D&D 5E [+] Questions for zero character death players and DMs…

[Charlaquin]

Perhaps, then, this is the issue.

I see a death caused by the dice--a death that just happened, with no context, no resolution, broken stories that will never ever get anything more than an "oh, yeah I guess that happened" is the antithesis of interesting to me. It's saying you should get super duper ultra invested in a story you KNOW will only get half-told, and then peter out into nothing.

Whereas it seems like, for you, the point here is exploring a "narrative interruptus." I just...don't actually see that happen with characters who die due to Random Kobold #6 getting a crit or Stupidly Bad Luck Climbing A Steep Cliff. I don't see players asking questions like, "What happens now? How do people grieve? Can we move on? Should we?" I see Pam VII, Second Cousin Twice Removed of Pam VI. Or I see (as mentioned upthread) that some random mercenary just joins up with the party out of nowhere, and almost instantly slips back into the same camaraderie and presence in the group.

There is almost never an actual period of mourning, of falling into weird coping mechanisms, of genuinely asking what one is going to do. There's no vengeance to swear against, because the source was something so mundane and dull it doesn't merit such a thing, it's just the world being a sucky place. Maybe you try to take up a quest or goal of the dead character, but such an "I am Spartacus" response is effectively a denial of the original death anyway (the dead character so, so easily becomes a Flanderized subset of the character that takes up the quest.)

Would you agree? It very much seems to me that there's this baked-in assumption that everyone becomes deeply introspective and demonstrates a nuanced and thorough-going investigation of the loss and resulting difficulty etc. and...I just don't see that assumption play out. Players move on way too quickly because three weeks out from the death, you have more pertinent concerns, and the gap between player feelings and character feelings makes grief not very interesting.

And the only way I've found to actually get that sort of introspection and nuance and investigation is to talk about this sort of thing in advance. To get people on board with the story, thinking about the directions it could go, etc. Which is only the tiniest bit different from, y'know, just handling the death differently. E.g. you can still get all those delicious "how do we move on, should we move on" etc. questions by having a lengthy quest to save the dead character from their fate, which can have a huge list of negative consequences all on its own.

I don’t think it’s necessary to roleplay the other characters grieving the loss of the dead character. I mean, they certainly can and that can be fun, but I don’t find it to be necessary. As a player you feel the loss, and to me that’s sufficient. I think a bigger disconnect is that I don’t see character deaths as ever “just happening” which is why I keep putting quotation marks around “random” character death. With the possible exception of death by massive damage due to an untimely critical hit (which I do think can be pretty unsatisfying and is the reason I’m pretty hesitant about any house rules that make crits stronger), a character death is always the result of a series of decisions the players made. You don’t just die out of nowhere, you die because you overextend yourself, or because you ignored or didn’t pick up on the signs telegraphing a deadly threat, or decided to stand and fight a much more powerful opponent, etc. Deaths can certainly be unexpected, but they’re almost never truly random in my experience. And, yes, they can be unsatisfying, even painful. That’s just ludonarrative consonance in my opinion, which is something I strive for in play.

 

[Charlaquin]

Very well said!

It made me think... among those who claim "I can't get invested unless I know death is an option", would you play a game where, should your PC die, you will not have an option to create another PC in the same campaign and will have to wait until next campaign to play again with the same group?

I’m not one who can’t get invested unless death is an option, I just invest differently if death is only with my permission. But no, I don’t think a single-elimination campaign would be very much fun, unless resurrection was a pretty readily available option. Mainly because at that point the risk isn’t a character’s narrative coming to an inconclusive end, it’s the entire game doing so.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don’t think it’s necessary to roleplay the other characters grieving the loss of the dead character. I mean, they certainly can and that can be fun, but I don’t find it to be necessary. As a player you feel the loss, and to me that’s sufficient. I think a bigger disconnect is that I don’t see character deaths as ever “just happening” which is why I keep putting quotation marks around “random” character death. With the possible exception of death by massive damage due to an untimely critical hit (which I do think can be pretty unsatisfying and is the reason I’m pretty hesitant about any house rules that make crits stronger), a character death is always the result of a series of decisions the players made. You don’t just die out of nowhere, you die because you overextend yourself, or because you ignored or didn’t pick up on the signs telegraphing a deadly threat, or decided to stand and fight a much more powerful opponent, etc. Deaths can certainly be unexpected, but they’re almost never truly random in my experience. And, yes, they can be unsatisfying, even painful. That’s just ludonarrative consonance in my opinion, which is something I strive for in play.

I feel like this just reinforces that character deaths don't actually serve a story purpose and are just punishments for the player 'not doing it right'.

 

[Charlaquin]

I feel like this just reinforces that character deaths don't actually serve a story purpose and are just punishments for the player 'not doing it right'.

Is it also a punishment for “not doing it right” when an enemy takes over your territory in Risk? Or when one of your creatures dies in Magic: the Gathering? No, of course not. It’s just one possible outcome of gameplay. An undesirable one, to be sure, but undesirable outcomes are a normal part of most games. They give you something to play to try to avoid. That doesn’t mean they’re punishments for playing wrong.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Finally, what benefit is gained by having no character death?

I'm not able to answer in absolutes but in the instances where the consequence of perma death was avoided at our table, the benefits were the emergence of new storyline opportunities.

