Quote from: jhkim;788645The normal way to lose in a wargame is to fail to achieve your goals. The same works perfectly fine in RPGs. Games where you have to eliminate your playing piece when you lose are actually pretty rare.

In my experience, there are a lot of competitive RPG players who prefer low lethality because it means there is more continuity. So if they fail to defeat the supervillain Doctor Hex, then they can adjust and try again with the same characters in a later adventure. Amber is often high competitive and low-lethality, in my experience, as are some superhero games like Champions.

On the other hand, I know lots of non-competitive players who play with high lethality - mainly casual, "beer-and-pretzel" gamers who just like playing together socially to kill some orcs, get eaten by tentacled monstrosities, or whatever. When they get killed, they just laugh about it and roll up a new character.

That's what frp was commonly about when I was introduced in the 1970s. As Mr. Gygax later wrote in one of the AD&D books, it was a passtime, not to be taken very seriously.

Dungeon and wilderness scenarios had a format very easy to have on the shelf, ready for an afternoon's play on short notice. There was a built-in scoring system in the form of "experience" points primarily for securing treasure. As with other point-scoring games, one could compare one's results with previous sessions.

Quote from: Gabriel2;788755Game
noun
1. an amusement or pastime

Notice the number there? That's because words often have multiple, context-sensitive denotations.

Quote from: dragoner;788876The whole one thing though, imo I doubt unless everyone is playing Paranoia.

I don't know about the other '1' voters but I'm not measuring it by frequency of death, just how deadly combat is. It's not a 'meat grinder' if PCs have an opportunity to avoid danger, find less-violent alternatives to complete their goals... don't rush into combats they aren't prepared for.
Random encounters yes, but it's not raining anvils and demons aren't teleporting into the outhouse.

Quote from: Simlasa;788906Random encounters yes, but it's not raining anvils and demons aren't teleporting into the outhouse.

Pardon me while I make some notes for my campaign.

Quote from: Simlasa;788906I don't know about the other '1' voters but I'm not measuring it by frequency of death, just how deadly combat is. It's not a 'meat grinder' if PCs have an opportunity to avoid danger, find less-violent alternatives to complete their goals... don't rush into combats they aren't prepared for.
Random encounters yes, but it's not raining anvils and demons aren't teleporting into the outhouse.

So then what is the number of "raining anvils and demons teleporting into the outhouse"?

Quote from: Simlasa;788906Random encounters yes, but it's not raining anvils and demons aren't teleporting into the outhouse.

Well, it wasn't me , so teleporting demons are the only rational explanation for that stench.

Quote from: dragoner;788916So then what is the number of "raining anvils and demons teleporting into the outhouse"?

I think that's a zero, because no one plays that way... or maybe one game, then no one comes back.

Quote from: Simlasa;788923I think that's a zero, because no one plays that way... or maybe one game, then no one comes back.

There isn't a zero, so if not, it's a one; that's what I'm saying. I won't treat PC's like NPC's, because I'll kill an NPC just to move the story along, no rolling; I'll at least give the players a chance before killing them.

Quote from: dragoner;788933There isn't a zero, so if not, it's a one; that's what I'm saying. I won't treat PC's like NPC's, because I'll kill an NPC just to move the story along, no rolling; I'll at least give the players a chance before killing them.

Whatever. Why not be even more ridiculous and just tell the Players their PCs start off dead... don't even bother rolling them up, they died in a fire before the game started. Go home, no game tonight.
Or even beyond that where we buy the rulebook and immediately set fire to it!
Looks like all us '1' folks are actually playing at around a 6 huh?

Meanwhile, raining anvils is totally playable if you raise the level up high enough and give the PC the 'Dodge Falling Anvils' Feat.

Quote from: Simlasa;788939Looks like all us '1' folks are actually playing at around a 6 huh?

Maybe. I voted five.

What is "losing?"

Games are about decisions.  "Losing" is when you MAKE A BAD DECISION.  In a RPG, I differentiate between the player and the PC.  For the player, the goal is to have adventures.  For the PC the goal may be to find a man, get married, buy an inn, and start a family, but then six orcs with crossbows enter the room.

The character goals are thwarted, but the player goal -- to have adventures -- is achieved.

There has to be a way for the PLAYER to lose.  "I get to have even more adventures with that character" is not losing.  "My bad decision got that character killed" is losing.  There may be other modes of losing, but to be losing, it CANNOT ADD FUN TO THE GAME.  Losing MUST by its very ontological nature be less fun than winning, or it is not losing.  Losing has to be an end condition that you wish to avoid.

Note that in an RPG, losing does not equal elimination from the campaign.  This is where it differs from other wargames campaigns, for instance the first WW2 campaign I was ever in where I was told "If you lose all your tanks, you are out."

"Back in the day" (Early 80's) in these parts we had a certain macho fatalism. If you died, but went out in a way that was funny, or bad-ass, or made for a good story, we saw it as a kind of "Winning".

If the player's goal is to have fun then dying can be as much as much "winning" as surviving.

Quote from: Simlasa;788906I don't know about the other '1' voters but I'm not measuring it by frequency of death, just how deadly combat is. It's not a 'meat grinder' if PCs have an opportunity to avoid danger, find less-violent alternatives to complete their goals... don't rush into combats they aren't prepared for.
Random encounters yes, but it's not raining anvils and demons aren't teleporting into the outhouse.

Yeah, I'm not about frequency. Which would also go against my view on player agency, too. There's no "allotted mortal peril counters per session." I just don't pull my punches if you deliberately bite off more than you can chew — and deliberate includes blithely wandering about in ignorance.

Yeah, the poll isn't so much about frequency of PC mortality than about how much the GM shields the PC from death as a result of their actions and the mechanics.

Of course the two probably bear some correlation.