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Post by RudeAlert on Jun 20, 2017 11:24:48 GMT -8
I totally agree that discussing with the group if PC death (1) can happen, (2) how permanent it is (magic/clones/etc), and (3) if it will only come at "dramatically appropriate" times or could happen in any combat/conflict. My personal feelings is to go the more "realistic" route and let death happen if the dice fall that way. I consider RPGs their own thing, and am not trying to be a book or movie, so the whole idea of "heroes only die in epic ways" is not something I subscribe to.* The great thing about RPGs is that you don't know what the dice are going to do, and letting that random element impact the story can lead to some great stories... BUT, the trick is that the GM and players need to be on the same page, and everyone be OK with loss and playing out that that means to them. If everyone is just going to gripe or be bummed out, then there isn't likely to be any great roleplay gained. *Bold added for emphasis. (Pronounced emph-ASS-iss) This bit is a big topic on which I strongly disagree with the hosts. They have made frequent comparisons between RPGs and novels/movies/TV shows and whatever, but while it is true that there are significant similarities between RPGs and these other forms of storytelling, there is one very important distinction: All the other forms of storytelling are scripted and static, RPGs aren't (not usually anyway). That makes a big difference, the conventions of novel-writing don't all apply to writing a movie script or a play or a TV show, likewise the conventions of writing a movie script don't all apply to writing a novel or a play or a TV show, and so on. The point is that while all these forms of storytelling share many features, they are nonetheless all distinct and unique in their own ways. To equate RPGs to any form of scripted fiction is to ignore the sheer flexibility and openness of RPGs. There are certain requirements in scripted fictions that are not necessarily present in RPGs. In a scripted, finite story, it makes sense to have to hit certain beats and plot points in a certain way, but that doesn't have to apply to RPGs. Personally, I have very little interest left in scripted fiction (TV, movies, novels) because they kind of all feel the same in the end. RPGs however, offer me so many other possibilities. The possibility of failure (and character death) for instance, that's a story you rarely see in scripted fiction outside of Game of Thrones (and even that doesn't seem to have much of that left).
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2017 11:44:30 GMT -8
I totally agree that discussing with the group if PC death (1) can happen, (2) how permanent it is (magic/clones/etc), and (3) if it will only come at "dramatically appropriate" times or could happen in any combat/conflict. My personal feelings is to go the more "realistic" route and let death happen if the dice fall that way. I consider RPGs their own thing, and am not trying to be a book or movie, so the whole idea of "heroes only die in epic ways" is not something I subscribe to.* The great thing about RPGs is that you don't know what the dice are going to do, and letting that random element impact the story can lead to some great stories... BUT, the trick is that the GM and players need to be on the same page, and everyone be OK with loss and playing out that that means to them. If everyone is just going to gripe or be bummed out, then there isn't likely to be any great roleplay gained. *Bold added for emphasis. (Pronounced emph-ASS-iss) This bit is a big topic on which I strongly disagree with the hosts. They have made frequent comparisons between RPGs and novels/movies/TV shows and whatever, but while it is true that there are significant similarities between RPGs and these other forms of storytelling, there is one very important distinction: All the other forms of storytelling are scripted and static, RPGs aren't (not usually anyway). That makes a big difference, the conventions of novel-writing don't all apply to writing a movie script or a play or a TV show, likewise the conventions of writing a movie script don't all apply to writing a novel or a play or a TV show, and so on. The point is that while all these forms of storytelling share many features, they are nonetheless all distinct and unique in their own ways. To equate RPGs to any form of scripted fiction is to ignore the sheer flexibility and openness of RPGs. There are certain requirements in scripted fictions that are not necessarily present in RPGs. In a scripted, finite story, it makes sense to have to hit certain beats and plot points in a certain way, but that doesn't have to apply to RPGs. Personally, I have very little interest left in scripted fiction (TV, movies, novels) because they kind of all feel the same in the end. RPGs however, offer me so many other possibilities. The possibility of failure (and character death) for instance, that's a story you rarely see in scripted fiction outside of Game of Thrones (and even that doesn't seem to have much of that left). Umm, no? Character death is a thing in a lot of movies, just not for the 'main' characters. There is a strong reason for this, and it is the same as in rpg's. Simply put, Time invested correlates to the need for the character to stay alive. No one cares if a mook dies. We don't know him, we don't care about him. It's also an empty death. In order for death to have an impact, we need to be invested in that character. RPG's create an investment before the characters ever speak a line of dialogue by forcing the players to make them. The longer and more involved the creation, the higher the investment. This gives meaning to death (for most systems that have a normal amount of character creation) while also giving reason for the character to not die at every turn. Why is that? Because we won't invest the same amount of emotion or time through multiple deaths. Even people who love creating characters get this kind of fatigue after the loss of several characters. As players we aren't only the audience, but the actors. And just like actors in Game of Thrones, most of us want our characters to live. Maybe there is some other role we want to do from time to time, but on the whole we don't want to bounce around without any control over our parts. So while rpg's aren't movies or books, they act similarly for a lot of the same reasons. The ability to die like a bitch at random is not productive unless a game has almost no investment in that character/death. Kobald's ate my baby allows you to make a character in seconds. Thus they can die quickly with little drawback. Not so in more traditional games.
