Death is a crutch used by bad GMs

>My family is dead
>Go and shoot up a school
>God's fault for being a shitty GM

Nice edit of a post about vidya games.

You're still a cunt who is wrong though.

I'm not sure why you think it's an edit, but even if it was it'd still be right. Your lack of any counterargument is telling.

Hmm. I agree OP. Lately I've been tending toward more "lethal" games....but, that is in contrast to the games I've been in that are basically power wanks. For example in my Pathfinder campaign I will pit them against things of CR 1-4 above their level constantly. This is something I did consistently in a 3.5 campaign I ran for years that was composed of three martials and one caster, so in a group of all casters it should be fine. Yet, they whinge and bitch because of the stupid fucking gay-ass CR system. Players should not be allowed to know what CR anything is. If they give me shit about them again, I'm going to tell them that its CR is none of their business, and to stop metagaming.

Yet, throughout the entire campaign, only 2 of them have died. One of them died because he decided to sneak into an orc camp, alone, and throw fireworks at the human cultist leading them. Then run through the woods with 20 orcs chasing him, find the ancient ruin they were supposed to explore, and climb into a sarcophagus to hide. The sarcophagus contained a wraith, he didn't have a magic weapon, and proceeded to die (despite his broken AC and saves). This also took up an entire session of the party's time, because he ran off by himself like a dumbass.

Second death was another player who went off by himself to meet the widow of a murdered noble who was a cultist. Oh and he specifically did not tell anyone else in the party where he was going. While knowing that there was a fair chance she was a suspect murderer. She invites him inside, talks to him about how lonely it is out here, then tries to give him a little kiss. He tries to run but it is too late, and he is kissed to death by a succubus. That is one of the few dick-ass kills I've had happen.

Most character deaths I've seen have either been suicides, or sheer idiocy. Even with super challenging encounters the PCs usually pull it together.

That's also your players having no idea how the CR system is meant to used. It's just meant to give the GM a way of assessing encounters and summing up how dangerous they are, but pitting players against things above their CR is a core and intended use of the system.

Both those deaths also sound entirely unavoidable due to utter idiocy. I imagine they didn't respond to the 'Are you sure you want to do that?' hint that it was a really bad fucking idea?

If assessed as a GM, God is doing a pretty terrible job. And his character generation rules are garbage.

>play Engine Heart
>characters get tossed off of buildings and crushed all the time
>fishing their sad little broken bodies out is an adventure in itself
>the repairbots bring them back online because that's their job
>when they come back online the light in their optics fades a little because they realize they're still in purgatory

>waaah
>i didn't win
>the concept of death should be erased so that i can win every time

ftfy

So you didn't actually read the post?

I had a DM who felt like this was a big thing, so I cleared a character with him that has supernaturally bad luck romanticly and often has potential partners die comically. My character was super interested in a relationship and not just sex, that way it was easier to kill them off and didn't have to be done super quickly. The metaphorical god of cockblocking was upon my character, and killing off love interests was basicly a running gag that sated the DM's bloodlust for innocent NPCs.

I fully agree. Death should be a rare storytelling tool, even more so if it involves PCs. A decent character involves hours of development effort and immersion and should not be thrown under the bus unless the story or player decision warrants it. In my opinion, playing a game where death is a constant threat makes characters expendable, which is more suited for roguelikes and not the strengths of the pen-and-paper medium, which is interactive storytelling.

DMs and players that insist on having a random "game over" condition have probably never tried a more relaxed approach. It's not necessary to always be one step away from death to make the game thrilling, and likewise a game where PCs rarely die won't automatically devolve into slapstick because of it (unless the players are utter shit anyway).

