D&D General "Hot Take": Fear is a bad motivator

Lanefan · Apr 12, 2021

Mistwell said:
Then it's a badwrongfun reaction to a different thread which is also a badwrongfun reaction? We on the two wrongs make a right road now?

My fun is bad, my fun is wrong
And that's the end of this short song...

jayoungr · Apr 12, 2021

Rob Kuntz said:
It impacts it all the same, one cannot suggest changes to the game without studying the impact on the entire system.

It's not about removing removing risk, challenge, uncertainty, or consequences, as you stated. It's about finding consequences that are effective motivators for your group of players and leveraging those.

Lanefan said:
Which, if your players/PCs are the greedy types, can be quite effective. If they're not, it isn't.

That's the point. There is no one-size-fits-all consequence that's going to motivate every group to play in a fun and engaged manner. And that includes character permadeath.

Maxperson · Apr 12, 2021

Deset Gled said:
"What does a player do during the rest of the session when their character dies?" is another completely legitimate and valuable discussion that is highly unlikely to happen with the introduction OP provided.

That wasn't the point, though. The point was to counter the idea that non-participation doesn't happen or that the OP was talking about permanent non-participation.

Lanefan · Apr 12, 2021

jayoungr said:
I don't see how you're getting the idea that anyone in this thread wants success to be a given and consequences to be nonexistent.

I certainly get the idea that some want success to be a near-constant and failure to be just a speed bump rather than a hard loss.

Note I say failure rather than consequences. They're different. Failure happens here and now and has to be dealt with here and now; consequences happen later and thus can sometimes be mitigated or avoided.

Rob Kuntz · Apr 12, 2021

jayoungr said:
And that's great, for your group. A problem arises when people try to make this a universal rule that "should" be applied to all tables. I can't tell you how many "advice to the DM" videos and columns I've seen that say, as an absolute principle, that the DM should always make sure players fear for their characters' lives, because it will make the game better. That's simply not true for every group, mine being exhibit A to the contrary.

Fear is super-level event. In the wash it is stepped, actually: anxiety>doubt>fear>terror. Perhaps people conflate this incrementalism with fear alone. IME, anxiety and doubt should always be present, and fear is a greater in-game manifestation resulting from unfolding events and is not present otherwise. Doubt and anxiety should be present considering the fantastic (unknown) medium one is working within.

Vaalingrade · Apr 12, 2021

I can see doubt being often present, but I get enough anxiety in real life, thanks.

Rob Kuntz · Apr 12, 2021

jayoungr said:
It's not about removing removing risk, challenge, uncertainty, or consequences, as you stated. It's about finding consequences that are effective motivators for your group of players and leveraging those.

Isn't this a convoluted way of saying that one doesn't like fear as a motivator (not a conclusive argument even, all opinion) and suggests finding alternatives? But yet the OP has not really described what "fear" is in that sense, just that it is not liked. As I noted elsewhere, fear is a super event and not a constant in any game I have ever played. Anxiety and doubt are. So is the OP actually objecting to fear or is he posing and oppositional viewpoint to style which he sees as a constraint to his and his group's style? I am tending to see the latter.

loverdrive · Apr 12, 2021

Lanefan said:
So, by reading this perhaps a bit differently than you wrote it, you've more or less replaced death with loss of possessions as your hard

No. I remove hard-loss — you can't lose my game.

Your character, on the other hand, will lose a ton of stuff, important and personal. They will lose their heirloom sword, the vessel of their ancestors' spirits. They will lose their grimmoir, their Magnum Opus, all the research and breakthroughs they made to understand the greater laws of magic. They will lose their families, their sons and their lovers.

Oh God will they lose. The cruel world will chew them and spit them out, forever changed, and more often than not, changed to the worse.

Lanefan said:
Without any sort of hard-loss potential we're drifting into participation-medal territory - no winners, no losers, everyone gets a medal just for entering the race - which makes the race itself completely meaningless.

I don't see anything wrong with participation medals — the real medals are the friends we made along the way or something.

I'm not particularly interested in testing, whether the players can beat the game, and as a player, I can't say that I feel any importance in the fact that my character has survived the Tomb of Horrors.

What I am interested in is seeing how characters would react to hardships, how would they change and develop.

Warpiglet-7 · Apr 12, 2021

jayoungr said:
I don't see how you're getting the idea that anyone in this thread wants success to be a given and consequences to be nonexistent.

I don’t see how you missed my point about motivations.

Rob Kuntz · Apr 12, 2021

I'm bowing out of this with an EGG quote: "If the day ever comes when fans agree on how the game should be played D&D will have become staid and boring indeed." Gary Gygax, Alarums & Excursions #2, 1975.