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sdJasper
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 30
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, Fudge, PDQ
Currently Running: GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars
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Post by sdJasper on Jun 20, 2017 13:08:46 GMT -8
As players we aren't only the audience, but the actors. And just like actors in Game of Thrones, most of us want our characters to live. Maybe there is some other role we want to do from time to time, but on the whole we don't want to bounce around without any control over our parts. So while rpg's aren't movies or books, they act similarly for a lot of the same reasons. The ability to die like a bitch at random is not productive unless a game has almost no investment in that character/death. Kobald's ate my baby allows you to make a character in seconds. Thus they can die quickly with little drawback. Not so in more traditional games. And that's where I disagree. A lot of drama and character development (for the other PCs) can come out of a random death. I've had characters die to random encounters that still are talked about. I've had whole campaigns change focus because of a random character death! Those campaign turns and character development would never have happened if I (as GM) prevented character death. I would have denied some of the most awesome campaign developments to have ever happened. And that is one of my pet peeves as a GM... I don't want to tell MY story... I don't want to just guide PCs through a "heroes always win" scenario... I want the player's choices and the chances they take (rolling dice) to matter! And that's the story I want to be a part of.
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Post by lowkeyoh on Jun 20, 2017 15:27:44 GMT -8
This post contains comics spoilers from 1988 and Game of Throne Spoilers from 1996 and GoT TV spoilers from 2011. If that bothers you, go read New Mutants and Game of Thrones. What are you waiting for? One of the most memorable deaths in comics is a character who dies in a random encounter. His actual death isn't even on screen. His team mates don't even realize it until after the fight. Death is dramatic. It has long running implications, even if it's a 'random' one. Doug Ramsey's death haunts the characters for over two decades. It was a major motivating force for Magik in Inferno and a primary cause for Magneto to stop being the Headmaster of the Xavier school and return to villainy. And who were they fighting? Surly it was some cosmic evil! No wait, it was the Ani-Mator, that super important villain who's only been in six issues of comics in forty years. Death is dramatic. Be it a large heroic sacrifice, a twist of fate against a long term foe, or thugs on the road. They all give your story a different tone, but they are all dramatic. They all change the story in ways that only character death can. It boggles my mind that @stevensw tries to use Game of Thrones, a series that REGULARLY kills beloved and recurring characters to further the drama. Main characters. If the ONLY thing you are attached to in a campaign is your own character, then death is going to suck. But it also sounds like you're not very involved in said campaign. When I read Game of Thrones I don't just care about Ned Stark. I don't throw the book across the room when he dies. I'm invested in the other characters, the metaplot, the setting. Similarly when my Bardic Inquisitor got got playing Strange Aeons, it was great for the story. There were other characters I cared about that I could play, and it only increased the horror and paranoia for the entire table. It was a net positive for the story. It sucks that the character that I spent a while making is gone, but he's not gone forever. I can always play that concept in another game. I can always recreate him later and play him in a different setting. Death is dramatic. It's fine to want a low drama game that's fine, but that doesn't inherently mean that death is something to be avoided to preserve fun.
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Post by RudeAlert on Jun 20, 2017 15:35:52 GMT -8
As players we aren't only the audience, but the actors. And just like actors in Game of Thrones, most of us want our characters to live. Maybe there is some other role we want to do from time to time, but on the whole we don't want to bounce around without any control over our parts. So while rpg's aren't movies or books, they act similarly for a lot of the same reasons. The ability to die like a bitch at random is not productive unless a game has almost no investment in that character/death. Kobald's ate my baby allows you to make a character in seconds. Thus they can die quickly with little drawback. Not so in more traditional games. And that's where I disagree. A lot of drama and character development (for the other PCs) can come out of a random death. I've had characters die to random encounters that still are talked about. I've had whole campaigns change focus because of a random character death! Those campaign turns and character development would never have happened if I (as GM) prevented character death. I would have denied some of the most awesome campaign developments to have ever happened. And that is one of my pet peeves as a GM... I don't want to tell MY story... I don't want to just guide PCs through a "heroes always win" scenario... I want the player's choices and the chances they take (rolling dice) to matter! And that's the story I want to be a part of. Exactly! There's no way to predict what is going to happen in a game as a result of any given GM decision. Even if the GM is trying to maximize enjoyment or drama or some sort of "good" narrative, there's no way to truly know that any decision will actually accomplish that goal. So for me, I prefer to let things unfold and see what happens, THAT'S the story, not something planned or directed by the GM, however good their intentions may be. For me the risk of failure is what makes success meaningful, the risk of defeat is what makes victory meaningful, even the risk of occasional stagnation or dead ends are what make drama and action meaningful. If everything is always geared toward maximum narrative progress and drama, then that just becomes the norm and kind repetitive. As a player and a GM I want players (myself included) to sometimes fail, be defeated, waste time on a red trout (fuck herring!), or face dead-ends, because those are the things that provide contrast to all the big dramatic moments, successes, and victories. If everything only serves to move the "story" forward at all cost, then forward movement becomes expected and the norm, and thus kinda just mundane. If success and progress are to have any value, then failure and stagnation must be allowed to happen. Obviously (since I know someone is bound to blow my words way out of proportion), no game should be allowed to become nothing but a string of failures, setbacks, dead-ends, and stagnation, but these things should be allowed to happen.
