Pretensions of Grief

Maybe I should get off Chris Perkins' back. These last few years he's transformed himself from insufferable asshole to insufferable suck-up. It's an improvement. We should always reward improvement. The link provides an interview between Perkins and the creator of a channel I don't care about; I was able to listen to all of it without damaging either my laptop nor my computer tower. I count that a win.

For those who don't know, Christopher Perkins (wikipedia page) used to run public games for the WOTC, while also acting as a "game designer" and so-so editor. I say "so-so" because I've seen his work. It's about the same as mine, which I do for free and without hundreds of thousands of dollars of staff support. Like he had. In 2025, he "retired" from the WOTC... at approximately the same time the WOTC was letting everyone go that was costing money and not making it with splatbooks. He's now the creative director of the company for tabletop gaming launched by Critical Role, Darrington Press.

Throughout the interview, Perkins uses multiple choice questions as a rhetorical device which does nothing to educate the listener about D&D, since for the most part the answers are either intentionally insipid, or "all" the answers are acceptable. One such question is shown here on the right. A. and C. are clearly meant to convey the usual tropes associated with dungeon masters, which of course are expected to be funny... except that for me, having played since 1979, I find the humour a little dusty. That doesn't mean it won't be used for another 47 years.

Please either indulge me or forgive me as I provide a transcript of the above's deconstruction:

Host: {chuckling} Can it be option A and D at the same time? Definitely not B.

Perkins: I'm going to suggest that the correct answer is "have snakes erupt from the dead character's corpse." {general laughter}

Host: Okay.

Perkins: I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. The real answer is "discuss options with the dead character's player."

Host: Right.

Perkins: Often when death occurs, it's unexpected and it might be the result of bad dice rolls or just a bad decision... and in that case, it's basically spelling the end of a character's journey or a character's arc. 

Host: {nodding sagely} Yeah.

Perkins: And some players are prepared for that; some players actually greet their character's death with a fair measure of enthusiasm. 

Host: Yeah.

Perkins: Particularly if they're a type of player who's got like a line-up of other characters that they've built and they're just aching to play something else. 

Host: Yes.

Perkins: You know the type.

Host: Yes.

Perkins: And so death is not that— doesn't come with any trauma or or any, um, um, you know, resentment—

Host: Yeah.

Perkins: Or anything like that. But... you never know... and so as a DM, it's always good to say, okay, this happened. Take the player aside or just have a conversation and say, "Do you think your character's journey is over at this point? Are you happy with this situation, or at least are you ready to move on from that character? Or would you like to discuss other possibilities? In D&D, there's plenty of ways for characters to come back from the dead, and working with your player, you might be able to contrive something fun — not only the player coming back from the dead, but maybe with a vision that they had while they were dead. Maybe while they were dead they actually has some sort of weird extra-planar interaction, that might propel the character's story even further along. It might be divine intervention or some other encounter, but there are all kinds of ways to skin it. But I think that it's smart for the DM and the player to both agree on the course of action with regards to that character and their journey. Just so it doesn't feel like it's incomplete.

Host: Right.

Perkins: ... and unsatisfying.

In answer, I'd like to link this youtube video of players and coaches being thrown out of baseball games for unsportsmanlike conduct, because they can't suck it up, despite being paid literally millions of dollars to do so. My question, then, is what produces the most trauma? Being struck out, so that you're so mad you argue with the umpire or throw your bat at the ground, or being thrown out of the game. Write your answer in the comments below.

The difference between the D&D example and baseball is that the company perceives "character death" as an inherited flaw of D&D, that it has to mitigate by turning every DM into a psychologist to manage player trauma... or or any, um, um, you know, resentment. Whereas Major League Baseball know the fans are going to fucking watch anyway, and they don't give a shit if the player is unhappy.

Chris Perkins is not selling table courtesy, he's performing brand protection. His answer treats player death as a customer-retention hazard. The dead character is not allowed to remain simply dead, because the company-facing version of D&D has become anxious about the player leaving the table with a negative feeling attached to the brand. So the DM is repositioned as the person responsible for converting loss into satisfaction.

And you, gentle reader, as the DM, have been co-opted into this, as the person who should, without being paid, protect the company.

All D&D game deaths are unexpected, unless the player suicides. All deaths occur because of a "bad" die roll OR a bad decision. NO game deaths result because of a good die roll or a good decision. Unless, again, suicide was the plan.

Oh, and hey, while we're here, let's point out that if we're going to roll dice to check success, there's not very much point in rolling the die at all unless we're going to accept the failure. If failure isn't an option, put the dice away and just say the players always succeed.

If a "bad" die roll (that is, one that fails to succeed, rather than one that is being framed as though the gods picked the number showing) does kill a character, and that causes or or any, um, um, you know, resentment, then maybe that player isn't old enough to play. Maybe that player needs to check themselves against a plywood knight with hand raised up and a motto next to it, "Your ego has to be this secure to play this game." Maybe, just maybe, just possibly, even if the company makes a buck from it, there are some people who just shouldn't be playing D&D. Because the mettle required to pretend things just isn't there.

Die rolls are only "bad" from the standpoint of the desired outcome. They are not moral events, they are not an injustice, they are not an attack against the player's emotional state... and their consequences should not need me to approach the player gently, possibly while to other players hold a fucking straightjacket, so I can talk an adult down, when as a kid we used to die all the time in this game and we were goddamned fine. What in the hell?

If a player needs the game to go well because they had a bad week at work, or they're so fragile that I need to sit down with them and use words like "journey" while measuring the player's degree of "happy," then that player needs to not be at my game table. They should be elsewhere doing something more constructive and helpful for their fragile ego. Learning to make pottery is good for that; it teaches how effort and failure can be met with resilience to make things that turn out to be excitingly beautiful, all while the skill learned is useful and the process beneficial for other activities. D&D is just way too, um, traumatic for these people. Honest. They're not up to it.

Whew.

All right, let's talk about death.

Death in the game sucks. No question about it. I don't like to kill a lot of characters; I've found in general I do it less than most people, not because I fudge, not because I deny players a chance to restore their dead characters — usually, I make raise dead and resurrection fairly easy to obtain, if at a price. I tend to view it in the way that some board games do, "Lose all your cash on hand, return to Start."

Some DMs seem to view the murder of vast numbers of player characters as a badge of honour. "See, I believe that player characters should die as part of the game. In fact, last week I ran a game and everyone died. That's how much I believe in that rule." Which is, I guess, okay. I'm not an advocate for game balance, so that's fair. Not how I run, nor a game I'd play in I think, but whatever works for whoever is running their table.

I said a few posts back (which you read, Gentle Reader, because you read everything I write) that I seem to have a gift for picking just enough monsters to seriously threaten death, without that actually resulting in death. A "bad" roll, or a "bad strategical decision" could tip that balance, which is why the players in my game tend to compensate thoughtfully for the former while respecting the latter. Most of my present players remember a session against fire beetles in which three of five members of the party died, mostly because they did engage in a bad strategical mindset, and that memory comes up in nearly every running. So the players know I can kill them. I just don't feel the need to prove it all the time, so they know that's still possible. Being mature adults, they seem capable of having memories longer than mayflies, apparently unlike every player Perkins has ever run.

