D&D General "It's not fun when..."

[Xamnam]

There is nothing that forces a player to "take heart" in any of these things in a standard game of D&D. Kick out of the faction? Who cares? Town's opinion of you goes to reviled. Who cares? Foes escape? Who cares? When your only consequences are left down to the player's choice to invest in them, changes are a good portion of your table is just going to not care. What do you do when 3 of your 5 players only care about leveling up and improving their character? Salient enough to matter to certain tables is not the same thing as salient enough to matter.

The fact that no one is forced to care makes them stronger, better, not worse, for me. If a player doesn't care about that stuff, then I'm not going to foreground offers of those to them, simple. I'm not trying to argue this is perfect for every table, so salient enough for my tables is all I'm looking at. I care. My players care. Other people in this thread have said they care. I'm fine with you and your tables not caring. We're just asking for the same respect.

But OK, if this is your answer, that some tables are so invested in story elements like the approval of NPCs that this is meaningful and that's the core of the game, why don't make that game? Why have hit points? Let's just have a reputation system? Why have a combat system? Let's just have social approval as the metric that matters in the game. Why not make your relationships to other NPCs have meaningful mechanical effects on play? Plenty of games do that. If that's really the core of game play and not trudging through steaming jungles and fighting monsters, why don't we play a game that facilitates that instead of having an illusionary combat system that produces no negative outcomes. Let's just have a system where if you want to fight something, and dispense with the dice rolling under the principle that you shouldn't roll the dice if nothing is at stake?

People have made that game, I'm sure, though I don't know what it is. There's probably even a really good version of it, and I'd enjoy my time there. But for Dungeons and Dragons, I would never say that is the core of the game. Social Interaction is explicitly called out as just one of the three pillars, and I enjoy all three. If I actively didn't want to play this game in its totality, I would play a different game. And if there was a mechanical system included that embodied these things well, I'd use it, but the absence of such is not a reason to not include that pillar, especially given that we have a DM present who can adjudicate complicated topics like this.

When your only consequences are left down to the player's choice to invest in them, changes are a good portion of your table is just going to not care.

There is a very strong correlation between people who don't want consequences and people who don't want to care.

If that's really the core of game play and not trudging through steaming jungles and fighting monsters, why don't we play a game that facilitates that instead of having an illusionary combat system that produces no negative outcomes.

But I can't help but see some self-contradiction in saying that the game should be primarily about the D&D experience of dungeon crawling, adventuring, fighting and so forth but that there is no need for consequences to that, because there are these tangential abstract experiences that a group could potentially become invested in.

The fact that you keep using lines like this makes it feel like you're not listening to what I'm saying, or arguing against someone else, because that's not my stance, nor have I ever portrayed it as such. I have been doing nothing but advocating for varied consequences. My very first post in this thread was about the value of frustration and not getting what you want. You strongly prefer a very specific type of consequence. I think those sort have their place in this game, just, alongside other types.

 

[Celebrim]

It is nowhere near as easy as you think it is.

It's your table. If every player at your table doesn't want death as part of their gameplay experience, why not just do that?

I'm not playing at your table. I'm not shooting down anything you purpose to do at your table. I've played in full consent games before where no one could die without agreement of all parties, and where you negotiated what the stakes where before playing a scene. If that's what you want to do, go for it. Have fun. You don't need my blessings, but you have it anyway.

But let's not forget, this thread started not with, "It's not fun when I have the risk of death". It started with, "It's not fun when I miss an attack."

You want to take death out of your game fine. But it's no longer projecting a slippery slope when we have at this point gotten to: "It's not fun when my equipment breaks.", "It's not fun when I lose a level.", "It's not fun when I suffer lingering injuries", and "It's not fun when the BBEG shrugs off my attack."

Because combat that does not result in permanent, irrevocable death is still interesting, in the same way that, for example, puzzle games remain interesting even though you don't lose the ability to keep playing puzzles if you fail to complete a particular puzzle.

Failed analogy. First of all, few deaths in fantasy need to be irrevocable, but even if one where irrevocable, it wouldn't stop you from playing RPGs or even D&D. You'd just have to make a new character. And these days, you probably wouldn't even have to start over at 1st level.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You seem to be misusing the English language here. You capitalize the 'f' in fantasy, but then you use it apparently not to mean a genre of literature with fantastic elements, but rather of the product of creating things to one's fancy.

I wrote precisely what I mean.

When writing Fantasy, the notion of 'what does real life think' is so far away that the light from it will take ten thousand years to enter the same galaxy. I'm here to have fun as a magic dragon man, not be haunted by the fail expectations of this sad dirtball.

 

[Celebrim]

I wrote precisely what I mean...I'm here to have fun as a magic dragon man, not be haunted by the fail expectations of this sad dirtball.

Yes, exactly. I understood you completely.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But it's no longer projecting a slippery slope

Yes, it is. Arguing otherwise is disingenuous.

 

[Clint_L]

Well, I do think failure is fun, or at least can add to fun, as long as it is not unrelenting. Because if we never failed, success would be meaningless. If you hit on every attack, then hits aren't fun anymore. If you were guaranteed to succeed on the ability check, then it doesn't matter. If your character has no risk of death or other dire consequences, the fight doesn't have stakes.

I have intentionally designed encounters that were pretty much unwinnable, unless you define winning as escaping to fight again. But those serve the greater fun because at the end of that story arc, when the players meet the Big Bad again and finally triumph (hopefully), it is WAY better because of the struggles along the way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, I do think failure is fun, or at least can add to fun, as long as it is not unrelenting. Because if we never failed, success would be meaningless. If you hit on every attack, then hits aren't fun anymore. If you were guaranteed to succeed on the ability check, then it doesn't matter. If your character has no risk of death or other dire consequences, the fight doesn't have stakes.

I have intentionally designed encounters that were pretty much unwinnable, unless you define winning as escaping to fight again. But those serve the greater fun because at the end of that story arc, when the players meet the Big Bad again and finally triumph (hopefully), it is WAY better because of the struggles along the way.

Certainly. Failure can be extremely useful as a tool, so long as it serves a higher purpose.

One of our most interesting adventures in the DW game I run literally only happened because someone failed a roll.

 

[Aurel Guthrie]

It's not fun when the DM changes how a rule works without telling the players until it comes up. Especially if it's something related to a class feature. That divine intervention should've succeeded, damnit

 

[Lanefan]

Why do you leap from I personally want hardship driven from mechanics (Great! Go wild!) to There can be no meaningful loss/consequences if it's not mechanically enforced

Because mechanical loss/consequences are the only universally-meaningful type. Narrative loss/consequences are only meaningful to some people at some tables in varying amounts.

(Lots of people in this thread disagree with that.)

Which is IMO indicative of a subset of players who don't want to lose in any meaningful manner.

 

[Xamnam]

Narrative loss/consequences are only meaningful to some people at some tables in varying amounts.

Hey, that's all I've been arguing for, that it can be meaningful to some people. There's a big difference between I don't find them satisfying and These do nothing.

Which is IMO indicative of a subset of players who don't want to lose in any meaningful manner.

Well, I can obviously only truly speak for myself, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that as someone who is advocating for these alternate failure results when it's not out of any sort of desire to avoid loss.