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

[EzekielRaiden]

Just as a function of pointing out where "Realism" gets scrubbed to the side in these situations, I want to note that there is never really an expectation that these rumors are actually baseless rumors that are a waste of time to follow up on. There will be SOMETHING to do after choosing the path.

I have actually never seen or heard of anyone creating an adventure hook rumor, and it turning out to be literally nothing. No monsters to fight. No treasure to find. Just a week of wandering around camping outside with nothing to show for it. That doesn't happen.

A good example of the ways that an "adventure hook" deviates from real life. IRL, most rumors are at best wildly exaggerated and frequently have only the most limited, tenuous relationship with the truth. A realistic "adventure hook" should totally fail to produce anything of interest a meaningful portion of the time. I would be rather surprised if @Micah Sweet does in fact prefer a situation where even, say, 25% of rumors are wild exaggerations not worth the effort put in to investigate them, and a mere 5% are total wastes of time with genuinely zero benefit--even though that would be on the low end of what I would consider "realistic" (or "verisimilitudinous" which IMO is just "realistic" refurbished) for theoretical adventure hooks. It's a straight-up pure narrative conceit that we only "look at" the party when they're busy with real, serious hooks, or only spend the gaming equivalent of a cursory glance at the times when a lead is a total dud. Not because it's realistic to only "pay attention" when the action is happening, but because it is incredibly boring to run through all the rationally-expected duds before something actually worthwhile crops up.

 

[soviet]

A good example of the ways that an "adventure hook" deviates from real life. IRL, most rumors are at best wildly exaggerated and frequently have only the most limited, tenuous relationship with the truth. A realistic "adventure hook" should totally fail to produce anything of interest a meaningful portion of the time. I would be rather surprised if @Micah Sweet does in fact prefer a situation where even, say, 25% of rumors are wild exaggerations not worth the effort put in to investigate them, and a mere 5% are total wastes of time with genuinely zero benefit--even though that would be on the low end of what I would consider "realistic" (or "verisimilitudinous" which IMO is just "realistic" refurbished) for theoretical adventure hooks. It's a straight-up pure narrative conceit that we only "look at" the party when they're busy with real, serious hooks, or only spend the gaming equivalent of a cursory glance at the times when a lead is a total dud. Not because it's realistic to only "pay attention" when the action is happening, but because it is incredibly boring to run through all the rationally-expected duds before something actually worthwhile crops up.

Completely wrong. Your narrative conceits are entirely hollow constructions that serve only to illustrate the unimmersive artificiality of your game world. My narrative conceits are simply diegetic phenomena that add to the depth and wonder of my complex living universe.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Everyone keeps tying themselves up in knots to include the actual definition of what a story is into what they believe defines a story.
The debate hasn't been what is a story. Story is a word that has a definition in every dictionary in every language.

That things have common definitions is not necessarily useful, because the simple fact that someone wrote down a definition does not mean that that definition is actually what any specific person means. That's literally the failing of so-called "natural language" rules. Natural language turns out to be loosey-goosey and frequently very fuzzy.

As a good example, I looked up "story" in four different dictionaries. They did not agree on what the primary sense of the word "story" was. Some required that it be in prose or in verse; others required that it be for "entertainment" purposes; some required that it be an actual accounting of events, while others only had that as a secondary or tertiary meaning.

The debate is....are we creating a story when we play an RPG?

Some people are. Some people are not. I prefer RPGing that both does create a story, and creates that story in the act of playing, as opposed to a story prewritten in advance (such as Dragonlance, which is kind of the poster child of that approach), or a story which only exists long after the events have occurred and are then discussed or recorded.

Keep in mind that this debate has NOTHING to do with the OP.

Have a great day everyone.

It has to do with the OP if one's objection to narrow, specific forms of character death is "it makes for a crappy story." In other words, it is not directly addressing the OP. But it is a natural follow-on if one's interest in RPGing is some kinds of stories and not other kinds of stories (or things entirely apart from story).

 

[tetrasodium]

what makes LotR not that in your opinion? they might have a destination but they still explore and interact with the setting, and wanting to destroy the very evil one ring is a motivation that makes sense in the setting.

Spoiler: did you not read it?

AI Overview

The number of pages in The Lord of the Rings depends on the edition:
Paperback
The paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings is typically around 1,150–1,178 pages.
Hardcover
The hardcover edition of The Lord of the Rings is typically around 1,216 pages.
Single-volume edition
The first single-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings was published in 1968 and has 1,077 pages.
Kindle edition
The Kindle edition of The Lord of the Rings is 1,209 pages.

You might be able to point to a particular page or individual scene∆ within The Lord of The Rings and say "that right there! That's an adventure hook!", but The Lord of The Rings makes the chonkiest of chonky APs like the 640 page kingmaker AP & nearly every setting guide type ttrpg book I can recall ever seeing look like a positively bite sized one shottable thing. The Lord of The Rings is not an "opportunity for exploration", it's the extensive result of a specific exploration told in story from. You may as well be asking how record of lodoss war is not like Lord of the Rings alongside the those are the same picture meme with that question.


