D&D 5E Do PCs at your table have script immunity?

[Arilyn]

Second, we don't know what the players mean by not wanting character death until we ask them. I've met many who legitimately don't want to lose, and death is seen as the most obvious expression of that idea. Just because someone wants death off the table doesn't mean they're ok with other forms of failure. Sometimes players just want the DM to run them through a power fantasy.

In my experience groups who take death off the table are more than happy to put their characters through emotional hell and have no problem at all accepting other kinds of loss.

Is the power fantasy gamer who never wants there to be any risk of any kind of loss a player type that actually exists? If they do, do they stay engaged in the hobby? I keep hearing these stories and am wondering how common this actually is?

 

[Umbran]

Are you really curious to know my stance on this or is this just a rhetorical question?

It was specifically rhetorical. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

In any case, for me, "my game" comes first. Players who are not okay with my style and table rules are welcome to walk away. I have never understood the "being a fan of your players" thing.

I used to be a Boy Scout. In the Scouts, one of the major teachings was the value of doing things not for yourself, but for others. We did a lot of service projects, for which we had to raise the money and work without pay to give something back to our communities. Folks who stuck with the Scouts found out how darned good it feels to do that.

Being a fan of your players is this, writ small for your gaming group. Each session is a little service project - something we do for the players because we want to make their lives that little bit better. We are on board with doing a bit of work for them to make it happen.

It is about finding the biggest enjoyment in GMing from how entertained the players are at the end of the session. When your success, enjoyment, and fulfillment is focused on others, rather than yourself, you can find that you have a lot of breadth in what you can do to achieve that, because the how isn't the important part - you become results oriented.

 

[Nefermandias]

In my experience groups who take death off the table are more than happy to put their characters through emotional hell and have no problem at all accepting other kinds of loss.

Is the power fantasy gamer who never wants there to be any risk of any kind of loss a player type that actually exists? If they do, do they stay engaged in the hobby? I keep hearing these stories and am wondering how common this actually is?

They absolutely do exist and they are the same kind of people who use cheat codes in videogames.

 

[Umbran]

So I'm gathering from some recent posts that the DM is not god?

And that's probably a good thing. Review your mythologies - most gods are human foibles and flaws writ large, and are usually jerks. As a GM, do you want to be best known for your failings?

 

[Campbell]

As a point of clarification the saying is generally not be a fan of your players (although you generally should like the people you play with). It is generally be a fan of the players' characters. Mainly that as a GM you should be emotionally engaged in play with the player characters and should care about them the same way you would characters on your favorite TV show. You should like them, care about their struggles. and be curious about them. Curious about who they really are. Curious about how they will respond to events. You should be on the edge of your seat to see what happens when the spotlight is on them.

It's really about valuing the creative contributions of the people you play with. Wanting to see more from them.

 

[Umbran]

So, it seems D&D 5e is the first game I know of where you have to negotiate with the players beforehand if they are allowed to lose.

So, your lack of experience with games other than D&D is showing. If you were trying for an authoritative stance, displaying expertise, this weakens it considerably.

Maybe it's time to take the "G" out of RPG and everybody will be happy.

They absolutely do exist and they are the same kind of people who use cheat codes in videogames.

Right. About that inserting moral judgements in gaming...

This comes across very much in the mode of ,"if you don't enjoy games the same way I do, that is a failing on you part." The OneTrueWayism is pretty apparent. I've seen videogamers extolling how videogames shouldn't have an easy mode, or cheat codes, and this seems to be leaning that way. The arguments aren't impressive.

If everyone wanted the same thing, the world would be an incredibly boring place. Indeed, if everyone wanted the same thing, D&D wouldn't ever have been created - it came out of creating a niche entertainment. So, if you want to stay short of hypocrisy, you probably need to leave room for it to be perfectly okay to like things you don't.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm just a "neutral" arbiter of the rules. Honest. So I do what I can to let the dice and player foolishness decide their fates.

Last session the same player died twice via trap. Disintegrated the second time. He rolled up a new L1 PC who washed up on the shore of the island they are on and will be back in the action next week. I keep telling them to go find less perilous adventure, that tribe of sickly kobalds perhaps, but they keep going back in...

