On the Importance of Mortality

[Jack7]

This is probably the key difference in the way we look at this issue: I don't see D&D as a training ground for heroism. In D&D, I'm pretending to be a hero, in much the same way that an actor in a blockbuster action movie pretends to be one. The character in a movie, book, or game may be considered heroic because as far as he is concerned, he is running a real risk of death, even if the actor, author or player portraying that the character knows that he is going to survive in the end.

Of course you're pretending. All training is pretending. If training were not pretending, it would be the real thing, not training. When a soldier trains he pretends, the pretence is practice for real life. It is acting, though it has a very different end than stage or film acting, which is entirely motivational and/or entertaining. Though to be fair to what you mean, and I understand your point, not all pretending is training. And that should not be overlooked, as you pointed out.

And, of course, I'm not saying you're gonna learn to be a hero, or anything else, through gaming alone. That's a rather silly conceit. It's just a game. In and of itself it would be a very dangerous gamble upon which to bet the success of any real enterprise.

But what I have said before is that anything can be employed as training if one so wishes and uses it for that end. But that doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design, though one can gain skills and capabilities by accidental exposure to a thing and not really realize it til later. That though is another matter.

But I really wasn't making that particular point this time.
My point this time was that the game started out as an exercise, training or pretense, or both, of heroism. Heroism was the point. (So I'm not saying heroism and training have the same gaming end, a game can also be used merely as inspiration towards the ideal of heroism, rather than as training for it - or any other ideal for that matter.) I'm saying the inspiration towards and even the possibility of training for heroism through the game and the ideal of heroism the game once mostly embodied are related matters. Not the same, but related.

That has long since changed, and I don't think that is so great a thing, trading heroism for cartoon super-powers disguised as magic, but one of the reasons it has changed is because heroes die in their cause (they also live, conquer, and overcome in their cause), but the deathless can never become heroes.

They can only become immortal.

The ideal of heroism spurs on a certain kind of game mechanics, the idea of becoming a god another.
But basically they are incongruent and even mutually exclusive ends.
In one game the point is to become a paragon of manhood, and to face danger regardless of consequences, in the other to become a non-man who doesn't really have to fear any consequences, even his own death.

Well, gotta go.
I'm an old man with lots to occupy me tomorrow.
Nice yakkin with you people.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I think it all comes down to heroism.

I agree it comes down to heroism.

However I think the real impediment to building a heroic character is when you've got situations like:

A) The 4hp Orc who is capable of dishing out 45 damage to one-shot your 30hp, 4th level fighter.
B) A trio of shadows who can surprise, flank and slay a 9th level Cleric, who effectively has AC12 and 14hps against their attacks.

Try playing the game with open rolls, from start to finish, no fudging. Then try to play your character heroically as s/he dies from some random out-of-whack rubbish.

Toning down the games lethality is imo a healthy thing. I mean, how many characters have gotten split apart in our game in the last year or so... 7 and counting. Only 4 of those deaths have come from poor decision-making. 3 deaths were no-fault to the player, they could have easily happened to any character.

 

[jdrakeh]

Incidentally, this reminds me of a rule mod that I had worked out for another system -- basically, in exchange for extra points up front (for character building), a player defined conditions of their PC's ultimate fate (i.e., dies in combat, dies fighting a High Priest, dies in the Valkan city of Graile, etc).

A player would receive three extra points to spend for each broad condition (i.e., a condition that doesn't mention proper nouns, such as the "dies in combat" above), two points for narrow conditions (conditions that make use of a single proper noun, such as the "dies fighting a High Priest" above), and one point for very narrow conditions (those that mention more than one proper noun, such as "dies in the Valkan city of Graile" above).

In D&D, I think that adding two to each of the above values makes more sense. These points may be spent on a 1:1 basis to increase skills, or on a 3:1 basis to increase ability scores.

Characters are free to choose as many conditions as they like, though these conditions do have an impact on actual play -- whenever a character is taking action under one of these conditions in actual play, they make all related die rolls at a penalty (thus, increasing the likelihood of misfortune). IIRC, the original mod was to penalize rolls by the same number of points initially granted by said conditions.

In D&D, I'd be temped to have the penalties be something like "-1 for broad conditions, -2 for narrow conditions, and -5 for very narrow conditions".

In actual play, broad traits occur more often but carry a less severe penalty, while narrow and very narrow traits occur less frequently but carry a much more severe penalty. This system allows the DM to maintain an atmosphere of high lethality while still imparting some level of power to players with regard to how their characters ultimately meet their end. Fate can be cheated, of course, and that's where Chance (in the form of dice rolls) comes in.

