In-game character death resolution

[Master Marx]

Turning your back and being physically unconscious and unable to prevent a death are two different things.  It's much less of a deal, in my mind, if someone were to simply look away.  PC-1 said I'm gonna kill him, and PC-2 turned his back.  He could have taken ANY action... however, PC-3 is lying on the ground dying and cannot do anything.  That's like saying me and my friend went into the movies, I slipped and fell on the floor and he robbed the place.  I had no intention of robbing the place, and after I fell (unconscious), I couldn't stop it.

Of course it is different, but it plays up the drama. After you woke up and realize that your friend has robbed an innocent cinema cashier, would you still be friends with him? Would you feel bad about it? If you want to play up morals, you can do it full-throttle or watered down. It's up to you. And, it is a technical detail.

I don't know what kind of gaming groups you have, but the last thing I would want to do is turn my players against themselves.  You almost leave them no choice.

There are many ways that players can have fun playing out the moral dramas of having conflicting interests. I have also grown tired of groups of adventurers hanging together for no reason. In terms of AD&D alignments, will a group consisting of Chaotic Evil and Lawful Good characters stick together without external pressure? Some groups might, but it doesn't smell of good realism in my opinion. You might differ, and that is ok, too.

If PC-1 wants to kill someone and PC-2 doesn't want to, his options are to stop PC-1 (which is unlikely, because PC-1 has made up his mind) or to leave the party.  If he leaves the party, the game stops.  He likely fundamentally left because he doesn't like the affects of bad karma (whatever they may be) and felt it was a poor decision to get bad karma.  Perhaps you should explain exactly what good and bad karma do.  I'm imagining that you will gain good karma by doing good things, but spend it just as fast because of it.  Meanwhile, bad karma will mount up until you are defeated... not by an enemy, but by your karma.

The difference between good and bad karma are as yet undecided, as well as how much it actually effects the dice rolling. But it wouldn't be fun if it DICTATED role playing, a mere INFLUENCE is good enough. You want an influence that is strong enough to bring drama but not strong enough to force the players hands.

To get back to where we started from, A Karmic system representing a way to (in game mechanics) reward non-lethal conflict resolutions.

I don't know what kind of groups you play with, but my groups generate their characters as a group, taking the other players and their characters, as well as the theme of the campaign, into account, when making up the morals and code of ethics of their own characters.

After all, this kind of karmic system demands a fitting game world in which players tend towards the good side. Players enjoying this style will like this kind of mechanic. Players who prefers not to worry about morals or the killings of NPC's tend not to play these games. And any rule is optional.

[Nogusielkt]

Of course it is different, but it plays up the drama. After you woke up and realize that your friend has robbed an innocent cinema cashier, would you still be friends with him? Would you feel bad about it? If you want to play up morals, you can do it full-throttle or watered down. It's up to you. And, it is a technical detail.

Yes, I would still be friends with him, if he ever gets out of jail.  The point was that our justice system would not punish me because they know that I couldn't have prevented it, much like the unknown consumers in the theater couldn't stop it.

There are many ways that players can have fun playing out the moral dramas of having conflicting interests. I have also grown tired of groups of adventurers hanging together for no reason. In terms of AD&D alignments, will a group consisting of Chaotic Evil and Lawful Good characters stick together without external pressure? Some groups might, but it doesn't smell of good realism in my opinion. You might differ, and that is ok, too.

Adventurers hanging together for no reason... I don't think this kind of thing should happen either, but must should look at it from a DND point of view.  If a group of chaotic evil people hung around with a group of lawful good people, and the chaotic evil people didn't do anything wrong... then it might be time for an alignment change.  Therefore it might be a group of chaotic good and lawful good people hanging together, which is much more likely to happen.  Just because you pick an alignment doesn't mean you have to play that alignment until you die, alignments weren't meant to be restrictions, but were meant to be guidelines for players to create backgrounds and playing styles that were built upon a foundation instead of from scratch.  After all, there are all kinds of stories about people hanging out with serial killers before and after they had committed crimes.  Just having the intent to do wrong doesn't make you bad, they would actually have to know about it.

The difference between good and bad karma are as yet undecided, as well as how much it actually effects the dice rolling. But it wouldn't be fun if it DICTATED role playing, a mere INFLUENCE is good enough. You want an influence that is strong enough to bring drama but not strong enough to force the players hands.