 

[overgeeked]

For me, the only downside to this though is you are killing off the tank, which means the wrong person is getting the raw end of the deal in my opinion.

The team isn’t working as a team so the team suffers. The ranger is leaving the tank to die, so the tank dies...then the enemy melee fighters charge the ranger and likely kill him because they’re melee fighters and the archer ranger clearly is not. You can’t really compartmentalize the consequences of failing to work as a team.

As I mentioned in my first post, my tables have enough players (and thus PCs with healing) that the odds of actually getting to that TPK are long. So even though the tank bites it, the ranger-type player never actually reaches the point where they too are at risk (let alone more than once and thus establishing the point). Instead, they get to still live while the tank has to either hope to get raised or make a new PC.

And the tank player is likely pissed at the rest of the team, especially the ranger, for letting him die. So the tank makes the point of needing teamwork and will be less likely to play a tank, increasing the chances or other character death. When enough people understand that they need to work together or die, they will work together...or die.

I mean if I really wanted to try and make some sort of point it would need to be lots of fights where the enemies all seem to arrive out from the edges and go right after the rear-guard and ranged characters while avoiding the front-line. Which, if I was trying a 'me-vs-them' thing, then sure I could do that. But narratively I just can't justify that metagame enemy action occur so often as to try and stick it to the ranger. It makes little sense, so I don't do it.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing. Any intelligent enemy can and should be run as if they’re actually an intelligent enemy. This isn’t adversarial DMing. This isn’t DM vs players. It’s the DM not playing intelligent creatures as if they were stupid. Intelligent creatures won’t ignore the back line and focus on the tank. Intelligent creatures will have ranged attackers of their own.

Truth be told... usually my way of coaxing those types of players along is to change up character creation format for each new campaign so that they can't play their tried-and-true archetype each and every time. The 'roll in order' stat method can do wonder in that regard when they roll high on STR and/or CON and playing melee in the upcoming game is the only real choice.

That’s definitely one way to go.

 

[overgeeked]

Death's not the only way to lose, just the most disruptive, annoying or distasteful to some people.

No, but it’s about the only one the players are sure to care about. I’ve watched as supposedly “good” PCs torture and kill their own retainers to get a bit of intel.

Also, pretty much all previous editions had some level of mutual respect and comraderie between all players at the table to achieve a common desired game style.

The DM being considered “just another player at the table” is a rather recent development. So too with “be a fan of the players” and other such advice. Try reading the AD&D DMG sometime.

There never was a time when the DM was undisputed ruler of their group.

Ha. Uh, nope. Try reading up on the older editions of the game. DM as undisputed ruler of the group was the default throughout TSR D&D and only changed with WotC’s 3X. There was a little shift in AD&D 2nd Edition, but not to the point of the inane “the DM’s just another player”.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The team isn’t working as a team so the team suffers. The ranger is leaving the tank to die, so the tank dies...then the enemy melee fighters charge the ranger and likely kill him because they’re melee fighters and the archer ranger clearly is not. You can’t really compartmentalize the consequences of failing to work as a team.

And the tank player is likely pissed at the rest of the team, especially the ranger, for letting him die. So the tank makes the point of needing teamwork and will be less likely to play a tank, increasing the chances or other character death. When enough people understand that they need to work together or die, they will work together...or die.

The Monsters Know What They’re Doing. Any intelligent enemy can and should be run as if they’re actually an intelligent enemy. This isn’t adversarial DMing. This isn’t DM vs players. It’s the DM not playing intelligent creatures as if they were stupid. Intelligent creatures won’t ignore the back line and focus on the tank. Intelligent creatures will have ranged attackers of their own.

These are all basic "Well, yeah..." statements that are true on the face of it, and I don't disagree with them as general principals. But the only problem is that they don't take my specific table's picadillos into account, nor my particular style of DMing. If these quite sensible points would actually have meaning at my table for my players and how I prefer to DM for them, I would have done then already. So I appreciate the comment, I just know that aren't really applicable to me in this particular situation.