Is Dying Such a Bad Thing?

[Rechan]

Unless the Villain Winning means that the world ends, I am not seeing the problem here. The "story" shifts focus (assuming no sandbox), but there is no reason not to continue the game.

Start a poll. Ask how many continue the game after a TPK. I am certain you will find that the majority start over from scratch, rather than continue, and many will give reasons for not continuing the game.

Take War of the Burning Sky. If the party dies, then it's going to take some effort to just stick a new party in their old shoes. I only played through the first adventure, but

Spoiler

The story hinged on the party getting Information about the Ragesians to some other country/mage tower. It was classified info and in a letter. It would nuke my suspension of belief that, if a TPK occurred, ANOTHER group just happened to have the SAME information and were on the SAME mission at the SAME time. If nothing else, time would have passed, and the events of the AP would be different.

Or typically any other "Stop the villain from completing the ritual" type plot (where ritual is any sort of objective), if the party TPKs, then at the very least, the villain has reached his objective. Otherwise it really impacts suspension of belief that another group just HAPPENED to be in the immediate area when the main group bought it and just HAPPENED to show up in the nick of time. And if the villain's Ritual does go off, then it's not the same adventure, it's a different one. Sure, you can start in the same area, but the quests, the adventure is different, not the continued one. And I would imagine that the majority of games where TPKs happened ... don't continue the game.

 

[billd91]

Because the world doesn't stop happening when the PCs die? Usually they're on some task that, failure means the Villain Won (which depending on the adventure can mean apocalypse et al)? And just teleporting new PCs in hampers continuity? That the new PCs dont' have the info the old PCs have, which very well can mean success?

Not Everyone Runs A Sandbox.

TPKs can make things difficult. If a party's been out of touch with most of their friends and society for a while and ganks it on some remote plane, the campaign may be hard to pick up where the PCs left off. That's true. But I would suggest that those would be the minority of cases.

I've been tempted to have my players make back-up characters. These would be characters who know their main PCs, are somehow involved in the immediate setting of the campaign, and who may be available to activate and rapidly bring into the campaign if the main PC dies. With something like this in place, it's not too hard to keep a campaign going after a TPK. There may be some time lag as a distant party is determined to be overdue for contact and presumed dead, but the easy option is there.

 

[Uder]

Let's be honest now.

I had no idea I was being dishonest.

Most fiction, unless you spoil yourself, doesn't tell you what's going to happen at the end. We suspend our disbelief to allow ourselves the illusion that 80-90% of all fiction has a positive ending. I didn't mean to imply by giving examples of bad fiction that all RPGs should only emulate bad fiction.

... because it's kinda hard to continue a campaign after a TPK?

TPKs are a different beast entirely. If someone experiences regular campaign restarts due to TPKs, I suspect either something is going wrong on one side or other of the screen, or some part of the group enjoys campaign resets.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

So this all brings up another question? Is the game still interesting if you are guaranteed that your character will never die? If you were assured immortality (at least as far as the highest level in whatever game you play), would you get the same thrill in playing?

Yes it would be interesting. But no it wouldn't have the same thrill. Because it's not about the thrill. It's about figuring out an interesting puzzle. I treat the story as the puzzle: how do I use each new development to add? But I can't use death: it's a disruption in the flowing of adding because with my character dead I can't control the adding any more. And a new character is the start of a new puzzle, not a continuation.

In Paranoia, the point is to die. Die the least, but die none the less. In the most entertaining ways fashionable. If you have death immunity, it's pointless.

This here is a good example of how you satisfy the urge for puzzle while including death.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Start a poll. Ask how many continue the game after a TPK. I am certain you will find that the majority start over from scratch, rather than continue, and many will give reasons for not continuing the game.

I would be flabbergasted were that the case. If there is only one route which can be followed to the endpoint in your story, then I suppose it might strain credibility to believe another group was following that same route. But having only one route to the endpoint itself strains credibility.

In any event, if "must prevent TPK at all costs" is a consequence of a non-sandbox game (and, again, I would be flabbergasted were that the case), it would definitely be a good reason (IMHO) to not run that sort of game.