I'd have to wonder if the drama is brought about by the thought of bad karma more than the karma itself.  You could be backing the GM into a corner, even with a small influence.  Even if the influence didn't get bigger as you made it to the extremes of karma, it'd probably interfere with the story at some point.

To get back to where we started from, A Karmic system representing a way to (in game mechanics) reward non-lethal conflict resolutions.

I don't know what kind of groups you play with, but my groups generate their characters as a group, taking the other players and their characters, as well as the theme of the campaign, into account, when making up the morals and code of ethics of their own characters.

After all, this kind of karmic system demands a fitting game world in which players tend towards the good side. Players enjoying this style will like this kind of mechanic. Players who prefers not to worry about morals or the killings of NPC's tend not to play these games. And any rule is optional.

There are, however, many different ways to reward players for non-lethal conflict resolutions.  There could be bounties for bringing him in alive, the party might need information from someone (which will probably require him being alive), he might belong to an organization that they wouldn't want to get on the bad side of.  We also create our characters in a group over here.  Do you take everything into account, but purposely make characters that have conflicting moral codes, such as having a pacifist and a blood-monger in the same group just to have drama?

I already have agreed that the world should agree with the system.  Too bad for all the war heroes though... they would likely never get out of the bad karma.

[Master Marx]

Yes, I would still be friends with him, if he ever gets out of jail.  The point was that our justice system would not punish me because they know that I couldn't have prevented it, much like the unknown consumers in the theater couldn't stop it.

Then you must be a greater and more forgiving friend than I. I see your point but I take a moral/metaphysical rather than a legal point of view in the matter.

Just having the intent to do wrong doesn't make you bad, they would actually have to know about it.

If I am not misinterpreting you here it seems that you mean that the other party members have to be aware of the evil deed. In this, I agree. If you actually mean that "having the intent to do wrong" doesn't affect you morally then I disagree.

I'd have to wonder if the drama is brought about by the thought of bad karma more than the karma itself.  You could be backing the GM into a corner, even with a small influence.  Even if the influence didn't get bigger as you made it to the extremes of karma, it'd probably interfere with the story at some point.

Well, if you are worried about these things than having a rule like this might no be a good idea.

There are, however, many different ways to reward players for non-lethal conflict resolutions.  There could be bounties for bringing him in alive, the party might need information from someone (which will probably require him being alive), he might belong to an organization that they wouldn't want to get on the bad side of.

Naturally. But that is besides the topic of a karmic retribution games mechanic, which is the point of the topic. We can perhaps move the discussion of wether to have it or not to another thread?

We also create our characters in a group over here.  Do you take everything into account, but purposely make characters that have conflicting moral codes, such as having a pacifist and a blood-monger in the same group just to have drama?

I could do that if that was the purpose of the game, but the theme would probably be so strong as to overshadow any other theme, making all other dramatic points quite useless. Unless you can enforce a convincing  external influence that keeps the group together.

I already have agreed that the world should agree with the system.  Too bad for all the war heroes though... they would likely never get out of the bad karma.

Thank you for giving me a reason to get back to the MECHANICS of the question...

Well, a war hero is by defintion someone who does good. So if he kills the right baddies for the right reason he wouldn't get any bad karma for it. It's all about putting it into perspective.

If for example, the game is set in Hare Krishna envrionment, killing anyone for any reason would give you bad karma. Just as eating a hamburger would. But if the game is hamfisted allies vs. axis kill the Nazis sort of thing, then killing any Nazi probably wouldn't give you bad karma. You just adapt the mechanics to the settings.

If the karma is based on social norms you could give players points for just being born in the right social class (caste?) or wearing the correct shade of red feathers in their hair. If karma is based on religion with REAL Gods than you should of course adher to their rules. If karma is based on a metasetting, i.e. the rules of chivalry, you should reward the players adhering to the rules. If you're playing a game about the killer cults of Khali than killing people needlessly will give you good karma.

You could also engineer the award/penaly of karma to affect different areas. It doen't necessarily have to affect a characters effectivness in combat, but what about magic? Or religion? Or social status?

