Death, Dying and Entitlements.

[mneme]

There's a lot of badwrongfun in this thread. Some interesting (if not novel) points as well, of course.

I don't think there's any reason the dice intrinsically need to matter. You roll the dice because you don't want all results to be decisions of the players/the GM, but it's the players and GM who need agency; not the dice. That said, I don't really like fudging much; it's functionally lying to the players, and it's not good to lie to your friends. And if you want to banish death from your game, there are lots of ways to do so without illusionism/lying -- you can use monster tactics that don't kill; you can have monsters use non-lethal tactics and strike to knock unconcious, not kill (see: fates worse than death; the concept, not the Dragon article); you can even use house rules that make it harder to die and use other consequences instead.

OTOH, it's important that player decisions make a difference. Otherwise, why did the players show up? You can handle this by letting players die when they do stupid things...or you can handle it by making actions have consequences, whether those are death or not. It's all good, as long as what a player does and how they do it -does- make a difference.

Now, regarding the idea that without death on the table, a game has no teeth...um, no? Has anyone here read dungeon_grrl's 3.5 writeups (not family friendly, but awesome)? The games she wrote up didn't have a lot of character death--but there were certainly consequences for a wipe; big ones. Having the party wake up, defensless and captured, after a wipe rather than ending the campaign is totally legit re RAW (as is, given the right circumstances, having the bad guys capture a downed PC rather than killing her, then turn that into an adventure hook with the player trying to escape or avoid a horrible fate on the inside, or helpless with the player playing a temporary PC for the rescue), and turns a wipe into plot, rather than a campaign-ender. What you have the bad guys do with the party after their capture (or try to do, depending), depends a lot on the tone of the game and what the players have agreed to, of course.

 

[aurance]

No it is not all randomness, but the dice are the neutral factor in the outcome of battles. If you have to fudge dice then there is no need to roll them.

As other's have mentioned, it is hard to die in 4th edition D&D. You have to jump so many hoops to die that if you do end up hitting the negatives and then failing three death saves in a row then you were most likely meant to die.

How much more red tape do people need to go through in order to die? I think it's kind of overboard as it is right now and there are people who want it even harder to die.

I got news for you. Even with dice, and even the way you think you're playing it, the DM directly affects the outcome regardless. You ever add more monsters after battle starts? You ever present or allow players creative opportunities to beat the encounter without further violence? Heck, do you allow PCs to avoid combat all together with diplomacy or guile?

Whether you do it with encounter setup or with judicious use of tactic changes or dice changes, the DM directs the combat almost every step of the way.

"You die because the dice say you do." Nope. PCs die because ultimately the DM says they do. Some people like the element of randomness to be a little more visible, some don't. But it's not cool of you to associate not playing that way with some kind of cheating.

 

[aurance]

Without deaths, players will eventually stop taking threatening situations seriously and instead only look towards the treasure involved.

Nope, not true.

Risk of death is not the only penalty in-game, nor is it even the one with most emotional impact. It's just the most obviously easy and blunt one to use.

 

[FireLance]

Sure I'm passionate about this! Because this to me is along the same lines as cheat codes and strategy guides. Why would you want to play game that you can't lose at?

Answer #1: Because the journey is more important than the destination.

Answer #2: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Answer #3: Because life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don't hang around long enough for his or her bad attitude to pull you down.

 

[Colmarr]

I killed off a friends character because...

Lord help us if Jack Chick ever sees your friend play D&D.

 

[FireLance]

I don't have to houserule anything. We play by RAW which includes death by RAW.

To houserule, or not to houserule, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take pencil against the RAW of troubles,
And by houseruling end them? To houserule, to change,
No more; and by a change to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural ones
That dice are heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To houserule, to change;
To change, perchance to unbalance – ay, there's the rub:
For in that change of rules what unbalance may come,
When we have ignored the official assumptions,
Must give us pause

 

[DNH]

I used to play with someone whose mantra was "It's the bad dice rolls that'll kill ya!" And it's true. Whether it means the players' rolls are too bad to deal with their foes quickly and efficiently, or the DM's rolls for the foes are "bad for the players" (ie good), it's almost always going to be down to the dice whether a character lives or dies. I take the point (aurance) that, ultimately, the DM has the final say on the application of those dice but the rolls matter nevertheless.