Although, as Uder points out, even if your point is accurate for most non-sandbox DMs, this is really just applicable to TPKs, and not to the majority of character deaths per se. And, IMHO, protecting the party from a TPK under the circumstances where "TPK = Failure" is the same as protecting the party from failure.


RC

 

[CleverNickName]

HOW DID YOU DIE?

Did you tackle the trouble that came your way
with a resolute heart, and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
with a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
and it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
but only, how did you take it?

You're beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
but to lie there--that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why, the higher you bounce;
be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,
it's how did you fight--and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the wold of men,
why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
and whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
but only, how did you die?

-Edmund Vance Cook

 

[Mallus]

The NPCs are still there. The dungeon is still there. The situation the pcs were involved in is still there.

Roll up some new pcs and go back at it.

This is easier if your campaign is based around relatively static challenges like a traditional dungeon crawl. "Yet another band of foolish heroes descend into the Maw of Abasement and attempt to steal the Amulet of Splendor".

The farther you move away from that kind of campaign template, the harder it becomes. Not all plots/stories/event sequences have easy entrance points for new characters. It can start to strain the already strained credulity of a campaign if heretofore unknown relatives of dead PC's keep popping in to take up their cause, or if minor NPC lackeys suddenly manifest PC-grade abilities as the players take control of them so the storyline can continue.

Sometimes it's just easy to use non-lethal failures states and let the players keep their original guys, rather than trying to shoehorn new protagonists into the existing action. Well, it's easier for me, anyway.

 

[coyote6]

Unless the Villain Winning means that the world ends, I am not seeing the problem here. The "story" shifts focus (assuming no sandbox), but there is no reason not to continue the game.

Depends on the campaign; if you're running a covert ops game, then another team can go in to Fakeovia try to stop The Evil Scheme. But if the PCs were on a personal mission (e.g., all from one village, and they died trying to avenge the destruction of their village), playing another group of people who happen to try to take on the personal mission of a bunch of strangers isn't really the same. It can feel kind of lame, like a bad comic book retcon. (And like a comic book retcon, what feels lame will vary from group to group and person to person.)

And sometimes it's just time to try another campaign/game/whatever.

Edit: One reason I think it can feel lame to me is that it does (or can) feel like starting over with a whole new & different group of characters who are pursuing the same task as a previous group is like a cheat to get out of the failure. The characters all died; they failed to accomplish their goal. Now here's a second group of characters, who will pursue the same goal. Thus, I, the player, get another try. It's like the situation in other threads where the character gets a second chances to avoid failure; maybe it makes sense and works & everyone's cool with the second chance, and maybe it doesn't, and it feels ham-handed and lame. It's the same thing, applied to the group of players as a whole. You lost, by a wide margin (everybody died!); a second try will often seem lame.

 

[Rechan]

I would be flabbergasted were that the case. If there is only one route which can be followed to the endpoint in your story, then I suppose it might strain credibility to believe another group was following that same route. But having only one route to the endpoint itself strains credibility.

You're welcome to start the pole, RC. Let's see who gets flabbergasted.

Although, as Uder points out, even if your point is accurate for most non-sandbox DMs, this is really just applicable to TPKs, and not to the majority of character deaths per se. And, IMHO, protecting the party from a TPK under the circumstances where "TPK = Failure" is the same as protecting the party from failure.

Yes, I'm aware that TPKs aren't the topic of the thread. But I brought it up as one point out of 6, you responded, I responded to that, you responded to that, and then Udar responded to my response to you.

 

[Uder]

I have some bad news for you.. it's actually all just wanking either way.

Cheers, -- N

Fine. Assuming you're not just being glib because "wank" is a juvenile word that invites equally juvenile drive-bys, why does character death even matter? If we're in hippy dippy everything is equal land... why does there even need to be a rulebook, a screen, or even a group?

Should I just edit my comment to remove wank and change it to "may as well not bother with the books, dice, and maybe even the players"?