How to deal with death in RPG?

[uzirath]

What I don’t like is the GM keeping my character alive for their own purposes, or though it’s never happened to me: the forced resurrection.

Whoa. Yeah. I can’t quite wrap my head around either of those possibilities.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think in some ways, some people are forgetting the “game” part of “role playing game”.

It's not necessarily that people are forgetting it, as much as it's an ambiguous term. Likewise, there's some disagreement about what the "role" term is supposed to mean.

 

[pemerton]

Some people are playing a game, that they enjoy, and they enjoy certain challenges that can be overcome within that game. Part of their "fun" is the idea that knowing that they fairly overcame those challenges, that their character, in the end, didn't have a thumb on the scale, or plot armor, and that they cheated death. They want that final, additional, outcome, with an emphasis on final, to be overcome.

It doesn't mean that these two forms are mutually exclusive, and they often bleed into one another. Games without death have stakes, and games with death can have emotional payoffs that have nothing to do with cheating and/or fearing the Reaper

I merely wanted to push back on the idea that taking death off the table means that the story always ends in a preordained fashion. Lack of PC death doesn't necessarily equal GM storytime.

I wanted to follow up on this.

I think that the perceived connection between finality and PC death is contingent. There can be other final results - eg losing your gear; failing to woo the object of your affection; failing to rescue your family from a fire.

Conversely, the emphasis in some classic FRPGing on PC death as stakes tells us something about the typical protagonist of those games.

And the notion of "thumb on the scales" in this context is tangential. A PC can have "plot armour" vis-a-vis fighting to first blood, or fighting to the death, or wooing a beloved, or whatever. Or can not. In D&D, there is no rule for a spell failing because the caster sneezes (contrast, say, The Dying Earth RPG). That's a type of plot armour, but all it means is that making sure you don't sneeze while casting is not at stake in that game. That doesn't mean that other meaningful stuff isn't at stake, plot armour free.

PC death isn't inherently different in this respect. (It would be if PC death meant you could never play the game again. But I don't know any table other than Jack Chick's that works that way.)

 

[Imaculata]

I gave XP, but I needed to comment about how much I agree. As a DM, we have the whole world as our playground except for a few individuals - the PCs. Let the players take them in the directions they want, and explore the consequences (good and otherwise) of what it means in the world. Don't be so attached to an outcome or plot direction that you overrule your players and railroad them down the path you envisioned.

Precisely.

For example,

(Minor spoiler warning, if any of my players are reading this)

I came up with a future plot for my ongoing campaign, where an ally of the players lures them into an ambush, by first 'trying' to split them up. I have no idea if this is going to work out at all the way I planned. I have no idea what will happen when I spring this trap on my players, but I try not to have any intended solution. What I do is, I create an exciting situation and then have the players react. How they react determines what happens next. It's like almost all the pieces are in place, but the players are the final missing piece that changes everything.

Maybe my villain is unable to split up the party at all. Maybe they'll get suspicious, regardless of how well he tries to hide his true intensions. Maybe a massive fight breaks out, and the players are all over the map going in all directions (that may be hard to manage, but we'll see). Or maybe the players use their diplomacy to talk their way out of this situation. Can they make the villain an offer that will sway his mind? I don't know. All I know is the motivation of the villain, and his sense of morality. Will this result in an epic escape, or an all out war? The players are not likely to peacefully surrender, but what if they do? I need to think about that outcome, rather than obstruct it. I suspect the players may unleash hell when they reach this part of the plot, but I am very curious to see what happens next.

Because this situation is so unpredictable, I'm probably going to have to prepare a lot for this session. I'll need to have multiple locations ready, in case they are needed. I'll need stats for all the important characters involved, because a huge fight could break out that involves them. I'll have to think of various action sequences that could arise from the actions of the players, and I'll have to specifically design the setting with this purpose in mind. If the players make an epic escape, the setting should provide them with the right ingredients to make this truly memorable. I also need to set up all of the details ahead of time, without the players having any suspicion of what is going to happen. I don't want some things to come totally out of left field. I should clearly establish what the location(s) look like, and which environmental details are present that may come into play when the trap is sprung.

