The death of a Dungeons & Dragons character can be traumatic, and the more successful the campaign, the more intense the trauma.
Now, to be clear, I’m talking about traumatic in a relative way. It is a traumatic akin to the rush of blood one can feel in the midst of a D&D combat. It’s the emotion of playacting, somewhat detached, safe, and controlled. It’s like the death of a well-loved T.V. show, movie, or comic book character. And geeks of all stripes can get very attached to characters.
Relativity of the trauma aside, it creates stress and complication. Not only does the player of the deceased character has to stop playing the game for a period of time, his or her fellow party members have to trudge on, at least until the end of the encounter without a member of their team. On the DM side, you have to adjust to the change of the game space. Is there a danger of more deaths? Is this possibly the first domino in a Total Party Kill (TPK)? Is it possible for the deceased character to come back to life? If it’s not, how do I get the player back in the game? These possibilities and a DMs reaction to them are made even more difficult when you consider that most of these questions involve things that have large effects in the game space and in the play space.
Death in D&D has always been a bit arbitrary. There are reason many of the gags in The Gamers movies are riffing on death rules in RPGs. And there is a reason why we laugh at every single one of them.
Let me explain what I mean. I have a pet theory that all game involved both the game space and the play space. The game space is where the action of the game takes place. Unaffected by anything outside of it, the game space would consist of the give and take of the game as described by the rules of the game. Think on it like this, if games were played by perfect robots or machines that were only concerned with the play space, the game would interact perfectly—or as written. The only time game play would break down or suffer stress is when it encountered some form of imperfection in the rules. The play space is the realm of the players. Since game are human activities does by people, their actions, their context, and their desires that have to do with things outside of the game can affect the game. Bluffing in poker and similar card games is a way in which the play space affects the game space.
Cooperative games in general, and RPGs in specific, are more likely to have their game space affected by play space. First off, you are just dealing with more people, the more people you have in a game, the more likely play space issues with intrude into game space. More importantly, especially in RPGs, is the fact that there is a deliberate porous boundary between play space and game space. The act of roleplaying itself, and the fluidity and adaptability to the RPG game space asks the player to intrude into the game space all the time. Some people wonder why you can’t just write the perfect rules set, something mechanically brilliant that needs no tinkering from the DM and no house rules. It’s this. I’m a strong believer that it is a feature rather than a bug, but if you don’t believe me, there’s always World of Warcraft, that game is closer to those ideas only because of its constraints.
When a character dies, it has a great effect not only on the game space, but also the play space. The deceased character’s player becomes anxious and frustrated. They have limited effect on the play space. Often, the player will feel that the death was somewhat arbitrary. This is more the case in older versions of D&D, but 4e’s death engine is just as swingy and arbitrary as any of the earlier editions, maybe even more so. This increases the frustration, and as the waves of stress go round the table, things can get very tense.
This is not always a negative. Tension is good for the game. But I think there’s a better way. At least for me and folks who might share my sensibilities on death and dying in RPGs.
While I think the standard system to deal with death and dying in the Player’s Handbook (4e) is fine, it is a gambling system, which I find doesn’t fit well with my latent narrativeist leanings. While by no means immortal, I think main characters in many form of contemporary dramatic entertainment almost always have the opportunity to choose their death. Some of this is purely wish fulfillment on our part. Though we know it is inevitable, death scares the hell out of all of us. We want our death to be non-existent, easy, or heroic; usually in that order of preference. We are also part of a culture that values self-reliance. We feel like we can affect the things in our life (even though sometimes we can’t) and our heroes are usually just us writ in larger than life. What I find dissatisfying about the current death and dying rules is that it’s a game playing you. Whether or not you pass on to the next life just has to do with how you rolled. I understand the need for random in games. They are tools to make choices more interesting by making them less certain. Random only rules should rarely replace choice.
I wanted to make a system that allowed players to have a great choice in the matter. In doing so, I believe it creates stronger narrative tools for the game. Both the motivations of self-sacrifice and self-serving natures come to play more often. And while this system does not rule out the occasional strange and random death, it does reduce its frequency. Also, when death becomes a clear result of the accumulated choices of the player, the play space stress of a dying character is reduced. The player sees death as less of something that happened to his or her character that they must endure, and more as the consequences of their own actions.
Losing Life
A heroic level character has three life points. A paragon-level character has four life points, and an epic level character has five life points. When a character is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points, the player has a choice; they’re either out, or hanging on.
