D&D General "Hot Take": Fear is a bad motivator

[jmartkdr2]

To be honest, I can't imagine playing a game without good spots. Without places, people, or things that are worth protecting. I mean, a good corrupted setting and tension based narrative is awesome. But, so is making friends at the pub over a game of dice or a drinking contest or a "who can balance the dagger on their head" contest. (Not in real life, but with rolls.) A spectrum is needed.

I've played in such games. You stop caring about the setting and npcs, and find your fun elsewhere.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Meant to respond to these, but apparently forgot. So you get a little bonus thing, Lanefan! Lucky you

I'm not opposed, however, to players trying* things that are technically legal (or accepted) by RAW but maybe not quite what the game expects. <snip> * - note that I say "trying" here; I also feel it's the DM's job to shut these things down by houserule if they threaten to ruin the game, preferably before they're discovered and certainly when they are.

I support unexpected player ploys, like the time they totally "ruined" a fight I made by luring a molten-obsidian golem into a pool of standing water, freezing it solid. No epic battle, no hard-won victory, maybe a couple minutes' exposition. They just outsmarted me. Nothing abusive or untoward about it. That fight ranks up there with the very first "boss" they ever fought (a scroll golem).

But challenge the tone and purpose of the game, and I'm not so open. Frex, I told them I won't run a crapsack world: they can show mercy and I won't ruthlessly exploit that mercy as if it were a weakness. (Some prisoners are too dangerous though, like murder-cultists.) I want a world where doing the right thing CAN work. If my players tried to exploit this (dunno how--but I bet you can think of something!), I would be just as upset as if they exploited the "no random, pointless permadeath" policy. I'd feel that they were passive-aggressively crapping on my offer of a world not ruled by cutthroat dog-eat-dog violence.

I see it as much more black and white: either you have character death in the game or you don't.

I guess that's fair, and...technically I do? I just favor other things, or only use it at times that make sense to support cool RP chances. Def not meatgrinders. Call it an "anti-funnel." Funnels soft-guarantee losing LOTs of chars, but survivors are keepers with a sort of story.* "Anti-funnels" soft-guarantee not losing your character, but casualties go out in a blaze of glory. Funnels balance "zero to hero" with "let's not take a year to get a hero." Anti-funnels balance "you can always stand back up" with "be reasonable and make deaths fun too."

*TBH "I rolled better, so I survived" isn't a story to me. It's mere statistics, draining away the value of survival. Winning your first hand of poker is exciting; winning at least one game in a batch of 100...less so. Both are wins. But if you play 100 hands, I'd HOPE you win at least once if you're actually trying. Specialness slain by iterative probability. For me, "story" lies in chars responding to success/failure, not the brute facts thereof. Can't respond to failure if failure kills you...unless your death IS your response, which makes it fun and engaging (see below).

Death at some point is nearly certain

Ay, there's the rub. Near-certain death + "keep trying, one PC'll get lucky" kinda bore me. The former, I disengage: if my toys are always taken away, why care? Best to pull away, then the losses won't hurt. The latter sours me on the survivors, who don't feel "special" because of course it happens eventually. Flip a coin enough times and you'll get ten heads in a row, it's not interesting if you flipped 10k times before that. A royal flush is exciting during a poker tournament; it's not exciting if you speed-run 100,000 games a minute until you get one, and even less exciting if you are forced to fold and draw again repeatedly until you do get one.

I leave this in the hands of the player, as that's who the character belongs to. A player is free to retire a character at any time, and I-as-DM have no input into it other than if the retirement's taking place in some bizarre off-plane location I'd probably ask "are you sure?".

