Death, Dying and Entitlements.

[Ourph]

Apart from 4e you listed three high-lethality games.

Which are completely non-lethal depending on the situations the PCs find themselves in and the type of campaign and encounters the GM designs. The CoC combat rules are only lethal if people are using lethal weapons and playing a campaign where combat occurs (most of my CoC games attempt to hew as closely as possible to HPL and you don't see a lot of swordplay or gunfights in his fiction). The WFRP combat rules are only lethal if the PCs get involved in life or death combats. There is plenty of support in WFRP for an investigative or diplomatic game rather than one that centers on combat. The level of lethality is a choice that the PCs and DM make cooperatively for most RPGs.

 

[mneme]

Fifth: Well the DM is the final say so as to what goes on in his/her game.

That's one model. But it's really an illusion.

RPGs are social activity, and absent force, all social activity is a result of voluntary collective action.

A bunch of players get together to game. The result -- and the protocols involved -- are a result of the agreements, implicti and explicit, that they make for structuring their activity.

You don't need a GM (and there are plenty of GMless roleplaying games; they work fine).

If you do have a GM, they need not have rules authority.

If you have a GM and they have rules authority, that authority is -still- only as binding as the other players will let it.

The GM, ultimately, has the power to refuse to run (eg, leave/stop playing) unless a player accepts their authority or leaves. A player has the power to leave or argue in order to persuade others -- the GM or other players on their side.

Ultimately, a GM is no more irreplacable in a game than any other player is. Each player added or gone significantly changes the resulting game -- but play can continue, with the same apparent world, the same characters, and same overall situation with any player replaced -- even the GM.

Maturity, for gamers, means playing the things you want to play and not the things you don't. Ultimately, that means spending enough time working out the ground rules for a game that it's something you'll find fun, and working out things rather than rolling over and taking it when things aren't working out.

Sometimes, that means the entire group hitting the GM with a cluestick when the GM is being dumb. More often, it involves more subtle negotiation. But gaming has progressed a lot from "the GM is in charge of everything except the characters; the players control their characters."

 

[ForeverSlayer]

That's one model. But it's really an illusion.

RPGs are social activity, and absent force, all social activity is a result of voluntary collective action.

A bunch of players get together to game. The result -- and the protocols involved -- are a result of the agreements, implicti and explicit, that they make for structuring their activity.

You don't need a GM (and there are plenty of GMless roleplaying games; they work fine).

If you do have a GM, they need not have rules authority.

If you have a GM and they have rules authority, that authority is -still- only as binding as the other players will let it.

The GM, ultimately, has the power to refuse to run (eg, leave/stop playing) unless a player accepts their authority or leaves. A player has the power to leave or argue in order to persuade others -- the GM or other players on their side.

Ultimately, a GM is no more irreplacable in a game than any other player is. Each player added or gone significantly changes the resulting game -- but play can continue, with the same apparent world, the same characters, and same overall situation with any player replaced -- even the GM.

Maturity, for gamers, means playing the things you want to play and not the things you don't. Ultimately, that means spending enough time working out the ground rules for a game that it's something you'll find fun, and working out things rather than rolling over and taking it when things aren't working out.

Sometimes, that means the entire group hitting the GM with a cluestick when the GM is being dumb. More often, it involves more subtle negotiation. But gaming has progressed a lot from "the GM is in charge of everything except the characters; the players control their characters."

It is not an illusion but a fact. You are assuming that everyone will agree on everything but the final word is that of the DM. Here is the kicker. Let's say you have 5 player's and 1 DM. Well the odds are greater that the game will tumble due to the DM leaving that say one or two player's and you are assuming the player's will agree with their fellow gamer that isn't always true.

I think people are trying to minimize the role of the DM and paint that person out to be just the guy that runs the monsters and does the NPC voices. D&D and most all other RPG's have always given the DM the final say so because everyone does not agree, period. I also think people forget that the game is about the DM having fun as well as the player's. Being a player doesn't give you more authority because you can turn around and leave and the play "without player's there is no game card" and the same can be said for the DM.

Like I said eariler, if the DM leaves then the game cries to a halt. It's actually easier to find player's than it is to find DM's.

 

[S'mon]

gaming has progressed a lot from "the GM is in charge of everything except the characters; the players control their characters."

D&D hasn't. A good thing, too. Dang hippies, always trying to ruin things (S'mon starts singing Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee)...