When a character is out, he or she is unconscious until the end of the encounter or until the out character spends a healing surge to end this effect. An out character can spend a healing surge as a free action at the end of its turn. When it spends a healing surge in this way, it regains 1 hit point and ends the out effect.
When a character is hanging on, they are dazed until that effect ends. At the start of the hanging on character’s turn, he or she loses 1 life point. As a free action during his or turn, the hanging on character can choose to go out (see above).
A character that is hit and takes damage from an attack while out or hanging on loses 1 life point.
When a character has 0 life points, it is dead. A character regains all life points at a rate of one each extended rest for heroic and paragon characters, and a rate of two for each extended rest for paragon characters.
This seems similar to death in All Flesh Must Be Eaten (the Zombie P&P I run weekly)
It goes like this:
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When a character has been reduced to negative 10 Life Points, she may be killed instantly. To see if this happens, the character makes a Survival Test. Survival Tests are a special form of Attribute Test, using Willpower and Constitution, at a penalty of -1 for every 10 Life Points below 0 (rounded down) the character currently suffers.
This Survival Test only determines whether or not the character drops dead right then and there. Passing the Test does not mean the character is out of the woods. Unless medical attention is available, the character may still die in a few minutes. Every minute that is spent without receiving medical help, a new Survival Test is required, at a cumulative -1 penalty.
If the character survives the Survival Test, she must still check to see if she remains conscious. A Consciousness Test is run exactly as a Survival Test is, except the modifier is equal to the amount of negative points imposed!
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The upshot is this:
When you hit -10 life, you check to see if you die right then and there. If you don’t, you check to see if you stay conscious (equal to how much negative life you have). Every minute you spend not getting medical help, you do another check with an additional -1.
I kind of like this one; it gives more of a realistic feeling to it. Though, like you said, you’re at the will of the dice—plus this is a zombie RPG, so realism makes it more fun.
Perhaps a melding of these two could add a bit more drama. You could add time to this system to make it more dramatic: every x turns you lose one more life point or such, or take an extra 1lp every -50hp or something of the like.
I like where this is going, I think it could use a little more though and this is the only thing I can come up with right away.
Food for thought.
You know I started with a life point system, and one of my groups still uses one. I went for the simpler system because it was quicker and easier to remember. I think rules subsystems that don’t come up very often (say twice an encounter) need to be as quick and simple as possible. That’s when people go scrambling toward their book (see 3e grapple).
That makes sense in a Drama -vs- Fun kind of way. I’ll definitely keep this in mind for future non-OMGSURVIVE games.
I like this idea, a lot. I’m stealing it, with proper attribution of course. It’s nicely cinematic.
I might add some randomness to ending the out condition, maybe like a death saving throw. On a result of 10 or higher, you can spend a surge the way you say, but as no action, since unconscious guys can’t take actions. If the result is 20 or higher, spend a healing surge as normal, optionally spend second wind to gain the defense bonuses.
I can see why you wouldn’t add randomness to the out condition. Your system puts choice completely in a player’s hands as to whether his or her character returns to action. I’m wondering if the randomness at this point might add to tension or just force someone to stay out instead of playing.
Well, you know what I think about randomness. LOL! I think randomness seems okay with death mechanics, because on some level we are keenly aware of the fact that life is short and often ends unexpectedly (if we are to believe the 24-hour news cycle). I just see D&D characters as pulp heroes. They defy death through inexplicable means. Putting a random roll into the death mechanic does more harm than good. But hey, I embrace the genre. Fantasy has a long habit of taking itself overly seriously.
@Terry: Thanks! Yeah, I remember that mechanic and liked it.
@Shane It does not count. It is one of the reasons why I stated that it had to come from an attack. I don’t mind losing ongoing or non attack damage effects for the sake of an easy and evocative system. A creature has to purposefully attack and damage you in order to kill you when you are out or hanging on.
“Diseased” should be “deceased” in the above, unless the character died of disease, in which case the diseased is deceased. There’s other nitpicks I could make, but I’ll desist.
IIRC the old “Top Secret” spy RPG from TSR had a similar mechanic as the one you propose, where each spy had a secret and random number of luck points, known only to the DM. In a deadly situation the spy could spend a luck point to save his a**, but of course, he could never be sure when his luck would run out…
Would taking ongoing damage while hanging on or out qualify as taking damage from an attack?
There are a few factors that contribute to death using the standard negative bloodied death system (ignoring the three failed death saves element) that are not necessarily addressed by life points. Ongoing damage is the one that sprung to mind first.