There's a lot of discussion and I regret I don't have the devotion to read it all. I want to throw one thing into the mix.
I think many players care more about their stuff than they do about their character. Instead of killing a player that wants to spoil the adventure for others, might they just lose that cool thing they carry around with them?
And he didn't roll play, he just rolled a charisma check and got above 20 cause of his class.
Then this is your problem. Why did he roll the charisma check, and what did he expect it to accomplish? Did you tell him to roll charisma?
The players' skills and stats aren't buttons they get to push. "I use my Charisma! I got a 20, this means the NPC does what I say!" That's not how it works.
The player describes WHAT their character is actually doing. Then the DM decides what, if any, rolls are necessary for this, and then the DC of the roll and if the player gets advantage or disadvantage for some reason. (If the action is impossible, no roll is needed - the action fails. If the action is trivial, no roll is needed - the action succeeds.) Then, IF NEEDED, the player rolls and the DM narrates the result.
Sounds like that was a missing piece - the player just said "I'm gonna use Charisma to get in! [rolls] Great, got a 20, I get in!"
Not everyone takes RPGs seriously and not everyone cares if their character gains a level, is wanted by the law, or dies. I have known people like this -- you kill their character and they will shrug or laugh or say cool, I get to make a new one. These people are not being dismissive of the campaign because they don't think their characters can die. They are being dismissive of it for other reasons -- either, they simply are not invested in D&D as a general proposition, or else, the DM has not done enough to convince them of the verisimilitude of the world.
But it's not because "they can't die."
And then I'd like to add on a little more to the above (all of which I agree with),
When we talk about how a game "should be", we owe it to each other as DM's to be aware of the diversity of play styles, and engagements. Calling a style of DM'ing/ Playing "Offensive" isn't productive. Saying that "You're hurting your players if you don't do X or Y" isn't helpful and it's often quite wrong.
For me, and maybe I'm not a good example, if I spent 3 months working on a character story, $40 on artist renderings of character and the party, put weeks into coordinating character motives with the rest of the group, and then watched it all vanish because of random dice rolls, I'd be heart broken. And if your answer is "hey, man, the dice are the gods; too bad" I would be offended.
Death is not the only consequence available to a group in an RPG and there is no one way to enjoy an RPG. The key is to be sure you and your players are all angling towards the same KIND of fun while you play. I think we can agree, however, that good DM'ing in any RPG requires player investment. It requires Stakes. Bragging rights or cash, Poker can be very a competitive game. But to say it ONLY matters when there's money on the line is unfair to those who put more value in the right to say they won than they do to $30.
So.. in summary:
Must haves for Good RPG: Player Agency and Meaningful Consequences
For me, and maybe I'm not a good example, if I spent 3 months working on a character story, $40 on artist renderings of character and the party, put weeks into coordinating character motives with the rest of the group, and then watched it all vanish because of random dice rolls, I'd be heart broken. And if your answer is "hey, man, the dice are the gods; too bad" I would be offended.
Right... not everyone wants a campaign in which their character can easily die to random rolls. As I explained above, the Champions writers in 1st through 4th edition explicitly cautioned against letting the dice determine character death, because character deaths should be significant and meaningful as story elements and not something that happens randomly in an otherwise irrelevant encounter. In fact they stated quite emphatically, though I am only paraphrasing because I don't have the books anymore, that the GM should run the game, not the dice.
Now, with all due respect to Steve Peterson and George McDonald (the writers of Champions), some groups actually like when the dice run the game. Clearly a few people on this thread feel that way. And that's great!
But we shouldn't assume all players are like that and we shouldn't assume that all the problems we are seeing with DMs complaining that their players "aren't taking the game seriously" necessarily has to do with whether the dice are allowed to run the game or not.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Ironically, I had no predetermined idea of how the scenario was supposed to go. I simply gave the players an objective: finish the quest by killing the target. Everything between taking the quest and running away was all by player choice. The employer is from another criminal organization that used the PCs as a scapegoat for the attack with other operatives to reinforce it. They didn't need to know this but if they figured it out who the employer was or who the target was then maybe the scenario would've gone much differently and I accept that. My problem was that the one player through the game for the rest of them since they were literally within feet of figuring out the clues. He made a decision that went against what the general party consensus was and that's on me for allowing it to happen. And he didn't roll play, he just rolled a charisma check and got above 20 cause of his class.
Players are gonna miss clues. They're gonna miss clues that you think are screamingly obvious, and they're gonna fixate on some random throwaway detail instead. And it's not because they're bad players - it's because they don't share your brain, so they're not gonna always follow the same logical pathways that you took when writing up the session.
The trick to being a GM is seamlessly redirecting the flow of the narrative based on the decisions your player make. So they miss the clues and charm their way into the safehouse. (And I strongly concur with ftl's post #28 about how that should have been handled.) That's okay! They get inside and instead of finding the big bad crime boss they're expecting, they find a young girl. That right there is a clue that their employer isn't whom they initially assumed. And now they have a conundrum on their hands: do they still carry out the hit, or do they renege on the contract? This is a good opportunity for some inter-party roleplay as the different players argue about what to do. If they argue too long and the scene is dragging, you can ratchet up the tension by having the guards at the safehouse get suspicious and order them to leave (after all, they're loudly arguing about whether to kill a child), and attacking if the players don't comply.
