Player starts to cry when her character dies

>Players need to learn that if you take away the lows then you also shave the top of the highs.
This. I've lost beloved characters and sometimes they can be resurrected, sometimes they can't. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world to me, it's just the end for them and a beginning for another.

Oh look it's nu-Veeky Forums, right on cue.

>BOY DO I HATE WOMEN
Naw, I've seen this shitty behavior from dudes as well.

...

How, exactly? Context is important. If some rando bullshit killed the character in a really dumb way (i.e. the GM forcing a stupid pointless check or just some lame random encounter fight) then it's not the worst thing to fudge but if the GM was going to do it, it should have been done behind the screen and before the death result was announced. Characters die. This is fact, part, and parcel of TTRPGs. Players not ready for that need not apply. But PC deaths should be memorable for the most part; they should fit the narrative and make a poignant thing to talk about for years to come. Though, sometimes, it's fine to allow a "cheap" death to happen, especially if it drives home the fact that this campaign is supposed to be brutal or grim. GM needs to read the room, be in touch with the tone of the game, and understand how to weave a story. Almost killing PCs is just as effective as killing them more often than not.

Of course, if it was the player's dumb fault because she wanted to face check a portal or something without taking proper precautions, or did some stupid thing that has dire consequences, then... well, she dead mang.

>if there isn't a chance for death, there's no real consequence to adventures

Death does not have to be the only meaningful consequence of failure, in fact one could argue that it might be the least interesting consequence.
Now what those other meaningful consequences can be depends on the type of campaign you're playing. This is not to say that death should be off the table, but that lots of other interesting options exist.

Nah. Death is really the only definite "lose-state". in most games. Yeah you can throw in narrative stuff like "your entire village is burned down" or "you fail to stop the evil empire and the kingdom falls into chaos", but those are all narrative punishments that only affect the Character.

Character death affects the Player in a very definitive way. Sure you could have the Character lose an arm or something, but then they're just stuck with a useless character and will probably roll a new one anyway.

>Death is really the only definite "lose-state". in most games
Take Way their loot and see two things immediately happen

1. The players will immediatly smarten up and get serious
2. They will pursue whatever took their loot and fucking terminate it with extreme and out of proportion force

This is also a super easy way to get PCs to chase your plot or the villain

What I do when it comes to character deaths is that I have a 'will to live' mechanic. If a player cares about their character enough I give them an option to overcome what would be a death for them but in exchange must suffer a grievous and permanent physical injury or dismemberment in return. Some players who become very attached to to their characters choose to continue playing as their character albeit perhaps blinded in one eye, missing an ear or now possessing a disgusting scar. I allow this up to a maximum of 3 times with the injuries and penalties getting progressively worse. Beyond the 3rd penalty the character simply dies. Those who choose not to employ this mechanic simply choose another character from the get go. I find it's an effective means of ensuring the players still face consequences for rash actions while allowing them to weigh up their options and not necessarily lose a beloved character while still, in turn, allowing them to roleplay this new injury and have it play a part in their character's growth.

Oh definitely, and I've done this plenty of times, but it's still not as meaningful as death.

Yet i would argue that the narrative punishments that affect the character, and the game world are much more interesting. It's more interesting from a roleplaying viewpoint to see how the characters deal with such a setback.

Tbh most players would rather their characters die than fail in any meaningful way. Any character setback will be met by autistic rage and shitting up the game.

At least you can point to death and say "hey there is combat, the game is lethal". Try stealing a wizard's spellbook for one adventure (after they mem spells, creating a resource shortage +time pressure plot) and see how much they bitch and cry and scream.

Never forget for funfags it's all about empowerment without gravitas. That's fun when I want to turn my brain off but it shouldn't be the expected state of gaming.

It all leads to the same place though, and how well it works depends on the player. I've seen players get massively pissy because they were 'denied' the mechanical rewards they'd been anticipating, and framing it as the GM 'punishing' them for not doing what the GM wanted.

I mean, if you have a sore loser player who only wants to soullessly grind through easy situations while amassing gear and increasing stats, they'll be butthurt about anything that impedes this progress, whether it's death or just not being awarded GP and XP. On the other hand they won't care about any other consequences at all.

> one could argue that it might be the least interesting consequence.
I can see the reasoning in this, however I'd argue that it's not about the outcome of dying as much as it is about situations being made more tense while your character is still alive if there's a credible threat of them being killed.

>Any character setback will be met by autistic rage and shitting up the game.
Only if you play with actual autists.

Besides as OP already noted, character death can also lead to all sorts of stupid behavior, so it's not like one is automatically superior to the other.

