Closing the Rotating Door of Death

[Scurvy_Platypus]

That deals with the random PC death where the PCs are the winning side. What happens if the PCs are overrun by ghouls? Killed by predator animals? Fall into the volcano? Do you fudge the likely result (PC eaten/disintegrated) to keep them alive? Is there a point at which you'd rule they're actually dead?

Well, once you get beyond the easily dealt with situation of there being at least 1 surviving member of a conflict, then it winds up being a judgment call; this isn't an especial problem for me, since I don't rely on the rules to be arbitrator and make sure that the group I'm with is on the same page as far as that's concerned as well.

So, pack of ghouls overran them? The first thing it tells me is that I screwed up; the point is to challenge the group not kill them. There might be an element of "bad luck" but I personally don't like cutting things so fine that one or two bad rolls results in a TPK.

2nd, yeah I'm probably going to "fudge" things from some people's perspective. Like I said, "dead" in combat means "out of the fight"; I don't rule this as meaning "unconscious" it means "unable to meaningfully contribute". So everyone can escape, but they're going to be suffering some lingering wounds. Or depending on the situation, the escape could wind up being a whole different sort of conflict; with 4E here now, escaping after the fight loss would probably be a Skill Challenge type thing.

Or, if it's a complete hash and has basically been an unfun waste of people's time, I just Fade-to-Black/cutscene/montage it... the group escapes battered and bloody, goes back to recover, and X amount of time has passed.

Predator animals are probably going to be a similar sort of deal. If it's some sort of bizarre creature, I dunno... it's possible that people will wake up in the lair and discover that they're being stored for food or part of the reproductive cycle.

Environmental hazards aren't especially different from combat as far as I'm concerned; it's a conflict, only it's Person-against-nature instead of Person-against-creature. So lingering wounds of one sort or another probably.

And I'm also not afraid to say, "Dude... it's not gonna happen. Your character would be committing suicide to [do whatever] and they know it." This sort of thing is usually more the province of someone wanting to push the limits of the characters-don't-die thing; in other words, it's been more a function of not-nice play.

I seem to be unusual in the D&D circles (these days at least), because I don't necessarily insist that game-fiction _must_ have mechanical consequences. Mechanical things often or usually have game-fiction influences, but it's not required.

So, take for example the bit about disintegration. Depending on the nature of the game, the players, as well as the nature of the game-world, it's distinctly possible that a portion of the PC gets disintegrated. Now, if it's a fight and the disintegration spell killed them, it's a logical enough outcome; having your entire left arm disintegrated off is going to put a crimp in your desire to keep swingin' a sword.

Afterwards? Well, they character is already suffering from lingering effects, which is being applied to them in the form of some easy to track penalties (like negative levels). So I don't feel a need to further penalise them. One of their friends can pick up the partially disintegrated arm that's lying on the ground, stuff it in a backpack and when they get back to town and heal up, the mechanical effect is the removal of the penalty and the in-game fiction is a healer being able to reattach the limb.

Ain't magic grand?

Would I be willing to actually go ahead and kill a character?

If the player is fine with it, sure. And if the player really _wants_ the risk for the character to die? That's their call too. My point is to avoid taking away a player's toys as punishment, not "don't kill a character".

And if the player is all, "Dude, it's a major fight and I think my character is gonna eat here. That being the case, just go ahead and let him die and I'm gonna make a new one." I'll work with them. I'll do my best to make sure it's a fight that _feels_ worthy of the character getting ganked.

If you've seen Watchmen, I'll tap that for an example. The scene where the Comedian gets killed? That felt like a pretty epic fight, even though it's just the first one and it's a one-on-one. Stuff breaking, chunks of marble kitchen being pulverised, being tossed across the room, it was big stuff. The collateral damage going on and the character dying by being tossed out a window, you _know_ that the attacker is Hardcore.

As the GM I can cheapen that character's death or I can make it big. I don't have to go over the top and have sobbing townspeople building statues, that's ridiculous in most case and inappropriate.

