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

[Swarmkeeper]

No. And I'm really not sure where you draw the connection. The friend isn't TELLING me, "We're going to lunch, and you won't take my money." Your description literally was the person telling the group, "We will be doing this thing," which...as I said is logically equivalent to telling people that they aren't allowed to do anything else. That's literally what it means to tell people that they're going to do one specific thing. It necessarily means you're not letting them do anything else. Like that's literally the logical converse. "For all X, if X is a player character, X is a Y" is 100% logically equivalent to "There does not exist any X, where if X is a player character, X is not a Y." By definition they are equivalent.

If I may, you seem to be attributing malintent where there need not be any. A DM proposes a campaign idea - the party is a group of halfling adventurers in [adventuring world]. The players can chime in with "Sounds great" or "Tell me more" or "Hmm... can't we try XYZ instead?" Session zero can hash out this and a whole lot more detail with everyone getting some input. Maybe this particular campaign ends up sounding great to 4 out of the 5 players so that fifth player has a choice: go with the flow or sit it out and wait for the next campaign. No harm, no foul. If only 1 player thinks it is a great campaign premise, well, back the drawing board to find something most of the group can agree on. It's not a situation where the Big Bad DM is imposing her will on everyone. It's a conversation where the DM has a campaign idea, is going to do a lot of work to make it happen, and is seeking buy-in from the players.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If I may, you seem to be attributing malintent where there need not be any. A DM proposes a campaign idea - the party is a group of halfling adventurers in [adventuring world]. The players can chime in with "Sounds great" or "Tell me more" or "Hmm... can't we try XYZ instead?" Session zero can hash out this and a whole lot more detail with everyone getting some input. Maybe this particular campaign ends up sounding great to 4 out of the 5 players so that fifth player has a choice: go with the flow or sit it out and wait for the next campaign. No harm, no foul. If only 1 player thinks it is a great campaign premise, well, back the drawing board to find something most of the group can agree on. It's not a situation where the Big Bad DM is imposing her will on everyone. It's a conversation where the DM has a campaign idea, is going to do a lot of work to make it happen, and is seeking buy-in from the players.

As I said: Every single time this conversation comes up, someone (frequently @Oofta) gives me the ultimatum of "what happens if it can't be resolved?" Every. Single. Time. What happens if it's two things that just absolutely cannot ever be worked out no matter what? There is never lenience given for (what I consider to be) the 99.99999% of cases where it's totally reconcilable because everyone is actually friendly and engaging in good faith. Hence why I assume the loggerheads; I'm the one who has always said loggerheads is incredibly rare.

If we're now, finally, able to talk about the vast majority of other situations where things are reconcilable, awesome! I have always wanted to talk about that, and not about the gotcha ultimatum BS that the pro-"absolute power" DM folks keep pushing. (And yes, I use those quotes for a reason. That is the precise phrase repeatedly used, by multiple posters, a phrase I campaigned as hard as I could against and which folks adamantly refused to budge about. These are not scare quotes. It was literally verbatim "absolute power.")

I only emphasize this so hard BECAUSE I've been browbeaten so. damn. many. times. Because I've had people insist, over and over and over again, that the ONLY surefire solution is to have a DM with "absolute power" who autocratically dismisses player disagreement, in the absence of meaningful discussion, because there's some tiny slim possibility that someone is being a jerk maybe possibly.

Are we finally, finally moving away from exclusively discussing the desperate worst-case scenario? Because the only (realistic) thing that would please me more would be hearing that WotC is officially releasing 4e into the Creative Commons.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

As I said: Every single time this conversation comes up, someone (frequently @Oofta) gives me the ultimatum of "what happens if it can't be resolved?" Every. Single. Time. What happens if it's two things that just absolutely cannot ever be worked out no matter what? There is never lenience given for (what I consider to be) the 99.99999% of cases where it's totally reconcilable because everyone is actually friendly and engaging in good faith. Hence why I assume the loggerheads; I'm the one who has always said loggerheads is incredibly rare.