 

[Barastrondo]

Our specific group is a collection of people who have played together for 10 plus years.

Off and on, it ranges from a year or two for a couple of my co-workers to 15-20 years for some of my old friends. And one of the things that I think is worth pointing out is that over that period of time, it's actually possible to play quite a number of character concepts even if you aren't generating replacements for a fallen PC. One-shots, side stories, games that end naturally or unnaturally -- while having a PC killed is an excuse to try something new, it's not the only excuse. Playing with people who may have to miss sessions here or there due to real life actually has encouraged us to have three or four campaigns shifting around, any one of which may be run in the Weds. night slot.

What our DM does not do, and I am glad of this, is essentially write a novel with our D&D characters ahead of time.

That's not what people on the low-lethality side of the fence usually do either. I create situations with variable consequences. I don't mandate the specific consequences, or the ending.

Again, this is why "you should probably play some other game" arguments fail: because they so rarely understand just how the other group plays, and sometimes they don't even try. Predetermined outcomes for character arcs or scenarios can take place in a lower-lethality game, but also there are lower-lethality DMs who find the concept abhorrent. (Like me.) The two are not intrinsically connected. It's like deciding not to use norkers, and deciding not to let the PCs play races other than humans -- you could have a game where both of those things are true, but adding one does not mean the other is present.

If you want to remove death from a game then that is perfectly fine, but you will be house ruling it.

"Death is rarer and harder to come back from" is not removing death from a game. The only house rule is "the raise dead ritual is not widely available, and may require extra components or efforts." Everything else is choosing enemies who might take captives rather than deliver a coup de grace, giving players opportunity to identify and prepare for really hard fights instead of trying to surprise them with them, placing more encounters where diplomacy is an option rather than a fight to the death, things like that. A lower-lethality game is absolutely by the rules.

I have seen other games in my day that handle this style of play better than D&D does.

To be honest, "this style of play" you're describing isn't a style of play I see regularly; it's based on assumptions that might be correct for some groups, but not any of the ones I've played with. I'm willing to describe our actual games more if you're interested in seeing how lower-lethality can work in accordance with RAW and still run without rails or player fear of failure. But if you'd prefer to take my word for it, I'll just say "nope, it works much differently than what you've described."

 

[Akaiku]

1. Your first sentence is nothing to do with what I wrote.

My bad, I made a bit of a logical leap.

What does a gm do that is significantly more work then players? They make up the world occasionally. They design the encounters, they make up the npc's goals and actions/reactions. They have the overarching plot, though unless you are doing a rather on-rails game, extreme detail on that means lots of wasted work.

And so on.

If you are GM-ing, it's best to find such things 'fun'. If the gm is having fun doing all of that, why would it entitle them to more control over other's fun?

Was that not what you said? That since the gm did more work, they deserve more control?

 

[Kerranin]

D&D hasn't. A good thing, too. Dang hippies, always trying to ruin things (S'mon starts singing Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee)...

If simon starts singing, kill me now! PLEASE!

 

[S'mon]

If you are GM-ing, it's best to find such things 'fun'. If the gm is having fun doing all of that, why would it entitle them to more control over other's fun?

I find my work fun, too. I still expect to get paid. This statement of yours is a complete non sequitur.

 

[Obryn]

I think what it may boil down to is if you (in general) want PC death to be part of the story, well rigged in a way where all members agree and everything from the beginning to end is essentially planned out then D&D may not be the game for you. There are other games out there that handle this situation a lot better.

Who are you to say who D&D is or isn't a good game for? I'll ask again - what are you arguing for? What is it to you if someone plays a low lethality 4e? Or any game for that matter?

-O

 

[ForeverSlayer]

"Death is rarer and harder to come back from" is not removing death from a game. The only house rule is "the raise dead ritual is not widely available, and may require extra components or efforts." Everything else is choosing enemies who might take captives rather than deliver a coup de grace, giving players opportunity to identify and prepare for really hard fights instead of trying to surprise them with them, placing more encounters where diplomacy is an option rather than a fight to the death, things like that. A lower-lethality game is absolutely by the rules.

Honestly, why do you even need to make death even harder? What do you want, have to drop to - triple your hp and then fail five saving throws before you die? 4th edition already pampers to the ones that don't like death anyway, asking for more is like biting the hand that feeds you.

I honestly don't see why anyone needs to take this another step. Random deaths do not really exist in 4th edition D&D.