>Character death affects the Player in a very definitive way
You mean in a very metagamey way, right? because they'll start to outofgame be "smarter" (genre savy not smart btw) or paranoid

I had players who played against the tropes because they lost many chars before which made the game a fucking nonsense
>I'm going to ambush them, I'll throw a decony and then attack them from behind
>Retard fighter with 6 Int the moment he hears something in front of him looks behind him because he as a player already lived that many times
>Have a discussion why that's stupid from a ingame point of view
>Stall the game because Player says it makes sense
No, thank you. Killing PCs alone doesn't teach players shit

And this forgetting that if their char dies the next one is going to be a little bit more optimized to avoid future deaths, rinse and repeat and you end having powergamers with 10001 metagamey ways of avoiding death

>Death is really the only definite "lose-state". in most games.
The amusing thing is that there are actually people who believe this.
I doubt you do tho, it's too easy to troll Veeky Forums by trotting out this line.

I actually have a very unique player, deaths of other PCs and NPCs affect him way more than the death of set backs directly applied to his PCs.

>and then everyone clapped

Well of course it's more interesting. The character is alive. Death, in general, isn't super-interesting unless it's happening in some kind of dramatic way.

You're in the minority. In video games, this kind of design is hardly favored. You're in luck though, since tabletop allows you to just find a group of people with the same mindset. Vidya must cater to the millions of retarded drones that only treat games as a distraction to real life, rather than a wholesome and fulfilling hobby.

>I'd argue that it's not about the outcome of dying as much as it is about situations being made more tense while your character is still alive if there's a credible threat of them being killed.

I would totally agree, I've never said death shouldn't be on the table at all, but rather that it shouldn't be the automatic default failure state.

As for this;
>if you have a sore loser player who only wants to soullessly grind through easy situations while amassing gear and increasing stats, they'll be butthurt about anything that impedes this progress
I really couldn't say since i don't really play with people like this.

My point exactly.
Random, meaningless character death is boring, you just roll a new character. Having the characters come to terms with the consequences of their failure is much more interesting.
Epic character death while doing something important is a whole different matter.

>tfw people in this thread area actually mad about their no-death, wish-fulfillment, "muh-chracter arc", hugfest games are being called out.

Come on Veeky Forums you're better than this. If I wanted /r/dnd I'd be on reddit.

Character is a low health no armor build

ran ahead of the tanks and caught a critical spear to the face

DM rolls his dice in front of everyone to ensure no fudging is had

Surprised no one has mentioned this, but for me a character''s death is 100% contingent on its plausibility. If someone steps into an acid pit and sinks to the bottom, they die.

What makes rpgs so special within the world of games is their unique capacity for verisimilitude. Whether it's for narrative or pragmatic reasons, nothing is worse than seeing a dm do something, particularly something important like character life vs death, for the benefit of the players and not the universe or story.

>not following up her death with "...but death is not the end," in a set-up where she has some ghostly Christmas Carol-esque experience with their deity while the party quests to save her soul or resurrect her
I see your GM takes the easy way out instead of giving her a chance to come back that weaves with the plot.

And this is where the "rule of cool" and "characters only die when it makes a good story" games totally fall apart.

You either let characters die when it happens, or nothing in the universe has any real narrative weight. That acid pit all of a sudden doesn't have any actual danger associated with it if the DM says "uh well, the acid wasn't that bad so you're fine".

...

Well then she dead.

Is the bait big or the fish small?

But that is legitimate quest/side-quest hook, not a bait hook

Whichever one is more interesting and dramatic for the story.

Events can have narrative weight without life and death being involved, but this requires a narrative framework where people care about more than the thrill of violence and ill-gotten gains.

Oh you were serious?

Wow.

Sensible chuckle

...

>And this is where the "rule of cool" and "characters only die when it makes a good story" games totally fall apart.
And there is no middle ground between the two...No wait! There totally is!

what the hell is your point?

I'm really enjoying these daily stealth /r9k/ threads. They're a nice addition to all the blatant /pol/ threads.

I'm also fortunate that a lot of harder difficulty mods exist. And yes, plebs complain about them being 'unbalanced'.

>what the hell is your point?
He's making a joke about how the story in the OP is fake.

I am. It honestly works. If the party wants to save her, it makes perfect sense that they can try. And maybe her ghost experience can act as something of a lesson while also setting up other plot points. It can honestly work.

That's why you shouldn't play with beta virgins. They're ruin everything.