You could also dispense with the good karma and only use the bad karma, or vice versa, without in essence effecting the overal mechanics. You could even make the results of having high Good Karma into something silly:

"The native cats on Epsilon-5 have a supernatural sense and can instinctively feel who does and doesn't follow the rules of the local religious groups. Any person who attracts the wrath of the Gods by eating sweets before sunset will be punsihed by suffering the stigma of being avoided by these lovable cats."

Or have the results of having bad karma something quite trivial:

"You are a respected war hero, but having killed so many people give you nightmares and thus forcing you to toss and turn in sleep. For every bad karma point you have you add one difficulty level to any roll to Fix Your Hairstyle".  

Or you can make the effect quite hard: "Anyone who enters the Pharaos tomb will be hit by ten points of bad karma thus rising the likelihood of being struck by cancer, syphilis or lightning by 10% for every minute spent in the tomb."

Yes, they are all perfectly silly examples but serves my point of illustrating the possibilites. How adapt these mechanics to your game is up to you. The possibilites are endless and the same mechanic can be used to make rules on seduction, fashion, social status, religion etc etc.

[Jack Aidley]

As I envisioned it Karma would have only one in-game effect: it stops you being killed by the your foes when they could kill you. So it goes both ways and produces a reciprocal effect; you can choose to kill your foes when you don't have to - that's OK, they can choose to kill you when they don't have to.

As to your Nazi killing example that is exactly what I intend the system to avoid (by rewarding the not doing of). The whole idea is to move the game away from the notion that it's just fine to kill needlessly - and that applies whatever group the foe is of.

[Stickman]

Karma sounds neat-o .. but it brings up a question in my mind: Is this a system to help moderate / influence character behaviour or is it a mechanism for extra in-game control?

In the first model, you decide what counts as 'good' and whats 'bad'. This cound be tied into a really nice thematic background (crusading paladins, buddist monks, etc). I'd guess you'd want to continue adding in karma awards for other general behaviour? Would you evisage karma becoming a resource to spend (The characters arrive in a small town, and there's no healer available to help them .. well, for 20 karma there might be ...)
or purely to avoid the grim reaper?

In the second model, it seems to become a 'you spare the big bad guy / go along with the plot and I'll spare you're worthless lives at some later date'. Still pretty funky, but maybe a little less flavourful.

[Jack Aidley]

Ooo, spending Karma to help create the world I want. In effect, players trade allowing the GM to save his villians for extra control over the game world at a later date - excellent idea, Dave.

I think there is a real danger of a Karmic system being used a player-beating stick. In order to avoid that I think it needs to have tight, clear mechanics so that the players know in advance what will or won't give them good/bad Karma (or raise/lower a single Karma score) and the effect that Karma will have so that they can make their own realistic choices. Karma by fiat would I think be too capricious and too prone to creating dissent.

[Nogusielkt]

As I envisioned it Karma would have only one in-game effect: it stops you being killed by the your foes when they could kill you. So it goes both ways and produces a reciprocal effect; you can choose to kill your foes when you don't have to - that's OK, they can choose to kill you when they don't have to.

This is what I was talking about.

1: PCs can get into a situation where they could die with or without the help of a previously escaped villian.

2: PCs gain no benefit from killing their foes because of ongoing conflicts (IE: GM will always find a new foe)

3: Because of the above facts, it will be difficult to find a time when the players would actually kill someone.

4: Even if any of the other numbers are false, players now have a mechanic that can save them from death, and all they have to do is NOT do something.  It's like giving candy to a kid for not blowing up your house.  I'd have to question how often you would want to kill the players off when they could buy their way out with karma normally...  Is this just a mechanical replacement for a plot device?

Using karma to change the world (cleric passing through town by chance) could be interesting... but it still comes back to the GM and what he expects of the karma system.  Example: Players defeat bad guy, but let him escape to earn Karma.  Players are hurt and search for a healer.  They don't find any, but could get one with karma.  Players refuse to spend karma on a healer, and GM does...  Well, he could let them heal normally or he could throw some monsters at them at a point that he thought they would be healed at (by spending the karma).  If the monsters attack, the players would die.  If the players heal without the karma, now they have lots of karma to spend.  It's a lose/lose situation for the GM.  A karma system that gives players control of the story could easily hamper certain GMing styles.  Instead of letting the players decide the outcome of something, the GM could just let what he wants to happen, happen.  The players could find a healer, like he wanted, and the story would be on it's way, all without a karma system.

