Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;833552What about killing the party and letting a new party pick up where they left off? Is that bad?

Wizardry I (a video game dungeon crawler RPG) was pretty awesome for this. If you got TPKed, and if you could make it back to where your party died, then you could find some of your character's old gear back with a percentage of it looted by monster or other adventurers.

Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

It depends.

Consequences that make the character unpalatable to play are very similar in effect to death. In both cases, the character is no longer in play. Death could well be a better outcome from the perspective of player or PC if it makes for a more satisfactory ending.

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

I would also have to go with a 'that depends'.  A lot of the time, losing a limb DOES mean retirement for the character.  I don't know of any Rogue type or Man At Arms that can keep adventuring without a leg, for example.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833624I would also have to go with a 'that depends'.  A lot of the time, losing a limb DOES mean retirement for the character.  I don't know of any Rogue type or Man At Arms that can keep adventuring without a leg, for example.

Apparently it can work if you are a pirate. Though being able to cook or navigate would help since you aren't going to be climbing any rigging no more.

Quote from: Bren;833635Apparently it can work if you are a pirate. Though being able to cook or navigate would help since you aren't going to be climbing any rigging no more.

Fair point, if you've lost a leg just at the knee, I was thinking closer to the hip, myself.  Full limb removal, for example, that makes it hard to keep 'adventuring'.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;833512And they then backslid in Rise of Tiamat. In this WOTC has taken a quite explicit approach to not caring about PC death. They combine the DM stacking the deck against the party with directives to not go easy and to kill them ... and then follow it up, in several places, with "but its ok if they die or even if there is a TPK. The Council will raise them."

This is the WORST possible outcome. Killing the party AND making it meaningless. Why even try?

But again even the Council exists only if the DM allows it. and what if the PCs get killed way out in the boonies where the Council couldnt possibly be? Lots of factors can make even those sorts of safety nets useless.

You could have a raise dead temple in every town and its going to be useless if you cant get the body back to raise it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833637Fair point, if you've lost a leg just at the knee, I was thinking closer to the hip, myself.  Full limb removal, for example, that makes it hard to keep 'adventuring'.

Well we did have a Call of Cthulhu character in a wheelchair after his spine was injured making him a paraplegic. He was mostly restricted to office work, coordination, and mundane research, but that works a lot better in CoC than it would in fantasy or pre-modern games.

And your point is well taken though that losing a limb may make the character unfun to play for the player. Maybe they want a PC who can swing from the rigging and have dashing sword fights like Captain Blood not one who can only hobble around on a crutch and like Long John Silver. Similarly maybe they want to play a handsome or beautiful PC not one  whose face is a hideous travesty forcing them to wear a mask like the Phantom of the Opera.

I lost two characters to getting killed and then reincarnated. The first was the oft mentioned otter incident and had I not been killed at the end I'd have retired the character. Effectively dead. And the other being the gnoll whom I did retire after we finished the adventure.

In Gamma World we had more than a few PCs by the end either missing parts totally, or with cybernetic or mutational replacements.

Quote from: Nexus;833605Speaking from a player perspective, do you prefer death or other consequences? What about lasting permanent injury? Is it a binary choice or a range like being scarred is all right but losing a limb will likely make you retire the character anyway?

I prefer what the (detailed realistic tactical) combat system gives me, because that's the game I signed up to play, and if the GM is going to fudge things, I'd rather not pretend to be playing a game with rules with actual risks of consequences.

Then, I roleplay the consequences. If my character is maimed, I figure out what he'd do about that, whether it mean retiring or coping or arranging revenge or whatever. If I think the character is becoming something I don't want to roleplay, I talk to the GM about having the character become an NPC.

What I don't like playing, are games with trivial healing and trivial reincarnation/resurrection. I hear about characters getting repeatedly killed and brought back each combat round in D&D 5e and think OMG no. I play CRPG's where they make it easy to die but then just reload your last save and expect you to replay where you died until you live, and I stop playing. Those CRPGs especially seem SO pointless. "Yay I won! I beat the game!" "How many times did you die and savescum?" "I dunno. Hundreds? It doesn't even keep count." Uh, great. Seems better to just watch a walkthrough on YouTube. Or just mourn the hours of wasted gamedev and gameplay time and ignore. ;-)

I think one division among players is whether "Character X is no longer fun to play" means the game is not fun (the criteria for X getting retired being another division).

There might be a "generation" weighting here. In the 1970s, it seemed to me that most players came to D&D and such with only the assumptions familiar from countless other games: that pieces might meet various fates, and finding out what happened was the fun, and one could keep playing indefinitely regardless. The sense of having "lost a match" was just what made the "wins" exciting.

Quote from: Phillip;833847In the 1970s, it seemed to me that most players came to D&D and such with only the assumptions familiar from countless other games: that pieces might meet various fates, and finding out what happened was the fun, and one could keep playing indefinitely regardless.

Also, videogames of that era were generally of the GAME OVER variety where you maybe got three tries and then death... no starting up from a save spot with minimal/no consequences.

Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

Is it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

For me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes which a real person would have a 0.1% chance of surviving, and most audiences just take it and say, "cool" while I'm thinking "OMG they made The Hobbit into Mario Brothers, and they would have all died in that fall, and if not, been killed 100 times before making it out of the goblin caves, if they were really like that."

Yeah, I think modern 'action' movies also add to the expectations.
I'm thinking Errol Flynn level stunts and they're thinking Jason Statham... even though Errol Flynn is long before my time it's what I grew up with.

The rubber hobbits bouncing down to goblin town did strain my suspension of disbelief quite a bit. Live action cartoon.

Quote from: Skarg;833851Hmm, yes... but I wonder where the expectation to not risk death or loss comes from?

I think one clear source is the demographic attracted primarily by the prospect of "living the story," which may involve a character's death, but only at a dramatically appropriate point.

In other words, people want not so much to explore Barsoom as to be John Carter, and that not as he might see himself (which seems already beyond normal longevity) but as they see him in the books: certainly triumphant in the end, however many implausibilities that may entail.

When they make up figures of their own, these come likewise with some conception (however germinal) of a saga.

QuoteIs it just that game companies have pandered to crybabies enough for it to become a standard feature and box which people tend not to break out of?

The plotted scenario is easy to write, but I think demand-side expectations arose and arise independently of commercial supply -- and are also shaped by it.

QuoteFor me, it's also akin to all the action films where even characters who have no particular survival skills are shown (often with CGI physics-bending magic) to do amazing gymnastic dodges and physical miracles to survive over-the-top eye-candy danger scenes which a real person would have a 0.1% chance of surviving, and most audiences just take it and say, "cool" while I'm thinking "OMG they made The Hobbit into Mario Brothers, and they would have all died in that fall, and if not, been killed 100 times before making it out of the goblin caves, if they were really like that."