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

[Rob Kuntz]

Anyways, before I derail the thread even worse:

Player elimination on boardgames isn't really comparable to character death in DnD. For DnD the real question is "how long before you can get back into the game?" which varies a lot between games - even within a single edition.

The conventional wisdom here is: the longer it takes to get back into the game, the more it sucks to be removed from play. And since character death =/= character loss, it can be shorter than making a new character. And there are other variables (ie how stupid <-> satisfying you felt the death was) which can vary a lot as well.

Well, I will not be sucked further into this microscopic minutia. To each their own as D&D allows. That said, patience is also a virtue except for the entitled. Adios.

 

[payn]

Well, Monopoly is rank 20,535 out of 20,542 ranked games on BoardGameGeek, so calling that a paragon of good design doesn't seem like a strong argument. It's better than The Game of Life (rank 20,536), so I guess it's not the worst.

Browse Board Games | BoardGameGeek

boardgamegeek.com

But I'll abstain on Diplomacy. I've never played it and it's ranked 614 (top 3% of all games), so either the mechanic is used well or the game's so good one flaw isn't worth mentioning.

(Although the most recent review I could find notes that "You need 7 players who are simultaneously ruthless and congenial, are willing to sacrifice half a day and are okay with practically guaranteed player elimination." Not an endorsement of the mechanic.)

Diplomacy

Powers of post-Victorian Europe cooperate and clash to become master of the Continent

boardgamegeek.com

The best way to play diplomacy is online and taking turns every 24 hours. The rules are quite simple. Its the table talk and forming alliances and breaking them that makes Diplomacy a game all in it's own.

 

[Lanefan]

Anyways, before I derail the thread even worse:

Player elimination on boardgames isn't really comparable to character death in DnD. For DnD the real question is "how long before you can get back into the game?" which varies a lot between games - even within a single edition.

Even between two tables, in fact.

If there's a hench or a party NPC the dead PC's player can take over for the interim then the "get back into the game" time is near zero.

The conventional wisdom here is: the longer it takes to get back into the game, the more it sucks to be removed from play. And since character death =/= character loss, it can be shorter than making a new character. And there are other variables (ie how stupid <-> satisfying you felt the death was) which can vary a lot as well.

Not just death. In 1e one failed save vs Hold Person at the start of a combat can end the evening early for anyone. Sitting out and watching for a bit now and then is just an accepted - and acceptable - part of the game.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So... time and time again, it has been noted that death is not the only possible consequence.

If what you are here to do is to beat the same old strawman drum, and say, "BUT I LIKE DEATH!!!" I really think you should go find a thread in which you can take some constructive part.

I'm not jumping to anyone's defense here, but this is a real phenomenon that's been going on for a while:

Publishers and Producers often push creators to 'up the stakes', wanting to always go for maximum effect in terms of audience reaction. As death is the ultimate stake, that's the lever they demand creators always pull regardless of how appropriate it is for the story being told. This is why for long time in action and superhero movies the bad guy ALWAYS dies. The fight was always to the death because there is no other stake the creators were allowed to use. This is also rooted in the older decency codes like the Hayes code, which demands evil be 'punished'.

This has had two distinct effects in popular culture:

1) Incoming creators are shaped by the media they consume. They've learned the advice 'when in doubt, kill a character'--again whether or not it's a good idea or fits the story. This has gone so far that that even genres like sweet romance have been filled with corpses of late. Not usually main characters, but then... Nicholas Sparks.

2) Audiences have been trained to expect and even demand death. It is the way the story is supposed to go after all. Especially in comics, where people will literally decide big events had no lasting effect if someone doesn't die. Remember back in Avengers where people were mad a certain character died not because his death was a tired trick to pull the audience's heart strings -- but because he wasn't 'important' enough?

Which is a very long way of saying that 'BUT I LIKE DEATH' is not a heartening response... it's hardly unexpected and is pretty understandable. Hollywood and New York have been working since the 80's to make sure we love and crave death in media. Because it's so cheap and easy. Easier than good or thoughtful writing.