• Character was able explore peak behind the curtain so to speak, explore the Fugue Plane, the Wall of the Faithless, the petitioning of souls and meet with an ex-party member, now NPC, who had been Immortalised (Mystara) in their last session (sadly the player was extremely ill and passed away). The immortal petitioned Kelemvor for the dead character's soul. The player and I did a line-by-line dialogue post on our Obsidian site as he asked questions and the Immortal answered them. The cost of his resurrection was having his soul un-bounded from the Mystara universe and tethered to the Forgotten Realms - which additionally cost the player creating further backstory posts of his time in Mystara - the effects of character loss of memory. The player absolutely loved that storyline and the closure it enabled with an ex-party member and I as DM enjoyed exploring a section of the lore from both settings that would otherwise remain cool text in the setting books.
• Characters died (TPK) in an epic battle against the beholder Netherskull in Undermountain. They recovered consciousness some days later near the dungeon's exit by the Yawning Portal's well-pit. They have a suspicion that Halaster cloned them - but for what purpose they don't know. Did he use Timestop to save them or Wish to bring them back - who knows. They are certainly valuable to the realm being champions of the Council of Waterdeep. Being future lackies to the Mad Mage is not appealing. The party will be seeking ways to rectify that.
• Character was captured by Frulam Mondath and aggressively interrogated (not roleplayed but left to the imagination). A unique enmity was borne out of this experience between PC and NPC, and after he was rescued, this unique relationship played out between numerous future encounters between the PC and the NPC, until the latter was eventually executed.
• Character fell into a deep coma and did not awaken. Using a creative (levelled-up) version of the Dream spell the players entered into the Dream in an effort to awaken the PC (Part Inception, part Tanis, the Shadow Years). The idea was mine but the execution of the Dream adventure and if it worked was DMed by the player of the character in the coma. Sadly the PCs failed, but the player enjoyed being involved in this process.

Like I said I'm not speaking in absolutes, because death occurs in my campaign. It really depends on the situation.
But death need not be an end but a beginning, such as through a new patron and or new powers (Sorcerer, Warlock etc) allowing for a class shift OR new roleplaying opportunities through new or additional personality traits, progressive disease or malady...etc

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is it also a punishment for “not doing it right” when an enemy takes over your territory in Risk? Or when one of your creatures dies in Magic: the Gathering? No, of course not. It’s just one possible outcome of gameplay. An undesirable one, to be sure, but undesirable outcomes are a normal part of most games. They give you something to play to try to avoid. That doesn’t mean they’re punishments for playing wrong.

I don't put effort, thought or investment into my Risk territories or my M:tG creatures. RPG character death isn't just a setback, it's a sink into which my time and care get ground up into jut because some people who are not me enjoy the risk and stress factor it involves and the lingering ghoul of Skilled Play looming over my shoulder.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't put effort, thought or investment into my Risk territories or my M:tG creatures. RPG character death isn't just a setback, it's a sink into which my time and care get ground up into jut because some people who are not me enjoy the risk and stress factor it involves and the lingering ghoul of Skilled Play looming over my shoulder.

I mean, if you don’t enjoy skilled play or the risk and stress factor involved in it, by all means, don’t play in such games. Nothing wrong with knowing what you do and don’t like and sticking to the former.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So I would add my question to the OP's from that perspective. What is the value of declaring no death instead of just using the resurrection options already included in the game?

I don’t play in a non-death game, so take these responses with a grain of salt.

1. World-building. Default 5e resurrection rules cause world-building and verisimilitude problems. Essentially, the “OMG, the count just assassinated the king plots” can’t be run without some heavy-duty hand-waving “yeah, but the king didn’t want to be resurrected because reasons” or “yeah, but the assassin used a special poison…”. In a no-character death game, you can make actual in-world resurrection rare and heighten the stakes of “assassin on the loose” plots.

2. The “bumpiness” of resurrection rules. Under default 5e rules, access to resurrection isn’t even across levels. It’s tough to get resurrected until level 7, at which point permanent death is essentially off the table unless the enemies or the DM are trying to get around the resurrection rules. A no-death rule essentially applies the 7+ paradigm across all levels of the game.

3. To raise the stakes. To be honest, I think the “no death unless dramatic” is more common than “no death at all”. So in a “no death unless dramatic” game, if your character dies holding the line while the party escapes, that’s it. You don’t get resurrected afterwards and every one laughs about it. In a standard game, you definitely can. Even in a “no deaths, period” game, you can use this to raise the stakes. The PC’s love interest dies, that’s it. No easy resurrections, no I cast 500 gp to bring her back.

 

[Umbran]

Though in a meta-narrative sense, it’s purposelessness was its purpose. There’s really no such thing as a character death that doesn’t have huge narrative consequences. And that is as it should be, in my opinion.

Consequence and purpose are not the same thing. Indeed, there's a whole branch of unintended consequences that are, by definition, not purposeful.

There are times when we can put consequences to good use, but some of the consequences of character death are not in-game, and those are commonly a bit harder to work with.

 

[Charlaquin]

Consequence and purpose are not the same thing. Indeed, there's a whole branch of unintended consequences that are, by definition, not purposeful.

Well, I was talking about Tasha Yarr’s death in Star Trek TNG, whose purposelessness was absolutely purposeful. It was explicitly written to be a random death that accomplished nothing in a wattsonian sense (in a doylest sense, it was to demonstrate the evilness of the creature that killed her). But, yes, it was nonetheless consequential to the show’s narrative moving forward.

There are times when we can put consequences to good use, but some of the consequences of character death are not in-game, and those are commonly a bit harder to work with.

Sure, although when aligning the players’ mental states with those of their characters is a goal (certain not a given in D&D, but fairly common in my experience and certainly something I enjoy in my own games), those out of game consequences can actually be put to good use as well.