D&D General "Hot Take": Fear is a bad motivator

[Democratus]

With that provocative title to grab your attention, let me explain what I mean. Please, as with all things of this type, keep in mind a giant neon sign that says, "OBVIOUSLY NOT APPLICABLE TO 100% OF PEOPLE."

In D&D of even a somewhat "old school" bent, it has always seemed to me that the game outright encourages inducing paranoia in your players. Making them distrust every offer of allegiance, every kind gesture, every calm scene, every peaceful town. Making them rightfully believe that they're in constant danger of losing their ability to participate in play, aka, in constant danger of character permadeath, for light and transient causes. I've even been told, just recently and on this very forum, that such paranoia absolutely is how play should work.

So. How about it? Does "don't fear the reaper roller" sound like blasphemy or beatitude? Would it "not be D&D" if fear weren't the fundamental motivator of your games?

In "old school" games, you don't ever lose your ability to participate. One character dies and another steps up. In the middle of a dungeon, this is best done by having a retainer/hireling switch to being a PC. Otherwise, it takes about 5 minutes to make a character in B/X and get rolling again.

The primary motivation for 'old school' characters is loot. They are out there to get rich, make a name for themselves, and create a stronghold. The way they do it is by delving into the terrifying wilderness and underworld. The wild places actively hate and oppose the intruders from the civilized world. It is a place of darkness, fear, and death.

Risks are great - only a lucky few successfully reach the end of this ambition. But those few become legend.

In newer-style games, there is often a focus on narrative where each player has a single "hero" that is intended to be part of the story from start to finish. This calls for an entirely different kind of play, where death is much less common and the goal is not to get rich but to conclude the story that is being told.

The key is to go with whatever matches the kind of game your table has decided to play.

 

[prabe]

So what replaces PC death as a hard-loss condition in your games?

There seems to be a gap between people who think a permanent loss/defeat is possible if the characters are still alive, and those who don't. For those who do, any sort of irreversible loss or defeat or failure can be a hard-loss condition. Heck, it doesn't have to be the end of the campaign: You failed to save your world, and now it's permanently gone; now what do you do?

Those who don't think permanent loss/failure/defeat is possible if the characters survive (it seems to me) either don't buy into the permanence, or they end the campaign at that point--which isn't radically different from a TPK.

 

[Umbran]

I've got rid of death (your PC dies when you decide that it's time for them to die) and it's a thing that instantly makes a game much better.

Yeah. Consider - if the point is some kid of verisimilitude, a player's fear the they'll lose their PC isn't a whole lot like a person's fear that they might die, so the resulting behaviors you see as a result are probaby not terribly similar either. Unless, of course, the players recognizes this fact, and takes an effort to role-pay the character's fear separate from their own. However, if they can do that, they can do that without the stimulus that they'll lose their character.

The more common claim seems to be that you want the player to fear character loss, so they "play smart". Real people when fearful don't often become smarter, or more effectively analytical. In a real-world fear response, most people's ability to apply logical reasoning to the situation drops precipitously. "Fear is the mind-killer," to quote Frank Herbert.

The OP in general makes a point that is very consistent with how mammals are best trained. Negative stimuli tend to yield unpredictable responses - smacking a puppy with a rolled-up newspaper is not a good way to housebreak your dog, for example.

Positive stimuli generally work better - the mammal (and this includes humans) far more quickly and reliably recognizes the desired behavior when they are rewarded than when punished. So, rather than punish a player (by killing characters) for poor play, it is likely better to reward players for whatever good play looks like at your table. If you want to promote a kind of play at your table, clickers and treats beat rolled-up newspapers.

 

[Mort]

Yeah. Consider - if the point is some kid of verisimilitude, a player's fear the they'll lose their PC isn't a whole lot like a person's fear that they might die, so the resulting behaviors you see as a result are probaby not terribly similar either. Unless, of course, the players recognizes this fact, and takes an effort to role-pay the character's fear separate from their own. However, if they can do that, they can do that without the stimulus that they'll lose their character.

