Quote from: Trinculoisdead;1112001I've played a lot of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a little bit of Maze Rats, and ran my first session of the Whitehack tonight. In all of them, character death happens pretty often and unpredictably. In the game tonight one of my players got pretty upset after their 1st level warrior-type character was one-shot by the first monster they fought in the dungeon. He was down to 4 HP out of 6, and the monsters were rolling d6s. Of course I rolled a 6 on my first attack. One failed save later and whoop he was dead. We had to end the game there. He threw a bit of a fit. Clearly these games are not a good match for him, or I'm doing something completely wrong.

So yeah, in these high-lethality games, how do you as players or GMs deal with characters dying off so much? Does it disrupt the continuity of your game? Is it something that takes getting used to? Is there anything you can do as a GM to make it more fun or acceptable to the players? Or is total-buy-in the only way for these games to work? Is this even fun?

IME it can be fun. For a while. It runs the risk of becoming arbitarily deadly, which is amusing the first few times, but gets old quick.

Once a character gets past 1st level, I think lethality drops significantly. When I was running DCC, I had a lot of characters die in the funnel, but when they got to about 2nd-3rd level, I don't think we ever had a character death after that.

I run Dark Sun pretty lethal, 0 HP = dead. No saves or negative HPs or anything like that. Notably Dark Sun had the character tree rule where you make up 4 characters, so that you have a spare character handy to pull into an adventure if the one you were playing got killed.

It sounds like your friend was a bad sport. If he lost his cool over his 1st level character dying, I can't imagine how he'd handle losing a 15th level character that he'd been playing for year or so...

Quote from: rawma;1112027While I've seen TPKs in 5e, it's really not that deadly once you level past the possibility of instant death (exceed the character's max HP past zero) from a critical hit, and players reach competence with the system. I've seen TPKs and a few high level deaths (disintegrate) but outside of those, once you have raise dead characters are less likely to remain dead - and no long term consequences or limit on raise dead (such as maximum based on CON, or even decreasing CON, or system shock giving even high CON characters a chance of failing).

When I was first lurking here, there was a thread in which gleichman described the Hamster Effect - deadliness for low level characters, the "hamsters" - which in some cases was apparently the only real deadliness in "lethal" campaigns:

Ah yes that old fallacy.

Actually even at high level death can come from straight up combat due to how the system works. Once someone is down they are appallingly vulnerable even with various protections. And even at high level and with the double pre-3e HP. There are things that can take them down. That is one of the strengths and weaknesses of 5e. It has threat all the way to level 20. But it has threats all the way to level 20. Some don't want threat at all. Others want sometimes stupidly more threat to the point there is really no point in playing. And how much threat there is in the game can vary massively from table to table depending on playstyle. Which has been true from the very start of D&D.

Of course it's fun. OSR-style games really put a huge onus on player skill; it doesn't matter what the character sheet says, if you're not using your brain your character will die. If you have lazy players who just want to roll dice and not fully engage with creative solutions to problems, OSR games are not a good fit. I got REALLY tired of the rolling dice crap real quick during the last 5th edition game I played. No one was even legitimately trying, they were just hoping to get a good roll. That is boring. Give me high lethality over that nonsense.

If you can make it to about 3rd or 4th level in AD&D or B/X, your character is going to die if you're stupid. Rarely will luck factor into it at that point because by then you should already know how to approach challenges in the game. If the DM removes the high fatality rate at low level, the players never learn anything and high levels become empty and lame. Hell, a level of 1st level characters can take out pretty much any monster if they're not stupid.

Right, some want to really just play a board game.

Quote from: Omega;1112055Right, some want to really just play a board game.

I played Candyland with my 4 year old daughter yesterday. We had a good time, and there is literally zero skill involved. Candyland is not a good RPG.

I want lethal dangers in a game because it often makes Players think twice before starting combats... gets them looking for other ways to solve problems, which is where the real fun is for me anyway.
I've played games that lacked any real danger and people fell into playing bullies... and idiots who never planned anything because they knew they could just rush in, guns blasting, and get away with it.
Plus, combats are boring if you KNOW you are likely to win regardless... just an exercise in dice rolling, dragging out the inevitable. Combat just isn't exciting unless there is some level of desperation/consequences to it... death/wounding being the most immediate.

Quote from: S'mon;1112005IME it's only fun if the players can do 'combat as war' and work around it. Charging the machinegun is not fun, but working out how to take out the machinegun without a frontal charge can be fun. Stuff like use of hirelings, avoiding fights, and running away. Stuff like getting Monster X to fight Monster Y.

Hirelings are key if you want to be proactive about avoiding death. But keep in mind their morale. I managed to keep all but one of my hirelings alive so far in the B/X campaign I am part of. The other two PCs haven't had good luck and have gone through two complete sets of hirelings. Some fights we have 11 or more combatants.

