Continued Play as a goal

[Mike Holmes]

Comte, yes, you're missing the point. The thread that spawned this one assumed that this was not an option. Marco must have an aversion of some sort to using your suggestion, because I'm sure he's aware that he could just make another character.

In a hard-core dungeon-hack game where I could be klled and wind up playing a 1st level character along for the ride with 10th-level bad-asses I'd be avoiding as much step-on up and as much competition as I could.

What he's saying, it seems to me, is that replacement characters are unrewarding enough that they won't change his mind about avoiding character death. Just to be clear, Marco, if you were rewarded by getting a character that was higher level than the one you lost as a replacement, would that "fix" the problem?

I could as easily suggest that he merely play games that don't have rules that force characters to die (InSpectres, for example). But again, that misses the point of the thread that assumes that the game has the propensity to kill off characters.

There are some interesting things that can be done this way in general that would work for other players. For example, TROS has the Inspiration rule which means that future characters can start out more powerful than normal. This is still problematic, because you still lose some power when you die, and you certainly lose your attachment to the character in quesiton. But mechanics like this can ameliorate death.

Mike

[Marco]

Hi Mike,

Yeah--being able to re-enter "at level" quickly would help. I think a lot of my play doesn't facilitate that easily so it's not necessiarily that simple--but yes, it'd mitigate the severity of the "loss condition."

What struck the chord was that Ron's gamist T&T design would shift my play from one mode to another.

As far as playing games where I couldn't die: this is an idea I see hinted at (if you're fudging the dice, you're playing the wrong game). I think this is an interesting discussion--and not *nearly* as black and white as some people here make it out to be.

Note, however, that I don't consider the terminal condition a "problem" (did I use that word? I don't know)--just that it's a powerful effect.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

What struck the chord was that Ron's gamist T&T design would shift my play from one mode to another.

Well, I think that's part of his design there. He's really trying to focus on T&T's Gamism, and not Drift from it at all if possible.

As far as playing games where I couldn't die: this is an idea I see hinted at (if you're fudging the dice, you're playing the wrong game). I think this is an interesting discussion--and not *nearly* as black and white as some people here make it out to be.

What are the issues with it? I mean, I do understand that some people want Death as a potential result of play. But outside that, what's to stop people from using InSpectres sorts of models for appropriate games?

Mike

[Marco]

Nothing should stop people from using Inspecters as a model for appropriate games. Heavens, no. That's not at all what I'm talking about.

I'm saying that my choice of game may more or less suit my needs at any given point in time--and that doesn't necessiarly mean I have the wrong game (I believe dice-fudging is always dangerous due to social contract issues--but that's only part of what I'm talking about here).

Ron *is* trying to put the emphasis on T&T's gamism. The result for me is very cautious play.  Drift the game a bit and it'd be a more risk-taking dynamic dungeon romp. For me.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

You're hitting upon a principle that I, like you, been nosing around for some time now.

It basically comes down to this: "sit out" is a lousy player-consequence for an in-game outcome, for all but a fairly narrow range within Gamist play.

Let's leave all the power-issues out of it, which is to say, "losing the levels" when your 10th level dude is killed and you have to take over the 4th level NPC or whatever. I think we're talking instead about a game - which is almost all of them! - in which certain in-game consequences literally mean that you, the player, can't play for a while.

The obvious example is when your character eats a bullet, but Humanity going to 0 in Cyberpunk is another. Lemme see if I can break this down ... and this is a first try, so I'm not wedded to it or anything. Given that one's character has been taken out somehow ...

We see a branching: either go down A or down D.

Branch A: You keep playing no matter what. I like to think of this as playing Star Wars using a conceivable tweak of the Hero Wars system, such that Obi-wan's player is just as present and active among the group after the character's death as before. He can only use a limited set of the rules (e.g. lending Action Points from a pool based on Relationship abilities; spending Hero Points, etc), but the player didn't stop playing for a moment.

Branch A continued: B or C.

B: You can start a new character or take up an existing one as a player-character, eventually.

C: You can't. You're stuck with dead Obi-wan, unless the Social Contract lets you switch to new characters regardless of whether the old one is dead or alive.

Branch D: You have to stop playing, for some length of time, even if it's a matter of waiting until the party gets back to town.

Branch D continued: E or H.

E continued: F or G

F: Your character is just plain lost, and you have to get a new one - but getting a new one is kind of a "hitch" as far as you and the other players are concerned. In this sort of game, all sorts of loophole mechanisms usually exist to keep characters alive, up to and including fudging rolls (which is where that concept enters this framework).