IF a DM is there with the crash-cart, the EMT, the psychologist couch and smelling salts every time a player fails, for whatever reason, then of course the players aren't going to take the game very seriously. The reason that umpires in baseball were finally given the power to eject players for so much as a word was because the old way, in the old days when I was, what, a younger adult, it was really getting out of hand. Looking into it, it appears that with the 1999 umpire labour crisis, when twenty-two umpires quit, the old union was replaced, umpire staffs were merged into one... and that brought about the modern administration model. The overall effect was to give umpires more power to manage the game, not less... while the Perkins/WOTC/corporate model is there to effectively emasculate the DM's power by making this about therapy, not player management.

What's funny is that I have given players other options than resurrection for bringing back dead characters. Not the cheesy plot devices suggested, of course... but D&D does owe at least some fealty to Heracles rescuing Theseus from the underworld, or Dante spending at least some of his vacation there. The "outer planes" are comprehensible real places that have existed as part of the setting's structure since the 1970s, so sure, there ought to be some way to identify which plane of existence the soul of a dead character ending up at, and therefore some way of getting them back, even if a monkey's paw is needed. It's not that I necessarily encourage this kind of thinking; logically, if it were to be attempted, it would have to be the kind of adventure that required a year of game play, at least 20 or 30 sessions... but truthfully, it ought to be possible... just not in the way Perkins is suggesting. I'm not going to restore your character because you have the sads. That's just not good enough.

Trust me, if a party does decide to go through all that for someone's 8th level ranger, they're not going to do it all again for someone else's a 7th level fighter. It's funny how suddenly a party is ready to draw a hard line about such things.

Truthfully, it's taken the 1st level fighter in my present campaign nine sessions to reach 4th.  That is, the accumulation of 8,000 x.p. Logically, to reach 5th, 18,000 x.p. it ought to take ten or eleven more, but it won't, because the fighter is tougher, can take more damage, can kill more, hits better and so on. As the needed experience doubles, thereabouts, the actual time per x.p. shortens, just enough to make each level feel like an effort without there being a cut-and-dry certainty about when the next threshold comes. This is good for the game. A player who loses their 4th level, or 7th level, or whatever, should just count the time needed as game play and just that. Yes, okay, we all loved Rodrick. And it's a pity.

But not to sour the party or anything, I used to have another wife, who died for real. I have had two parents, who died for real. Which I had to get over, just as everyone has to when something like it happens to them. Look, just bear with this a moment, as hard as it is, as out of place as you may feel it is inside a post about D&D. Life isn't just living with the knowledge that we ourselves are going to die. It is also that along the way, we're going to find ourselves having to cope with others that we love passing away on us, and there's nothing, nothing at all, that we can do about that except to keep moving forward. Cruel, brutal, undeniable truth. Earlier, I said, "death in the game sucks." And so it does. But let's have a little perspective here, okay?

If my 8th level ranger dies, then really, how long does it take to replace that character in my heart? As Rodrick's memory fades, then Desdemona's memory, though she may now only be a 3rd level mage, grows. By the time D reaches 6th, R was a year ago. It's just not that hard to get over.

Gawddammit. If you've ever had a pet that lived for ten years, you know you'll never replace that pet in your heart, no matter how much you love your new pet Jupiter now. I guess maybe its because of how long I've been here... but fragility is a terrible way to manage what life is going to hand over. Yes, right, your D&D character dies, okay. Look on the bright side. There are no funeral arrangements to make. There's no lawyer's office you're ever going to have to sit in. There's no household of possessions you're ever going to have to divide up between your siblings and yourself, and you're not going to have the experience of watching your parents most treasured things being thrown into the trash, because they're old, they've been polluted with mice feces because the house wasn't looked after toward the end and worse, there's just no room in your house, or that of your siblings, for everything. That's how it goes.

I promise. If your D&D character dies, there are going to be worse things coming for you to get over.

The Presence of Death

As a solution to the problem of getting back and forth across a large fjord in Norway, separating the party's base camp from the large market city of Stavanger, my party purchased a ship's boat: 3 tons cargo capacity, three oars and a rigged sail.  They obtained a pilot, Nadia, to direct the boat and maintain it, because none of the player characters have any skill in sailing.  In the example below, I'm going to cut out the extra dialogue relating who is present at any given time while we play. 

On the morning the party was ready to leave Stavanger, I described the weather thusly:

"... the morning of the 20th starts with a strong breeze and a moderate rainfall (5mm over a 3 hour period). This is enough to produce a steady downpour, something equal to this. Nadia is game to go nonetheless, though you're all going to get very wet, as the wind will blast the rain sideways. She feels she can get you across the bay in about five hours. I'd intended to describe the journey, but given the conditions, the players will have to decide their intentions first."

This is what I mean when I say it's the DM's responsibility to give a reasonable expectation of risk to the player characters.  I don't have a result in mind.  I know that Nadia CAN manage the weather, but I deliberately word this in a manner that the players cannot be sure ... i.e., she is "game to go."  That phrase, stemming from the adjective "game," meaning brave, daring, gutsy, definitely does not mean "can absolutely and unquestionably succeed," which is why I chose the word.  Even though I decided from the pilot's experience, dexterity, the nature of the storm and the seas where Nadia had managed a boat that YES, she was going to bring the boat safely through.

That did not mean she would bring the party safely through.  In my mind, the odds were high that all would work out.  I had plans to roll dice in this event; dice can always go badly.  The players, as it turned out, were also game:

Pandred: I'm okay with making the crossing.

Embla: Let's cross. I've taken care of wages on my end.

Vafrandir: I am as well. We make sure all the supplies are strapped down tight, we've enough rope. I've accounted for all food to this point.

Marcule was not heard from, this being online, but three persons is a quorum so the agreement is to go ahead.  That's where we ended the session yesterday.  Take note; the party doesn't have to leave today, or even this morning.  They could wait out the weather.  The decision to go is ALL on them, as I've clearly given an impression of what the weather is like, and I've offered no absolute promises.  What's more, they've only just engaged the pilot; the fact that the party agreed to trust the pilot tells me they're beginning to trust ME as a DM.  That's very important.

Today I wrote,

During the crossing, there is a small percentage, 2%, of something troublesome happening. There are six of you in the boat, and to save time, I will roll for each of you: Embla, Marcule, Nadia, Pandred, Vafrandir, Valda. Pandred, sorry to say, your number came up (I rolled 1 in 50 for each of you alphabetically). I will need Pandred to roll a d% as the fjord is crossed.

A 2% chance per player—and one third of those players being NPCs—are pretty good odds.  If the pilot, Nadia, had been the one getting the bad roll, there's really no chance of her suffering any part of what came next.  But Pandred is nearly a landlubber.

Why this matters, and why I'm highlighting this particular moment in this campaign, comes from how often I hear players on the internet bitching about how UNFAIR it is that a single roll of the die can unreasonably ruin the fun of a campaign.  I believe this carping is partly the substance of bad temperaments and a failure to recognize the characteristics of games, where any bad move can, without your expecting it, cause you to suffer a consequence.  If my knight is taken unexpectedly in a game of Chess, is the game "ruined"?  What if I bet and lose at Poker?  What if I fail to attack Irkutsk in RISK, and that turns out to be a fatal mistake?  Who are these people who don't realise that games always involve a chance of loss?  Did their parents keep them in bubble wrap before unleashing their snowflakeness on us?

Watch how it plays out.

Pandred wasn't immediately available to make her percentage roll, so I made it to keep the online game moving along.  This roll was applied to the maladies table shown; this is just a simple table that I occasionally use for any small, minor unfortune that arises.  I rolled a "64", producing a slip and fall for 1-4 damage.  Pandred took 4.  In itself, no big deal.  A hundred times the result could come up and it would never be a big deal.