Sounds like a solid way of making the best of it. Reminds me of Kobolds Ate My Baby, a game which took it to comedic extremes, where your kobold died whenever you failed a roll, failed to praise King Torg when his name was spoken, and a number of other such silly things.

dident read

FPBP

>I imagine they didn't respond to the 'Are you sure you want to do that?' hint that it was a really bad fucking idea?
Yep. And a third one should have died when she went up (invisible) to a demon sitting on its throne in a goblin castle, eating, and shot it in the mouth with a kinetic blast. After killing two guards outside and opening the door, so the demon knew someone invisible was nearby. Got hit with a blasphemy and rolled a nat1. Would have been coup de graced while paralyzed, but I figured demons like to take pleasure in their victims deaths, so the characters broke in while it was dressing up to eat her alive, and managed to withdraw her. They had to run the fuck away, though, and two more of them almost died in the effort. I feel like that was a bit more rewarding than outright killing her. However, the demon now knows their capabilities and will not fuck around with them. If/when they go back to fight him, he's going to be ready.

t. someone who died because he fucked up

Because it's literally an argument made by David Cage several years ago about how player death is the failure of the game designer.

Death is a consequence that is an immediate and tangible loss players experience. Sure it can be over used, but to say it is a crutch used by bad GM's is as generalizing and stupid as the people you are shit-posting at.

Losing titles, ranks, friends, land, home, all these things can be used and used to great effect. In fact in many cases they should be used, especially when playing the political side of things in a game.

But the idea that they're not going to be able to play this character they've spent the past six months getting invested in anymore if this combat goes pear shaped, or that if they fail a task that the NPC they've grown to love is fucking dead? It's a motivator that works, and in the hands of a DM that can do their job is something that will elicit a real emotional reaction.

The issue isn't death. The issue is just poor writing and a poor implementation of cause an effect. Players that are murderhobos more than likely are that way because they feel that the story doesn't matter at all not because of use of death. Your whole argument is built on a false equivalence.

>The point where this response becomes cancer

Here is a (you) for you too

So you didn't actually read the post, or failed to understand it. I never said Death wasn't something you should use, quite the opposite. I said that overusing it is a crutch that bad GM's rely on, milking it for easy drama and tension rather than really considering their choices.

It's also an entirely different situation from videogames to the point that the comparison is fucking laughable.

Bad DMs are bad at handling/using player mortality. Good DMs are good at it. Woop de fucking doo.

What bugs me is the odd sense of pride with which you'll hear these veteran GM's talk about how lethal their games are or how many PC's they've killed. In purely antagonistic, player vs GM groups, if it's what they're looking for then I won't hold it against them, but then you see them giving advice, or people taking inspiration from them, and using it in otherwise more character focused, modern style games, often ending up being confused as to why their whole group is murderhobos and starting to blame their players.

It's a clear and obvious pattern and an easy cycle to break if you just get some perspective.

OP is saying that killing off NPCs and player connections is bad GMing, not killing player characters.

And besides, barring a TPK a player character death is not a total fail state with no progression or meaning. Cage's stance still doesn't apply.

Being fair, I did make my point about both- Overusing death in either respect can seriously harm a game.

If a player goes down in a fight, the enemy doesn't always need to stay there and finish the job. Some might, through personal motivation, bloodlust or bestial instinct, but I've known GM's who would never even think to not finish off a fallen player, and would act confused at the notion of not doing so.

This depends a lot on how you frame your fights, the objectives for each side and the context you're fighting in. But making that kind of direct, intentional desire to kill, instead of simply seeking to take down those in your way as part of another objective, more rare also makes it more impactful and meaningful when it does happen.

>death
honestly i'm pretty sure people would have less of a visceral negative reaction if you said ***excessive*** death intead.

but yeah i agree with the sentiment. killing npcs for cheap drama or just to establish powerlevels is dumb.

and you don't NEED to rely on potential pc death to make combat tense, true. though, it's arguably a very useful tool, IMO exceptions like failing your goal or losing stuff should be used sparingly.

while i think too much lethality can lead to players no longers being attached to their characters, i will have to disagree over the idea that any potential lethality in combat breeds murderhobos, however.

Coddling your players is by far worse then killing to much. Coddling will lead to uninterested players or ones that know they cant die and take unusual risks.

>how lethal their games
Any gm can wipe every game if wanted. the goal is to make a challenging and some times lethal game were the players till have fun. i have ran and played in games where we TPK and it was a memorable moment.

The only reason 'coddling' your players will lead to them being uninterested is if you're a shit GM who can't make the world, events and NPCs compelling in their own right. All you're doing is showing exactly why death is a crutch used by bad GMs.