And really, what is a DM to do when their players have thus been trained to think a story means nothing without maximum over-stakes?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I recently had a discussion with a friend about horror movies that seems to fit here. Basically, I understand modern horror movies and why they tend to depend on jump scares and gore, but I don't like them. And the reason is that for a lot of people, the tension of expecting a jump scare, and the release of the shock of one happening is gratifying. Being scared in a safe environment is fun for them. For me and a lot of others, it's just... stressful. I don't enjoy it. It leaves me feeling bad and burnt out.

This is absolutely 100% applicable, yes. I have the same response to horror films. I am arguing against the idea that a "horror-film-like" mentality is the best means to achieve an enjoyable D&D experience, and especially that if such a mentality is removed, the game inherently becomes un-fun or pointless--which people have absolutely already made in this thread. I will, however, note that I don't think ALL "tension" is bad. Horror relies on a particular kind of tension and uncertainty, but there are others.

I think it's a good reaction to the belief that Old School play is an inherently better play style and that new school is coddling and therefore lesser.

Thank you, genuinely. Because that is exactly what I'm railing at. The notion that it's only when you have the "thrill of death" that anything can ever matter.

Then it's a badwrongfun reaction to a different thread which is also a badwrongfun reaction? We on the two wrongs make a right road now?

I'm not the one claiming that the only way for D&D to ever be enjoyable to anyone is if it's always a tense, one-wrong-move-and-you-lose-everything experience. Others in this thread straight-up have. Who's badwrongfun arguing, in that instance?

I included an all-caps YMMV disclaimer. I'm not sure what more I can do besides abandoning critique of arguments entirely, which seems an excessive response.

Wow: I dunno. Sunshine and rainbows are great but if I am playing D&D much of the thrill is the fear of and avoidance of some sort of loss.

Genuinely trying not to go straight into the salt zone here: You have incorrectly assumed that the only form of thrill comes from fear, and that the only form of loss is character death. I am saying that loss can be a host of other things, and that tension can arise from wanting to protect/nurture the things that excite you (enthusiasm) or that you have come to love (affection). I am very specifically arguing against the idea that ONLY death counts as loss and ONLY fear counts as thrill.

If you know you can win every fight without a consequence does the fight matter?

I feel very frustrated that you have misunderstood my argument in this way, as this is a very uncharitable reading of what I said. I am doubly frustrated because I tried very hard to explicitly state that this knowledge ISN'T a thing in my games. You DON'T know if you'll succeed or not. You DON'T know if you'll be able to protect the things you love or advance the things that excite you. I just don't include random, purposeless, irrevocable death. Perhaps the character does die, but Gets Sent Back, Gandalf-style--with a literal deadline and more questions than answers. Perhaps a valued NPC sacrifices their life to save them, and now the party must quest to resurrect them or honor their sacrifice in some way. All sorts of costs exist, and many of them are much more engaging than "your character is dead, everything they might have cared about or achieved is now dust in the wind. Try again? Y/N"

I don’t like the narrative approach much and prefer some level of emergent play.

This would be a key difference between us, then. While I absolutely value emergent play (it's part of why I have forced myself to NOT prepare very much, to NOT hammer everything down, to rely pretty heavily on improvisation and adaptation), I'm interested in the stories of my players' characters. I want to see where they go--the ups and downs, the costs and rewards, the agonizing over difficult moral decisions, the righteous vengeance and the wise forgiveness. It's like having my own personal character-driven TV show. I don't want to hand things to my players on mithril platters, but I don't want them fearful that everything they've built will go up in a puff of smoke because of a couple bad die rolls. My players are skittish enough as it is.

the oh s**t moments are memorable. In the days level drains were watched things but we also usually had a chance to adventure and find a cleric to help which of itself was fun derived from loss.

Oh, I absolutely agree that "oh s**t moments" are memorable! Our party has absolutely had plenty of them. They just didn't include character deaths as a consequence. As one example, when the party exhumed the bodies of two individuals stricken by the Song of Thorns, a memetic virus and spirit of chaos and primal savagery. They performed an autopsy on them, and realized that the Song--despite being a spirit--literally transforms its victims into pre-sapient animals, modifying bone structure, muscle, brain tissue, the works. One of our players is an anthropologist by training, and was EXTREMELY disturbed by these revelations; it was an "oh naughty word, this thing is NASTY and SERIOUS" moment, despite involving zero danger to anyone in the party personally. They could see how terrible this could be if it wasn't contained or destroyed.

