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Whoa, that means I've been using that word wrong for years.
...
Nah, you're definitely the wrong one. Everyone knows I can't make mistakes--haven't you seen my threads about how entitled/powermad my players/GMs are?
A death being upsetting doesn't make it a bad death. It was, however, arbitrary, since he only died to set the tone for the climax.
Doesn't that kind of argue that it was not, in fact, arbitrary?
Dang. Ninjaed by ciretose.
I'm currently working on a system and I'm considering making character death something rare but also make survival interesting.
Here's how it works:
If you would die inconsequentially, you may choose to die as normal or return from the brink. This does not apply if someone coup de gras you or similar.
If you return, you roll on a chart to determine the outcome of your ordeal. Alternatively, the GM may create an effect just for you.
The chart includes such things as strangely prophetic nightmares, weird abilities, unusual pains that flare up in the presence of holy sites, peculiar marks, etc. At the direst extremes, you may even come back with some undead traits.
If you come back, you might bring something else with you from the beyond.
;)
Edit:
Ooh, I had another idea. Since I am not using alignment, I may have characters choose a 'motivation'. And then use that to influence what happens when they almost die.
Motivations are what keep you going. It could be simple terms like 'destiny', 'fear', 'love', 'vengeance', 'duty'.
This may also determine what kind of undead rises if they're slain in unhallowed ground. :D
In the end, a character is merely marks and numbers on paper (or a readout, if you will). I've lost characters I've invested years in. I shrug, laugh about the good times, and reach for the dice and a blank character sheet.
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I'll have you know I cried for an hour when my Hat landed on the Dog's Park Place hotel.
I'm currently working on a system and I'm considering making character death something rare but also make survival interesting.
Here's how it works:
If you would die inconsequentially, you may choose to die as normal or return from the brink. This does not apply if someone coup de gras you or similar.
If you return, you roll on a chart to determine the outcome of your ordeal. Alternatively, the GM may create an effect just for you.
The chart includes such things as strangely prophetic nightmares, weird abilities, unusual pains that flare up in the presence of holy sites, peculiar marks, etc. At the direst extremes, you may even come back with some undead traits.
If you come back, you might bring something else with you from the beyond.
;)
Edit:
Ooh, I had another idea. Since I am not using alignment, I may have characters choose a 'motivation'. And then use that to influence what happens when they almost die.
Motivations are what keep you going. It could be simple terms like 'destiny', 'fear', 'love', 'vengeance', 'duty'.
This may also determine what kind of undead rises if they're slain in unhallowed ground. :D
You may want to check out (or, if you have already posted, resume participation within) this thread
Some of those work. Some are too severe.
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GMs are entitled to be 100% protective of their setting while players are not entitled the same thing for their characters ?
The risk of character death is an inherent part of any campaign.
The risk of setting death usually is not...and if it is, it's the BBEG's endgame, and the PC's are usually trying to prevent it.
GMs are entitled to be 100% protective of their setting while players are not entitled the same thing for their characters ?The risk of character death is an inherent part of any campaign.
The risk of setting death usually is not...and if it is, it's the BBEG's endgame, and the PC's are usually trying to prevent it.
I dunno, I feel like I lose a little bit of a setting when I lose a character. Characters do define some portion of it and what we see. If you lose every character you of course have to start over, but that's something else.(didn't we just touch this a while ago?)
Someone on the boards found it funny when I discussed characters being heavily involved in the story and advicating arbitrary death at the same time. Where is the problem with this? Why can't I spend a lot of time on my character, have him heavily involved with the story and at the same time, accept that things happen and characters die by that lone trap or that lucky hit from a monster?
I do this with each of my characters and I don't see why it would be funny.
Because, I daresay for most people, the more heavily invested they are in their character the more painful it is to have that character die, because it feels like they are losing that investment. People typically don't like to go through painful experiences if they don't have to, so people tend to not like having their character die, especially when the circumstances make it feel as though the death was unnecessary or meaningless.
This isn't a difficult concept.
I could understand if a concept only entered one's brain very rarely and it was an act of god to come up with another but most people are able to come up with concepts.
I just accept the rules of the game and how crap can happen.
Again, there's nothing wrong with your approach, and there's nothing wrong with the opposite philosophy, either.