I'd let them retire chars if they wanted to. None of mine have, because they're pretty invested in their characters, but I'd support them if they did. That Druid player who was going to kill off his char, sought it only to enable an indefinite hiatus. I wanted to leave a chance he could return, even if he doesn't. We talked it out. What he did (spirit-calling the deity of a rival monotheistic religion as a spirit-worshipper who technically should see that deity as "merely" the biggest city-spirit) didn't feel like it should kill. It felt like putting a burden on him (price for his boon), and on his allies (his soul was still locked in a devil's contract). That, plus the deity being good (so their followers claim) meant mystery+doubt felt better than certain death.

For now. AI is progressing in mighty leaps and bounds these days.

Yes, but an artificial general intelligence remains distant. Even the computer science theory of AIs learning from human behavior is touchy (though progress continues). In optimizing functions, statistical analysis, and data aggregation, AI beats us humans by miles. But ask one to write a full-page science news article, and even the best falls short. (Note: it's not really "writing an article," it's doing RNG with a very complex filter to produce likely new words in sentences. The complexity covers long-range correlations. Basic English syntax--e.g. SVO word order, adjectives before nouns, "a"/"an," etc.--is very easy, but semantics, like "two adjacent sentences should have subjects related to one another," is HIGHLY advanced stuff, only big, complex deep-learning algorithms can even try to pull it off. Even complex syntax (like when to insert paragraph breaks) can baffle a mid-tier effort into predictive text generators.

I wouldn't want to impose it as DM, though.

Oh, sure. "Impose" seems pretty strong here. I take and offer suggestions, and support most things my players take interest in.

Fear is not ever present in our games, and most that I have played/DM'ed. I think there are things a DM can do to mitigate this paranoia, and I think the broader moods enhance the game. Here are a few specific examples:

• DM buddy of mine built a fun drinking, dancing, riddle filled dungeon that needed to be navigated to get information from a good guy, a copper dragon in fact. (And yes, we literally had to drink and enter a dance off.)
• Less extreme, most of my trusting NPC's do specific things: the Captain of the guards reaches into her own coin purse to pay you to check on her men; approaching the halfling you see him hugging his child and playing horseshoes with his wife; the merchant who hired you throws a feast and you have a line of jokes he likes to tell.
• As DM, one can describe the setting with comic or serene similes and metaphors. The music in the background helps too.
• Just as important, don't change moods quickly. Foreshadow any upcoming trouble. This tempers players reactions to "the good folk" around them.

Great suggestions, and lovely examples. That copper dragon sounds like a hoot. (Dragons are rare in my setting, but a gold one is a trusted NPC ally, who is hunting a black dragon trying to conquer the party's homeland.) And yes, I definitely try to foreshadow shifts in tone.

To be honest, I can't imagine playing a game without good spots. Without places, people, or things that are worth protecting. I mean, a good corrupted setting and tension based narrative is awesome. But, so is making friends at the pub over a game of dice or a drinking contest or a "who can balance the dagger on their head" contest. (Not in real life, but with rolls.) A spectrum is needed.

Absolutely. I tend to prefer a "lighter and softer" side, but I have included several enemies who are just that: enemies. Like that one conversation between Zuko and Iroh.
Z: "I know what you're going to say: she's my sister, and I should try to get along with her."
I: "No, she's crazy and she needs to go down."
Various enemies--the black dragon, the Grandmother of Shadows, the Burning Eye, the (erstwhile!) Song of Thorns, the leader of the Shadow Druids--are genuinely bad people(/spirits) who need to go down. Their followers are also mostly bad, but some can be redeemed, and if the players are clever, they can figure out who and how. I have set one player on the road, but it's up to them to realize it and take it. But there are also trusted friends, friendly rivals, love interests, potential suitors of political expedience....it's a complicated web, but much of it is good people, or at least ordinary people doing their best in difficult situations.

 

[Lanefan]

I support unexpected player ploys, like the time they totally "ruined" a fight I made by luring a molten-obsidian golem into a pool of standing water, freezing it solid. No epic battle, no hard-won victory, maybe a couple minutes' exposition. They just outsmarted me. Nothing abusive or untoward about it. That fight ranks up there with the very first "boss" they ever fought (a scroll golem).

