dungeon crawl classics is usually shortened to DCC <snop>
I am familiar with DCC and its funnel in the broad strokes. It is a tool for achieving something along the lines of what I'm talking about, just one that includes death. From what I've heard, I wouldn't personally consider the gaggle of "characters" you bring into a funnel to be
actual characters; only those that
survive a funnel have graduated to that rank. Before that, they're random shmucks...and there's a reason you get a crapload of them, rather than just one.
I am arguing, more or less, that there is a pervasive attitude in D&D that the game should be played in a nearly-funnel-like way....except that you only ever get one character at a time. Again, more power to people who enjoy that. But, as we've seen, questioning the hegemony of that kind of thing often gets people thinking you mean to remove any and all challenge, loss, hardship, or uncertainty from the game.
For example I greatly enjoy working together as a group to coordinate so as to minimize risks & maximize everyone's capabilities in combat as well as doing the same for the world & environment both as a player as well as a gm when my players do it. Without some level of the kind of fear present in older editions over the consequences & risks that stem from succeeding
poorly at those things however there is no incentive or impetus to bother doing anything but brazenly
faceroll through everything in the path as expending time & resources on those more involved strategies is a suboptimal waste of time & resources
Again, it seems like you're saying the only options are "success" or "success, but a little sucky." If so, that implies, again, that the players are guaranteed success, simply because random, purposeless,
I think you're taking my original statement way more seriously than it has any right to be taken. The very fact that you're now hauling out dictionary definitions is proof positive of that.
I fear that, while I laugh
very easily, I am also a very serious person at heart. (The two are conjoined; I laugh easily because, in my seriousness, it is an instinctive response to the ridiculous, especially when it is ridiculous
and unexpected.) Believe it or not, I am in fact
less serious than I used to be!
When I talk about inducing a bit of worry or fear or paranoia or whatever you want to call it in the players I'm assuming that such is coming from empathising with what their characters are feeling; because the characters, if they're the least bit wise, should certainly be feeling such things every time they go adventuring. Or - and even better - ignoring any such feelings and throwing caution to the wind.
My problem is that I (and my players, based on their behavior) find it
extremely difficult to ever ignore such feelings and "throw caution to the wind" when anxiety over losing their characters is so front-and-center. Instead of doing something exciting and risky, they consistently avoid every possible risk as they go wherever they're going, sometimes in ways that are seriously detrimental to their own goals. They're still
very skittish even WITH the measures I already take, AND counting the fact that they trust me as a good friend. For a group like this, if they're "certainly...feeling such things every time they go adventuring," it's going to mean that they
stop adventuring. I doubt I need say, that would be a bad result for everyone involved.
Hence, my challenge to the notion that such feelings are
necessary for all tables always.
I'm not certain of the character's script, but if I know it can't be killed then it's open season on that character doing whatever ridiculous gonzo risk-dialled-to-eleven thing I can think of, because succeed or fail I know I'll still be around to try again. And that gets degenerate real fast.
I'm not sure I understand why that should
necessarily get degenerate. Just because you can't die, doesn't mean you'll
succeed. And if you do do "whatever ridiculous gonzo risk-dialled-to-eleven" things you like, it's going to have costs and consequences for the people and organizations in the world. Reputation, for example, matters a great deal in this setting. Having a reputation for being borderline-insane with the risks you take would be bad! Endangering your allies with madcap schemes will cost you their allegiance. If these costs don't matter to you
at all whatsoever, then I have demonstrably failed to make an entertaining game, and we should pack it up now. And if they
do matter to you, then you
won't be doing truly, literally
whatever you want, making this criticism inapplicable.
And, it's worth noting, I personally act as something of a limiter. If something just won't work, I'll
tell you it won't work. I won't beat around the bush and give you a "only if you crit three times in a row" chance or some naughty word like that. I'll just say, "I'm sorry man, I don't buy it." There's no need for random arbitrary deaths to act as a limiter when the rationality of me as DM, and the group as a whole, is more than sufficient.
