Lethality in gaming. IE the "Save or Die" love/hate...

[Treebore]

I'm going to be a bit, um, blunt here. So if you are "thin skinned", stop reading now.


OK. As you may have noticed due to another thread here, I have been play testing DnD Next. So I read the blogs, etc... WOTC puts out about it. I just got done reading a Legend and Lore post by Mike Mearls that has me getting turned off about the possible future of D&D Next. Once again, they want to make D&D the kinder and gentler D&D. Apparently, when it comes down to it, all the talk about "realism" in D&D is the joke I consider it to be. Apparently, having things in D&D that can kill your PC, or the NPC, is not the kind of realism gamers want in their games. Apparently they want it to be impossible to immediately kill, or "remove" a PC or NPC from combat.

I can understand this. I get irritated when my PC gets killed. Even when I know he can be brought back to life pretty quickly. Dying is losing. I don't like losing either. So I get irritated. As the game master, I don't like it when a PC dies. Even when I know they can be back in action soon enough. I really hate TPK's, because that will likely, but not necessarily, mean the end to the campaign.

You know what I hate worse? Games with rubberized rooms, weapons and spells. Games that are as "safe" as possible. I hate, hate, HATE such games. Why? Because they are very boring to me. If I want such games there are plenty of "sunshine and ponies" kids games I could play.

I tolerate the inconveniences of PC and NPC deaths, even insta deaths, because that is a realism I want. That is what makes the game exciting when those dice get rolled. Knowing I can lose. That my PC can die. In an instant. That is a realism I absolutely want in my games, whether I run them, or play in them. It is precisely why I put up with all the inconveniences of PC death. It is why I let my NPC's die so quickly, when the dice rolls call for it.

So basically, what I am saying, is despite how much I am liking how D&D Next plays, if they take this step to make D&D this nice, safer, "puppies and rainbows" kind of game, WOTC will once again fail to recruit me as a "loyal" customer.

Which we all know is fine, because we all have Castles and Crusades. You can be immediately put to sleep, or held, or die of poison, etc... It's not "safe". Its not hard to kill or be killed. Get the right or wrong roll at the right or wrong time, and your dead, or taken out of the combat. All those things that a lot of D&D players apparently hate. Well, more power to them. Their whimpified game is not the kind of game I want to play. I want more so called "realism" than that. I want the equivalent of a bullet to the chest, or grenade going off, or tank running me over. I want the sudden, instant, change to the course of my PC's life. That is the very real risks such "adventurers" face in real life, and that is the risk I want to vicarously experience via my character.

So I am very grateful that if they do end up going with this "whimp" version of D&D that I still have plenty of other RPG's to give me the game play experience I do want.

[Arduin]

I'm going to be a bit, um, blunt here. So if you are "thin skinned", stop reading now.


OK. As you may have noticed due to another thread here, I have been play testing DnD Next. So I read the blogs, etc... WOTC puts out about it. I just got done reading a Legend and Lore post by Mike Mearls that has me getting turned off about the possible future of D&D Next. Once again, they want to make D&D the kinder and gentler D&D. Apparently, when it comes down to it, all the talk about "realism" in D&D is the joke I consider it to be. Apparently, having things in D&D that can kill your PC, or the NPC, is not the kind of realism gamers want in their games. Apparently they want it to be impossible to immediately kill, or "remove" a PC or NPC from combat.

Hmm. If this translates into the final rules then they are going the same way as they did with 4.x. The tabletop video game where one has "lives". If they do that, it'll be the same disaster as 4.x was for WotC...

The FINAL disaster. They won't recover from it. I hope they don't screw up this badly.

[serleran]

In some settings, dying is only the start of the campaign...

[Treebore]

I'm going to be a bit, um, blunt here. So if you are "thin skinned", stop reading now.


OK. As you may have noticed due to another thread here, I have been play testing DnD Next. So I read the blogs, etc... WOTC puts out about it. I just got done reading a Legend and Lore post by Mike Mearls that has me getting turned off about the possible future of D&D Next. Once again, they want to make D&D the kinder and gentler D&D. Apparently, when it comes down to it, all the talk about "realism" in D&D is the joke I consider it to be. Apparently, having things in D&D that can kill your PC, or the NPC, is not the kind of realism gamers want in their games. Apparently they want it to be impossible to immediately kill, or "remove" a PC or NPC from combat.

Hmm. If this translates into the final rules then they are going the same way as they did with 4.x. The tabletop video game where one has "lives". If they do that, it'll be the same disaster as 4.x was for WotC...

The FINAL disaster. They won't recover from it. I hope they don't screw up this badly.

Yep. That was one of my biggest turn offs about 4E. In the several months we played, on a weekly basis, there was only one time we were worried about going unconscious or dying. Only once. Out of dozens of fights.

[Omote]

In some settings, dying is only the start of the campaign...