If they kill the girl, they have her dad's crime organization gunning for their asses. If they renege on the contract, their employer's crime organization is gunning for their asses. Either way you have a fun escalation of the story and fertile opportunity for more conflict. And that's the key: your goal as the DM is to set up opportunities for the players and be flexible about what they decide to do. Because they're never gonna do what you expected them to do.
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"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
I've been playing video games since the days of the Commodore 64. Those first games were, "you got 3 lives, then you restart the game". As a kid, it was intense but I had no other frame of reference. Then games evolved to have checkpoint saves. Then they took that further and you could save anytime you want. Mashing "F5" every minute or so became a standard way to play. I've even gone so far as to save prior to any decisions, so I could undo and restart specific courses of action that didn't turn out well.
Games played that way are still amazing. The stories in games these days are on par with books or movies. Finishing a AAA game title like Mass Effect, The Witcher or Dead Space is rewarding, although at no point was I worried about screwing up or dying/losing. I still remember those games fondly, which is why I bring them up.
However! I have played more hardcore games, notably EVE Online. I don't anymore because of family obligations, but there is no other game that I've played in my entire gaming life that has caused my heart rate to peak and left me with the shakes. And the reason? EVERYTHING is on the line. A newbie can spend 6 months getting a shiny battleship and there's no safe place in the entire game where another player can't blow it up for their own fun. And once it's blown up, it's gone. 6 months of gathering money or resources, gone.
Those kinds of risks force behavior changes. Instead of dumping all of your wealth to get the next best thing in EVE, you only sacrifice what you can afford to lose. If you don't have ships and wealth ready to replace what you lose, you don't fly it. It's the golden rule every player is forced to learn if they want to keep playing EVE. There's no such thing in AAA titles with saves and checkpoints. It's intentionally avoided.
You can take away true risk in D&D and have wonderful and memorable games. Even though players can still have agency and affect the world and story, it doesn't have the same level of intensity as a game where you can lose it all by making poor choices (gambling on the odds, or not caring about the story) and having the dice go sideways on you.
The poker example is a great one. Play poker with your entire life savings. You can come out richer than you ever thought you would be, or you can end up broke. Or you can play with plastic chips for bragging rights. One way is going to evoke emotions of dread or rapture. The other way is just an excuse to spend time with friends. Which is fine.
Until I played EVE Online, I would have been 100% on the "the risk of death is not necessary" side of the fence. But having experienced emotions at an intensity that I never felt playing other games, now I'm firmly on the "true risk forces behavioral changes and makes certain scenarios truly intense" And powerful emotions, good or bad, just amplifies everything that came before or after.
Heh. I’m uninterested in playing poker for real money, and uninterested in playing Eve online. Kerrec has successfully convinced me that I never want to play a D&D game with dramatic risk of death either.
It's interesting to watch this discussion because I'm seeing a few themes pop up:
Death is a fundamental core elemental to D&D, its why we have hit points, its why we have death saves and its why we have raise dead spells.
I disagree completely. We have those to add drama and tension and to provide mechanics to follow in those cases. However, it is one of dozens of mechanical systems all of which are integrated into the game rule set. We have death saves and raise dead because we want to give players that tension when it's appropriate to the game moment. Back in the "old days" we didn't even have those. 0 HP meant you were dead. Period. Gone. Game over, man. No save. And if you were prelevel 8 or so, odds are you weren't getting raised either; it was expensive (by the rules). Entire campaigns could be dedicated to getting a particular PC resurrected.
Death is a logical consequence of combat. But if it doesn't serve the entertainment of all of the players, it's not any more fundamental than following full encumbrance rules.
Every action no matter how stupid, how obviously suicidal, regardless of anything you know you have plot armor, you are immortal because you bought a 40 dollar art poster so you DM can't kill you.
You are still assuming that there are no other consequences. This is a false choice you keep imposing here. If one of my players does something obviously suicidal just because they think it's all well and good, and there are no stakes there is something a lot worse I can do than kill them.
I can tell them they can't come back to our table.
That is the real death. That is the real end of the game. If you knowingly muck with the enjoyment and immersion of everyone else who worked to put the game on, by writing it as the DM or planning for it as a player, then you have no business at our table. You can take your dice and go home.
Is that harsh enough of a punishment for you?
I would never kick out a player for saying "hey, I've got a crazy idea, let's try". But if someone was actively flaunting the agreements of the table and was actively acting as though there were no consequences ("I draw my sword and threaten the king because I know you wont' let my character die"), then absolutely there would be a moment of "dude, that's not what this game is about and maybe it's not the game for you.
And short of that, when a "hero" does something stupid, how often do they die and the end credits roll? How often do they push the envelope, come up lacking and BAMM their plane blows up and that's the end of the movie, story over? Yes, Game of Thrones famously killed people ALL THE TIME. And me? I generally hated it. I had no investment in anyone on the show because why get invested when they'll just be voted off next week? It was like watching American Idol meets Lord of the Rings. Who's gonna get voted off this week? But that goes to another point I'm seeing:
Those kinds of risks force behavior changes.
Yes.
But what behavior do you WANT to see in your game?
The heroes are a tough choice. Do they risk it all and make a mad dash to freedom? Or do they play it safe and hunker down and just wait? One is heroic and the other is not. One makes for an epic series of opportunities, and one is... kinda boring.