However, in this storm, in this wind, on this small boat, with the players baling, and Pandred not having any boat skill, there had to be a check to see if Pandred would fall overboard.  For this, I always use a "dexterity check"—the player rolls their dexterity or less to compensate for the slip.  Pandred's dexterity is 14, so she had a 70% chance of success.  Now, let's view that chance a moment.  I am playing online with these players ... because of this circumstance, they have every opportunity to fudge that I have.  Pandred could have easily written that she rolled a 12 and there, no problem, she remains in the boat.  But Pandred answered back that she had rolled a 20.

We need to reflect on that.  A 20 puts Pandred in the water of a bad storm; Pandred can't swim.  No one in the party can, except the pilot.  And it wouldn't matter anyway, because if the pilot had jumped in after Pandred, they'd have both drowned.  You can't swim back to an unpiloted boat in three foot waves, because you will NEVER catch the boat.  Pandred is a 4th level fighter; just turned 4th level, after about three years of our playing online (things move slow when you play this way).  YET, she was willing to take the die as it was rolled, because that's how things should be.  As a DM, you should get on your knees and kiss the ground begging for a player like this.

This is the kind of player you get when you take a stand on things.  Not because you make this kind of player, but because you get rid of every other kind; and players like Pandred flock to your door because they're sick of playing with DMs who don't recognize the respect these players have for the game.  When I tell you to boot jerks and assholes, I am telling you to remove the chaff from the grain.  You can't eat the chaff, you don't want the chaff.  You want brilliant, glistening kernals like Pandred here.

But, I am not a monster.  I don't like single life-and-death rolls; I like there to be at least one back-up.  So, I wrote,

The DM: Okay, this is getting dire. Vafrandir, you're nearest Pandred; I will need you to start with an intelligence check, to see if you're too dullwitted by the storm to be paying attention to Pandred's slip. d20, please.

Vafrandir: roll 5, my Int is 12.

Vafrandir is every bit the player Pandred is, so when he says he rolled a 5, I believe him.  I don't have to see the die.  But note here that I'm not just giving Vafrandir one roll to save Pandred.  I having him make a roll just to see if he can save Pandred.  This has two game functions: it builds tension, because I'm not telling Vafrandir ahead of time how this is going to work.  People who have played with me a long time have seen this pattern before—it matters, however, that I'm not saying "Okay, roll to see if you notice so you can roll to see if you catch her."  That's a stupid downplaying of the effect here.  We want to feel the emotion, the fear, of Pandred slipping, and Vafrandir realizing she's going to fall overboard—"OH SHIT, PANDRED!"  I don't need to play that part out, because all the players are doing that without me, in their own heads.  I don't need to "purple this up."  I just need to move methodically through the process.  Telling Vafrandir he's closest.  Telling Vafrandir to check his intelligence (basically, a "perception" check).  This is a hard storm.  Vafrandir, the only person close enough to catch Pandred, could easily be tired, cold, languishing in the bottom of the boat; failing the check, he would hear a cry, lift his head and see that Pandred wasn't there—without even knowing why.  This could have happened that way.  And knowing it could have happened that way gets Vafrandir's heart racing as he reaches for his die to make the intelligence check.  This is ALL STAGING.

Okay, so he sees Pandred start to go.  I write,

The DM: Okay. Temptation is to say, "You see Pandred start to fall, what do you do?" But I think we'll assume that you try to catch her.

In anyone else's game, Vafrandir might have the option to just let Pandred fall.  There's nothing to force him to act.  I don't know why, on this particular occasion, I felt the need to point this out; probably, because we're playing by post and I have time to think about this.  At the game table, I wouldn't say anything like this.  Yet it is convenient for this post, because we can make a point about player vs. player.

If the players need to trust me, they need to trust each other.  They need to be there for each other.  This vastly reduces the number of "silly deaths" that occur entirely at random during a game.  It lets me as a DM count on the other players to be there, to let me let them have extra, logical rolls that can counteract one bad result.  It lets me run a better game.

I told Vafrandir to roll, to see if he was able to catch Pandred.  He did, and I wrote,

The DM: You catch her, and a heart-pounding moment is finished. Chances are, you wouldn't have had time to think about hollering; the dexterity check is a reflex check, to see if you would habitually just reach out and steady her; there wouldn't have been planning in it. But don't forget to keep reminding Pandred that you saved her life. You're a hero.

Vafrandir: Everyone here has saved my life many times! I am honored to return the favor. My heart was honestly in my mouth.

Marcule: Deep exhale.

Pandred: Alright, so next adventure is to slay Poseidon himself. Guy tried to ambush me, you all saw it.

Classic after reaction.  Cheers, release of tension, joke, everyone shakes out the panic and the campaign gets underway again.  Don't tell me these moments aren't intrinsic to the game, because they really are.  But it depends on how they're run.  It depends on the way we respect the player's perspective.  It depends on setting up the moment, so it's not entirely unexpected; this was a dangerous storm.  There was always a chance something bad would happen!  Sometimes, the die tries to take you out.

If not for moments like this, the game would be as dull as dishwater.  They can occur while on a simple crossing of an ocean, or they can happen in the middle of a combat when everything is going well.  Suddenly, the dice turn on you; and sometimes your friends can save you and sometimes they can't.  But if we play it so that you NEVER suffer real consequences, then none of these die rolls matter ... and you can't possibly achieve the kind of sharp alarm that enlivened everyone's afternoon today on the campaign.

And, I might point out, even you, dear reader, wondered whether I was going to say that Pandred died.  That is the power that the presence of death has over the game.  A presence you must give it, if ever you intend to be a good DM.

Resolve

It annoys the hell out of me when I see people bitching about superhero films.  Compared to the wide, deep, incomprehensible stream of garbage movies pouring out of Hollywood in these past ten years, at least superhero films have straightforward stories, applicable narratives and unique characters.  Yes, some are garbage, like the two Ant-man films, but for the most part when I sit down to watch one, I know I'm not going to be bored or pushed to adopt a social political agenda.

Be warned, I'm going to embed a piece of one that I know the gamer-boys hate:



Recently, talking about what skill set a player acquires when playing D&D over several years ~ real D&D, not adventurers league shit ~ a reader proposed that the skills are those related to executive functions.  Wikipedia defines these as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibatory control, working memory and cognitive ability.  In simpler terms, listening, focus, self-control, holding information well and multi-tasking.  I think this is 100% true, but that this is supported by one other thing: the strength to ignore failure and keep going.

Some will take it as trite, but a fundamental narrative beneath all the Marvel films is that these people were capable, intelligent and heroic before they were enhanced with powers.  This narrative seems to get lost in the complaining and bitching that superheroes apparently exist in the universe to solve all our problems.  Yeah.  Who the fuck do you think is solving all your problems right now?  You?  Or some person who has decided to sacrifice their fun and leisure time in Mother's Basement to take on a 75-hour a week job digging the world out of the shitpile it's in?

The writer was careful to write the character of Carol Danvers as someone who had been taking hits and getting up again before she became a superhero ... just like you're free to do, if you've got the resolve and the willingness to overcome pain.

I appreciate the hurt that comes from losing a character, or having your game plans exploded in a few minutes by a bad die roll.  But the people who pretend to be heroes, but cannot be heroic enough to put on a game face when their character dies, or when Jerry gets the +4 sword in the toss and not them, are pathetic.  The game as written is tough, babycakes.  Shut the fuck up and grow a pair.