If you are having trouble as a GM with dying villians or dying players, then the problem isn't not having the mechanics, it's not using the right mechanics.  I can think of a billion ways that a villian could escape sure defeat, I must've seen a billion by now anyhow.  You don't need to give players the ability to create things you might not want them to have.  Would you just say no sometimes when they try to spend karma?  Might as well just not have it.

Naturally. But that is besides the topic of a karmic retribution games mechanic, which is the point of the topic. We can perhaps move the discussion of wether to have it or not to another thread?

I was just about to end the discussions, before those last three posts, because I have a problem of my own now.  Really, I'd just like to see one of these karma systems in action, play as a player, and show the Author how troublesome a karma system can be.  I'm not talking about trying to halt the game, but show how assumptions about the design can lead to an easy failure.  So send me a message if you ever get anything running.

[Stickman]

Nogusielkt raises some interesting points there.

It seems to be that the whole call for a Karma device here is to add flavour. Sure, the PC's could be finished off by foes when helpless. Sure, they can decapitate all of the npc's to stop repeat villains. Sure, the GM can just make up newer, badder, more hit-pointy bad guys when his favourites are killed. But stopping those things happening might, in the right kind of game, add significant amounts of falvour to the settings. Certainly from a player point of view a version of D20 (for the sake of argument) where I get some sort of recognised benefit from rp'ing and get neat recurring villains that I love to hate - all supported by the game system - would be appealing to me.

Jack, as much as Karma could be a PC beat-stick, it seems like it could be a free pass for PC's to become untouchable. Sir Nice-A-Lot builds oodles of karma from giving alms and sparing his foes, and spends it to avoid all sorts of deadly situations. Defiantely something to watch out for.

I know it was touched upon eariler in the thread, but would karma be fixed for the game, or per player? Does the questing paladin earn karma the same way as the wandering monk? Are karmic rules written in stone, or is this a method of measuring a PC / character following 'thier path'.

Second, would this be a group pool as suggested, or individual, or a mixture of both?

[Jack Aidley]

Noguiskelt (do you have a real name we could use, please?),

You are correct that this system would constrain the possible GMing styles; but that in and of itself is not a flaw - it is better that a system do what it does well than attempt to please all comers. Where I see you as being incorrect is in your suggestion that this would prevent GM planning. In the example you give where the players refuse an opportunity to heal, the answer is already in the system: the enemies* attack and win, but Karma stops the players being killed. And that is another possible benefit: it allows the threat level to be higher without killing off the party. In any case, this problem itself is only a product of a certain style of GMing.

I guess in essence, Karma seeks to convert Death into Defeat. As to why that is desirable; I think Dave describes it nicely in his post above.

Dave,

The sir nice-a-lot problem is certainly one. The other is the posibility of a player banking good karma so they commit negative karmic acts free of consequence. The answer, I fear, lies in the mechanics; which is what I don't have and what the idea badly needs.

My feeling is that Karma fits most naturally an individual resource; although the world-changing concept you proposed earlier would work best on a group level. As to individual Karma mechanics for individual characters; I feel that character goals are best dealt with through an individual experience mechanic akin to TSOY's keys.

- Jack.

*I use the term 'enemies' rather than 'monsters' because I see this system operating under the circumstances where players primarily opposition consists of intelligent, thinking foes.

[Stickman]

Jack,

This all looks pretty good so far. Summarising looks something like:

Every PC has a numeric karma score
Karma is earnt / lost through a defined rules set
+ This is the same for every character
Karma is spent through a defined rules set
+ This is the same for every character

Karma as a term has a some baggage associated with in, but in essence I think the suggestion is that karma is earned through sparing lives in combat / accepting surrender of foes in combat. I'm guessing that aiding the weak could be in there too. What about obeying the law / 'natural law'? I guess some settings might have a 'mandate of heaven' ruler whose law carries karmic weight.

What would you envisage karma being spent on, life or death situations or for one-shot dice modifiers?

The issue of abuse of high karma characters could be taken care of with a 'one strike and you're out' system .. karma is hard to build, and a single bad karma action might wipe out all that good work.

Another idea: karma only persists for a single session. At the end of the session all karma totals are weighed up and dealt with. If you've good karma you get something, if not, then a penalty?