I want my players to invest. I want character journals, I want artwork, I want them to talk between sessions about their current and back stories. I want them to feel like their characters are breathing, living people. But I also want them to take risks. I want them to be daring. I want them to BE HEROES. I want them to be out there. And part of that is looking to things besides forcing them to throw out all of that investment (aka perma-death) as "failure states". It's a balancing act because, yes, no consequence can impact investment, yet at the same time, any economist will tell you: You get what create incentives for.
Also, as an educator, risk taking is a HUGE challenge to teach to students. They become so fearful of failure that they don't try to do something new. Why invest time in a concept you might not learn when you can instead "play it safe" do nothing and just take the 0? Or maybe learn it later with a tutor? Why raise your hand and risk being laughed for being wrong, when your ideas might help move the whole class forward? Again, risks are good things in many situations.
No matter how you explain it or try to justify it, its only a matter of time before the players and/or the DM lose interest in the game and the end result is exactly what is happening in the OP's game.
Nope. None of the games I've run or played in since college lost interest because of a sense of "lack of consequence". Yes, they ended. But that was often because we ran into cases of "Jeff can't come because the baby is being fussy and his wife needs him home" or "Emily can't come because she has finals next week and cant' spare the drive time". They've ended because "it's the end of summer and we're all going back to college". Not in the last 20 years of DMing has a game ended because players "just didn't up to coming".
There is one exception. About 15 years back I ran a game of Vampire the Masquerade. One player was RPing a disrespectful wilderness vampire. There was a scene taht came up organically where he attempted to dishonor the family of an elder vampire. The elder vampire dressed him down for this disrespect and his reaction was "I'm sorry, were you talking to me because I dont' care." Death was the logical consequence. There was no way that vampire would let him live after that. It was GAME OVER and he knew it going in. There was no surprise. And when his character was dead, he got up, packed up his stuff and went home. The game ended shortly after that, permanently. The death advanced no story, no character, wasn't very fun and the player didn't like being pushed into a corner and given no way out.
And while I respect how those who disagree want to run their game, they're not how ~I~ want to play or run a game. And forcing me to play by your rules won't satisfy anyone. DND and RPGs are big umbrellas with lots of room under them. Just like some people love EVE and I will never ever pick it up. Yes, you get a major adrenaline rush when you realize that 6 months of gameplay can be wiped out and frankly: I don't ~like~ that feeling. It's not pleasant to me. I've had enough times in my life I've suffered losses, from real death (my girlfriend in college was killed in a car accident while we were dating) to work loss (90 hours of video editing wiped out in a hard drive crash). I don't find that kind of "fear" pleasant, and I'd appreciate a little less judgement on my personal character because of it.
So to repeat:
Consequences good; death is optional based on players and play style. Also, respect that not everyone finds the same experiences entertaining and try not to judge their persons through that.
I want him and the other stat focused players to care about the plot-driving points of their character.
To me this is the most telling sentence in the OP. You don't get to tell the other people what's important to them. Some people just want to roll dice and drink a beer or two and could not care less about why they're fighting any given monster. Sounds like that's the way this person wants to play, but not how you want to. You need to have a session 0 and work this out. Either you come to an understanding about how to deal with the differing play styles going forward, or one of you finds a different game.
And to answer the question, yes, characters should die sometimes. Bad choices and/or bad luck are both good reasons for character death. I've had lots and lots of characters die over the years, and its never really bothered me. But then I started back in 1e, when the game was much more lethal, to the point that I often didn't bother naming them until they hit 3rd level or so. I realize now its more about cooperative storytelling, and that a dead character can really screw up months of plot development, but still it happens. I usually look at it as a challenge for the rest of the party (and the DM) to find a way to compensate and move forward. Character death can lead to some of the more interesting story developments if its done right.
The heroes are a tough choice. Do they risk it all and make a mad dash to freedom? Or do they play it safe and hunker down and just wait? One is heroic and the other is not. One makes for an epic series of opportunities, and one is... kinda boring.
I think I spotted the difference between you and I. To me you are not a hero if you do something knowing there is no risk to you, you are a hero when you take a risk knowing you could die. Its not epic without risk, its mundane and its not heroic without risk, its routine.
I think you, at this point, are being intentionally obtuse.
I never said "no consequences". Not once. NEVER did I say that I thought a game was better when players could do whatever they wanted without fear.
Nor did I say that players should operate knowing they had "plot armor". In fact, I expressly stated that someone who did so would be talked to and possibly Kicked Out of My Game. So again, you're somehow missing my point.
Role Playing a Hero means pushing that character to take risks because it makes a good story and yes, even risk death (I never said characters could NEVER die, that's on you for assuming that). I just said that death from random dice rolls was not something I want in my games. But if the fear of character death constantly forces my players to hedge on the side of caution, then the game becomes stale and boring. A ship in a harbor is safe... as the saying goes. I'd rather my players think they have a little extra bonus to their Saves if they take daring exciting risks then having them always double and triple check a plan to the point it's a snooze fest to execute.
As for the whole "40 years of game design" you're showing your (lack of) age. Over the evolution of DnD from the Blue book to the current 5th edition, death penalties are getting lighter and easier, not stronger and more deadly. DnD 5th edition is considerably more forgiving of fatal choices than it was when I was but a kid playing in my mom's basement. So to the end of "years and years of design", sorry that dog don't hunt. Further, if you look at the RPG's produced now rather than those produced in the 80's and 90's, more and more are shifting away from harsh death and more into narratives and story as the primary drivers. Even video games are moving away from "you get 3 lives and then you start over" to auto saves, respawn points and integrated "quick saves" that we didn't even think of back in the 90's. Again, decades of game design are based around encouraging risk with the realization that destroying hours, days, months of work on a bad choice isn't conducive to good game design.
