D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?

[Ranes]

That's a tutorial on the combat UI interface--the bugs don't even have an attack. Doesn't really count. Also, aren't they bugs and not rats?

Is it? Don't they? Are they?

Er…

Still, the Sunless Citadel is underground. Like a basement. Erm…

Oh look! What's that over there?

(Must remember to cross that glorious victory off my PCs' CV.)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'm not sure. I can't recall using rats on low level characters in the last 20 years or so.

I recall using rats in at least seven different campaigns. Sometimes giant rats, sometimes swarms of regular rats. All over the place. Almost always the first encounter.

Granted, it's not usually as a quest, as much as an obstacle that just happens to be there. I'm not sure how much the quest element is important to the complaint, though.

I'm also of the right age to have the early cut-scenes from the first Parasite Eve game burned into my mind, so giant rats are always scary to me.

 

[SteveC]

The 1st level characters in my current campaign survived a city wrecking tsunami and helped fight off an army of deep ones. In past campaigns, 1st level characters have negotiated face to face with a deity.

I don't recall any game involving killing rats in someone's basement. Doesn't that mostly occur in cRPGs? And even then, doesn't it mostly occur as either a humorous lamp shade of the trope or a deadly inversion of it? Planescape:Torment has a 'kill the rats' quest, but Many-as-One is hardly your typical rats in a basement.

I checked on TVTropes and they assert that this happens in PnP Dungeons & Dragons, but tellingly (to my mind) and uncharacteristically they provide no actual examples.

I am always amused when someone posts about a cliche in a role-playing game and is met with the response "well my games aren't like that."

Having read your posts for a while now, Celebrim, I have no doubt that you don't run games like that: you sound like an excellent GM. I don't run that way either. When I actually get back to updating my 13th Age Story Hour, you can read about my group trying to get off of a crashing sky fortress. They were level two, though, so I suppose that's where things are supposed to get interesting.

Of course not every game runs on cliches, but an awful lot them do. I can't believe you've never run into the campaign opening cliches, but if that's actually the case, I'd be glad to introduce you to some GMs I know. Their campaigns would really seem fresh and inventive.

A couple spoilers for the caravan guard adventure:

At some point your caravan will be ambushed by bandits, and someone in the caravan is actually a spy for the bad guys.

And another spoiler for a different starter: goblins are going to attack the Sandpoint festival, so be on your guard for that...

The point was that low level adventures typically are less than interesting. Certainly not always, but a lot of the time. Sure you can make your adventures not fit that mold, and if you're a good GM you'll do that. Sadly. as I've said before, GM ability tends to run on a bell-curve and be generated by rolling dice, so there are a lot of average and below average GMs who throw these sorts of challenges out.

 

[Ranes]

When I ran the Sunless Citadel for an old friend of some twenty-odd years, and we got to the dire rats, to my surprise he asked me if I could change them to anything else, such as spiders. As it turned out, he was terribly squeamish about rats, which I hadn't known. And there was I thinking everything would be all right, as long as I avoided another of his quirks, extreme unease at the use of the word 'cadaver'. Oh, and moths. He hated moths, too.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Sure laugh at ROUS....I give them 3 levels of monk as well.

 

[pemerton]

So, more than just a roleplaying game? What rules do you feel help enable storytelling?

I'm not the person you asked. And I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "storytelling" - especially with a follow-up post contrasting RPGs and "storytelling games".

But I'll give two examples of rules that I think facilitate the creation of story in an RPG. One is more player-side, the other is more GM-side. And by "story" I mean story in the semi-technical sense of rising action, climax, resolution - as opposed to just a sequence of events, which any RPG should give rise to.

Both rules are found in Burning Wheel, but at least one can be fairy easily adapted to other sytems.

The first rule is more player-side: each PC has a Circles attribute, which (just like a skill or stat) is a number that can be used to make a check. A Circles check is made to try and encounter a helpful NPC from the PC's past. The DC is determined according to considerations of how likely it is that a character of that sort would be in the area, what sort of relation the NPC might have to the PC (given the PC's background), etc.

If successful, the PC meets the NPC. If unsuccessful, the GM gets to adjudicate - no one is met, or the NPC is met but turns out to be an old enemy, or otherwise hostile, rather than helpful, etc.

Here are some links to write-ups of recent BW sessions I've GMed: failed Circles check and successful Circles check.

The second rule is more GM-side: "fail forward" adjudication of unsuccessful checks. In BW, the key is to distinguish "intent" and "task". If the player succeeds in the check, the PC succeeds at the task and achieves what s/he intended. If the player fails, the GM narrates the consequences, but focusing more heavily on failure of intent than failure of task - which encourages the introduction of complications rather than roadblocks.

I can give other examples too if you're interested!

 

[Sunseeker]

Interesting. In those moments, how much narrative control over the setting (and NPCs) do you give the players?