Of course they can. But when the character falls into the acid pit, or when the character is crushed by a giant boulder, they're dead regardless of it was an "interesting" or "dramatic" death.

Hyper-lethal campaigns are the most fun 2bh

Cool, and now I as a player know that you don't have the balls to kill a PC.

There's nothing challenging about rolling dice and playing make believe like a small homosexual child.

Not the original guy but, what you do then is stress how dangerous it is, and then you get the chance to kill a shit-ton more of them.

Yeah, it's ridiculous to draw conclusions based on a single event.

For systems without a few get out of death cards (40k games come to mind), that's a pretty good idea. Considering everyone in my group gets attached to characters, that'd probably make for some great roleplay opportunities. Unfortunately, I feel at least 2 people might treat it as a chance to continue playing their characters, but default to becoming an insufferable cowardly shit for the sake of self preservation at the expense of the rest of the party.

>having fake "challenging" fun
>in reality you're just slogging through boring poorly designed shit that requires you to roll exceedingly high numbers
>get a feeling of accomplishment from rolling a large number on a dice
>the feeling of accomplishment only registers because you're an utter failure of a human being who has literally nothing else going for him.

Bad wrong fun is a myth. The real plebs are the people who can't appreciate more than one form of entertainment. Difficult and easy both have their time and place.

You are broadly right but sound like an absolute cunt.

That's a really neat idea.

In our campaign, Revivify is the only means of "cleanly" resurrecting someone. Once they've been gone for more than a minute, restoring them to life is both extremely taboo and requires either some manner of Faustian bargain from the caster, or a roll on the madness tables by the resurrectee.

We've only had it happen once, our fighter fucked around and got my character blown the fuck up. He ended up getting forcibly resurrected by necromancers and came back blind, which was beautifully ironic because he's a solar cleric who's all about light.

Most of the bitching I'm seeing is about disingenuous arguments.

>If I wanted /r/dnd I'd be on reddit.
The funniest thing is you don't realize how self-incriminating this is.

I actually had a character lose an arm and refused to stop playing her.

>my battle-hardened warrior who the DM had carefully woven into the overarching story arc got stabbed to death in an alley by a random mook who rolled a couple of crits
>sure, I've got a massive case of the blue balls from all the missed narrative potential I wanted to explore with him, but at least I have Veeky Forums's approval!
How patrician of you.

>blah blah generic straw man Veeky Forums response with no coherent argument
(you)

>self-incriminating
Yes, how dare someone comment about how shit something is only after having witnessed it first hand, rather than going by hearsay and prejudice.

FAG.

>I used a buzzword therefore your argument is invalid

Bias can effect one's perception, making firsthand accounts unreliable.

QUEER.

>A hardened warrior surveys all directions when he hears commotion, including looking behind him
>OMG THAT'S COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC AND METAGAMEY YOU RUINED MY PERFECTLY GOOD TRAP BY BEING A SAVVY PLAYER
Having 6 int means a character isn't good at book-learning or thinking in depth, not that they're too stupid to check their own backside. Your player did the right thing.

good one

>"my character checks behind me"
>NO HE DOESN'T
>YOU'RE RUINING MY GAME

you're an autist. I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you.

>>A hardened warrior surveys all directions when he hears commotion, including looking behind him
>including
Well, the troll had to reply I guess, I love how you purposely ignore what I wrote and literally change what I sad. He didn't look everywhere, he literally turned 180º and focused on whatever was behind him, he let his back, left and right side unprotected (flank rules) on purpose because he was metagaming.

What, does the character have blinders or something on so he doesn't have peripheral vision? Moron.

What game are you playing?
Because most abstract positioning enough that actual facing rarely matters mechanically.

No, the rules say that you can only focus on your front, if you don't like the system don't play it, nobody is forcing you. He didn't roll perception, he didnt' care either he focused on behind because "I've already seen this in your previous games, you attack from behind".

>>>Player starts to cry when her character dies
Can someone expain to me why the DM decided to kill off the character in the first place?
There are so many ways to interpret losing the encounter.
>you can simply fall unconscious and wake up with your loot missing and/or in unknown place
>you can get mutilated and "left for dead", giving you both a plothook of barely surviving and reaching the nearest town where you can get help AND some long-reaching consequences for your actions
>you can get captured by the enemy, and now the party has to rescue you, giving them a plothook\
But, noooooooooo, as soon as your character reaches 0 HP, you've got to immediately kill him off on spot, even if it doesn't make sense from the contextual standpoint, amirite?
Is death of the character really the only threat that motivates players or something? I don't get it. When the only thing that motivates your players is the end of their narrative (instead of consequences in their narrative), that's either a shit group, or shit GMing.