Character death should be possible but it has to service the broader enjoyment of the game. Death is always possible in a world of magic and swords. I've never said "Never kill a character". What I said was to use it carefully and when it works for the story.
To the OP, I stand firm that "Just Kill off their characters and make them roll new ones" is the wrong way to go. Consequences come in dozens of forms, and making "your character dies; start over" is taking the easy way out. Talk to the players, learn what they want. Tell them what you want. Make a plan as a team that enjoys playing a game together.
I can kind of understand @BigLizard that for you the possibility for death is an important part of the game. I can see how it gives some kind of more excitement. However I seems that this is the only consequence that matters to you, and that for those of us who chooses to somehow restrict it, we're not playing the "real" game? This I don't understand.
For me as a GM, it's a question of what's best for the story. If this is a face down with a long lasting enemy, then fine. Put death on the table. I can for instance show that by rolling dice openly. However if John Doe who started a fight at the pub with a PC just "happens" to roll high enough to kill the player - unless I think as a GM that would make a great story, I fudge the dice. (This is actually a bigger "problem" in other systems who have an open ended crit system).
I think a good story is all about consequences, but I think there are a lot of equally interesting consequences as PC's death. If I as a player loose a duel over my title as King of the Isles, is it best for the story if I die, or if I survive and have a chance to swear revenge? If our goal for the session is to free my brother, isn't it a "consequence" if he dies if I fail? Depending on different settings and games, there are a lot of consequences other than death that can really hurt players - at least that's how we play role playing games.
What works in peoples endless home-brew versions of the game is all fine and good for them, but in a discussion about D&D, its really difficult to have a conversation when the rules and design on which its based is this infinitely flexible version that includes everyone's homebrew versions and we have to have side arguments about "how I do it at home" when we are discussing the game. How you do it at home is irrelevant, we are discussing D&D as its designed.
Here I think we disagree. D&D (as all RPG's) is flexible. I AM interested in how you're doing it at home. Why? Because it's obviously different from me. If I only was interested in what the rules said, I would have read them instead of discussing. Many uses miniatures when they play D&D - I don't. That's a huge difference in how combats play out, but I can't see that either of "us" doesn't play "real" D&D? The DM-guide even have a section for house rules where it mentions fudging dice to avoid killing a character - it doesn't recommend it, but it doesn't say don't do it either.
You are free to play D&D anyway you want. I however find your "ownership" to the only "true" D&D to be a little off. I have never said death isn't a part or an opportunity in my games, I have simply said that as a DM I choose which situations death is on the table, and that I do give players a warning before it happens. To me that is building up drama and tension. Dying from a boulder because someone forgot to sy "I check for traps" - well that's just an anticlimax.
I went back and read the OP. And I'll agree on one thing - he might should have been harder on the players ingame. He writes:
If he or another player decides to do a blatantly stupid decision that throws the rest of the game for the other players, should I kill off their character?
Here I agree. Yes, he should probably have warned them that this is probably going to get you killed. If the players went on. Well - let the dice rule.
However I was more startled about this sentence:
I don't know why they keep doing this but I'm convinced that he just doesn't care about his character (he's literally played the same race and class for the last 6 full campaigns, explaining that his character is just the son of the last one thrust into a multidimensional portal), and I want him and the other stat focused players to care about the plot-driving points of their character.
To me this seems like the real problem - they don't want to play the same game. The DM want a more plot and roleplaying focused game, the PC is basically only interested in beating things up. I really don't see how killing the player's character would change that. To me it seems like the DM's problem is why his character(s) doesn't care about killing innocent bystanders. The solution to that problem in my world is to either have the player staring to care for some NPC's so it hurts if they're killed - if that doesn't work, I think I would have sat down and had the talk: you don't want to play the same game as me. I am the DM, so either you get along, or you leave.
I can kind of understand @BigLizard that for you the possibility for death is an important part of the game. I can see how it gives some kind of more excitement. However I seems that this is the only consequence that matters to you, and that for those of us who chooses to somehow restrict it, we're not playing the "real" game? This I don't understand.
For me as a GM, it's a question of what's best for the story. If this is a face down with a long lasting enemy, then fine. Put death on the table. I can for instance show that by rolling dice openly. However if John Doe who started a fight at the pub with a PC just "happens" to roll high enough to kill the player - unless I think as a GM that would make a great story, I fudge the dice. (This is actually a bigger "problem" in other systems who have an open ended crit system).
I think a good story is all about consequences, but I think there are a lot of equally interesting consequences as PC's death. If I as a player loose a duel over my title as King of the Isles, is it best for the story if I die, or if I survive and have a chance to swear revenge? If our goal for the session is to free my brother, isn't it a "consequence" if he dies if I fail? Depending on different settings and games, there are a lot of consequences other than death that can really hurt players - at least that's how we play role playing games.
I don’t want to get too into this debate between you two:
”best for the story” every story has an ending. And most stories have chapters. Sometimes main characters have to die for a story to continue even though their chapter ends.
see: GoT, see Harry Potter, see etc etc etc etc.
Not everyone gets to live to be the hero they want to be.
