Do you "save" the PCs?

[Janx]

If one is playing a game in which situation X can happen and anytime X does indeed happen the results that produced X are changed or discarded then it has been decided that result X will not be a possibility.

If we say that result X = character death and result Y= the party survives and we eliminate possibility X then we are left with a predetermined situation Y, the party survives.

We don't know all the events that will take place but we do know that the party will make it through alive. That is predefinition of a kind.

I think I agree to some extent. At least on the micro per-encounter scale of things. It doesn't offer any predefined ending on the macro scale of will the PC become a king, pauper, god, or ooze.

If I say that in my game, PCs don't die, that rules out an outcome of combat.

I would never tell players that, however, as that eliminates a tool from my arsenal.

What muddies the water in no death = "predefined ending" further is that I don't know that I would "save" a PC until I was in an encounter where he needed saving. At that point, I would consider questionss like:
did he have it coming to him?
is there a rational alternative that doesn't look totally cheezy?
will this screw up the storyline in unrecoverable ways?


If I kill Aragorn at Helmsdeep, is that going to screw up my story line? I know Aragorn will be mad, as his storyline will end. But I've got this Sauron thing, and a ring-trek to try to run. It's early on in the campaign, Boromir's player got over it, though running side quests for Faramir until he comes on the scene is getting tedious. If I kill him, it'll cement in the players mind that there is no plot immunity, especially useful with the jerk who's holding the ring...

 

[Nightson]

Regarding death in story driven games, it's generally not "No PC will ever die" it's a dislike of the random death. Imagine a PC who is the long, lost noble with the true claim to the throne. There's a lot of time spent raising allies and preparing to return home and claim the throne. Then through a string of bad luck the character bites it to a gelatinous cube.

Now without access to raise dead there's plenty of reason to be upset by that, ideally people at the gaming group are equally upset by, that having sat down and hashed out their expectations for the game ages ago.

But that same group would probably be okay with the character dieing in the scene of the final confrontation. Because one death conforms to good storytelling and one doesn't.

Now in my campaign, I let PCs die, in fact the monsters try to kill them a fair bit. But raise dead is also available in my campaign. That money cost and inconvenience of having someone dead is just about exactly where I want the penalty for death to be. I want my PCs, who are seventh level and have storylines that extend into paragon, to live as long as the player wants to keep playing that character.

 

[Janx]

Regarding death in story driven games, it's generally not "No PC will ever die" it's a dislike of the random death. Imagine a PC who is the long, lost noble with the true claim to the throne. There's a lot of time spent raising allies and preparing to return home and claim the throne. Then through a string of bad luck the character bites it to a gelatinous cube.

Now without access to raise dead there's plenty of reason to be upset by that, ideally people at the gaming group are equally upset by, that having sat down and hashed out their expectations for the game ages ago.

But that same group would probably be okay with the character dieing in the scene of the final confrontation. Because one death conforms to good storytelling and one doesn't.

Now in my campaign, I let PCs die, in fact the monsters try to kill them a fair bit. But raise dead is also available in my campaign. That money cost and inconvenience of having someone dead is just about exactly where I want the penalty for death to be. I want my PCs, who are seventh level and have storylines that extend into paragon, to live as long as the player wants to keep playing that character.

And that's probably a good example of how some GM's approach it.

Generally, I have an assumption of PC success. I expect they'll beat every encounter somehow. I expect that when Bob decides to reclaim his throne, he'll do it. It's not that I make it easy, I simply figure my players are smart and will come up with a solution.

I might call the quest to reclaim Bob's throne a storyline.

If Bob is about to die from a gelatinous cube, I have a quandary.

If Bob's dead (assume permanently), Bob just wasted his time, because he didn't even come close to the goal, and it wasn't even a cool ending. I also wasted the other players time who supported Bob on his quest. If I let Bob live, will it make players assume they have plot immunity and act recklessly?

Personally, I try to avoid plots that hinge tightly on a specific player. At least ones that are for a central plot. Thus, anybody can carry the ring to the volcano, not just the one who inherited it from his uncle. Thus, I can try to avoid one problem with killing a PC.

 

[The Shaman]

And in the same token, before the 2e era, there are a group of gamers who were conditioned to think role playing != storytelling.

*raises hand*

Present.

If I want to play a game, it would not be an RPG. An RPG is not a game. It's biased because of the reliance on a GM to both arbitrate and define and control the opposition. Just because it has the word game in it, RPG is not necessarily a game.

I couldn't agree less.

BTW, I find it HIGHLY improbable that somebody wasn't storytelling with D&D in the 1E era. That pattern is so inherently obvious to play the game that way that some group of players did it that way.

That's not my point. Yes, some people were using roleplaying games to simulate fantasy novels - just like there are players now for whom D&D is effectively a miniatures skirmish game - but that style of play didn't become supported by adventures and rule books until some years later.

I just don't see this as a ruleset problem. It's more of a GM execution problem.

If you think the role of the guy or gal behind the screen is to manipulate outcomes, then I can understand why you'd say that.

On the other hand, if you believe the role of the referee is to arbitrate play, then it's a whole different kettle of kippers.

 

[El Mahdi]

Could you give me an example?

My pleasure!

3E DMG page 11 (section - Changing the Rules) - "The ability to use the mechanics as you wish is paramount to the way roleplaying games work..."

4E DMG page 189 (section - Creating House Rules) - "The D&D rules cannot possibly account for the variety of campaigns and play styles of every group. If you disagree with how the rules handle something, changing them is within your rights."

However, I've never seen anything in a D&D book that says you might want to switch systems if these rules don't work for you...of course that may just be a marketing thing or an oversight... (Just kidding)

Unless you're playing by the rules, of course.

Since changing the rules is also playing by the rules, I guess we agree with eachother.

