New WotC Article - Deadly Dice

[Lwaxy]

D&D is a roleplaying game not a storytelling game.system.

Ah but to me, roleplaying is the best way to create a story I have yet to see any of the few so-called "storytelling" games I was shown tell a real good story or even set the basis for it to be possible. That is mainly because I want to have fun with a developing story, failure or not, either as a player or as a GM, and it would be boring for me not to have random and dangerous elements. I want to be surprised no matter what side of the table I'm on, and d20 games never fails to deliver that.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ah but to me, roleplaying is the best way to create a story

Quite often this ends up being the case. Simply roleplaying while exploring a fantasy world can produce some of the best stories IMHO. This is distinctly different from the goal of play being to create a story though.

As a DM if a character dies in combat and you change the result because it would be a bit anticlimactic, you MIGHT be playing a story game.

If you are constantly referring to a shared narrative, you MIGHT be playing a story game.

 

[stevelabny]

Is anyone else seeing a disconnect in the results of this poll (so far) and the community at large?

I bounce around to lots of different forums, and have been reading a lot of opinions about 5E. Lately, there's been a lot of talk about save-or-dies and it seemed a large percentage of the gaming community hates the idea of them. In their reasonings they repeatedly say they think death should be rare and/or only when the player does something remarkably foolish.

Even in this thread, I saw a few people saying they voted "uncommon" but would play it as "rare".

I want to play/run games where the deaths are uncommon or common. Currently they combine for 65% of the vote. However, from the few games I've played and the tons of games I've read about in the last 12 years... that number couldn't be further from the truth.

What gives?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm comfortable with several different chances and frequencies of death in a system. My main criteria is that the system does what it says it does.

Take Basic/Expert D&D, for example--a pretty good game in a lot of ways. The actual mechanics, at least through level 5 or so, played as written, give you Fantasy Vietnam. The text implies that the system gives you Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Once I figured this out, my teenage self realized that I could play it as written for one kind of fun, or I could fudge it to sort of get the kind of fun the system said it delivered. But this took me awhile, and then a much longer while to realize that fudge was not the best way for me to get the latter fun.

Contrast this with early RuneQuest. The system says that if you get into fights, you'll probably die, suffere a gruesome wound, or maybe get inhabited by a disease spirit and waste away to your former self. Of course, if you try to run, you might also suffer any or all of those, too. And then the text reinforces what the system does.

I'd of course like options to change the lethalness built into D&D, instead of me having to figure them out. But a first step to providing such options is making a system that does what it says it does.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Is anyone else seeing a disconnect in the results of this poll (so far) and the community at large?

...

What gives?

People who fudge are happy with a lot of implied mathematical nastiness because of the flavor, knowing full well they will mitigate or nullify it as they desire. This inevitably skews polls of this nature towards more mathematical nastiness than will actually be practiced at the average table.

 

[D'karr]

Is anyone else seeing a disconnect in the results of this poll (so far) and the community at large?

What gives?

Well with polls that are designed off the cuff you are bound to find a lot of questions that don't match what is being asked or the perception of what is being asked.

There is also a certain bias in the poll and the poll taker. So someone might answer a certain way, not because that is how they actually feel, but because they infer that the "bias" in the poll will achieve a much worse result with any of the other answers.

 

[Mattachine]

Quite often this ends up being the case. Simply roleplaying while exploring a fantasy world can produce some of the best stories IMHO. This is distinctly different from the goal of play being to create a story though.

As a DM if a character dies in combat and you change the result because it would be a bit anticlimactic, you MIGHT be playing a story game.

If you are constantly referring to a shared narrative, you MIGHT be playing a story game.

I am certain that I have been playing D&D since 1981, whether it's been tournament play, tactical fantasy strategy, shared narratives, light fantasy, or even "standard D&D".

 

[Belphanior]

The article and poll are too vague to be of any use.


First, let's take a look at the most common response: "uncommon, always a threat". Well that's not hard to do. Just make any natural 20 auto-kill if confirmed by another natural 20. Now your level 20 paladin can still be threatened by an infant. Mission accomplished! But let's be real here, that's not what y'all meant. But it is what most of you voted for.


But that piece of bad wording aside, I think it's meaningless to talk about the frequency of death in D&D without also discussing resurrection (the phenomenon, not the spell). You can make a game as lethal as you like, if resurrection is cheap and easy it doesn't matter. Death becomes merely a time-out instead of a true finality. We can't discuss the frequency of death in D&D without also discussing the frequency of curing it. This is an issue that rests on two pillars, not one.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Is anyone else seeing a disconnect in the results of this poll (so far) and the community at large?

I bounce around to lots of different forums, and have been reading a lot of opinions about 5E. Lately, there's been a lot of talk about save-or-dies and it seemed a large percentage of the gaming community hates the idea of them. In their reasonings they repeatedly say they think death should be rare and/or only when the player does something remarkably foolish.

I believe what they are saying is that death by 'Save or Die' be rare. Character death can be uncommon (because goodness knows there are hundreds of ways to get your PC killed)... but Save or Die shouldn't be uncommon, it should be rare. Otherwise, 1) death comes to the campaign too easily, and 2) the effects that cause SoD no longer are special.

There are only a small handful of monsters that traditionally have true SoD abilities. Do we want to see those monsters become so much more prevalent that death by them becomes 'uncommon' rather than 'rare'? Do we really want to face off against packs of basilisks as often as we face packs of gnolls? I don't know that we do.

 

[stevelabny]

I believe what they are saying is that death by 'Save or Die' be rare. Character death can be uncommon (because goodness knows there are hundreds of ways to get your PC killed)... but Save or Die shouldn't be uncommon, it should be rare. Otherwise, 1) death comes to the campaign too easily, and 2) the effects that cause SoD no longer are special.

There are only a small handful of monsters that traditionally have true SoD abilities. Do we want to see those monsters become so much more prevalent that death by them becomes 'uncommon' rather than 'rare'? Do we really want to face off against packs of basilisks as often as we face packs of gnolls? I don't know that we do.

Meh. That's why there was more to my post. I don't think its JUST a dislike of Save or Die. I think most people play with death being rare or super-rare. Heck, even I'm guilty of this myself, as my last few campaigns I've run have been with players who prefer rare-death and I can only cram "my type of fun" down their throats so much.

I understand that people can dislike save or die and still like the idea of character death, but I think MOST players and DMs (of those posting anywhere on the internet) prefer to have as little character death as possible.

Which is why the poll results are shocking.