Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[hawkeyefan]

I think there's a difference between characters in a novel and those in an RPG, especially as it relates to the deaths of characters.

It's one thing for a supporting character in a book to die in service to the main character's story. It's something different for a player's character to die in a game.

I'm not generally against PC death in games, but I don't think there's only one way to handle it. Especially given that any consequences from a PC death are mostly limited to any meaning in the fiction of the character's death, and then the player's need to make a new character to continue playing.

I get as attached to my characters as anyone, but the idea that having to make a new character is some kind of consequence just seems weird to me. And the fact that I get to continue playing certainly diminishes any sense of loss on my part.

 

[Campbell]

I'm usually in that camp too as a player.

I wonder if some people on here view hit points as having properties not too far from meta currency

• It doesn't really map to something exactly in the game world, unlike, say encumberence in pounds or movement speed .
• You can spend it for doing things. "I've got 180hp, so I cannonball off of the 40 foot cliff to the road below to catch up to them."

I can even imagine some on here saying HP annoy them more than meta-currencies because it tries to act like it has some interpretability but doesn't narrate into the game naturally in many cases. (Or really at all by RAW?).

For me hit points (and D&D style armor class) are personally much tougher to deal with because what actually has happened in the fiction and its ongoing impact never really get established or matter. Some numbers get shifted, but nothing really changes and there is no clear picture of what has just happened. In a game like Dune 2d20 I might know my character has bruised their ribs and that will make strenuous physical activity harder (by increasing the actual difficulty of tasks). The specificity of the fiction makes it more relatable.

 

[pemerton]

Losing a lot of wealth was often at stake in early D&D, in that if you failed a save vs area damage (fireball, lightning, etc.) all your items also had to save.

That seems like one of the least interesting ways to lose one's wealth.

I'm thinking of ways of losing wealth that correspond more to genre fiction - eg bad deals, addiction, the swings and roundabouts (as well as the slings and arrows) of outrageous fortune, etc.

As for the other things - being banished from my hometown would likely be in response to something I willingly did in-character, which means I'd likely already be in a position to not care.

Huh?

Suppose the thing you did was to support a coup. And the coup fails. And now you're banished - and have probably lost much of your wealth and fame in the process. Why would you not care?

Or consider The Hour of the Dragon or The Scarlet Citadel, in both of which Conan is the victim of a coup, finds himself in exile, and has to return to Aquilonia and retake his throne. These are examples of the literature that - as per Appendix N - supposedly inspired RPGing. They don't in any way depend on the risk of death as the sole or principal thing at stake. They do assume that other stakes will be taken seriously both by the protagonist and by the reader.

Not caring about setbacks to a PC other than death strikes me as a rather shallow approach to the fiction, and to the character of the protagonist.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That seems like one of the least interesting ways to lose one's wealth.

I'm thinking of ways of losing wealth that correspond more to genre fiction - eg bad deals, addiction, the swings and roundabouts (as well as the slings and arrows) of outrageous fortune, etc.

Huh?

Suppose the thing you did was to support a coup. And the coup fails. And now you're banished - and have probably lost much of your wealth and fame in the process. Why would you not care?

Or consider The Hour of the Dragon or The Scarlet Citadel, in both of which Conan is the victim of a coup, finds himself in exile, and has to return to Aquilonia and retake his throne. These are examples of the literature that - as per Appendix N - supposedly inspired RPGing. They don't in any way depend on the risk of death as the sole or principal thing at stake. They do assume that other stakes will be taken seriously both by the protagonist and by the reader.

Not caring about setbacks to a PC other than death strikes me as a rather shallow approach to the fiction, and to the character of the protagonist.

It may not be the most exciting way to lose wealth, but it makes sense in the setting.. and that's a big priority for me. Genre fiction concerns come after that.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure. But that doesn't have much to do with death. In fact, death means you don't have to interact with the consequences of failure!

Like, you didn't beat the BBEG before they hit the Big Red Button. Boom. You have lost. The BBEG got what they wanted.