If we're now, finally, able to talk about the vast majority of other situations where things are reconcilable, awesome! I have always wanted to talk about that, and not about the gotcha ultimatum BS that the pro-"absolute power" DM folks keep pushing. (And yes, I use those quotes for a reason. That is the precise phrase repeatedly used, by multiple posters, a phrase I campaigned as hard as I could against and which folks adamantly refused to budge about. These are not scare quotes. It was literally verbatim "absolute power.")

I only emphasize this so hard BECAUSE I've been browbeaten so. damn. many. times. Because I've had people insist, over and over and over again, that the ONLY surefire solution is to have a DM with "absolute power" who autocratically dismisses player disagreement, in the absence of meaningful discussion, because there's some tiny slim possibility that someone is being a jerk maybe possibly.

Are we finally, finally moving away from exclusively discussing the desperate worst-case scenario? Because the only (realistic) thing that would please me more would be hearing that WotC is officially releasing 4e into the Creative Commons.

Some of us have never been "exclusively discussing the desperate worst-case scenario". No "finally" about it. I wish you wouldn't lump us in with those you think are. It might do you some good to ignore those that give you the ultimatum so you can then more easily have the discussions you wish to pursue.

 

[Lanefan]

Okay. So do you actually talk with your players about premises, and if the players are really not on board, try to find something that does work?

How I do it:

I design the setting, tweak the rules, and set up the campaign premises and potential - though highly malleable or even discardable - story arcs.

Only after that process is complete (or complete enough to let me drop the puck) do I start approaching potential players to invite them in, fairly safe in the knowledge I'll find at least four or five people in our larger gaming circle willing to give it a go provided we can find a common free night of the week to play (schedule conflict with other games already on the go is the biggest headache here).

And as I run very long campaigns, I only have to do this process once every very long time.....which is fine with me, as that set-up process represents a crap-ton of work.

 

[Oofta]

Okay. So do you actually talk with your players about premises, and if the players are really not on board, try to find something that does work?

Or do you do as you and several other people keep saying, where if there's ever any kind of disconnect between player desires and DM desires, DM always wins, hands down, no questions, no discussion, nothing whatever, DM always gets whatever they want and players meekly accept it. Which is what you and others have repeatedly pushed as the only possible solution to any meaningful difference between player and DM.

I tell people what kind of game I run, what ruleset we're using, restrictions and so on in my invite. I run campaigns in my home world but I still have quite a bit of flexibility. So if this is an established group I'll discuss options and of course they can make suggestions on general theme of the campaign, at least to start. Once the campaign starts it's very player choice directed.

But do you really need to insert the adversarial/insulting "players meekly accepting" BS. I've explained how I run my games to you many, many times. But even then? This power hungry DM lording their power over hapless players is a really moldy strawman. Can it happen? Sure. Millions of people play TTRPGs. Does it happen with any regularity? No. At least not for long.

 

[Chaosmancer]

What exactly is objectively better about playing a hero? The way you said that implied that anyone would agree with your stance that playing a hero is the superior option.

Sell me on it. What benefits would I get from playing a callous money-grubber that would make it a headspace that I want to get into?

 

[Chaosmancer]

None of those are reboots. All take place in different times and in different places in the same universe, the same story, with frequent crossovers taking place.

Just like Marvel.

Reboots AND remixes, right? But now you are focused ONLY on reboots? and what? Reboots can only be reboots if they take place in the same time and place? That isn't my definition of a reboot, since a good reboot necessarily takes you to different places.

And no, not just like Marvel. Marvel still has Peter Parker as Spider-Man, in New York, and he is still largely dealing with many of the same struggles. Peter gets married? Within a year the marriage is over and he is back to the same status quo. He gets a better paying job or makes forward career progress? Within a year he is broke and back to the same status quo. Heck, even Batman has a kid now, though treating him having a biological child as being a massive change to his story does a disservice in my opinion to his adoptive kids, whom he has had since the 40's! And of course, he's never had a wife.

The status quo becomes king, because you cannot have infinite character growth, any progress has to be dragged out far too long, or be forgotten/retconned away.

 

[Lanefan]

Sell me on it. What benefits would I get from playing a callous money-grubber that would make it a headspace that I want to get into?

