Quote from: Aglondir on March 27, 2023, 06:00:36 PM
Pundit,

Great video. Looks like Meatball likes the Gonzo book! (10:18)

She was endorsing it!

Quote from: Rhymer88 on March 28, 2023, 04:11:22 AM
One thing you touch upon is the absurd tendency nowadays to write huge backstories for first-level characters. It's very funny when such characters get killed off soon thereafter.

Ironically, what made "huge backstories" a thing was largely that people were no longer playing long-term campaigns.  When players know their character has no future, they want to give him a more impressive (and usually ridiculous) past.

Spread the word, share the video!

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 28, 2023, 06:28:18 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on March 28, 2023, 06:21:58 AM
I've always absolutely hated how a lot of RPG players just hate dying. I can name many times I've had a situation where a PC rolls were bad and they got killed by a kobald or a goblin or something like that. And they start blaming me as the GM. I'm not an adversarial GM. I'm not actively trying to kill the players but I am trying to stress challenge and that death can happen. But so many people watch Critical Role and just see RPGs as "a collaborative storytelling exercise" where they are the stars and constantly need "super awesome" moments where they do "super awesome" things. In an RPG what happens is the story evolves from what the players do. But so many of these people want to force their story onto the game and have it go exactly like they want in their heads.

A big problem here is that having your character die in an act of heroic self-sacrifice which saves everyone else IS a "super awesome" moment where they did "super awesome" things. The dipshits just don't understand that.

In my Star Adventurer (Star Wars) campaign, we recently had an amusing situation where an Imperial Inquisitor found the group and the two force-user characters were each tripping over themselves with trying to be the one who heroically sacrificed themselves to let the other escape.

Quote from: Festus on March 28, 2023, 06:52:30 PM
I think there's a strong "kids these days" factor at play here. I remember people in the 80s losing their minds when their characters died. But we were all kids, and everything seemed like a bigger deal than it looks now in retrospect. 5e brought a ton of new people to the hobby, specifically *young* people. And the game itself is published by a *toy* company keen to attract younger players.

The majority of D&D 5e players are Millennials.
It's one thing to be a 15 year old who absolutely freaks out when their character dies. It's another entirely when it's a 37 year old who's so emotionally stunted as to want to declare that DMs everywhere (not just in their own games, in all games) should not be allowed to kill any PC without "player consent" or else they're a Nazi Trump Supporter.

Quote from: THE_Leopold on March 29, 2023, 10:53:48 AM
Diversity and Dragon brings the reciepts like a qualified investigative jurnalist:

Therefore I don't need to.

Quote from: Festus on March 29, 2023, 06:04:42 PM

Quote from: blackstone on March 29, 2023, 02:33:24 PM

Quote from: multiarms on March 29, 2023, 09:06:22 AM
Is there a link to a source of J. Scott G or someone else actually saying that PC death without player consent is a hate crime? Because if not, then this video is just ranting against a straw man.

RPGPundit won't link to the YOuTube channel, due to the fact that the douche bag in question doesn't need any more traction to his channel. I'm with RPGPundit on this one. As the English say, he's a nutter.

That douchebag's YT traffic is in the dozens. Pundit even mentioning him by name gives this guy and his channel more visibility than anything he could do on his own. Honestly it's kind of embarrassing that Pundit paid him any mind at all. But the nutter certainly served as a convenient straw man for a rant about players these days. Kinda feels like picking on a kid who rides the short bus to school though.

As I think I pointed out in my video, Garybay was convenient, but he is definitely NOT alone in this view. A lot of the storygame crowd have made this same argument repeatedly, about "consent" for PCs to die.

Quote from: Festus on March 31, 2023, 12:55:36 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 30, 2023, 10:25:28 PM

Quote from: Festus on March 30, 2023, 09:11:35 PM
I see a whole lot of "wow, that's a crazy attitude" combined with "luckily I haven't had to deal with that."

Maybe it's not really that big of a problem.

"It'll stay in the universities guys!"

Yeah, no, that's not how these lunatics operate. If you play at conventions, LFGS or online you'll soon see this shit start creeping in. Just like with the "safety tools", we also had one or two people claiming it wasn't "that big of a problem".

So what are you going to do about it? Get Congress to pass a law mandating 20% more character death? Form a hit squad to hunt down soft DMs? Or just stoke each other's outrage in a circle jerk echo chamber?

I tried 5e for awhile and ditched it because I wanted a game with more risk. No one is going to tell me how I should play.

But here's the thing: if no one gets to tell me how to play, then I don't get to tell someone else how they should play. That's how freedom works.

Until they DO tell you how to play, at a convention.
Or at a gaming store.
Or online in virtual table top.

Or by designing products that have these elements built in.

Or by grooming a generation of children who will then physically assault you if you don't play D&D the "diverse" way.

Or by eventually passing laws where something you say in your own home could be reported to the FBI and they arrest you for Hate Speech.

At what point in the slippery slope are you going to realize that saying "stop" to a gang of psychopaths is probably a good idea?

Quote from: RPGPundit on April 01, 2023, 01:58:52 PM
It's one thing to be a 15 year old who absolutely freaks out when their character dies. It's another entirely when it's a 37 year old who's so emotionally stunted as to want to declare that DMs everywhere (not just in their own games, in all games) should not be allowed to kill any PC without "player consent" or else they're a Nazi Trump Supporter.

Quote from: RPGPundit on April 01, 2023, 02:04:55 PM
As I think I pointed out in my video, Garybay was convenient, but he is definitely NOT alone in this view. A lot of the storygame crowd have made this same argument repeatedly, about "consent" for PCs to die.

