After many scheduling snafus, I finally am heading out to game again tonight with my die hard crew of 7th Sea players who claim to want to live on the knife edge continually. In the scheduling discussion, I threw out the idea we'll be trying tonight where character death is decided in part by character decision, instead of it being all rules or all my call. Clearly we've not tried it yet, but I did find the only reply via emal to be quite telling.

"Finally! I get to play a swashbuckling game again!"

When I thought about it, this player had been plying pretty reservedly, while the others were hog wild berserkers. He clearly took the treat of death seriously, never once asked to be spared, but tried very hard not to get into potentially lethal situations. Now that he can choose not to die for failing a stunt, he's relieved.

I'll update how it works once someone actually has to make that decision.

Hi Cliff,

That often can be a tricky ground to navigate, especially since gamer culture very much has trained a lot of folks to not really say what they want or put it into clear terms.  Another part of the problem is that most rpgs have rules for death, but not really any formal rules for lesser loss-conditions that would make losses something players could endure regularly without losing everything.

Chris

Good luck!

What version of 7th Sea are you playing?  I played quite a bit of the game back in the day and my recollection is that the mechanics can only Knockout a character.  Death has to be a conscious and deliberate act undertaken by a character after they've been Knocked out.

Jesse

jburneko wrote:
What version of 7th Sea are you playing?  I played quite a bit of the game back in the day and my recollection is that the mechanics can only Knockout a character.  Death has to be a conscious and deliberate act undertaken by a character after they've been Knocked out.

To tack a question onto the end of this finding, the results of this experiment obviously show that my "always in risk of death" player has no interest in even entertaining the thought of character death, and yet he's the most aggressive one at the table (to NPCs, not fellow players). He'll fight anything anytime, never once take a defensive action, and if he's alone that's all the better. So he wants to be pure offense without a single consideration to self-preservation, but he doesn't want to die, at all.

I'm thinking at this point that a good game match for him would be one that relegates defense to passive, establish and forget defense mechanics, like armor in D&D. Yeah, I know since 3e there's been some active defense options, but even the most tactical players in my circle have never, ever used them. Is there anything else out there that has something like this? Or, even better yet, does anyone have experience meeting this style of play to deliver a satisfactory experience in general?

Well..... this does remind me somewhat of games past, but I'm not sure the match is a good one.  I've done a lot of "fake danger" stuff; special effects that don't really exist mechanically.  Like in seventh sea terms, maybe have a cannon ball pass through the hull, missing everyone by a whisker and showering them in splinters.  This external to and on top of the normal functioning of the system.  As I say, special effects, the appearance of danger without making it tangible.  It certainly can serve to up the pitch and tempo without actually introducing any new levels of danger, but I'm not convinced that this is really the point at issue.

Wow, what a clear cut result! No fuzzy mollases like ambiguity about what's going on! Good on you for trying this, Cliff!

I dunno, but perhaps this will be alot easier on you as you wont be trying to provide him with gamism then, as it turns out, obviously getting negative feedback from him for doing so because that's not what he wants (and then racking your brain on how to deliver the gamism, etc).

He's got some 'My character defeats all' passion going on, you just play the backstage stage hands who set up the structure to facilitate the playing out of that passion.

So after letting the results of my experiment simmer for a little bit, I had a much more in depth conversation with one of my players. No theory, but a lot of "what are you looking for?" kind of stuff. What came out was that this person, the biggest proponent of all grave danger all the time, doesn't particularly like high lethality games. In fact, he'd prefer to never die. However, he staunchly believes two things that lead him to his stated attitude:

1) There are certain things that belong solely in the GM's hands no matter what. Matters of life and death, for PC and NPC alike, are among those things. They should be decision made in secrets ("behind the shiled" was his term) and handed down. It's what a GM's authority exists for, so he says.

2) Rules that allow for easy character survival are fine, even preferred. But death rules, whatever they are, should be played, not circumnavigated. If you forever fudge rolls and rules so that the PCs never die, all sense of risk evaporates from the game and it becomes boring. So if you don't want to run a high mortality game, don't use high mortality rules, but once you pick a set of them, use them and don't cheat them.

