D&D General Doing Tragedy in D&D

[Paul Farquhar]

a new player

I mean, this is the thing. Experienced players know the "you all meet at an inn" trope and just get on with the game.

When you are starting out new players, it's a good idea to force them together, such as "you have been employed as caravan guards" (Lost Mines) or "you are are shipwrecked together on an island" (Stormwreck Isle). That way they learn how the game works (including the unwritten expectations) without having to do the "party up" phase.

But if Bilbo makes the sensible and in character decision not to join the dwarves on an adventure, then the character of Bilbo is not in the adventure.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, this is the thing. Experienced players know the "you all meet at an inn" trope and just get on with the game.

When you are starting out new players, it's a good idea to force them together, such as "you have been employed as caravan guards" (Lost Mines) or "you are are shipwrecked together on an island" (Stormwreck Isle). That way they learn how the game works (including the unwritten expectations) without having to do the "party up" phase.

But if Bilbo makes the sensible and in character decision not to join the dwarves on an adventure, then the character of Bilbo is not in the adventure.

Well, and let's not forget - the system heavily, heavily incentivizes Bilbo to join the dwarves on the adventure. Everything in the game is telling the player - "Do this thing because this is what this game is about." Staying at home and eating more pies basically ignores everything the game is telling the player to do. And, fair enough, we've all probably run into "that" player that insists on ignoring the game, we all also pretty much agree that this is a failure in play.

Absolutely no one is patting that player in the back and congratulating that player for playing a great game.

OTOH, a player that deliberately chooses the worst possible thing to do is not being incentivized by the system. Sure, we could go with milestone leveling, but, that just makes leveling no longer an incentive. Milestone leveling presumes a certain level of engagement by the players in the campaign at hand. If a player pulled a Bilbo and stayed at home in a game with milestone leveling, I'm thinking that the DM and the player were going to be having words pretty quickly.

The point I'm trying make here is that system matters. If a system in no way incentivizes behavior, that system probably isn't a good fit for that kind of play.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Staying at home and eating more pies basically ignores everything the game is telling the player to do

Not really. Bilbo doesn’t need gold because he has inherited wealth, and he doesn’t need XP because if he stays home there are no monsters to fight.

 

[Hussar]

Not really. Bilbo doesn’t need gold because he has inherited wealth, and he doesn’t need XP because if he stays home there are no monsters to fight.

Then, at this point, why did the player make that character? The game rewards being an adventurer. If your character has wealth and has no need to adventure, isn't the correct solution to make another character?

However, let's not get too far into the weeds with the example shall we? The point is, if the player is deliberately working against the incentives provided by the system, then this is a player problem.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then, at this point, why did the player make that character

Because the rules don’t spell that out (and new players probably haven’t read the rules from cover to cover, nor the fiction that inspired it). The tropes are learned thorough play. A new player might make a Bertie Wooster type character, in expectation of dealing with scary aunts and the romantic problems of school chums.

The rules emphasise that you can be whoever you want, not "you can be whoever you want, so long as it's a hard boiled mercenary with a tragic backstory".

 

[Hussar]

Because the rules don’t spell that out (and new players probably haven’t read the rules from cover to cover, nor the fiction that inspired it). The tropes are learned thorough play. A new player might make a Bertie Wooster type character, in expectation of dealing with scary aunts and the romantic problems of school chums.

The rules emphasise that you can be whoever you want, not "you can be whoever you want, so long as it's a hard boiled mercenary with a tragic backstory".

I'm not really sure where you're going with this though. Now we're limiting the conversation to a totally new player that has never played before and thus doesn't quite understand the game? Ok? Who cares and what does that have to do with running tragedy in an RPG?

Again, even for a very new player, EVERY SINGLE THING points that player towards creating a heroic PC. There is absolutely nothing in any of the descriptions of the character classes, play examples, backgrounds or anything else that would suggest that the game is about staying at home and playing a comfortable character that doesn't want to be an adventurer.

Now, if after all of that, the player STILL doesn't want to play an adventurer, even after a Session 0 where the DM has spelled out the expectations of the game, then at that point, there needs to be a conversation with that player because that player is being deliberately obtuse.

 

[HappyHubris]

I've run into some tragedy (and been a tragic character) at one of my tables.

