Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[pemerton]

In the early 20th century there were not many Forever Heroes.

Conan - a paradigm for FRPGing - survives being crucified in the desert!

A lot of other pulp heroes survive too. Even in HPL's stories, the narrator is typically alive though perturbed and feeling threatened.

The PCs can't be killed or even harmed or even slowed down. Much of the game play feels pointless. Sure they take the "10 points of damage" to there character, but it does not matter. Even if the character had only 10 hit points they would just ignore it as no player character can die ever.

One of the most epic films ever made is Lawrence of Arabia. We, the audience, know he will survive the war because the framing device is his death in a motorcycle accident after the war. This doesn't make the rest of the film pointless.

Obviously innumerable other examples could be given.

The idea that RPGing, even FRPGing, is "pointless" if the PCs can't die is just wrong. Fiction in other media doesn't depend upon the prospect of death to generate drama and tension. RPGing doesn't need to either.

 

[JohnSnow]

The simple fact is that heroes on fiction usually only die when it’s dramatically appropriate. What do I mean by that? As pointed out, Conan is sturdy enough to survive crucifixion. He doesn’t get mowed down by common soldiers. But the threat of death is real. His allies? They die, semi-frequently.

Another example is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lots of folk die, and only one (Gandalf) gets better. Of the heroes’ major allies, three of the dwarves (Thorin, Fili and Kili), plus Boromir and Theoden all die. And Balin is killed between the stories.

But nobody goes out randomly. Boromir is killed defending Merry and Pippin, and goes down to overwhelming odds. It’s epic, heroic, and exactly what we want to emulate.

Honestly, I think the sweet spot for character durability in RPGs would be that they have a (non-diminishing) high chance to survive most encounters. How high? That depends on the game group and the tone you’re going for in a particular game, and it ought to be an easily tunable dial.

My two cents.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is a problem with emulating a lot of popular fiction using many ttRPGs that the main characters in the fiction typically have massive plot armor and most bad guys are mooks and go down easily - but the folks playing the game might not like having that be too obvious?

What about movies, comics, TV shows, and novels let's us get past that? What lets me ignore that Marshall Dillon will certainly live to be in the next episode of Gunsmoke, or that the entire 4077 won't be wiped out before the next episode of MASH. Does it need other stakes? Does it need to give enough other plot to to distract me? Does having a big character go down fairly early help (lots in GoT, once in a while in Black Company, Boromir in LotR, most people in the Silmarillion)? If main character death isn't a thing in the fiction, what makes the combat interesting? Does easy raise dead in D&D map to how unseriously super hero death in the comics is?

For IRL heroes, is it just that we're doing things in reverse. They're heroes we're reading about because we already know how it turned out? So, what makes us watch a story about a war hero where we know how it ends? Can one even have a historical emulation game where it is guaranteed to end with success in a similar manner to the original, or is there no game there?

Without the possibility of character death, combat is uninteresting IMO. Other stakes definitely help, but the possibility of each "life and death" fight to actually be life and death has to be there.

 

[nevin]

Is a problem with emulating a lot of popular fiction using many ttRPGs that the main characters in the fiction typically have massive plot armor and most bad guys are mooks and go down easily - but the folks playing the game might not like having that be too obvious?

What about movies, comics, TV shows, and novels let's us get past that? What lets me ignore that Marshall Dillon will certainly live to be in the next episode of Gunsmoke, or that the entire 4077 won't be wiped out before the next episode of MASH. Does it need other stakes? Does it need to give enough other plot to to distract me? Does having a big character go down fairly early help (lots in GoT, once in a while in Black Company, Boromir in LotR, most people in the Silmarillion)? If main character death isn't a thing in the fiction, what makes the combat interesting? Does easy raise dead in D&D map to how unseriously super hero death in the comics is?

For IRL heroes, is it just that we're doing things in reverse. They're heroes we're reading about because we already know how it turned out? So, what makes us watch a story about a war hero where we know how it ends? Can one even have a historical emulation game where it is guaranteed to end with success in a similar manner to the original, or is there no game there?

