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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8935206" data-attributes="member: 29398">I would.&nbsp; It's complete, neutrally-gathered, organized numbers on a page, which makes it hard data; as opposed to best-memory guesswork or estimate, which isn't.You (hypothetical) telling me a tale of there being a bunch of deaths in your game is anecdotal.&nbsp; You telling me there were 21 deaths over 97 sessions, and that you can show the records to back this up, is hard data.You may not believe this, but yes! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />&nbsp; I did this a while back as I was curious if the numbers could tell me which monsters or foes were in general the biggest threats and-or whether non-monster threats were a big deal; they did tell me, and I admit the results were somewhat surprising*.For many deaths there's both a primary cause (what actually kills you) and a source.&nbsp; For example, a character who died to an Orc's sword thrust would be listed as &quot;Melee - Orc&quot; while a character who died to a poisoned trap would show as &quot;Poison - Trap&quot;.&nbsp; Some aren't that easy to classify and aren't always fully recorded e.g. if a character dies to an Orc's poisoned blade is the source &quot;Melee&quot; or &quot;Poison&quot;?* - a shockingly common source of character death was &quot;Own Party&quot;, be it through mis-aimed AoE spell or wild magic surge or fumble or (in quite a few instances) intentional action.Manually logged.&nbsp; The game logs are online; if you really wanted to* you could plow through them and glean much of this data for yourself: certainly frequency by adventure, by class, and by species for death, level loss, petrification, and limb loss.&nbsp; By-session would be harder as session numbers are only shown in the log of one major game out of six, but I-as-DM have that info on paper; ditto for cause of death, which isn't always obvious in the online logs (particularly those from the early days) but is usually noted on paper here.* - and I can't blame you if you don't. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />You're giving a much tighter definition to &quot;hard data&quot; than I am.&nbsp; To me, hard data is anything both a) verifiable and b) written down with at least a shred of organization behind it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8935206, member: 29398"] I would. It's complete, neutrally-gathered, organized numbers on a page, which makes it hard data; as opposed to best-memory guesswork or estimate, which isn't. You (hypothetical) telling me a tale of there being a bunch of deaths in your game is anecdotal. You telling me there were 21 deaths over 97 sessions, and that you can show the records to back this up, is hard data. You may not believe this, but yes! :) I did this a while back as I was curious if the numbers could tell me which monsters or foes were in general the biggest threats and-or whether non-monster threats were a big deal; they did tell me, and I admit the results were somewhat surprising*. For many deaths there's both a primary cause (what actually kills you) and a source. For example, a character who died to an Orc's sword thrust would be listed as "Melee - Orc" while a character who died to a poisoned trap would show as "Poison - Trap". Some aren't that easy to classify and aren't always fully recorded e.g. if a character dies to an Orc's poisoned blade is the source "Melee" or "Poison"? * - a shockingly common source of character death was "Own Party", be it through mis-aimed AoE spell or wild magic surge or fumble or (in quite a few instances) intentional action. Manually logged. The game logs are online; if you really wanted to* you could plow through them and glean much of this data for yourself: certainly frequency by adventure, by class, and by species for death, level loss, petrification, and limb loss. By-session would be harder as session numbers are only shown in the log of one major game out of six, but I-as-DM have that info on paper; ditto for cause of death, which isn't always obvious in the online logs (particularly those from the early days) but is usually noted on paper here. * - and I can't blame you if you don't. :) You're giving a much tighter definition to "hard data" than I am. To me, hard data is anything both a) verifiable and b) written down with at least a shred of organization behind it. [/QUOTE]

Verification