I love enthusiasm, however its something I feel game and adventure design has been very hit and miss on.

Agreed.

The Paizo adventure paths do a good job on both the character options and adventure campaigns. Its great to not only see options tailored to the campaign, but also included in the modules to assist the GM. I say a good job, but not a great one. I think this is a space that is ripe for the next gaming design breakout. Or, maybe that's just where my hopes lay.

I may have problems with Paizo and PF, but I can agree with this. It's a struggle to find a way to make "contextual" options that can be shared across an entire system, which sounds like a contradiction. I, too, hope that we'll see more development on that front. I think 13th Age's Backgrounds and OUTs are good starting points for new design ideas in this space.

At the table, the GM often has a lot of responsibility to make sure the enthusiasm comes alive.

Also agreed.

Affection is reactive for sure. It can be a very difficult element to cultivate at the table for both GM and players. I've seen GMs put a lot of love into a cute cuddly NPC only to have the players take a giant dook on it. A GM has to understand that the players wont bite on every hook, and sometimes you have to follow their lead. This can take you to really fun places and its memorable for sure, but it can also kill a GMs enthusiasm dead if the players hate their ideas.

It's a careful dance. I have personally been very lucky, in that my players have responded much more positively than I ever dared hope to several NPCs I've introduced. Part of it is just that those NPCs are actually useful to the party, but part is also that the players were On Board for two of them being in a relationship. I've found a big part of setting the stage for player affection (for my group, at least) is just to show NPCs being relatable people with a skill to offer, and saving the "help us plz" for after a baseline rapport comes up. Offering a little witty humor now and then also helps!

I think the enthusiasm is a lot stronger of a motivating element than affection. Affection is just so difficult to think about in a tangible way like enthusiasm or even fear. Fear has long held its position as a motivator because its so tangible. It's baked right into the rules and its conditions are clearly spelled out. Every adventure module hits the fear factors, not so much the enthusiasm or affection points. Though, as adventure design grows and changes, maybe these intangible items can become a stronger motivation factor as folks learn to utilize them better at their tables?

Perhaps. I've actually found affection to be an extremely strong motivator in my group, mostly because the party is really good at finding communities that look to them for leadership and guidance, and the player(s) in question have zero problem with getting on board. For example, our party tiefling has taken multiple actions I would not have expected, due to deeply caring about people to whom he has a familial and/or philosophical connection. He became half-devil (as opposed to merely a tiefling) due to wanting to save a group of people who had collectively made a protect-us-from-horrible-things bargain with his (yet-to-be-determined) devilish ancestor, siphoning off their devilish essence, even though he HATES how manipulative and bastardly devils can be and wants nothing to do with them personally.

What you describe as "outright encouraging paranoia" is not D&D. It's, well, Paranoia.

I mean, I literally quoted a person who used that exact word. And I have seen plenty of others, here and elsewhere on the internet, who either used that exact word, or said things functionally equivalent to it (something like "if the player isn't constantly in fear of

Describing character death as "losing their ability to participate" is a false equivalency of epic proportions. Does your DM kick you out of the group if your PC dies? I doubt it.

Perhaps I did not specify finely enough. I have absolutely seen (and been) a player having to sit out for 2-3 sessions or more, because there weren't henchmen around to step up or it didn't make sense to find a replacement yet. If that isn't losing your ability to participate, I don't know what is. And, as noted, I have had multiple people tell me that that's the whole point of character death--costing the player their participation in the game. ZakS, for example, explicitly said that to me on another forum, a long while back.

I simply do not believe that you have been told, recently, on this very forum, that either of the above are true.