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Someone on the boards found it funny when I discussed characters being heavily involved in the story and advicating arbitrary death at the same time. Where is the problem with this? Why can't I spend a lot of time on my character, have him heavily involved with the story and at the same time, accept that things happen and characters die by that lone trap or that lucky hit from a monster?
I do this with each of my characters and I don't see why it would be funny.
If you're really asking why someone thought your opinions are funny, I don't know because I'm not him.
If you're beating around the bush as a means to ask 'Why do others find it difficult to appreciate arbitrary character death and heavy character investment at the same time?,' perhaps an anecdote will help:
I grew up in rural NY, with lots of pets. Cats, dogs, fish, mice, you name it. I even caught a couple snakes to keep. (Fun fact: they tend to poo when scared.) And until The Incident, I gave them all names, cared for them, and was deeply invested in them. To the extent that a boy can love his pets, you can certainly say that I did. But then one day I adopted a cute little kitten from a friend who had an unspayed cat, and brought it home.
Within a few hours, it got out of my arms -- I can't remember if he squirmed out, or if I put him down to explore his new home. In any case, one of the family dogs noticed the little guy at that point, and the chase was on. Scared for my new kitten, I managed to catch up with the two of them, and intended to scoop up the kitten out of harm's way.
But when a kitten sees a large dog and an even larger boy with reaching hands, it acts on instinct and takes its own chances. And that's how I ended up watching the family dog crush the life from the kitten I had adopted only hours earlier. Now I had seen family pets die before, after living long and full lives. But after The Incident, I never really got attached to an animal again.
Anyhow, with characters, it's the same concept: It's difficult to care about things that you've seen be destroyed in the blink of an eye, and for no good reason. Not impossible, but difficult. Now don't get me wrong; I can get invested in a character, and I can take PC death in stride. But a DM who expects me to do both is going to be disappointed.
Keeping characters alive just so the next book can come out is something I get tired of. I don't know how many times I wanted Artemis Entreri to kill Drizzt.
When I found myself wanting the same thing, I stopped reading Salvatore and found better authors. ;)
Just an idea. Id like to see what stuff you would post in that thread.
Some of those work. Some are too severe.
Yeah, some of them are pretty severe either way (too unpleasant or too beneficial, but it seems like a pretty fun thread to use. A lot of the changes can be scaled down.
For instance, the "you lose your name and become immortal and unable to interact with reality" could be reduced to just, "You no longer possess a name, and no new name can stick". And "Your physical stats are all increased to 18" could just be "your physical stats all increase by +2".
Not every adventurer survives the dungeon.
A sudden death can be an end to a story.
Now, are you rolling up a new character?
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In the end, a character is merely marks and numbers on paper (or a readout, if you will). I've lost characters I've invested years in. I shrug, laugh about the good times, and reach for the dice and a blank character sheet.
In the end, so is a setting, or a story.
I do not think you will see many GMs (myself included) who will just shrug and reach for some blank paper if they lose it.
An act of creation, on any scale, is an important thing to its creator and should be respected as such.
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Why should I ?Not every adventurer survives the dungeon.
A sudden death can be an end to a story.
Now, are you rolling up a new character?
If you want to continue playing you will.
If not then good luck.
Why should I continue playing with a GM who carelessly kills my PC ?
I think every such death undermines the player's trust in his GM.
However if the death is grand and enjoyable for the player, it is actually a great enticement to keep on playing with the same GM (as a new PC of course).
Why should I ?Not every adventurer survives the dungeon.
A sudden death can be an end to a story.
Now, are you rolling up a new character?
If you want to continue playing you will.
If not then good luck.
Why should I continue playing with a GM who carelessly kills my PC ?
I think every such death undermines the player's trust in his GM.
However if the death is grand and enjoyable for the player, it is actually a great enticement to keep on playing with the same GM (as a new PC of course).
SO what if, as is quite often the case, the pc in essence carelessly kills itself?
SO what if, as is quite often the case, the pc in essence carelessly kills itself?
Then his last words were 'worth it!' in my experience. Alternatively you should probably give him a warning that he will totally kill himself and if he does it its all on him and I hope he had fun doing it.
I'm still stuck at the part about taking three weeks to create a character. Once I can wrap my head around that I might finish reading this thread…
Was an example. Likely very few people take three weeks to make a character.