>He didn't roll perception, he didnt' care either he focused on behind because "I've already seen this in your previous games, you attack from behind".

you are seriously fucking stupid if you think you'll be able to pull the same shit on the same people and have them play along for RP's sake

even worse if you berate them for not acting like actual retards

0/10 shit GMing

>death teaches my players NOTHING
>do literally the exact same thing
>the players learn and fix their mistakes

It sounds like you taught them to deal with your shit pretty fucking well actually.

He didn't learn though, he just started metagaming.

>paraphrased response into a straw man
(you)

>learn that it's pointless to do x because the DM makes it mean nothing
>every campaign
>when I don't do it the fucker calls me a metagamer even though it means nothing
what did you expect

>Metagames by making actions based on OoC knowledge
>Gets butthurt when he gets called out for it.
Try not being a cheater next time and the game will go a lot smoother for everyone involved.

>DM looks you dead in the eye and does the same thing to you, over and over, that he's always done to you. And you spread your cheeks and take it.

Cuck. I guess that a DM can be the ultimate cheater, huh, cuck?

>Cuck.
You're not using that word correctly. Getting fucked by someone doesn't make you a cuckold.

>fake fun
Also known as "badwrong fun"

>So mad he resorts to /pol/speak out of rage

It sounds to me like some GMs and players need to have a sit down their players or GMs and better define the sort of roleplay experience they want out of their games, instead of passive aggressively whining about it on an imageboard.

>Cuck. I guess that a DM can be the ultimate cheater, huh, cuck?
Are you a bot

>Events can have narrative weight without life and death being involved
You are correct. However attempting to make death a meaningless distraction or impossible, or god forbid only when story appropriate (aka I think it would be best for the story if your character stopped being here), has taken an entire separate shelf of events and thrown them all out.

Well players should not die. If one died then something did not work.
Cause badly defined HP idea and the fact that RPGs don't deal with other than death consequences, blame dnd where you are good and dead with nearly nothing in between at one side. At the other side due to HP creep and inability to kill high level wizard with 1 strike of greatsword it is called "unrealistic", so "realistic" fags tend to construct overly lethal mechanics that is shit.

While living things are durable as fuck and nothing other that destruction of brain will kill us. Sure one would normally die after having head cut of, but when you have magic that regrow limbs it should be doable to put head to the neck and mend it with magic. If done within 2 minutes you won't need to cast restoration to deal with cell death due to lax of oxygen.

Also I blame vidia and action movies for fearless NPCs and PCs as none will attempt to retreat or surrender. In case of NPCs lack of surrender it is justifiable by trail of bodies left behind PCs, but they should run.
Plus PCs often fight enemies that would never accept surrender

Looks to me that many of the posters in this thread advocated for having other consequences in addition to death, not having death removed entirely from the list.

Quite, and I'm another of them.

>roll badly mutliple times in a row
>die without actually doing anything wrong
>piece of shit who stayed out of it lives and gets a share of your loot
Most systems handle death pretty lame and uncreatively, and that's where a large amount of people who fudge or deus ex machina death away come from.
Doesn't help that making a new character can be a slog, and you'llk have to learn a new race and class, and you'll have to come up with a new backstory and personality.

>roll badly mutliple times in a row
>die without actually doing anything wrong
Well it would appear they've taken no action to remove themselves from the circumstances which were leading to death. Generally there should be a non-roll action which could lead to a resolution of some sort. Lack thereof could be a particularly bad situation (which the player put themselves in), or a particularly shit gm.

there should be other consequences before death like accumulating injuries, permanent injuries and shit like that for starter.

This can work, but can often also lead to annoying death spiral mechanics.

>Get into fight
>Arm is broken by opponent, bleeding profusely
>Keep fighting
>Start losing harder because of the broken arm
>Keep fighting
>Die

Death spirals are only death spirals because you keep fighting. Have you considered living to fight another day? Maybe not pushing your luck? Yield, retreat, or if the injury is off a previous fight don't go looking for another.
That last option is a great way to pump tension into a game with the age old trick of time pressure. Well you're arm's fucked, but that ritual is being conducted tonight? How badly do you really want to save that kidnapped child? I'd hardly be annoyed by dying a hero.
>have to learn a new race and class, and you'll have to come up with a new backstory and personality.
God forbid, learning and creativity.

If you want to jerk off, If you want to be jerked off, you can try If you want everyone to agree with you, perhaps you can go moderate a subreddit for free ($0.00)