D&D 5E Where does the punitive approach to pc death come from?

[bedir than]

... and don't rest very heavily on narrative.

Wait, what? What's non-narrative about having characters live and die?

 

[redrick]

Personally, I'm a huge nethack fan. In nethack, you cannot reload a saved game, you can only resume a current game. Every character starts at level 1. Character deaths can be hilarious. Tragic. Redrick the Human Barbarian. Level 11. Killed by a gecko while paralyzed. Nethack is a very hard game to advance in, and every time I get a character halfway through the game I feel very proud.

I'd love my next D&D campaign to have a little bit of that feel. But that's just me.

In my current campaign, new characters come in 1 level below the lowest character in the party. I want death to feel like a setback, because I want choices surrounding death to feel meaningful. I think it's a little like stakes in a poker game. We play for $10 because it keeps us honest, but none of us will lose friends over $10. For some people, $10 would be as meaningless as playing for pennies. When we were kids, we played for $1 and that felt real enough. So, your consequences for death really depend on the people you're playing with. And what kind of stakes you want.

What sucks is when you show up for a penny game and somehow lose $50. Or show up for a high stakes game and somebody still plays as if they could care less what happens.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Wait, what? What's non-narrative about having characters live and die?

Just Fiction 101: if something happens in a story, it has a meaning and a purpose for the story as a whole. Life and death aren't exceptions to that. If a death isn't meaningful in the context of the story, then it shouldn't happen. There's a reason Obi Wan dies sacrificing himself for Luke and not from falling off a ladder while fixing his light bulbs (even though the latter would be more accurate to the way the world works, the former is accurate to the way stories work).

When a death happens in D&D that's pointless, that makes it less like a story.

I rely heavily on narrative when I DM. But the actions my players take within the game should add to that narrative and it is up to my players to make the most of their deaths. Even in narrative though, sometimes deaths are meaningless.

But then I suppose there room to debate what sort of narrative you fancy, as Game of Thrones is just as much a narrative, full of often meaningless deaths as is Lord of the Rings, in which deaths are only ever heroic.

I think in RPG play in normal D&D, the characters are the protagonists. I would say that in Game of Thrones, this is not as true -- the protagonists are more typically families, not individual members. Game of Thrones isn't about a person, it's about a lineage, an era, something bigger than the characters that participate in it. Those kinds of protagonists are not as common, but it's not a fundamentally different way of thinking about narrative as it is an unusual way of thinking about what a protagonist can be. Were I to make a game based on a GoT-style experience, I'd not have the players control individual characters as much as I would have them control a family, which is pretty far removed from normal D&D play.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think in RPG play in normal D&D, the characters are the protagonists. I would say that in Game of Thrones, this is not as true -- the protagonists are more typically families, not individual members. Game of Thrones isn't about a person, it's about a lineage, an era, something bigger than the characters that participate in it. Those kinds of protagonists are not as common, but it's not a fundamentally different way of thinking about narrative as it is an unusual way of thinking about what a protagonist can be. Were I to make a game based on a GoT-style experience, I'd not have the players control individual characters as much as I would have them control a family, which is pretty far removed from normal D&D play.

I agree and disagree. You're right that in the big picture, the story as a whole, the houses are the protagonists/antagonists. You rarely see someone rooting for a single character who doesn't also root for the faction that character represents. But like many stories the "big picture" is told through a series of smaller stories. A story within the story so to speak. Within those more focused, lets call them "episodes" the characters themselves are the protagonists/antagonists. I do try to set this up in some of my games, I have run "other parties" within my game as a part of a random encounter table. Would the mighty king really rely on only 5 strangers to recover his kidnapped daughter? I think not. He just doesn't let them all know they're competing, or maybe he does, maybe it's an open contract, whoever gets her back first wins.

The players are the focus of the story and insomuch they can be the protagonists and the antagonists of the story, depending on their objectives, but occasionally they will discover that they are not the only actors within the story.

