D&D General How Often Should a PC Die in D&D 5e?

[KYRON45]

In what way does that make them protagonists in a story? Seems to me that the PCs are just people going through the world and making choices based on what they find there. That isn't a story until someone puts it together after the fact and tells it.

Everyone is the protagonist in their own story. Even if someone else never recounts that story....you were still part of your own life and what you did affected you. When someone asks you..."how was your weekend?" Regardless of how you respond...YOU were the main character in that response.
I will never understand your point of view regarding TTRPGs and them not being stories. I'm not saying you are wrong....i'm just saying I don't understand it.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Break any argument down into small enough pieces and it ceases to make sense. You are splitting hydrogen and oxygen and then claiming we don't have water. My preference is to see the campaign as an exploration of the setting by the players through their PCs, not as a story with protagonists and a plot. Seeing the game that way feels less realistic and immersive to me, because as a PC I don't want to have any consideration about "telling my character's story", and as the DM I don't want that from the players. What I want is to explore and interact with a world through my PC that feels as real as possible, and I want to think about my character's narrative role in that world as little as possible, because that is a distraction that takes me out of play.

Seriously, is there a reason my chosen playstyle is getting so much pushback here? Am I responding in kind to what you like somehow?

i've mentioned nothing about your playstyle, i've only questioned your stance that a session of a TTRPG is not and cannot be 'a story' until after the fact and someone takes the time to re-recite the events that took place.

and when i say 'telling my character's story' i don't mean 'i expect plot beats X, Y and Z to occur and to form a perfect scripted narrative arc' i mean 'every thing that happens to my character or they decide to do is part of their story.'

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have a similar playstyle to what you describe:

1. DM makes the world/setting (I do this with my players to some extent)
2. PCs explore that world
3. DM reacts to the PCs exploring the world (based on DM's interpretation of the natural reaction of the settings environment and occupants)

I can't speak for others; however, where I feel the need to pushback ever so slightly is the idea that your are not creating a story when exploring your setting. I may not be thinking about it as story, my character's story, or concerning myself with the narrative roles of the characters, but that doesn't mean we, as a group, are not creating a story. Whether we realize it or not, or think of it that way or not, we are, IMO, creating a story.

Though, from my perspective everything is a story. For example, I am going to go live the story of taking my dog out to the bathroom on a rainy morning in Seattle. Who knows to what adventures that will lead - possibly a donut!

Yeah, this is an issue of definition. To me, stories have elements of story construction that just playing your character as you like doesn't. When you play, to me you are creating situations that may be constructed as a story later. Until then, it really is, "Just a bunch of stuff that happened".

 

[DarkCrisis]

I have a similar playstyle to what you describe:

1. DM makes the world/setting (I do this with my players to some extent)
2. PCs explore that world
3. DM reacts to the PCs exploring the world (based on DM's interpretation of the natural reaction of the settings environment and occupants)

I can't speak for others; however, where I feel the need to pushback ever so slightly is the idea that your are not creating a story when exploring your setting. I may not be thinking about it as story, my character's story, or concerning myself with the narrative roles of the characters, but that doesn't mean we, as a group, are not creating a story. Whether we realize it or not, or think of it that way or not, we are, IMO, creating a story.

Though, from my perspective everything is a story. For example, I am going to go live the story of taking my dog out to the bathroom on a rainy morning in Seattle. Who knows to what adventures that will lead - possibly a donut!

I took my players from WotC official adventures to an open world "make your own story" and they have loved it.

Their current self-made goal? Get back down into the cultist crypt and recover the body of a beloved NPC Hireling and get him raised.

They've had way more fun trying to fix issues that they themselves helped to create "Uh Oh a member is cursed lets try to find a way to uncurse them!"

It's been way more fun an interactive then "Here is the quest guys. Get on it cause it took me 5 days to write it up."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Everyone is the protagonist in their own story. Even if someone else never recounts that story....you were still part of your own life and what you did affected you. When someone asks you..."how was your weekend?" Regardless of how you respond...YOU were the main character in that response.
I will never understand your point of view regarding TTRPGs and them not being stories. I'm not saying you are wrong....i'm just saying I don't understand it.

Like I said, it's a question of definition. It appears that this is an uncrossable bridge.

 

[Micah Sweet]

i've mentioned nothing about your playstyle, i've only questioned your stance that a session of a TTRPG is not and cannot be 'a story' until after the fact and someone takes the time to re-recite the events that took place.

and when i say 'telling my character's story' i don't mean 'i expect plot beats X, Y and Z to occur and to form a perfect scripted narrative arc' i mean 'every thing that happens to my character or they decide to do is part of their story.'

Whereas when I say, "telling my character's story", I mean that literally, which requires that what you're telling has to have happened first. Yours and others definitions are simply too broad to suit me.

 

[dave2008]

Until then, it really is, "Just a bunch of stuff that happened".

And to me, that is all a story is. So I agree with you that issue is our definition of "story."

For instance, my story this morning did not involve a donut, just the dog going to the bathroom on grassy hill.

 

[prabe]

Like I said, it's a question of definition. It appears that this is an uncrossable bridge.

It appears as though you require "story" to be pre-planned, That'd seem to imply that a free-written novel wouldn't meet your definition of "story.' I'm not saying you're wrong, exactly--this is (or would be) very much an edge-case, and just about all positions have edge-cases that make them look at least a little weird.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It appears as though you require "story" to be pre-planned, That'd seem to imply that a free-written novel wouldn't meet your definition of "story.' I'm not saying you're wrong, exactly--this is (or would be) very much an edge-case, and just about all positions have edge-cases that make them look at least a little weird.

It absolutely would...once at least a portion of that story is done and presented.

 

[prabe]

It absolutely would...once at least a portion of that story is done and presented.

The difference between the experience of free-writing a novel is, to me, very like the experience of GMing a TRPG when there's no pre-planned series of events. I presume you would say that the TRPG session is not a story--and I mostly agree--but could session notes be one? How much editing, how much reshaping the narrative into some sort of story structure, would need to happen to make it one?

Feel free to presume I'm the GM, but I'm talking about player-side session notes.