(End of spoiler)

So as you can see I do a fair bit of plotting actually. I work out all manner of scenes that may or may not come into play, and work out the locations and characters for them. There IS a story, but the outcome depends entirely on what choices the players make, and what actions they take. Its like a good old adventure movie, but with the actors being free to do whatever. I just make sure there is plenty of backup material to adjust the plot accordingly.

 

[Zhaleskra]

It's not necessarily that people are forgetting it, as much as it's an ambiguous term. Likewise, there's some disagreement about what the "role" term is supposed to mean.

I'm well aware of the mental gymnastics by which one could classify Monopoly as a role playing game.

 

[Nytmare]

I'm trying a new houserule in my current game: PCs don't die unless the player says so.

I'm just getting into this thread, and I don't know if someone else has already mentioned what I want to add in the 10 pages I haven't read, but when I was last running D&D, this was how we were playing.

Prior to that I had been firmly planted in the die fudging DM end of the spectrum, but I got swept up into the E6 school of thought which involved a mechanic known as a "Death Flag" which is essentially what you're describing but with a mechanical add on tied to it.

Nowadays, none of the games I run really have a need for it, but if I were to run D&D again, it would probably be the first houserule I'd consider throwing into the mix.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

so last night they were trying to haul some treasure out of Rappan Athuck, well an adjacent dungeon that connects to it. So they are heading out and they run into a random encounter, giant poisonous warrior ants. They have a 1d6 bite and a poison. 2d6 on a fail and 1d4 on a success. Well the 1/2 thief gets bit, knocked unconscious, and carried off by the very fast ant to the hive. So he died. He lasted two sessions though. They went and found him in the entrace to the hive and he had been reduced to a quarterling by that point. So I looked though the party roster page in my campaign notebook and he was the 21st PC death in about 12 months of gaming. 11 to ghouls alone, 6 in a single TPK. the player grabbed his 3d6, rolled up a new PC and now is a dwarf cleric. I sometimes wonder if they will surrender to the dungeon and demand less perilous adventure but they want payback on this pit and say they are going to get it.

 

[MNblockhead]

[MENTION=6909558]Flex[/MENTION]or the Mighty - When you sign up for a Rappan Athuk game, you are signing up for a very different style of game than what is typically ran these days. Just look at all the posts hating on Dungeon of the Mad mage and on the concept of mega dungeons in general.

I'm enjoying this change of pace.

 

[Jonathan Tweet]

In 13th Age, by default the party can "flee" at any point in a fight, and all the characters survive (unless they're already dead). The penalty is a "campaign loss," as in, something goes badly in the game world as a result. The rule doesn't prevent all PC deaths, but it's a big help. Back in 2008, I wrote up that rule and posted it on Gleemax, the short-lived digital platform that Wizards of the Coast sort of launched.

In my long-running 3E campaign, two characters died when the party tried to invade the Church of Hell through the front door and found out that nagas sometimes cast fireballs. It was an emotional loss, and one player almost dropped out of the campaign. But we played on, and eventually the rest of the party recovered the fallen characters' stolen hearts so they could be raised from the dead. That campaign was about a world that had been corrupted by its Satan figure, so the prospect of meaningless death was always part of the background.

 

[Nytmare]

In 13th Age, by default the party can "flee" at any point in a fight, and all the characters survive (unless they're already dead). The penalty is a "campaign loss," as in, something goes badly in the game world as a result. The rule doesn't prevent all PC deaths, but it's a big help. Back in 2008, I wrote up that rule and posted it on Gleemax, the short-lived digital platform that Wizards of the Coast sort of launched.

What was the death mechanic in "Over the Edge"? I remember that it had had some kind of system in place that worked kinda like a death flag, but I don't remember what it was.