Death, Dying and TPKs

Poring over the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG I came upon rules for saving ostensibly dead characters:

Bleeding Out: There is a chance of saving a dead character by healing him very quickly (such as with a cleric’s ability to lay on hands). […]

I’m sure you are all familiar with similar rules. As the Swords & Wizardry White Box notes

[...] many referees allow characters to be ‘unconscious at 0 hp and not actually die until they reach some pre-determined negative number.

Whether one uses the ‘death at 0 hp’ approach or ‘dying’ rules has serious ramifications.

Most notably, ‘dying’ rules decrease individual risk but actually increase the chance of a TPK.

If the party’s fighter goes down after a brutal crit the best strategy might very well be retreat, i.e. cutting one’s losses and running. But if Bob’s character can still be saved the other players may want to continue fighting in the face of unfavorable odds.

In the latter case, the decision to fight or run is a tough one. I like confronting the players with tough choices but it bears pointing out that in this case, social pressure (whether overt or not) may well be involved.

The upside is that if the other players try to save their fallen comrade the players will almost certainly bond (or deepen their bonds) - regardless of whether they succeed or end up losing their characters as well.

The downside is that the atmosphere at the table might be seriously impacted if the player of a PC left behind harbours hard feelings.

The DM has to make some tough calls, too. Realistically, many monsters will concentrate their attacks on a fallen PC. A pack of ravenous wolves, for instance, will likely try to drag off the body of a not-quite-dead PC or tear him apart on the spot (i.e. start feeding).

But Bob’s already having a hard time and if the DM decides the monsters go after his poor PC he might feel picked on.

I think the best practice is to decide on – and communicate! – such behavior beforehand and/or to let the dice decide.

I'm not condemning 'dying' rules at all, but for DCC, I’ve cooked up the following house rule:

Damage and Death p. 93

PCs die at 0 hp. Period. 

More precisely, PCs are fatally wounded at 0 hp.

A PC who is not yet at -10 hp may continue fighting for a number of rounds equal to his level. He is considered to be fatally wounded. Neither medical attention nor mortal magic can save him. When his time is up, he dies.

For more of my DCC house rules, click here. 

My Trinity of Old School Gaming (Part 4)

After explaining the relationship between a game’s mortality rate and its method of character creation, how the former leads to simple and exciting combat, and why all of this makes it easy to form or find a gaming group, I finally get to analyze how it all relates to challenging and creative roleplay.  

Random character generation results in quirky characters (an intelligent warrior, a nimble wizard etc.) and, perhaps more importantly, in characters one might not have chosen to play otherwise.

A high mortality rate leads to a much, much more intense roleplaying experience. Consider the following scenario:

Peasants ask the adventurers to help them against a terrible monster. It’s a sandbox campaign, so the monster might indeed outmatch the characters and it’s up to the players to decide whether to tackle it or not.

If the players know that the DM will let them escape in case things go wrong, or will adapt the monster to the party’s strength, or fudge, then the choice to play the heroes is an easy one.

(And that’s exactly what the players will do: play the heroes.)

If the players know - from actual experience - that PC death is a very real possibility and a TPK is not out of the question, then the choice to play the heroes is a tough one.

(And if the players go through with it, they are the heroes, at least to the extent it’s possible to vicariously experience such a thing through fiction.)

In the former case, you’re emulating a genre and creating a story (with high drama and heroic deeds).

In the latter case, you’re putting yourself in a character's shoes to make challenging choices and suffer the consequences, for good or ill.

Of course, similarly negative consequences for the players also work to some extent. If the risk is real, the play is intense. Choosing to enter a tomb when you know it’s full of level-draining wights takes guts on the part of the player. Choosing to save an NPC’s life instead of escaping with gold worth 3000 XP requires that the player is really invested in the in-game fiction or his vision of the character.

(Risking a -1 penalty for the next three encounters or getting those 3000 XP or whatever from the ‘story award’ for saving the NPC – well, that’s just not the same.)

Oh, and then there’s simple combat. A simple combat system frees up mental space for creative solutions or evocative descriptions. In complicated games, players are so busy tracking multiple variables and weighing (preconfigured) options that there is hardly any time to appreciate the fiction or think outside the box. It was a running gag in one of my Rolemaster campaigns that, after a long fight, the players and DM would enumerate all the mechanical advantages and bonuses they had forgotten about.
 

That's it for now with My Trinity of Old School Gaming. Next, I'll start a series on Becoming a Killer DM, but I plan to throw in some rants and reviews as well.

My Trinity of Old School Gaming (Part 3)

Now that I’ve explained the relationship between a game’s mortality rate and its method of character creation and how the former leads to simple and exciting combat, I’ll focus on how quick character creation, a high mortality rate and simple, exciting combat make it easy to form or find a gaming group.

Quick character generation is the most obvious aspect here, as it lowers the entry bar. A newbie who has never roleplayed before can hop right in. Similarly, guest players, tryouts, spouses or kids can effortlessly join in, even for just a session or two.

