mind, I wonder, would start a new player in media res, in a combat that has the potential to kill that player's PC before the player can act, in the first place?

That seems like a failure of the DM, to me.


RC

 

[JacktheRabbit]

For example, falling to their death during a pretty standard climb, or drowning in a fairly casual situation. I'll find a way to make them survive.

My rule in this is that unless party is doing something really dumb, climbing without gear, or in combat without climbing, I dont make them roll. We roleplay them sending the rogue up first with proper gear, setting ropes, and then everyone follows.

The same goes for other items. If you made people roll per the rules every time they jumped in water then even olympic class swimmers would accidentally roll a couple 1's in a row and die for a stupid reason.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Who in their right mind, I wonder, would start a new player in media res, in a combat that has the potential to kill that player's PC before the player can act, in the first place?

That seems like a failure of the DM, to me.

Agreed. There is a trilogy of modules that form a small campaign where I think starting the PCs in media res in the first combat scene would be better than the rather forced "nothing's happening, or if it is it's not that important, talk to each other" immersion scenes. Hardly the only thing I'd change about that series either.

The same goes for other items. If you made people roll per the rules every time they jumped in water then even olympic class swimmers would accidentally roll a couple 1's in a row and die for a stupid reason.

Only roll the dice if the chance of failure MATTERS.

 

[Dausuul]

My rule in this is that unless party is doing something really dumb, climbing without gear, or in combat without climbing, I dont make them roll. We roleplay them sending the rogue up first with proper gear, setting ropes, and then everyone follows.

The same goes for other items. If you made people roll per the rules every time they jumped in water then even olympic class swimmers would accidentally roll a couple 1's in a row and die for a stupid reason.

Skill checks aren't attack rolls. Natural 1 does not auto-fail and natural 20 does not auto-succeed (otherwise a rogue willing to take 20 could pick any lock automatically). It is thus possible to have a PC who cannot fail a given skill check, and in fact this is quite often the case once you get into the mid-levels.

 

[the Jester]

Skill checks aren't attack rolls. Natural 1 does not auto-fail and natural 20 does not auto-succeed (otherwise a rogue willing to take 20 could pick any lock automatically). It is thus possible to have a PC who cannot fail a given skill check, and in fact this is quite often the case once you get into the mid-levels.

...barring situational modifiers, of course.

Even the easiest wall to climb becomes harder when the bad guys light it on fire and start to shake it like a rattle.

 

[Hussar]

But that is a straw man. No one here advocates Failure=Death.

What is at question is only whether or not death is an acceptable form of failure.

IOW, if you allow character death, Failure is a set of values, and Death is a member of that set. Thus, if the set contains even only Equipment Loss Due to Rust Monster and Death, then living characters who have experienced equipment loss due to rust monsters have also experienced failure, even if they are still living.

Yet, no one here advocates such a narrow set of Failure which also includes Death, either. A set becomes narrow by removing options, not by adding to them.

For example, I know an EN Worlder who, over the course of several previous threads, has decried character death (in most, but not all, circumstances), so-called "gotcha monsters" (such as rust monsters), equipment loss, petrification, and indeed anything that takes a character out of the action for more than a round or two, and possibly even that.

Now that fellow has a very narrow set of acceptable "failure" conditions! Perhaps you know him?


RC

Really? Straw man? Several posters, Celebrim included, have stated that removing death from the game makes the game either boring, or flat out not even a role playing game anymore (Celebrim states, why should we bother rolling for anything if death is not on the table?). How is that not stating pretty spefically that death=failure is the only important consequence?

My issues with aha gotcha monsters comes from the fact that aha gotcha monsters are boring as all hell. Not because of anything to do with failure. Bang, oh gee, I'm dead. No thinking, no tactics, nothing. Wow, that was fun.

Please, if you're going to misrepresent my arguments, at least try to be in the same ballpark.