According to some nice rando, a Player Character dying is always the product of a bad Game Master. Always.
Also, people who enjoy RPGs where character death is a high possibility (Cyberpunk, CoC, Delta Green, etc.) are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. They don't actually like those games.
There's a long time RPG blogger, who I won't name, that's hating on an old version of GURPS right now. And how it's WrongFun, and encourages WrongFun. And how things that weren't in 0e D&D should be illegal. Unless he likes them, then they're fine.
Oh man. I've seen various renditions of that. Like, "0e D&D was perfect and gaming evolution should have stopped there... except for these later things I've cherry-picked, and I'll outright ignore these parts of 0e that I don't agree with. See? It's PERFECT!"
I got accused of WrongFun-ing Traveller recently. I didn't detail the COMPLETE RAW of a book in one of my videos, so I am a Danger To Traveller Players Everywhere™ spreading sedition and rebellion throughout the Imperium (of that person's mind). People need to get help.
I mean, which RAW? Given that MgT 2e Revised 2022 Update Revised just dropped... there may be more than one. So, being vague about certain things is probably fine.
One of the things I tell people about Traveller is it's just as much or little crunch as you want to use.
I'm way out of patience with anyone, old schoolers or new, saying "that game objectively sucks." The right game for a person to play is the game they enjoy the most (except for F.a.t.a.l, which is in fact objectively awful and bad).
This reminds me of back in the Elder Days, when a well-regarded, published RPG author went on his forum and told everyone that playing Vampire: the Masquerade was giving college students literal brain damage.
The 2000s were a weird time.
As someone who's been playing Call of Cthulhu for 40+ years, I have to say, the best thing about the game is that there is absolutely no risk of death or insanity; it really keeps the excitement level up.
Honestly I'm of the opinion that there needs to be risk for it to be. A game. If there is no risk of failure it's no longer a game it's just a story.
To what extent the risk is can vary but I do think pc failure/death is a bare minimum
Thank God we have people to correct us. I am sure they will lead us to a happy place and treat us better than society does... Wait a minute, it's Stockholm all the way down isn't it!
Man the one long DND campaign I was in was kind of ruined for me by my PCs death - but not because she died, she got eaten by a dragon it was fitting and awesome, but because the rest of the players complained it was too mean and wanted it undone!
In Dread, the horror game that uses a Jenga tower for resolution, a player can specifically choose to knock the tower over to produce a self-sacrificial success that will help the other characters, but kill their own character.
And the GM has NOTHING to do with it.
Different games are different.
Well, glad to know I am a bad GM. After 45 years of play, I appreciate the diagnosis and can now happily just stop playing. Salvation from nice rando. 🙌
I feel like this is how some people internalize "character death isn't fun". I don't feel like character death is a requirement for all games, and I'm totally down with the idea that it can feel bad. But I will absolutely play a game where my character can die—and even it's certain they will.
Expectations around lethality is something to cover during session 0 with safety tools. I get anxiety around unexpected death, so I always ask that the group signal when a situation might kill a PC. I also have a line against casual murder.
Character death and plot armor levels should always be discussed and agreed on. John Wick and Alls Quiet on the Western front are both fun but very different stories.
It can be fun, but "stop playing" is a crappy penalty for bad luck.
This is why I think high lethality games should have fast and easy character creation and a GM who can slot in a newly created character into the adventure on the fly.
Sometimes you want to kill orcs and take their shinies. Sometimes you want to be confronted with your own insignificance in the face of an indifferent cosmos full of alien gods. I don’t see the problem with either.
But "Stockholm syndrome" was made up by the Swedish police to explain why a bunch of hostages would object to the cops going full Rambo on the hostage-takers and endangering the hostages
So in this scenario we're actually having fun but this guy wants to ruin the party and paint himself as the hero
I had to leave my cyberpunk group because i was becoming a DM for my college's ttrpg club. We had gone the entire semester without a character dying (though we had some incredibly close calls). I gave my DM full permission to kill my character as cruelly as possible, so long as it was cool. 1/
My rockerboy was stabbed 32 times by a pimp who was essentially Captain Buggy the Clown mixed with Edward Scissorhands. The party prevented my body from being sold on the black market by planting a bomb that turned him into a red mist. 2/
It can suck having a character you love playing die, but sometimes i think it's better to have a character go out with a bang. It creates really fun story telling opportunities, and allows you to experiment with other characters. embrace death! It can be fun.
I think I was in all of 7th grade the first time I took my DM aside and said "I think my character should die in the next adventure and here's why".
It may or may not have been inspired by reading about Harrison Ford wanting Han Solo to die in RotJ.
I’ve only had one character death I got majorly bummed out about, and the DM undid it in a storyful
And appropriate way.
Otherwise, I’m all game. I’ve TPK’d my groups before or had characters die. It happens and keeps excitement up.
