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

[Istbor]

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a devil to show up with a contract.

Indeed. Where they are though, and how the setting is configured, there isn't that choice. If they were further north perhaps? There is a powerful lich in the cold 'night-side' of the planet that offers deals to those on the verge of freezing to death ala Rime of the Frost Maiden. Here though, a different... entity holds sway, and it isn't one that offers deals to mortals, if it is even aware of their presence.

 

[Mannahnin]

I voted for "Completely fair, sometimes you roll the 1", but for the record I do also think the phrasing "player has no control" is not representative of that answer or the way I run games. It will always be at least one (usually multiple) player decision(s) that puts them in a position to roll that 1.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

 

[Reynard]

Indeed. Where they are though, and how the setting is configured, there isn't that choice. If they were further north perhaps? There is a powerful lich in the cold 'night-side' of the planet that offers deals to those on the verge of freezing to death ala Rime of the Frost Maiden. Here though, a different... entity holds sway, and it isn't one that offers deals to mortals, if it is even aware of their presence.

I mean, if your game doesn't have devils waiting for opportunities to steal mortal souls, so be it. It's going to be a long, painful death for the poor barbarian I guess. Next time wear a mask.

 

[Mannahnin]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

In theory I agree, and I've gotten more and more sanguine about my own PCs dying over time, but it's definitely a thing that people get attached to a character and frustrated when they die.

OTOH, to some extent that attachment feeds the fun- without it there would be no tension or fear of death.

 

[Reynard]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

I think it usually upsets players who think of their character as the protagonist in a particular story. Death means that they were the protagonist in a different story and not necessarily one the player knew about or liked.

 

[Puddles]

Somewhat dealing with this currently.

It isn't a TPK, but a character inhaled some pretty rough spores. In combat, all they really did was cause them to lose a turn if they failed a con save.

Then came an out of combat roll. As described, if they fail this, a plant grows in their lungs, and without addressing this 'disease' the creature dies as the growing flora blocks air passage in a matter of days. (a rolled 1d4 days and in our case 2)

They failed. Rolled like a 3.

The group is several days away from anywhere one could find help, and they currently lack the ability to deal with a disease. Now... I could be lenient, especially since dying like this could mean a pretty inglorious death. However, by my own session zero, I can't pull punches.

Now, the player is already aware of this somewhat. What I plan, is to tell that player to essentially play his barbarian as if it was his last days on Earth. Hopefully, that will mean a more meaningful and glorious death.

Not sure if this explains my point well or not, but... I feel that once you are in that situation, where you cannot win, what you do matters. Do you go out swinging, or do you beg whatever distant Gods/Goddesses you believe in for mercy? I know this doesn't reflect the sentiment of the question 100% as this player gets to know he is doomed. Where often, bad luck or poor decisions maybe give a round or two of reflection and action before the long sleep comes.

I think you've handled it really well so thanks for sharing!

I have always been interested in the 'Last Stand' or 'Blaze of Glory' style mechanics, where a player can doom their fate but gains an advantage that lets them wreak havoc on the enemy until they eventually fall. Maybe in for his final 2 days, the barbarian has unwavering inspiration on every die roll? It could be quite memorable to see how many enemies they can plow through before they are laid low, and serve as a good farewell for the players to give that character.

 

[Fanaelialae]

For myself, I tend to believe in the totality of the play. Which is to say that if you do not play the bad guys to the hilt, then the players will start to believe that they are invulnerable; they will no longer play realistically. They will no longer enter encounters cautiously.

They will no longer do basic things like have spells, abilities, or magic items that allow them to escape encounters, instead concentrating solely on offensive firepower.

On the other hand, if you play the encounters to the hilt, it will only take the unwary one time to understand that all of those "disused" items and spells and abilities (or even choosing not to engage in combat on occasion) really do have importance.

TLDR; the DM must be Cobra Kai. SWEEP THE LEG. NO MERCY.

I think this comes down to Combat As War vs Combat As Sport. And it should really be Campaign As War vs Campaign As Sport, since I've never known a GM who ran Combat As War but Exploration As Sport (or visa versa). Typically, IME, a campaign falls somewhere on the spectrum between War and Sport, rather than at an extreme.

