Is it edgy to have an unhappy ending for some or all of your PCs/NPCs? Not necessarily you all died in the end and lost...

OK, I'm gonna go into theory a bit here.
Why are games fun? Because in them we have agency: the ability to make informed choices, knowing that the decisions we make will matter and have good or bad consequences. However, pure agency (IE total control) is boring as 'you can have anything you want' is a trivial non-choice. There should be some resistance to our actions.

A brief example: chess. In chess, you can see the board state and control where your pieces go. You can, within the structures of the game, put pieces where you want in order to move closer to checkmate. Chess is fun because it is built on making a series of choices, and hoping that you make good enough choices to overcome your opponent.

So, let's take this to roleplaying games.
In a game, you need to have the ability to make choices that affect things. Without that, the game turns into a railroad, the stereotypical 'might as well just read a book' game.
Our choices need to be informed. If there is nothing to differentiate option A from option B, then the outcome is essentially random, and your choices do not matter.
There must be doubt. If the 'correct' action is known, then the right action is a foregone conclusion, and the decision is made for us. Hidden information or randomness introduce doubt that makes the decision non-trivial.
Some choices must be better than others. If every outcome of our decisions is just as desirable, it doesn't matter what we pick, since it will always be OK. For our choices to matter, there must be /wrong/ choices. Of course, it is possible for the player to come up with their own definition of 'desirable', but there needs to be bad options.

(to be continued)

>bad end
after years of successful adventuring, they find themselves unable to readjust to civilian life. The rest of the party moved on and has families now. They are stuck in the past. They drink a lot, and wait alone for their life to be over. This continues on for decades, and until suddenly their health starts failing. On their deathbed, they curse themselves for throwing away so much of their lives, and die forgotten and alone.

>If the 'correct' action is known, then the right action is a foregone conclusion, and the decision is made for us. Hidden information or randomness introduce doubt that makes the decision non-trivial.
You're assuming that in the game I play in there is only one option: either go with what the GM wants or go against what the GM wants and condemn the character to die. Do you know what assumptions make you look like?

Ever heard the saying "Don't assume. You make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'" which you are doing right now.

>Some choices must be better than others.
You're preaching to the choir.
>For our choices to matter, there must be /wrong/ choices. Of course, it is possible for the player to come up with their own definition of 'desirable', but there needs to be bad options.
Implying there aren't in the games I play in, again 'assuming'...

(Continued)
That last bit (some choices must be better than others) is the bit I'm going to zoom in on. There are two approaches here: choosing right brings you closer to the good ending, or choosing wrong brings you closer to the bad ending. Both of these work pretty well as motivators.
However, either ending is /still an ending/, which makes the fun thing (a PC or campaign) stop. So good endings want to be infrequent, or else the fact that they are still an ending will make them less desirable. After all, how often do PCs in mid campaign retire to a quiet life and not come back, even if that's a 'good ending' for them? Rarely, because it means not playing that PC anymore. Thus, bad endings need to be a more significant 'threat' than good endings are achievable since - out-of-game - 'keep playing' is desirable.

So, the threat of bad endings is healthy if you want to give a sense of agency, which you probably do since agency is fun.

The same, incidentally, applies to good 'things' and bad 'things' happening as motivators. Discarding those which are pure fluff, these tend to mean either the PC is losing something/becoming weaker (for bad things) or gaining something/becoming stronger (good things). Either works as a motivator.
However, a PC losing something is often un-fun. Playing a weakened PC reduces your ability to do stuff, and is depressing. Losing in-world stuff (like NPC friends) is a loss of something you'd invested in, and is in many ways like a smaller Bad Ending. Continuing to play after being smacked down by these bad things can be depressing and frustrating, defined by what's been lost, not by what the character is. Getting new stuff, and having good things happen, by contrast, is fun! Humans are greedy and like having nice things, so gain makes us happy.

(to be continued again)

It's worth noting that an end to a character (death, insanity, forced retirement, transformation) often sucks /less/ than them being crippled but continuing to play them. The initial sting is sharper (which is, in a way, a benefit! It makes the bad end something you want to avoid), but it's quickly replaced with a new PC, whereas the sting from a surviving, punished PC /lingers/.

This means that, in order to get the motivation balance working, what you want is a game where permanent bad endings are a risk (but good endings unlikely), but where getting good stuff (including good stuff that mitigates the risk of bad endings) is easier than bad stuff.
This is easily seen in the structure of, say, Dungeons and Dragons, where the tension is between the risk of death and the promise of treasure.

This mini essay is, incidentally, not always applicable. You might be playing to produce comedy. You might be doing 'art' where the themes that emerge are more important than the game-like elements.
I'd also say that 'end' is left ambigious on purpose. Death is a bad end. So is hitting 0 humanity in vamp, or 0 sanity in call of cthulhu. Imprisonment, mind control, Fates Worse Than Death, getting cured of the magic... these all apply. Pretty much anything that renders the character unplayable is an end.
Similarly, 'good' and 'bad' are up to the player to decide. Maybe a glorious death against a worthy foe is a good end? That's legit too. The point is more that the risk/reward decision making is pretty vital to what makes games fun, and a lose-state helps with that.

