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Sep 29, 2012 -- 8:45AM, iserith wrote:

Sep 29, 2012 -- 4:17AM, LunarSavage wrote:

What is the basis for this reasoning?

Common sense? Or in the words of Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker: "D&D is a cooperative game, not a competitive one. In other words, you don't compete against the other players and you don't win by beating them. Instead, there are a lot of different ways to "win" the game. The common denominator in every victory condition is "fun." If you and the other players have fun, everyone wins a game of D&D."

"Fun" is a matter of perspective. It depends on the observer. If that person has fun by letting the dice fall where they may and tearing up his character sheet when the dice say the character is dead, they so be it. If someone says, "I'm not going to have fun just sitting here the rest of the night" or "Jeez, I really don't want to derail this awesome story so we can go get my character raised from the dead," then he should have say in whether his character is truly dead or not.

In other words, preference. Same as ours.

Back again for another post.

Before I begin I'd like to re-iterate that from a purely mechanical standpoint death does not keep a character from playing, it only inconviences them for a session or two*.   I should also mention that while I'm citing Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders for game examples of the functions of death with relation to winnning and losing, that both games suffer from a number of design flaws and as a result are not useful for a full comparasion.**

Now it's time to anaylze the why death needs to exist in it's current form in D&D.  This is not the reason it is good for the game, but the why it originally exists within the game in the first place.  Once again looking at it from a mechanical perspective it functions as similar to a Snake in Snakes and Ladders in the fact that it sets the original player back some.... or does it? As mentioned earlier,  excluding the case of a total party wipe, and assuming that most DMs are nice*** the player is almost in the exact same position they were left with when the original character died.  To move further with the examination of Death in D&D I'm going to go back to examining why bankruptcy exists in Monopoly.

Why does bankruptcy exist in Monopoly?  Bankruptcy causes a player to lose, but why must a player lose?  A player must lose so that one player may win and the game may come to an end.  All of this makes sense, but what is the real reason players must lose?  Players must lose because the game can only have one winner since the game was designed that way.  This is usually how most competetive games work, their can only be one winner and that winner has to prove they are better than the rest.

So why does bankruptcy work for Monopoly, and death do effectively nothing for characters in D&D?  It has to do with who is winning the game when people bankrupt/die.  In Monopoly you're closer to winning when someone bankrupts.  In D&D you're no further to winning or losing when someone dies.
 

This leads us to the realization that death within D&D does functionally nothing.  So why even have death within the game in the first place?  Give me at least an hour to write up another post examing death from the story perspective.
  



 

*And sometimes/hopefully not even that long.
** Anyone interested in my full thoughts on what problems exist in the design of those two games, or the examination of games that are closer to the D&D experience please let me know.
*** Not always the case

Sep 29, 2012 -- 10:20AM, iserith wrote:

Sep 29, 2012 -- 10:10AM, LunarSavage wrote:

I feel your explanations are circular and based solely on feeling. As you keep bouncing back and forth between "it should be player choice because it's a non-competitive game" and "a non-competitive game should not have win and lose elements". But no real reason for this other than "fun". The same thing we offered some time ago and you consistently denied it as a rational explanation.

Those are perfectly valid reasons for the preference, if you understand the game to be non-competitive. You do not, as you have stated.

Your explanations have been boiled down to (IIRC) "promotes metagame thinking" (which it does do) and "takes away the thrill of competition." The latter is arguable because it's a non-competitive game, but if you approach the game competitively as you've stated, then it's fair enough. Where I objected to people's explanations is when they boiled it down to "but... my feelings!" Feelings can have explanations. You've explained yours. I've explained mine. Others have not, but that's okay.

Actually, I've acknowledged time and again that D&D is non-competitive. But you can't seem to accept the fact that I also think it's completely okay for a non-competitive game to dictate losing conditions such as "death" to players, whether it be by dice, design, system, or DM intervention.

Sep 29, 2012 -- 10:34AM, iserith wrote:

Sep 29, 2012 -- 10:28AM, LunarSavage wrote:

Actually, I've acknowledged time and again that D&D is non-competitive. But you can't seem to accept the fact that I also think it's completely okay for a non-competitive game to dictate losing conditions such as "death" to players, whether it be by dice, design, system, or DM intervention.

I'm pretty sure you said it was competitive. In fact, if memory serves, you were the first person to say it was competitive. I could go look it up, but that'll have to wait because I'm prepping for a game today.

Lots of people are perfectly okay with a non-competitive game dictating losing conditions. Lots of people aren't. Lots of people never thought about why it's dumb. Hopefully now they are thinking about it.

It's both competitive and non-competitive. It has both aspects.

And no, it's not dumb. Hopefully, you're thinking about why it isn't.

And lastly, you also seem to conveniently ignore the fact that I've also stated that you and I have deferring ideas on what the DM's job is. It's a fundamental difference and probably the core of our problems. Lastly, the bolded part is the perfect example of why people perceive you as an arrogant jerkbag.