Poster Brendan directed me towards another point with his comment on participating in a character's evolution through actual play: To wit, quick character creation can easily be done at the table and as a group (rather than at home alone with a dozen source books and spreadsheets). Ideally, everyone is somewhat invested in everyone else's character which makes newbies feel more welcome.

('New school' games such as those coming out of the Forge movement often emphasize joint character creation for this reason, among others.)

Quick character generation is my N° 1 requirement for the one-shot games I occasionally spring on my group - and what better way to get my players interested in a new (or very old) game than to provide an evening of fun?

Simple, exciting combat is another factor in forming or finding a group. First of all, it’s uncomplicated fun and thus a great attraction. It makes people actually want to play. More subtly, though, simple combat is usually quite fast, which allows one to have larger and more robust groups. In D&D 4e, a typical fight is anything but simple and in my experience takes about 30 min per player character involved. So a group of four players will need 2 hours for a regular fight – add another two players (and a bunch of monsters on the DM’s side) and you’re probably looking at a single fight per session.

Contrast this to a game where a fight takes about 5 min per player involved. Even a fight with 10 PCs will be over in under an hour (and most likely keep everyone’s attention, too). On top of all that, handling the characters of absentee players is no problem with a simple system. In D&D 4e, a high-level character has 20+ cards detailing powers, magic items and such – good luck trying to run two or three of those on short notice.

What about a high mortality rate though? Simply put, it can be a bit intimidating to join a group who has played the same characters for years. Moreover, well-designed RPGs with a high mortality rate not only provide a method for quick character generation but also ways to catch up in a reasonable amount of time.

All in all, I think that the above factors make it much easier to assemble, find and maintain a robust gaming group.

Next up: How randomness, simple combat and death make for some excellent roleplaying!

My Trinity of Old School Gaming (Part 2)

Last week, I examined the relationship between a game’s mortality rate and its method of character creation. Let me expand my diagram to look at some ramifications of my trinity of old school gaming. This week I’d like to focus on one of the main effects of a high mortality rate among player characters: Simple, yet exciting combat.

One of the foundations of old school gaming is killing things and taking their stuff, so a satisfying combat system is of paramount importance.

A high mortality rate allows for just that. If those dice clattering onto the table just now might spell your character’s death, you’ll be fully invested in the action regardless of the complexity of the rules. When I roll monster damage in WFRP, for instance, all my players’ eyes are glued to the dice, even if they concern another player’s character.

If, on the other hand, you take away the risk of death, you will either end up with boring combat (DSA3, I’m looking at you!) or you will have to compensate for the thrill of danger by offering tactical depth (the D&D 4e approach), evocative tables (the Rolemaster approach) or whatever—at which point combat will no longer be a simple affair.

(Admittedly, things other than your character’s life might be at stake. Maybe an NPC could die, your character could be traumatized etc. I maintain that the threat of character death is the key, though. In-the-moment, the inevitably occuring deaths often suck but that’s the price you have to pay – and a topic for another day.)

I'll explain more of those arrows next week.

My Trinity of Old School Gaming (Part 1)

Hello and welcome to my blog on Dungeons & Dragons, old school gaming and becoming a Killer DM!

I’ll kick off my blog with some thoughts on the relationship between a game’s mortality rate and its method of character generation. Here’s a diagram of my trinity of old school gaming:

In short, random character generation enables us to achieve quick character generation which in turn enables us to have a high mortality rate. And – coming full circle – a brutal culling of player characters is needed to make random character generation fair, as I’ll explain below.

For starters, random character generation is one of the best ways to quickly make characters, at least if you want some depth and variety. The moment you start using building points, for instance, you will usually sacrifice complexity (i.e. offer few options) or speed (i.e. make players spend a lot of time weighing and choosing options).

(A counter example is James V. West’s excellent game The Pool. Character creation is quick but offers surprising depth and has long legs. But then, The Pool is a very different type of RPG than D&D.)

Quick character generation then allows us to kill off characters with abandon. If character creation takes hours, a player who has lost his character may end up sitting out the rest of the session. Even if he doesn’t (because the sessions ends or the player gets to control an NPC etc.) that’s an awful lot of time down the drain. Al from Beyond the Black Gate touches upon this topic in his post Character death = Fun!

(Just imagine telling a Magic: the Gathering player that he has to scrap his meticulously assembled new deck if he loses a single match with it (i.e. ‘dies’).)

I also believe that a high mortality rate is a prerequisite for random character creation. Else, the latter is simply unfair. When you roll up characters for a game expected to take characters from 1st to 20th level without anyone ever (permanently) dying, bad luck during character generation might doom a player to playing a weak character for years. To me, that’s unacceptable.

Contrast this to, say, a deadly OD&D campaign: Rolling up a character with excellent stats is no guarantee he’ll make to 2nd level or beyond. Player skill (and yet more luck) will be the deciding factor. And once a character has run the gauntlet, he will have grown on you and weak stats might actually be endearing. James Maliszewski has more to say on this in his excellent post character death in old school gaming over at Grognardia.

More on the various implications of my trinity next week!