...what's the harm in trying something else?

Absolutely nothing!

I house rule pretty extensively, but what I don't do is abandon or substitute for large swaths of significant rules which lie at the heart of the game. If I have to do that, I'm playing the wrong game, in my experience.

Or you just haven't created the "Penultimate Houserules" yet. (But then again, neither have I......but I'm working on it!)

 

[El Mahdi]

...Just because it has the word game in it, RPG is not necessarily a game. ...

Well, Randomized and Interactive Group Narrative Entertainment Experience just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way...

 

[Reynard]

*W*T*F*?!

O/AD&D is just a game! What on Earth has it done to you, that you feel a need to engage in name-calling like that? It really comes down to an attack on a person just for playing it.

If you really, truly wanted an explanation of how to play it, then you could pick up one, or several, of the books on the subject (including compilations of classic articles from The Dragon, and Gygax's "Mastery" volumes). That would be much more helpful than my trying to duplicate the work.

Why I would want to go to such effort for someone who is going to be so nasty is a mystery.

Look, people, I don't know where you get off going out of your way to claim I'm lying or whatever about how I and my friends play a dang-blamed game!

I have not said one damned thing against your statements of your own practice, and I am far from the only one in this thread to have said that I let the dice fall as they may.

What's it to you? How does our enjoyment of our game in any way affect yours?

I not only own AD&D, and love it, but actually continue to play it. What I don't understand is this: when asked straight out what your playstyle was and why you believed it was not encapsulated by any of the descriptions given previously in this thread, rather than answer the question to the best of your ability, you refused and suggested we were too dumb or new wave or something to "get it".

And given that I am in fact an "old school gamer" and have read Gygax excessively (beyond just the 1E DMG) and I still don't have a clue what you are talking about, one of two things is true (and perhaps both): either your playstyle is not as universally regarded as "old school" as you think, or you are being intentionally obscure so as not to have to defend your assertion that a DM can "have his cake and eat it too" in regards to the responsibilities of refereeing and the freedom of creation.

Additionally, just pointing at Gygax and saying "That's how I play" is of no value. EGG's style varied between tournament modules and other modules, between what was in the DMG and what he did at his table, over the years and through play groups. There's no definitive "Gygaxian" style (of play; of prose that's a different story!) to claim.

So I ask you again: please describe your playstyle. If nothing else, it will be enlightening to those of us that have never experienced it and may perhaps improve our games.

 

[Janx]

[Bold emphasis mine]

Are you serious? Because you choose not to play it as a game then it cannot be a game?

You would be quite correct about the DM bias if the game were a competitive one between the DM and players. Such a game would be very unfair.

There's some other thread that devolved into the definition of a "game" a few months ago. I'm no expert on the topic, it's simply my view that in the strictest usage of the term, an RPG is not a game.

It isn't Hockey, Chess, Monopoly or Shadows Over Camelot. And Shadows over Camelot is the closest to an RPG.

In all of those examples, the game is a competition. In the first three, it is player versus player. In the last, it is player versus gameboard.

I think you are claiming in an RPG as a Game, one aspect of the GM is the gameboard.

I have no doubt you can play the game that way, and it SEEMS fair, but the fact is, as long as a moist robot is running the show, it is not being fairly arbitrated. Otherwise, the expression "Rocks fall, everybody dies" would not have been coined. There are too many points of flawed human decision making that taint the results.

If instead, you gave 1 player 100,000 gold to build a dungeon and populate it with monsters and traps, and then a GM arbitrated that, you would have a more fair situation, as he is not controlling the opposition.

This differs from a sporting even with a true referree, of which the the referee only initiates play with a whistle and makes calls on plays. A GM makes a zillion other tiny miniscule decisions and such that are unaudited by anybody else.

But that's got nothing to do with the OT

 

[Haltherrion]

So you have never played a game in which you as a player get to decide the moves of your pieces? Your opponent, or the programmer, or the GM always does that for you, too? And always makes sure that you win, regardless of your moves?

I think the issue is that you, the referee are not some impartial robot processing a simulation of a fantasy world. In most cases, referees are executing their part of a cooperative game. Even in cases where a referee may be trying to remain impartial and do their imitation of a fantasy simulation, it is still a simulation where you, the referee make some sort of trade-offs in the name of game enjoyment and those decisions can set you down the path of "oops I made a mistake and threw too much at the players."

Case in point: encounter rates and encounter tables. It is a very rare game that I've ever encountered that has encounter rates anything like what people report in real-life adventures throughout history for the simple reason that most of life, even in a wild adventure through unknown (to Eurpoeans) Africa or what not, even in an out and out war, is boring. Not much happens for most of the time. And when it does happen, since the real world doesn't take care to make sure the adventurer is faced with a foe that he or she has a reasonable chance to defeat, death may occur at much higher rates. So it's a good thing it isn't too often or your Sir Richard Francis Burtons of the world wouldn't get to write their interesting memoirs.

So if you, the ref, are throwing out combats that don't kill someone every 4-8 encounters and having an encounter less than every few weeks you probably have already inserted your own views and decisions into your world and therefore are already part of an understanding that there will be an entertaining level of encounters that isn't too lethal. Therefore, when the encounters are suddenly lethal, one thing to consider is whether you screwed up or even if not, you owe it to your players, per this implicit understanding to not necessarily destroy them.

It's all a natural and accepted part of the game.

 

[Haltherrion]

I have no doubt you can play the game that way, and it SEEMS fair, but the fact is, as long as a moist robot is running the show, it is not being fairly arbitrated. Otherwise, the expression "Rocks fall, everybody dies" would not have been coined. There are too many points of flawed human decision making that taint the results.

Exactly. And I would include RPGs in the realm of "game" in the sense it is an engagement undertaken as an amusement with agreed upon conventions.