If there is not a challenge (not necessarily death) to the game you might as well be reading them you shit unfinished novel and save them from long battles they know they win. If you don't kill players of at least occasionally you are also a shit GM.

How in the living fuck does any of that make sense? Or have any relation to what I actually said?

The challenge, and the danger? Comes from their ability to interact with things in the world. To shape events for the better, or to fail and see them turn for the worse.

The entire fucking point that you seem to be missing is that it's possible for players to lose without them having to die, and that being able to do so just makes things more interesting.

I too cull my players. Once every so often I invite one over for a solo session and two hours later they're under the floorboards. Only thing I really worry about is the foundation.

This is the whole problem with D&D. 'We've always done it this way, so we'll keep doing it' isn't rational, it's just clinging to familiarity. You need to ask yourselves why you do things, and if there's a better way.

Killing PC is now only a d&d tradition?

Well, it certainly started there, and old school D&D types seem to be the people most prone to killer GM tendencies.

you have autism see a doctor

What a compelling argument

>old school D&D types seem to be the people most prone to killer GM tendencies.

Actually, old school D&D has this weird difficulty curve in that the most dangerous levels are typically the first few. If you can level up and play intelligently, you will typically not lose PCs very often.

The biggest killers, provided the DM isn't a total dick (which is a problem you resolve outside of the game like adults) tend to be off of enemies winning surprise rolls and getting off a perfect alpha strike. It tends to be impersonal; DM's dice are hot, rather than DM "rock falls" fiat. Furthermore, death can be laughed off, because PC creation is fast.

Man, finishing off a threat after he is down is really fast. The only reasons for enemies not to kill PCs who might be fighting to kill them is if they are really short on time, stupid or just arrogant. Even if you're not killing them, you'd at least break their arms and legs and ensure they're never a threat again.

The only ways to remove death from equation is to play games that are very little combat based and that is not what most people want.

But that's not implicitly true, it relies on a lot of assumptions you're making to justify it. It isn't a default or inherent thing, it's a choice you're making as the GM. And you could also choose to do things differently.

How do you make combat not result in death with a defeat?
You have to remove most animals, monsters, mindless beings and pretty much anything that's not a sentinent beings PCs can talk to. Then you can't have them be fighting in a war, guarding something that can't defend itself, dealing with criminals, etc.

You just remove a lot of things from plots if you remove the penalty of death.

No? You don't have to do that at all. Again, you're bringing with you a lot of assumptions about how things 'should' work.

Then how do you do it?

...

I agree. Also, being captured seems to piss off players more than the DM having hot dice that day and offing a character.

That's a very broad question that relies a lot on context, but in general it's a matter of establishing alternate objectives for opposing forces beyond simple and direct murder. Animals might be hungry, comfortable with dragging away supplies or pack animals once the defenders can't properly protect them, while a monster might be territorial, focusing more on driving the players back than singularly focusing on murdering them. Mindless beings might simply not see much difference between dead and down, giving players a chance to drag themselves away, or suffer some stranger or more esoteric cost for their failure.

Why wouldn't soldiers in a war take prisoners? What does what they're guarding have to do with it? Why would criminals bother to indulge in wanton murder rather than getting what they want and leaving? Why are all your enemies immediately aware of whether a fallen foe is dead or not?

It's less familiarity and more the fact that, no matter what I do, no matter how I run my game, and no matter how much my players enjoy themselves, some dipshit chucklefuck nobody on the internet is going to screech about how I'm doing it wrong like they're some kind of authority on the subject. So fuck it, I'm not going to change. My methods work just fine.

I should add that it also relies on your players not being total idiots. Being willing to grab a fallen friend and drag them away, or hunker down and defend while wild animals ransack your pack animals rather than fighting to the death, for example.

>Mindless beings might simply not see much difference between dead and down, giving players a chance to drag themselves away
That sounds like shitty deus ex scenario just to prevent your (or your players') character sheet/s thrown in the waste basket. That's an example of a bad DM and scenarios like that destroy the factor of excitement when risks are starting to involved which can lead to a boring game.
>or suffer some stranger or more esoteric cost for their failure.
Now this one I agree on.