Dead Cat Bounce

Plot armor is a writer's necessary approach when writing stories where the protagonist's life is regularly threatened.  Presumedly, the reader or viewer will like the character; and will not be happy if the character dies.  Bullets, therefore, can hit the character, but not kill the character.  The character can be poisoned, can fall prey to a brain tumor, can be kidnapped by aliens and be dropped down a well ... so long as things work out in the end.

There is a skill in making plot armor.  It has to be invisible.  Once the presence of plot armor becomes glaringly obvious, the tension in the story is gone.  Automatic survival, when it is understood to be certain by the audience, is boring.

D&D is not a writer's script or novel.  It is a game.  And by the rules of that game, stripped of all the rhetoric and self-aggrandizement, no one has plot armor.  Anyone can die.  In recent years, playing to a more sophisticated audience, writers have been moving towards an understanding that a universe with uncertainty is far more interesting and tension-building than one where most of the cast clanks about in their plot armor.

The risk, particularly in television, where an audience is cultivated for months or years before the death of a favored character, is that the viewer will deeply resent the writer killing their favorite character.  People get attached.

The question arises, is attachment a sufficient reason to circumvent the rules of the game and give player characters plot armor?  Clearly, many people think it is, because many games ~ and DMs ~ insist wholeheartedly that "a good game" demands less heartbreak and a corresponding amount of fudging on the DMs part to ensure no one dies, who should not die, unless the circumstances are such that dying seems like a proud, heroic, profoundly emotionally satisfying thing to do.

For reasons I can't guess at, I don't share this morbid fetish for sacrificing one's life for the good of the country.  I've always thought the important thing was to live and thus go on contributing to the experiment, and, like Patton, to succeed by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.  I consider death to be a pretty stupid way to contribute to anything; and that there is nothing sadder than a corpse, no matter what it died for.

Death, however, is inevitable.  And part of the process of moving from childishness to maturity is to recognize the fact of death, without the glitz and romanticism that a fetishist adds to make it palatable.  I'm not glad when a character dies in a film or a book.  I am reconciled to it.  I acknowledge that I can't change it.  In the light of friends and family passing away, at this awful time or any other, I accept there is nothing I can do about it.  I don't look for reason.  I don't ask to be recompensed with rhetoric or foolishness.

I know from observance that the game is a dead cat bounce without the ever-present spectre of death.  I don't like killing a player character; and I don't like having to take a hard stand with a player when they resist that finality.  But being a good DM is not all beer and skittles.  Being a good DM demands the ability to look your friend in the face and say, "You lost this one.  You're going to have to get over it."  And knowing, maturely, that within a few weeks, they will get over it, and appreciate the positive qualities that imminent threat adds to the game, making the game both terrifying and magnificent, because it includes loss as part of its fabric.

It is a very shallow person who believes they're serving their friends by eternally protecting them from harm.  Avoiding happiness is not the road to happiness.  People who are afraid of death are afraid of life.

Death Makes It Better

It continues to worry me that role-players habitually make arguments that hinge on the idea of, “What’s good for the company is good for me.” You know, don’t you? The company would sell you for dog food if it made them a buck.

On another subject, Charles A made a very good point about player death:

“Over time, (computer) game designers have realized *players don’t like to lose* … Games now auto-save regularly. Difficulties are set so the average casual player will die seldom, and when they do, they lose very little progress.”

Succinct. Role-players want save points, so if they do get killed by the big dumb monster, they can punch a button on the ol’ DM and jump back in time. Got it.

I spend 8 to 10 hours a week on video games, borrowed or old games I still play. I enjoy anything logistical. I dislike hearing the mainstream media crap on video games and the time people spend on them, as no one seems to have any trouble with how much time is spent watching sports or reality television – probably because the media has money invested in those time-wasters. I don’t see that it makes any difference if I want to rest and watch Bill Maher drag on another republican in an effort to make these droids appear human, or if I listen to him do so while I squeeze another desk into the training room of my Two-Point Hospital. Rest, down-time, taking part in an activity while experiencing a few hours of flow is legitimate however that time is spent.

But while video games are engaging, I rarely get excited. I usually put them down when I start to feel what Yahtzee coined in one of his old vids about Sims 3.

“On the surface you seem to have complete control over their lives … but beneath the surface your power over these tiny lives is ultimately negligible. Assuming you’re not a bitter anti-social dickhead, etcetera, and you’re playing properly, your role is to keep the Sims happy. They’ve got various stats on display and as soon as one goes in the red you make them do a wee or eat leftover pancakes or whatever. And assuming they’ve got a job you’ll have just enough time in the day to get every stat in the green before they leave. You fall into a routine and it gets harder and harder to break out. Days go by, all interchangeable, even the house parties of the weekend start to feel hollow and token. Sooner or later a big fat realization drops onto your head and smothers your face in its blubbery rolls. Here you are, recreating the same work-sleep routine you’re supposed to be using your free time to get away from. Looking forward to simulated weekends even as your own drift by unfulfilled. You see what this is? You are not the ruler of your Sims. You are the one rushing to meet their every whim. You are the slave. You are the real play thing.”

Whether or not we’re aware, that is fundamentally true of every video game, and indeed of every game once we assign ourselves to following rules-as-written in any structure we don’t personally have control over. It can be relaxing to hand over control to something else, to let the game decide we’re going to run for hours through the halls of a castle, slaughtering skeletons and avoiding ginormous things we’ll call “Gerald” because it feels warm and funny.

Meet Gerald

But make no mistake. It’s not “creative.” It’s dopamine, it’s occasionally some endorphins when your wrists hurt, there’s some serotonin thrown in when you gain bragging rights (and particularly as you make your own let’s play videos) … and those things can sustain your interest for a long time. And if they can’t, someone out there is creating another dop-end-ser combination designed to serve you up some sweet, sweet chemicals. But like Yahtzee says … you’re the one simulating your weekends. You’re the rat in the cage. You’re not adding anything to your existence. You’re running and some very, very smart people are watching the way you run in the maze and setting out to take the money out of your pocket in exchange for more amazing and more interesting mazes for you to run in.

What does any of this have to do with player death? Arguably, I’m making a case in support of Charles A’s point. If we don’t follow the rules, if we fudge the dice, if we discount the death by dragon breath and roll back the campaign to the last save point … "Okay, Yuers and Skiff died that time. It’s two days ago and you’re all back at the tavern again. And again the young cleric with the book telling about the dragon is approaching you. He puts down the book and he says, ‘The townspeople are scared of Milligan’s Rift; but you folk look to be afraid of nothing.’ "

Surely, that means we’re in charge. We can walk away and not face the dragon again, if we don’t want to. Right?

I can see some legitimacy there.

My poor online players [whom I’ve been ignoring for two weeks without explanation, in hunting for an apartment and packing and moving and prioritizing content on this blog and not on the campaign] are in a quandary. They are on the bad side of a lake in dreadful weather in a weakened state facing an unknown and unquantified enemy on the edge of a mysterious gate that may produce their deaths at any moment. They got into the situation by degrees and they’re feeling it.

Each time something happens, they talk again about retreating, strengthening themselves and trying again later. Then they say they should stay in case leaving will make this all harder next time … and as long as they’re here now, they should stay. Each time, so far, they’ve voted to stay; but then something else happens near the gate and the debate starts all over again.

If we adopt a save point for the game, all that goes away. Why not charge the gate? If we die, we’ll figure out something else. Why not retreat? It’s not like the situation will become more life threatening … because, in truth, nothing is life threatening. The removal of death from video games has sold more video games, yes; because walking through corridors as an unkillable hero is more interesting that watching people on television talk about whether or not the hair we found in the car’s tire matches the suspect, or if Judy slept with Jamie’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s son. It’s relative to time spent at an activity that we do largely alone, in time we wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile if not for this.