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 20, 2017 15:44:00 GMT -8
Death is dramatic. It's fine to want a low drama game that's fine, but that doesn't inherently mean that death is something to be avoided to preserve fun. Dude. That is a cheap shot. Not to mention seriously disingenuous. Death CAN be dramatic. It's not a given, however that it will be. Similarly, just because you avoid death in your game doesn't mean you don't want drama. It just means you don't want THAT drama. There's plenty of high drama stories where not a single person dies or even comes close to death.
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Post by lowkeyoh on Jun 20, 2017 15:54:58 GMT -8
Death is dramatic. It's fine to want a low drama game that's fine, but that doesn't inherently mean that death is something to be avoided to preserve fun. Dude. That is a cheap shot. Not to mention seriously disingenuous. Death CAN be dramatic. It's not a given, however that it will be. Similarly, just because you avoid death in your game doesn't mean you don't want drama. It just means you don't want THAT drama. There's plenty of high drama stories where not a single person dies or even comes close to death. My bad. I didn't mean to imply that no death = no drama. What I meant was that it's completely fine to want a game without the drama and complication of character death. Because you're right, there are other ways to include drama in a game. If you want a high political drama game with very little chance of characters dying, rock on. If you want a game where everyone's the big damn heroes that defeat the big damn villain, rock on. I've played in those games. I love those games. But just because your style is to preserve characters doesn't mean that death is something that needs to be avoided. Even Harry Potter had characters die even before the climactic conflict. There can be fun had in character death. Cutting yourself off from that fun out from a preservationist instinct of 'my character dies = I lose' doesn't let anyone experience a dramatic funeral and eulogy scene or a hunt for revenge. Which again, if that's not your thing, that's fine. But death usually results in some level of drama and isn't always a bad thing.
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 20, 2017 15:56:02 GMT -8
That I can get behind.
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sbloyd
Supporter
WHAT! A human in a Precursor service vehicle?!
Posts: 2,762
Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller; Dresden; Mage
Favorite Species of Monkey: Goddamnit, Curious George is a CHIMP not a monkey! Stop teaching my daughter improper classification!
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Post by sbloyd on Jun 20, 2017 16:29:34 GMT -8
On the flipside, sometimes you get a GM that thinks killing off a PC or two is easymode for EXTRA DRAMA!
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Post by lowkeyoh on Jun 20, 2017 16:30:42 GMT -8
The more players I kill, THE MORE I'M WINNING
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2017 17:34:22 GMT -8
I think the key is being consistent and the game world being true to its own rules.
Some games, you have a plan for a character. Sometimes, you want to go from young Conan on the Wheel, to thief Conan, to King Conan. Other times... eh.
The best recent character death I had was in SW. It was in a low power supers game. Supers had vanished from the world largely, but were slowly creeping back in. It was also mixed with 1980s espionage. The party included an agrophobic techie, John Steed and Emma Peele, and I was basically a de-powered Superman. I'm not sure what exactly happened other than we went to sabotage something, and one of the evil New Supers showed up. I called up my last bit of Superman powers to, on my action, grapple the mutant and hold him inside the building as it blew up with everyone fleeing. It really had an effect on the table, on the GM and his plans - so many 'Oh man, I'm so sorry about killing your guy off!' - but my response was 'This was INCREDIBLE! Sure it was the first death really of any of the games we've played in together for years (barring D&D where you die, and it's easier to make a new PC), but... it was epic, it was heroic, and it was my character going out, on his terms, as Superman, rather than dying at an old age, weak and a shadow of himself.'
Good times
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Jun 20, 2017 21:10:18 GMT -8
I try not to have a plan for my characters any more. I plan to "play to find out". As a player though, I am ready for my PCs to die, and septite many of them having "mundane" rather than heroic deaths, I am very happy with what each death added to the story.
