...by which I mean campaigns where death is not a mechanic. Perhaps Death is a "narrative device" or inexistent because:
DM: I don't want my PCs to lose progress
Another DM: My PCs would find the death of their PCs traumatic
and other reasons I haven't bothered looking up.
Are they worth playing?
Only if you're using a system appropriate for such a game, where people do not, by default, die when they lose a combat(or alternatively real combat isn't even an option).
That kills the excitement of it. Think of it like other entertainment, like vidya. I play STALKER Misery mod a lot. I die a lot. But it feels good when you survive in the worst of the situations you encounter.
Or here's another one, and I know I'll get shit for having shit tastes. PUBG. Used to be shit at it, now pretty good. When you survive after killing ten people by shooting them from afar, it feels good that you outskilled those people in a situation where you chances are now less than 50% survival.
My point is that without death in a game, the excitement and exhilaration of playing is kinda gone. It can be forgiven if it is for really comedic purposes, but even then death adds even more humor to it if added correctly.
That was my opinion as well - it lowers the amount of consequence the game has in store for you. I am of course not someone who would dictate how others should have their fun, but I was curious if the non-existence of death (making PCs effectively immortal) would reduce the amount of overall FUN to be had.
What about when it's part of the genre? A superhero game, for instance.
I mean, I feel like I’m the DM that wouldn’t want death barring extreme circumstances. Plenty of ways to still make a campaign feel tense and meaningful without dying every session
Depends on your playstyle. I regularly run games where nobody dies, and I've never known anybody to have a problem with them, but I only run for players I know line up with what I want out of a game, these days. We're interested in long form consistent storytelling, and character death just represents an unsatisfying end. We prefer failure to be just another way of progressing the story, losing out on opportunities, objectives, goals or connections rather than just losing a character and having all those plot threads cut in an instant.
If threat of death is the only thing that creates excitement and tension in a game, you have an incompetent or uncreative GM.
Well, I mean, unless your PCs are regularly suicidal, there's plenty of room between dying every session and maybe dying during a climatic boss fight.
There still can be fun without the risk of death. There has to be, however a risk of SOMETHING.
Their antics get a ship destroyed and a noble friend has their buisness fail, their fence gets caught because of bad handling of stolen goods by the party, if the party can't discover a cure for the disease the poor folk, like that nice woman who healed you once in the city begin to die. These are fantasy examples, but the idea works anywhere. The stakes exist outside player death, but present.
The players have to be invested in the world enough that successes of the groups they identify with are part of the fun, and that failing in their tasks is meaningful, if not deadly. Player death is a form of stakes. Without it you MUST (IMO) raise the stakes elsewhere, such that there is a tension to the story.
It takes a solid DM and players who want to be a part of the world, and not walking blocks of numbers.
This.
Sometimes it’s much worse to see something the characters care about get fucked instead of them.
I think deaths can be fine, that's why revival usually exists. It's unwanted loss of character that's unfun (for most)
death exists to be a threat, to make your players fear threats, be afraid, clench their asscheeks in anxiety, and when they come out on top, feel like champions who actually accomplished something. They should come close, roll off the rim, but never explicitly die and stay dead when they don't want to. (Again, exceptions to this)
Noble sacrifices? Great use of death
"Oops I guess the ogre triple-crit you and you missed every attempt to survive, roll a new character while we move on" Bad, (most people) probably wont have fun with that, you probably just made a player feel shitty and killed his fun because RNG
Again, this depends WILDLY on your players and their tastes
TL;DR death is a factor that should exist to cause fun in ways, not an arbitrary challenge like this is a vidya.
Well said. The premise of death can keep players engaged but too much death and/or anti climactic death can totally do th opposite. This isn’t like “legendary” difficulty in video games where you have checkpoints. The world is real, visceral, and constantly moving in real time. Having your character die means your investment in them is also gone which can be bad
>homebrew dnd with a nice sized group of friends
>girl and her inuyasha character self insert tries to use her giant fox familiar to intimidate a store keeper
>It goes badly
>6 guards show up
>dice go against her hard
>DM offers her a choice, either she dies or her giant fox dies
>she picks the fox
>comes around to her turn again, been silent/huffy whole time
>ends up leaving
>fiance leaves his spine at the table and leaves as well
>'he shouldn't have killed my fox, I was having a bad day and he shouldn't have done that'
>her and her fiance leaves
If you can't accept an aspect of the game, don't play it.
At least I am slowly pulling the remaining players into the possibility of trying out Dark Heresy soon instead of this HB nonsense.
Wasn't the DM btw, just another PC
as a DM I kinda pull my punches, but deaths happen. Worst case Ontario the PCs can just roll new ones. It's all for the better if they get attached to a character and it dies
>girl has an Inuyasha character
like fucking clockwork
>Are they worth playing?
If it's something you and your group want to do. If everyone wants to go on a fun fantasy adventure where they are the absolute hero's and the failstates are in quest failures, I can see a group getting into that.
I've had more than a few players tell me how much it really bummed them out to lose a character they had grown so attached to, and that even though death is part & parcel with the game, they would have really liked to keep their character. I can imagine people like that would probably enjoy a game where death wasn't something they had to consistently worry about.
Not saying it's the right way or the wrong way, but it is certainly a way I can see someone thinking has a lot of merit.
>There still can be fun without the risk of death. There has to be, however a risk of SOMETHING.
This. Thinking of running a game with only one player. Anyone got ideas for mechanics for what could be at risk or is it better off treated as fluff?
i'm thinking of adding an injury system to 5e, something that can have negative effects on combat and can't be immediately healed with magic or a long rest. head injuries, arms, legs etc.
maybe really powerful hits would cause it, but mostly going down in combat. when you get sustained, roll for an injury that remains for a certain amount of time, maybe 2d4 long rests or a set amount of days. could give disadvantages or negatives to certain saves or attacks, could be a wound that has a chance to reopen in certain situations, maybe the wizard or bard could puncture a lung that gives them a small chance to fail a vocal spell. i guess they'd be like minor curses that heal over time.
i'm the dm for a really new group (myself included), and i don't want to kill off anyone's character, but i want to make sure combat still feels dangerous and they don't get too careless.
>If threat of death is the only thing that creates excitement and tension in a game, you have an incompetent or uncreative GM.
Okay then what else is supposed to create the excitement or tension? Any tension comes from fear of loss of some sort, and the most effective is fear of death. Or embarrassment but most people suck at roleplay too much to be able to actually deal with this.
I ran a game for my dad where he played 2 characters and I ran a cleric healbot NPC that tagged along.