As an aside, that is one of the reasons I don’t see the video game/RPG equivalency. I don’t play VGs with other people. If my partner wants to engage me in a conversation, I’ll cheerfully pause the game and talk for minutes or change what I’m doing … because the game is either disposable or can be saved for later. I’m not engaged in VGs like I am with RPGs, where I can hardly just get up and leave the house in the middle of a game session. I don’t want to interrupt D&D to talk about some utterly disconnected thing. The time I spend playing D&D is sacred; the time I spend playing VGs is, well, it’s okay. I can take it or leave it.

I only play VGs when I’m too tired to work. I recognize that most who play VGs only work when other people create a space for them to work in. That work-sleep routine Yahtzee describes.

As a designer, I work hard to create that feeling of despair, the doubt and discouragement that builds over time, as players dig themselves deeper into a situation. I’m not merely building excitement; or providing dopamine and serotonin. I’m actively pushing to make the players’ skin crawl, to create dilemmas on a par with real life, where success isn’t just beating the monster. Hell no! The success is beating themselves … overcoming their doubts, their urge to withdraw, their certainty of death.

If you take death from the game, you take away the best victory there is.

Deader than Dead

While talking about how games should be hard, it's not a bad time to think about death ... specifically, the sort of death that occurs when a player is deader than dead.

I used to hear people complain that the presence of raise dead and resurrection minimized the impact of death, but in these days of poofie games, when death doesn't occur at all, the subject doesn't come up so often.  Still, I wanted to write a post about situations where spells, or even rods, aren't enough to change a bad situation for the better.

First, let's understand that spells and magic items have limitations ~ as does everything in D&D, because limitations are how games work.  To bring back the dead, you've got to have a body.  Even resurrection needs a body part ~ though gawd knows what the fuck the rule is in 5e ... probably, to make resurrection work in the newest version, we just need a memory of the dead. Hell, 5e probably doesn't even need a spell.  I'll be you just have to really want another player to be raised.

But ... in the darker world of old timey D&D, there were limitations on a return from death that kept the game interesting, without having to create any rules.  The simple fact of role-playing in a complex world made even resurrection with a rod impossible.

The gang I played with considered that "a part of the body" had to be something representative; an organ would do, but tended not to keep very well, where as a bone ... well, any of the 206 in the body would do.  However, it had to be a part ... ashes were not enough.  Therefore, if someone burned the body, that was the absolute removal of that creature from any possibility of resurrection. This fit neatly into the framework of religious cremation ~ so that we could argue that the reason why burning the body became a thing was so that kings and priests could not be brought back from the dead with the mere touch of a magic rod.

A similar argument is made for bodies dissolved in lime pits, or bodies that were eaten whole by creatures that made it impossible for the body to be obtained, even after the creature was dead.  A character in my game once died permanently by remorhaz.  The internal heat of the creature is such that as soon as he was swallowed (a special power of the creature in the original Monster Manual), the character was dead.  No resurrection possible.

Of course, a character could be eaten by more normal creatures, too, who might swallow the bones, splitting them for their marrow or digesting the smallest pieces.  If a character wandered off, and was killed, then dragged away by the monsters, so that by the time the players caught up to the player that the body and bones were rendered unrecognizeable ... that was permanent death, too.

There are a host of permanent deaths that involve the body simply being lost.  It might be buried in an avalanche, never to be found again, even in the spring ~ and of course, some parts of the world have no spring.  A body could be lost at sea and never found.  A body could fall into a deep trench and be lost, or unrecoverable because the trench itself could not be navigated by a sufficiently skilled party.  More than one character could die permanently in the attempt to recover one already lost.

Then we have my favorite.  The crushing death.  I once dropped a mountain on a character in a cave-in.  Even if the body was recovered ~ next to impossible, as many kinds of rock cannot be excavated after a cave-in, because there's no way to "shore up" the new tunnel ~ it would be mush, as good as ashes ... and any lone bone that might exist would probably be missed and overlooked unless the space was excavated within a few weeks, before the flesh rotted away or was eaten by insects and other creatures.

Or the space between a glacial crevice; the body falls one hundred seventy feet, is wedged between the ice; which, moving, closes and squush.  That's too much ice to simply turn to water.  No spell would have been able to do it in less than three months.

Plus there's always lava, or being buried under a fall of ash. These are just things that happen.  And for some reason, player characters are willing to go adventuring around volcanoes and other dangerous places, so it happens to them more frequently.

Of course, it doesn't take a physical force to end it.  There's always transmogrifying into the undead.  Once a character has become a shadow or a wraith, resurrection is out of the question.  This isn't merely a curse.  The soul itself has been lost from the body, entombed on another plane of existence.  Resurrection presumes the soul and body are one.  Without the soul, it might as well be the same issue as not having a part of the body.  Perhaps the body could be raised ~ but like W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw, what comes a knocking is not what is hoped for.

The matter of the soul is often overlooked.  For the body and soul to be restored to life, in the D&D framework of material plane and outer planes, where the latter is ruled over by gods who reap the dead according to their ethnic origin and ethical behaviour, resurrection magic requires a certain complicity.  The god, having gotten the soul of your dead character, has to be willing to give it back.  The existence of the spell, to me, suggests the god is mostly fine with this arrangement.  After all, the god will get you eventually, and gods don't view time the way we do.

However, if your actions on the material plane have been running along with much conflict between you and some of the gods ~ and in those upper double digit levels that tends to be the sort of game that's played ~ some of the gods may not be so willing to give that soul back, once it's gotten.  Remember, magic has limitations.  And mortal magic is most definitely not the end all and be all of magical power in the multi-universes.  At some point, if we've gained the enmity of the gods, that enmity is going to cost us when we want to get the soul of our friend back.

So these are ways that any character can die permanently.  Some, because they failed a saving throw, or the dice were against them, or they made a bad decision and took too big a chance ... and others because it isn't possible to live forever.  It's fine that most of the time the character can be gotten back; so long as we understand there's always a reasonable chance that they won't.  Ever.

Though ... it's worth saying that if mortal magic does have its limitations in raising the dead, then immortal magic might have a few options that aren't normally available.  And the gods might be convinced, somehow, to intervene even when deader than dead is not dead enough.

Dungeons & Dragons means there's always a way to negotiate with this guy.
But it's going to cost you.

A Pox Upon Thee

Before I begin, I am deeply conscious that this post might be taken for an argument.  That is not my intention.  Instead, I wish to express the impression I am getting from watching video after video about how to play, run and design for role-playing games, particularly Dungeons and Dragons.  That impression suggests that what is commonly happening at game tables is radically different from my experience at my table.  I only wish to suggest reasons why that may be.

Therefore, because many of the details of 3e, 4e and 5e are unknown to me, I'm going to be general in my descriptions - and when certain details are not known to me, I'm going to say as much.



In light of the previous post, let's take a situation:

The players complete their characters and begin the adventure; they need to climb into the forest above the town, to locate the cabin of a druid, who has information they need in order to locate the Palace of Pickscale Peak.  On the way, the party encounters four giant ticks ... and within two rounds, one of the ticks rolls a 1 in 100 critical attack, killing the party's strongest fighter.

The Reaction I'm Hearing

At this point, the player goes off, ranting about how unfair this is, how wandering monsters or verminous monsters shouldn't have the power to roll critical hits, etcetera, apparently at length and in general disturbing the "good times" being had by the players on the one day this week they are allowed to play.

