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9 months ago ::
Sep 18, 2012 - 10:59PM
#21
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There's a whole lot of context around that sentence you just cherry picked. That is really reaching if not flailing.
You mentioned in an example above that given the choice between life and death, you chose death. You knew during the battle it was just a cash sink if you bit the dust (and a fictionally made up cash sink to boot since you didn't really have the money). So really, your character's dying or not was a choice. You chose to buy the farm instead of a resurrection ritual.
What's the difference between that and what I propose? Somehow my suggestion comes with a sprinkling of magic dust that makes risk and tension disappear?
(And does this not reveal what the true purpose behind raise dead and the like is? A poorly designed patch to fix a bug in the game?)
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 12:05AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2009
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If you are sitting down to play the base rules of the game, you're by default opting in to the rule as written regarding death. If, as a player you are given the option that you can choose to use the rules as written regarding death or not, and you make a conscious choice to go by the rules as written, you're doing the same thing. I don't see where this whole loss of emotion is coming from. The fact that there is a choice impacts nothing. Choose according to your taste.
No, there's a difference. In your scenario, it's all on the player. They can choose at any time.
In ours, the DM enforces death and the player can't just reverse the decision (be it by the roll of dice or DM action) of death mid-game (not in a meta game sense anyway). There's a huge difference. I'm surprised you can't see it.
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!)
*Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb.
http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 3:27AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jun 12, 2009
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Failure, which is what risk is about, does not have to equal death. You can maintain tension without the chance of a character a player has invested in emotionally getting randomly chucked in the garbage because he rolled a 4 and not a 9.
We summoned a devil once. All we used was the D&D books, too. It was pretty kwazy.
God of Arrested Development and Intelligence 
Resident Left Hand of Stalin and Banana Stand Grandstander
Pie-Cooling-On-A-Windowsill of the House of Trolls
In the morning HK'll be sober but you'll still be a meatbag.
I know I misspell "Danke" in my posts. It's an inside joke.
"Ten cents gets you nuts." -George Michael
Spoiler:
Show
''Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening.''
—Bill Clinton
You are not a moral man. There are not enough middle fingers in the world for you.
Why do I get a silly PG-13 man giggle
going everytime I see Fist Of The Forest ?
Actually, Santa just didn't like you. However, you weren't on the Naughty List, so he had to give you something "better" than coal.
I'd take coal. Heating your house is expesive, and engery cost arn't going down.
Mabey if i beat enough homeless people, i won't have to be cold this year. 
"Heroes"...I wish I had those. I remember in my first-ever campaign one PC went around shootin all the unconscious baddies in the head to gain Dark Side Points...
Whaaaaaat?!??
Wow...way to waste perfectly good potential slaves.
Er...no wait I mean..uh...something not evil!
(Quotes screwed up on the next one, won't give the poster's name. It's in the Best Lines thread on the D&D forum)
First, an experience from a game I played in a few years back. Our DM didn't like 3.5 as a whole but liked parts of it. So he hands us a big ass rules packet for his modified FR campaign, complete with quotes from important NPC's on the front. I can't remember most of the HRs, just that some how gods like Cyric and Bhaal existed at the same time, despite the obvious problems there. In the end the game became a problem more because of the railroading than the HRs, but it ended with this classic line, after our ranger tried to disarm the strange woman following us WITH HIS BOW: DM: You just killed (insert random noble sounding name here) JP: Was she important? Jack: Dude, she's quoted on the front of the rules packet!
"Why in the wide,wide, world of all things irrational would I help you?
-Daniel Jackson
"Fun will now commence."
-Seven of Nine
"Excellent."
-Mr. Burns.
Whey is a crotch.
Cut the last encounter on your way out after dealing with the Darth. He's the BBEG. Treat him as such. Play up that Darth Revan is THAT much of a badarse. When the shuttle landed, I had no less than 13 JEDI MASTERS step off the shuttle. The PCs were slack-jawed. After the meetup with Bastila (as she's carrying Revan's body), only TWO jedi masters remained with her. Let me tell you, the player whining about not getting to fight Revan himself shut up pretty quickly when he saw that. 