For better or worse, I take more of my cues about what happens in the game from media sources other than D&D. Books, movies, comics... these are what I'm going to think of in terms of what should or shouldn't happen. The rules of D&D provide a way for myself and the players to interact with and affect the game world in a (semi) consistent fashion. But when it comes to rules vs story, the rules are probably going to lose. It's a deliberate choice and players are aware of it. It also means that players need to have enough trust to accept that I _won't_ take away their toys.

For the metric of being an impartial judge, I'm a failure. I do my best to ensure that the rules are applied evenly to characters, so that a player doesn't feel like they're on the short end of the stick compared to another player. But I am involved and committed to the game and the stories that are being created. I think I run a pretty fun game but I know it's not for everyone. I'm not saying my way is _better_ than someone else's, merely that I've put a lot of thought into things and that it's what leads to games that are satisfying for me to participate in.

Does that answer your question? I know I'm not going to "convince" anyone to "change their mind", but I do hope I'm showing an internal consistency of process that demonstrates it works, even if it's not the sort of thing that others like or feel comfortable with.

 

[Starfox]

My solution is to close the revolving door of death - PC death is just not in my rules. This is the preference of me and my group; I realize others like it differently.

There is often talk about three styles of gaming - Simulationist, gamist, and storytelling. My games very strongly leans towards the storytelling side of this triangle. To us, the characters life story is much more important than what challenges he or she undergoes. To risk this accumulated story by letting a simulationist (nobody could survive this) or gamist (ops, a critical hit) element produce a random death simply is not interesting to us. Also, because so much is invested in the characters, I need "threaten" the players with much smaller setbacks to make the game exiting - the the death of an NPC associate, alienating a possible ally, or a career setback is just as large a deterrent against reckless behavior as death is in other campaigns where the players have invested less in their characters.

I used to have Fate Points that let characters escape death a limited number of times throughout their career, but in the end this became a sham as nobody ever ran out. It felt more honest to make death an optional rule instead.

I do agree that raise dead is not really a good idea - to me mainly because a world where raising the dead is a distinct possibility has to be quite different and because the ethical issues of who to raise and who not to raise become so hard and distracting.

 

[Tanstaafl_au]

The way "rotating door of death" sounds like there's too much death. My games tend to have characters downed but not out at the end of fight.

Death by dice, and/or by character stupidity happen in my games, but not so common be called a rotating door.

FWIW, I use initial con score for max number of resurrections/back from grave thats possible. Con score goes down one, no matter what form of resurrection was used.

I also have the dire pool of reincarnation, based of the original Darksun stable idea. Spare characters already created at about the right level that can be taken up with minimal delay.Items from the dead character go back to the party pool, redistributed if desired. New character once a certain vague hand waving time has passed typically gets to look through party pool for stuff, so might be collecting some of the same items, but typically not.

 

[Tuft]

My solution is to close the revolving door of death - PC death is just not in my rules. This is the preference of me and my group; I realize others like it differently.

There is often talk about three styles of gaming - Simulationist, gamist, and storytelling. My games very strongly leans towards the storytelling side of this triangle. To us, the characters life story is much more important than what challenges he or she undergoes. To risk this accumulated story by letting a simulationist (nobody could survive this) or gamist (ops, a critical hit) element produce a random death simply is not interesting to us. Also, because so much is invested in the characters, I need "threaten" the players with much smaller setbacks to make the game exiting - the the death of an NPC associate, alienating a possible ally, or a career setback is just as large a deterrent against reckless behavior as death is in other campaigns where the players have invested less in their characters.

I can testify to how tense and intense things can be in Starfox' campaign, and how having the luxury of caring about more than your character's survival can make things much more interesting. For example, the other night an NPC my character was interested in got lured into the embrace of what used to be her father, but now was a Zombie on a killing spree. I spent an absolutely nail-biting series of actions until I managed to get her away from the Zombie, until finally I got reinforced by my team members. After that incident, I can swear I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of my ears...

The thing is, I knew that the my odds at saving her might very well be much, much worse than my own odds at saving myself in a similar situation. Let's for argument assume that my odds at saving her were a mere 30%. I have great problems seeing a campaign with PC survival odds so low - with 2/3 of them dying every battle, you would have absolutely no continuity and overall plot.

Were my odds of saving the NPCs really so low? I don't know, since I don't know what the numbers were behind the DM screen. But the threat that they might have been so bad was very real to me.

