D&D General Kobayashi Maru: Should the fate of the character always be in the player's hands? POLL

Is it fair for a character to die over an event that the player has no control?

  • Completely fair. Sometimes you roll the 1.

    Votes: 66 54.1%
  • Somewhat fair. The rules shouldn't encourage death, but you can't get rid of randomness.

    Votes: 35 28.7%
  • Unfair. There is no such thing as an "unwinnable scenario," and players, not dice, should control

    Votes: 8 6.6%
  • Other- I will explain in the comments.

    Votes: 12 9.8%
  • I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then I could beat up Dracula AND Superman.

    Votes: 1 0.8%

  • Poll closed .
Voted other.

That depends on a game the players and the GM agreed on. If you're into hardcore survivalist fantasy, then random stuff may kill people - Warhammer fans should get a deadly disease or terminal mutation, or a death sentence first. If you're a glutton for punishment in a Wraith the Oblivion fashion, you should not die easily - the final moments should come only after long and painful suffering. If you play Call of Cthulhu, of course you should die needlessly from random stuff - after you have gone stark raving bonkers. If Kult is your poison - you should die sane, experiencing the worst with no comfortable delusions. Narrativist afficionados, on the other hand, should have to pay the GM for the privilege of sacrificing themselves on the altar of necessity.
 

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In another thread, I saw this comment by @Marc_C (discussing Savage Worlds RPG):

"TPK without any reason for it. PCs didn't do anything wrong. I was turned off."

And that resonated with me, as it had me thinking about a specific application to a general concept I had been considering. I often think about the difference in general style between the TSR-era editions of D&D (especially OD&D / early 1e) and the more recent editions (such as 4e and 5e), as well as the difference between older game design and more recent game design.

Now, putting aside one-shot adventures or games that are specifically designed to kill characters (such as Paranoia), I've been thinking about the sentiment expressed in the comment I just read. Not that it's good, or bad, but contemplating it ... and contrasting it with the famous example from Star Trek of the Kobayashi Maru.

A brief explanation for those five people who do not fit within the Venn diagram of the overlapping circles of, (1) people who read these forums; and (2) people who get the Kobayashi Maru reference ... Kobayashi Maru refers to a training exercise at Star Fleet academy that, famously, was impossible to win; they wanted to see how cadets react when they know they can't prevail. Famously, James T. (the T stands for TERRRRRRR-IFFIC!) Kirk "won" the exercise by cheating- because he didn't believe that there is such a thing as a no-win scenario.

Putting this back into the context of D&D, I was thinking about whether or not it is "fair" to have players die due to events over which they have no control. A famous example of this, in early versions of D&D, is the "save or die" type of situations- sometimes, you just roll a 1. For the most part, 5e has replaced most of these "save or die" (and similar really bad effect) with various types of "save or suck" type of things, and replaced the "death" with "death saves" and so on.

But at the core of the issue, while 5e is much more forgiving that 1e, it is still possible, through pure bad dice rolling, to not do anything wrong and die/TPK. They have not eliminated dice swinginess altogether, although they have ameliorated it a great deal. In contrast, there are TTRPGs and other systems that are resolutely "fail forward" - that there is narrative control of not just good events, but bad events, such that there will not be an ultimate sanction when the "PCs didn't do anything wrong."

I was genuinely curious what people thought about these different styles in D&D. So I'm putting up a poll, and hoping for a great discussion in the comments.
Ok, wait a minute here! 🙃

We were talking Savage Worlds. I should have mentioned they died because of the exploding die which produces extra exploding damage. Very swingy system, even with the soaking damage tokens. I'm not the only one who stopped playing SW because of that.

Of course the die will kill PCs. Most players I've met didn't even mind their PCs dying, if it is heroic. Dying shot on the toilet seat with your pants down while reading a magazine is not want they have in mind. ;-)

For the record I make all rolls in front of the GM screen*. No fudging.