This thread comes close to a thread I had considered starting myself, so I'll try to contribute.

There seem to be two large segments of RPG players; those who understand that character death is always a possibility, and those who want their characters to live forever.

I admit, it's not fun to lose a character you enjoy playing; but it's a game, and you can't always "win".  Some people get caught up in the idea that their character is a hero, and should therefore always "win" somehow.  How can their heroic character die?  They are the star of the show.

Ok, taking a deep breath now.....

Your character has to earn that shit, bitch!!!

Quote from: Trinculoisdead;1112045Yeah 5e is nothing as deadly as these other games I've mentioned. No comparison.

I'm glad other groups can make something fun out of it, like having a list on the wall. My list would drape across the floor, but we've played a lot of DCC funnels.

I like these games a lot, but I hate having to kill off characters now. Makes me sick at heart just thinking about it. It's been so long since I had a player who got into the spirit of it, and for a long time now I just feel as though everyone thinks I'm just punishing them or enjoying their "failure". I hate it. I'm just trying to run the game fairly and follow the rules. And it's impossible for me to try to make it fun or memorable or interesting if I'm cringing on the inside whenever I roll a critical hit. I guess I can't play any of these any more.

I don't know, I've had very few character deaths in the games I run. I think that there's a dimension that's missing within the text of the rules which is vital to running games that are this life/death binary. I don't know if other people use it, but I sure as hell do: I call it the "Are You Sure About That?" principle.

Works like this: instead of the player's declaration of action ever immediately triggering the roll that will kill them, it triggers me pausing right before they commit to it and explaining to them exactly what they're doing (because they fucked up somewhere if they think what they're doing is a good idea).

I'm not coy with like "Are you SUUUUURE?" I just explain to them that they're thrusting a dagger into a sleeping ogre and their character understands how suicidally stupid that is, even if I've failed to convey it through my description. "Your character understands this amorphous eye-monster's anatomy *might not* be susceptible to mortal steel *at all*, and your plan, just to recap, is to, and I'm quoting here, 'stab it in the nard-stalks'. You're clear this is what you're committing to?"

"You haven't carefully examined the door to the ancient lich king's treasure vault; are you committing to yanking it straight open?"

"You're just gonna blunder across the checkerboard floor in the mad wizard's palace, stomping your big stupid feet all over the illustriously polished tiling?"

"Just gonna put your hand right on the glowing green orb radiating evil, eh?"

The rule serves to help align the player's interactions with the character's perspective; it's not so much a safety net as a communication tool, something to draw the players attention to their own recklessness.

Another habit I needed to break was the 3.5-acquired habit of filtering every fucking action through a die roll. Get that out of your head: if a normal person could reasonably do it, it just doesn't require a roll. And it certainly doesn't require risking your life. Like, if instead of swinging their sword at the ogre, they just cut the rope on a chandelier? There's no roll required: you're hitting a stationary target with a battle-ready weapon, the only dice rolling should be damage dice to determine how crushed the ogre's skull is.

Finally, I try to keep in mind that a 1 Hd wizard should be able to cleverly survive nearly everything you can encounter in D&D. Players ar smart; after a bit of experience, they'll learn stuff like "Don't get into a situation that you can't run away from". If you lean into this naturally-emergent, cautious and strategic play, characters won't be getting into fights unless they've got a good chance of not merely surviving, but winning. They'll flee. They'll negotiate. They'll drop food. They'll bluff. They'll set traps. They'll trick enemies into fighting each other. It's reached a point in my games where if initiative is getting rolled, the players are either about to curb-stomp something or die; there's very little else (sometimes they get cocky, you see).

Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Quote from: Trinculoisdead;1112012This player has been present in all my DCC and MCC games. They eventually came to dislike the lethality so we stopped playing those. I made a mistake by bringing the Whitehack, which is more lethal than DCC from what I can tell, to the table and expecting it to go well. But in this thread I didn't want to go over my mistakes, only to hear other's experiences. To see what's working at other GM's tables.

As far as my campaign go, I run things as a sandbox which gives players a lot more information and freedom about what risks to take and when. There is no expectation from me that they do anything at a particular moment. The general pattern is that players roleplay a bit gain some allies (usually hirelings), gain some info (like recon) and then do what they want to do. Usually forming a plan that gives them the initial advantage.

It also helps that

1) I have magic items shops and low level parties can keep one or two healing potion on hand.
2) I don't have death at 0 hit points. But instead have a rule that you go unconscious at 0 and die at -3 hit point. The threshold lowers by -3 hit point per level until it reaches negative constitution. So if you have a 15 con at 5th level you won't die until you hit -15 hit points.