I don’t want to get too into this debate between you two:
”best for the story” every story has an ending. And most stories have chapters. Sometimes main characters have to die for a story to continue even though their chapter ends.
see: GoT, see Harry Potter, see etc etc etc etc.
Not everyone gets to live to be the hero they want to be.
Hi Robazthus,
I really, really don't see how you are answering me. I said that as a GM if I found it best for the story that death was on the table, then it is! I then continued to say that I don't mind fudge dice to not have a PC killed on random because I suddenly roll a crit for a random drunk at the bar who does a swing at a PC. Do you really mean that storys get better because of "random" deaths?
To compare this with film and literature isn't really working. What would Harry Potter be if Harry died in the first book because of a random bad roll? It wouldn't be a story! Dumbledore more or less HAD to die in the story - that is the main part of the mentor in a heros journey. Same actually goes for Ned in GoT (or Gandalf in LoTR or Obi Wan in Star Wars and so on...). The mentor is there to get you on the path, then he dies, so the hero can prove himself. It's slightly better hidden in GoT because Martin fools us into believing that Ned is the protagonist, while he actually is the mentor in the story of his children.
I have no problem with players dying, but the thing is that I see each and every player as a protagonist in the stories I GM. They aren't supporting mentors who are supposed to die. I have no problem with killing players, but I think it is best to do it when it makes dramatic sense, and I usually never do it unless I have stated that this is a lethal situation.
I don’t want to get too into this debate between you two:
”best for the story” every story has an ending. And most stories have chapters. Sometimes main characters have to die for a story to continue even though their chapter ends.
see: GoT, see Harry Potter, see etc etc etc etc.
Not everyone gets to live to be the hero they want to be.
Hi Robazthus,
I really, really don't see how you are answering me. I said that as a GM if I found it best for the story that death was on the table, then it is! I then continued to say that I don't mind fudge dice to not have a PC killed on random because I suddenly roll a crit for a random drunk at the bar who does a swing at a PC. Do you really mean that storys get better because of "random" deaths?
To compare this with film and literature isn't really working. What would Harry Potter be if Harry died in the first book because of a random bad roll? It wouldn't be a story! Dumbledore more or less HAD to die in the story - that is the main part of the mentor in a heros journey. Same actually goes for Ned in GoT (or Gandalf in LoTR or Obi Wan in Star Wars and so on...). The mentor is there to get you on the path, then he dies, so the hero can prove himself. It's slightly better hidden in GoT because Martin fools us into believing that Ned is the protagonist, while he actually is the mentor in the story of his children.
I have no problem with players dying, but the thing is that I see each and every player as a protagonist in the stories I GM. They aren't supporting mentors who are supposed to die. I have no problem with killing players, but I think it is best to do it when it makes dramatic sense, and I usually never do it unless I have stated that this is a lethal situation.
Harry’s bad roll wouldn’t matter. Plot armor Horcrux. Bad example.
edit:
protagonists in “the stories I GM”
interesting view. That to me, looking at the linguistics of it. Say you are rigid with the story, and would get upset if the players’ actions/choices deviate from the story you envision.
whether or not that’s what you meant, that’s how it reads raw.
i look at the stories, of non modules, that I Gm, as “stories woven together by the pcs and myself”
I get that, but here is the thing, D&D is not a story. We aren't writing a Harry Potter or Game of Thrones story, we are playing a game, a role-playing game. You can't force the theatrics of a tv show or movie onto a role-playing game "because its cool". That's not what a role-playing game is. A role-playing game is an adventure that you go on using a character you have created. The story is whatever happens in that game and what happens is resolved using dice. That means that characters will sometimes die anti-climatically, sometimes they survive when they should have died, sometimes they make logical and optimal choices rather then theatrical ones.
Role-playing is not script writing and I don't want to get into another Mercer Effect discussion, but this sort of logic that has been born in modern gaming is terrible for the hobby.
Player agency is everything, it is the game, as a DM you don't get to decide when characters die and when they don't. It happens spontaneously in the emerging story based on what the players decide to do. This idea that D&D is theater is frankly, ridiculous and its not "a different way to play D&D", its not playing D&D at all, its doing something completely different.
100% you don’t just change Monopoly because it’s not interesting to land on luxury tax and go bankrupt.
I'm sure you believe that warning players in advance about how you are going to GM fiat their death is "building up drama and tension" but you would be wrong. Drama and tension come specifically from not knowing when it might happen and knowing that you are always in danger of it.
Either I completely misunderstands what you are trying to say, or we are in two different universes here. I am certainly not wrong in mine. To me there is absolutely no drama or tension to me saying: "I roll to jump that cliff, I rolled an 8." "DM: Not enough. You die!". You have at least to tell me before I roll that "this is it!", if you haven't I think I would simply have left the table, and never returned. Because I really think the GM should be clear on the odds before I roll.
Few things. First, D&D is not all RPG's, its D&D and there are several versions of the game, each with its own flavor, style and dynamics.
Yes I know D&D is not all RPG's, and I stand by the quote that like most other RPG's, D&D is flexible. Probably more flexible than some, less flexible than others.
I also know that there are several versions of D&D, but neither you, nor anyone else here has made a point of making a difference of that here. Even in your answer you say: "D&D is a very specific thing, ..." So you are both telling me that D&D har several versions, AND that it's a very specific thing! Since you don't differentiate between what version you are talking about, why should I? I'll make it simple - I'm on a discussion board where we discuss D&D 5e. That's the system/RPG I'm talking about, and I'll state if I'm talking about earlier versions.
