D&D General What does D&D look like without Death on the Table?

[EzekielRaiden]

Never say never. Being in control of a roll's story outcome is the same power as the ability to fudge. To wit:
Fudge: "The terrasque rolls a 20, I mean, a 3. Its claw gets stuck in a crevice only yards away from you."
Non-fudge: "The terrasque rolls a 20. Its claw does double damage to the boulder you're using for cover, obliterating it."

Ummmm...no it's absolutely not?

Fudging means concealing the actual result/world from the players and explicitly saying that something is the case when it's not, and then preventing the players from knowing that this concealment occurred. Properly speaking, your first example isn't a fudged roll if the DM explicitly says they've changed a 20 to a 3. It's certainly not "letting the dice fall where they may," but it's not fudging, because you didn't conceal anything from the player.

Again, I really don't want to get into a debate about fudging because I have extremely strong opinions on this topic and it tends to be very high-emotion. But I emphatically DO NOT fudge, never have, never will. I see it as actively deceiving my players and preventing them from being able to make real choices, and that is bad.

To respond more to your chosen example: firstly, since I run Dungeon World, only players roll to determine thing 99% of the time. I use rolls only when I need DM inspiration. So what would actually happen is that a player would roll poorly on the self-defense move, "Defy Danger." When a player rolls poorly on any move, I as DM get to make a "Hard Move," which means I am empowered to do something that directly costs, threatens, or harms the character, things with "immediate consequences" that the players must now labor under and try to bounce back from, rather than try to prevent or avoid. Damage is one option for a hard move. Separating the party is another, as are "use up their resources," "turn their move back on them," "show them a downside of their class, race, or equipment," and "reveal an unwelcome truth" (a personal favorite). So if the tarrasque hitting them would kill them and I consider that a boring outcome, I am explicitly empowered by the rules to choose a different move with more interesting consequences...such as revealing that Gozilla has been released to fight the Tarrasque and now the party has TWO kaiju to contend with in order to save the city! Or that they were saved at the last second...by Count Badman, their nemesis in the royal court, to whom they will now owe a life-debt which he will exploit to the fullest. Or that they were thrown aside by the tarrasque's claws, amazingly unhurt apart from some near guaranteed soreness tomorrow...but now their artifact sword is lodged in its leg, and the pain has enraged it--they'll have to act fast if they want to both drive it off AND recover the sword before it leaves! Or that they were teleported out of the way at the very last second and into a cavernous, dark chamber, where their magic patron sits looking very disapproving; she says, "I expect better of you, my servant. This...makes me question the worth of my...investment. Let us discuss terms for how you will rectify this shortfall, shall we? You will be returned to your...associates in good time."

In every way, these represent real costs, real losses, real setbacks. They're just not setbacks that come in the form of "throw away that character sheet and start a new one." And, again as I have explicitly said, I DO allow for death to still happen! It's just that it will either always be reversible ("but at what cost?") or it won't be sudden/unexpected ("Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die, serve right and justice one last time, seek one last heart of evil, still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend, and then farewell.") Either the character CAN come back, or the player is okay with them NOT coming back--and if they DO come back, it's going to cost something precious, require them and their allies to do something they'd rather not do, or seriously hurt their efforts to succeed at their goals.

Death is not permanent in my games unless the players decide it is. But consequences ARE permanent--there is always a price to failure, and it will never be as simple as just leaping back into the fray, guns blazing. I simply choose either to (a) use other kinds of consequences besides death, or (b) permit the party to substitute a different unpleasant consequence in the place of a death that has already occurred. I find this is much more exciting, interesting, investment-driving, and overall enjoyable than having random unavoidable/irreversible death.

 

[Reynard]

So give me some examples of fantasy novels that match the way D&D was played when 75 per cent of play was in the dungeon, lethality was extremely high, and XP was awarded for gold recovered from the dungeon.

The pulp fantasy Gygax used as his main form of literary inspiration is full of dungeon delving, tomb robbing anti-heroes just as likely to end up skewered by some nameless underground horror as save the princess. (And if they did save her, they would ransom her back for double the going rate.) Of course Gygax was not the only person making D&D. Arneson was more moved by Lord of the Rings and other epic fantasy, so D&D had a mix of that too. If you delve into what people actually did with D&D as it swept through college campuses and game clubs, you'll find very broad approches and a lot of DIY development. These led to a lot of those early clones and alternate takes.

So, yes, "story" was as important then as it is today -- which is to say, exactly as much or as little as the people at the table wanted it to be.

 

[uzirath]

If a group decides to treat their PCs like protagonists in a longer story and effectively take the kind of unsatisfying, random death caused by bad die rolls out of the equation, what does a D&D campaign look like? If you play this way, how does it work and how does/did it go? if you don't play this way, what do you think? if you refuse to play this way, why and what are you worried about?

This is more-or-less how I've run most campaigns since the mid-1980s. I've used systems other than D&D sometimes (mostly GURPS), but stay pretty close to D&D-style. PC death isn't usually entirely off-the-table, but I avoid it unless the drama supports it. So, yeah, maybe if you make a daring maneuver in the culminating encounter, but you're not going to fall into a pit of lava and die. I encourage players to invest a fair amount of effort in their characters and they get tied tightly into the game world. Random death, in my experience, incentivizes a different sort of playing than I'm interested in. (Not bad-wrong-fun, mind you, just not my preferred type of fun.)