As I said, I literally quoted Lanefan, who explicitly used the word "paranoia" to describe the feeling players should have. If that isn't explicitly doing that, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't thing you can cleave off fear of resource attrition from fear of death or even fear of random death just so can call badwrongfun on @Lanefan for defending the existence dcc funnel style funnel type games. 5e did exactly that and we et damage beyond zero goes away no foul into the maxhp sized absorb shield , healing word & similar abilities to make yoyo healing backed up by tiny hut guaranteed successful rests asthe most optimum style of play while the pieces needed to support other styles are lacking & not at all trivial to simply retroactively attach to a system that fights it on so many differing levels of edge cases & one off abilities.

I'm honestly not entirely sure what you're saying here, Tetrasodium. Also, I made this a General D&D thread since I didn't specifically mean to discuss 5e alone.

Your looking at the paintball with dr Manhattan analogy vaporizing the incoming paintballs for his team healing word style the wrong way by focusing on just the chance of injury during a normal game and ignoring how removing the chance of loss changes the game. Simply saying that the gm should find some other set of stakes to compensate for the severe design problem as has been suggested in this thread is an flatly admitting how difficult it is for the gm to do so fight after fight after fight by lacking specificity.

As above: I emphatically DO NOT wish to remove loss from the game. But "chance of injury" is not at all the same as "chance of loss," and a key part of my argument is that a lot of people, for a very long time, have been equating those two in a D&D context. Equating "your character may, and indeed almost certainly will, suffer loss, hardship, and difficulty" with "your character is at a very real risk of irrevocable (or at least not short-term resolvable) death basically all the time" is exactly the problem. The two are NOT one-to-one equivalent.

"What does a player do during the rest of the session when their character dies?" is another completely legitimate and valuable discussion that is highly unlikely to happen with the introduction OP provided.

My experience, particularly with OSR things, has been that a player whose character dies does nothing (except make jokes and comment on the state of play) for the rest of that session. And possibly for multiple sessions thereafter. Hence why I said what I said.

In Diplomacy if you're knocked out of the game as any country (which is the purpose), you are out. Same in Monopoly, the Game of Life, etc. If people want a narrative fiction-building approach without challenges and uncertainty or, gosh, even death for daring to be an "Adventurer"

Mr. Kuntz, I genuinely respect your contributions to gaming, but again, I feel very frustrated by this severe misinterpretation of what I said. I understand that you are mostly choosing to disengage with the thread, so if you do not wish to respond to this post, I would not hold it against you. But I emphatically reject the notion that I am advocating anything that lacks "challenges and uncertainty." Yes, I am saying that (character) death is severely over-emphasized as a potential cost. It frustrates me greatly that saying that gets transmuted into "oh, so you want a game where the players just succeed at everything they do, every time, always?"

I completely agree with you that an "Adventurer" that never experienced challenge or uncertainty would not deserve the title! I'm not saying that that is what should happen in any game. (I mean, if a group really wants that, more power to them I suppose, but it's definitely not for me.) I'm saying that the culture of D&D has falsely treated "death, particularly the ever-present threat of character permadeath" as being the ONLY form of loss, of "challenges and uncertainty," and that I think the hobby as a whole--but obviously not every single individual table--would be better-served by emphasizing a wider spectrum of losses, challenges, uncertainties, by considering other motivators besides fear (and very specifically the fear of character death).

Is an RPG a game or not? If so there are winners and losers, monsters die by the thousands under your immersed PC's spells and melee.

I was told it is not possible to "win" D&D. Would you disagree? If you agree, does that mean D&D isn't a game? You can certainly lose, in lots of ways. I find losing-by-character-death is highly overvalued, and other forms of losing are often neglected or forgotten.

It impacts it all the same, one cannot suggest changes to the game without studying the impact on the entire system. The parts in this instance effect the whole. Others have made this point as well.

Completely agreed. When making changes to a game, you have to expect the unexpected. Consequences almost always spiral out from a change, and sometimes what seems like a small tweak has vast impact. Focusing challenge, hardship, loss, and uncertainty away from character death requires effort to keep things exciting and engaging. I have found that effort is not a burden, though, and its rewards are rich.