∆ there might be a be a better word for a scene that takes place in a book but it's not coming to mind at 8am while the coffee pot is gurgling.

 

[Autumnal]

I think roleplaying game sessions and campaigns have stories the same way speech - mine, yours, anyone’s - has grammar. We don’t have to think about it at all, or care about it at all, exactly as you don’t have to care about grammar when talking or writing. People run on subconscious rules and intuitions, and it generally works out okay. Stories are how our minds organize a collection of events, in present time and as an aid to memory.

Memory turns out to a weird and fickle beast when you look it closely: it turns out that a lot of what seems solid and grounded to us is invented in the act of recollection. Modern studies of consciousness can get pretty disturbing. (Try Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel for a great example.) Stories help us hold things together.

The physical world doesn’t have stories, of course. Philosophers of science have sometimes interesting argument about how much there are numbers in the world. But our communications, and apparently those of some other species, have an innate grammar to give them form, which evolves overtime in response to changing environments. And our experiences of discrete events have story when we have them and recall them.

I admit to being a bit bewildered by the really vehemently anti-story gamers. It seems to me very. Ich like trying to talk without grammar. But then a full understanding isn’t necessary to get thst something is a gamer’s priority and to hope their recreation time gives them satisfactions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

what makes LotR not that in your opinion? they might have a destination but they still explore and interact with the setting, and wanting to destroy the very evil one ring is a motivation that makes sense in the setting.

That's true. But the structure of LotR is very similar to an adventure path, with a single overarching story. The characters don't choose from several possible ways to spend their time, things to explore and/or investigate, unless you count the choice to not engage at all and go home. An adventure hook is almost always (always in my games) one of several possible opportunities to follow or ignore, always allowing the additional choice of going off in whatever direction the PCs want, without any hook.

In short, LotR is not a sandbox.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A good example of the ways that an "adventure hook" deviates from real life. IRL, most rumors are at best wildly exaggerated and frequently have only the most limited, tenuous relationship with the truth. A realistic "adventure hook" should totally fail to produce anything of interest a meaningful portion of the time. I would be rather surprised if @Micah Sweet does in fact prefer a situation where even, say, 25% of rumors are wild exaggerations not worth the effort put in to investigate them, and a mere 5% are total wastes of time with genuinely zero benefit--even though that would be on the low end of what I would consider "realistic" (or "verisimilitudinous" which IMO is just "realistic" refurbished) for theoretical adventure hooks. It's a straight-up pure narrative conceit that we only "look at" the party when they're busy with real, serious hooks, or only spend the gaming equivalent of a cursory glance at the times when a lead is a total dud. Not because it's realistic to only "pay attention" when the action is happening, but because it is incredibly boring to run through all the rationally-expected duds before something actually worthwhile crops up.

This is just the, "100% realism isn't practical or possible, so why bother with any of it" argument all over again. The quest for verisimilitude isn't all or nothing, and suggesting otherwise is just a way to denigrate the desire for it.

 

[KYRON45]

This is just the, "100% realism isn't practical or possible, so why bother with any of it" argument all over again. The quest for verisimilitude isn't all or nothing, and suggesting otherwise is just a way to denigrate the desire for it.

I guess that depends on what your definition of verisimilitude is.

Sorry, i just couldn't resist.

 

[pemerton]

That's true. But the structure of LotR is very similar to an adventure path, with a single overarching story. The characters don't choose from several possible ways to spend their time, things to explore and/or investigate, unless you count the choice to not engage at all and go home. An adventure hook is almost always (always in my games) one of several possible opportunities to follow or ignore, always allowing the additional choice of going off in whatever direction the PCs want, without any hook.

In short, LotR is not a sandbox.

This makes no sense. LotR is a novel, with (depending how you count them) two to five or more protagonists (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Merry, Pippin, maybe Faramir and/or Boromir).

Each of those characters had - in the fiction - a choice about what to do, where to go, etc. But of course the author has them make choices that will drive the story he wants to tell.

If, in your game, a player had their PC pick up on one of those adventure hooks, and exciting things happened as a result, presumably a story could be written that retold those exciting events. It may not be as long or intricate as LotR, but it would still - presumably - involve a sequence of events that follows from the choices made by the PC, including the choice to "bite" on the hook.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This makes no sense. LotR is a novel, with (depending how you count them) two to five or more protagonists (Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Theoden, Merry, Pippin, maybe Faramir and/or Boromir).

Each of those characters had - in the fiction - a choice about what to do, where to go, etc. But of course the author has them make choices that will drive the story he wants to tell.

If, in your game, a player had their PC pick up on one of those adventure hooks, and exciting things happened as a result, presumably a story could be written that retold those exciting events. It may not be as long or intricate as LotR, but it would still - presumably - involve a sequence of events that follows from the choices made by the PC, including the choice to "bite" on the hook.

What I would say that "the adventure hook" of LotR is a bad choice for more sandboxy game. It is basically about the fate of the world. That one thing is so big that it cannot really be ignored and it overwhelms any other potential "hooks." I think "multiple optional hooks" setup will probably produce something that resembles more an anthology of Conan adventures rather than an epic with one overarching plot like LotR.