THIS! In my homebrew game world, the adventure has just begun upon death.

As for save or die spells... Love, love, love, LOVE, LOVE!. Avoiding death is easier in C&C because you don't "bleed out" from -1 to -6, so stop whining you mewling quims! But never let spells be easy, or light on kill potential, or fluffy. F-THAT! Wizard spells wielded by villians are for hardcore, death-dealing muther-fvkers.

So your characters want to go up against Zansidaar, the Black Sorcerer of Nargath do they? Well, you better bring a back-up character.

~O

[Ancalagon]

To hell with WotC. I have C&C.

[Lurker]

To hell with WotC. I have C&C.

RGR on that !!!!!!

[Arduin]

Yep. That was one of my biggest turn offs about 4E. In the several months we played, on a weekly basis, there was only one time we were worried about going unconscious or dying. Only once. Out of dozens of fights.

I think trying to make an RPG that is all things to all demographics is going to prove impossible. They should have created 4.X as a separate new RPG and continued with D&D on its own brand.

[Lord Dynel]

Wow. I already had one foot off the 5e train the moment I heard about "bloodied" being back (although as an option). What really got me heading off and away was all the "optional" stuff being such a big part of the playtest. They focused so much on it and, sure, it could be that they still plan on a very basic core book, but I sincerely doubt it. But I digress.

I can't say I'm surprised, honestly. It's been the trend with D&D for years, the softening of the game. In the beginning, you made a character, and Gygax himself advised not to make a story for the guy until a few levels in. And you always hired retainers, to keep you alive longer and to have a playable character in case you died. Then 2e got rid of the harsh stuff - brutish half-orce, evil assassins, devils, demons, etc. Even though a lot of that stuff came back eventually, late in 2e and with 3rd. Of course, 3rd is where it really got bad. Starting sometime in 2e, there was a paradigm shift - people didn't want disposable heroes. They didn't want the threat of death looming over their heads. Players wanted to pick what they wanted to play, not let the fickle finger of fate decide for them. It had been around for a while before that even, but I think it took root in 2e. The Player's Options didn't take the SOD mechanic out of the game, but it got you closer to being "Superman" that you could survive SODs, and many other challenges, much, much easier. Then, of course, fast forward back to 3e and player entitlement went into full gear. They were telling the DMs if they made this saving throw or that skill check. The DM got relegated to a different role - one of narrator to the player's story.

I know I'm going off the deep end, and I apologize. It just burns me up. I don't know what the driving factors are for this kind of game design. Feedback? The MMORPG influence, that nothing really kills you...you just respawn back at your bind point? Do gamers nowadays have such fragile egos that "dying" in a rpg is so much a buzz kill that they'll just give up on tabletop rpgs altogether and go play something else they can keep on playing until they get to the end without dying? No threat, and no danger? To me, that means no reward. If there's not a challenge to overcome then how is it rewarding? If the DM will never put the players against something they can't defeat, or nothing can kill you outright, then people can still sit around the table and enjoy themselves? If they "win" every encounter...and they know they'll win every encounter...how can that be fun?

Again, my apologies. I just can't wrap my head around something like this. I guess they're welcome to game the way they want. I guess I shouldn't be focused so much on the playstyle that's evolved from D&D than I should on what instilled that playstyle. They're revising a game that's been out for less than four years (considering there hasn't been much new stuff for the past year or so) because it didn't work. I guess I can't say the "softening" of later editions had anything to do with the sales of the game. For 4e, I don't know what it was. I think they took it too far from what D&D was and that turned a lot of people off. Like the frog in the hot water.

Anyway, it's like Ancalagon said...I have C&C, so I'm good. I've stopped playtesting more than a month ago because I had read the next download packet and all I could muster was a "bleh." I'll keep an eye on it, and hope, but my hope is beginning to wane with each packet and blog they release.

[Sir Ironside]

I"ve seen this for a long time, even in 3.5. I'm also willing to bet, like was said above, that this is probably because of feedback, where- I'm sure- most of it is coming from 3.5/4e players. Grognards have a little voice now, rpg's have changed. I do think that online gamers are having a huge impact of which way 5e is going to go.

Maybe all those expansion books will solve the problem. But, I agree. If they try to be inclusive for everyone, it is a river that they are trying to swim upstream.

Me. I have no horses in this race. There is enough- out there- that I have no need to go the D&D route. Mind you, I'm more of a outside guy looking in. It has been so long since I've gamed I've almost forgotten what it is like.

[Lord Dynel]

I"ve seen this for a long time, even in 3.5. I'm also willing to bet, like was said above, that this is probably because of feedback, where- I'm sure- most of it is coming from 3.5/4e players. Grognards have a little voice now, rpg's have changed. I do think that online gamers are having a huge impact of which way 5e is going to go.