I played with a GM in college who refused to kill his PCs, but he'd massacre them just short of death and come up with terribly lame reasons why we didn't die. Sometimes the bad guys would just give up on the verge of victory. More often we'd wake up in a mysterious clinic beholden to yet someone else. So I see where my player's coming from (he was in that campaign suffering along with me). Still, I'm not sure any of that reflects what he really wants from a game on a fundamental level. He just doesn't want death cheats turned into a tool to dick him continually, which is what they were in games past. It is, however, the most powerful opinion he's expressed on gaming preference to date, and I've noticed that a lot of his (and others') attitudes are a lot of that "should" stuff that you get from game books everywhere.

You know, an unexpected side effect of this is an increasing sense of annoyance I experience when confronted with what a GM should be doing. Not only does it feel more and more limiting as I read other designs, but it also feels a little cheap given that I'm always the GM. I'm supposed to be the one to decide if your character dies, not you.. I'm the one who's supposed to control things while giving you complete freedom. Why? Because. I'm *really* looking forward to transitioning my gorup to something else as an experiment in broadening our collective horizons.

Hi Cliff,

I saw this comedy film once and it had this bit where a guy is ostensibly being dominated by a dominatrix. But then the dominatrix does a certain thing and he suddenly snaps around and says no, your doing it wrong, in no uncertain terms. Really he was dominating the scenario. It was kinda funny - must have seen that over a decade ago...

I'd say with #1, it's much the same. He's not suggesting all that to you, he's telling you. It's a really awkward he's in charge but your in charge but only as much as he decides, in precise terms, because he's in charge. I mean, is he saying he likes this or is he saying this is how it should be (like he just walked out from behind a bush with a stone tablet in hand, this written on it)?

In other words it's a massive source of that 'should' stuff your talking about.

I'm not sure you can appease him. Because with #1, it's not like something he just likes - because with something you like, you can compromise on that. No, with #1 this must absolutely be the case. You can't even just pitch it to him and say 'Well okay, tell me how to run the game, moment to moment' because he'll say 'oh, your the GM - your in charge of that!'.

After some thought, I dont think the PC death thing should be an issue, except maybe if you are playing with a fully sim priority where you want to model exactly what would happen.

If you want to be playing a gamist game where the challenge and significant player decisions revolve around strategy and tactics?  In those types of games, its the thrill of design, strategy and execution that is fun.  You dont really need the threat of the character to die in that situation, merely winning/not winning is enough.

If you want to play a narrativist style game, think of movies and books --  in movies/books the 'PCs' dont die, right?  They get into mortal danger, they get knocked out, they get into cliffhangers, they get injured to some extent or another, but we the audience know that despite being hit with an atomic bomb on the top of the head, somehow the protagonist(s) are going to survive and the movie is going to continue, unless of course its one of those movies where the hero dies in the last 10 minutes.

But if its done well enough, we suspend our disbelief and we get stressed in a good way about the 'danger'.  why is that?  Partly because the spectacle I suppose.  but mostly because in situations where the lives of the PCs are threatened, theres usually a lot of other stuff at stake besides the danger to the PC.  Its the context of the danger that gives it drama, not the fact that the life of the PC is being pretend-threatened.

So you want to play in such a way that the players care about their character enough to worry that maybe, the character wont achieve whatever goal it is that he is willing to put himself in mortal danger for.

Cliff wrote:
However, he staunchly believes two things that lead him to his stated attitude:

1) There are certain things that belong solely in the GM's hands no matter what. Matters of life and death, for PC and NPC alike, are among those things. They should be decision made in secrets ("behind the shiled" was his term) and handed down. It's what a GM's authority exists for, so he says.

2) Rules that allow for easy character survival are fine, even preferred. But death rules, whatever they are, should be played, not circumnavigated. If you forever fudge rolls and rules so that the PCs never die, all sense of risk evaporates from the game and it becomes boring. So if you don't want to run a high mortality game, don't use high mortality rules, but once you pick a set of them, use them and don't cheat them.

Hi Cliff,

I've been faced with similar situations.  Here's how I look at 'em:

The players want their choices to matter.  Specifically, they want to make some relevant choices in situations of danger, where it's at least easy to imagine or pretend that death is on the line.

The players also don't want to be losing characters all the time.  Maybe they're attached to the ones they have; maybe making new ones takes too long.

My general solution is to use a system that makes death extremely unlikely (1 in 36 to 1 in 1000), but makes more acceptable consequences quite likely.  Loss of gear, levels, looks, connections, abilities, friends, favorite color, etc.  So, my decisions still determine my fate in terms of some stuff I care about; live or die just isn't one of them.