No. I remove hard-loss — you can't lose my game. Your character, on the other hand, will lose a ton of stuff, important and personal. They will lose their heirloom sword, the vessel of their ancestors' spirits. They will lose their grimmoir, their Magnum Opus, all the research and breakthroughs they made to understand the greater laws of magic. They will lose their families, their sons and their lovers. Oh God will they lose.

This, definitely. Though in my case, I run a world which is bright, but under threat: less "points of light" in a vast tapestry of darkness, and more...light and darkness about equal in influence, currently, but the latter poised to destroy the former....unless heroes rise to make a difference. Inattention and neglect can be just as dangerous as failure, because dark forces are surging back into power. It is not really possible for darkness to totally snuff out light, but things might suck for just as long as they've generally not sucked very much (that is, centuries to millennia, depending on the severity).

I'm not particularly interested in testing, whether the players can beat the game, and as a player, I can't say that I feel any importance in the fact that my character has survived the Tomb of Horrors. What I am interested in is seeing how characters would react to hardships, how would they change and develop.

Agreed. Character death (that isn't reversed) permanently ends change and development. Hence, when I do consider death as a consequence, I prepare for making it yet another journey. The journey ends when we as a group decide it ends, but there's no guarantee the course will be easy, nor that it will go even remotely as planned, nor that the party will even get to where they originally planned to go. Those are all sources of challenge, loss, and uncertainty that are much more interesting to me than cutting the thread and ending a character--and I think they would be more interesting to other groups out there too, if more DMs considered something other than "your character died" as the weapon of first and last resort in terms of creating tension and hardship for the characters.

 

[Lanefan]

I return... AGAIN.. to the OP. This is about fear of death as motivation.

The title of the thread would suggest it's about fear in general as a motivator, with the OP using death as merely exhibit A of something to fear.

So... time and time again, it has been noted that death is not the only possible consequence.

If what you are here to do is to beat the same old strawman drum, and say, "BUT I LIKE DEATH!!!" I really think you should go find a thread in which you can take some constructive part.

First, what on earth is wrong with saying "I like death in the game" if that's how one feels?

Second, how - particuarly given your quoted take above that the thread's about fear of death - can saying death is OK be off topic or not germaine?

 

[Lanefan]

Genuinely trying not to go straight into the salt zone here: You have incorrectly assumed that the only form of thrill comes from fear, and that the only form of loss is character death. I am saying that loss can be a host of other things, and that tension can arise from wanting to protect/nurture the things that excite you (enthusiasm) or that you have come to love (affection). I am very specifically arguing against the idea that ONLY death counts as loss and ONLY fear counts as thrill.

This actually brings up a tangential point that's probably worth noting here: as the editions have gone by the hard-loss conditions other than death have generally been either nerfed ot eliminated from the game, leaving death as all there is. Consider; in 0e and 1e that beyond just simple death you faced the possibility of:

level loss (partially repairable, at great cost to the PC)
much more frequent magic item destruction (from AoE damage, rust monsters, etc.)
petrification (repairable at slight but significant risk to the PC)
sometimes-massive aging effects and resulting gain/loss of stats (repairable only if you happened to find the right potion)
polymorph-other permanently turning you (including your mind!) into a rabbit or salmon or earthworm

So, compare 5e*:

Level loss - completely gone. This is the big one.
Item destruction - very rare if ever.
Petrification - still there but much easier to resist (need to fail a series of saves rather than just one).
Aging effect - ghosts can still do this but it's not as easy.
Polymorph - nerfed significantly.

* - if there's examples of these in any post-initial releases I don't know of them, and am all ears.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

This is absolutely 100% applicable, yes. I have the same response to horror films. I am arguing against the idea that a "horror-film-like" mentality is the best means to achieve an enjoyable D&D experience, and especially that if such a mentality is removed, the game inherently becomes un-fun or pointless--which people have absolutely already made in this thread. I will, however, note that I don't think ALL "tension" is bad. Horror relies on a particular kind of tension and uncertainty, but there are others.


Thank you, genuinely. Because that is exactly what I'm railing at. The notion that it's only when you have the "thrill of death" that anything can ever matter.