This. That was what I was getting at, but forgot to voice that. You did it, quite elegantly.

[captain_blood]

To hell with WotC. I have C&C.

+1, Like, Bazinga, or whatever the kids are saying these days.

[Sir Ironside]

This. That was what I was getting at, but forgot to voice that. You did it, quite elegantly.

I'm nothing, if not elegant.

Like, Bazinga, or whatever the kids are saying these days.

I think it is "Zoink!" But, it is not uncommon for me to mix-up what the "me" generation are saying now and 1970's cartoons.

[serleran]

There is a mind that saves characters before kicking down every door. We did it with the SSI Goldbox games. Mollycoddling is the norm, I'm afraid, with the law of averages favoring the worst.

[ArgoForg]

I started losing my taste for being on the Pathfinder boards (I was an active Paizo junkie from just before the beta of PFRPG) because of the way boardgoers whined about how horrible Save or Die (or Save or Suck) spells/traps/etc, even after most 'fatal' creatures had workarounds in the PFRPG-- i.e, blood of a basilisk can restore a petrified character, creatures causing d4's to d6's of ability score damage and only 'fatal' if score reaches 0, et al).

To a degree, with 3.x/PF I can understand some of the crying-- generating a new character from scratch (assuming you don't have one ready) is an hour-long task, and getting through the combat to move to a point of pulling a new character in may be even longer than that. But no one wanted to hear about ways you could integrate the players into the game after character death so the players didn't sit around and sulk or let their ADD kick in and stare at bright shiny objects or whatever... they just wanted to do away with anything that could conceivably kill a character with a single bad roll of the die... or in some cases, even miss a round of combat. I got sick of that video game "no child left behind" mindset really quick.

If D&D Next is moving that direction, it's most likely not going to be for me, either. I love SoD spells, and have no qualms with using them. My players know that in some cases, especially if they've really given good effort, I might even nudge a little to give an 'out' for a failed save. But the GM makes that call, not the rubber-edged sword mentality of the books. Looks like I'll be sticking to C&C as well, with its easy character creation and cold, cruel lethality.

Oh, well.

[DeadReborn]

I like playing Wizards, and although they are spellslingers, there are times when magic isn't always a tactical option in combat. When those situations arise, I find it boring to hide behind the fighter types. I figure they are holding a staff most of the time, why not use it? What really makes that exciting, especially at low levels, is the knowledge that one sword swipe or one crushing blow of a mace could spell doom. Take that away and it's just not as fun.

[Julian Grimm]

I guess I am going to be the voice of dissent. Personally, I dislike save or die, level drains and similar mechanics. I liked how poison was handled as ability damage and have turned level drain into drain on ability scores. So far it has worked well. As for save or die spells and poison I think that 3.5/D20 fixed the problem some but 4e did go a bit too far. However, in the one 4e game I played I had a character die and another go into unconsciousness on several occasions. I know others that have also lost PCs as well. So I don't exactly buy that the game makes it impossible to die.

Like any other game, I plan on houseruling what doesn't work for me and going on. There is no need to get bent out of shape over a rule or two.

[serleran]

I have nothing against not having save or die. Toon is like that. However, the written "rules" are there to evoke a feeling, to make the system work a given way. A game where people can't fail a single roll and die is "less threatening" but not necessarily less grim or adventurous... it just has less death. That can be a good thing. If I were to play with children, I would consider a "no save or die" rule. But, for my group, they love the excitement inherent with the toss of fate.

[Arduin]

That can be a good thing. If I were to play with children, I would consider a "no save or die" rule. But, for my group, they love the excitement inherent with the toss of fate.

I do it for kids <12 yrs old. For an older player, once they figure out that they will always (no save or die) see possible death coming a long way off, it obviously brings the tension level WAY down. It's impossible for it not to.

[Treebore]

I guess I am going to be the voice of dissent. Personally, I dislike save or die, level drains and similar mechanics. I liked how poison was handled as ability damage and have turned level drain into drain on ability scores. So far it has worked well. As for save or die spells and poison I think that 3.5/D20 fixed the problem some but 4e did go a bit too far. However, in the one 4e game I played I had a character die and another go into unconsciousness on several occasions. I know others that have also lost PCs as well. So I don't exactly buy that the game makes it impossible to die.

Like any other game, I plan on houseruling what doesn't work for me and going on. There is no need to get bent out of shape over a rule or two.

Your far from the only voice of "dissent", there are obviously a lot of people out there who feel the same you do, otherwise WOTC wouldn't be looking to make these changes, or have made them for 3E, etc...

So its obvious those of us who like Save or Die are the minority.

[Traveller]

Apparently we are a minority. I know I'm a minority, being a voice of one within the minority, but I don't believe C&C itself has enough save or die within it. But what it does have is a hell of a lot better than anything Hasbro produces.

Now if C&C only had dying during character generation we'd be all set.