Movies, Novels, Heroes and D&D.

[Dannager]

I've been reading the various threads here on Enworld and the Wizard's websites and I have noticed a growing trend with people about being a hero like in a novel and in the movies and the hero always wins in the end so they feel like their characters should as well.

You are describing entitlement, but are going about the reasons for it all wrong.

Well I just want to say that "plot armor" should not protect anyone when it comes to playing D&D. Now if you run that type of game then then should be an option but it should not be the default of the system. I really don't understand where this attitude came from.

It didn't come from anywhere you're thinking of. I've never met a D&D player who said, "The heroes never die in the movies, why should mine have a chance of dying in D&D?"

It comes from players developing a natural attachment to the character they made and guided through the campaign. Of course no one wants to run the risk of losing something they are attached to. Don't start blaming pop culture influences like movies (or, worse, "kids these days") for a rather obvious quality of human nature.

Movies keep main characters around because of money.

This is superficial reasoning. You should avoid it.

Movies keep main characters around because they allow the audience to relate to the plot as a whole. When we watch a character deal with the dramatic struggle, we empathize with him or her. They become the vessel through which we experience the move/video game/whatever. Killing the character severs the audience's connection to the character, and, by association, the audience's connection with the story. Only the most adept filmmakers and storytellers have mastered the art of drawing the audience back in after the removal of the protagonist.

The cause that you identify (money) is a byproduct of the film's/game's quality. That is to say, if you succeed in keeping the audience with you through the entire storyline (including when that storyline spans multiple films or games), you will experience greater financial success. But identifying money as the reason does little for your understanding; indeed, money can be claimed as the reason for everything done in a commercial production like a film or video game. Maintaining the audience's human attachment to the protagonist and the story is the real reason storytellers are hesitant to kill off their main character(s).

What does this mean for D&D?

Consider that, for some players, you may be doing quite a lot of harm to their investment in your game and its story by killing off their character. If their character is the lens through which they have understood and reacted to this story, losing that character also causes a loss of perspective.

I'm not telling you to make your games easy. Make them challenging, because that's where a lot of the fun lies. But failure should result in setbacks, not in an end to the character's story. There are a hundred different ways to handle a failure on the player's part that don't involve killing their characters. And if you do kill them, my advice is to provide an accessible way for them to return to the game (via resurrection magic or something similar).

 

[Neverfate]

The Terminator?!
Lots of people want to play Kyle Reese type PCs, and not to " take away the risk of death in order to show crazy stunts, action and explosions"...

Here's a hint: if Sara Conner in T1 or John Conner in T2 die, a 120 minute movie becomes roughly 15 - 20 minutes. Everyone goes into those movies knowing they are not going to die because then their wouldn't be a movie.

Though really, you've brought up one of the more interesting questions regarding Terminator. What if the Terminator was successful? Do they kind of just wait around for the nuclear war or did they have other objectives to pass the time? It's like, "Oh, I actually killed John Conner. . . guess I'll just. . . take up basket weaving or something".