I'm not the one claiming that the only way for D&D to ever be enjoyable to anyone is if it's always a tense, one-wrong-move-and-you-lose-everything experience. Others in this thread straight-up have. Who's badwrongfun arguing, in that instance?

I included an all-caps YMMV disclaimer. I'm not sure what more I can do besides abandoning critique of arguments entirely, which seems an excessive response.


Genuinely trying not to go straight into the salt zone here: You have incorrectly assumed that the only form of thrill comes from fear, and that the only form of loss is character death. I am saying that loss can be a host of other things, and that tension can arise from wanting to protect/nurture the things that excite you (enthusiasm) or that you have come to love (affection). I am very specifically arguing against the idea that ONLY death counts as loss and ONLY fear counts as thrill.


I feel very frustrated that you have misunderstood my argument in this way, as this is a very uncharitable reading of what I said. I am doubly frustrated because I tried very hard to explicitly state that this knowledge ISN'T a thing in my games. You DON'T know if you'll succeed or not. You DON'T know if you'll be able to protect the things you love or advance the things that excite you. I just don't include random, purposeless, irrevocable death. Perhaps the character does die, but Gets Sent Back, Gandalf-style--with a literal deadline and more questions than answers. Perhaps a valued NPC sacrifices their life to save them, and now the party must quest to resurrect them or honor their sacrifice in some way. All sorts of costs exist, and many of them are much more engaging than "your character is dead, everything they might have cared about or achieved is now dust in the wind. Try again? Y/N"


This would be a key difference between us, then. While I absolutely value emergent play (it's part of why I have forced myself to NOT prepare very much, to NOT hammer everything down, to rely pretty heavily on improvisation and adaptation), I'm interested in the stories of my players' characters. I want to see where they go--the ups and downs, the costs and rewards, the agonizing over difficult moral decisions, the righteous vengeance and the wise forgiveness. It's like having my own personal character-driven TV show. I don't want to hand things to my players on mithril platters, but I don't want them fearful that everything they've built will go up in a puff of smoke because of a couple bad die rolls. My players are skittish enough as it is.


Oh, I absolutely agree that "oh s**t moments" are memorable! Our party has absolutely had plenty of them. They just didn't include character deaths as a consequence. As one example, when the party exhumed the bodies of two individuals stricken by the Song of Thorns, a memetic virus and spirit of chaos and primal savagery. They performed an autopsy on them, and realized that the Song--despite being a spirit--literally transforms its victims into pre-sapient animals, modifying bone structure, muscle, brain tissue, the works. One of our players is an anthropologist by training, and was EXTREMELY disturbed by these revelations; it was an "oh naughty word, this thing is NASTY and SERIOUS" moment, despite involving zero danger to anyone in the party personally. They could see how terrible this could be if it wasn't contained or destroyed.


Agreed.


I may have problems with Paizo and PF, but I can agree with this. It's a struggle to find a way to make "contextual" options that can be shared across an entire system, which sounds like a contradiction. I, too, hope that we'll see more development on that front. I think 13th Age's Backgrounds and OUTs are good starting points for new design ideas in this space.


Also agreed.


It's a careful dance. I have personally been very lucky, in that my players have responded much more positively than I ever dared hope to several NPCs I've introduced. Part of it is just that those NPCs are actually useful to the party, but part is also that the players were On Board for two of them being in a relationship. I've found a big part of setting the stage for player affection (for my group, at least) is just to show NPCs being relatable people with a skill to offer, and saving the "help us plz" for after a baseline rapport comes up. Offering a little witty humor now and then also helps!


Perhaps. I've actually found affection to be an extremely strong motivator in my group, mostly because the party is really good at finding communities that look to them for leadership and guidance, and the player(s) in question have zero problem with getting on board. For example, our party tiefling has taken multiple actions I would not have expected, due to deeply caring about people to whom he has a familial and/or philosophical connection. He became half-devil (as opposed to merely a tiefling) due to wanting to save a group of people who had collectively made a protect-us-from-horrible-things bargain with his (yet-to-be-determined) devilish ancestor, siphoning off their devilish essence, even though he HATES how manipulative and bastardly devils can be and wants nothing to do with them personally.