Again, that the mindless beings wouldn't finish them doesn't mean they'd get away scot free, just that they'd suffer some other downside for their defeat.

>to involved which can lead to a boring game
>*to get
Fuck I need more sleep.

Still doesn't change the fact you gave them another chance, which lessens the excitement of risks.

But the whole point is getting away from the risk of death being the only motivator and source of tension. With just a little work, you can have just as effective, if not more so, motivations, tension and excitement from what else might be at stake. You can also use defeat to create interesting plot hooks or lead the story in an unusual direction. The party being defeated by ancient guardian Golems, only to wake up all marked with a brand or tattoo in the shape of an ancient glyph could lead in any number of interesting directions, figuring out the meaning or how to unravel an ancient curse that had been laid upon them.

Yes, I can always strive to be better. However, Veeky Forums is the last place for self-improvement.

For all the shit you've been given: I agree with you. It is quite annoying when the GM has the players face a threat that is basically
>you hit it
>it hits you
until one of the two parties keels over and dies.

White box combat is not fun for me: I would much rather have a combat encounter with a group that wants to steal a treasure before we do and don't care for murdering us as much as they care about getting out of the crypt/pyramid alive before it all collapses, so you have to fight them as you sprint out and attempt to grab the crown before the other party grabs it.

>dident read
no need to state the obvious

>"herp derp, the only way that players can feel a sense of defeat is when they or the NPCs they care for particularly, die" the post
No. That's wrong and you're dumb for thinking this.

If I wanted to be babied I'd go play Oblivion or something.
It seems like this is a typical Veeky Forums badwrongfun argument where the OP can't fathom that different people like different types of game and that there is no right or wrong in this kind of thing.

This was part of what made PS:T such a great game. Relatively few deaths in comparison to a lot of other games. Made life and death seem like serious business instead of something casual, much more realistic (and it synergized especially well with the whole planescape philosophy bent).

Fucking dying is a big deal even if a cleric can res you or whatever. You've still got your soul in some other dimension for the interim.

I am pretty sure the OP argues against the excessive use of death in RPGs and his point is to make GMs at least try different things.

NO! You must use the most recent and up to date version of everything, always! This includes all memes, and that is using the word meme to mean what it actually means and not the internet meaning.
Did you not get the memo?

...

No, it doesn't.

Death should be used realistically. PCs and NPCs should be treated equally and anyone can die, and die quickly if things are bad enough.

>Its another "the gm should not kill players because it hurts there feelings." Episode
Holy fucking shit. Grow a set. There is nothing wrong with killing pc or npc and stop implying that this is the only thing that drives a leathal campagn.

Death should be used narratively. Characters should only die if that would lead to a better dramatic payoff.

How about I keep doing what I want and you deal with it?

Realism is irrelevant to the vast majority of RPG's. It can be a factor in some games and for some groups and playstyles, but assuming it as a fundamental constant is dumb.

The same argument applies here. They're both factors that can be important, but how much they apply depends a lot on context.

The balance of one or the other is also irrelevant to OP's point.

>Realism is irrelevant to the vast majority of RPG's.
A degree of realism is needed not to break immersion of the players even in epic fantasy.

Nope. Authenticity and internal consistency? Sure. Not realism.

I do not in anyway shape or form attempt to actively kill my players. I'm the gm, I don't need to try. If I want a player dead, they will die. That's how being god works, but that's also boring. Where's the fun in causing rocks to fall? There isn't any, on either side of the screen.

I will however. In no way shape or form. Prevent player death.
All these people in this thread that talk about "Oh well just don't kill them when they lose a fight". Absolute horse shit. Also assumes they're not going to just die of their injuries mid combat if it was going that poorly, and you've got to be playing a special sort of system for that not to be an option on the table.

I agree fully with the people that support letting a player die due to their actions, and you know what some people seem to be forgetting? That being in combat is a player choice. Very few combat encounters just pop out of nowhere with instant melee engagement distance, and no option to flee,bargain, give up, or set fire to the immediate surroundings while screaming and unbuttoning your pants. Any gm that's just throwing around truly random combats that involve 0 player choice in their participation, is a bad gm for a lot more reasons than using player death as a be all end all form of tension. Sniper are really the only exception here, and snipers are an antifun encounter to begin with, so there's that.