I don't think I would have my players play houses in a GoT-styled story. I think I would either have them create multiple characters that they may end up competing with themselves to represent the multitude of internal stories within the "series" itsself, or as I have done before, I would run all those alternative groups and between sessions determine what the outcomes of their adventures were and how that might affect what will happen to our "focus group".

 

[transtemporal]

1.) The power disparity for heterogenous levels in 5E isn't usually as bad as you portray it. You picked an extreme example (one 1st level guy in a 20th level party) but how likely is it that the very first death in the party, ever, would happen at level 20? More likely you'd have one 20th level guy, some 14th-18th level guys, a 9th-level guy, and the 1st level guy. The 1st level guy will level up pretty quickly due to the shape of the XP table, and if you think 2nd level guys can't contribute in important ways I guess you've never run into a Diviner. Even a simple Bless from a 1st-level cleric can be really nice.

I've had the 1st/20th disparity more than once in my RPG history but admittedly that was years ago. In recent history a 5 level disparity is probably the max I've encountered. In our 5e game, its more like 2-3. I'm more wondering whether the people in other thread saying "I would start them at 1st" is a regular occurrence or not.

So now instead of playing a 5th level guy, he's playing a 1st level guy (now 2nd), in a party of generally much higher level--but it makes perfect sense from a roleplaying perspective, and the player doesn't view it as a punishment.

And that's cool, but its something you worked out with the players and you all bought into it which is the key thing. Its not you the DM saying "All of you now have to play these characters whether you like it or not."

 

[I'm A Banana]

I agree and disagree. You're right that in the big picture, the story as a whole, the houses are the protagonists/antagonists. You rarely see someone rooting for a single character who doesn't also root for the faction that character represents. But like many stories the "big picture" is told through a series of smaller stories. A story within the story so to speak. Within those more focused, lets call them "episodes" the characters themselves are the protagonists/antagonists.

I can see what you're saying. In terms of how this applies to RPG play, though, I'd say that those individual actors in each "episode" are less like RPG characters and more like resources that the player controlling a family spends to accomplish a goal. They're more akin to units in a strategy game, or chess pieces (and as such, they don't need all the complexity, depth, and variety of a normal RPG PC - a few unique tricks and traits are usually enough). In D&D terms, the individual people are more like spells or HP or GP - things that make up the strength of a given family, but not so important that you can't lose them or spend them to get a result.

The players are the focus of the story and insomuch they can be the protagonists and the antagonists of the story, depending on their objectives, but occasionally they will discover that they are not the only actors within the story.

Well, that's just a robust, believable world! Everyone is at the center of their own story, even if it's not something that gets "screen time."

I don't think I would have my players play houses in a GoT-styled story. I think I would either have them create multiple characters that they may end up competing with themselves to represent the multitude of internal stories within the "series" itsself, or as I have done before, I would run all those alternative groups and between sessions determine what the outcomes of their adventures were and how that might affect what will happen to our "focus group".

Sounds complex. I think I'd re-think my level of focus - rather than individual characters, I'd have the players build a house (with ability scores like Population and Resources and Reputation rather than Constitution and Intelligence and Charisma), and consider the important characters within those houses as packets of "HP" (run out of them and your house falls apart), each perhaps with some special ability that functions similar to a spell (roll a Reputation save or lose 3d6 House Points...)....so a single session could fly between scenes in various regions of the kingdoms, with various characters acting to assist each other or destroying their common enemy...

Basically, keep the structure of the game intact, and zoom out to the same level that the actual protagonists dwell in.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I rely heavily on narrative when I DM. But the actions my players take within the game should add to that narrative and it is up to my players to make the most of their deaths. Even in narrative though, sometimes deaths are meaningless.

I can think of at least one major character in Feist's Serpentwar Saga who died a meaningless death (random crossbow bolt to the stomach, from accidental discharge/friendly fire). It didn't hurt the story any. Things like that really happen.

