Death, Dying and Entitlements.

[S'mon]

If it is an activity you're undertaking with your friends, then DM declarations are generally a bad idea.

I don't see this; do people have really fragile friendships these days? I blame the education system!
I find that something like this kind of negotiation exercise is necessary when playing with my 3 year old son Bill, because he does not have the maturity to play something which does not exactly fit his preferences, but I have never found it necessary when gaming with adults.

 

[Obryn]

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?

(1) There's ways of losing other than character death. Most of them are much more interesting than death, for an ongoing campaign.

(2) Again, what are you arguing for? Does it matter to you how other people play their pretend-elf game, in campaigns you're not involved in? Do you think you know better than I do what makes for an entertaining session at my table?

-O

 

[Ourph]

So, when I say 4e isn't very good at giving you a game with a lot of lethality, I mean that 4e isn't very good at giving you a game where death matters mechanically. The rules don't punish dying very harshly. Swapping out a party member is not a big deal, as far as the rules are concerned.

I see what you mean. I don't necessarily agree that 4e is as different from other games by RAW as you do, but I don't want to derail the thread with unnecessary edition comparisons. I certainly concede that there are minimal mechanical consequences for death built into the 4e rules.

 

[Ourph]

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

That assumes the DM is eliminating death using one particular method. There numerous ways to eliminate death as a consequence that do not involve simply handwaving the situation when characters would otherwise die.

As an example, you have a bunch of low level adventurers come across a dragon sleeping on its treasure horde. If you have kept the risk vs reward paradigm in your games to this point, the adventurers will likely decide it is not worth the risk. If the theif does try to sneak in and steal something, it will be exciting as they might die at any moment.

This is a perfect example. If the players wanted a game where character death is not a common in-game consequence, I simply wouldn't present them with these kind of situations as a DM. The characters would be spending their time doing things that were unlikely to result in character death.

There are other ways of adding risk v reward than death of course. In a recent game, the PCs failed miserably at trying to save an NPC from a big bad guy. They were beaten down, with only one left standing. The bad guy then callously executed the NPC in front of them. At this point, they know they had lost and had been 'punished' for their failure. I decided that seeing their friend murdered enraged them so much that they all spent a healing surge due to the inspiration. The guy who was still up and the dwarf who was a relative of the NPC were both so overcome with rage that they got an action point. This led to a cinematic resurgence where they came back from certain death and slaughtered the bad guys. This resulted in a much better game than a TPK, the players still felt empowered, yet they know that they had lost the day, even if they did avenge their fallen comrade.

This is a great example of in-game consequences that matter just as much (perhaps more) to the players than simply dying and rolling up a new character.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Why do you have to equate "losing" with death? Surely in a semi-open ended campaign (still with an overarching plot or else it's not a campaign but a mini-series) there can be consequences that don't involve PC death

Totally true!

But there's no rules for failing a story goal.

There ARE rules for dying! Plenty of 'em.

So to make a space for winning and losing the story means that the DM has to do all the work.

Which some DMs, naturally, either don't know they need to do, or are aren't able to do, given how little the core rules discuss this apparently vital element of adding risk and challenge to the game.

 

[Ourph]

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

And yet, none of them have any rule that insists the GM create campaigns or encounters where character death is a likely consequence.

 

[Barastrondo]

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

Not a guaranteed situation. I haven't had a death yet in either of my longest-running 4e games, and players (a) still take threatening situations seriously and (b) don't really care much about the treasure. Instead, they care about their objectives -- how to establish safe passage past the Gutterherd, where to find the next zodiac golem, what the plague-cult's been up to in their absence, whether or not they'll be able to prevent the warlord's family from trying to kill the rogue in the party. These are all objectives that go beyond personal enrichment; even the "hey, we need to get House Rovino to call off their vendetta" is partly about "Ettorio is going to be in danger" but a lot more about "we don't want to have to go to war with House Rovino, they're Carenza's family."

There are players who think only in terms of death and riches, and maybe the only way to encourage them to develop tactical play is to use death as a stick and riches as a carrot. But "players," as a broad term, includes way too many different types of people. The moment you get someone who's invested in events as they affect people other than his or her PC, you have ways to engage people other than "Cake or death?"

 

[Fifth Element]

I find that something like this kind of negotiation exercise is necessary when playing with my 3 year old son Bill, because he does not have the maturity to play something which does not exactly fit his preferences, but I have never found it necessary when gaming with adults.

When I say negotiation, I mean:

"How does this sound?"
"Pretty cool. But can we change this little thing here?"
"Sure. Let's play."

And since playing something which does not exactly fit your preferences is a sign of maturity, are you saying DMs are exempt from the expectation of being mature?

 

[Kerranin]

As long as we all know the style of game we are playing in, then we shouldn't have too many complaints. I know that I've felt quite bad at times when a PC I was playing died, but if the DM is being consistent, I have no complaints.

There have been times, when playing my dwarf paladin, that I have almost dared the DM to kill me. (Telling the rest of the group to "Run away, I'll stop the dragon following!" - the group had a better idea btw)

Suffice to say that getting killed can be part of your character, just as much as not getting killed.

 

[Ryujin]

Unfortunately my experiences, in various different games, have been getting killed through the actions of other party members rather than my own.