Death is Always in the Cards (Or Maybe it Isn't)

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Let's talk about death, baby. It's become a hot-button subject since the launch of Pathfinder Adventures, where a legion of fans were presented with the choice of using a "permadeath" option or letting the fear of death fall by the wayside. There are lots of good reasons why death works the way it does in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, so three of us are providing you with three very different perspectives on the subject. Mike will talk about death in the home version of the physical card game, Nathan will talk about death in the digital game, and Tanis will talk about death in organized play.

Mike's Take: "Permadeath, All the Time"

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is built on the principle that if you try to draw a card that isn't there, you've kicked the bucket, shuffled off your mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible. You are an ex-character.

The rationale for this is simple: If the danger of death isn't there, the game breaks down. If you know you can't die, you don't fear the consequences of your actions. So you might embrace what us game designers call "degenerate behavior." For example, if you know you can't die, you might forgo that offer from Kyra to heal you, and get an extra exploration. That one exploration can matter a lot.

For example, you may know that I went in for knee surgery a little while back. So I resolved to play through all of the Obsidian game that was available, through Hook Mountain Massacre. And get this: My party failed to defeat Xanesha on the final card of the blessings deck two games in a row. If I wasn't worried about them dying, there's no way I'd get in that predicament. That's how the game is balanced.

The presumption built into the game is that you're playing a campaign, and losing a character is a massive deal. I lost two characters in the run-up to that Angel in the Tower double-failure. Sajan died during Attack on Sandpoint and Lini kicked it during Local Heroes. (Let me underscore that for emphasis: She died in Local Heroes.) So the new guys, Harsk and Kyra, didn't actually ever finish Burnt Offerings, and so they missed out on the adventure's feats. They turned out a little less buff because their predecessors offed it. Now, I could go back and do those early scenarios with Harsk and Kyra, but I'm running a story here. Also, this is a moot point, since Harsk and Kyra died too, in the last scenario of Hook Mountain Massacre. I knew we named it that for a reason. We won't be seeing those four again, any more than John Cleese will ever have a functional parrot.

Nathan's Take: "Digital Dice Are Unforgiving Enough"

Let me first state for the record: When my group plays the Adventure Card Game, death is real and not forgiven. Just ask our Ekkie player who died in WotR 1.4 and had to play her cousin Rekkie solo through the first 9 scenarios to catch up.

But when it came to Pathfinder Adventures, we decided to make death less than permanent by default. Is it because we are nice? Ummm... Nope! We did invent the Darkest Night Wildcard which costs you a card from the blessings deck each time you fail to acquire a boon (which should give you some indication of our generosity). Actually, it's quite the contrary, and doesn't have much to do with game difficulty at all.

It's all about how we save games! I wanted to preserve the sanctity of rolled dice and cards found in the location deck. As the guy who has reloaded the heck out of X-COM, Civilization, and Total War to get the rolls I wanted, I understand the temptation to cheese the system's random number generator. I even would go as far as to crash Elder Sign: Omens on purpose to reroll. Is that fun? There's a not very good argument that it is, but I knew that to preserve the importance of risk and choice in Pathfinder Adventures, we had to remove the concept of "Saved Games" that you load.

Instead, you play with a party or parties. Every time you confirm an action by rolling, drawing a card, or tapping the confirmation arrow, you've made a permanent decision that can't be reversed by any means.

Okay, fine. What does this have to do with death? Put simply, if you make a mistake at the game table, it's adjudicated by people who can determine how honest the mistake was. If you make a mistake in the digital game, like you swiped to roll when you weren't ready or you didn't realize it was Lem's turn and not Valeros' when you decide to take on the villain, there's no take-backs. And if you're just learning the game for the first time and you didn't quite understand the deck-to-life equation, you might put down the game for good.

Bottom line: If you are a new casual player, enjoy non-permadeath while learning the game! The rest of you don't really have an excuse to play anything but permadeath!

Tanis's Take: "I Like to Make You Suffer, But I Don't Like to Make You Quit"

In Adventure Card Guild games, the bulk of reported play that we're seeing is weekly or fortnightly games at local game stores and game days. I'm aiming to provide a fun experience that people will make part of their routine. And as Mike and Nathan have already said, it's hard to generate an exhilarating victory without the real possibility of death or loss.

In Season of the Shackles, I decided to run with the base game's rules on advancement and death. People enjoyed themselves, but missing a week at the store because your kid was sick or because you had a conflicting event would automatically put you behind the rest of your party. And if you died late in the season? You were never going to catch up to your friends again. Social contract voided, six months of fun washed away, and a bad taste left in your mouth. Not ideal.

I've been at a table where someone's playing Adventure 5 and a character dies, and it suuuuuucks. In the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild, usually someone at a high-level table will have a way to access resurrection magic or some kind, whether via a cleric or druid at the table or via special access to some sort of life-restoring magic earned during play. In the Adventure Card Guild, you wouldn't want to depend on a cleric having a Raise Dead in her deck. So I added a metagame system that allows players to expend pretty valuable resources—die bumps—to resurrect a fallen comrade. Die bumps are earned when characters complete an adventure, and they can be used to modify a roll after it's been made. The party can collectively expend 3 die bumps to resurrect a character at the end of a scenario. There's still pain, and dying still sucks, but I'm glad we found a way to allow people to keep playing. Like Dory, we want you to just keep playing. (This is where Disney•Pixar pays me the big bucks for nudging you to go see Finding Dory.)

If you don't like those rules, you can always go by Selinker's Law: "It's organized play, son. When your character dies, you die too."

Mike Selinker and Tanis O'Connor
Adventure Card Game Designers

Nathan Davis
Pathfinder Adventures Designer
Obsidian Entertainment