Hope this helps,
-David

David wrote:
My general solution is to use a system that makes death extremely unlikely (1 in 36 to 1 in 1000), but makes more acceptable consequences quite likely.  Loss of gear, levels, looks, connections, abilities, friends, favorite color, etc.  So, my decisions still determine my fate in terms of some stuff I care about; live or die just isn't one of them.

Cliff, I think your trying to figure out how it works out. But it doesn't necessarily. You may simply have found a mild form of madness. To define that, it's having two compeating desires (one is 'real death' on the cards, the other is that character death is unacceptable (shown by his hiding the death chip) that can't both be forfilled, yet he's still gunning to have both of them. Before anyone gets their panties in a knot, I'm suggesting this as a possibility only and out of concern for Cliff - if you approach something as if it works when it's madness, your likely to catch it yourself as well, I estimate (and even if I'm wrong on that, I still act out of concern...by crom, I hate giving disclaimers...)

Anyway, I'd agree it's someone not knowing what they want, in the sense of not having given up one of two conflicting desires, when only one can be had.  But that's not even a game talk thing - the capacity to identify conflicting desires then choose which desire is effectively 'put down' - well, it's not a skill taught in school, let's say. Ie, it's not common.

Hi Cliff,

I ran a homebrew where gaining scars and losing limbs (or the occasional beloved item or NPC) worked well.

I also sat on some 6th-level OD&D where the group was enjoying some Gamism in just the manner you describe (that Dragon editor would sound like a pansy to them).

If threatening their stuff isn't feasible, there's always Shock or Stun: ways for characters to drop in combat without dying.  This is fun because it keeps the challenge open for the rest of the group: can you avoid the TPK with fewer characters, can you escape while lugging bodies, etc.  (It sounds like you achieve this already, but this would let you do it consistently without fear of unacceptable deaths or fudging.)

"Risk of death should be real!" makes perfect sense to me as an approximation of "I want my choices to matter" in the context of a fighty game.  I'd ignore the former and focus on the latter.  But maybe that's me being presumptuous.  You could ask the following:

"As long as it's technically possible to die, and as long as I never fudge anything, is it okay if no one actually ever winds up dying?  Or are a few fatalities important to make the threat of death loom larger, and make survival feel like more of a victory?"

I really don't understand any of this either.  I've played happily with no-death social contracts, but in those cases the players at least behaved as if the danger were real; they would take cover and be defensive etc.  Nor was it the "terribly lame" variety you describe.  Both sides colluded in the illusion, but this guy seems to be outright ignoring it, even challenging it.  I'm curious as to whether it has ever been the case in your play history with this person that character death has actually occurred?

Fundamentally, I think this idea that life and death is in the GM's hands is broken.  What does that mean anyway?  It makes even less sense when juxtaposed with the view that the system should run according to its own logic without interference.  Somehow I doubt it means that the GM is free to have a character struck by lightning by simple fiat and that this would be accepted with equanimity.  There is a tangible disjuncture here between expectations at the the player level and actions at the character level.

In all honesty I'd be tempted to take the gloves off and start dropping characters.  Not my usual thing at all, and very confrontational, but if you don't understand the bounds of acceptable outcomes in regards this player then you don't really have a working social contract as it is.  This isn't "advice", it's definitely risky ground, but IMO things like permanent injuries and losses of possessions or relations can have much the same impact as character death and thus they don't really offer solutions.  Plus, all of those end up with passing the burden of how to rationalise these things into game play onto you.  Can you really eb expected to, say, bump off the character's paramour as a substitute for the wounds he should have taken in a battle past?  It just gets worse and worse.

Beware any tabletop RPG player who says, "I only play.  I never want to GM."  It's a mystery to me what motivates such players to roleplay, but the effect is always the same:  They see the GM as the "giver of fun".  Such players, themselves, take no responsibility for the success of the session.  All responsibility belongs to the GM, in their book.  Even asking such a player, "What is your character's goal?" will often get a sarcastic or meaningless response that merely deflects the question (e.g. "kill, kill, kill!").  For them, the GM's world exists to be torn apart and dominated, and the idea of cooperative creation of a story (or in any way contributing to that fantasy world) is a pointless, irritating notion.  Oh, and if the game is D&D, they will always play a chaotic-neutral, an alignment they universally misinterpret as meaning "I can do anything I want".

