Death (split from Dungeons & Demons)

[Bryant]

Idle thought which may or may not be useful, regarding death in D&D vs. death in Sorcerer:

In my D&D experience, once a PC gets to a certain level death is in fact not a big deal. S/he dies, the party finds a sympathetic cleric, the cleric casts Raise Dead, the PC moves on. More simulationist GMs may make the task more difficult -- requiring a sympathetic cleric, etc. -- but the basic mechanics of the game make resurrection pretty easy. After all, eventually the party cleric is gonna be able to cast the spell.

Mind you, the PC suffers some experience loss (at least until the party has access to bigger spells) but it's not crippling.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Bryant,

Two thoughts ...

1. It's a level-based issue, isn't it? Prior to a certain level, death is often a game-breaker in D&D play. In my experience, the unluckier players at the 1st-3rd level stage eventually take over an NPC so they can be playing 5th-level guys along with the players whose characters survived. (Granted, mine is a very old-school outlook, dating back to 1979 or so.)

After that point, it's as you say in many cases.

2. Which would mean that Raven is going to have to decide whether death in this game is going to mimic the phenomenon that's characteristic of D&D play (and it is a major phenomenon), or comment upon it in the fashion that he's shooting at for other aspects of play?

Best,
Ron

[Bryant]

Two thoughts ...

1. It's a level-based issue, isn't it? Prior to a certain level, death is often a game-breaker in D&D play. In my experience, the unluckier players at the 1st-3rd level stage eventually take over an NPC so they can be playing 5th-level guys along with the players whose characters survived. (Granted, mine is a very old-school outlook, dating back to 1979 or so.)

After that point, it's as you say in many cases.

2. Which would mean that Raven is going to have to decide whether death in this game is going to mimic the phenomenon that's characteristic of D&D play (and it is a major phenomenon), or comment upon it in the fashion that he's shooting at for other aspects of play?

Yep, agreed on both parts. Your outlook may be old-school, but it matches my actual experience in the 3e campaign I was in recently. My PC died at around 4th level, and we actually wound up house ruling the system such that the experience loss wasn't insurmountable.

The actual phenomenon seems to be a sort of winnowing out period, come to think of it. Not so much that low level PCs who die stay dead (although many of them do), but more that they die, get brought back, and return to the farms. Sort of like ad hoc basic training.

[greyorm]

Raven is going to have to decide whether death in this game is going to mimic the phenomenon that's characteristic of D&D play (and it is a major phenomenon), or comment upon it in the fashion that he's shooting at for other aspects of play?

I want to thank Bryant for bringing this up. The "death" issue is one I've been wrestling with since the initial discussion about it, because as you say, there's this whole D&D paradigm as described -- which I've seen in play over and over again.

As Ron notes, I have to make a decision about whether to mimic the occurence, or comment on it. I'm tempted to use it to comment further; the question is "how?" What do I want to say with it about the established themes?

I don't want it to eclipse the main theme of play, however, so I feel I'll need to regulate it to existance as a power that can be attained rather than a given item. That is, unfailing resurrection as an Ability that can be gained.

This seems as though it would help showcase the main theme of play, while not eclipsing it. This seems to be more "mimicing" than "commenting," however.

[Rob MacDougall]

Maybe there's a permanent Humanity cost to each resurrection? Letting your own character suffer a painful death and then poof! bringing them back to do it all over again seems a pretty powerful expression of the mentality I thought you wanted to critique with this game. Or maybe the commentary could be done just with color - just using description to play up how unnatural it is for someone who just died to be restored.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings All,

(Ioun? Ignorance?  Hahaha...  ?  Bleorg.)

Maybe there's a permanent Humanity cost to each resurrection? Letting your own character suffer a painful death and then poof! bringing them back to do it all over again seems a pretty powerful expression of the mentality I thought you wanted to critique with this game. Or maybe the commentary could be done just with color - just using description to play up how unnatural it is for someone who just died to be restored.

