D&D 4E Fun to die in 4e?

[shilsen]

Really?

I've NEVER encountered this combination. Easy resurrection, in my experience, is a HALLMARK of "dying is fun and easy" - as exemplified, in electronic gaming, by first person shooters.

By contrast, almost low-death or no-death game I've played in outright banned resurrection. It simply was not an option barring extraordinary, artifact- or deity-level magic.

Agreed. In my last two campaigns (both Eberron, one 2 yrs long and the other in its 3rd year and going strong), I've almost eliminated PC death through use of action pts and swashbuckling cards, and one of the reasons I've done that is because return from the dead is close to non-existent. If returning from the dead were easy, then the game wouldn't have to be low-death to suit my tastes.

 

[hong]

I've long been a proponent of the idea that reward without real risk is no reward. It's boring and uninteresting.

"Real risk"?

 

[Henry]

Hey, isn't it true that, in 1st edition, you actually gained XP for dying? I think it was 1,000 XP per death.

I don't recall that one - it may have been a house rule common to many folks, though.

"Real risk"?

Of course, man -- if you didn't use those Steam Tunnels at MSU, you WEREN'T PLAYING D&D!

 

[Wormwood]

"Real risk"?

When your character dies, he punches you in the face.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, that tears it:

Gameplay dictated character death is too videogamey!

Seriously, though, you can hardly compare the experience of dying in a first-person shooter, where the 'penalty' for death is losing the weapons it took you 30 seconds to collect and waiting a fraction of a second, and the experience of dying in a tabletop RPG, where the 'penalty' for death is potentially hours of being out of the game, potentially losing all the character development you've done to date, and, until true resurrection becomes available, certainly losing many hours worth of XP.

I'd be very curious how the 'entertainment' factor of death in Halo compares to the 'entertainment' factor of death in, say, a JRPG, especially if it's death at the hands of a random encounter toward the end of an hour-long dungeon with no save points. I've known plenty of people who have fun with the former, very few who have fun with the latter.

QFMFT!

 

[Mercule]

"Real risk"?

Oh no! Blackleaf!

 

[FireLance]

I think the key issues to how fun it is to die in a game are the expectation of character persistence, and the expectation of character growth.

In many games, the game pieces are not expected to be persistent, or to grow significantly. Usually, the game is expected to end at some point, after which the game pieces reset to some baseline value. After a game of Monopoly is over, everyone starts again from the same baseline in the next game. If a character in a typical video game dies, it might be missing some power-ups when the player re-starts or re-joins the game, but it can usually regain those advantages, and the player's skill is supposed to matter more than those power-ups, anyway.

D&D can be played with expectations of low character persistence and low character growth, e.g. one shot games. Death is seldom a problem (and usually expected) in such games, and is thus more likely to be fun than in a game with expectations of high character persistence and growth.

 

[Li Shenron]

Really?

I've NEVER encountered this combination. Easy resurrection, in my experience, is a HALLMARK of "dying is fun and easy" - as exemplified, in electronic gaming, by first person shooters.

By contrast, almost low-death or no-death game I've played in outright banned resurrection. It simply was not an option barring extraordinary, artifact- or deity-level magic.

The ambiguity is because when I think "death is fun" (or "interesting") I am talking about dying permanently with the occasional exception. It's the "characters fight, adventure, kill monsters, save the world, and die (sometimes more than once)" philosophy. Which is why our games have a low death rate (like 1 PC every 15-20 sessions), and resurrection spells are available, but not used much*.

Some people instead don't have problems with the event of death, as long as it's meaningless or a small nuisance at worst. Those are the ones I was talking about, that say "death is boring" but they really mean only "permanent death is boring". Result: high death rate is accepted because you can just take some penalty and "respawn". And I think this is not unlikely what the 4e designers have in mind...

*player's choice, not DM's order

 

[shilsen]

I've long been a proponent of the idea that reward without real risk is no reward. It's boring and uninteresting.

Same here. I'm also a proponent of the idea that the risk of character death is only one among a huge number of potential risks in the game and, IMNSHO, one of the more boring of them. My PCs face the risk of failure all the time and sometimes do fail. And when they do, the fact that they rarely die means they actually have to live with the consequences of their failures.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

The ambiguity is because when I think "death is fun" (or "interesting") I am talking about dying permanently with the occasional exception. It's the "characters fight, adventure, kill monsters, save the world, and die (sometimes more than once)" philosophy. Which is why our games have a low death rate (like 1 PC every 15-20 sessions), and resurrection spells are available, but not used much*.

Some people instead don't have problems with the event of death, as long as it's meaningless or a small nuisance at worst. Those are the ones I was talking about, that say "death is boring" but they really mean only "permanent death is boring". Result: high death rate is accepted because you can just take some penalty and "respawn". And I think this is not unlikely what the 4e designers have in mind...

*player's choice, not DM's order

What I generally encounter in D&D is that, when the death rate is high, players end up throwing in the towel on character development and make disposable, playing-piece style characters. They may enjoy the experience of playing them in the moment, but there's no expectation of character growth either mechanically or story-wise - the stereotypical "Bob the Fighter" and his brother "Bob 2.0 the Fighter," etc.

I've played and run a couple of RAW D&D games over the last few years, and, largely due to having a large group for them, the death rate was very high. Every one has ended up with a core group of no more than two or three 'main characters' who were the most tactically played and well-built and thus survived, with a rotating 'supporting cast' who rarely survived more than two or three sessions. :\ Mind you, most of the players of the 'supporting cast' seemed to enjoy it for what it was, but it was very much a tactical exercise for them.

Whereas I'm currently running Star Wars Saga Edition, and, in addition to its other upgrades to the rules, the players have to CHOOSE to spend their last Force point for the level - as long as they have one, they're not in danger of dying due to gameplay factors. Two of the characters would have died in the first session if not for this rule; instead, those characters have persisted and developed, and the game has a real ensemble cast flavor to it.