Now what?

If you are dead, now... nothing. Game and story ended for you the moment you died. The fact that you lost is immaterial to a dead character, honestly.

Character's individual story ended, yes. Neither the game's story nor the game itself ends with a character death; the game continues, as does its story, and the player can always roll up another character (if not done already) and slot back into that story where-when it makes sense. And hey, who's to say the dead one won't be revived later at some point?

This isn't Black Leaf in the Chick tract, where the player gets punted from the game when her character dies.

 

[Lanefan]

That seems like one of the least interesting ways to lose one's wealth.

Perhaps, but it does mean wealth is on the line at least in those editons.

Huh?

Suppose the thing you did was to support a coup. And the coup fails. And now you're banished - and have probably lost much of your wealth and fame in the process. Why would you not care?

If I-as-character wasn't prepared and ready to pay that price I wouldn't have supported the coup, would I? Or at the very least, my support would have been covert all the way.

But the coup failed, and now my only viable option is to declare those parts of my past dead to me now, and move on as best I can.

Not caring about setbacks to a PC other than death strikes me as a rather shallow approach to the fiction, and to the character of the protagonist.

One can care about a setback while still accepting it as having become a fact of life. OK: the coup failed, I can't go home, I'm almost skint, and I'm probably named on some "wanted" posters. Rather than bemoaning these things, as an adventurer/knight/thief/(etc.) I have to ask myself in-character what I can do next to both stay out of jail and get my adventuring/knightly/thieving/(etc.) career back on track.

I intentionally try to avoid playing angst-ridden characters who take every failure to heart; too much of that and I'll very quickly stop looking forward to the games.

 

[The Shadow]

They are seperate, just related.

No, they really, really aren't. Not even a little bit.

If a player character can not ever die, why waste the time with hit points. Even when you get to -100 hit points, you will just keep playing the game.

I've already addressed this? While I don't play D&D Fate-style, in principle it would be possible to do... In which case going to zero hp would mean you're unconscious and perhaps suffering some lingering wounds.

Normally session zero.

I'm starting to question whether we're having the same conversation. You're the one who put forward that the PCs can't fail, I didnt. That doesn't resemble any game I've ever heard of, much less played in.

Sure you can have failures other then death. And if the players care even a little about the fiction it might mean something for a couple seconds. There is a huge difference between "oh shucks my character did not catch the bad guy and he got away, oh well" and the bad guy gets away BY killing the character and the player sits their in horror. Same way when the Whole Group of characters die defending a castle it's a Big Deal, but when the characters "just loose the fight" and players just sit there and are like "darn".

...If that's the degree of buy-in you've got to your game and setting, I'm very sorry.

 

[The Shadow]

The possibility of losing my playing piece is what turns a situation from interesting to edge-of-the-seat interesting.

Okay, this is very helpful. What it boils down to is that we find different things exciting or interesting. Character death isn't interesting to me really at all, unless it's dramatically satisfying. Meaningless death is just frustrating - it isn't what I'm interested in.

It does seem odd to me that you guys juxtapose this excitement with, "Just make another character, no big deal," though. If it isn't a big deal, why was the possibility of death exciting in the first place?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, this is very helpful. What it boils down to is that we find different things exciting or interesting. Character death isn't interesting to me really at all, unless it's dramatically satisfying. Meaningless death is just frustrating - it isn't what I'm interested in.

It does seem odd to me that you guys juxtapose this excitement with, "Just make another character, no big deal," though. If it isn't a big deal, why was the possibility of death exciting in the first place?

because the death of the previous character wasn't meaningless, it was all part of the same great story of the campaign. That death is just as important as the life of the next guy.

 

[The Shadow]

because the death of the previous character wasn't meaningless, it was all part of the same great story of the campaign. That death is just as important as the life of the next guy.

Again, I can only conclude that we have different concepts of "meaningful". Because being killed by a lucky shot from goblin #4 doesn't seem meaningful to me at all, regardless of the larger campaign.