Actually, as I recall it, character death in AD&D (not D&D) was actually a bit more involved than this.  Though, in the gold box CRPGs, which many here may be familiar with, they demonstrated yet another facet that was, IMO, bad.  Namely that temples seemed willing to not only RESSURECT the dead but RAISE them as well, often for nominal fees which made death (and their deities power over the living) seem unimportant.

However, in most games I was involved with, there were issues of System Shock- Ressurection and Raise Dead, far as I recall, were not, and never was, a certainty; you had to ROLL to be sure you could- in addition to XP loss, level degradation, and the loss of 1 CON point.

That's the mechanical basics, best as I recall them.  However, I also recall there were other problems.  Namely centering upon concerns of alignment and deities.  When you get into issues of alignment and apply the rules strictly money will not always open those temple doors.  In fact there may be other restrictions placed upon the clerics, but everyone here is essentially right.  At the core character death was little more than a matter of a TN resolution obstacle.

I am not sure if this helps at all, since most here who played AD&D will probably know this full well.  Then again it always struck me as odd how character death was portrayed in the CRPGs, for all that they were very true to the actual rules!

My point?  There was actually a differende between RAISING DEAD and RESSURECTION.  In simple terms Raise Dead had to be cast on a relatively fresh corpse (ie: dead within a few hours or something like that) and the character had to roll a System Shock roll.  Which, when you take what Rob says above, it does sound like a good way to simulate the AD&D experiance.  After AD&D did have the characters lose CON, not sure if that can be made equivalent to Humanity, but maybe something along those lines?

But, more importantly, I suppose it also depends on what sort of AD&D experiance you are aiming to emulate.



Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[greyorm]

Rob,

In thinking about this, I have to ask myself: is Ressurection part of the world at large? That is, in this fantasy universe, is raising the dead something that happens to even normal people outside the adventuring context?

If not, then this works as you state, highlighting the "game" attitude. If it is part of the setting reality, however, then isn't it more akin to modern medical doctors bringing someone back from the brink of death who was nearly killed in a horrible, disfiguring or even crippling accident?

Hrm...can it be both?

[Rob MacDougall]

Good question. I don't have an answer, but I'm reminded of a short story by Kim Newman called "D & D" that I'd meant to bring up since the Dungeons & Demons thread first opened.

It's been ages since I read it, and I don't know where one could track it down, but it was a story about D&D-style adventurers, told in the first person, in a style that was a pastiche of Michael Herr's book Dispatches (about US troops in Vietnam) and of Vietnam reportage in general. It's all too easy for Newman to present dungeon adventuring as bloody and nihilistic jungle warfare. Troops of highly equipped adventurers, loaded down with magic swords and fireballs and healing potions, march endlessly into subterranean corridors, butchering the outgunned orc and kobold guerillas (for no clearly defined reason), get gored or toasted by diabolical traps set by the humanoids, only to be patched up by their clerics and ordered back into the hole. It's a clever story if you can find it.

[Bryant]

greyorm -- I'd say it's the former. While there's no world-related reason why NPCs can't be raised, they very rarely are. Unless they're henchmen and you need the loyalty bonus.

It does cost a hundred gold pieces or so to do the raise. More for the higher quality versions.

[Nev the Deranged]

(or some equally dramatic drivel)

This topic was the subject of one of the Face Off sections in Knights of the Dinner Table.  It was roasted at length from both points of view (IE rezzing good, rezzing bad).

Personally, I thought the most telling point on either side was the one who said, basically, that if in the world there were people with the power to raise the dead back to (more or less) perfect health, NOBODY with any wealth or influence would ever stay dead.  INCLUDING most major NPC villains.  So if you go to the trouble of getting your buddies raised after slaying and de-treasuring the evil arch Lord Badguy, don't be surprised if the torches are burning on the parapets of Lord Badguy's castle tomorrow night as well, since Lord Badguy can almost certainly better afford to hire/retain/enslave a high level cleric than your party members can.  Clerics with this power would more than likely be either conscripted or flat out enslaved by every ruler of every nation or principality.

Anyone who cares to read the full column can probably find it at www.kenzerco.com somewhere or by rummaging through your back issues of KoDT (and who doesn't have those?)