The ethics of ... death

[Tonguez]

Was watching the movie The Darkest Hour this morning which features 5 American tourist caught in Moscow during an alien invasion. Anyway my head straight away started running it as an RPG scenario. Now the aliens did have an insta-death effect which fit the story, especially as the deaths happened after meeting NPCs which allowed a Co-opt NPC after death
mechanic to allow the player to switch to a new character.

Anyway my point being that I don't thing DnD has the right mechanics for insta-death to be fun or dramatic so fo DnD it is bad. Nonetheless a game were insta-death works could easily be done...

 

[GX.Sigma]

If you're running a game where character death isn't part of the story, then save-or-die is bad for your game. If you are running a game where character death is to be expected, then save-or-die is good for your game. That's all there is to it, really.

 

[Hussar]

Maybe because with SoD... HP+11 is kinda redundant... Just saying...

EDIT: Seriously though, you keep throwing around the words "poor game design" but there are plenty of people playing games with SoD effects that enjoy them and are having fun, I enjoy DCC rpg myself and it has it's fair share of SoD effects, traps, etc. in the adventures... so maybe instead of trying to proclaim SoD as objectively poor game design you should just claim it's not a fun game design for you and your players.

What does fun have to do with good game design. People enjoy the heck out of RIFTS. RIFTS has all sorts of mechanical issues.

"I like it therefore it must be good game design"?

Personally, I don't mind SoD effects and use them in my game for exactly the same reason you talk about. But, that doesn't mean that I think they're a well designed mechanic. Confusing personal taste for quality is a pretty common mistake.

 

[Hussar]

If you're running a game where character death isn't part of the story, then save-or-die is bad for your game. If you are running a game where character death is to be expected, then save-or-die is good for your game. That's all there is to it, really.

Why are these two being conflated?

There are tons of games out there which have character death but do not have SoD effects. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

SoD to me, is simply lazy game design. We can't be bothered coming up with some interesting effect, so we'll whack on a SoD effect and call it a day. Worked for Gygax. Believability? Who needs it. After all a single snake bite from a poisonous snake is always potentially lethal isn't it? Doesn't matter what kind of snake it is. Spiders? Heck, every spider bite from a big spider should be lethal, at least potentially.

Doesn't matter that my fighter can stand toe to toe with a giant for five or six rounds trading blows. That's not important. Bitten by a big spider? He should potentially die.

There are so many other, more interesting IMO, ways of doing this. SoD just doesn't fit and never really did.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is "Zap, you're dead" a problem in the game?

I know I have been writing this so many times that readers are starting to get nauseated by my posts, but there is NO answer true to all gaming groups, because it is a PLAYSTYLE issue.

The two "extremes" of RPG gaming style, wrt PC death are:

(a) Old-school high lethality - Think of it like watching a horror movie, a main part of the fun is watching PCs die horrible and creative deaths. Zapped-dead from traps, save-or-die spells etc. ARE NOT a problem, they are a wanted feature.

(b) New-school low lethality - Think of it like watching a TV series, a main part of the fun is watching PCs develop their story and/or their tactics, thus death just gets in the way because it forces a restart. Zapped-dead ARE a problem.

RPG books are often afraid to make a clear choice, and fall in-between the two, e.g. they give both save-or-die effects AND easy cheats like resurrection spells. Some RPG games make their choice and stick with it, which makes their lives easier, but D&D cannot make a choice because it has too large gamers base, and choosing one style over the other could alienate too many fans.

But OTOH, this means D&D can support your favourite style between those 2 extremes, as long as you are aware of the problem, and have some ideas or experience on how to tweak the rules (or just exclude some spells & monsters) to achieve that.

 

[Li Shenron]

"Death" isn't a problem; finding yourself spending your evening watching your friends play D&D is a problem, though. That's no fun - watching an RPG being played is often an interminable experience.

For me, then, it's about effects which remove a player from play. Those I try to avoid.

Of course, there are ways around it. Backup characters; have 'em play NPCs; and so on.

Which is why old-school high-lethality benefits a lot from quick, low-complexity character creation rules.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Why are these two being conflated?

There are tons of games out there which have character death but do not have SoD effects. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

SoD to me, is simply lazy game design. We can't be bothered coming up with some interesting effect, so we'll whack on a SoD effect and call it a day. Worked for Gygax. Believability? Who needs it. After all a single snake bite from a poisonous snake is always potentially lethal isn't it? Doesn't matter what kind of snake it is. Spiders? Heck, every spider bite from a big spider should be lethal, at least potentially.

Doesn't matter that my fighter can stand toe to toe with a giant for five or six rounds trading blows. That's not important. Bitten by a big spider? He should potentially die.

There are so many other, more interesting IMO, ways of doing this. SoD just doesn't fit and never really did.

A high level fighter is not afraid of a giant, but is afraid of a snake with lethal poison. That sounds alright to me. Why is that "lazy" or "bad"?

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't like save-or-die spells because they don't fit with hit point mechanics.

There are also people who don't like hit points because they don't fit with more realistic descriptions of combat...

Just to mention a real case, The Legend of the 5 Rings (Rokugan) is a RPG that was adapted to 3e. It's my favourite setting, and I have no problems playing that with HP and more or less like a typical D&D game. But the majority of their fans rejected the 3e version, because they said its HP and combat mechanics based on "wearing down the opponents" really got in the way of the setting, which is a lot more about duels and risky fights where the opponents just glance at each other until they score a killing blow. I don't know what they did in their other editions of L5R before and after 3e (they have their own system) but they might use something more similar to save-or-die attacks.

 

[JamesonCourage]

What does fun have to do with good game design. People enjoy the heck out of RIFTS. RIFTS has all sorts of mechanical issues.

"I like it therefore it must be good game design"?

The problem is that "good game design" isn't a thing unless you define what you want out of the game. If it's "fun", then mechanics that are fun = "good game design". If it's encounter balance, then games that lack that = not "good game design".

But until you define what it is you want out of the game, you can't judge whether or not it's got good design in that area. If the goal is "I want at least one person to die from this effect" (be it falling distance, bodaks, or whatever), then the game giving you one or more deaths (on average) = "good game design". If you don't want that, then it's not "good game design".

Personally, I don't mind SoD effects and use them in my game for exactly the same reason you talk about. But, that doesn't mean that I think they're a well designed mechanic.

It sounds like they're serving what you want them to, which, as far as I can tell, makes them a well designed mechanic.

Confusing personal taste for quality is a pretty common mistake.

How do we judge it? We set up a way to judge it, just like we would for any other product. Sometimes people judge things on purity, sometimes people judge things on function, etc. We need to come up with what the mechanic should be doing, and seeing how closely it matches what we want it to. And, the sticky part here is that "what we want" is just personal taste. As always, play what you like

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, as both a player and a DM, I like having the possibility of death in a game about people who very often are wading into combat with weapons & spells.

And yes, I have lost plenty of PCs to the whims of the dice, including some who died because of a save-or-die not related to spells at all. One fell head first into an underground chasm, another was snatched out of the air by a cave fisher when "catapulted" across another underground chasm in another canpaign (the PC was paralyzed when hit and the party had no way to reach the monster), yet another PC died in his first combat to a crit roll from an opponent with a 2Hd sword...and so forth.

So why should spells get singled out for nerfing?