[D&D 4e] Character Death and TPKs
Callan S.:
The idea of paying off a failure with another adventure doesn't really click with me. I mean, at the moment of failure, it hasn't resolved that failure - we'd have a whole other game night of getting through an adventure before you could say 'And that's what you get for failing!'. And if it's another adventure, it's practically indistinguishable from what they'd be doing next if they won. Indeed it probably suits a simulationist agenda precisely for that reason (ie, it excludes any outside the game sense of winning or losing).
In terms of a winning vector based on benefit accumulation, I wonder if you had some sort of system which has a treasure rating for dungeons/adventures. Each time you win/complete an adventure properly, you go up to the next rating, which means that dungeon/adventure has even more treasure. But if you fail/TPK, whatever, you drop down a few ratings - your guys are so beat up they can only find leads on the less rewarding dungeons/adventures.
I just think in terms of benefit over time, the only way that works is if when everyone loses, that's the end of the session for the night. Which you can do, granted. But if you did continue playing, it'd totally undermine the benefit over time sting of failure. Because even if the pirate leaves with his treasure, if you start another adventure straight away then you've just brought back the pirate/treasure, because that adventure will have a new treasure/boss. Unless you stop playing for the night, there is no sting. And if you die in the first five minutes of the session...when everyones only has this time to play and have traveled for X time to get here...C'mon, your gunna keep playing. Of course you are. But it'd bone the gamist sting that a benefit over real time involves.
But with an overall spine added to play of your current treasure rating hinging on your moment to moment performance or gutsy luck, it works out if you keep playing (well, unless you keep screwing up and dropping your treasure rating right down to the lousy default, but that still works as gamism - it just doesn't work out for the guy who keeps stuffing up, hehe!)
Natespank:
Okay I get what you're saying. It's late, I'm gonna review this tomorrow after school. You might be right.
Ron Edwards:
Hey,
Nate, I suggest that a couple of your current threads should be left alone, perhaps to be picked up at a later time. You've brought up a lot of topics, with a lot of nuances, especially in the charged emotional context of Dungeons & Dragons.
It would be good for all of us to concentrate on one thread especially, to bring the full bore of Forge-style discourse into action and actually to conclude something there.
If I had to pick, I'd like to focus on your player-choice, sandbox thread, but the choice should be yours. I think you'll be surprised at how productive conversation here can be, but at the moment, it's too diffused across your topics.
Best, Ron
Devon Oratz:
I don't know if Ron wants us to cool off on this topic for now but I just wanted to say that this is a topic that I personally am very, very interested in. This is something I have really, really struggled with as a GM.
Chris_Chinn:
Hi Nate,
Let's consider what the role of a character (and character death) and the point of play is, from a few angles:
1) Player play time
Most games only let players play 1 character - meaning, a dead character means a player is left not playing. This is a direct impact on moment-to-moment fun.
Ron points out very early D&D gave players multiple characters, so odds are good losing a character doesn't mean being left out of play. There's also a lot of design aimed at making characters harder to permanently kill, but more likely knocked out or injured to be out of a fight - shorter downtime.
2) Fictional Positioning and Story Capital
The bigger impact is how invested you, and the other players are, in the character and the story built up. This is usually the reason most games end up making death less likely and GM's end up fudging damage rolls, etc. (There's also usually a conflict between the goal of making a dramatically appropriate story vs. mechanics that focus on producing strategic choices or simulating a situation).
3) Mechanical Power
Many games have characters get more powerful as you continue play. In later play, it means a new character is often at a massive gap in capability to the surviving characters. A player has lost a lot of time and effort put in, it's not just a setback like losing one's bishop in Chess - it's some thing that might leave you months behind everyone else.
If nothing else, this was probably the biggest impetus behind the classic "raise dead" mechanics- you end up playing as a secondary character for awhile until the party can get enough money to raise the character (usually only a delve or two).
Notice, though, that these issues become "non-issues" under certain play styles or games.
Old school D&D with multiple characters means you're unlikely to get a TPK or knocked out of play before having the ability to escape, story capital exists, but you can shift around your personal investment because you have more than one character, and mechanically, you'll lose some characters but you'll also have some that will survive attrition and have a spread of levels available to you.
Other games, like say, Primetime Adventures don't even have death rules- death can't happen unless the table agrees to make it a conflict, so all of the issues are nicely avoided.
Anyway- that's all orientation. It sounds like you're looking at how to make D&D4E death work for what you need, right? Are you worried in particular about any of those three problems above?
4E makes death pretty hard - there's 3 rounds of saving throws if a character is left unconscious. Each roll has a 55% chance of stabilizing as well - all said an done, you're looking at 90% chance of survival, even without any healing or first aid. So, death shouldn't be too common anyway.
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