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

[Ruin Explorer]

Same for dice rolls. One doesn't have control over the result. One often has control over whether the roll is attempted, and whether it is worth the risks or not.

Yup.

And if we go back the original post the complaint is:

"TPK without any reason for it. PCs didn't do anything wrong. I was turned off."

And it's about Savage Worlds. IMHO Savage Worlds has a pretty swing-y combat system. A combat that is even slightly close could well be one that if a few baddies make lucky rolls, one where the PCs are all dead very rapidly. One could say "use better tactics!" but if the DM effectively forced the PCs into the situation, or just expected it to play out like a different RPG, that's a reasonable complaint about SW as an RPG.

I'll never forget one of the first times I ran D&D for people who weren't already good friends, in early 2E, big party 7 PCs, comes across 6 goblins with like 4HP each and 1d6 dmg spears, in what I'd intended as a "warm-up" encounter. So we roll initiative. PCs all lose. Then the goblins proceed to get 4 nat 20s and down 4 PCs. The other three PCs cleaned them up but good god, if they hadn't, I'm pretty sure that would have been the last time any one of those 7 people played an RPG, certainly D&D.

 

[Laurefindel]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

Losing an encounter with your character is losing a battle.
Losing your character is losing the war.

People react differently to that. For you, it's an opportunity to try the war again with a new army. For others, it's more like game over. And even if they are civil enough not to make a scene out of it, you can't blame them from feeling bummed. And I would definitely entertain some hard feelings if my character was killed by another PC... I guess that's part of the social contract you have with your fellow players (including DM)

That being said, death (or the illusion of death) of a character needs to be relatively plausible, sometimes even the likely outcome, for things to remain exciting. And nothing says "death might happen if..." like "you died". Still, I prefer to bring my players as close to death-but-not-quite as possible, and PC death is not off the table, but that's not what I aim for.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

I get annoyed if I'm "not done playing that character." If there was more fun stuff I was looking forward to for that character in particular, then I'd be upset. If a toy gets taken away while you're still enjoying it, you're gonna be annoyed even if the new toy is better.

On the other hand, sometimes I am done with the character and am happy to move on to the next one. No toy stays fun forever.

But I also run and tend to play in games where resurrection is at least possible, so character death is not the same as character loss. I do prefer when death changes the character (I want them to grow and change), so I don't like most of 5e's resurrection options, but I find removing resurrection entirely creates more issues than it solves, so I leave things like reincarnate in.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I get annoyed if I'm "not done playing that character." If there was more fun stuff I was looking forward to for that character in particular, then I'd be upset. If a toy gets taken away while you're still enjoying it, you're gonna be annoyed even if the new toy is better.

On the other hand, sometimes I am done with the character and am happy to move on to the next one. No toy stays fun forever.

But I also run and tend to play in games where resurrection is at least possible, so character death is not the same as character loss. I do prefer when death changes the character (I want them to grow and change), so I don't like most of 5e's resurrection options, but I find removing resurrection entirely creates more issues than it solves, so I leave things like reincarnate in.

I'm totally down with the possibility of PCs coming back, although like you I prefer there to be consequences to returning to life. Many other systems have better ways of dealing with that than 5e, and I would rather use those. In particular, I find the "tampering with mortality" table in ACKS to be interesting as hell.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Losing an encounter with your character is losing a battle.
Losing your character is losing the war.

People react differently to that. For you, it's an opportunity to try the war again with a new army. For others, it's more like game over. And even if they are civil enough not to make a scene out of it, you can't blame them from feeling bummed. And I would definitely entertain some hard feelings if my character was killed by another PC... I guess that's part of the social contract you have with your fellow players (including DM)

That being said, death (or the illusion of death) of a character needs to be relatively plausible, sometimes even the likely outcome, for things to remain exciting. And nothing says "death might happen if..." like "you died". Still, I prefer to bring my players as close to death-but-not-quite as possible, and PC death is not off the table, but that's not what I aim for.

I agree with all of this. The weirdest thing I've seen with death in RPGs, though, is that when you make it so death is optional, so PCs only die when the player wants them to die, way more PCs die. I think this is because in such games, players take take bigger risks with their PCs, willingly, and the other players don't have their PCs drop everything and flick through every option to ensure they stay alive, because it's really up to the player if the PC dies.

And you also get more dramatic and memorable deaths out of it.

It feels kind of counter-intuitive. I'm tempted to extend it to more games, but I think I'd like to understand the phenomenon better first.

 

[Quartz]

"TPK without any reason for it. PCs didn't do anything wrong. I was turned off."

If the players have no agency - and agency includes the PCs being in a fight - then it is unfair and - more importantly - unfun. An exploding die in combat is totally fair. A natural 1 is totally fair. Three failed Death Saves is totally fair. Sometimes s*** happens. If you has a DM want to kill or capture the PCs it's better to start the session with something like "You all find yourselves in a dank dungeon. We're now going to play out how you got there." This means that they can go full tilt in safety.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

An exploding die in combat is totally fair.

Fair isn't the same as interesting or fun. I note this because exploding die systems which allow for one-shots to happen because of them, are a bit prone to fair-but-crap-feeling results.

 

[Laurefindel]

An exploding die in combat is totally fair.

Any type of explosives, dice or otherwise, is a foul at my table. And it always trigger the fire alarm...

 

[Reynard]

Fair isn't the same as interesting or fun. I note this because exploding die systems which allow for one-shots to happen because of them, are a bit prone to fair-but-crap-feeling results.

I think people have different expectations of potential outcomes aka "swinginess. That's something everyone should be on the same page for when a group chooses a system. Linea systems like d20 based D&D are easier to see potential trouble spots in, while people have a much harder time in my experience estimating dice pool probabilities.

Savage Worlds is a great game but it is definitely swingy -- but that's why you have Bennies. Experienced players or the GM need to let folks know that if they burn their last Bennie they are probably going to go down hard at some point soon...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's something everyone should be on the same page for when a group chooses a system.

Yeah and I suspect the original complainer here was a DM, and was unaware of how swingy SW can be.

Experienced players or the GM need to let folks know that if they burn their last Bennie they are probably going to go down hard at some point soon...

Yup, and if the whole group is new to it... oops TPK!

Particularly bad if nothing untoward happens for say, the first three sessions, and everyone is like "Hey this is cool..." and then on the second encounter of the fourth session (or w/e), which doesn't seem particularly threatening, it's TPK-time because of rolls. At least if it happens in the first session or so people might be like "Oh, that's how it works, huh!".