I've been running and playing games at SF Bay Area conventions for about twenty years. In that time, I recall two significant incidents:

One was in a original series Star Trek game using the HERO System. I gave out character sheets, and there wasn't any phasers or other equipment on the sheets. One player demanded, and I said that phasers weren't personal equipment, and this being original series, phasers were always one-shot-one-kill (or unconsciousness if set on stun). He argued for a few minutes that they needed to be written up as powers, then walked out of the game.

Another was in a multi-GM Call of Cthulhu event, where PCs jumped between worlds and the players were shifted between games. There got to be an in-character argument between PCs, and at some point, one of the players got upset at the raised voices to the point that they stopped the game and got the con staff involved.

---

The second would match with your stereotypes of sensitive snowflake -- but my point is that it's rare even in what presumably is the wokest corner of gaming.

Lots of story games are dark and/or horrific - and many are built with PC death assumed, like Fiasco, The Mountain Witch, etc. For example, I've run several games of the horror story game Bluebeard's Bride at local conventions. For that, I did use an X card since it is written into the rules. However, I still had several PC deaths in my runs. In theory, the players could have stopped that by touching the X card, but they didn't.

To be clear - people like Garibay exist, and I'm on your side as far as PC death being part of fun games, having played and run many fun Call of Cthulhu games along with other games. I just feel like you're raging against people who would otherwise be on your side.

House rules for 5E

(hat tip: RPG Pub)

Putting the character in mortal danger is consenting for the character to die if the roll turn out that way. This whole mess is about freedom from consequences. If the player was not willing to let the character die, the character should have stayed back in town and tried to avoid disease instead of going on a dangerous journey to a dungeon full of deadly traps, lethal monsters, and who knows what other nasties. Some poor excuses for players only want selfish wish fulfillment and ego padding. That it is a game, and loosing at the game is the stake of winning it.

Greetings!

*SIGH* I sometimes wonder, where the Hell do these kinds of narcissistic, entitled crybaby players come from? I now that they exist, *somewhere out there*--certainly online, Twitter, and so on, but where in the real world? Perhaps I have met them ace to ace, but didn't know it otherwise? In game groups at home and with friends--for years now--I have never really encountered these kinds of players. Even at game store game groups, and at conventions I have been to--I can't say I have encountered these terrible people. Maybe a handful, years ago, over the years.

I always tell my players, that their characters live in a harsh, brutal world, where they can easily die a grim and savage death, whether they are killed by a sword, or torn apart and eaten by some terrible monster, death is always near, whether from bad luck or their own stupidity or poor judgment.

In decades of playing, I can probably count on one hand how many players I have encountered--face to face--that didn't or couldn't seem to comprehend and accept that reality of the game campaign.

Perhaps strangely, probably the absolute easiest people that understood these simple dynamics were when I taught my nieces how to pay D&D. They were 11 and 9 years old at the time. Likewise, my brother-in-law's two nephews, and a niece--all three were under the age of 14 at the time when he and I introduced D&D to them.

The kids were all absolutely bloodthirsty savages! They all exalted cheerfully--and competitively--in slaughtering their enemies and rivals, and howled in dramatic anguish and laughter when their characters died in some horrifying manner. In every such occasion, they were chomping at the bit to roll up new characters to get back into the action! On some occasions, some of them literally went through rolling up a new character every game session, usually becoming wiser players after losing two or three characters in rapid and brutal succession. Every step of the way though, was hysterically fun and an absolute blast. These experiences were similar when the nieces and nephews also invited some of their friends over to join our games. They would all compete against each other, shouting and laughing, regaling each other with the details of how their characters died from stupidity, or their own poor judgment, bad luck, or also when they simply died heroically fighting against the evil monsters! It has ways been exciting, thrilling, and fun to them.

I find it pretty fucking sad that 10 and 12 year old kids embrace RPG's with more fun, common sense, and maturity than these alleged "adults" that everyone talks about.

On that note, as well, I have played with dozens of kids--and not one of them acted like these brain-damaged, pathetic gamers people talk about that cry and whine about their characters dying. I can think of one 10-year of girl that cried when she lost one character, briefly, though she was also eager to roll up new characters and get her revenge! She thus recovered in good form in less than an hour, and proceeded on being stronger and even more belligerent and ready for violence!

Normal gamers shouldn't play with these pathetic, mentally-ill narcissists. Swiftly and ruthlessly reject them whenever they are encountered.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark, some ideas are so stupid that a normal person would never even consider them.  To think something--or more accurately, to believe something--that stupid, a person must be "educated" into it first.  When you find a group that is that willfully stupid, you'll find behind them someone who taught them to be that way.

Yeah, I've had a fair share of pre-teen to young teen players, and never found one that way. Now, I did have some that got a little upset about losing a character, or even having something bad happen to a character.  But it was the same way they would have reacted to something happening to a character they liked in a book or film.  They were emotionally invested, but it wasn't something that they considered out of line.

I always tell my players to have a backup character ready because there's a good chance that their character will die.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 01, 2023, 11:06:31 PM
House rules for 5E

(hat tip: RPG Pub)

Death at 0hp had already been abandoned by AD&D1e for -10 (roughly twice the starting hp of a fighter; and with 1 minute rounds equated to bleeding out over 1-10 minutes).

I guess all those old school players were whining too much when their characters died so Gygax changed it to be more lenient. 

The idea that this is some new phenomenon is laughable.

When I saw the video was replying to J. Scott Garibay, I knew not to get worked up about it.

He just stirs up shit to get get views.  Gamer's should instead of addressing him should ignore him so he doesn't get the attention he deserves.

J. Scott Garibay doesn't have a clue about what he is talking.