G: Your character may continue but is diminished or altered in some way. (Alternatively, the character may be more powerful! as in Deadlands ...) But you still have to sit out for a while, and your re-entry depends on in-game actions as controlled by the other players. (Resurrection rules apply here)

H: You literally have to leave the game; there's no functional way to re-enter play. (Some circumstances of Social Contract and design result in this option even if no one ever really admits it or thinks of it  that way.)

I'll betcha everyone can come up with multiple branches I've missed, or maybe some other framework entirely, but that's not the point. My point is that D/E seems overwhelmingly present in role-playing design, which has always struck me as awfully odd. Why play a game that's based on interactive contribution, but include a mechanism for booting contributors out? Again, I can see this quite easily as a particular detail of a particular design (e.g. tourney-style old-school D&D), but not as a default feature for the activity in general.

Anyway, none of this is intended to be especially profound. Here are the solutions or approaches that have seemed to me to do the best job of stepping out of the D/E model, without simply going freeform. Some of them overlap.

1. Games which permit player-character death to become more likely through player-driven rules-applications (e.g. choosing to spend Spiritual Attribute points rather than use them as bonuses during a climactic fight scene in The Riddle of Steel; choosing to bid exceptionally high during an Extended Contest in Hero Wars; entering Endgame in Violence Future).

2. Games with nigh-disposable characters that are very easily replaced without much loss of fun; in fact, this is much more fun than I thought it would be before seriously trying it.

3. Games for which the same mechanical results can yield very different in-game results depending on player decisions/narration (e.g. Dust Devils). Losing a ton of points in an early scene means a battered nose; losing them in the big shoot-out means a teeth-gritted final monologue while bleeding your life away in the mud.

4. Games in which character death is possible, but relies on a unique confluence of dice and choices that carries immense thematic-statement power (Sorcerer sort of does this, but not quite as well as Trollbabe or Otherkind). In these games, the "sit out" period is kind of like sexual afterglow; you don't want to keep playing just yet after a rush like that.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Ron, I'm surprised you missed Multiverser: character death ends the current scenario for that player, but play immediately continues in a new scenario. I suppose it turns the thing on its head a bit--when the character is killed, the world "dies" to him, but he continues.

I suspect there are other ways to produce a similar character dies but then continues effect. Toon does something like it, perhaps--characters are not killed, but "knocked down" and can't act for five minutes. That's a bit like character death, but most of the negative consequences are at least mitigated. You lose five minutes of play, but in most games it's not uncommon to be out of the action that long anyway, in my experience.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi M.J.,

See? People are already fillin' in the tree or Venn diagram or whatever it is. No more than I expected.

Can't remember everything all the time.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Seems to me that this is one of those bits of incoherence thats really old and hoary and embedded.  A conflict between the needs of the minimum game element and the minimum sim element.  In that respect I think that cunning devices to introduce new characters do work by aligning the two approaches.  Paranoia parodied this by having replacement clones delivered by mail, or even artillery.  But you know it all made a perverse kind of sense.  I liked a lot of Comte's ideas, and I think anticipating the eventuality is probably a good thing in its own right.  Perhaps games should have a character ending section in much the way they have a character creation section.

I also think its not necessarily too bad a thing for there to be a break in play.  IME, with a dead character I'm prone to reflect on it for a bit, and observe the group dynamic that develops in its absence.  Then a try to build something that makes a kind of sense in concert with the new dynamic.

[Mike Holmes]

Paranoia parodied this by having replacement clones delivered by mail, or even artillery. But you know it all made a perverse kind of sense.

There was even a statement in the game rules that said that, sure, it's a metagame crock, but just look the other way. Or you'll be turned into a thick yellow paste. I love how the metagame becomes intentionally confused with the in-game in terms of the GM being the Computer. Meaning that if you did something "wrong" in the metagame, the GM could punish you in-game with impunity.

That said, clone lives just became a resource to try (mostly unsuccessfully) to marshall. Once number six goes, yer out! The idea of playing a campaign of Paranoia always struck me as an abomination.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Gareth wrote,

Perhaps games should have a character ending section in much the way they have a character creation section.

Yup. Double yup.

I recommend Violence Future and My Life with Master, both of which should be readily available following GenCon this year. Each includes a mechanic which is literally called "Endgame," which may include the upcoming death of the character. The initial credit for this idea goes, I think, to Jared Sorensen for his application of the Sorcerer Humanity mechanic in his mini-supplement Schism. See also The Riddle of Steel for a very subtle version of the same idea nestled in the Spiritual Attribute + Improvement + Insight system; and Trollbabe for a way for the player to keep playing the dead trollbabe's relationships (as relationships, not as characters).

Best,
Ron