Here are reasons that I have heard given for why death sucks.  To begin with, the player has spent much time making their character.  I am not sure how long this takes in 5e.  I have heard that in 4e it can take an entire session.  I suspect it was not a short time in 3e either, what with the varying feats and builds that were part of that system.  I have never made a character in any of these systems, so I am only going on the considerable amount of time that people online have given to describing the considerable amount of time it takes to make characters.

3e, and presumedly 4e, had a lot of choices to make, to create the carefully crafted character of the player's intent.  I am guessing this was a cross between pimping out one's ride and buying a car from the worst car dealership in Michigan.  After choosing skills, there is the problem of equipping the character, and according to most descriptions I've heard about present-day games, a lot of time spent writing a backstory.  Now, even a two-page backstory is a steep hill for someone who doesn't write all the time.  If the player really got into the process, the backstory might be longer, or really considered, perhaps even written multiple times between the running when the character was made and the running just before the character died.

Of course, now that the character is dead, the game stops.  This has been described as onerous in the extreme ... though I've heard it said and seen it written constantly that the player is free to leave the table, go to a corner, and roll up their character entirely on their own without any supervision whatsoever.  Which is just ... well, I have no words.

AND it's a big issue of the DM.  After all, the DM has planned everything for Gespacho the Gwistbaker to take the lead in every part of the adventure going forward, and now there is no Gespacho.  What now?  What if the player doesn't come back with another fighter?  What if the new fighter isn't strong enough, or is the wrong race?  What then?

These are all problems that seem to seize the very heart of the gaming community.  I cannot relate.

What Happens in My Game

Because the time needed to roll up the character was about half-an-hour, there's very little investment at this point.  The player hardly cares that the character was killed, unless the character was something really unusual, like having two 18s or three 17s.

Since I generate a background, rather than have the characters invent one, there's not much investment there, either.  Oh, the character might have been terrifically lucky, been of noble birth or with some unusual extra skills, but again, there hasn't been time to play them and at any rate, the background is rich with extra skills.  So there's always an expectation that something like it will turn up again, only better.

The player starts picking out dice to roll up the new character, while the other players make a few jokes about the death or chat amiably about whatever.  There's no sense that the game is "stopped," because ALL the players are anxious to see what the new character is going to be.  They, and I, watch earnestly as the dice are rolled, giving congratulations at each good roll and good-natured humour at each bad roll.  The player may not roll well enough to meet my minimum stats (either at least one 15 and one 16, or a single roll of 17 or 18), which aren't super-high.  No one minds the re-roll.  They want to see how much power is joining the party.

Quickly, the player sorts out which numbers go under which stats, picks a class, picks a race and starts thinking about spells, weapon proficiencies or sage abilities.  These are really easy to choose, especially for anyone who has played in my world a few months, so it is past in 5-10 minutes.  If the player really wants to think before choosing, I'll forego spells until the first combat, or a sage ability until the next running.  I don't care if the player chooses an ability for a specific situation, because the player is then stuck with that ability forever, whereas the situation may not come up again for months.  So it doesn't matter.

15 minutes have passed.  Now comes the biggest timewaster: the player has to pick a name.  Meanwhile, I automatically generate a background, which I post as a file on the net which can be downloaded on the player's phone.  I read off anything that looks interesting, not for the benefit of the player, but for everyone's benefit.  If there is a sailor or an armorer or a physician in the party now, everyone wants to know.

25 minutes gone and the player can now start looking over the equipment table.  The new character is THERE, in the game, buying equipment at the table as they are introduced to the party.  Basically, the character comes stumbling out of the forest, expresses surprise at the party's survival, pity at the dead body, and asks to join.  There is usually no role-playing; everyone has done this dozens of times and they don't care about introductions.  Bang, we're off and the adventure continues unabated.  After a bit, the character says they have finished buying equipment.  Total time before adventuring again: 25-30 minutes.


Concluding Thoughts

I think that the need to tailor characters has resulted in this unhappiness connected to player deaths.  The issue, it seems to me, is that with so much lead effort before actually playing, we are creating a deep attachment to something that hasn't proven itself in the field.

People aren't going to give up this habit.  The later editions have emphasized all these build time and effort, in effect expanding the mini-game of making the character to meet certain expectations of the player (who wants total control over who they will BE).  They're not going to give that up.

I'm glad I never went this route.  By maintaining the class system, the class abilities are standardized across the board - and though these may be boring to many players, actual experience of seeing and doing things seems to be more eloquent in character development than trying to do it all at one go before actually starting.

If a fighter in my world fights, and has little else in their skill list, that means the player has to come up with some other way of defining themselves beyond what they "do."  If the background tells them what their past has been and who their people are, then players can't define themselves by their past.  Instead, they have to define themselves by what they want, what things they wish to acquire, what plans they wish to put in motion ... and then to see if they have the stuff to succeed at that, regardless of what class they happen to be and regardless of where they came from.

I find it curious that as the game moved away from the class system, the need to identify with the job title, or the personality of the character, intensified.  Though there are fifty different ways to be a paladin, or more, the most important fact about a character is still what the character does for a living, rather than the aspirations of the character.  I think that's lacking.

In any case, death is always a hard thing.  If a character that has run in my world for years dies, that's a hard day for the player.  But it isn't a pox on the game.  Not at all.

The Boldest Experiment

I was asked if I could satisfactorily answer the following:

"What happens when a character dies in a per-pay enterprise like this? Should they expect not to? Imagine the furor around a video game costing $59 where character death was permanent. Now multiply that by 100."

Sigh.  This makes me sad.  The very intention of the "what if" scenario proposes that people have become so fragile, so needy, so entitled that if they were to spend money for the privilege of playing a game, the ensuing tantrum of their dashed privilege would grow so onerous that my resolution would be swept away in a hurricane of screaming, self-righteous hysterics.

Multiply that by 100.

One hundred of what, exactly?  100 commenters on the internet?  100 players?  I'm certainly not capable of running 100 players at the same time and I find it impressively unlikely that I would be killing 100 players simultaneously if I was.  That would truly be a total party kill, not to be matched in the annals of the game.

But let's imagine that someone has chosen to play in my campaign - and that I've rolled a die, or they have, and as a result they've died.  They are so invested in the game, so invested in their character, that they choose to seek compensation for the death of this character through a means that will cause me harm in some manner.  Let's further assume that this person's perception of me turns so black over the death of this character (remember, paid for), that they truly, deeply, intensely hate me.  We need to multiply something by 100: let's multiply this hatred.  What are the possibilities?

Well, I'm on the internet with my real name.  It's reasonable to assume that someone truly motivated could choose to seek me out, hunt me down and kill me.  This is not the first time I've speculated about something like this.  A little over four years ago, I had a little troll who wrote nasty messages and personal threats and a lot of other things, causing me to remember the story of Billy Pilgrim and Paul Lazzaro from Slaughterhouse Five.

So it goes.

My father, who is 80 now, cannot get it into his head even after forty years of my deciding to be a writer that this occupation actually requires that I be, well, publicly known.  Just a month ago he was cautioning me in serious tones to "be careful" about who knows me on the internet because there are people out there just waiting to use personal information about me to destroy any chance of my getting a "good job."  He is, without a question, a doomsayer of the first order; I remember back in high school, when we first got a Betamax Video Recorder, that my father discouraged us from speaking about it to our friends, arguing basically, "If word gets out that we have one of these, there are people who wouldn't hesitate to break into our house to get it."