To me, "characters don't die, but they can fail miserably" is more simulationistic - if you simulate books and movies, that is. How popular would Robert E. Howard have been if Conan the barbarian had died in the third chapter of the first book, only to be replaced by Ronald the Barbarian for two and a half volumes, who is substituted by Donald the Barbarian, who is...

 

[Jeff Wilder]

To me, "characters don't die, but they can fail miserably" is more simulationistic - if you simulate books and movies, that is.

The characters that survive -- when "not surviving" is a real possibility -- are the ones that make it into books and movies. (All of the others are half-finished manuscripts and screenplays that never went anywhere.)

 

[Victim]

Personally, I don't care if there's a revolving door of death. If death is frequent, it's far better to have characters get rez'd than to have to replace them. Especially at higher levels where similar characters are more rare, characters have more stuff (so someone dying and replacing with a new character can mean tons of magic items potentially added to the party).

 

[Moleculo]

In our campaigns, when such spells existed, you couldn't just buy resurrection spells. You had to convince the priest that this was worth the time, and potentially the ire of his or her deity.

I mean, the soul of your companion must be wrenched back from the afterlife at the behest of a higher being, potentially from a location that that higher being does not have sway in. Would Corrillon spend his energies dragging your non-elven soul back from the nine hells, when you weren't even a follower, simply because they needed a new roof on the temple? Yeah, I'm sure a deific being is okay with his mortal vessels working miracles to make some coin.

 

[Starfox]

About what Tuft said; it was the Hangman's Noose scenario from Pazio and the Madge Blossomheart event.

Other games have had other, more casual approaches to death and revival. Some snippets from our Dragonstar (think Star Wars + DnD) campaign.

• There is a cult worshiping the "merchant" and they sell miracles. Their commercial attitude has of course influenced all other cults to be more commercial too, still not selling miracles to outsiders but instead offering discounts to members.
• There is a meta magic feat that lets you cast spells over a telephone line. There are dial-up services you can call for spells. Need to buff up?; Just call 111-BUFF. Same goes for healing and raise dead. Great workplace insurance.
• Speaking of insurance, you can bye resurrection insurance - if you fail to report in they will divine your status, and if you are dead you'll be remotely resurrected. All that is needed is a unique identifier, like the social security number.
• Speaking of resurrection, we discussed paladins using kamikaze tactics. A high-level paladin spends his time kicking back in heaven, mostly. When needed, he is resurrected and given a kamikaze vehicle, which he can then use to devastating effect.

Many of these things were based on local rules, of course. Feel free to check out ]Dark Star. It was a few years back.

 

[Essenti]

At the end of the day, the name of the game is fun. Immediate death as the result of a single roll detracts from the story and the fun, and I make every effort to avoid it. If a player fails a save--the target number they were trying to beat is entirely up to me--I don't tell them what they were rolling for. What happens behind my screen stays behind the screen. I'm often making random rolls (as in, just for the heck of it) behind my screen to keep them on their toes anyway. They have no clue why I am rolling... nor should they... and I have no qualms fudging things in favor of what adds to the story

That doesn't mean I don't provide ample opportunity for them to put their character in mortal danger. But if it starts looking like a TPK, I'll knock down enemy stats and engineer strategic misses. I'll be as shrewd as I need to be to keep the story going. Taking them to the brink of defeat and letting them claw their way back from death's door is way more fun than religiously adhering to the game mechanics.

But if a character has fought that hard and still falls in battle--well into the negative--I'll give that player a choice. If you choose to get back up after this battle, it may be a long time before your character fully recovers, if ever: loss of limbs, loss of stats, whatever seems appropriate and proportionate to how they were felled. It's their decisions to pass back through death's revolving door but they'll carry story consequences back with them.

As far as something like true resurrection, it only works perfectly once...

 

[Hassassin]

Say what you will about evil parties, but this problem is lessened. Others will probably not expend a lot of resources to get you raised unless you have something they truly need.

I think death is a part of most good stories. A story where none of the important characters die despite repeated mortal danger is - IMHO - too unrealistic.

That doesn't mean I like "random" deaths, but any time the PCs go to combat they should know they are risking death or worse. I try to make sure the players understand that...