If everything is predetermined it sucks all the excitement out of the process. I think that's the primary reason that the star wars prequels were never that popular. I know it's what sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of Amazon's LOTR for me. It's really hard for me to get connected to these characters because I know where they are going, and it sucks for everyone. It's really hard to buy in and enjoy what your hero's are doing if it's all predetermined. Now the Raise dead in D&D I think is a problem for those who want gritty crawl through glass games but I think the masses have spoken and those games are for the minority. Besides there are other gaming systems that do it better.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If everything is predetermined it sucks all the excitement out of the process. I think that's the primary reason that the star wars prequels were never that popular. I know it's what sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of Amazon's LOTR for me. It's really hard for me to get connected to these characters because I know where they are going, and it sucks for everyone. It's really hard to buy in and enjoy what your hero's are doing if it's all predetermined. Now the Raise dead in D&D I think is a problem for those who want gritty crawl through glass games but I think the masses have spoken and those games are for the minority. Besides there are other gaming systems that do it better.

Yes. Like previous editions of D&D, and games based on them.

 

[nevin]

Without the possibility of character death, combat is uninteresting IMO. Other stakes definitely help, but the possibility of each "life and death" fight to actually be life and death has to be there.

to be fair if every single fight is a life and death fight then the game stops feeling heroic and turns into survivor d&D

 

[Thomas Shey]

Without the possibility of character death, combat is uninteresting IMO. Other stakes definitely help, but the possibility of each "life and death" fight to actually be life and death has to be there.

You feel the way you feel, but this would seem to write off superhero combats in most games that use them being interesting to any meaningful degree. That's certainly not been my experience.

 

[Thomas Shey]

to be fair if every single fight is a life and death fight then the game stops feeling heroic and turns into survivor d&D

This is an area where probability matters. You can have a chance of death in a system, but where (for any number of mechanical reasons) its not a likely result, but not so off the table that you can ignore it.

The issue for some people as referenced up thread is that random death, even low incidence random death, is also the opposite of interesting. If they're going to lose a character they want to do so in a meaningful context. So you're not going to make both sets of players happy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The simple fact is that heroes on fiction usually only die when it’s dramatically appropriate. What do I mean by that? As pointed out, Conan is sturdy enough to survive crucifixion. He doesn’t get mowed down by common soldiers. But the threat of death is real. His allies? They die, semi-frequently.

Another example is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lots of folk die, and only one (Gandalf) gets better. Of the heroes’ major allies, three of the dwarves (Thorin, Fili and Kili), plus Boromir and Theoden all die. And Balin is killed between the stories.

But nobody goes out randomly. Boromir is killed defending Merry and Pippin, and goes down to overwhelming odds. It’s epic, heroic, and exactly what we want to emulate.

Honestly, I think the sweet spot for character durability in RPGs would be that they have a (non-diminishing) high chance to survive most encounters. How high? That depends on the game group and the tone you’re going for in a particular game, and it ought to be an easily tunable dial.

My two cents.

I say take the next step and tie it to how the players envision their character's story arcs. They won't know how things will turn out, but the stakes are defined by how they describe their characters and how they engage and/or what elements they bring into play or focus on. Its perfectly possible that PCs die in things like PbtA games (at least some, you can certainly bite the dust in Dungeon World or Apocalypse World, or Stonetop).

There's plenty of tension and high stakes in our BitD game now, as the Wandering Souls crew has become powerful enough to mess with the Powers that Be and clearly the game trajectory is basically "lets see how they wreck Doskvol, or else get crushed." We're all assuming the game can't go more than a couple more sessions before it reaches a huge climactic something. Its possible one or another of us could die before that too, but it would definitely be fairly dramatic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

to be fair if every single fight is a life and death fight then the game stops feeling heroic and turns into survivor d&D

I've never been interested in assumptions of heroism in D&D. Why the PCs do what they do and how "heroic" they are shouldn't be dictated by the designers.