Me, I am probably too quick to fudge things and avoid character death. Don't know why. I guess it could be because I play a lot too (as a player, I mean) and I tend to invest a lot into my character and grow attached to him or her and I know what character death feels like after all that. I notice that, over time, my players develop their characters in a similar way, both as individuals and as a group. And we have fun with that. And so I generally don't want to break that with character death.

Is that wrong? Probably, and I will take another look at my DMing style on this issue once my campaign resumes in a few weeks.

I will say this though - I am loath to kill off a character out of pure bad luck (ie bad dice rolls). I mean, it's one thing to be able to say "he was in the wrong place at the wrong time" but if death comes about because the dice fall badly, then I don't feel that is fair. OTOH, a character acting through gross stupidity and recklessness doesn't deserve to be protected.

Here's another thing: Time was, back in the day, that my group role-played every little thing, from visiting the store, to travelling through the wilderness, to renting rooms at the inn for the night, and yes, getting characters raised/resurrected. That was a long time ago now, when all of us had more free time for gaming and we played a lot and often. These days, we play once a week for a few hours and that time is more precious. As a result, most of those RP aspects have fallen by the wayside and become more like DM fiat: "Okay, cross off 4gp apiece for rooms and supplies; ten days later you arrive back in Specularum." Same goes for raising characters, I feel, so it is very much an exercise in seeing how much gold you have and where the nearest temple is (if you can't do it yourself).

Also, in my young campaign (currently 5th level), I have seen two characters retired - not killed. This amounts to the same thing - the same jar to continuity - but occurs for completely different reasons, even among the players who elect to do this. One of the characters felt, in an rp sense, that they were better off elsewhere fulfilling a particular role; the other character's player simply wanted to try something else.

One final thing before I close this essay - someone mentioned above that the journey is more important than the destination and that is very much the case for my games. However, I am not entirely sure how that affects the approach to character death. If the story is paramount, then it doesn't really matter what characters see it through (unless they are closely invested in the story); the players will remain the same. Or else, maybe the story only really *is* a story because of those characters.

 

[DNH]

To houserule, or not to houserule, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take pencil against the RAW of troubles,
And by houseruling end them? To houserule, to change,
No more; and by a change to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural ones
That dice are heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To houserule, to change;
To change, perchance to unbalance – ay, there's the rub:
For in that change of rules what unbalance may come,
When we have ignored the official assumptions,
Must give us pause

You can't make a Hamlet without breaking rules.

 

[S'mon]

I certainly wouldn't tell them to "get lost" if they were my friend and I was interested in playing a game with them. I also wouldn't expect them to spend their precious leisure time playing a game they found unenjoyable because someone on the internet thought their approach was badwrongfun.

If both DM and players enjoy a game where the players get everything they want, then there is no problem with running such a game.

I think however it's important that both actually take time to understand what they really want. Are the players *really* looking for a 'story game' where their PCs cannot die? Is that what they want out of 4e D&D? With its lengthy combats and complex combat rules it seems an exceptionally poor choice of rules for such a game.

What is very common is DMs who pretend they'll kill PCs, but fudge so PCs never die. This is a deceit on the players and they tend to be unhappy when they work it out. OTOH there are also DMs who claim to be running a story-centric game but kill off lots of PCs because they're using an inappropriate ruleset, such as (IME) using 3e rules for a 'Midnight' campaign. That 3e is actually the official rules system for Midnight didn't make it any less inappropriate IME!

 

[S'mon]

Thanks for the advice. However, neither eliminating death as a consequence... ...requires houseruling anything in any of the games that I play (e.g. 4e, WFRP, CoC, Labyrinth Lord, etc.). .

This is just not true. All those games have the possibility of character death coded into the RAW.