D&D is a very specific thing, there is a way to do it, its not my way, its THE way the game is designed. There are variations on themes and styles, their are optional rules and ways to adjust those rules, but there are constants.
I guess I'm putting more weight on this paragraph from the introduction to the Dungeon Masters guide than you then:
The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren’t in charge. You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game. That said, your goal isn’t to slaughter the adventurers but to create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions, and to keep your players coming back for more! If you’re lucky, the events of your campaign will echo in the memories of your players long after the final game session is concluded.
I get that, but here is the thing, D&D is not a story. We aren't writing a Harry Potter or Game of Thrones story, we are playing a game, a role-playing game. You can't force the theatrics of a tv show or movie onto a role-playing game "because its cool". That's not what a role-playing game is. A role-playing game is an adventure that you go on using a character you have created. The story is whatever happens in that game and what happens is resolved using dice. That means that characters will sometimes die anti-climatically, sometimes they survive when they should have died, sometimes they make logical and optimal choices rather then theatrical ones.
Role-playing is not script writing and I don't want to get into another Mercer Effect discussion, but this sort of logic that has been born in modern gaming is terrible for the hobby.
Player agency is everything, it is the game, as a DM you don't get to decide when characters die and when they don't. It happens spontaneously in the emerging story based on what the players decide to do. This idea that D&D is theater is frankly, ridiculous and its not "a different way to play D&D", its not playing D&D at all, its doing something completely different.
I completely agree that we are playing roleplaying game and not writing a story. That was actually my POINT! I thought it was strange to use the deaths in Harry Potter, GoT etc as examples of why it's OK to kill of characters. To me that is two very different things.
interesting view. That to me, looking at the linguistics of it. Say you are rigid with the story, and would get upset if the players’ actions/choices deviate from the story you envision.
whether or not that’s what you meant, that’s how it reads raw.
i look at the stories, of non modules, that I Gm, as “stories woven together by the pcs and myself”
Then I think it's bad lingo.
A protagonist is THE MAIN character in a story. In most RPG's the players are either collectively the protagonist as a group, but I usually call them all protagonists. It was to differentiate them from "main characters". An NPC can also be a main character in my games, but he's never a protagonist. The protagonists are those the story resolve around - the players. The other reason I used it was to underline that I view ALL my characters as protagonists, not only some, and some others as "main characters" that can be sacrificed - (like Obi Wan is a main character, but no protagonist). Hope that clarified it somehow?
And my stories are very little rigid. I usually present some kind of problem I have no idea how the players can solve, and rather like them to be creative of how to do it. The I try to be open for their ideas and suggestions.
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Ludo ergo sum!
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There's a lot of discussion and I regret I don't have the devotion to read it all. I want to throw one thing into the mix.
I think many players care more about their stuff than they do about their character. Instead of killing a player that wants to spoil the adventure for others, might they just lose that cool thing they carry around with them?
Then this is your problem. Why did he roll the charisma check, and what did he expect it to accomplish? Did you tell him to roll charisma?
The players' skills and stats aren't buttons they get to push. "I use my Charisma! I got a 20, this means the NPC does what I say!" That's not how it works.
The player describes WHAT their character is actually doing. Then the DM decides what, if any, rolls are necessary for this, and then the DC of the roll and if the player gets advantage or disadvantage for some reason. (If the action is impossible, no roll is needed - the action fails. If the action is trivial, no roll is needed - the action succeeds.) Then, IF NEEDED, the player rolls and the DM narrates the result.
Sounds like that was a missing piece - the player just said "I'm gonna use Charisma to get in! [rolls] Great, got a 20, I get in!"
Is that what happened?
And then I'd like to add on a little more to the above (all of which I agree with),
When we talk about how a game "should be", we owe it to each other as DM's to be aware of the diversity of play styles, and engagements. Calling a style of DM'ing/ Playing "Offensive" isn't productive. Saying that "You're hurting your players if you don't do X or Y" isn't helpful and it's often quite wrong.
For me, and maybe I'm not a good example, if I spent 3 months working on a character story, $40 on artist renderings of character and the party, put weeks into coordinating character motives with the rest of the group, and then watched it all vanish because of random dice rolls, I'd be heart broken. And if your answer is "hey, man, the dice are the gods; too bad" I would be offended.
Death is not the only consequence available to a group in an RPG and there is no one way to enjoy an RPG. The key is to be sure you and your players are all angling towards the same KIND of fun while you play. I think we can agree, however, that good DM'ing in any RPG requires player investment. It requires Stakes. Bragging rights or cash, Poker can be very a competitive game. But to say it ONLY matters when there's money on the line is unfair to those who put more value in the right to say they won than they do to $30.
So.. in summary:
Must haves for Good RPG: Player Agency and Meaningful Consequences
What those look like may vary by group.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
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Right... not everyone wants a campaign in which their character can easily die to random rolls. As I explained above, the Champions writers in 1st through 4th edition explicitly cautioned against letting the dice determine character death, because character deaths should be significant and meaningful as story elements and not something that happens randomly in an otherwise irrelevant encounter. In fact they stated quite emphatically, though I am only paraphrasing because I don't have the books anymore, that the GM should run the game, not the dice.
Now, with all due respect to Steve Peterson and George McDonald (the writers of Champions), some groups actually like when the dice run the game. Clearly a few people on this thread feel that way. And that's great!