>So good endings want to be infrequent, or else the fact that they are still an ending will make them less desirable. After all, how often do PCs in mid campaign retire to a quiet life and not come back
>implying the best ending isn't the one where the character goes out with a Bang
I see our tastes differ even more

>So, the threat of bad endings is healthy if you want to give a sense of agency, which you probably do since agency is fun.
You're putting this a bit too much in a video game perspective. I do agree that if the players make stupid decisions, their characters should die, no question about that. But I play because I want to take my mind off of the daily routine and my difficulty setting when playing games is on "normal" and not "dark souls - rape my ass with spiky capra demon cock until I like it"

>The point is more that the risk/reward decision making is pretty vital to what makes games fun, and a lose-state helps with that.
Counterpoint: youtube.com/watch?v=1GrK9FJK_Ek
Tell me, how fun would Daisuke Jigen's Gravestone have been if the sniper of the movie had rolled a "1" on his "bullets to use on the mark" to kill the protagonist? It would not have been fun, because the movie would have been over after 15 minutes.

Now you have characters that the player enjoys playing and the GM enjoys seeing in the campaign, one that is keeping the party together and the surviving members on a mission that the players all agreed was what they wanted to do?
Let's say that half the party has already been replaced due to death and new characters have been introduced who didn't originally get tasked with the mission.

The party encounter an obstacle and they hatch an acceptable- if not good- plan to overcome it. And then the dice decide to screw them over.

The sniper rolls a "1" on his "bullets to kill the party" and kills the player with what the odds would say is 0,0002% chance of happening.

(Cont.)

>either go with what the GM wants or go against what the GM wants and condemn the character to die
that's not quite what I mean. Look at it this way: If one option is strictly better than the other (or close enough as makes no odds) and there's no uncertainty, the decision is trivial and therefore meaningless. Say you're building a magic deck: a 1/1 goblin for 1 mana is just never as good as a 2/1 goblin for 1 mana. Deciding to put the 2/1 in instead of the 1/1 is not a meaningful choice, because there's no element of doubt or skill or judgment - it's just /better/. For an extreme example, tic-tac-toe is a solved game. For any given situation, the optimal move is known, and so playing it involves no skill, just a flowchart. So, there's no agency.
A game which gives you more agency is one where you have more decision-making. This is why, for example, people enjoy social scenes: every line of dialogue is a decision to make which affects how things will play out. The process is open-ended and somewhat (but not totally) predictable, so the player's agency is high. Meanwhile, the system for chases in many systems (roll opposed drive/athletics checks - other games I've seen have much better chase mechanics) have little to no decision making for the player; once a chase is initated, you roll some dice to see who wins, without much more input. Here the player's agency is low, so scenes using these mechanics tend to be less exciting.

I'm not implying anything about other people's games. The point of this little essay is to explain why I think the risk of fail-states make games more fun.

>implying the best ending isn't the one where the character goes out with a Bang
that's not a bad ending, surely? It's just an ending, and 'good' or 'bad' is kind of an external value judgement. See
> 'good' and 'bad' are up to the player to decide. Maybe a glorious death against a worthy foe is a good end? That's legit too

Remember: the players OoC told you they liked this direction they were going, the mission they had been assigned and everything.

The player in question likes the character they are playing and are extremely cooperative and immersed with the elements you put them in front of. And their character is the engine the group runs on the mission for, because half the party has already been replaced by new members and the other guy doesn't have that strong of a motivation, IC, to keep going alone.

What do you do? Start over? Even if the group already said that they liked where the game is going and have fun? Metagame it and force the other character to give a fuck and continue on the mission and kill the PC regardless? Because the dice decided this night, RNGesus abandoned all hope?

Sure, go ahead, just expect the same detachment from the players as they would have it toward Darkest Dungeon.

It's a natural part of life and story telling. I've had my own PC killed offscreen because I thought it would make for an exciting story.

Man that sounds like the fate of a lot of people used to warfare and death, that's some sad shit

Very realistic tho 10/10

>You're putting this a bit too much in a video game perspective
my thoughts here actually originated with larp design. Specifically, VtM, and the ongoing argument about whether the Prince (and other officers of the court) should be PCs or not.