Edit: also, Wash's death in Serenity.

Anyway, a D&D death will never be meaningless like that, because PCs proactively create the story. Even if you die to a random goblin crit and two crit fails on your death save, you still died "rescuing Princess Annabelle from kidnappers" or "stopping the death cult" or something. If a death is meaningless narratively, then that means the goal wasn't worth dying for, which means the life was meaningless too, so what is there to complain about? The trick is to find things worth risking your life for--live or die, succeed or fail.

Or just accept that your life is meaningless and go dungeon crawling. "Disintegrated by a beholder while looking for treasure" is a story too.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And that's cool, but its something you worked out with the players and you all bought into it which is the key thing. Its not you the DM saying "All of you now have to play these characters whether you like it or not."

But I absolutely would say that if necessary. If Nox gets killed next session, the player will have to fall back on his other character who's been leveling up in the character tree all this time (in the background), and create a new first level character for the character tree. If that other character (paladin of vengeance) gets killed too, he'll be paying that first level character. The fact that the player in this case chose to play a 1st level character doesn't mean it will always be a conscious choice on the player's part. It just shows that some people don't view it as a punishment per se.

I do however think that having multiple characters and a fairly open sandbox is pretty key to enjoying this type of experience. If you have only one PC as your alter ego, and the game is about some overarching Wheel of Time-style epic conflict, I can see how developing a new character from first level would feel like a punishment. So I think the answer to your original question of "why did they do this?" is "they weren't thinking of their games as novels." Different playstyles.

 

[EvanNave55]

I've mostly just played 3# and PF, we've always done overarching stories (like return to the temple of elemental evil as the current) so starting from level one just just would not work for us, we do however make new characters start a level lower than the party.

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=21379]goatunit[/MENTION] in post 20 and [MENTION=6702445]jayoungr[/MENTION] in post 42 have summed up my take quite well, no need to retype it all here.

The trick is not to view death as a punishment after the fact but as a warning before the fact - if you're gonna do something stupid, consequences will happen. If death has no consequences at all then like it or not playstyle will almost certainly drift toward gonzo pretty quickly...which can be fine, but probably doesn't suit the story-driven type of game where this issue seems to arise.

This is one reason I'm not a fan of canned adventure paths, at least the way the published ones so far have been set up, where they assume the party will be at certain levels at certain points. Now that said, most published APs have been written for 3e or 4e or a variant thereof, and in both those editions it helps if the party is both a) very close in level and b) levelling up quickly. What's needed is an AP design where assumed advancement is much slower and variance within the party is taken for granted. To explain the difference:

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell is listed as being for levels 1-3; what it means is characters are all expected to be level 1 going in and level 3 coming out - the adventure even has built-in advancement points for those DMs as needs 'em. B2 Keep on the Borderlands is also listed as being for levels 1-3 but the implication there is the party's level range will be 1-3 throughout. A better example of the latter is WGA4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, for levels 5-10...that sure as hell doesn't mean you're expected to be 5th level going in and 10th level coming out!

An example of an adventure path that does work is the A-series Slavers modules. The level *range* goes up by about 1 per module, but the ranges of each module overlap with the next (2-5, 3-6, 4-7 etc.).

And how does this all relate to character death? Simply that bringing in a replacement character at a lower level than its predecessor shouldn't be discouraged by the system, which APs-as-system tend to do. I don't agree with always bringing rookies in at 1st level once the party average gets up over 3rd or so, but I set a floor. In my current game where the active PCs are all 6th-9th level the floor is 5th, and that's what new characters come in at; I have one party on hold at the moment where the level range is 5th-8th, and the floor for that one is 4th.

A nice side effect of doing it this way is it slows down the overall level advancement, which in turn makes the campaign last longer.

Lan-"and what do you do when a character simply retires from adventuring or leaves the party due to in-character reasons"-efan