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

[EzekielRaiden]

Unless someone recorded it as it was being played.

But then it isn't improvisational jazz anymore. It's a dead recording.

The experience, yes. The act of creation, yes. The end-result music for anyone else to hear, no (again, unless someone happened to record it).

The experience is the music. That's...literally the whole point.

And RPG play, assuming someone's keeping an ongoing game log, produces as its end result a written, collated story, even if said story has no idea what the "structure" of a story looks like.

No. That is one way that it can do so. It is, emphatically, NOT the only way. Dragonlance is Story Before. Dungeon World is Story Now.

This conflates experience with story. The experience is what happens in the moment. The story is what you tell people later.

Experience IS story with Story Now. That you refuse to accept this fact does not make it not true. Just as the experience of jazz is the whole point thereof, and the experience

Story Before, as you define it here, IMO isn't (yet) story at all. Story After is just Story, period.

Then you are--simply--wrong.

This is a perfect example of conflating "story" with "experience".

Because you keep asserting, without any actual evidence or even argument, that that is somehow inappropriate. You are incorrect.

The story of RHPS is that a couple of people get lost on a rainy night, end up at a castle, in that castle a bunch of very strange things happen, etc.

The experience of RHPS is that of sitting in a theater watching it with a bunch of hard-core nutball fans doing their thing.

And I say that the former is a dead thing that provides nothing of what RHPS is about. The latter is what RHPS is actually about--and thus, that is what the actual story is. The nailed-down, dead thing isn't.

You can (and probably will!) tell the story of that movie-watching experience later.

But that would not be the same story. That would be my story of some particular time. It would not be the story of actually being there, which is a different thing. As different as Ludwig van Beethoven and Louis Armstrong. To confine Mr. Armstrong's art to exclusively recordings and written, composed pieces would be killing the soul of his art, which is not at all true of Beethoven's art. They're different kinds of art with different goals. Just as Story Before, Story Now, and Story After are different kinds of story with different goals.

That you are not interested in the goals of Story Now (or Story Before) does not mean those are not also valid storytelling goals. "Setting tourism" and "theme-park" gaming and other such things are a perfectly valid and widespread preference; just ask @Micah Sweet. "Protagonism" and "conversation" gaming and other such things are another perfectly valid preference, though I don't think it's as widespread as the previous, in part because awareness of that experience as a distinct thing is much more recent. "Story Before" in the TTRPG space is at least as old as Dragonlance, and probably older. "Story After" is as old as TTRPGs themselves, mostly because it's the simplest form of storytelling. Nearly anyone can tell a story upon reflection, though it may not necessarily be a particularly good or interesting story. Story Before and Story Now require a bit more effort and induce a few more wrinkles.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Unless someone recorded it as it was being played.

The experience, yes. The act of creation, yes. The end-result music for anyone else to hear, no (again, unless someone happened to record it).

So you cannot create music unless you have created a product that can be bought and sold?

No thanks.

And that really seems to be the root of your argument, anything other than a product is an experience. But... an experience of what? A memory of what? Are we going to argue a sunset doesn't exist unless we take a picture of it that can be looked at later? It was only an experience?

I think you have made experience too large of a definition, and shrank everything else around it.

 

[Lanefan]

So you cannot create music unless you have created a product that can be bought and sold?

Buying and selling has nothing to do with anything.

A creation of any kind - music, improv, etc. - that doesn't last beyond the moment of its creation, however, is only of any benefit to those experiencing that moment of creation; each of whom will probably have a (more or less) different and-or imperfect memory of it later. It's of no benefit to anyone not there at the time and cannot be replicated afterwards.

Contrast this with music etc. that, while created completely in the moment, is recorded at the time and thus can be revisited later, meaning others not present at the time can still share and enjoy the results of that creative moment.

And that really seems to be the root of your argument, anything other than a product is an experience. But... an experience of what? A memory of what? Are we going to argue a sunset doesn't exist unless we take a picture of it that can be looked at later? It was only an experience?

The sunset exists, but only as an experience if not recorded somehow at the time.

Same with story.

 

[ezo]

Man... this is still going on?

Come on folks, it is almost to #1000! You can do it!

 

[billd91]

Honestly, after all this discussion, I think there's only one answer:
Until player morale improves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you cannot create music unless you have created a product that can be bought and sold?

No thanks.

And that really seems to be the root of your argument, anything other than a product is an experience. But... an experience of what? A memory of what? Are we going to argue a sunset doesn't exist unless we take a picture of it that can be looked at later? It was only an experience?

I think you have made experience too large of a definition, and shrank everything else around it.

I don't recall him saying anything about buying and selling.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Buying and selling has nothing to do with anything.

A creation of any kind - music, improv, etc. - that doesn't last beyond the moment of its creation, however, is only of any benefit to those experiencing that moment of creation; each of whom will probably have a (more or less) different and-or imperfect memory of it later. It's of no benefit to anyone not there at the time and cannot be replicated afterwards.

Contrast this with music etc. that, while created completely in the moment, is recorded at the time and thus can be revisited later, meaning others not present at the time can still share and enjoy the results of that creative moment.

So until the invention of recording, no one played music?

Because that's the part you are ignoring. Micah's claim was that there was NO STORY until it was retold to someone else later. And you keep arguing that there is NO MUSIC unless it is packaged in a physical medium that can revisited later. And I'm not trying to argue that there is no value in a CD or a Record or a Vinyl disc. There is value in recording music and to listening to music later. But music still exists even if it is not recorded.

And I'm stunned that I have to make that argument, because it doesn't matter if people have imperfect memories of an event, or if people who are not present "benefit" from it. It matters that it happens and that it exists.

The sunset exists, but only as an experience if not recorded somehow at the time.

Same with story.

So the story of DnD exists when it is played at the table. That's literally my entire argument. You trying to devalue it as "only an experience" is utterly bizarre to me. What is wrong with being an experience?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't recall him saying anything about buying and selling.

Missing the point by a wide margin.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Missing the point by a wide margin.

I also don't recall anyone saying music doesn't exist unless it's recorded.

 

[ezo]

Fine... I'll do it.

#1000.

I'm outta here. See ya around, folks.