Man, you are making so many assumptions I'm not even sure where to start.

You've also missed the point.

>Most GM's really, really overuse death in their games
That's a hell of a statement to make based on your paltry number of first-hand experiences, and Veeky Forums stories are largely fabricated bullshit.

> if you just keep killing NPCs to make your latest threat seem badass you'll run out fast, and disincentivize your players from ever caring again.
Standard "I initially phrase it as something extreme and then walk backwards until my opinion is bog-standard by the end" bullshit. If this isn't bait, you need to work on not sounding like a shitposter. Fucking everybody is aware of how toxic it is to constantly kill people just to showcase the new threat.

>f you can't threaten PC's, and make them feel tense and at risk in a combat, with absolutely zero threat of them dying? You're a bad GM.
Or they're bad players, or they're just not good enough at getting in-character. The DM isn't god; he can't lead the players somewhere that they aren't willing or able to go. See, this is another "this post has to be bait" statement.
>Death is a powerful motivator and a real risk
I agree, which is why death should almost always be on the table if combat starts. As nonlethal as the initiating incident may have been, there's a nonzero chance of death as soon as people start hurling fireballs and stabbing each other.
> there is so, so much more you can do if you stop using it as a crutch
But there's no reason you can't have other failure consequences alongside the possibility of death.
>failing to protect someone or something
Protect them from something like death?
>dealing with long term injuries
Often analogous to death in terms of what it does to you character. A two-handed melee weapon user (or really any melee combatant) that has an arm put out of commission is himself essentially out of commission until that arm heals.

Ignoring the bits of the post you can't easily dismiss isn't an argument

What salient points did I "ignore?"

The idea that murderhobo tendencies are linked to death is absurd. Murderhobo tendencies are a result of the players not getting in-character. If your characters don't really care about NPC's as people at all, it doesn't matter if you kill NPC's or maim them or let them get kidnapped.

Well, for one thing, taking phrases out of context and trying to dismiss alone rather than as part of the whole makes it seem like you don't actually have a point.

And your counterargument seems to amount to 'nuh uh'. It's not that murderhobo tendencies are 100% caused by callous overuse of death by a GM, but that doing so only reinforces those tendencies, even if that straight up goes against what a GM wants out of their game.

I've heard people, and seen people on Veeky Forums, bemoaning the lack of their players investment before going on to how many PC's and NPC's they've killed, and pointing out that doing so wilfully just harms the ability of the players to get invested in the game seems blatantly obvious.

>Well, for one thing, taking phrases out of context and trying to dismiss alone rather than as part of the whole makes it seem like you don't actually have a point.
An entire sentence isn't a phrase, and the only part where I poke at actual phrases doesn't take them out of context. It's impossible to refute an argument without at some point picking apart the constituent sub-clauses of that argument. Which is why I requested that you point out what important bits I missed. I'm going to take your inability to do so as an admission that I didn't miss anything.

>And your counterargument seems to amount to 'nuh uh'.
If you don't want to actually read my post, you don't have to respond. People aren't going to suddenly think you aren't a retard if you keep posting.
> It's not that murderhobo tendencies are 100% caused by callous overuse of death by a GM, but that doing so only reinforces those tendencies, even if that straight up goes against what a GM wants out of their game.
But taking death off the table does nothing to stop murderhobo tendencies. Death isn't a relevant factor in murderhobo tendencies. It's like you're saying that sunlight causes cancer as an argument for why living underground is a positive. Sure, that's technically true, but it doesn't really matter.

>I've heard people, and seen people on Veeky Forums, bemoaning the lack of their players investment before going on to how many PC's and NPC's they've killed
I repeat that your paltry sum of experience is so tiny as to be irrelevant and that stories on Veeky Forums are mostly lies. Furthermore, I doubt that this is true even on Veeky Forums. I've never seen someone "bemoaning the lack of...players (sic) investment" prior to listing all the people they've killed.

Wow, that's a very eloquent defence of cherrypicking.