With regards to game mechanics helping with this situation (low-lethality probabilities, etc), that won't work.  No matter what odds you present these players with, they will push it further.  If the drowning rules let them stay underwater 10 minutes with no risk, then they will stay underwater for an hour;  If a sword-thrust can only scratch them, they will attack an entire army.  If they can safely fall 50 feet, they will begin leaping off mile-high cliffs.  They will constantly push to take any situation a step further and watch the GM artfully change the world to accommodate them (but subtly, so it doesn't look like he's fudging anything).  No set of game mechanics can cure this syndrome, IMO.

Only a tyrant GM could function under a premise like "I decide life and death, no matter what."  There should always be room for group input.  Anything the whole group thinks is really cool should go into the game ("Hey, Mr. GM, what if Joe's character is saved by an angel, because that would tie in with our quest to solve the mystery of the guardian angels?").  But again, that's contributing to the shared imaginary world, something player-only participants are loathe to do.

I see no clear or assured path to resolution of the situation, because in my experience such players are completely inflexible in their playing style:  It is either illusionism-gamism where they take no responsibility for the outcome or else leaving the table and making disparaging comments about what a pain the GM is being tonight.

Cliff wrote: I'm thinking at this point that a good game match for him would be one that relegates defense to passive, establish and forget defense mechanics, like armor in D&D. Yeah, I know since 3e there's been some active defense options, but even the most tactical players in my circle have never, ever used them. Is there anything else out there that has something like this?

Or, even better yet, does anyone have experience meeting this style of play to deliver a satisfactory experience in general?

Jeff wrote: Only a tyrant GM could function under a premise like "I decide life and death, no matter what."  There should always be room for group input.

stefoid wrote:

Cliff wrote:
However, he staunchly believes two things that lead him to his stated attitude:

1) There are certain things that belong solely in the GM's hands no matter what. Matters of life and death, for PC and NPC alike, are among those things. They should be decision made in secrets ("behind the shiled" was his term) and handed down. It's what a GM's authority exists for, so he says.

2) Rules that allow for easy character survival are fine, even preferred. But death rules, whatever they are, should be played, not circumnavigated. If you forever fudge rolls and rules so that the PCs never die, all sense of risk evaporates from the game and it becomes boring. So if you don't want to run a high mortality game, don't use high mortality rules, but once you pick a set of them, use them and don't cheat them.

So I pretty much think this player has a sim priority - he wants to know what really would happen, and as the GM you are the impartial physics of the world, so you tell him.

I have also found myself in this dilemma as a player and as a GM. As a player I got frustrated by character death when I had to create a new character, recalculate the stats, tactics, etc. and then find a feasible excuse with the GM to insert the new character. With a simple system, an experienced master and/or a player not so much into powergaming the process can be done quickly, but this is not often the case.

As a GM a character death somehow interrupts the fun for a while. Even if the death was laughable, game has to be interrupted somehow for that player to reincorpore, or the player has to sit down the rest of the session watching other people play.

Eventually these situations led me to think problem was in the design, so I went for minimalistic designs where powergaming, if not evaded, at least took less time. Story points also worked wonders since players invest them in whatever is important for them in the story and make the GM an other players respect that and keep the game ahead.

However the main issue can remain there as a big elephant in the room. Withouth the feeling of risking something, victory feels empty. Now, since a good part of any RPG is creating the illusion of something, either by fudging or less conspicuous mechanics that illusion should (ok, could) also be fullfiled.

In the end the choice I took as a GM was to use the mechanics of any game to their extent to save players from death, even suggesting ways to use their resources to save their characters or appealing to other players to help their mates. When you add there the choice element "yes, you can survive this way but you won't achieve the main goal now" and the player goes for the goal, that's what they want and as a GM you can't deny them that.

Alas, character death doesn't have to be all bad. For example, if a player risks his character's death on a conflict when I'm GMing, the player still rolls the dice to decide the result BUT even if they roll a catastrophic result I narrate their deaths as something epic and let them accomplish something with it. Perhaps it gave the other characters a clue or a way to defeat the boss, thus giving meaning to their sacrifice.

Hi everyone,

This thread needs to be left alone now. Please take all topics you want to discuss from it and start new threads, linking back to this one for reference.

Best, Ron