Depends on how well and how creative they can describe what they want to happen and how lucky they are with the dice.

 

[Celebrim]

I am always amused when someone posts about a cliche in a role-playing game and is met with the response "well my games aren't like that."

The actual implications of the posting are, "I don't even mind rats or caravan guards, yet my games aren't like that. You complain about them, so why are your games like that?" I don't what you are amused about. It's a very serious point.

Of course not every game runs on cliches, but an awful lot them do. I can't believe you've never run into the campaign opening cliches, but if that's actually the case, I'd be glad to introduce you to some GMs I know. Their campaigns would really seem fresh and inventive.

I've never met a DM who didn't work hard at it, who wasn't a lot of fun. And I've never met a DM that didn't work hard at it, who was.

And another spoiler for a different starter: goblins are going to attack the Sandpoint festival, so be on your guard for that...

Something big happens while you are at a public gathering is a great start to a campaign. It gives the DM the ability to include the PC's in something epic, while at the same time not making the entire weight of the world depend on the still narrow shoulders of low level PC's. It also makes for great indirect story telling. In the opening of the story, the PC's find out that they can be local heroes, protect the innocent, fight the monsters, and save at least their little corner of the day. As the story progresses, D&D's inherent story of zero to hero begins to play out, as the PC's take on larger and larger roles in each subsequent encounter. Gradually the things that seemed epic and impressive become things that they can do themselves, and then they find themselves transcending even the big heroes whose efforts that they glimpsed earlier on, becoming first peers, and the ultimately lords in their own right.

The point was that low level adventures typically are less than interesting.

I just don't agree. In fact, if you look back over the history of adventure writing, on thing that stands out is the very high quality seen in modules for low level characters. U1 is better designed than either U2 or U3. The Village of Homlet and its moat house is better designed than the Temple of Elemental Evil. 'Whispering Cairn' is not only the best single module in the adventure path, it might well be the best single module Paizo has published. Sunlit Citadel was a better designed adventure than any of those that followed it. A few small flaws aside, 'Of Sound Mind' is yet one of the best modules for 3e D&D. 'Mad God's Key' is a well done module, easily adaptable to low level play, and so forth.

Honestly, increasing the level of characters and monsters gains you very very little. The numbers get bigger, but that's about it. And it's not like bigger numbers don't come without costs. Fundamentally, unless you change the PC's social status and shift the focus of play to politics, philosophy, or some scope larger than merely physical strife, leveling up in D&D is like leveling up in Diablo or WoW - the numbers get bigger, but fighting a 70th level bear is pretty much like fighting a 5th level bear.

so there are a lot of average and below average GMs who throw these sorts of challenges out.

In my experience, if the GM can't handle low level play well, he'll tend to be even worse at high level play. Any decent DM age 15 or higher ought to be able to make a fun little decent dungeon just out of the tables in the back of the 1e DMG if nothing else. It might not mean much. It might not have much of a theme. It might not have a lot of literary value, but it can still be approach as fun for what it is - kicking down doors, killing things, and taking their stuff. But writing for high level play, that's tough. If you stick to dungeon crawling, you have to up your game, because otherwise eventually a steady diet of exploration of space and tactical combat tires even the most hardcore grognard and hack-n-slasher. If you try to up your game by going broad, there is a tendency to row-boat worlds, poorly designed railroads, DM PC's, and open worlds where every fight occurs in an empty street (or equivalent) - all the bad parts of the dungeon with none of the good ones. The amount of work required to make a world breathe and live in that bigger space is simply more than most DMs can take on, and so the amount of improvisation goes up, creativity consequently goes down, and details become vaguer and vaguer like paintings that look ok from a distance but don't stand to scrutiny. Honestly, for a bad DM probably the only advantage of being higher level is it's easier to avoid being bullied by the DM, because typically the ones that think going big solves everything don't have a lot of system mastery or tactical ability either.

 

[guachi]

It was a common standard. I am not wrong about this.

In the 30 years I've played D&D no one ever made all new characters start at first level. It wasn't even suggested by Gygax that all new characters start at first level. I've seen enough posts online to know it wasn't common with others, either.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So where does this come from and why on earth did it ever make sense? Is it a reaction to "everyone's a winner" sports activities? Is it some kind of weird DnD hazing?

I suspect it originated in some players' experiences in the modern workplace.

Roy and his buddies have been working as a team at Chicago CogCo for 15 years, when suddenly, too many lunches at the Beer and Brats Bungalow catches up with him, and he keels over dead. Chicago CogCo management knows the team needs a replacement, and post the job. Unable to hire anyone away from one of their competitors, they bring in Johnny, fresh out of the program at iTech Vocational College. He's wet behind the ears, but he's got potential, and will probably do just fine learning on the job. And if not?

Well, Johnny's graduating class had 30 others just like him...