Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[overgeeked]

Sure. I once killed an entire party fighting against the dragon they'd been hunting for all campaign (he was epic, he'd killed one PC's parents, he was one of the other PC's parents and had abandoned them, etc.) but the group was unable to roll higher than a 10 on the dice in the last fight, and I rolled 8 20s in a row. You can do that.

If RPGs are collaborative storytelling games, why is tragedy and/or failure not an acceptable option? Not all stories have happy endings. "Either we win or it's a wasted campaign" is not a great stance for players to have. It's a game with dice, as per your example, the dice will go against the PCs. If the story is more important, you have to minimize the game elements. If the roll of the dice doesn't matter, why have dice?

But telling the players who felt they'd wasted a whole 6-month campaign to die ignominiously in the dragon's dung heap due to the roll of the dice that this is the "wonder of emergent gameplay!" is not satisfying to me personally as a DM.

To me, that's the only possible way to play. To do otherwise is to hand the players victory or defeat. That's not my job as the referee. Importantly, it's a high fantasy game where life after TPKs is easily achieved.

But my PCs don't currently have plot armor, and when they die, they generally do so in the most badass way the player can conceive of, rather than me telling them, "Sorry, your wild sword swing connects but doesn't seem to do much to the dragon (minimum damage on the dice) while his bite complete severs you at the waist (my crit)."

How do you accomplish that without giving them plot armor? If they can't die in ignoble ways, that's plot armor. If they can only die in badass ways, that's plot armor.

 

[prabe]

 

[Mad_Jack]

Great.

@Dannyalcatraz has just created the new hobgoblin of player agency debates...

THE QUANTUM DOG.

Isn't Quantum Dog also that band that Keanu Reeves plays in?

 

[payn]

Isn't Quantum Dog also that band that Keanu Reeves plays in?

Sounds better than Dog Star.

 

[CleverNickName]

I thought a Quantum Dog was a hotdog that is simultaneously the best and worst thing you've ever eaten.

 

[overgeeked]

I keep reading that as Atomic Dog...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Sounds better than Dog Star.

That's because Keanu is ... serious.


I'll let you think about that, and I'll show myself out.

 

[Umbran]

But what if… you are wrong about this?

When we are correct, we don't learn much that we didn't already know. No new truth is discovered from correctness. So, if the world is better if we don't make mistakes, it follows that the world is better if we don't learn much.

Thus, if he is wrong, then we are "better" in lives of brutish ignorance.

 

[Umbran]

I don't have any problems with admitting I'm wrong...

But I'll be darned if I let some punk on the internet know that I think they could be right!!!!

You see what I mean? Monkeys with smartphones, all of us.

 

[Ryujin]

I think that the world* would be a better place if people would understand one simple thing-

It's okay to be wrong. Really. And it's fine to admit it. No one, in the history of ever, is correct all the time. It's better to confess error gracefully, and move on, than to just keep arguing. And you know what? Everyone else appreciates it, and will think more of you as a person, not less, if you do that.


*By "world," I mean world. But mostly the internet.

If ever you stop frequently being wrong about stuff, check for a pulse.