For me the main benefit is being able to do what I can't do (and be what I can't be) in real life.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The first statement is counter to many studies over the last 15 years.

A study by Cheng et al. (2010) conducted research on the effects of exponential increase in screen time on children. Noting a significant increase in screen use during brain development since 2000. When parents were asked to rate the distractability of the children on a scale of 1-3, the researchers noted that heavier screen time increased the rated distractability.

I will assume a good control group was used. Kids with no screen time at all. But how accurate were the parent's assessments? Did the parents believe that the increased screen time would increase distractability and therefore rate it at an increased rate? I can assume that the researchers accounted for this, but you were quite specific that they were noting the parent's ratings, and no other measurements.

Vedechkina & Borgonovi (2021) did a study on school age children and their productivity as well as their ability to work within constraints. They noted that use of technology during childhood development correlates with increased prevalence of attention related disorders such as ADHD. They also noted that technology use activates addiction pathways through the release of dopamine to give children a neural reward. The study noted this was akin to the effects of alcoholism or drug use in it's addictive effects.

Addiction does not mean decreased attention span. And correlation is famously not causation. Also, those results don't seem to be related to the questions they were asking. They were looking for productivity and ability to work within restraint and noted addiction tendencies?

A study (Zaveri 2023) showed that online video creators had to boil information down to a timeframe from 1 to 3 minutes to maxmize engagement. Other studies have noted similar effects in teens, young adults, and adults.

Ah, now here is something interesting. But... strange. My own viewing habits on Youtube tend towards 45 min long videos, and I'm a young adult to adult aged individual. And how long is your average twitch stream? Longer than 2 minutes I'd imagine. Most twitch stream videos I see are 1 to 5 hours long.

To quote Petrillo 2021;

"When there is a significant dopamine release due to consumption of short-form video content, the prefrontal cortex of school-aged children cannot properly regulate the impulse control needed to modulate the addictive behaviours. An addiction to short-form media is essentially an addiction to the constant influx of information presented in the attractive content which is made available by apps like TikTok."

CNN and Microsoft released studies as well, noting drops in attention span, including statistics like the average visit to a website being just north of 4 seconds.

Simply put the more technology we use, the worse we are at focusing. I think it would be hard to argue that this does not influence the length of campaigns. If a person is used to dopamine releases every 1 to 3 minutes, the DM better be on top of their game in order to maintain that person's attention.

I would love to see preferred campaign length by age, but I have a feeling I could guess at it pretty accurately. I expect to see shorter sessions and campaigns as time goes on.

Here is a question for you. What is the average length of a movie?

There is a dartmouth article here: Trends: Despite Shorter Attention Spans, the Most Popular Movies are Getting Longer which shows that movies are on average very slightly shorter (90 min to 85 min) but some of the most popular movies are getting LONGER.

And let us say that needing that dopamine rush to check your phone means that you stop and check it oh every 20 minutes or so... do you have a tangent with friends while gaming? Maybe get distracted by an event that just happened. That is also being distracted and not focusing, and that hasn't increased in recent years.

There is a lot of debate on even what it means to have a shorter attention span. Maybe you do glance away from a screen to look at something else every 4 seconds, but if you sit to play a video game you can do that for two hours easily. Most of us have to focus for work, and yet we aren't seeing massive falls in productivity, in fact, we are seeing the highest productivity ever.

Sure, I don't have the studies memorized to back this up, but it seems to me that I've heard people saying this my entire life, and yet I've never experienced it. What I have experienced is people not wanting to waste their time. Most Tiktoks are swiped off of in the first half a second, not because we can't focus on them, but because you have ten minutes to yourself for the entire day, and you are NOT going to waste it on something you don't enjoy. I've felt that pressure, to cram as much enjoyment into one or two hours as I possibly can, and that is probably leading into at least some of these things like the average time on a website being 4 seconds. Not a lack of ability to focus.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sell me on it. What benefits would I get from playing a callous money-grubber that would make it a headspace that I want to get into?

Probably none, for you. You seem pretty dedicated to high moral fiber in your PCs, and that's fine.

Besides, since when have either of us been able to convince the other of anything?