Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[Irlo]

Take two groups and run them through an adventure. The first is a group that agrees on no character death ever and the heroes always succeed.

Those are two separate agreements, and to play a game in which character death is not a possibility does not mean that the heroes always succeed (whatever succeed means in this context). I mention this because it's not clear that you are making a distinction between the two.

The second in my game: hard core hard fun unfair unbalanced anyone can die at the drop of a die anytime. When the first group successfully completes the adventure did they really accomplish anything? they just sort of automatically succeeded as that is the game they played. My players had the hardest time possible and really had to make a huge effort to succeed. It makes for a very different game.

I wouldn't say that either group really accomplished anything other than to play a game that I hope they enjoyed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair enough. Life and death are by no means required for games or any other media in the superhero genre.

I don't think they are in a number of others, either; I just used superheroes because its the big obvious target.

All that a combat needs to be relevant is that there is an in-world win and loss condition that matters, and there are plenty of those possible besides the death of the participants.

 

[Thomas Shey]

An alternative approach can be this: the probability of death is low, perhaps for practical purposes nil, provided that sufficiently clever decisions are made about how to use player-side resources. 4e D&D combat can approximate this. The interest, then, is not in finding out whether or not we die but making those decisions, as a group, that will keep us alive.

Well, there are a number of games that, effectively, have that baked into the mechanics, particularly games with semi-realistic potential combat results, but strong enough metacurrancy to put your thumb on the scale. In practice, that's usually the case with Savage Worlds; the open ended damage rolls can kill almost anybody, but if a moderate amount of Bennies are in play, you can throw a wall between those open ended rolls and death with Soak in the vast majority of cases. In some its even more strong; for all its grittiness, Mythras Luck can be used to outright make a Mortal Wound just a Serious Wound.

 

[The Shadow]

In Fate, it is virtually impossible for your character to die without your consent. That doesn't mean there's nothing at stake! Your goals can be foiled, you can be captured, you can receive wounds that last over many sessions, and so forth.

Why does death have to be on the table to make a combat dramatic?

(That said, my Fate group is generally so sneaky and devious that fighting usually means we screwed something up!)

 

[Lanefan]

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

Yes. That's the point.

Survival is job one, always.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think they are in a number of others, either; I just used superheroes because its the big obvious target.

All that a combat needs to be relevant is that there is an in-world win and loss condition that matters, and there are plenty of those possible besides the death of the participants.

Yes, there are. But take out the possibility of death, and the whole thing crumbles for me. It immediately feels fake.

 

[Lanefan]

An alternative approach can be this: the probability of death is low, perhaps for practical purposes nil, provided that sufficiently clever decisions are made about how to use player-side resources. 4e D&D combat can approximate this. The interest, then, is not in finding out whether or not we die but making those decisions, as a group, that will keep us alive.

I almost can get behind this, except the element of luck is missing.

If the last were phrased as "making those decisions, as a group, that are most likely to keep us alive" I'd be on board. The replaced "will" makes it too absolute: I always want there to be that small chance of things not working out even when everything was done right; flip side is I also want there to be a chance of things working out fine even if almost nothing was done right.

 

[Fifinjir]

Take two groups and run them through an adventure. The first is a group that agrees on no character death ever and the heroes always succeed. The second in my game: hard core hard fun unfair unbalanced anyone can die at the drop of a die anytime. When the first group successfully completes the adventure did they really accomplish anything? they just sort of automatically succeeded as that is the game they played. My players had the hardest time possible and really had to make a huge effort to succeed. It makes for a very different game.

Did the second accomplish anything? The way you tell it, it sounds like the dice won for them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I almost can get behind this, except the element of luck is missing.

If the last were phrased as "making those decisions, as a group, that are most likely to keep us alive" I'd be on board. The replaced "will" makes it too absolute: I always want there to be that small chance of things not working out even when everything was done right; flip side is I also want there to be a chance of things working out fine even if almost nothing was done right.

"It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not a failure; that is life".

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, there are. But take out the possibility of death, and the whole thing crumbles for me. It immediately feels fake.

I'd replace "death" with the much more cumbersome "gamestate-forced barrier to playing that character again for a long time, if ever"; which covers death, capture, loss of mind and-or abilities, and a bunch of other long-term or permanent loss conditions that take a character right out of play.

A situation from my current game: the character didn't die, but during a combat did get perma-polymorphed into a giant ant with the brains and abilities of such...the poly couldn't be reversed without resources they're nowhere near being able to acquire, so for playability purposes the character might as well be dead.