I think you're priorities are fundamentally different to mine. You're looking at this as, primarilly, a storytelling thing. 'And then the key character died from a weird fluke, and the mission was abandonned' is a fucking terrible /plot/. But as gameplay, it's just a lose-state. Like, I wargame a lot, and losing a battle doesn't mean I don't try again next game.
I, for one, would let the weird result stand. Everybody laughs at the stupid funny thing, and we move on. After all, as I said here
>a good GM doesn't plan the plot ahead of time. Dice rolls and the actions of the PCs mean that you rapidly enter the realm of chaos theory. So rather than trying to things back on track, just roll with it and see what happens.
running a game is improvisatory. It has to be; you can't control the dice or the players' decisions or any of that. If a quest fizzles, it fizzles, but if you don't think of that as 'campaign derailed' it's not a problem. Sandboxes (whether a megadungeon for D&D or the social web of a vamp larp) are good here, since if one thread gets cut off, there are plenty more.
Remember, humans are really /homo creativus/. Put the random shit that happens in a game in front of them, and a narrative will emerge without needing to conciously work towards it. It's what humans do; we see faces in the clouds and tell stories about them.

>I think you're priorities are fundamentally different to mine.
oh, and I'd add that that's NOT A BAD THING. But it means that we're discussing an entirely different set of priorities. If 'satisfying narrative' trumps 'agency and tension' then none of what I'm saying really matters: fudge everything to get the best story. I've played games that run on that, and they're pretty fun, but the satisfaction is /very/ different to what I get playing a game about challenge.

>Is it edgy to have an unhappy ending for some or all of your PCs/NPCs?
This can be answered thusly:

NPCs should die in ways that make sense. If that means "dig two graves if you seek vengeance" then you roll with that.

For PCs: it. should. be. the. player's. choice.

Period.

Period period.

Well, you do you.

Have fun having another session 0 about what the players want out of the game, what they'll play and where they want to go with their characters, roughly. Oh, of course don't forget to mention to them that their characters will die a completely unclimactic death and they should have spare PC sheets for when the dice inevitabily fail them.

>Put the random shit that happens in a game in front of them, and a narrative will emerge without needing to conciously work towards it.
Sounds like some CYOA shit. I'm not really a guy who likes "random" narratives, where I could simply take a book or a machine and roll to see what happens next with no rhyme or reason because, hey, it's dice that dictate the pace of the game.

But that's your prerogative and we've already determined that it's two parallel ways of playing the game, somewhat. Although one way reminds me more of playing "win the good ending" bingo/lottery.

is this bait?
if not, you need to stop playing with tumblrinas. your character is not you, your consent to stuff happening to them is irrellevant. Like, just like 'it. should. be. the. player;s. choice.' is a fucking dumb position to take about whether your tank gets blown up in 40k.

...

That's how session 0 went. Session 1 had an initial bloodbath when the players not used to my GMing screwed up royally, but it was fine, 'cos those were fresh new PCs with no attachment yet, so they rolled up replacements and carried right on, and now they knew better than to assume they had plot-armour.
I mean, I'm running a game right now that's basically these principles applied as rigorously as I can. High-risk, high-character-skill, easy-rewards, improv-heavy. It's going pretty well, actually. It helps that the game's a wide-open sandbox with various objectives that players /can/ go after, but don't have to. I've been rolling up details in-game rather than planning ahead of time* to keep me on my toes, and the stories that are emerging are getting to be pretty neat.
But, it's much more like watching sports than watching fiction.

*I did, however, make a frankly unreasonable number of random tables ahead of time.

That's good on you: as long as you're having fun, it's cool.

damn straight. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
(incidentally, user, this has been a pleasant and constructive conversation. on the internet, no less. Good on you! If only more people were like you when disagreeing)
It occurs to me that 'and then the plot sucks so we retcon it' can be treated as an out-of-character fail state to be avoided, if we treat 'telling a good story' as a game, with a satisfying plot as a goal we have to work towards.

I am also happy that I managed to post with a pleasant user like yourself. I also wanted to thank you for bearing with me: sometimes what I write can be a bit caustic in nature and turn people aggressive.

It's been nice, but I should be off. I'll catch you around, probably.

toodles. Swing past /osrg/ if you want more of my OPINIONS.

>How dare you two be all civilized and stuff! GET TO SHITPOSTING

...

The key different between us, user, is that I am actually playing (and GMing) RPGs, while you are, obviously, between games you're being kicked out of.

>Continuing to play after being smacked down by these bad things can be depressing and frustrating, defined by what's been lost, not by what the character is.
I'd argue that in a good story, hardship doesn't utterly define a character; it just dictates the direction of the development. That kind of thing can be very exciting to roleplay in the right group. I definitely understand that it's not for everyone, though, especially when the depressing shit in-game happens to coincide with bullshit in the real world.

This thread was a very pleasant read, and I hope both of you anons are fortunate enough to have a like-minded group like I do.

git gud scrub

...

>implying

It's fine if it leaves the players satisfied. If it doesn't, then it's just a dick move so you can act like a faux artiste. The line can be very fine between the two, so the best move is to talk about where a character is going with the player. Especially in private.

A good ending to a story is all about achievement. There is nothing at all wrong with PC or NPC death, so long as it is meaningful.

No. Edgy is a buzzword used by normies to shut down anything outside of their comfort zone. Not everything needs a neatly wrapped happy ending, dark (and bittersweet) stories and characters have always been around. Just do it well, like anything else.

Preach it brother!