I mean, I literally quoted a person who used that exact word. And I have seen plenty of others, here and elsewhere on the internet, who either used that exact word, or said things functionally equivalent to it (something like "if the player isn't constantly in fear of


Perhaps I did not specify finely enough. I have absolutely seen (and been) a player having to sit out for 2-3 sessions or more, because there weren't henchmen around to step up or it didn't make sense to find a replacement yet. If that isn't losing your ability to participate, I don't know what is. And, as noted, I have had multiple people tell me that that's the whole point of character death--costing the player their participation in the game. ZakS, for example, explicitly said that to me on another forum, a long while back.


As I said, I literally quoted Lanefan, who explicitly used the word "paranoia" to describe the feeling players should have. If that isn't explicitly doing that, I don't know what to tell you.


I'm honestly not entirely sure what you're saying here, Tetrasodium. Also, I made this a General D&D thread since I didn't specifically mean to discuss 5e alone.


As above: I emphatically DO NOT wish to remove loss from the game. But "chance of injury" is not at all the same as "chance of loss," and a key part of my argument is that a lot of people, for a very long time, have been equating those two in a D&D context. Equating "your character may, and indeed almost certainly will, suffer loss, hardship, and difficulty" with "your character is at a very real risk of irrevocable (or at least not short-term resolvable) death basically all the time" is exactly the problem. The two are NOT one-to-one equivalent.


My experience, particularly with OSR things, has been that a player whose character dies does nothing (except make jokes and comment on the state of play) for the rest of that session. And possibly for multiple sessions thereafter. Hence why I said what I said.


Mr. Kuntz, I genuinely respect your contributions to gaming, but again, I feel very frustrated by this severe misinterpretation of what I said. I understand that you are mostly choosing to disengage with the thread, so if you do not wish to respond to this post, I would not hold it against you. But I emphatically reject the notion that I am advocating anything that lacks "challenges and uncertainty." Yes, I am saying that (character) death is severely over-emphasized as a potential cost. It frustrates me greatly that saying that gets transmuted into "oh, so you want a game where the players just succeed at everything they do, every time, always?"

I completely agree with you that an "Adventurer" that never experienced challenge or uncertainty would not deserve the title! I'm not saying that that is what should happen in any game. (I mean, if a group really wants that, more power to them I suppose, but it's definitely not for me.) I'm saying that the culture of D&D has falsely treated "death, particularly the ever-present threat of character permadeath" as being the ONLY form of loss, of "challenges and uncertainty," and that I think the hobby as a whole--but obviously not every single individual table--would be better-served by emphasizing a wider spectrum of losses, challenges, uncertainties, by considering other motivators besides fear (and very specifically the fear of character death).


I was told it is not possible to "win" D&D. Would you disagree? If you agree, does that mean D&D isn't a game? You can certainly lose, in lots of ways. I find losing-by-character-death is highly overvalued, and other forms of losing are often neglected or forgotten.


Completely agreed. When making changes to a game, you have to expect the unexpected. Consequences almost always spiral out from a change, and sometimes what seems like a small tweak has vast impact. Focusing challenge, hardship, loss, and uncertainty away from character death requires effort to keep things exciting and engaging. I have found that effort is not a burden, though, and its rewards are rich.


This, definitely. Though in my case, I run a world which is bright, but under threat: less "points of light" in a vast tapestry of darkness, and more...light and darkness about equal in influence, currently, but the latter poised to destroy the former....unless heroes rise to make a difference. Inattention and neglect can be just as dangerous as failure, because dark forces are surging back into power. It is not really possible for darkness to totally snuff out light, but things might suck for just as long as they've generally not sucked very much (that is, centuries to millennia, depending on the severity).


Agreed. Character death (that isn't reversed) permanently ends change and development. Hence, when I do consider death as a consequence, I prepare for making it yet another journey. The journey ends when we as a group decide it ends, but there's no guarantee the course will be easy, nor that it will go even remotely as planned, nor that the party will even get to where they originally planned to go. Those are all sources of challenge, loss, and uncertainty that are much more interesting to me than cutting the thread and ending a character--and I think they would be more interesting to other groups out there too, if more DMs considered something other than "your character died" as the weapon of first and last resort in terms of creating tension and hardship for the characters.

