D&D General Why fear is good for PCs

[MGibster]

Its always funny when GMs decide that negative things is good for Players...

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have Dungeons & Dragons. Part of what makes the game fun is the potential for bad things to happen. Even after more than 15 years, I still remember how awesome it was when my rogue got one shotted, his face ripped off by a hook wielding hillbilly ogre in Rise of the Runelords who rolled a critical success. I went through a lot of characters that campaign now that I think about it. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to design scenarios that are punishing for the players. Only that sometimes bad things need to happen to keep the game interesting.

 

[Autumnal]

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have Dungeons & Dragons. Part of what makes the game fun is the potential for bad things to happen.

Not for me. What happened over and over, for years, was that my low-level character would run into bad things, and die, and I never got to see or do good things at all. So I became apathetic, and finally wandered off to games where there was any prospect of seeing and doing good things before some overwhelming bad thing descended and killed my character. Again.

It wasn’t fear I felt, after the first few times, but disengagement. I wanted a character who could, even in some small way, matter to the things going around them, but D&D and AD&D as run by the people in my social scene never offered that to me.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Yeah, I've tried funnel games recently and played 'fairly frequent random permanent death' games in the past, and they aren't at all interesting to me. "Oh look, another generic character sheet died because I didn't aggressively enough say I was standing away from a door, guess I have one +1 and one +2 stat instead of 4 +1s and a -1 now" doesn't evoke fear, it evokes either silliness ('send in another clone!') or disinterest.

I'd much rather have players engage with the game and take risks than a bunch who just sit back and try to be supremely cautious, and most of the time non-death consequences are significantly scarier and more interesting for the player than 'guess I pull the backup PC I already had ready out of the folder' or 'guess I'm done with this campaign'.

 

[RainOnTheSun]

I haven't played in a lot of games with Random Meaningless Character Death(tm), but just as described to me, it sounds like just about the least frightening thing I can think of in a game. The article in the first post refers to this as "slots gambling," playing with minimal stakes and minimal emotional investment.
"Steve's head exploded? Ha! That's great! Anyway, I'm gonna check my phone for a bit, let me know when you find Steve 2: Judgment Steve in a dungeon cell or whatever."
The more random it is, the less frightening it gets, because fear incentivizes making choices that keep you safe and reduce risk. The fewer meaningful choices there are to be made, the less useful fear is, and the more often characters die, the harder it is to forget that the game can't actually harm you in any way.
"Big sleeping dragon? Steve III pokes it in the eye with a stick. Wake up, dragon! Entertain us!"
"I don't like the way the king's looking at Steve IV. I'm gonna throw a rock at him."

That doesn't mean random meaningless character death doesn't sound like it could be fun, just... not remotely scary in any way.

 

[tetrasodium]

If you have 4 or 5 hp then sure, you're probably feeling afraid for your character. - But if the DM had just rolled a little better on that last hit you took, you wouldn't be feeling afraid for your character, you'd probably be feeling frustrated and annoyed as you start generating a new one.
If you die at 0, at what point do you start feeling afraid for your character? At 30hp a crit or failed save and an above-average roll could kill you before you even hit bloodied.
So you're afraid most of the time? Or are you just apathetic, because you're always at risk?

But when you do get low, what are your tactical decisions? 5e doesn't have many effective defensive options outside of spells. Running will generally rely on the rest of the party to defend you, risking themselves, since many monsters can run down the average PC. Dodging increases your chance to live by a little, but again at the expense of your contribution to the fight. The only real option, if you're playing a character with resources, is to burn more of them, if you weren't already.

The sort of people who care about their characters enough to be your target victims probably wouldn't enter a fight casually, or with no tactics. They're already trying to minimise their damage taken vs effectiveness ratio.

Even with the death saves system, people still fear the results of getting unlucky in a fight: There is no guarantee of survival, and no one enjoys sitting on the sidelines rolling death saves. Its not as bad as having to roll up a new character, but its still not a fun way to spend leisure time intended to be devoted to trying to de-stress.

You left out an entire pillar of stuff to be afraid of that makes taking a small 3-5hp hit something that can create some fear even if taking several more that would drop the PC to that 0-5 razor's edge range you note as an area of fear. That omission is one 5e primes players to ignore by design though.

Prior to 5e PCs died at zero (or neg10 with the death's door optional rule) and every single point of damage needed to be healed at a situational day by day rate and spell slot by spell slot and without unlimited cantrips while lacking full BaB progression the cleric wasn't going to be keen on dumping all of their slots healing everyone back to full. Sure they might burn a couple bringing the tank back to the upper 80% or so, but they aren't going to and generally couldn't top off everyone. That led to the situation where a 2-3 point hit to the wrong PC could be scary because the player knew their cleric couldn't waste the heals on them when they might need it for the tank later.

Fear in PCs requires that the system present plausible risk like that to the players coupled with a hunger for more. Will our resources hold out? If we work together better and really stretch can we get MOAR of the phat lewtz we know that we really need and bigger experience payoffs? Can our carrying capacity carry all of the supplies and equipment we expect to need?... Obviously not... Which do we need now and which can we plan to go without? How can we stretch each HP of life?...