Yep - I like these sort of things as well.

But challenge the tone and purpose of the game, and I'm not so open. Frex, I told them I won't run a crapsack world: they can show mercy and I won't ruthlessly exploit that mercy as if it were a weakness. (Some prisoners are too dangerous though, like murder-cultists.) I want a world where doing the right thing CAN work. If my players tried to exploit this (dunno how--but I bet you can think of something!),

I'd have to be in the campaign and know its personalities etc. but the quickest general idea I can think of would be to somehow put anyone we rescued - particularly anyone powerful - into our debt, not so much slavery as just a clear realization that their loyalty is now to us and nobody else; and slowly build up our own private army...

I guess that's fair, and...technically I do? I just favor other things, or only use it at times that make sense to support cool RP chances. Def not meatgrinders. Call it an "anti-funnel." Funnels soft-guarantee losing LOTs of chars, but survivors are keepers with a sort of story.* "Anti-funnels" soft-guarantee not losing your character, but casualties go out in a blaze of glory. Funnels balance "zero to hero" with "let's not take a year to get a hero." Anti-funnels balance "you can always stand back up" with "be reasonable and make deaths fun too."

*TBH "I rolled better, so I survived" isn't a story to me. It's mere statistics,

Sometimes statistics are the story, or a major component of it. You need look no further than baseball for an example of this.

draining away the value of survival. Winning your first hand of poker is exciting; winning at least one game in a batch of 100...less so. Both are wins. But if you play 100 hands, I'd HOPE you win at least once if you're actually trying. Specialness slain by iterative probability.

But if I win 68 out of 100 games I'm going to generally do better than someone who wins 36 out of 100, right? (that said, when it comes to me and poker 1 win in 100 is about right... )

For me, "story" lies in chars responding to success/failure, not the brute facts thereof.

Well, it's both, really.

Can't respond to failure if failure kills you...unless your death IS your response, which makes it fun and engaging (see below).


Ay, there's the rub. Near-certain death + "keep trying, one PC'll get lucky" kinda bore me.

When I say death is a near-certainty I'm also taking into account that the game provides mechanisms for revival. Death isn't always permanent, though (in my game anyway) it does carry long-term or permanent aftereffects should you be revived unless by a full Wish.

The "keep trying" bit really only applies at low level where revival remains (usually) unaffordable.

The former, I disengage: if my toys are always taken away, why care? Best to pull away, then the losses won't hurt. The latter sours me on the survivors, who don't feel "special" because of course it happens eventually.

The survivors feel special to me while they're still going; and maybe by the time their numbers come up we'll be to a level where revival is in play...

 

[Scott Christian]

I've played in such games. You stop caring about the setting and npcs, and find your fun elsewhere.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that you played in campaigns that didn't have good spots and you stopped caring? Or the opposite, you played in campaigns with good spots and you started to not care. If the latter, I really only see three reasons:
1. It's not your cup of tea. You would rather dungeon crawl, explore, etc.
2. Your DM didn't do a good enough job to persuade your table to care.
3. You weren't open to that style of gaming, and shut the door on trying to care.

All three are okay. And can be great games. But, I don't see any other reason. Perhaps there is another?

PS - I think you mean the former jm, but just checking and trying to understand. Thanks for understanding my ineptitude.

 

[Scott Christian]

Meant to respond to these, but apparently forgot. So you get a little bonus thing, Lanefan! Lucky you


I support unexpected player ploys, like the time they totally "ruined" a fight I made by luring a molten-obsidian golem into a pool of standing water, freezing it solid. No epic battle, no hard-won victory, maybe a couple minutes' exposition. They just outsmarted me. Nothing abusive or untoward about it. That fight ranks up there with the very first "boss" they ever fought (a scroll golem).

