D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Micah Sweet]

There you go. Multiple viewpoint characters all engaging with the same continuing story that doesn’t end simply because one character is no longer the viewpoint character.

Now, apply that to D&D. The game isn’t about your character. The game is about the group. The story isn’t about your character. The story is about the group’s adventures. The game/story doesn’t end if or when your character dies. It continues on with or without you and your character. But the story is changed in your character’s passing. You as a player can engage with the story of the group and want to see how it plays out...by continuing to play using a different character, something cheesy like a brother or cousin, or a whole new character, or having your dead character raised.

But that’s the point, really. It’s not about your character. It’s about the group.

I mean, we literally get an example of this in Lord of the Rings. Boromir dies…and suddenly, his brother…with a similar name…suddenly becomes an important character.

Yup. I was in a long running campaign a while back, in the course of which I ran three successive characters. One story for the group, three characters for me. They were all fun to play, but when they died (none by my choice) I moved on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which is likely why people seem to think of 5E as a fantasy superheroes game.

Its hardly the only one, though. One of the things that made GoT distinctive is that it played fast and loose with apparent protagonists--but there are plenty of protagonists that are very unlikely to ever die across the course of the books or shows they appear in, but are hardly superheroes. In very few of those should death be a strong counter-motivation.

Even in action-horror shows you can go a long damn time without a main character dying.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why does the new one never going to leave either?

Many long running TV series have characters rotate out (sometimes for plot reasons, sometimes for contract or IRL problem ones), and the fans pick another character to focus on - maybe even the replacement one. That's maybe hard to guarantee with a TV show, but in the RPG you get to cast and script the replacement.

Point is, usually people aren't only focused on one character in the first place (unless its a case where the lead is the only continuing character); they may have a favorite, and may not be too thrilled if they leave, but its usually not the only character they're connecting with.

RPGs aren't like that. The connection is almost totally through a single character, and if they go, the player mostly has to start from scratch. Most people are not enthused about that, and the more it happens the more they become disconnected or slide into token play.

 

[Cadence]

I don't really get the obsession with characters dying. I don't recall any protagonist dying in the Earthsea trilogy. <snip>.

It's trivial to have high stakes, meaningful RPGing without death being on the table.

Six books, right?

I guess putting

Spoiler: < major plot thing >

"loss of all powers"

on the table would certainly be a meaningful stake. Based on other threads that seems like it might get a worse reception than death from some folks.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Six books, right?

I guess putting

Spoiler: < major plot thing >

"loss of all powers"

on the table would certainly be a meaningful stake. Based on other threads that seems like it might get a worse reception than death from some folks.

Well, if they're wrapped around the character's identity enough and/or make it impossible to use the character in the game context any further, is there really a meaningful difference?

 

[pemerton]

That’s my issue. I want characters who aren’t boring game pieces to move around in a faux boardgame style of play. Yet that’s what the majority of players offer up.

I don't mean to trivialise your situation - but this seems like a complaint that you want to join a book club and read Joyce's Ulysses, or perhaps Smith's On Beauty, while everyone else wants to read Stephen King. Or a complaint that all your friends will only ever go and watch MCU films, and you'd rather go and see a Hal Hartley revival.

Faced with these sorts of aesthetic mismatches, I can see two options: try and educate your friends; or find new ones.

The first is possible, among mature adults with a range of interests. Back when I was young and had all the time in the world I used to attend the Melbourne Cinematheque, and got my best friend to come along even though I think he would have preferred the latest Bruce Willis vehicle.

My current RPG group was built out of two former groups and was originally focused on 4e D&D, but in the past five or six years we've played (at various times, and with various configurations of participants) Burning Wheel, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark, Wuthering Heights, The Green Knight, Torchbearer, The Dying Earth, Agon, In A Wicked Age, and maybe others I'm forgetting, as well as 4e and AD&D. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

The second option also seems pretty feasible, if you have access to online play or live in a town or city of reasonable size. There are near-to-mainstream RPGs these days that are focused on real characters: various flavours of PbtA and Fate are probably the best-known ones.

 

[Cadence]

Point is, usually people aren't only focused on one character in the first place (unless its a case where the lead is the only continuing character); they may have a favorite, and may not be too thrilled if they leave, but its usually not the only character they're connecting with.

I wonder if that happens more in comic books, where I think a lot of people have one or two favorite characters on a team like the X-men or Avengers or whatnot, and follow that one character more than the team as a whole.