The important bits you were missing, that you still are missing, is that the point was never about taking death off the table, but pointing out that the default fail state of combat always being death is wasteful, pointless and a sign of a lack of creativity on the part of a GM.

That is, if you want to run a game with actual player investment in the world and their characters. If you want to just run a murdergrind dungeoncrawl, that's fine, but that's a very distinct playstyle that's not shared by most RPG's.

As for the sunlight causing cancer bullshit... What? Saying 'Killing off lots of characters can harm investment in the game' is just a statement of the obvious. Overusing death potentially leading to burnout is something well known among writers, and it's why so many attempts to rip of 'dark' storytelling end up shit, because their writers have no idea how to use death as an effective tool, and simply spam it recklessly without any consideration for how it's best to actually use it.

And might I ask why your own experiences, which I can only assume are just as paltry, give you the grounding to make such authoritative statements? Either both of us have a basis to argue from, or neither of us do.

>And might I ask why your own experiences, which I can only assume are just as paltry, give you the grounding to make such authoritative statements? Either both of us have a basis to argue from, or neither of us do.
Can't prove a negative. My position isn't that death isn't common in RPG's, it's that your claims about how common it is are bullshit.

>'Killing off lots of characters can harm investment in the game' is just a statement of the obvious
I agree, but it's also just not an important factor relatively speaking. You have to get characters invested first, which doesn't happen with murderhobos.

>pointing out that the default fail state of combat always being death is wasteful, pointless and a sign of a lack of creativity on the part of a GM.
The default fail state of ANY lethal combat is death. That's why they call it lethal. Feel free to point out some fringe RPG's with a default assumption of non-lethal combat, but over here in "everything is DnD or a derivative of DnD"-land, a fireball to the face can and will kill you. Sure, you can invent any number of immersion breaking ass-pulls, but those are just that.

"Oh, maybe the golem just doesn't distinguish between fallen and dead and he's striking with exactly enough force to render you unconscious instead of dead from blunt force trauma." Lol.

...You do realise characters in D&D aren't dead at 0HP, right? They go down, but they're take some extra effort to actually die. Failure without death is implicitly supported in the mechanics.

And the way to help a murderhobo player stop being one is... Do things to help them get invested in the game. It's not that hard.

>they're take some extra effort to actually die.
Incorrect. They'll die with no outside interaction ~40% of the time.

And what specific iteration of the system are you talking about? Since that seems pretty high from the ones I know of.

The current one? What edition of DnD are you thinking of?

4E also had death saving throws, but they were even harsher. Something like ~70% chance of death.

In 3.5 you didn't hit dead until -10, but it was entirely possible to go straight up above zero to below -10 in a single blow/turn.

I never played 2E, but I think AD&D was just dead at 0.

I don't know why the basement dwellers on this board are railing you so hard for this, or if it's just a shitty pasta, but you're talking sense to me. The funnest campaigns I've had were the ones where the players rarely killed others and whenever they did it was either an awesome spectacle or it had some serious consequences.

If PCs aren't dying in Paranoia, everybody is doing it wrong

So, in every modern edition of D&D, there's significant leeway between defeat in combat and death- An amount of time where someone or something could intervene, along with a better chance of recovering than otherwise. Thanks for proving my point.

Paranoia is an amazing game with its own very distinct set of assumptions. Like Kobolds Ate My Baby, it gets a pass.

I think it's just people getting defensive. They're a Good GM, which means they need to keep doing what they've always done and never change, so anything that would threaten that assumption is met with a violent negative reaction.

/r9k/ is that way

xd you got me

To be fair, removing Treasure-for-XP makes combat one of the main guaranteed way of getting XP. This, of course, necessitates a more combative game, and limits the DM to encounters that PCs can plausibly win. No longer is it fair to have monsters that will skullfuck the party, because they can be bypassed without combat to get to the plunder, whose return to civilized lands grants XP. This also incentivized diplomacy and non-combat trickery, because bypassing an encounter without a fight, extends how far you can delve and how much potential loot you can acquire.

OP, your entire post is bait, and that why this thread is destined to be shit, and is shit.

You still get the xp if you bypass the encounter user. Killing it has never been the only way.