But challenge the tone and purpose of the game, and I'm not so open. Frex, I told them I won't run a crapsack world: they can show mercy and I won't ruthlessly exploit that mercy as if it were a weakness. (Some prisoners are too dangerous though, like murder-cultists.) I want a world where doing the right thing CAN work. If my players tried to exploit this (dunno how--but I bet you can think of something!), I would be just as upset as if they exploited the "no random, pointless permadeath" policy. I'd feel that they were passive-aggressively crapping on my offer of a world not ruled by cutthroat dog-eat-dog violence.


I guess that's fair, and...technically I do? I just favor other things, or only use it at times that make sense to support cool RP chances. Def not meatgrinders. Call it an "anti-funnel." Funnels soft-guarantee losing LOTs of chars, but survivors are keepers with a sort of story.* "Anti-funnels" soft-guarantee not losing your character, but casualties go out in a blaze of glory. Funnels balance "zero to hero" with "let's not take a year to get a hero." Anti-funnels balance "you can always stand back up" with "be reasonable and make deaths fun too."

*TBH "I rolled better, so I survived" isn't a story to me. It's mere statistics, draining away the value of survival. Winning your first hand of poker is exciting; winning at least one game in a batch of 100...less so. Both are wins. But if you play 100 hands, I'd HOPE you win at least once if you're actually trying. Specialness slain by iterative probability. For me, "story" lies in chars responding to success/failure, not the brute facts thereof. Can't respond to failure if failure kills you...unless your death IS your response, which makes it fun and engaging (see below).


Ay, there's the rub. Near-certain death + "keep trying, one PC'll get lucky" kinda bore me. The former, I disengage: if my toys are always taken away, why care? Best to pull away, then the losses won't hurt. The latter sours me on the survivors, who don't feel "special" because of course it happens eventually. Flip a coin enough times and you'll get ten heads in a row, it's not interesting if you flipped 10k times before that. A royal flush is exciting during a poker tournament; it's not exciting if you speed-run 100,000 games a minute until you get one, and even less exciting if you are forced to fold and draw again repeatedly until you do get one.


I'd let them retire chars if they wanted to. None of mine have, because they're pretty invested in their characters, but I'd support them if they did. That Druid player who was going to kill off his char, sought it only to enable an indefinite hiatus. I wanted to leave a chance he could return, even if he doesn't. We talked it out. What he did (spirit-calling the deity of a rival monotheistic religion as a spirit-worshipper who technically should see that deity as "merely" the biggest city-spirit) didn't feel like it should kill. It felt like putting a burden on him (price for his boon), and on his allies (his soul was still locked in a devil's contract). That, plus the deity being good (so their followers claim) meant mystery+doubt felt better than certain death.


Yes, but an artificial general intelligence remains distant. Even the computer science theory of AIs learning from human behavior is touchy (though progress continues). In optimizing functions, statistical analysis, and data aggregation, AI beats us humans by miles. But ask one to write a full-page science news article, and even the best falls short. (Note: it's not really "writing an article," it's doing RNG with a very complex filter to produce likely new words in sentences. The complexity covers long-range correlations. Basic English syntax--e.g. SVO word order, adjectives before nouns, "a"/"an," etc.--is very easy, but semantics, like "two adjacent sentences should have subjects related to one another," is HIGHLY advanced stuff, only big, complex deep-learning algorithms can even try to pull it off. Even complex syntax (like when to insert paragraph breaks) can baffle a mid-tier effort into predictive text generators.


Oh, sure. "Impose" seems pretty strong here. I take and offer suggestions, and support most things my players take interest in.


Great suggestions, and lovely examples. That copper dragon sounds like a hoot. (Dragons are rare in my setting, but a gold one is a trusted NPC ally, who is hunting a black dragon trying to conquer the party's homeland.) And yes, I definitely try to foreshadow shifts in tone.