But we shouldn't assume all players are like that and we shouldn't assume that all the problems we are seeing with DMs complaining that their players "aren't taking the game seriously" necessarily has to do with whether the dice are allowed to run the game or not.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Players are gonna miss clues. They're gonna miss clues that you think are screamingly obvious, and they're gonna fixate on some random throwaway detail instead. And it's not because they're bad players - it's because they don't share your brain, so they're not gonna always follow the same logical pathways that you took when writing up the session.
The trick to being a GM is seamlessly redirecting the flow of the narrative based on the decisions your player make. So they miss the clues and charm their way into the safehouse. (And I strongly concur with ftl's post #28 about how that should have been handled.) That's okay! They get inside and instead of finding the big bad crime boss they're expecting, they find a young girl. That right there is a clue that their employer isn't whom they initially assumed. And now they have a conundrum on their hands: do they still carry out the hit, or do they renege on the contract? This is a good opportunity for some inter-party roleplay as the different players argue about what to do. If they argue too long and the scene is dragging, you can ratchet up the tension by having the guards at the safehouse get suspicious and order them to leave (after all, they're loudly arguing about whether to kill a child), and attacking if the players don't comply.
If they kill the girl, they have her dad's crime organization gunning for their asses. If they renege on the contract, their employer's crime organization is gunning for their asses. Either way you have a fun escalation of the story and fertile opportunity for more conflict. And that's the key: your goal as the DM is to set up opportunities for the players and be flexible about what they decide to do. Because they're never gonna do what you expected them to do.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
I've been playing video games since the days of the Commodore 64. Those first games were, "you got 3 lives, then you restart the game". As a kid, it was intense but I had no other frame of reference. Then games evolved to have checkpoint saves. Then they took that further and you could save anytime you want. Mashing "F5" every minute or so became a standard way to play. I've even gone so far as to save prior to any decisions, so I could undo and restart specific courses of action that didn't turn out well.
Games played that way are still amazing. The stories in games these days are on par with books or movies. Finishing a AAA game title like Mass Effect, The Witcher or Dead Space is rewarding, although at no point was I worried about screwing up or dying/losing. I still remember those games fondly, which is why I bring them up.
However! I have played more hardcore games, notably EVE Online. I don't anymore because of family obligations, but there is no other game that I've played in my entire gaming life that has caused my heart rate to peak and left me with the shakes. And the reason? EVERYTHING is on the line. A newbie can spend 6 months getting a shiny battleship and there's no safe place in the entire game where another player can't blow it up for their own fun. And once it's blown up, it's gone. 6 months of gathering money or resources, gone.
Those kinds of risks force behavior changes. Instead of dumping all of your wealth to get the next best thing in EVE, you only sacrifice what you can afford to lose. If you don't have ships and wealth ready to replace what you lose, you don't fly it. It's the golden rule every player is forced to learn if they want to keep playing EVE. There's no such thing in AAA titles with saves and checkpoints. It's intentionally avoided.
You can take away true risk in D&D and have wonderful and memorable games. Even though players can still have agency and affect the world and story, it doesn't have the same level of intensity as a game where you can lose it all by making poor choices (gambling on the odds, or not caring about the story) and having the dice go sideways on you.
The poker example is a great one. Play poker with your entire life savings. You can come out richer than you ever thought you would be, or you can end up broke. Or you can play with plastic chips for bragging rights. One way is going to evoke emotions of dread or rapture. The other way is just an excuse to spend time with friends. Which is fine.
Until I played EVE Online, I would have been 100% on the "the risk of death is not necessary" side of the fence. But having experienced emotions at an intensity that I never felt playing other games, now I'm firmly on the "true risk forces behavioral changes and makes certain scenarios truly intense" And powerful emotions, good or bad, just amplifies everything that came before or after.
Heh. I’m uninterested in playing poker for real money, and uninterested in playing Eve online. Kerrec has successfully convinced me that I never want to play a D&D game with dramatic risk of death either.
It's interesting to watch this discussion because I'm seeing a few themes pop up:
I disagree completely. We have those to add drama and tension and to provide mechanics to follow in those cases. However, it is one of dozens of mechanical systems all of which are integrated into the game rule set. We have death saves and raise dead because we want to give players that tension when it's appropriate to the game moment. Back in the "old days" we didn't even have those. 0 HP meant you were dead. Period. Gone. Game over, man. No save. And if you were prelevel 8 or so, odds are you weren't getting raised either; it was expensive (by the rules). Entire campaigns could be dedicated to getting a particular PC resurrected.
Death is a logical consequence of combat. But if it doesn't serve the entertainment of all of the players, it's not any more fundamental than following full encumbrance rules.
You are still assuming that there are no other consequences. This is a false choice you keep imposing here. If one of my players does something obviously suicidal just because they think it's all well and good, and there are no stakes there is something a lot worse I can do than kill them.
I can tell them they can't come back to our table.
That is the real death. That is the real end of the game. If you knowingly muck with the enjoyment and immersion of everyone else who worked to put the game on, by writing it as the DM or planning for it as a player, then you have no business at our table. You can take your dice and go home.
Is that harsh enough of a punishment for you?
I would never kick out a player for saying "hey, I've got a crazy idea, let's try". But if someone was actively flaunting the agreements of the table and was actively acting as though there were no consequences ("I draw my sword and threaten the king because I know you wont' let my character die"), then absolutely there would be a moment of "dude, that's not what this game is about and maybe it's not the game for you.