Today, my father lives in the same house that I lived in when I was zero.  That house, today, is worth around $800,000.  It sits amid a bunch of other houses that are also worth one hell of a lot of money - and it always has.  We would try to explain to my father that every person in our neighborhood owned a VCR, but that never seemed to get through.

Oh, in case someone is thinking right now, "Why doesn't your father help you?"  Well . . . in the original Fun With Dick and Jane, Jane goes to ask her father for money and gets this speech:

Father: "All right.  It's the monsoon season . . . and you're standing outside in torn raincoats.  Come through this by yourselves and you'll be dry for the rest of your lives.  Take money from me and you'll be wet.  Soaking wet from now on.  Jane, it's the best thing that could happen.  Especially for Dick.  I'm so happy for both of you.  Especially for Dick."
Jane:  "Dad, Billy is doing his work by candlelight."
Father:  "Splendid!  So did Abraham Lincoln."
Jane:  "How are you both doing."
Father:  "Never better!  Jane . . . we have sowed all our lives, and we're now reaping the harvest!  Reap!  Reap!  REAP!"

(this vid was the best I could find)

So, basically, I'm not deserving.

Okay, so I've gone around the barn, down to the store, gotten into an argument with the hairdresser next door and now I'm on my way home.  1.  I already have a public persona; 2. I've already been not liked; 3. every public persona risks some nutjob turning up some day; 4. Given my upbringing, I ought to be insanely paranoid but I've chosen not to be.

Let's contend with a far more likely scenario.  Said player's character dies.  Said player is unhappy.  Said player shouts about it on the internet, tries to raise x100 angry sentiment against me.

Sorry.  I don't see it.  First of all, I don't exactly know what horrible thing can be said about me that hasn't already been said.  Someone could claim to know something about me that's horrible - but that's already been claimed and it turns out that making shit up on the internet is quite ordinary.

Moreover, I ask the readership: consider if this argument would produce much sympathy:

"I paid $100 to play a role-playing game online and my character was killed.  And now I want justice."

Is there a way to add information to that argument that doesn't make the person sound, well . . . I'll refrain from the expletive.  I can at least feel reassured that, living in Canada, there's no practical way to bring a grudge suit against me on the basis of "I'm very rich and I like to use the system to fuck with people."  The legal system is different here; bringing suit is not just a matter of having money.  Moreover, I'd be operating under the legal disclaimer that exists on the Patreon website: so that as long as I follow Patreon's rules, I'm protected.  It would be very hard to bring a suit against Patreon at this time and there are much bigger fish in the kettle to contend with if that were the case.

As near as I can tell, this leaves my personal feeling of remorse or regret at killing a player character, given that someone has paid me for the privilege.  This leaves my self-esteem and my resolve in the face of pure, unbridled hatred, as I am told that I have committed a sin by running a fair and reasonable game in which a die roll may result in a character running out of hit points and being killed.

In 1985's Lost in America, the character's wife loses all the money the couple has at a Las Vegas Casino - and in one of the most painful scenes ever filmed in the history of American cinema, Albert Brooks, director and writer of the film, spends six minutes arguing with the owner of the casino in a vain attempt to get his money back.  I'll link the last four minutes of that conversation.

I don't know what sort of person could watch that scene and identify with Albert Brooks - but if that sort of person wants to give me money to play in my world, that sort of person is going to find that I'm on the casino owner's side.

Imagine the furor.

Yeah.  Furor.  Imagine it.

I'm just shaking in my boots.

Breaking Death

One in the morning and I've just finished my session.

I've broken a rule about my world I've never broken before.  But that's what rules are for.

Back in October, I killed the party's mage, Demifee.  And then I wrote a post about how important it was to be able to kill characters, how the chance of death had to be real, how hard it was for the player to handle the death and so on.

I need to make clear that what happened with the last session (which I will quickly recount) and tonight had absolutely nothing to do with the player requesting anything for their dead character.  I simply realized an adventure hook that could work and would build up a good sequence of events.

I had mentioned in the link above that the party was retrieving five idols.  Those idols were in the shape of religious symbols - a cross, a David's star, the symbol of the Tao, an ankh and a Zoroastrian medallion.  Without waxing on about it, the mage's death occurred in the midst of retrieving these items, making their restoration (to wherever they belonged) possible.  The party knew about the cross.  It was the cross they had gone to get.  They did not know about the other idols until they got there.

Now they have four idols and they don't know where they go (or didn't).  They spoke to a priest and the priest suggested speaking to the dead Demifee, with the chance that perhaps some information was given to her upon her death, regarding why she died and what she died for.  The party made arrangements to do this and had to wait 29 days before a cleric with the spell would cast it for them.

They spoke to Demifee in the last running.  She explained that, in the afterlife, she had been settled on the banks of the river Acheron.  There she was waiting with many others who had died in a circumstance of uncertain balance.  These were people who had died performing a great service for the gods but whom did not believe in those gods.  As such, I described an unwillingness on the part of the gods to condemn these people, but it was equally impossible to save and elevate them.  So there they would wait, without judgement, for eternity.  Unless persons on Earth 'changed the balance' of the scales.

In other words, return the idols, finish the job that Demifee had taken a part in starting, changing her fate.  She gave them a name, Hyklion, and a place, Amisos.  Thus they set out.  Amisos was not too distant, so tonight they reached it.

Hyklion turned out to be a group of telepathic somewhat supernatural monks, who were waiting for the party when they arrived.  And here is where I broke all the rules.

They agreed to return Demifee, the mage, to the semblance of life; she would not truly BE alive, but she would act and seem alive for all intents and purposes - for one year.  If, by that time, the party was able to return the four idols, the monks believed her life would be restored.  If she and the party failed, she would return to death and be condemned.  The party agreed to this quest, the monks communed with the powers of the universe and when the sun set, it was done.

So the mage is back with the party.

Cheating?  Absolutely.  The feeling of the players?  Overjoyed.  Not only the mage, but ALL the players.  Is the quest a railroad?  The party argued vigorously with me that it is not.  They argued that any time you want something, you have to take certain actions to make that thing happen.  These actions were acceptable.  They did not feel bound by the situation.

And what of allowing the return of a character that had failed resurrection?  I discussed that too, emphasizing that I did not wish for people to view this as a gateway to getting back any character that died.  This party has had characters die already; it does happen.  They were quite willing to accept that death in the future was expected to be final, that this was an intriguing one-off.

So, there we are.  Cheating for the sake of running an adventure that goes right off the usual fare.  I'm sorry I can't tell you details about the four idols or where they go - the party reads this blog.  The party did learn that "Jethro's Star," the Jewish symbol, belonged in Edessa.  For the moment, that is where they are bound.

PPK's

Do later editions of D&D make smaller parties more viable?

I confess, I probably don't have enough experience with later editions (I have none with 5e) to answer this question accurately.  Frankly, however, I don't see how the rule set actually matters where the problem is concerned - since everything that threatens a single character in the party can be increased or decreased in degree at the will of the dungeon master.  What difference does it make that two characters have more hit points in this system rather than that?  Or that those same characters are able to cause more damage in this system, or heal faster?  Isn't it a question of how many monsters the party encounters?  Or how high a height the character falls from?  Isn't the x-factor the decision of the DM to throw this much, this quickly, in these circumstances and with this much determination?

No matter how many hit points a character has or how many surges, I can always stack the deck with another dozen creatures pouring from another doorway, without mercy.  Which means that early editions of the game can be adjust the deadliness of encounters just as easily as any other edition - since the rule set doesn't limit the abundance of deadly possibilities.  Yet I hear every now and then that earlier editions lead to more total party kills.