The more common claim seems to be that you want the player to fear character loss, so they "play smart". Real people when fearful don't often become smarter, or more effectively analytical. In a real-world fear response, most people's ability to apply logical reasoning to the situation drops precipitously. "Fear is the mind-killer," to quote Frank Herbert.

The OP in general makes a point that is very consistent with how mammals are best trained. Negative stimuli tend to yield unpredictable responses - smacking a puppy with a rolled-up newspaper is not a good way to housebreak your dog, for example.

Positive stimuli generally work better - the mammal (and this includes humans) far more quickly and reliably recognizes the desired behavior when they are rewarded than when punished. So, rather than punish a player (by killing characters) for poor play, it is likely better to reward players for whatever good play looks like at your table. If you want to promote a kind of play at your table, clickers and treats beat rolled-up newspapers.

I've found edible enemies instead of miniatures (mini snickers, jellie bellies, used a giant hershey's kiss for a fire giant) do wonders both for whimsie and motivating the players.

 

[loverdrive]

I've found edible enemies instead of miniatures (mini snickers, jellie bellies, used a giant hershey's kiss for a fire giant) do wonders both for whimsie and motivating the players.

I've once played in a one shot where every enemy was a shot. Skeletons were vodka+sprite, zombies were vodka+tarkhun (a local sweet drink, VERY green) and the big bad was an undead hydra. Each head is a shot of absinthe.

It was the best and the worst idea ever.

 

[Mistwell]

This smacks as a "badwrongfun" type thread.

 

[payn]

All this stuff is pretty easy to clear up during session zero and choice of gaming system. There is no right or wrong way to do it, but the assumptions should be table wide.

 

[Democratus]

Positive stimuli generally work better - the mammal (and this includes humans) far more quickly and reliably recognizes the desired behavior when they are rewarded than when punished. So, rather than punish a player (by killing characters) for poor play, it is likely better to reward players for whatever good play looks like at your table. If you want to promote a kind of play at your table, clickers and treats beat rolled-up newspapers.

There's a misconception here that killing a character is somehow "punishing" players. And you posit that death is a result of "poor play".

This simply isn't true for all tables. In old-school games, death can come at any time. It's not poor play - it is the nature of the wilderness. Surviving adventure is as much luck as skill.

Character death - common character death - is an essential part of what makes the world feel dangerous. And this danger is an essential part of what makes surviving high-level characters so legendary.

Having a character live to reach name level was a great feat. It was something that only a small fraction of characters achieved. And it was something you would talk about with fellow players for years to come.

This style of play isn't dependent on a specific edition, either. We played a 2-year campaign of Out of the Abyss (5e). There were 6 players at the table and there were 15 character deaths. Only one PC made it all the way from start to finish. And we had a blast the entire time. Whenever a character was turned to stone by a beholder, eaten by a gelatenous cube, crushed by a gnoll club, etc. we all cheered and patted the player on the back as they put together their next character.

There are other schools of thought on how a game should play out, and how much death there should be in a game. Those are fun games, too! But I take umbrage at the assumption that PC death - for which there are entire rules in the PHB - is somehow a "punishment" for a player.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Life is full of uncertainty; every game I've played is filled will uncertainty; A Fantasy world is not a Fantasy world unless it too has uncertainty. How does the DM achieve that in players who are in certain game modes? It varies. Remove the tools or need for producing uncertainty in RPGs and I'm not sure what they'd be; but it's certainly nothing I'd play.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I can enjoy it now and then as a throwback to the old days, but session after session? That just gets old. Sometimes, as a DM, you're thankful for that one PC that says, to quote Pillsbury in Romero's Land of the Dead, " I came here to do something. So, we are gonna stand around, or we are gonna do something?" and then just does something.

The older I get, the less interest I have in the super-timid, poke-everything-with-a-10'-pole style of play -- on both sides of the DM screen.

It especially annoys me when this attitude creeps from dungeon crawling into other genres. I've had players in superhero games worry endlessly about the safest way of entering the villains' lair, instead of just crashing through the wall and making a wisecrack, or swinging down through a skylight and landing in the three-point stance.

I think fear as a prime motivator isn't optimal, but it can be a great spice now and then.