D&D General If not death, then what?

[tetrasodium]

An interesting turn of phrase--particularly since "ruin" is rather more flexible than "death."

It seems to me that the distinction, then, is that I find a ruin which happens simply because someone forgot to keep the sump empty rather dull and pedestrian, while a ruin which happens because a great temple complex was lost to the jungles after massive social unrest and upheaval is captivating.

That is, random and mundane "ruin" doesn't really do it for me. I want the ruin that befell Rome or Teotihuacan or Angkor, not the ruin of the Jameson Farm that went defunct because Ol' Man Jameson died from an infected horse bite, nor the ruin of the obscure author who wrote one moderately decent book and then died in a freak airplane accident.

Trouble with 5e is the design choices that enshrine totsl isolation of pcs from the world. A pc doesn't have any reason to care if ruin befalls any of those places thanks to how they no longer need anything.. That only leaves personal ruin for a pc

 

[Lanefan]

So more like The Black Company, then. Major characters come and go, and eventually, everyone's ticket comes up.

Errr...I guess? Not familiar with the Black Company.

 

[John R Davis]

PC death* is one of the great features of the games we play. I'm aghast that people would remove it? Just a little too much Hopepunk for my liking.

Can't imagine Dragonlance if Sturm/Flint didn't die or Luke's development if Obi Wan didn't sacrifice himself!

I really don't get it.
* And perma-death, not PF1 throw cash or PPs and come back. Dead, gone, mourned and remembered

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can't imagine Dragonlance if Sturm/Flint didn't die or Luke's development if Obi Wan didn't sacrifice himself!

Novels and movies aren't TTRPGs. You don't have a living, breathing person sitting behind that character, being told, "Sorry man, your character's story is less important than my character getting some cool character development." I know that's not what you mean. But "I can't imagine Luke's development if Obi Wan didn't sacrifice himself!" means exactly that if it happens when Obi Wan's player didn't want it to happen. Obi Wan and Luke can't want anything; but two played characters in a game have players who do want things.

That's why I support working stuff like this out with the player involved. Sometimes, players DO want this. Sometimes they see that they can contribute more to the ongoing story, or they can feel that a fresh start with a different character would be something good. If that's the case, awesome, we've got some great story going forward. Being forced to be the impetus for someone else's character development, on the other hand, less good.

An author or director doesn't have these concerns. That makes a world of difference.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Novels and movies aren't TTRPGs. You don't have a living, breathing person sitting behind that character, being told, "Sorry man, your character's story is less important than my character getting some cool character development." I know that's not what you mean. But "I can't imagine Luke's development if Obi Wan didn't sacrifice himself!" means exactly that if it happens when Obi Wan's player didn't want it to happen. Obi Wan and Luke can't want anything; but two played characters in a game have players who do want things.

That's why I support working stuff like this out with the player involved. Sometimes, players DO want this. Sometimes they see that they can contribute more to the ongoing story, or they can feel that a fresh start with a different character would be something good. If that's the case, awesome, we've got some great story going forward. Being forced to be the impetus for someone else's character development, on the other hand, less good.

An author or director doesn't have these concerns. That makes a world of difference.

Forcing a narrative into the game, rather than allowing one to emerge (or not) naturally, feels just as bad to me. Its a game. And sometimes your character dies and you have to make a new one. If you want that death to mean something, make it mean something in the gameplay.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Forcing a narrative into the game, rather than allowing one to emerge (or not) naturally, feels just as bad to me. Its a game. And sometimes your character dies and you have to make a new one. If you want that death to mean something, make it mean something in the gameplay.

Sure--but justifying it by saying "novels do it all the time, and you're okay with that" falls flat as a retort. The analogy fails, because the things being analogized are fundamentally different in a relevant way.

If your reason is, "I want the story to exclusively arise from the mechanics, with zero player agency involved in guiding it," awesome, we have different goals and that's just how things go. That's very different from saying "this is something everyone likes, you really aren't opposed to it," which is the implicit content of the argument by analogy to movies and novels.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure--but justifying it by saying "novels do it all the time, and you're okay with that" falls flat as a retort. The analogy fails, because the things being analogized are fundamentally different in a relevant way.

If your reason is, "I want the story to exclusively arise from the mechanics, with zero player agency involved in guiding it," awesome, we have different goals and that's just how things go. That's very different from saying "this is something everyone likes, you really aren't opposed to it," which is the implicit content of the argument by analogy to movies and novels.

I want the story to emerge from PC choices during the game, and how those choices interact with the mechanics and the created world. That's it.

 

[DND_Reborn]

This might be your experience, but not mine. I lost a 5e character is the last session I played.

10th level wildfire druid. Battle against a big wizard guy and minions, including a huge giant zombie.

Cast Heat Metal on the zombies armor and hide behind a building at extreme 9oclock of the battlemap from the BBEG who is at 3oclock Spend a couple rounds just hiding behind the building concentrating on my spell.

First, as I wrote "dumb luck" can happen.

But, in this case, you were concentrating on a spell, why weren't you doing other non-concentration spells or other actions to help the other three more quickly dispatch the BBEG? If you had, maybe you wouldn't have died? Playing too passively can lead to death, too.

Of course, I don't know the whole scenario. Maybe you couldn't for some reason?

Other questions would be removing your self from LoS on the BBEG is one thing, but didn't any other other three party members know you were there? Why wouldn't you have told them when you moved to hide? Moving to look around the building, yelling to the others about things to alert them you were still ok might have helped.

BBEG casts some spell with a giant radius that catches me by accident (it was centered on two other visible party members). Failed a CON save (vs DC17) and took 52 damage knocking me out from full health.

The other three party members were out of sight (I was hiding behind a building) and didn't notice I was bleeding out. Failed 3 death saves in a row and died.

Assuming they survived, none of them called out to you to see if you were okay?

Your inaction also made it so the others had no reason to suspect something was wrong when you continued to do nothing.

None of them also thought to check on you?

Not only did I in no way contribute to being killed by poor choices ... I was playing suboptimally by not casting spells for several rounds to continue to remain completely hidden behind a building.

Maybe. Like I said, I don't know the whole scenario. Being overly aggressive is only one poor choice. Others include:

Being overly passive.
Making tactical errors.
Not using features well.
Lack of team play.

For example, your PC was a druid. Why weren't you wild shaped after you cast your spell? Then you would have had an additional buffer of hit points when you took the damage. A CR 2 beast would have given you an extra 40+ hit points.

So, I'm not saying it wasn't just "dumb luck", but 90% of the time when I see a PC die or hear about it, there is usually a poor choice made that contributed to it. I mean, you admit to playing suboptimally to concentrate on one spell (a good one in most cases of course), but that was your choice. In this case, that might have been a bad one.

 

[John R Davis]

Forcing a narrative into the game, rather than allowing one to emerge (or not) naturally, feels just as bad to me. Its a game. And sometimes your character dies and you have to make a new one. If you want that death to mean something, make it mean something in the gameplay.

Absolutely.
Have a great meaningful death, be mourned by your fellows, discuss in pub in real life, look forward to bringing a new PC into your epic campaign.

 

[pemerton]

PC death is a loss condition in a particular sort of RPGing.

If a group isn't playing win/lose RPGing, then their game doesn't need loss conditions.

(There's also the weird thing about resurrection. Which makes the loss condition a pretty soft one at best.)