RPGs aren't like that. The connection is almost totally through a single character, and if they go, the player mostly has to start from scratch. Most people are not enthused about that, and the more it happens the more they become disconnected or slide into token play.

It feels like there is a lot of distance between never happens and happens a lot. Is one of the hard things about super hero comics and multiple-decades long fans the tension between having to know the character will always come out on top, and wanting them to have something new?

---

Barely a tangent: Its strange to me how some long time shows - say Gunsmoke - can have the same character in roughly the same situation over and over, while others - say Star Trek or super hero comics - seem to feel the need to continually up the power level and consequences that the opposition brings.

 

[pemerton]

Six books, right?

I guess putting

Spoiler: < major plot thing >

"loss of all powers"

on the table would certainly be a meaningful stake. Based on other threads that seems like it might get a worse reception than death from some folks.

Well, if they're wrapped around the character's identity enough and/or make it impossible to use the character in the game context any further, is there really a meaningful difference?

This is where stakes and consequence again come to the fore.

In my 4e campaign, one of the players gave up a daily power (one of four) in order to seal the Abyss. Of course, doing this at 28th or 29th level when the campaign is reaching its crescendo is different from doing it at 1st level.

If, as a player, I have no say in stakes, no sense of the meaning of consequences - it's all there inside the GM's little black box - then I'm more likely to want to cling with all my might to the one little thing that I do control, namely, my PC.

I don't see how more GM authority is meant to be the solution to any of these problems.

 

[Hussar]

Game of Thrones. Interesting and connected characters who get shredded and die…and it’s an interesting and engaging story.

If a player cannot accept there’s risk to a character’s life and limb they shouldn’t be playing a game that’s heavy on combat. Simple as.

Either 1) you want a game that involves risks, or; 2) you don’t.

Either 3) you want an interesting story with vulnerable characters, or; 4) you don’t.

D&D is good at 1, especially older editions. You can force it to do 2, but then why bother with a game as it’s just DM fiat story time at that point. Earlier editions produce vulnerable characters, and emergent stories. If the players find that interesting, great. If not, again, why are you playing the game? If you’re shooting for 4, why?

Funny how LotR gets mentioned in this too. Boromir dies, and... that's it? None of the Fellowship dies. Most of the time, they are barely hurt. So, the notion that you need death to make an interesting story is a bit overblown. And, let's not forget, for all the characters that die in Game of Thrones, most of the original characters from the first book are still alive at the end. It's not like they ever have a TPK in the series. By and large, all the protagonists are still there.

I mean, Harry Potter has a pretty serious body count by the end, but, again, the protagonists are there right the the finish.

Again, this gets back to choice. In older editions, you often killed PC's by accident. It was "Oh, you failed this saving throw, time for a new character". It was almost never part of the narrative. It was just a random die roll. In 5e, you actually have to choose, as the DM, that right now you are going to try to kill that PC. There's very little random death.

That doesn't mean the game is any less risky. It's just less random. And, if the DM isn't willing to take responsibility for killing a PC, then, well, you can't blame the game for being less lethal. Hiding behind the randomness of the mechanics (Oh, I didn't kill your character, the dice gods did) is a cop out.

If you want a game that involves risks, you need to be up front about that with your players. Trying to force your players to agree with your preferred play style by bludgeoning them over the head with mechanics just leads to trivial stories. There's a REASON players don't want to engage with your setting and campaign. If I can randomly die any session, why am I going to bother putting any effort into this character? What's the point? I spend all this time embedding my character in your setting, building up relationships and whatnot, and I die to a randomly generated giant spider?

Let's be honest here. That's cool the first time. The second time, maybe. After the fifth time, well, not too many people are going to put a whole lot of effort in. Same goes with the fifth time you've been jerked around because you decided that having a family was a cool idea.

This is so much of a circular problem. We want players to engage, but, we then punish them for doing so. And rarely does engagement come with any sort of reward. Having a family doesn't help me, it only hinders. Engaging with the setting doesn't make me any less likely to die some pointless random death, so, why bother?

I really don't blame players for not engaging. It's annoying true. And it's something I constantly have to struggle with when I run games. But, I totally get it. We trained the players to be like this and then bitch about it after when they do the things that we, as DM's most reward.

 

[Arilyn]

Yep, all those Bobs the second, third, etc. were a result of random, pointless deaths.