In "pure" CAW, there is an expectation of unfairness (or at least asymmetry) on both sides, and therefore anything goes. (Obviously, this does not generally extend outside of the game world - if the players are fudging rolls, you probably have something else going on.) It's expected that the GM may put challenges in the path of the players to which the characters have no viable solution. It's expected that the players may come up with unanticipated solutions to those "impossible" problems, and that the only fairness they expect is that the GM won't use fiat to render those solutions unfeasible, but rather play them out to a reasonable conclusion. For example, a low level party might come across a massive horde of orcs camped in a forest. They have effectively no chance of success if they take the orcs in a straight fight. This is still fair. The players decide, instead, that they will burn down the forest to get rid of the orcs. This is also fair. What wouldn't be fair in this scenario is for the GM to suddenly decide he doesn't like that solution, and that the trees in this forest are fireproof. Which isn't to say that a fireproof forest is unfair per se, but the players should probably have been able to discover that fact before venturing into it, which they can't if it's by fiat.

On the other hand, in a CAS game, the players encountering this orc horde is arguably unfair in most circumstances, assuming that it's reasonable that they would want to stop the horde. There's an expectation that the GM won't put obstacles in their way that they don't have the means to overcome, and even if the players think of burning down the forest, it might not fit with the group's ideology (a good-aligned ranger/druid party for example). It's typically not in the spirit of this type of game for the GM to force the players into an unwinnable scenario.

Of course, I've yet to see a game that was pure CAW or pure CAS. The games I've been in have always fallen between those two extremes.

I think that CAW falls closest to Kirk's version of the Kobayashi Maru, as the expectation at the table is that you may be presented with an unwinnable scenario and therefore must alter the conditions of the test in order to win. Even there though, there are scenarios that can be unfair. We can imagine a campaign that begins with the players locked in a room with a 100 tarrasques. It's CAW taken to the extreme, but it's not really in the spirit of CAW. Odds are that no matter how many times you play through that scenario, it will end the same way regardless of what the players choose to do (assuming they get to make a choice at all). Even for CAW, a real Kobayashi Maru (where players can't change the conditions of the test, and therefore automatically doomed to fail) is probably not in the spirit of the game.

Both CAS and CAW are both valid and fun preferences, and as I've said, I can't think of a game I've played that was purely one or the other. However, games that are closer to the CAS end of the spectrum have a stricter concept of fairness than game that are more CAW. What might be fair in a CAW game isn't necessarily fair in a CAS game.

 

[iserith]

I've never really understood why some players have so much trouble with their characters dying. I've had characters die all the time, sometimes heroically, sometimes because the dice don't support me. The thing is, there are so many character ideas, new mechanics, new stories to tell, that when you die you get to try another one. That's exciting to me. I've had characters leave the game because it turned out they didn't fit the campaign, and I've had a character fail a climb check and fall 500 feet to their death. I've even had a couple characters killed by other PCs. You just roll up a new one and get to try something different; no hard feelings.

The game itself (at least in D&D 5e if not others) explicitly sets forth the expectation that characters "might come to a grisly end, torn apart by ferocious monsters or done in by a nefarious villain." It goes on to say that this isn't the end and that the group might even fail to complete an adventure successfully, but none of these outcomes matter if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story together. So, for my part, this is telling me that I should not make my "good time" contingent upon my character's success or even survival. Therefore, I don't by setting my own expectations to be in line with what the game says.

That said, my "good time" isn't everybody's good time and, frankly, almost nobody even reads this part of the book (PHB page 5) or, even if they did, necessarily sets their expectations accordingly. Character death may also not be in line with the overall theme of the campaign. For example, I've run Eberron pulp action hero games or D&D-supers mash-ups where it didn't make sense to have death as mandatory in context. So I just modified it to take it off the table unless the player decided it was a good death. No big deal. Do I do that for my old school hexcrawl or dungeon crawl? Heck no because being a bit of a meat-grinder is, to my mind, on theme.

So, ultimately, the game tells us what to expect here, but nobody is beholden to do what the game says anyway.

 

[jmartkdr2]

For myself, I tend to believe in the totality of the play. Which is to say that if you do not play the bad guys to the hilt, then the players will start to believe that they are invulnerable; they will no longer play realistically. They will no longer enter encounters cautiously.

They will no longer do basic things like have spells, abilities, or magic items that allow them to escape encounters, instead concentrating solely on offensive firepower.

On the other hand, if you play the encounters to the hilt, it will only take the unwary one time to understand that all of those "disused" items and spells and abilities (or even choosing not to engage in combat on occasion) really do have importance.

TLDR; the DM must be Cobra Kai. SWEEP THE LEG. NO MERCY.

From the other side:

As a player, I tend to play boldly, brashly, and aggressively. I'm seeking the awesome moment, the cool win, the great, "the minstrels will never stop talking about this!" moment. Because if failure isn't likely, the only way to win is to go bigger than everyone else (that is, the other npc adventurers in the world. The team wins or loses, not the individual player.)

I do this until a pc gets burned by it. Then, and only then, do they learn caution.

This method has served me well in finding the maximum fun in a game.