My character is a devout cleric to his god, but circumstances have resulted in him being tricked or forced into advancing the devil BBEG's agenda multiple times. For example, the party was captured and forced to assist in experiments, and a simple experiment where I blessed the results ended up being the final input into crafting an artifact with both devil and celestial power, creating a superweapon. And then when our party recovered the artifact to dispose of it on the frustrated orders of my irate God at a key holy site, the devil adulterated the artifact to banish my god when we went through the purification ritual.

But the biggest tragedy was the most simple. When we arrived at an abandoned temple of my god to cleanse the artifact, we were attacked on sight by hobgoblins behind a makeshift barricade. Our party did the generic "fight the baddies thing", only to wipe out the group with a single fireball. My heart sank when I realized that they were carrying the insignia of my god carved crudely into their armor.

It turns out that they weren't actually antagonist warriors but civilian new adherents to my god who were drawn to that place of power and were trying to preserve and protect it. The leader of the hobgoblins wailed with sorrow and rage when he found out that these defenders - led by his brother - were killed at their posts. My character was gutted - he reveres protecting the innocent as a sacred duty.

I would say that you need a few things for good tragedy:
1.a. A player willing to make choices that would be in-character but viewed as a trap or a mistake by genre-saavy players.
1.b. This player should be willing to have their character experience tragedy and change in ways that they didn't anticipate; don't spring this on somebody who wants a happy story where their character thrives.
2. A goal or objective that this character holds dear, which could be anything from protecting a loved one to adhering to an oath.
3. Some sort of flaw or reason to lose what is in #2. This could be an external force like devilish trickery or an internal "flaw" like putting love ahead of duty or being too zealous in a faith and losing the spirit of the cause to the letter of holy guidance.

So maybe your paladin breaks his oath when the party must resurrect an ancient mage to cure a plague. Only for the mage to become a slaughtering BBEG, causing the paladin to become an oathbreaker and have nothing to show for it.

Or maybe the royal wizard saves and falls in love with a roguish visiting gentleman, only for him to be the assassin sent to kill the king. And a decision to let him into the palace to visit her quarters was the opportunity he needed to gut the royal family.

Or maybe your cleric of good loses the support of her god after refusing to stop the BBEG to save civilians, having to make a devil's pact as a warlock to continue the quest. And then wrestle with the terms of that contract and the juxtaposition with their earlier life.

Ideally this downfall will happen slowly but surely, as the character makes a number of realistic choices that result in terrible consequences and a change to the status quo.

 

[HappyHubris]

Because the rules don’t spell that out (and new players probably haven’t read the rules from cover to cover, nor the fiction that inspired it). The tropes are learned thorough play. A new player might make a Bertie Wooster type character, in expectation of dealing with scary aunts and the romantic problems of school chums.

The rules emphasise that you can be whoever you want, not "you can be whoever you want, so long as it's a hard boiled mercenary with a tragic backstory".

Isn't this a session zero discussion? Having a reason to want to adventure is a baseline property of any acceptable character. On top of that the DM controls what is allowed for the campaign tone.

"No, that character is a poor fit to the story I intend to run, which will involve grit and tragedy."

Most people don't join D&D tables to buck the quest and collect stamps, and those that do should be politely but firmly asked to figure out a character who wants to participate.

 

[Sorinth]

It's unfair and unfun for the players, and technically not a tragedy, since the outcome was not caused by a personality flaw of the character.

That looks more like a GM presented a "GOTCHA!" scenario than tragedy. It invalidates player choice and characters making bad choices is at the heart of classic tragedy.

Keep in mind this would be for a game where the players agreed at session 0 that they wanted a tragic so claims of unfair/unfun just don't hold the same weight as they would in a more standard game. Also maybe it wasn't clear in my original post but the players would have a choice, do adventure A or do adventure B. For example do the Haunted House and get paid 1000 gold or help the police track down a murderer for free, if they choose haunted house the murderer strikes again and kills someone close to a PC. Even if they had good reasons and not just greed to go for the money and clear the haunted house it's still a tragedy, though of course it's better if the PCs are leaning into personality flaws like greed for those decisions.

The main point is to dispute the claim that players won't be gaining XP and leveling up because they have to fail at whatever the goals are for it to be a tragedy which just isn't the case.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

wanted a tragic so claims of unfair/unfun just don't hold the same

They will still be unhappy, because “bad stuff happens” is not what a tragedy is.