Back in the day I used AD&D 1st's -10 rule and always thought that death at 0 was stupid.

These two rules don't make low level combat any less risky. What it does rewards party that plan well and give them a chance at recovering a fallen teammate.

Not dying is fun. Dying, not so much. But for not dying to be fun, there has to be some appreciable chance that your character will die.

Quote from: Azraele;1112067I don't know, I've had very few character deaths in the games I run. I think that there's a dimension that's missing within the text of the rules which is vital to running games that are this life/death binary. I don't know if other people use it, but I sure as hell do: I call it the "Are You Sure About That?" principle.

Works like this: instead of the player's declaration of action ever immediately triggering the roll that will kill them, it triggers me pausing right before they commit to it and explaining to them exactly what they're doing (because they fucked up somewhere if they think what they're doing is a good idea).

I'm not coy with like "Are you SUUUUURE?" I just explain to them that they're thrusting a dagger into a sleeping ogre and their character understands how suicidally stupid that is, even if I've failed to convey it through my description. "Your character understands this amorphous eye-monster's anatomy *might not* be susceptible to mortal steel *at all*, and your plan, just to recap, is to, and I'm quoting here, 'stab it in the nard-stalks'. You're clear this is what you're committing to?"

"You haven't carefully examined the door to the ancient lich king's treasure vault; are you committing to yanking it straight open?"

"You're just gonna blunder across the checkerboard floor in the mad wizard's palace, stomping your big stupid feet all over the illustriously polished tiling?"

"Just gonna put your hand right on the glowing green orb radiating evil, eh?"

The rule serves to help align the player's interactions with the character's perspective; it's not so much a safety net as a communication tool, something to draw the players attention to their own recklessness.

Another habit I needed to break was the 3.5-acquired habit of filtering every fucking action through a die roll. Get that out of your head: if a normal person could reasonably do it, it just doesn't require a roll. And it certainly doesn't require risking your life. Like, if instead of swinging their sword at the ogre, they just cut the rope on a chandelier? There's no roll required: you're hitting a stationary target with a battle-ready weapon, the only dice rolling should be damage dice to determine how crushed the ogre's skull is.

Finally, I try to keep in mind that a 1 Hd wizard should be able to cleverly survive nearly everything you can encounter in D&D. Players ar smart; after a bit of experience, they'll learn stuff like "Don't get into a situation that you can't run away from". If you lean into this naturally-emergent, cautious and strategic play, characters won't be getting into fights unless they've got a good chance of not merely surviving, but winning. They'll flee. They'll negotiate. They'll drop food. They'll bluff. They'll set traps. They'll trick enemies into fighting each other. It's reached a point in my games where if initiative is getting rolled, the players are either about to curb-stomp something or die; there's very little else (sometimes they get cocky, you see).

Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

This is some good and important tips, I just understand that they don't always work. Players can be incredibly dumb, even when the consequences are explained to them. Sometimes Players just do the suicidal thing "for the lulz".

In D&D based games of this type death comes often and quick at the lower levels. Getting a character to higher levels where they are much more likely to survive an entire campaign is part of the challenge and luck. You really should become too attached to characters early on in the campaign. I've found that this tends to lead to longer running games because once you get a few levels under your belt your more willing to stick with the game (after all you earned those levels and they can take awhile to get).

In general high danger combat systems I've always found to be more fun because in those systems combat is something you stay engaged in (even in slower systems) because you need to keep an eye on everything to stay alive. If your playing a safer system or just under a GM who bows to the current line of thought online then you have no reason to not zone out during combat or play with you phone since you're pretty much guaranteed to survive everything.

Dying a lot can be fun if you learn from it--and then stop dying a lot.  Or at least, not dying so much, as it can be a gradual process, and there is always the chance that things turn into a train wreck.  

Part of the point of low levels in a old school style is that you get to learn those lessons before you have a lot of time and imagination invested in the character.  Thus to get maximum enjoyment out of that style, it really helps to have a "develop in play" mindset, where the low powered characters do not have a back story yet.  Heck, they've barely got a name and a hint of a personality.  If they die quick, people might remember them for that, but it is the ones that make it, and how they did it, that become the most interesting.  

Don't get me wrong.  The idea of a funnel is hilarious even if you played it as only that.  But unless everyone in the group is into that kind of funny in and of itself--Ha ha!  Black Bart VI died just like III--then even repeated attempts with low powered characters should see some reduction in death rates eventually.

Quote from: jeff37923;1112071This is some good and important tips, I just understand that they don't always work. Players can be incredibly dumb, even when the consequences are explained to them. Sometimes Players just do the suicidal thing "for the lulz".

Granted; this isn't meant to be foolproof. Actually, quite the opposite: the deadliness suffered by fools is meant to serve as a messy demonstration to the more prudent players.