[Nogusielkt]

I think someone asked me if Nogusielkt was my real name in another thread.  I also think I've seen people use other people's real names when posting, which was confusing at first.  Nogusielkt is pronounced Nawg-oo-sealkt, but Nog is fine.  I'm afraid my real name might be just as hard to pronounce.  I'm sure I'll know if you are posting at me no matter what I'm called.

[Jack Aidley]

Ok, I've been having a think and I think I've come up with something workable. Let's start by considering what the goals are, as I see them:

1. We want to reward players for letting villians lives, so they can recur.
2. Trivial character death is rarely a good thing, so we want to do something about them.
3. Glorious deaths are kind of cool, so we want to allow for them.

I believe we can hit all three with the following (purely metagame) system:

* When a character has a villian at his mercy, the GM can offer a Karma Point for the player to let them off. If the player accepts every relevant character gets a Karma point (i.e. all the characters who could choose to kill the villian do), if a different character does the killing no points are awarded.
* When a character is threatened with death by a villian, the player can pay three (or however many is necessary to keep a lid on the number of points) to commute that death to a lower level of defeat (captured, knocked unconcious and left for dead, etc.)
* If a player wishes their character to die a glorious death they can cash in any Karma points they have to make their death glorious - the mechanics of how this would work would depend on the rest of the system but the idea is that characters who have a lot of Karma points outstanding could get a more glorious death.

What do you all think? This is more narrow than some of the ideas we've considered and doesn't yet deal with the I've Been Good Time To Be Bad problem, but I think its focus could also be its strength, it does deal with the issues I originally intended it to, I think.

Incidently, I'm reminded of Buffy's Drama Point system (where the GM can but their villian out of trouble by paying the players drama points) although my system maintains player choice and keeps a much more narrow focus. Does anyone have any experience of Buffy's system in action?

[Jack Aidley]

Ok, I've been having a think and I think I've come up with something workable. Let's start by considering what the goals are, as I see them:

1. We want to reward players for letting villians lives, so they can recur.
2. Trivial character death is rarely a good thing, so we want to do something about them.
3. Glorious deaths are kind of cool, so we want to allow for them.

I believe we can hit all three with the following (purely metagame) system:

* When a character has a villian at his mercy, the GM can offer a Karma Point for the player to let them off. If the player accepts every relevant character gets a Karma point (i.e. all the characters who could choose to kill the villian do), if a different character does the killing no points are awarded.
* When a character is threatened with death by a villian, the player can pay three (or however many is necessary to keep a lid on the number of points) to commute that death to a lower level of defeat (captured, knocked unconcious and left for dead, etc.)
* If a player wishes their character to die a glorious death they can cash in any Karma points they have to make their death glorious - the mechanics of how this would work would depend on the rest of the system but the idea is that characters who have a lot of Karma points outstanding could get a more glorious death.

What do you all think? This is more narrow than some of the ideas we've considered and doesn't yet deal with the I've Been Good Time To Be Bad problem, but I think its focus could also be its strength, it does deal with the issues I originally intended it to, I think.

Incidently, I'm reminded of Buffy's Drama Point system (where the GM can but their villian out of trouble by paying the players drama points) although my system maintains player choice and keeps a much more narrow focus. Does anyone have any experience of Buffy's system in action?

[Resonantg]

This is very much like Top Secret's "Fortune Point" system, except you know how many you have.  In TS, only the GM knows how many you have because some day, your luck may run out.  I always thought this was quite a good way to handle things.  You could also spend experience points to get a 1d4 extra fame points.  The fame points were good for "miraculous saves and rerolls".

So, it's quite a good system with a good track record IMHO.

:c)

[Stickman]

Jack,

that seems to hit all the right buttons, it's simple and to the point.


Something I came up with which might cover similar ground, and spins off your reference to TSOY keys (which I love, Sweet 20 is the way to go)

If you introduce a free Key, something like the Key of Villainy Returned, when players spare a decent NPC. Every time the npc pops up they get to activate the key, scoring xp. The kicker is that if the villain is killed they not only don't get a key-loss payoff, there may be penalties associated with it.

Similarly a Key of Survival (or something suitably cooler sounding) that the PC's get for free. If they keep on living then it does nothing, but if they are in a position where they could 'get off lightly' the key is traded in until they buy it again (possibly with the proceeds from the above key).

I'm sure there would be more details to work out if you went for that kind of solution.