There's so much you can do with insanity, especially when it has alot of resources.
1. Cleric cast protection from fire on Tank.
2. Tank goes in and get surrounded by enemies.
3. Wizard cast fireball and blows them up.
4. ???
5. Profit
I go by the saying," If it ain't friendly fire then it's not working."
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 6:40AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2009
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Failure, which is what risk is about, does not have to equal death. You can maintain tension without the chance of a character a player has invested in emotionally getting randomly chucked in the garbage because he rolled a 4 and not a 9.
For some players, death is a greater tension/excitement/risk than a mere failure to accomplish a goal.
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!)
*Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb.
http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 6:49AM
#25
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No, there's a difference. In your scenario, it's all on the player. They can choose at any time.
In the example I gave, the player opted to always choose death by default as per the rules of the game because that's what he wanted to do. DM said fine (as I would). The choice has been made for this player. He's always going to choose death, even though it's at his option not to. There is no difference to this player than if the rules were being played as written. Risk and tension remains the same.
In ours, the DM enforces death and the player can't just reverse the decision (be it by the roll of dice or DM action) of death mid-game (not in a meta game sense anyway). There's a huge difference. I'm surprised you can't see it.
If you're the type that needs the threat of death to get a visceral thrill, you just always choose death. It doesn't matter who "enforces" it.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 6:55AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2009
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No, there's a difference. In your scenario, it's all on the player. They can choose at any time.
In the example I gave, the player opted to always choose death by default as per the rules of the game because that's what he wanted to do. DM said fine (as I would). The choice has been made for this player. He's always going to choose death, even though it's at his option not to. There is no difference to this player than if the rules were being played as written. Risk and tension remains the same.
In ours, the DM enforces death and the player can't just reverse the decision (be it by the roll of dice or DM action) of death mid-game (not in a meta game sense anyway). There's a huge difference. I'm surprised you can't see it.
If you're the type that needs the threat of death to get a visceral thrill, you just always choose death. It doesn't matter who "enforces" it.
Yes, yes it does matter. "Choosing" death isn't thrilling at all. Fighting it with all your might and losing, is.
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!)
*Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb.
http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 6:59AM
#27
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2011
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There's a whole lot of context around that sentence you just cherry picked. That is really reaching if not flailing.
Yeah, I apologize. I realized a few minutes after posting it that it wasn't really fair. My point is that having or not having choice really, really matters to the person choosing, or not. In this case I'm arguing that more choice is not always a good thing, which I understand is contrary to your philosophy and probably not how your usual players would view things.
You mentioned in an example above that given the choice between life and death, you chose death. You knew during the battle it was just a cash sink if you bit the dust (and a fictionally made up cash sink to boot since you didn'treally have the money). So really, your character's dying or not was a choice. You chose to buy the farm instead of a resurrection ritual.
This is true. But we wouldn't have had that option if the last party member hadn't survived the combat. The point of no return that we've always recognized is "everyone falls unconscious with an enemy still standing." The chance to resurrect the other players was partly a reward for the Kobold for heroically defeating the wolf, but the DM was double-checking that we still wanted to play them before doing that, since we were doing an atypical game style that summer and switching characters frequently. And yes, I'm aware there are other things an enemy might do with an unconscious party than kill them. But we had already slaughtered all the sentient enemies, and I think we can guess what a wolf would do with fresh meat.
What's the difference between that and what I propose? Somehow my suggestion comes with a sprinkling of magic dust that makes risk and tension disappear?
No, if fiat "raise dead" without needing to actually scrape up the resources were always available, that would reduce tension in a similar way. Even having the ritual always available at higher levels does that to some extent, I think. Not as much as the ability to wave away a TPK would, though. Having someone fall unconscious in combat and not being able to get them standing again is a big deal, because it increases the chance of losing the combat, decreases the chance of successfully running away (assuming you won't leave them behind), and makes the threat of everyone falling unconscious loom larger. You don't want every combat to be that intense, but once in a while is fun.
(And does this not reveal what the true purpose behind raise dead and the like is? A poorly designed patch to fix a bug in the game?)
