D&D General If not death, then what?

[EzekielRaiden]

Out of curiosity can someone point me to "the other thread"?

Ask and ye shall receive.

 

[Mannahnin]

That's always bugged the heck out of me in gaming. I saw it all the time when I used to watch Critical Role. They would act convincingly threatened whenever combat ensued, even though in a lot of cases there was just no real chance of failure, and the players had to know it. It felt disingenuous to me.

I've often been surprised by how much more scared or concerned my players are in a given fight than I think they should be from my position behind the screen. Dramatic descriptions, lack of knowledge about stat blocks, and paranoia can definitely magnify a lot of threats in players' minds.

Edit: One technique I've become very fond of that also adds some serious suspense and excitement is rolling in the open as DM. It winds up revealing more info about monster stats (the players can quickly deduce the attack bonus, and immediately figure out the damage it does on a successful hit), but that's not really a bad thing, because it helps them make informed tactical decisions. But them being able to see that I'm not going to use the screen to fudge and save them (or fudge to hit them if I'm just rolling bad all fight*) makes it feel significantly more "real".

(*I've done both of these in games where I roll behind a screen)

 

[ninjayeti]

To my mind "death sucks" is the feature, not the bug (I say this as someone who plays more than DMs). The fact that it is unpleasant and even sometimes random is what makes me as a player invested in the game, particularly combat. Yes I have had some disappointing games when a beloved character died unexpectedly, but I have far, far more where my PC took a real risk and did something AWESOME.

In my experience as a player and DM I have never seen another "consequence" that worked well. They tend to be (as the OP points out) something that tramples your character concept like getting maimed or turned into a gnome. Otherwise they are some form of nominal consequence that is actually a nothingburger. The main examples I have seen are:

1) Captured. The only thing more boring than a dead PC is a captured PC. So this inevitably turns into RP being in a cell for 10 minutes and then a miraculous escape with all of your gear.

2) You work for me now. The PC either owes the bad guy who spared their life or the deity who brought them back from the dead. Now they have to ..... go on adventures for them. This is not a consequence, it is a plot hook.

3)"Loss." PCs fail in some objective, and maybe lose an NPC they cared about or something. Again, in my experience this just turns into the next plot hook to avenge x or redeem themselves. Sorry, that is not a consequence, that is Act One.

My buddy had a poker night a few years back where we just played for chips but no money. By the end of the night everyone was going "all in" every hand. The "consequences" of losing were so minimal that no one even cared it they won or lost. To my mind, this is the risk you run by trying to take PC death off the table as a consequence. Unless you can replace it with something that is actually meaningful to the players, you run a bigger risk of player apathy.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

Death doesn't have to be the end. Have the characters wake up in the afterlife. Then they have to find a way back to life through a different kind of adventuring.

 

[SewerSquirrel]

Back in the early days of D&D (~35 years ago), death was definitely a given. The modules were played as written because that is what was done with no leeway or applying the "Rule of Cool". I can't tell you how many times I showed up to a game session with three or four PC's rolled up...just in case, but that got boring quickly. Fast forward to today. My group/DM are all about narrative and story. PCs have died. NPCs have died. BBEGs have died. Unless the body has been destroyed beyond all recognition, then there is a chance of a raise dead, resurrection, or reincarnate...or other option. There have been a couple of times in the past where our Cleric had Speak With Dead loaded up and the PC that it was used on CHOSE not to come back. However, there was this one time...not at band camp...where the PC did want to come back to the world of the living. That decision did cause some delay in the timeline of the narrative since the only way to bring them back was to embark upon a quest to take the body to a sacred place of his/her Deity. There was no cost involved, except for travel and such. Another possible option is that instead of the player rolling up a new PC, have the DM do a SOLO quest where his "soul" or spirit or lifeforce...yada yada yada, has to perform some task to return to the living, but that would require the rest of the party discovering some way to know this is gonna happen (a Will that might be included in the newly departed party members' items) and preserve the body or even do some kind of ritual to make it happen. Make it part of the story. This is what D&D is about. Rules are rules, but a creative group can really make a difference and end up doing something cool and being part of the PC's background. It all boils down to thinking outside the proverbial box to make it fun for all, even in death!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Couldn't agree with this more. IMO random, filler combats in any game are boring and narrative-breaking—we don't like that stuff in movies, shows, or books, why would we want that in a game?

Personally I’d argue this point that other media doesn’t have random encounter ‘filler’ combats, just that in the alternate mediums it’s less recognised as a random encounter.

Take this scenario: the heroes are being chased across the country by a mysterious organisation that wants them dead, they run into a pack of wolves in the woods and have to fight them off, and they do, but those wolves had no connection to the actual plot of the organisation they were just a random encounter, or a detective gets into a brawl with a couple of backalley pickpockets or a gang, that’s just a modern day reskin of the classic bandit encounter on the roads, but the only difference is that because it’s all being told in retrospect and set in writing/video it doesn’t seem half as ‘random’, if you novelised a campaign with random encounters afterwards you could all make it seem like an overarching narrative.

 

[Mannahnin]

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."
-Raymond Chandler on writing pulp fiction

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Personally I’d argue this point that other media doesn’t have random encounter ‘filler’ combats, just that in the alternate mediums it’s less recognised as a random encounter.

Take this scenario: the heroes are being chased across the country by a mysterious organisation that wants them dead, they run into a pack of wolves in the woods and have to fight them off, and they do, but those wolves had no connection to the actual plot of the organisation they were just a random encounter, or a detective gets into a brawl with a couple of backalley pickpockets or a gang, that’s just a modern day reskin of the classic bandit encounter on the roads, but the only difference is that because it’s all being told in retrospect and set in writing/video it doesn’t seem half as ‘random’, if you novelised a campaign with random encounters afterwards you could all make it seem like an overarching narrative.

See, I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a specific, actual example of those other kinds of narratives having completely plot-irrelevant encounters like that. We sometimes imagine they work like that, in the abstract, but movies tend to be very tightly constructed (sometimes maybe too much so) and despite their length, most novels aren't just a string of unrelated incidents. Fights, when they happen in most narratives, have some purpose. Maybe the payoff isn't immediate, but they at least establish certain characters or plot threads.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."
-Raymond Chandler on writing pulp fiction

Yeah but give Chandler some credit here. Importantly, that guy isn't just some stranger with no relation to anything. And you can bet his presence is going to push the narrative forward somehow.

 

[Helldritch]

The death of a character is the logical conclusion of: "Bad luck, bad planning, bad assertion of the danger, bad DM's adjudication, and not to know when to flee". It can be caused by one or more of the previous reasons but though these are not necessarily desirable, they are needed to create both tension and a sense of achievement. Winning without risks is like playing monopoly with Boardwalk and Park Place from the start. It leads to a very boring game.

But having nothing to do because your character died in the first minute of the session is not fun either. This is why players have sidekicks to help them, henchmen and hirelings. If a main character dies, it gets replaced fast. Of course, you have to accept that the story emerges from play and not the other way around.