I have stated repeatedly that RPGs will and must incorporate differing POVs. I contest that having fear as a motivation be excluded from this as "Bollocks", for I don't believe it exists to begin with as players know that the game has hit points, saving throws and the like and that they are "battling" evil with the purpose of "possibly" defeating it. There is no guarantee as this remains to chance (thus answering your question yes, I do believe it is a game, for it involves chance and contest). Now, if you mean giving your players a sense of security through your actions as a DM to guarantee a neutral space in which to conduct fair exchanges (in the "game"), then I'd agree, but I'd also add this, if that were the case: Isn't this the mandamus for DM's anyway??

There is also the aspect of misinterpretation going on here, and there are so many wave lengths competing in this thread, compelling one to adduce that the Old School philosophy we established in the playtests is still in force even within the more confined and rooted aspects of the current system. What I see is variance here; and thus a definitive topic this is not. It is a specialized POV and as witnessed by those others who posted here, and as well as it should be.

IOW, whatever you do to manage your fun to its end is right not because of consensus (with the fanfare of Bollocks leading the charge towards that end, intentionally or not) but because of you and your group's POV. Thus I see the whole as more specifically positional rather than as broadly topical with results as noted.

 

[tetrasodium]

I return... AGAIN.. to the OP. This is about fear of death as motivation.

As you reach the top of the first hill of a roller coaster, and go over that drop, yes there's a thrill. Nobody's saying that isn't there, or isn't fun.

That's separate from what it actually gets people to do, if anything.



So... time and time again, it has been noted that death is not the only possible consequence.

If what you are here to do is to beat the same old strawman drum, and say, "BUT I LIKE DEATH!!!" I really think you should go find a thread in which you can take some constructive part.

I might be misunderstanding your point, but it seems like your saying @Warpiglet-7's statement is so unrelated to the OP' point that it deserves to be called out on that front

Death is a specific quantified "loss" & the player does not actually need to die in order for fear of that specific risk to provide reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way that makes efforts to avoid that loss. If @Warpiglet-7's quoted point is not relevant to "fear as a motivation" is the discussion just being narrowed down to "good point op" or "I disagree but the scope of discussion is too narrow to discuss why?" What people do in response to a given motivation is critical to discussing if a given motivation is a net gain positive component or a "bad" net loss to the game.

This actually brings up a tangential point that's probably worth noting here: as the editions have gone by the hard-loss conditions other than death have generally been either nerfed ot eliminated from the game, leaving death as all there is. Consider; in 0e and 1e that beyond just simple death you faced the possibility of:

level loss (partially repairable, at great cost to the PC)
much more frequent magic item destruction (from AoE damage, rust monsters, etc.)
petrification (repairable at slight but significant risk to the PC)
sometimes-massive aging effects and resulting gain/loss of stats (repairable only if you happened to find the right potion)
polymorph-other permanently turning you (including your mind!) into a rabbit or salmon or earthworm

So, compare 5e*:

Level loss - completely gone. This is the big one.
Item destruction - very rare if ever.
Petrification - still there but much easier to resist (need to fail a series of saves rather than just one).
Aging effect - ghosts can still do this but it's not as easy.
Polymorph - nerfed significantly.

* - if there's examples of these in any post-initial releases I don't know of them, and am all ears.

Attribute damage was a thing for a while too

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I return... AGAIN.. to the OP. This is about fear of death as motivation.

As you reach the top of the first hill of a roller coaster, and go over that drop, yes there's a thrill. Nobody's saying that isn't there, or isn't fun.

That's separate from what it actually gets people to do, if anything.



So... time and time again, it has been noted that death is not the only possible consequence.

If what you are here to do is to beat the same old strawman drum, and say, "BUT I LIKE DEATH!!!" I really think you should go find a thread in which you can take some constructive part.

For real?

I also mention losing treasure and levels. Are those verboten too?

have the conversation you want in an echo chamber. Enjoy!