Eh, it's a carryover from earlier editions, where death was much more common from what I understand. But this more than anything shows the differences between how we think about the game. Even if we agreed that character death was always a bad thing, you'd view an out-of-character solution that lets the players make meta-game decisions as a good fix, and an in-character solution that makes sense within the established world as a bad one. I'd try to explain why I think in-game solutions are better, but I won't because first, you'll probably come back with saying that you understand because you used to think like me but have seen the light, and second, because I'm not very happy with the in-game magic system for other reasons and don't want to put myself in the position of trying to defend it.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 7:01AM
#28
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Yes, yes it does matter. "Choosing" death isn't thrilling at all. Fighting it with all your might and losing, is.
I'm beginning to think you're arguing just to argue because what you're saying makes less and less sense the more you post.
You can still choose death as default as per the rules even with this house rule if that's what floats your boat. You can still fight against that looming death with all your might. Nothing changes except for those players who choose otherwise.
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 7:03AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2009
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There's a whole lot of context around that sentence you just cherry picked. That is really reaching if not flailing.
Yeah, I apologize. I realized a few minutes after posting it that it wasn't really fair. My point is that having or not having choice really, really matters to the person choosing, or not. In this case I'm arguing that more choice is not always a good thing, which I understand is contrary to your philosophy and probably not how your usual players would view things.
You mentioned in an example above that given the choice between life and death, you chose death. You knew during the battle it was just a cash sink if you bit the dust (and a fictionally made up cash sink to boot since you didn'treally have the money). So really, your character's dying or not was a choice. You chose to buy the farm instead of a resurrection ritual.
This is true. But we wouldn't have had that option if the last party member hadn't survived the combat. The point of no return that we've always recognized is "everyone falls unconscious with an enemy still standing." The chance to resurrect the other players was partly a reward for the Kobold for heroically defeating the wolf, but the DM was double-checking that we still wanted to play them before doing that, since we were doing an atypical game style that summer and switching characters frequently. And yes, I'm aware there are other things an enemy might do with an unconscious party than kill them. But we had already slaughtered all the sentient enemies, and I think we can guess what a wolf would do with fresh meat.
What's the difference between that and what I propose? Somehow my suggestion comes with a sprinkling of magic dust that makes risk and tension disappear?
No, if fiat "raise dead" without needing to actually scrape up the resources were always available, that would reduce tension in a similar way. Even having the ritual always available at higher levels does that to some extent, I think. Not as much as the ability to wave away a TPK would, though. Having someone fall unconscious in combat and not being able to get them standing again is a big deal, because it increases the chance of losing the combat, decreases the chance of successfully running away (assuming you won't leave them behind), and makes the threat of everyone falling unconscious loom larger. You don't want every combat to be that intense, but once in a while is fun.
(And does this not reveal what the true purpose behind raise dead and the like is? A poorly designed patch to fix a bug in the game?)
Eh, it's a carryover from earlier editions, where death was much more common from what I understand. But this more than anything shows the differences between how we think about the game. Even if we agreed that character death was always a bad thing, you'd view an out-of-character solution that lets the players make meta-game decisions as a good fix, and an in-character solution that makes sense within the established world as a bad one. I'd try to explain why I think in-game solutions are better, but I won't because first, you'll probably come back with saying that you understand because you used to think like me but have seen the light, and second, because I'm not very happy with the in-game magic system for other reasons and don't want to put myself in the position of trying to defend it.
I think you're officially my favorite poster on this board.
My username should actually read: Lunar Savage (damn you WotC!)
*Tips top hat, adjusts monocle, and walks away with cane* and yes, that IS Mr. Peanut laying unconscious on the curb.
http://asylumjournals.tumblr.com/
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9 months ago ::
Sep 19, 2012 - 7:07AM
#30
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2011
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I'm beginning to think you're arguing just to argue because what you're saying makes less and less sense the more you post.
No, I get exactly what he's saying, and it's the same thing I'm trying to say. We just haven't figured out how to explain it to you. This is frustrating to me, because teaching is my chosen profession, but in my defense I normally teach math. I don't want to just keep escalating conflict here needlessly, but I'll try to think of another angle from which to approach the topic.
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