Do we coddle new Players?

[ivocaliban]

I suppose I'm a coddler, but I have my reasons for it. I personally feel that the idea of D&D is to have fun and to tell a story. When you think of most books and movies, they wouldn't be very interesting if the lead characters died in chapter three or the first act. Sure you can just roll up another character, but stories don't generally work if you're killing the lead and reintroducing someone else every fifty pages. Furthermore, I feel that merciless DMs breed players who only go by the numbers (i.e. powergamers) which leads to a very narrow vein of gaming.

Recently my coddling has a more obvious purpose in that I only have one PC. If that PC bites it...then the game is over. This doesn't mean that the player uses his character with reckless abandon, because if he did then I'd have no problem with letting him die. However, you could say that Pelor's watching over him and that random events aren't going to kill him outright. Some may say it treads on realism, but so do the vast majority of fantasy novels. In other words, either Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were powergamers or they had a powerful deity looking after them (in this case Fritz Leiber). I tend to prefer the latter.

 

[Janx]

From a marketing perspective, always let the potential buyer see the good stuff.

In this case, a newbie is someone who is looking to invest in D&D, both time and money.

If their first experiences are negative, this will affect their opinion of the game negatively.

This can lead them to the conclusion that D&D is not worth their time and money.

So if you want more newbies, make sure they have a fun experience. This is why you always win at good demoes against the game-rep.

Since you are less likely to think something is fun if you keep losing, the lesson should be obvious.

Now the other factor to whether we're coddling new players is the game design. D&D hasn't physically changed in its core HP mechanics since it came out. A 1st level PC has maybe 10 HP. You get more HP each level. A couple of hits with a medium-large weapon will kill a first level PC. Not true with a higher level character with reasonbaly proportional enemies. The damage doesn't scale up as high as the HP, especially for weapons.

If the DM isn't careful, he can more easily kill a 1st level PC than a higher level one. If he has 2 combat encounters in a row, he can kill a PC. Yet how many game sessions go on with planned encounter after another. The dungeon being a good example. By its very nature, stuff is happening constantly. Yet a first level PC can't really keep up with a high action game.

So if you don't want to have the high mortality rate, you have to coddle the PCs, or be very careful in your adventure design to keep the pacing safe and less risky.

Janx

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Starman

Isn't that the point? That poor guy who invested a couple of hours to create this character isn't having fun if said character doesn't outlive the first two rounds of battle. Heck, I've seen plans survive longer than that, and they sure don't live long!

 

[apesamongus]

I think you need to define "willy-nilly" because I get the feeling that your investment in your characters prompts you to use that term more broadly than I would use it.

I think that people's nostalgia for the "good old days" prompts them to use the word "coddling" more broadly than I would use it.

And, for the record, I saw no more point in killing characters when I started playing in the 80s (when I, like an earlier poster, was 11) than I see in doing so now. The game certainly grew out of wargaming, but for those of us who learned to play without being taught by some grognard, we never brought that baggage with us to RPGing.

 

[John Morrow]

Would new Players, now adays, be well served by going through a low-level meat-grinder dungeon, just to get over the shock of PC death? Let a new Player see characters die off a few times in an introductory dungeon crawl adventure before actually starting a "real" campaign?

What a low-level meat-grinder dungeon game taught me was to stop caring about the whole game. Really. There is a reason why I didn't play D&D between the late 1980s and last year, when I decided to run a 3.5E D&D game to learn the d20 system. (My game isn't a meat-grinder, nor is it PC death free -- two PCs have died so far.)

I've had plenty of characters die over the years. I can deal with character death just fine and have enjoyed running a tragic character or two. But if I don't care about the character or what happens to them, what's the point? If the character is nothing more than a pawn in a boardgame, I'd honestly rather be playing a boardgame.

 

[Orius]

Would new Players, now adays, be well served by going through a low-level meat-grinder dungeon, just to get over the shock of PC death? Let a new Player see characters die off a few times in an introductory dungeon crawl adventure before actually starting a "real" campaign?

You know something like that could be helpful for newbies getting a feel for the game. Write up some basic cookie cutter characters, let them choose betweeen them. Perhaps you could tell them the party needs at least 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 rogue and 1 sorcerer/wizard so they can see how each class contributes to the part as a whole. Make sure that you got enough characters written up so that if one dies they can just quickly pick a new one and move on.

Do you see a difference in emotional attachment between a Player with a 10th-level character that is also their first and only character, versus a Player with a 10th-level character that is the 5th character they've played (having gone through the death of the previous 4 at low level)?

As stated in the other thread, a lot of newbies think dying=losing the game. It's doesn't, but they don't fully understand that in RPGs there really isn't winning or losing in the black and white sense that most other games have. I don't really think it's a matter of how many characters the player has played and seen die.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

I liek 2 kiel da PCs to deth!11

 

[Orius]

Back in the the Old Days, the biggest difference between Fighters was the percentage-roll on his 18 Strength. If your Fighter died, simply re-roll the percentage, change the name from Zunk to Klunk, and you're ready to continue.

In 3.5E players customize their characters, and that obliges the player to anticipate what they want their character to achieve 5 or 10 levels down the road (feats-chains, skills, prestiges classes, etc.). I think that means a greater emotional investment, right out the gate.

That's another aspect of this argument I agree with. This isn't old school Red Box D&D where you die, you roll up a random character that pretty much looks and acts like every other character with the same class. It would take what, a max of 5 minutes? 3.x e characters I would say on the average take 20 minutes or so to make. I can crank one out in less than 10 minutes myself, but that's because I like playing the same types of characters. So even the other players and then DM don't want to see frequent player death these days because it holds up the game.

And there is more customization in 3.xe too. In the old days, the only real difference among fighters was weapon of choice, which was rarely anything other than longsword, two-handed sword or battleaxe. These days depending on feat choices fighters can be the classic tanks in full plate, Dex based fighters with weapon finesse, light armor and a bunch of Dex related feats, two-handed fighting specialists, ranged attack specialists, unarmed fighting specialists and so on. So characters tend to be more unique and indivdualized, and so players like seeing them die even less.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I suppose there are a number of elements:
1. Video games and characters having multiple lives - so getting killed is not the end

2. The ease of character creation in earlier editions (so far less work getting there)

3. A greater emphasis on the amateur dramatics rather than killing monsters and taking their stuff from the early days.

I agree! Well, maybe not with #1, but otherwise, yes.

I've found avoiding character death makes for better stories and RP, plus I hate having to sit around for an hour while a 10th-level player equips himself.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Since our groups isn't trying to have a "shared storytelling experience" or anything like that PC death isn't a game wrecker. I guess there is a story being told, but it's something that comes out of the gaming, not something we are trying to do if you get my drift. PC's die sometimes, at higher levels this leads to raise dead and other spells being cast to fix this, leading to more adventures and crap, and this just adds a new kink to the ongoing game. Sometimes a players PC dies for good and they make a new one up. That's the nature of the game for a lot of people. I do go easy on newbies though, for a bit. A player in my game is playing a Wizard for the first time. He is always forgetting to announce he is casting a spell at start of the round, but I'm going to let him slide for a level or two until I figure he should know better.