I put in a decent amount of effort on my characters, but I have found that detailing the backstory to a ridiculous level only makes me sit alone with that backstory unused. I much prefer trying to work most of the backstory out during play. Instead, I want to make sure the character has a name, appearance and personality that I enjoy. And, I don't mind sudden, even relatively pointless deaths, so long as I have had a chance to get at least a bit of spotlight first. If my character dies, he or she has hopefully had time to leave some tracks in the campaign, and the emotional mix that comes with a dead character that won't get raised is heady stuff. I don't mind my character dying. I mind DM and the rest of the group never mentioning it again.
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I've never really understood "Back Story" but then again I usually insist we start at Level 1
If your character was a Pirate/Orphan/Escaped Convict/Palace Guard/Relic Hunter with a long story of exploits and adventure, before the game starts, you must have been really bad at those things to still be only level 1.
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A player killing his character through bad choices and poor judgment in my experience it happens very rarely. If it does keep happening why is no one espcially the DM not trying to talk things through with the player on adjusting his or her strategy. Or players or both. If neither gets a player to alter his tactics for a different outcome than he deserves to have his PC die over and over.
In a game I'm in a player insists on being stubborn no matter what I, the other players and DM try to give as advice. I have written him off at the table because only so many times I want to talk to a brick wall. And sometimes DMs do kill players because they can and a player deserves to be unhappy because it's a dick move on the part of any DM. If I play with one I sure as hell am not going to write any backstory because it's going to be useless.
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I've never really understood "Back Story" but then again I usually insist we start at Level 1
In my imagination I see that going like this.
DM: "No backstory, we're all starting at level 1"Player: "What? But what about my mom and dad?"
DM: "No! You don't get a family until at least level 3!"
Butbutbut... My god says "the first gift you ever receive is your family"...
I don't know about you people, but my family's gift to me was negative levels
badum, ching!
I put in a decent amount of effort on my characters, but I have found that detailing the backstory to a ridiculous level only makes me sit alone with that backstory unused. I much prefer trying to work most of the backstory out during play. Instead, I want to make sure the character has a name, appearance and personality that I enjoy. And, I don't mind sudden, even relatively pointless deaths, so long as I have had a chance to get at least a bit of spotlight first. If my character dies, he or she has hopefully had time to leave some tracks in the campaign, and the emotional mix that comes with a dead character that won't get raised is heady stuff. I don't mind my character dying. I mind DM and the rest of the group never mentioning it again.
What I try to do (admittedly I usually fail and start writing reams and reams anyway) is come up with a skeleton back story so I can go back and fill in the blanks later with detail at relevant points, such as when my character is sitting around in the tavern talking to the other characters and story time begins.
I've never really understood "Back Story" but then again I usually insist we start at Level 1.
If your character was a Pirate/Orphan/Escaped Convict/Palace Guard/Relic Hunter with a long story of exploits and adventure, before the game starts, you must have been really bad at those things to still be only level 1.
Back story doesn't always have to involve exploits and adventure :)
It also depends how you see a level 1 adventurer in your campaign world. I usually rate them as somewhat more seasoned than the average commoner, after having maybe a year or two of doing whatever-it-is-they-do under their belt - plenty of time to have gotten into a scrape or two, rather than being freshly-trained newbies that haven't faced a goblin (or whatever passes for L1 cannon fodder in that world) before.
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Why should I continue playing with a GM who carelessly kills my PC ?
You shouldn't.
Now if you made choices that put you at risk, or the dice gods were cruel...
Your Character dying doesn't mean your GM killed it. And frankly, I wouldn't want to game with anyone who accused me of such a thing.
To many other people I could game with.
Butbutbut... My god says "the first gift you ever receive is your family"...
I think that's metagaming actually. You don't get a religion until level 2.
I've never really understood "Back Story" but then again I usually insist we start at Level 1
If your character was a Pirate/Orphan/Escaped Convict/Palace Guard/Relic Hunter with a long story of exploits and adventure, before the game starts, you must have been really bad at those things to still be only level 1.
This is a big part of why I don't start games I'm running at level 1. It severely limits what players can do with their characters. Even something simple like having a heirloom weapon is difficult. If you start at higher levels, it's easy: it just comes out of their starting wealth. If I'd started the game at level 1, the bard wouldn't have been able to start out with the +2 greataxe that's been in her family for generations.
