Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[Blue]

I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.

The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.

This is trivially shown to be false. Many types of RPGs do not feature character death as a prominent possibility. Think superheroes.

I am for character death being on the table in games like D&D where lethal combat is a common method of challenge resolution. I enjoy that risk. But saying that no stakes have meaning outside the core "did you survive" is shown false by the number of games with real stakes where your character dying isn't on the table the majority of the time, if at all.

In other words, that's one set of stakes for the assumptions of one type of game. I want those stakes in that type of game, but we can't pretend that other games must feature the same stakes to be interesting.

 

[Blue]

That is curating the encounter, though from the player side as well, I know my 1st level character can't beat a dragon, and forced into a fight, to "learn me a lesson about GM power" or something. That's it, I die, game over.

Replace Red Dragon with King's Retinue. Can they beat you as bad as the Red Dragon at 1st level? Sure. Does it best serve their goals to do so when they come across you randomly in all cases? No.

Same for the dragon. You are assuming it's goals are always best served to kill the PCs. That's a two dimensional caraciture of a dragon, treating it no better than a mindless beast.

 

[Blue]

The players decide what their characters do. So the player decides what their characters care about. Even if the player writes a War and Peace length backstory about their deep connection to their family, the player is rightfully free to decide at any moment they don’t want to be inconvenienced by that strong family connection. So despite making a character for whom “family is everything” if that family ever becomes an inconvenience, the player can (and almost certainly will) decide the character simply doesn’t care enough to bother.

Wow, not a single player I game with, in multiple groups, matches the RP style that you are projecting with "and almost certainly will". Back in the 80s I knew a player like that. Didn't continue to game with him.

That isn't nearly as universal as you are making it out to be.

 

[dragoner]

Replace Red Dragon with King's Retinue. Can they beat you as bad as the Red Dragon at 1st level? Sure. Does it best serve their goals to do so when they come across you randomly in all cases? No.

Same for the dragon. You are assuming it's goals are always best served to kill the PCs. That's a two dimensional caraciture of a dragon, treating it no better than a mindless beast.

You are right in that ultimately it isn't how my PC dies (the dragon thing is not mine) it's about if my PC dies out of the gate for some random, or bizarre purpose, I am unlikely to continue, not roll up another character.

 

[Blue]

You are right in that ultimately it isn't how my PC dies (the dragon thing is not mine) it's about if my PC dies out of the gate for some random, or bizarre purpose, I am unlikely to continue, not roll up another character.

You do realize that many on-level threats in D&D can drop any 1st level character with a crit, and that's the first step towards death. For multiple editions, 1st level is one where random death can come with just a little bit of bad luck.

Do you still play D&D?

 

[Campbell]

In a lot of the games my main group plays we aren't wandering vagabonds or just getting started on our journeys. In Infinity the character I created through the lifepath system was a 36 year old Mercenary who had 2 career phases in special forces and 2 more as a bounty hunter. There was all sorts of life events involved that we then provided additional detail to. By the time we started play we had an experienced person who had already lived a whole life, had all sorts of complicated relationships, and had a real sense of history. We then spent some real time building layered connections between the characters who were equally as complex.

Going through that sort of process is deeply rewarding, but involves a lot of effort we don't want to necessarily repeat if we do not have to. That's why we negotiate what happens when characters are defeated. It's also an active negotiation that must make sense in the fiction. If the only reasonable thing is they die then they die, but if there's some other interesting narrative loss that makes sense we usually go with that. It's an actual conversation and negotiation. Not player just decides.

We have just gone through a similar process for Exalted over the course of two sessions. We're dealing with characters who are deeply connected to the setting, represent the height of human achievement, and have complex personal lives from the word jump. They have history with the world and with each other.

It works for us because we are good at negotiating those moments in fair ways. I feel we're pretty fair brokers of what seems reasonable or at least genre appropriate. I know some people are suspicious about negotiation as a feature of play, but we find for character death in particular it works better than hard and fast rules.

 

[Blue]

I think the number of cases in the history of RPGing where the players understood themselves to be playing a B/X or AD&D-type hexcrawl, and were playing low-level PCs, and had any familiarity with the game system, and deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon, is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero.

So if I hear reports of a game that resembles what you've described, I would be curious: Where did that information about the dragon in the mountains come from - at the table, I mean, not in the fiction - and how was it made salient? Why did the players act on it in the way you describe? I would be pretty confident that at least one of the four variables I mentioned didn't obtain in that game - most likely the first.

Nah, I have and will again run non-level specific worlds in D&D. Hexcrawls are not the only type of game where players have multiple hooks and decide which they deem are important. Even when running more traditional level-focused D&D, foreshadowing "there's a dragon sleeping in the volcano, don't go there yet" is perfectly fine. Sets up future badness, as well as removes the "huh, if there was a dragon in the area why did we never hear of it" immersion break when it does show up.

When running a non-level specific world I've had options where they encounter things that are likely beyond them - but have reasons not to pursue (protect nest, etc.) and/or reasonable ways to escape (something D&D does poorly out of the box) in order that if some/all of the players need a reminder that it really is non-level specific, I can bring home in a visceral lesson that it is, but also do so in such a way that as long as give up the "it's here to fight, we can obviously beat it" and are willing to retreat that they can.

It's one of the reasons that I like 13th Age as a D&D-like game. A successful retreat - with everyone including the unconcious and the dead - is always on the table in exchange for a campaign loss.

 

[dragoner]

You do realize that many on-level threats in D&D can drop any 1st level character with a crit, and that's the first step towards death. For multiple editions, 1st level is one where random death can come with just a little bit of bad luck.

Do you still play D&D?

Sure, and a lot of systems the effect doesn't go away because there are not levels. Still not going to just kill a character out of hand.

 

[pemerton]

Nah, I have and will again run non-level specific worlds in D&D. Hexcrawls are not the only type of game where players have multiple hooks and decide which they deem are important. Even when running more traditional level-focused D&D, foreshadowing "there's a dragon sleeping in the volcano, don't go there yet" is perfectly fine. Sets up future badness, as well as removes the "huh, if there was a dragon in the area why did we never hear of it" immersion break when it does show up.

When running a non-level specific world I've had options where they encounter things that are likely beyond them - but have reasons not to pursue (protect nest, etc.) and/or reasonable ways to escape (something D&D does poorly out of the box) in order that if some/all of the players need a reminder that it really is non-level specific, I can bring home in a visceral lesson that it is, but also do so in such a way that as long as give up the "it's here to fight, we can obviously beat it" and are willing to retreat that they can.

You don't seem to be describing a case where the players were playing low-level PCs, and had any familiarity with the game system, and deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon. (And your "non-level specific world" is in the neighbourhood of a B/X or AD&D hexcrawl.)

I still assert that the number of cases where the players do the things I've flagged is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero, unless there is a very different approach to determining where the PCs go on the map and what they confront (ie something GM led).

 

[Argyle King]

Is this thread about rpgs in general or D&D?