With 5e we have endless discussions over useless storytelling concepts like "horror" and "[narrative] fear" because the system now answers all of those questions with "easily but you shouldn't need to!" and " of course who cares?" while effectively ensuring that the PCs don't actually mechanically require anything they might narratively "need" to remove that hunger side of the formula. As long as the system designs against it, why are we asking how the gm can generate fear in PCs instead of asking why the system itself lacks anything that should provide plausible reasons to be convincingly having PCs feel fear?

 

[MGibster]

Not for me. What happened over and over, for years, was that my low-level character would run into bad things, and die, and I never got to see or do good things at all. So I became apathetic, and finally wandered off to games where there was any prospect of seeing and doing good things before some overwhelming bad thing descended and killed my character. Again.

Some GMs and/or scenarios can really go a bit overboard. If your character keeps failing over and over with seemingly no hope, what's the point of even playing?

It wasn’t fear I felt, after the first few times, but disengagement. I wanted a character who could, even in some small way, matter to the things going around them, but D&D and AD&D as run by the people in my social scene never offered that to me.

I don't think I've ever felt any genuine fear in all my years of gaming. My characters, that's a different story. As a DM, ideally what I want to see is a little tension. I want the players to feel as though there's some risk attached to every encounter. That doesn't necessarily mean there's a risk of death, but something needs to be at stake or it feels pointless.

I'd much rather have players engage with the game and take risks than a bunch who just sit back and try to be supremely cautious, and most of the time non-death consequences are significantly scarier and more interesting for the player than 'guess I pull the backup PC I already had ready out of the folder' or 'guess I'm done with this campaign'.

Same here. I've played games where players went out of their way to tell me the most mundane little detail, like that they've reloaded their weapons after a fight, and I see it as a sign they've been hurt by a DM in the past. "Ha! Ha! You never said you reloaded your weapon after the last fight, so you can't shoot this round." That's not fun. At least not to me.

As long as the system designs against it, why are we asking how the gm can generate fear in PCs instead of asking why the system itself lacks anything that should provide plausible reasons to be convincingly having PCs feel fear?

And that's a fair statement. As a DM and a player, I simply don't take D&D very seriously. It's a supremely silly game to me, and that's not a dig, it's why I like it. It's a game where I kick down doors, kick butt for goodness, and get treasure. (Except these days I can't be bothered to care about the treasure.)

 

[Remathilis]

I'd much rather have players engage with the game and take risks than a bunch who just sit back and try to be supremely cautious, and most of the time non-death consequences are significantly scarier and more interesting for the player than 'guess I pull the backup PC I already had ready out of the folder' or 'guess I'm done with this campaign'.

This is my experience as well. Fear induces paranoia and paranoia leads players to become risk adverse. Often to the point of decision paralysis. Every door is double trapped (there is a trap on the trap!), every chest a mimic, every fight handled with the ruthless efficiency of a mob hit, and every NPCs is a scheming liar and con man. Fear leads PCs to build cabins in the woods and rant how the royal family are doppelgangers. And it slows play to a crawl as every decision point is debated and triple checked.

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, I've tried funnel games recently and played 'fairly frequent random permanent death' games in the past, and they aren't at all interesting to me.

Part of this, to me, is that folks forget that random death does not give players much to work with. Random death cannot be learned from, or avoided, as the next death will be unrelated to the last. So, it doesn't induce so much "fear" as it does anxiety.

Random death is like whacking a dog with a rolled-up newspaper hours after they did something "bad". The dog is unlikely to connect cause and effect, and instead learns that you are just kinda mean.

Focused death, with clear, telegraphed, non-random and visible causes, is a far superior tool for a GM to use.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

This is my experience as well. Fear induces paranoia and paranoia leads players to become risk adverse. Often to the point of decision paralysis. Every door is double trapped (there is a trap on the trap!), every chest a mimic, every fight handled with the ruthless efficiency of a mob hit, and every NPCs is a scheming liar and con man. Fear leads PCs to build cabins in the woods and rant how the royal family are doppelgangers. And it slows play to a crawl as every decision point is debated and triple checked.

The thing is, fear and paranoia are a great atmosphere for certain type of games (including games of D&D). Dealing with a terrifying situation with no one you can trust can be a great experience - but that doesn't require easy and/or random PC death. I've had a great experience running a session where PCs are dealing with an angry hag's personal wood, where they're harried at every step and the poor gnome who usually has fun talking to cute animals has squirrels taunting him about his impending doom. What would have made it terrible is if it was a bunch of 'OK, now you need to declare specifically that you're checking for traps and where. WHOOPS you didn't say behind the 3rd tree, so now you fall in a pit and die.' The tedious specification really isn't fun for the vast majority of people, and the tension of 'can we figure out a way to make it' just vanishes once they realize a random roll or forgetting to be specific enough is eventually going to stop them.

 

[Minion X]

If people didn't yearn to simulate fear, we wouldn't have horror movies or those tower things at amusement parks. So fear = bad thing is false.