D&D General Kobayashi Maru: Should the fate of the character always be in the player's hands? POLL

[Stormonu]

Death can't be random in movies or TV or books. A writer decided. One of the big draws of RPGs is that there is no writer, that folks decisions and the dice create an uncertain outcome and produce and unexpected story. I don't know why one would play an RPG with a foregone conclusion.

Defeat need not mean death. There are times it's unavoidable, but consequences don't have to be "win or death". There's a lot of gray areas in-between. Sometimes surviving and being forced to watch the bad guys have their day is an even more poignant result.

 

[Reynard]

This argument is so stale.

Not even every RPG has Death as a consequence. Having it not be on the table means just that: death isn't on the table. Death is not the only stake possible; lazy writers have just conditioned us to feel that way over the last 40 years. Heroes can fail, villains can win, darkness can fall, people can be exiled from their homeland, have loved ones turned against them, have fortunes and lands taken from them, have thier dreams dashed--all without death.

You don't even have to fudge die rolls, just replace the results of 'Death Saves' with something less permanent. Then BAM. No death, but nothing else is changed.

Sure. But when you do that, the PCs are always moving forward toward the Inevitable Conclusion. And if even at The End death is off the table, the ultimate outcome is a foregone conclusion: if the PCs can try as many times as they need to, they will inevitably succeed. I mean, it's just as bad to arbitrarily say "this failure was the last one; you're still alive but you aren't allowed to try again" isn't it?

If there are no victory conditions in the game, then the end is predetermined and it is just a matter of how much fudging and contortions the GM is willing to go through to get there. In my experience, when players realize the GM has A Plan, it makes the game less fun because consequences stop mattering.

Of course death isn't the only fail state, but there should be a fail state, a point at which the GM looks at the players and says "Nope. You're done." Otherwise you don't have a GAME, you have a story one person wanted to tell to 4 other people.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sure. But when you do that, the PCs are always moving forward toward the Inevitable Conclusion. And if even at The End death is off the table, the ultimate outcome is a foregone conclusion: if the PCs can try as many times as they need to, they will inevitably succeed. I mean, it's just as bad to arbitrarily say "this failure was the last one; you're still alive but you aren't allowed to try again" isn't it?

If there are no victory conditions in the game, then the end is predetermined and it is just a matter of how much fudging and contortions the GM is willing to go through to get there. In my experience, when players realize the GM has A Plan, it makes the game less fun because consequences stop mattering.

Of course death isn't the only fail state, but there should be a fail state, a point at which the GM looks at the players and says "Nope. You're done." Otherwise you don't have a GAME, you have a story one person wanted to tell to 4 other people.

Does every single campaign you play end in a TPK or something?

 

[cmad1977]

Well, how does it work? If you don't have "real" random character effects upto death, then you just pick and choose what happens, right? So why bother rolling? Why bother playing the game? If all attacks will "miss" the special protected character, you don't have much of a game.

Or do you just constantly fudge and alter any roll you want, again making rolling pointless. If the dice roll a "wrong" number you just change it or ignore it?

It's random death...or your a rated G cartoon.

Oof.

Don’t make INT the dump stat kids.

 

[S'mon]

Of course death isn't the only fail state, but there should be a fail state, a point at which the GM looks at the players and says "Nope. You're done." Otherwise you don't have a GAME, you have a story one person wanted to tell to 4 other people.

Of course often the players can choose their own victory conditions; this is a major characteristic of sandbox games.

D&D is very much set up with PC perma-death the only meaningful fail state; the GM & players can add in other fail states of course. The most common one I see is NPC perma-death; the loss of a beloved NPC can be comparable to the loss of a PC.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think fair has anything to do with it. D&D is not a game of chance, not gambling.

I disagree.

To me it is a game of chance. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be any need for dice.

 

[Lanefan]

There's nothing wrong with character death per se. It's part of the game. Sometimes characters die, and it can even be fun.

However, I do consider unavoidable death to be very undesirable. If the player's choices have no impact on whether the character survives, or worse, the player does not even get to make a choice, that's not fun, in my opinion.

This bring to mind a general question for all:

What's your take on a situation where to save the party one character has to die - no other option - and this is clearly known to all.

An example might be a killer trap that the party's already set off once and moved on; but now it has reset and they realize the only way back out is to go through it and set it off again. Let's say for argument's sake the party have no teleport-like spells and no means of summoning anything.

Fair or unfair?

 

[clearstream]

Not even every RPG has Death as a consequence. Having it not be on the table means just that: death isn't on the table. Death is not the only stake possible; lazy writers have just conditioned us to feel that way over the last 40 years. Heroes can fail, villains can win, darkness can fall, people can be exiled from their homeland, have loved ones turned against them, have fortunes and lands taken from them, have thier dreams dashed--all without death.

You don't even have to fudge die rolls, just replace the results of 'Death Saves' with something less permanent. Then BAM. No death, but nothing else is changed.

What's so bad about death? Why are the other fail states better? Can those other states happen due to bad luck, or only if players choose them? Or is it a a game of gotcha where the DM and/or players have internal rules for failing?

I'd like to clarify what you are arguing against / for.

 

[clearstream]

This bring to mind a general question for all:

What's your take on a situation where to save the party one character has to die - no other option - and this is clearly known to all.

An example might be a killer trap that the party's already set off once and moved on; but now it has reset and they realize the only way back out is to go through it and set it off again. Let's say for argument's sake the party have no teleport-like spells and no means of summoning anything.

Fair or unfair?

Fair, and - from experience - more amusing if the characters get to decide who dies. The classic set up is the secret vote, which is then made un-secret and whoever lost chooses.

 

[Lanefan]

This argument is so stale.

Not even every RPG has Death as a consequence. Having it not be on the table means just that: death isn't on the table.

Fine.

If I know my PC is going to survive, even if not necessarily prosper, then the game just lost a lot of any serious challenge it might have had.

Death is not the only stake possible; lazy writers have just conditioned us to feel that way over the last 40 years. Heroes can fail, villains can win, darkness can fall, people can be exiled from their homeland, have loved ones turned against them, have fortunes and lands taken from them, have thier dreams dashed--all without death.

You don't even have to fudge die rolls, just replace the results of 'Death Saves' with something less permanent. Then BAM. No death, but nothing else is changed.

If no loss condition is permanent then you've ultimately nothing to lose. You're playing with house money.

Besides, combat is supposed to be war (otherwise why bother); and war without death isn't war, it's sport.