And alternative (for even more narrative-centered play) is to simply have a player whose character is subject to defined conditions make a Fate Roll with a DC of 10 that is modified by conditions thusly: -1 for broad traits, -2 for narrow traits, -5 for very narrow traits. And maybe, you could have them add their Wisdom mod to the roll (being wuise enough to 'see it coming' might prove handy). Failure to meet or exceed the DC results in instantaneous character death.

This is more or less how the mechanic worked in the original mod, though I think that the other method plays more to D&D's strong suits and architecture as a game.

 

[Mallus]

All training is pretending.

But all pretending isn't training.

But what I have said before is that anything can be employed as training if one so wishes and uses it for that end.

That's patently false. For example, no matter how many games of Soul Calibur I play, I don't get any better at wielding a pair of nunchaku and dressing like Elvis.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The OP's DMing approach is pretty much identical to mine.

A couple of points:
1) The 'Shilsen style' shows that there is a viable alternative. It's the one I use for the only other genre of rpg I run - superhero.
2) Falls, traps etc being deadly isn't particularly controversial, that's just following RAW.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Character death shouldn't be punitiv...

What do you mean by punative? Becuase anytime they make any mistake that results in their death, it could be said it was punative.

Aside from this, I agree with most everything you've said.

 

[Mallus]

Nowhere did I suggest that death was the only meaningful consequence of failure.

You presented death as the most important of consequences, and I'd like to suggest that it's one of, if not the, least. In fact, one you can safely do without. YMMV, etc.

But death as a consequence has a specific (and important) impact on play.

Yes, and I'd argue it's a deleterious one, if you're talking about a long-term, character-driven campaign.

Here's an alternative take on character death in D&D. Mechanically speaking, it's effect is negligible (if not a net plus, depending on the circumstances), thanks to the way the game is structured. Lose a character? Roll a new one. Leaving in-game 'continue' mechanics like resurrection magic aside, D&D is almost always played in 'infinite lives' mode. D&D practically requires groups to be comprised of PC's that are close in power level (in terms of both character level and gear) so your new character will start on par with your old one. In fact, if your new character is of a stronger class --say you replace a dead bard with a live cleric-- death will actually give you a stronger character. In that case death results in a mechanical benefit.

Now I know the game isn't just mechanics. A dead PC's story ends. All their ties to the campaign narrative, to in-game events, to the important NPC's, to their adventuring companions, are cut. This is my biggest objection to PC death, at least past a certain level. The player is now disengaged from the story (from the story we're building together, mind you, not from the set story I'm telling).

I think the game gets better the longer people play the same characters; the kinds of stories you can tell get richer, the level of player investment and involvement goes up, whole different kinds of adventures become possible, and the adventures start to write themselves.

I mean, seeing as we always get to jump back in, no matter how dire the in-game consequences, why not do it with the same character, the one with all the meaningful ties to the game world? Why not enforce consequences that lead to more of the story, rather ones that simply end it.

 

[Templetroll]

One of the first things I learned as a DM was that a campaign in which no one dies soon will.

How many scenarios attract the attention of heroes due to the death or deaths of others? Is death only for NPCs? The scenario situation that starts off with a death should hold that potential for the characters trying to resolve it. It doesn't have to happen all the time but the potential should be there, the players need to know that their characters can die.

 

[Graybeard]

I believe that characters should have the chance to die no matter what the circumstance. If it is from an attack by a monster, a fall from a cliff, or an epic battle against all odds. I agree, however, that meaningless encounters such as a tavern fight should never result in PC death. Can PCs be raised in my game? Yes. Is it always easy? No. There are always repercussions to dying and being raised in my game. There is XP and level loss of course but there is more to it than that. In my game world, the gods take an active interest in their worshipers. It sometimes displeases the gods when they have to resurrect a PC too many times.

Conversely, I played in a Harnmaster game where the PCs could never die no matter what they did or who they fought against. Whenever a PC was going to be killed by a critical hit or by just being hit too many times, the GM would fudge it so the PC lived. That got boring very quickly since the players knew that their actions in game would never result in death for their characters.

 

[jdrakeh]

Conversely, I played in a Harnmaster game where the PCs could never die no matter what they did or who they fought against. Whenever a PC was going to be killed by a critical hit or by just being hit too many times, the GM would fudge it so the PC lived.

I have to wonder why the GM even bothered with HM, given that the system in question specifically takes pains to make combat realistically lethal compared to. . . well. . . pretty much all other fantasy RPGs. Seems like the GM in this instance wasn't quite sure what he was shooting for when he chose his system and that HM as-written was a poor fit for the kind of game he actually wanted to play and so handwaved it on the fly to make it far less lethal.