Like many others have said, the key is having stakes that matter to the players. (Often, these are also stakes that matter to the characters.) The most common stakes relate to NPCs or PC connections in the world. They want to succeed in the quest because failure means bad things for someone that they care about. Or it allows someone they despise to get the glory (or the kingdom or the magic thing or whatever). Sometimes the stakes relate to an animal companion. Sometimes an heirloom or object. Sometimes a political event. Sometimes real-estate or inheritance or rank in an organization. I've seen clerics and paladins excommunicated, wizards thrown out of their guild, thieves arrested and imprisoned, etc. You know, the usual stuff: loyalty, love, betrayal, etc.

I also often play with players who enjoy playing flawed characters. Whether it's through the loose Ideal/Bond/Flaw framework of 5e or the more formal Disadvantage system of GURPS, it can be immensely satisfying just to see whether a flawed character can succeed in overcoming their baser instincts to achieve some measure of heroism or if they fail and spiral into darkness.

None of this requires death to be a prominent potential consequence.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

It needs to be filled with more personal difficulties (in the form of reduced experience, monetary costs, equipment breakage, lasting injuries, physical ailments, sanity loss, and other mental debilities). You can also try larger scale setbacks (like reputation losses, enemy territory gains, kidnapping allies, assassinating allies, stealing from allies, unacceptable allied force casualties) as well. IME the latter only works if the players care about said consequences so be ready to talk things out if that's not the case and don't be afraid to state that serious breaches of campaign sensibility will result in character death regardless of the baseline.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I also often play with players who enjoy playing flawed characters. Whether it's through the loose Ideal/Bond/Flaw framework of 5e or the more formal Disadvantage system of GURPS, it can be immensely satisfying just to see whether a flawed character can succeed in overcoming their baser instincts to achieve some measure of heroism or if they fail and spiral into darkness.

Your whole post was good, I just wanted to single this part out for expansion. Flaws are absolutely a great source of interesting roleplay, but it doesn't all have to be "flaws" per se. This is part of why I like Dungeon World's Bond and Alignment rules (though I'm sure both can be improved further).

Bonds are between characters and something (people, places, concepts, organizations, deities, whatever) that the character cares about. There's a starting list, and you can gain new ones through play or by resolving one you have (which can mean "completely explored, no longer relevant," or any other meaningful change of state). They have only two functions by default; resolving a bond gives you +1 XP, and you roll +Bond (rather than +DEX or whatever) when you try to Aid or Interfere with others' rolls. The goal, however, is for them to be shaping roleplay, giving you a clear idea of the things that matter to your character in an actionable way. E.g. the Thief class has a default bond, "I stole something from <name,>" which automatically implies a certain relationship between the characters--and how that status could change. (E.g. if you return the item, or the person dies, or they save you and you feel you owe them, or you cease caring about worldly possessions, or...) Generally when helping my players come up with new bonds to replace old ones, I try to direct them toward "I will <action>" statements, or "<name> needs <help>" statements, or the like--stuff that really shapes and drives roleplay. Default bonds are just there to stimulate ideas; you can always write your own instead.

Alignment, meanwhile, is always some kind of action description. E.g. the Thief's three provided alignment moves (you can use others if you don't like the ones on offer) are:

• Chaotic: Leap into danger without a plan.
• Neutral: Avoid detection or infiltrate a location.
• Evil: Shift danger or blame from yourself to someone else.

Each session where you fulfill your alignment move, you get +1 XP. (This may not sound like much, but you only need 7+current level to level up, so +1 XP is never less than 1/16th of a level!) It helps drive home what the character values, the kinds of things they actively seek out to do. I really quite like this take on alignment and find that it is far less prone to bickering--you work out essentially a one-sentence "ethos" for each character and then the player gets rewarded for behaving that way.

Expanding on both of these ideas is a great way to help create new stakes, new investment that will keep players on the edge of their seats even though their participation in play is not in question.

It needs to be filled with more personal difficulties (in the form of reduced experience, monetary costs, equipment breakage, lasting injuries, physical ailments, sanity loss, and other mental debilities). You can also try larger scale setbacks (like reputation losses, enemy territory gains, kidnapping allies, assassinating allies, stealing from allies, unacceptable allied force casualties) as well. IME the latter only works if the players care about said consequences so be ready to talk things out if that's not the case and don't be afraid to state that serious breaches of campaign sensibility will result in character death regardless of the baseline.

As with high lethality, and indeed with any game premise, you want to make sure your players are on board, sure.

That said, I find it really isn't too hard to get players to value things, people, places, or organizations (whether positively or negatively) through play. Having affable allies who actually do work to help you, and who have positive goals of their own, often endears the party. Providing pets, mounts, or other such things often works well too. And it's really not hard to make enemies the players love to hate! "Smug arsehole," "slimy businessman," and "corrupt nobility" are all easy archetypes for players to latch onto and enjoy fighting against. Giving them the opportunity to literally invest money, resources, and/or time into a place can also work--even if it doesn't inspire intrinsic motives of care, it at least has the extrinsic motive of "this is mine, I made it, you can't break it or take it from me."

You can argue that perma-death has "built-in" weight, needing no effort to earn players' care, since players want to keep playing. It's a given. Despite that, I find it...I guess too blunt. In being built-in, it has no human touch, no regard for each player's individual likes and dislikes. For all the derisive comparisons to video gaming in this thread and elsewhere, "you ran out of lives, you don't get to play anymore" is in some sense the driving factor of video game difficulty for a huge swathe of games. It's the key experience of arcade, platforming, and shooter games, at the very least. It requires literally zero DM effort to have "keep your character alive" as a motive--even a computer can do that. The motives I find far more interesting and productive cannot work without an active and healthy DM-player relationship.