For example, back in first edition Warhammer, my mythic Elf hero succumbed to a snotling, admittedly, there were fundreds of snotlings, and I was holding the line so other players could escape. It was a small death for a great character, but one we all remember. I have had one PC die in his bed, poisoned and then stabbed by another PC. Dying in your own shit is no a way any PC would want to do, but it was dramatic.
Conversely, in a SoIaF (GoT) game I'm playing, the GM has fudged dice (I believe) more than once to save my character. The first time, I lost my cock and balls in battle instead. Which was OK, lead to a good story thread about opening a brothel, and looking for a bastard to call my son. But the last couple of times ... meh ... I'd have preferred to die.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2017 0:51:48 GMT -8
As players we aren't only the audience, but the actors. And just like actors in Game of Thrones, most of us want our characters to live. Maybe there is some other role we want to do from time to time, but on the whole we don't want to bounce around without any control over our parts. So while rpg's aren't movies or books, they act similarly for a lot of the same reasons. The ability to die like a bitch at random is not productive unless a game has almost no investment in that character/death. Kobald's ate my baby allows you to make a character in seconds. Thus they can die quickly with little drawback. Not so in more traditional games. And that's where I disagree. A lot of drama and character development (for the other PCs) can come out of a random death. I've had characters die to random encounters that still are talked about. I've had whole campaigns change focus because of a random character death! Those campaign turns and character development would never have happened if I (as GM) prevented character death. I would have denied some of the most awesome campaign developments to have ever happened. And that is one of my pet peeves as a GM... I don't want to tell MY story... I don't want to just guide PCs through a "heroes always win" scenario... I want the player's choices and the chances they take (rolling dice) to matter! And that's the story I want to be a part of. I have a question for you: What is a random encounter from the perspective of the players? I'll tell you my answer: there is no such thing. How you choose to generate encounters does not matter. Dying like a bitch at random does not refer to a type of encounter, but how the system functions. "Roll to climb the stairs. You fail, fall down the stairs, and now you are dead." If you think I'm writing a backstory after that kind of event, you got another thing coming. Good games and game masters know when death or serious injury should be on the line, and even then they use systems that minimize the chance of an outlying result occurring. Most systems I've seen use a dice pool, a bell curve distribution, or some other method of controlling outcomes (wild dice, fate points, spending pool points, etc). These mechanics curb ridiculous outcomes. A mugging might be a 'random' encounter, but it's still an important event in the game to the audience (the players). No one told them that you decided to roll on a chart. Even if you did tell them, that is usually based on something. This neighborhood is dangerous, so there is a chance you get mugged when walking through it. The fact that you rolled to see if it happened or not doesn't really make it random. Even the basic D&D 'wandering monster' encounters aren't really random. They happen as a response to the character's remaining in a dangerous area. Would we call a session random if the GM used charts to come up with the premise for it? No. Then why do we keep insisting that encounters are random? They're not. Unplanned? Not even. That chart came from somewhere. 'Random' combats carry as much weight as any other combat. There is danger inherent in it because of the fighting. If that wasn't the case then it wouldn't even be an encounter, it would be a narration speed bump.
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TheGerkuman
Apprentice Douchebag
Why you no problem make
Posts: 76
Preferred Game Systems: Any variety of D&D or WFRP 2e.
Currently Playing: Anything I can find
Currently Running: I haven't run in a long time. Either sort.
Favorite Species of Monkey: Capuchin or Spider.
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Post by TheGerkuman on Jun 21, 2017 2:45:12 GMT -8
My first character died within 2 sessions and it was so cool I submitted it in an email to the podcast. I've also died frustratingly and anticlimacticaly.
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Post by chronovore on Jun 21, 2017 4:03:25 GMT -8
One expressed opinion by many during the podcast is the one to which I also subscribe: keep the Players in fear of PC death, but try to be their advocate when character loss is a possibility. Keep them engaged and immersed, and the idea of character death is a compelling force. It's perhaps even more critical in the types of worlds I run because (for personal reasons) resurrection is unknown.
This last weekend, I was happy to host some friends here in Osaka who had been in my college GURPS game. We spoke at length about what worked in the game, and what didn't. I mentioned that I still felt bad about killing one of the characters, because I'd rolled in the open, declared all the enemies' actions, and if I'd fudged the dice rolls or results, it would have cast a shadow across the campaign, making all the players reconsider the costs, and second guess whether or not they were being treated fairly. I couldn't take it back.
It ended up being a major touchstone for the campaign. The player was going to take time off to IRL travel, and she said she had "known" something was going to happen to her character that evening. She cried, I nearly cried, and we all felt the game world was sadder, but also that much more cemented in our heads as a place with consequences.
I'm willing to let PCs die, and will give players special consideration if they have their character go out in some special way. I have told them that I won't kill outright anyone unless they're doing something stupid. I succeeded most of the time, but not perfectly.
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