A player killing his character through bad choices and poor judgment in my experience it happens very rarely. If it does keep happening why is no one espcially the DM not trying to talk things through with the player on adjusting his or her strategy. Or players or both. If neither gets a player to alter his tactics for a different outcome than he deserves to have his PC die over and over.
Going a little further, you can have this conversation before the character dies. Something like "Carlos, when your barbarian ran ahead of the group in the dungeon and got ambushed by those dwarves, he almost died. In the future, you should [explanation of better tactics]. I don't want to be put in the situation where I have to fudge dice rolls to not kill your character."
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Why should I ?Not every adventurer survives the dungeon.
A sudden death can be an end to a story.
Now, are you rolling up a new character?
If you want to continue playing you will.
If not then good luck.
Why should I continue playing with a GM who carelessly kills my PC ?
I think every such death undermines the player's trust in his GM.
However if the death is grand and enjoyable for the player, it is actually a great enticement to keep on playing with the same GM (as a new PC of course).
What's the point in bothering with having the RPG system if you don't at least have the risk of mortal consequences for your character?
I personally would find a game where I knew that my character was inviolate to grow rather dull pretty quickly.
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For the record, I had to laugh when I saw the bit about losing a setting to a bad die roll because I used to run Exalted, where you lose your setting within the first fifteen minutes of the session.
Interestingly, in that game, I was much more protective of PCs than in Pathfinder. That has a lot to do with my group though. In one of my PF groups, death happens, and the bad guys are not here to pull any punches. My other PF group has TPKed twice already, but that's the group I'm more protective of! So you can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes your players will have a good time, I guess?
Depending on who is describing "carelessly"
I think if a player opens a door without checking for traps in a place where traps are likely, the GM wasn't the one who carelessly killed anyone.
This illustrates a consequence of trap-heavy play: it slows down the pace of the game. PCs have to check for traps on every door. This means you have to take the time for someone (or multiple characters) to announce they are checking for traps, to roll a perception check, communicate the check to the DM, the DM to announce the results, and, if there really was a trap, to redo the entire process with disable device instead of perception. Multiply this by however many doors the party has to go through, and it becomes a significant chunk of real-world time to resolve all the trap checking.
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SO what if, as is quite often the case, the pc in essence carelessly kills itself?Then his last words were 'worth it!' in my experience. Alternatively you should probably give him a warning that he will totally kill himself and if he does it its all on him and I hope he had fun doing it.
I'm still stuck at the part about taking three weeks to create a character. Once I can wrap my head around that I might finish reading this thread…Was an example. Likely very few people take three weeks to make a character.
If I have a player who seriously takes three weeks to make a character, sorry, but I'm gonna build it for him. Once he's good enough at the system to write his characters up in time to actually play them, he can start building them on his own.
Our GM rolls the checks.
And again, it is in a place where traps are likely, not on the front door of the inn.
Okay, slightly reshuffle the process of checking for traps. Also, don't forget that traps can be on more than just doors. You also need to check for traps on the floor, ceiling, and walls. If the dwarven temple has a dozen rooms, that's a fair amount of time spent on searching for traps.
Anyway, besides just the time spent on resolving checking for traps, there's also the fact that using traps pushes the party towards playing more cautiously and slowly. This of course slows the pace of the game. That may be a desired effect of using traps, but it's silly to deny that it is an effect.
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If I have a player who seriously takes three weeks to make a character, sorry, but I'm gonna build it for him. Once he's good enough at the system to write his characters up in time to actually play them, he can start building them on his own.
Uh-huh. I'm pretty sure "system" and rules and number-crunching has anything to do with it when you run across players who take that long to create characters-- it's usually all that other stuff that isn't directly reflected in the rules, all that free exercise of imagination, creativity (and sometimes obsession with detail to ridiculous degrees) that causes players to take such lengths of time in crafting a character for a given campaign.
So far that statement implies to me that you don't want your players to worry about anything like backstory, character history, pre-thought-out personality and motivations; but would prefer them to just crunch the numbers and get ready to roll (perhaps with characterization to be developed spontaneously as the game goes on).
If I have misinterpreted your intentions on this and you really prefer some middle ground between the two, please feel free to clarify.