Again: People seem to be taking "you won't die (permanently) unless we agree on it" (which is more or less what I do) as "you will ALWAYS and INEVITABLY succeed, you just have to keep trying until it happens." That's...not true. Sometimes, you'll fail, and can't take that back. Sometimes, you'll have to pay a price in blood, valuables, or morality, and you can't just wish that away. Sometimes, merely attempting a thing prevents you from trying again, so if you fail, that's it, you lost your chance.
It's...I'm reminded of a conversation I've had with my players a couple of times over the three years I've been running this game (God that feels like forever). They've been real troopers and have responded positively to the vast majority of what I've offered, but a couple times, someone has facetiously said something to the effect of "what if we decided to sail off into the sunset?" or "what if we just...left the region behind?" And I've frankly told them, that would disappoint me and I would be sad I had failed them as a DM, but I
would try to keep up the game if they chose to do that, because I support their ability to make real choices, including that one. They'd eventually hear about terrible things happening back home, but the knock-on effects probably wouldn't catch up to them very fast. They have, thankfully, told me they're much too invested to walk away like that, but that they appreciate that I would support them if they did.
If my players chose to walk away, abandoning their allies and homeland and adventuring
somewhere else, that would have permanent, lasting consequences for their world. Pretty serious ones, in fact. And there would be no way to simply revoke that. They could, of course, change their minds and come back. But what's done is done. They could fight against the enemies that had taken over, but they could never restore things to the way they'd been before. They simply won't ever have that kind of power. The reminders of what they allowed to be destroyed would linger on for however long we choose to play.
Sometimes, yes, when the main character should die a dozen times but doesn't.
This opens a new question: What happens if the characters take
excessive precautions, then? Because that's the issue I face with my group. They aren't these crazy risk-takers for whom the everpresent fear of death is the only limit on their behavior. Instead, the everpresent fear of death causes them to shut down, paralyzed with dread, so that instead of
them dying, the
adventure dies.
That's what made Song of Ice and Fire so wonderfully refreshing: GRRM wasn't shy about killing off major characters, including the "good guys".
Until, that is, he was shy about it, right? Because Jon Snow
didn't die. Not for real, anyway. And even with all the buildup, all the "Martin's ready, willing, and able to permanently kill off ANYBODY," all the "resurrection either
doesn't work or ALWAYS makes people come back
deeply wrong somehow," the fanbase KNEW that Jon Snow wasn't dead for real. Heck, he wasn't even dead for a full day, as I understand it? (I'm not an ASOIAF reader; I get enough grimdark BS and depressing realpolitik in my actual life.) I had expected someone to bring up Martin--and Jon Snow is my demonstration that
even Martin couldn't resist protecting one of the most important, main-character, "good guy" people in his novels. Does this mean that Jon Snow's consequence-free (indeed,
empowering) resurrection ruined ASOIAF for you?
I generally like death as a possible consequence in challenge based games like D&D, but I think you should be careful that the lingering sense of dread and paranoia is not dampening or destroying the intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm players are bringing to the table.
A perfectly cromulent condensation of my argument, just from someone who wants to keep death as a major consequence--which is perfectly compatible with what I've said.
Fear of death is treated as axiomatically necessary for a game to work. It is treated as though taking that off the table inherently drains
all uncertainty and loss out of the game. I do not understand this, and it sounds like you don't, either, even though you still want to keep death on the table as AN option.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Honest question to you all: Do you really see
all other in-world consequences as merely transitory faults? Do you really play games where "a druid-cult transformed the whole friggin' desert into a swamp" is as airily non-consequential as "I'm down 5 HP"? Do you really play characters with the power to un-break the world and resurrect all those who die of a plague and restore every bombed-out city to its pristine glory? I just...can't fathom that so many people play in games where LITERALLY the only meaningful consequence, the only consequence that could ever linger and continue to be a problem long after it happened, is character death.