My guess would be that modules like Tomb of Horrors or The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan built up a reputation for crunchy death-dealing sessioning, leading a lot of single-minded players into a mind-set that early gaming HAD to be deadly or else it wasn't 'D&D.'  Execution-style dungeons were trash in their day, played mostly by tourists who were in love with the idea of murder, death and killing, the same way that a fascination for these things will roll around in an emo's mind while clothing themselves in another layer of black.  Young boys develop such a fetish for the prospect of death that they'll dodge trains, jump from high bridges and otherwise experiment with chemicals just to prove that blood still flows in their veins.  For a segment of the population, D&D offered a safe, catechistic means of proving one's commitment - "I am willing to throw away a hundred characters to order to finish this dungeon, because that is how much I love this game!"

Unfortunately, this built up a renown for idiocy among certain groups in the population, so that I am still running across non-players in the late forties and fifties who - having not heard a word about Dungeons & Dragons in thirty years - still feel the need to roll their eyes upon hearing the words, remembering as they must the fuckwits screaming about the amount of damage they took in their high school cafeterias.  The impression was rooted and there it remains.

The question will arise, do I tailor the number of creatures to the party's size.  Of course I do.  Not in the sense that most would - if there is a goblin village in the area, then there is a goblin village.  But a party of 18 characters and their henchmen would make enough noise in approaching such a village that the first encounter would probably be a mass attack directed at the party before they knew a village existed.  On the other hand, two characters would make such a small footprint on the environment that they would probably stumble across the village undetected, thus allowing them to decide what to do about it.

The number of enemies is not the relevant issue - but the manner in which those enemies are encountered IS.  The smaller the party, the more likely they will be able to 'cut out' a section of the enemy and deal with them on their own terms.  If, however, two morons insist on openly approaching the enemy without thought given to strategy or tactics, then yes, they're going to die.  Quickly.

My 'tailoring' of my world is based entirely on giving my players the heads up where it comes to danger.  Knowledge is power.  Survival is the wise implementation of that knowledge.  If I as a DM were recalcitrant about delivering up that knowledge - and the possibility of players manipulating their situation into something they can handle - then yes, I probably would create a lot of TPK's.  But I can't see how the rule system I'm using is relevant to the situation.

But then, my small experience with 4e suggests that DM's are unwilling to create truly massive combats in the game.  No doubt, that is due to the ludicrous number of rules and sub-rules and rules of opportunity, all of which encourage situations of one party vs. one enemy, rather than a party fighting, say, 40+ enemies (which occurred in my last running).  Given what I've seen of later editions, 40+ enemies becomes a hassle - but perhaps that is due to my limited experience.  The reader should please correct me if, as a DM, they regularly run combats that feature squad or company sized battles.

For me, those may run half a session - but they're manageable and on the whole it usually means good treasure.  8 times out of 10, however, the players could avoid these fights - only the players like them.  While TPK's will sometimes threaten, they rarely occur.  In fact, I haven't had one in - fifteen years?

True enough, my parties have learned to run away.  Even when half the party dies, the rest usually get a chance to escape.  Partial Party Kill's are definitely the norm.

Lucy

"Ignorance brings chaos, not knowledge."

- Lucy

I experienced something last night that encouraged my faith in humans - just a little bit.

Three weeks ago I saw the film Lucy in a mostly empty theatre for a weekend matinee.  I came home to find that it had 6.0 on IMDb and that, for the most part, people thought it a bad movie.  Last night I saw it again - on a Monday night, when theatres are known to be a morgue.  The theatre was packed. Nearly every seat was taken.

It was clear from the warm up commercials that the theatre was not full of intellectuals.  And for the first minute or so of the film, there were those boys in the audience who thought the first images either silly or corny, who giggled to themselves.  That, however, evaporated very quickly - and as the cheetah tore down the gazelle, it was almost possible to hear assholes puckering throughout the theatre.

Lucy is a good film.  It is a smart film.  It is classic sci fi, in which the 'science' is a means to an end, it is not the end in itself.  Right and wrong are treated as what they actually are - interpretations slapped like bumper stickers onto the back of reality.  It is sweet.  Luc Besson has finally figured out how to direct.

I'm not sure why the fan boys hate it.  But they do.  They really do.

Of late I've been reading articles about why so many bad movies get made - and why the way Hollywood is designed practically guarantees it.  Apparently, it is all about how the scripts are purchased and how vehicles are proposed, how writers are used like tissue paper and why producers suck.  That is all well and good, and it certainly explains the Transformers franchise - but it doesn't explain how movies like Lucy get made.

A friendly warning:  I don't think this is going to get back to D&D.  I mean, for the moment, I don't have a connection for it - but as I write forward, I'll keep trying to think of one.  I wanted to pursue a thought first that occurred to me while watching the film - about not knowing things and the certainty of not knowing.

We are all told not to judge things before we see them.  We even use that philosophy as a weapon against others during an argument.  "You don't know what it's like to be me," we say, implying that until you ARE me, you have no right to say anything about who I am or what I think.

We also apply this to those who haven't done the things we've done.  A favorite is to say to your children, "Wait until you have a kid - then you'll see."  Hollywood likes to tell us that the moment our kid is born, a miraculous change comes over us in a magic moment that makes our hearts melt - because we cannot really know what it is like to have our baby in our arms until it actually happens.

Most, I think, agree with these arguments.  There's room for quibbling, but the arguments are made so many times by so many people that we have to at least accept that society believes the arguments to be true.  Don't judge a book by its cover.  Don't judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. You'll never know what its like to be a parent until you are a parent.

So if we chastise someone for making their minds up about a movie they haven't seen, why is it we are all so casual when it comes to telling others what death is going to be like?

Everyone has an opinion, don't they?  You're God's problem or your worm food, isn't that how it pretty much goes?  But nobody knows . . . and nobody is in any position to know.  Death is way less known that a film you haven't seen or a parenthood you haven't experienced yet.  Brothers and sisters, just give it a think.  What the hell do you really know about what happens after you're dead?

There are two times in your life when you'll become obsessed with death.  When you're very young, and you're just trying to get a handle on what it is and the fact that it is going to happen to everyone; and when you're very old, and you're finally realizing that yes, you're not getting out of it alive.  In between, death just gets put on a shelf.  We get reminded of it every once in a while when someone around us dies - particularly our parents.  My mother died almost two years ago.  My father is 78 and he's definitely beginning to slip.  That's becoming pretty clear - and the cold, hard truth of it is that this is how it goes.  Slowly, steadily, this is how it goes.

It would seem really trite right now to talk about death in D&D.  It would seem equally trite to talk about those blogs who feel they must post something every year about the death of some minor celebrity who is deeply remembered and deeply missed.  It is a strange, mocking ritual, but it all fits the pattern of trying to manage something about which we know absolutely not a thing.  Viewed from a distance, it all makes sense.  We do what we can.  We comfort ourselves as we can.  We invent, we rationalize, we construct castles in the air and populate them with our imagined balm.  There's nothing else we can do.

What is the alternative?

"Think of them as fleas on a dog hit by a car driven by a drunken teenager whose girlfriend has just given him the clap.  It will help your sense of perspective."

- Lawrence Fassett, The Osterman Weekend

Well, I'm not sure that's helpful.

I'm encouraged that film and art hasn't given up the debate.  I'm encouraged that the theatre was full last night despite the campaign going on that Lucy is a bad film.  Word of mouth showed demonstrably that it's not.

"We never really die."