(*except the secret ones of course)
 
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It depends on your story. If a story is completely character driven then killing off that character kills the campaign. If the story is event driven, then a character can die and other characters can pick up the story. My campaigns tend to have a bit of a mix of those, but I think that it is important that players know their characters CAN get in over their heads and die.

I've had a number of encounters where the dice have turned sideways and a character has died - including random encounters. No chance of resurrections either because the other characters are too busy running for their lives to collect the corpse.

I'm known as a killer DM amongst my gaming groups, but my games are considered the most fun. I think that tension that you might easily die is part of that.
 

Voted "somewhat fair"

PCs rarely have no control whatsoever on the outcome of their actions. When "rocks fall", you make a save vs "everybody die". You have little control over the result of the saving throw itself, but you usually have control over whether or not you enter the area where rocks may fall, of the risks encountered there, and over the preparations you can make beforehand.

The thrill of D&D is often by walking the very thin line between control and lack of control. This line is hard to set and often differ from one person to another, but part of the satisfaction of victory is when you know you could have failed.

The Kobayashi Maru is easily survivable; you just have to stay out of the neutral zone! Of course that comes with its own consequences, but you can always come back at these Klingon bast**** with a bigger army later and avenge the Maru.

Or, you know, you can take a page from Jim's book and cheat. Or the DM can cheat (in favour of the players), just a little. The Kobayashi Maru's DM was a bit of a dick, if you ask me...
 
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I chose "Other." My policy is that a character can die (or "die") due to a failed roll, but the player decides whether that means the character is permadead. If the player doesn't want to retire the character, we'll work together to find some way appropriate to the story to either keep the character around or bring the character back. Of course, this is dependent on me having players who won't abuse the option, and I do.

(This is adapted from SWSE's use of Force Points, by the way. You get a certain number per level, and as long as you have at least one, you can spend it to say your character is just knocked out in a situation that would otherwise kill the character. If you spend your last Force Point on something else, you're signaling that you are leaving your character's fate to the whims of the dice. I'm just essentially giving each of my players a single-purpose Force Point.)
 
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Unless the GM is terrible, there should few situations in an RPG where the players have "no control." Maybe you can blame the death on bad rolls....but could you have avoided that fight? Could you have used better tactics during the fight? Could you have done something before hand (ambush, buffs, recruited allies, etc.) to push the odds in your favor?
 

I voted 'Unfair', although that isn't the descriptor I'd use for the event. I don't treat RPGs as board games to win. And a death due to the randomness of the board game I feel is a waste of what an RPG is. If I want to see an elimination playing a board game... I'd play board games where that is a specific part of the rules for winning the game-- Monopoly, Diplomacy etc. The advantage of these board games is that they only last a couple hours or so and then the game ends and we can move on with our lives and then maybe play a new game later. Whereas D&D will last several hours per session, and then countless sessions moving on over the course of months and years. To play a game like that and then lose and be eliminated through no choice of my own because a die roll happened is a massive waste of time in my opinion and not a game worth playing.

If my character is going to die... it's because the story of the game has been set up wherein that becomes a narrative possibility, and my choices and actions will inevitably be what causes it. Deaths of the protagonists should mean something to the story. To do otherwise is a waste of a character.
I probably bend a little closer to between Unfair and Somewhat Fair, but this is a pretty close description of how I feel. I do think it's fair for dice to kill characters, but prefer the idea that they have multiple instances where they can rethink their choices and act on them and that things generally don't cascade out of all control between one choice point and the next. Like Marc_C, I wouldn't want a system to be overly swingy and take the party from more or less holding its own in a fight to blown away before anyone else can react.
 

Unless the GM is terrible, there should few situations in an RPG where the players have "no control." Maybe you can blame the death on bad rolls....but could you have avoided that fight? Could you have used better tactics during the fight? Could you have done something before hand (ambush, buffs, recruited allies, etc.) to push the odds in your favor?
Running away is always a good tactic.
 

“Rock falls, everyone dies” is bad game design.

But sometimes you get the toothy end of the shark. It may bite, but sometimes it happens, and you just got to roll with it (or is that a crocodile thing?).
 

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