Absolutely. I tend to prefer a "lighter and softer" side, but I have included several enemies who are just that: enemies. Like that one conversation between Zuko and Iroh.
Z: "I know what you're going to say: she's my sister, and I should try to get along with her."
I: "No, she's crazy and she needs to go down."
Various enemies--the black dragon, the Grandmother of Shadows, the Burning Eye, the (erstwhile!) Song of Thorns, the leader of the Shadow Druids--are genuinely bad people(/spirits) who need to go down. Their followers are also mostly bad, but some can be redeemed, and if the players are clever, they can figure out who and how. I have set one player on the road, but it's up to them to realize it and take it. But there are also trusted friends, friendly rivals, love interests, potential suitors of political expedience....it's a complicated web, but much of it is good people, or at least ordinary people doing their best in difficult situations.

This right there. I mean, I do get that at a certain time in a person's RPG life, you may not be open to some of those. Heck, I remember the first time I brought my girlfriend to play, and she wanted a romance novel. Our group, of 18 year old boys, was not real comfortable with this. But, it did lead to us accepting it, and then toying with it in the narrative for years. And now it is a staple.

 

[MichaelSomething]

This thread has given me the urge to link this video...

 

[jmartkdr2]

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that you played in campaigns that didn't have good spots and you stopped caring?

Yup. Exactly this. Everyone's a wangrod or just unable to help, things we build get destroyed a week later, and then the Dark Ones show up and ruin everything.

Or the opposite, you played in campaigns with good spots and you started to not care. If the latter, I really only see three reasons:
1. It's not your cup of tea. You would rather dungeon crawl, explore, etc.
2. Your DM didn't do a good enough job to persuade your table to care.
3. You weren't open to that style of gaming, and shut the door on trying to care.

All three are okay. And can be great games. But, I don't see any other reason. Perhaps there is another?

PS - I think you mean the former jm, but just checking and trying to understand. Thanks for understanding my ineptitude.

 

[Scott Christian]

Yup. Exactly this. Everyone's a wangrod or just unable to help, things we build get destroyed a week later, and then the Dark Ones show up and ruin everything.

Yeah, that is a bummer. Especially if the players spent time having their PC's build things with resources. Nothing beats a home base for some groups.

 

[Fox Lee]

So. How about it? Does "don't fear the reaper roller" sound like blasphemy or beatitude? Would it "not be D&D" if fear weren't the fundamental motivator of your games?

I couldn't agree more. I have zero time for games where the GM considers it their job to be the adversary of the players (rather than to operate a narrative/world space that contains adversaries) and that includes the idea that they need to strike fear/paranoia into the hearts of the players or "keep them on their toes".

I realise that's how a lot of groups have their fun, and good for them! I am a particular extreme on this scale—I'm so disinterested in fear/thrill as a core appeal that I don't even enjoy it in non-game media, like horror movies. So, a GM trying to make me feel afraid is a GM I would choose not to play with.

I also don't enjoy play styles heavily coloured by fear/paranoia (the old "check every door/chest/corridor for traps"/"grill every NPC to see if they're lying") or an overall story primarily about/motivated by fear. To me, those are just boring ways to play. I came to play as a hero (or as a GM, I came to facilitate a story of heroes) and "paranoid grave robber" ain't it. I prefer a game where a player can have their character do something reckless and stupid, that's also fun and interesting and moves the story along, without being afraid of punishment.

It's a big reason I still play 4e, which is very open about wanting to tell big flashy hero stories, and makes it quite difficult for PCs to die, even at low levels. (Like some other posters here, I won't ever kill off PCs without consent—but also I have literally never had it come up in a game.) That's the style I'm here for!

Also, a slightly more objective consideration; In my experience, the high-paranoia/adversarial GM games also tend to exacerbate metagaming and rules-lawyering, since players are highly motivated to use every last scrap of their game mastery to keep their character alive. I don't actually think either of those things is bad in moderate amounts, but I find that the more pressure a player is under, the more these behaviours approach problem levels (defined here as "making the game not enjoyable any more"). Again, not going to be a problem for every group, but it's certainly something to keep in mind if you don't enjoy these behaviours.