And short of that, when a "hero" does something stupid, how often do they die and the end credits roll? How often do they push the envelope, come up lacking and BAMM their plane blows up and that's the end of the movie, story over? Yes, Game of Thrones famously killed people ALL THE TIME. And me? I generally hated it. I had no investment in anyone on the show because why get invested when they'll just be voted off next week? It was like watching American Idol meets Lord of the Rings. Who's gonna get voted off this week? But that goes to another point I'm seeing:
Yes.
But what behavior do you WANT to see in your game?
The heroes are a tough choice. Do they risk it all and make a mad dash to freedom? Or do they play it safe and hunker down and just wait? One is heroic and the other is not. One makes for an epic series of opportunities, and one is... kinda boring.
I want my players to invest. I want character journals, I want artwork, I want them to talk between sessions about their current and back stories. I want them to feel like their characters are breathing, living people. But I also want them to take risks. I want them to be daring. I want them to BE HEROES. I want them to be out there. And part of that is looking to things besides forcing them to throw out all of that investment (aka perma-death) as "failure states". It's a balancing act because, yes, no consequence can impact investment, yet at the same time, any economist will tell you: You get what create incentives for.
Also, as an educator, risk taking is a HUGE challenge to teach to students. They become so fearful of failure that they don't try to do something new. Why invest time in a concept you might not learn when you can instead "play it safe" do nothing and just take the 0? Or maybe learn it later with a tutor? Why raise your hand and risk being laughed for being wrong, when your ideas might help move the whole class forward? Again, risks are good things in many situations.
Nope. None of the games I've run or played in since college lost interest because of a sense of "lack of consequence". Yes, they ended. But that was often because we ran into cases of "Jeff can't come because the baby is being fussy and his wife needs him home" or "Emily can't come because she has finals next week and cant' spare the drive time". They've ended because "it's the end of summer and we're all going back to college". Not in the last 20 years of DMing has a game ended because players "just didn't up to coming".
There is one exception. About 15 years back I ran a game of Vampire the Masquerade. One player was RPing a disrespectful wilderness vampire. There was a scene taht came up organically where he attempted to dishonor the family of an elder vampire. The elder vampire dressed him down for this disrespect and his reaction was "I'm sorry, were you talking to me because I dont' care." Death was the logical consequence. There was no way that vampire would let him live after that. It was GAME OVER and he knew it going in. There was no surprise. And when his character was dead, he got up, packed up his stuff and went home. The game ended shortly after that, permanently. The death advanced no story, no character, wasn't very fun and the player didn't like being pushed into a corner and given no way out.
And while I respect how those who disagree want to run their game, they're not how ~I~ want to play or run a game. And forcing me to play by your rules won't satisfy anyone. DND and RPGs are big umbrellas with lots of room under them. Just like some people love EVE and I will never ever pick it up. Yes, you get a major adrenaline rush when you realize that 6 months of gameplay can be wiped out and frankly: I don't ~like~ that feeling. It's not pleasant to me. I've had enough times in my life I've suffered losses, from real death (my girlfriend in college was killed in a car accident while we were dating) to work loss (90 hours of video editing wiped out in a hard drive crash). I don't find that kind of "fear" pleasant, and I'd appreciate a little less judgement on my personal character because of it.
So to repeat:
Consequences good; death is optional based on players and play style. Also, respect that not everyone finds the same experiences entertaining and try not to judge their persons through that.
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To me this is the most telling sentence in the OP. You don't get to tell the other people what's important to them. Some people just want to roll dice and drink a beer or two and could not care less about why they're fighting any given monster. Sounds like that's the way this person wants to play, but not how you want to. You need to have a session 0 and work this out. Either you come to an understanding about how to deal with the differing play styles going forward, or one of you finds a different game.
And to answer the question, yes, characters should die sometimes. Bad choices and/or bad luck are both good reasons for character death. I've had lots and lots of characters die over the years, and its never really bothered me. But then I started back in 1e, when the game was much more lethal, to the point that I often didn't bother naming them until they hit 3rd level or so. I realize now its more about cooperative storytelling, and that a dead character can really screw up months of plot development, but still it happens. I usually look at it as a challenge for the rest of the party (and the DM) to find a way to compensate and move forward. Character death can lead to some of the more interesting story developments if its done right.
I think you, at this point, are being intentionally obtuse.
I never said "no consequences". Not once. NEVER did I say that I thought a game was better when players could do whatever they wanted without fear.
Nor did I say that players should operate knowing they had "plot armor". In fact, I expressly stated that someone who did so would be talked to and possibly Kicked Out of My Game. So again, you're somehow missing my point.
Role Playing a Hero means pushing that character to take risks because it makes a good story and yes, even risk death (I never said characters could NEVER die, that's on you for assuming that). I just said that death from random dice rolls was not something I want in my games. But if the fear of character death constantly forces my players to hedge on the side of caution, then the game becomes stale and boring. A ship in a harbor is safe... as the saying goes. I'd rather my players think they have a little extra bonus to their Saves if they take daring exciting risks then having them always double and triple check a plan to the point it's a snooze fest to execute.
As for the whole "40 years of game design" you're showing your (lack of) age. Over the evolution of DnD from the Blue book to the current 5th edition, death penalties are getting lighter and easier, not stronger and more deadly. DnD 5th edition is considerably more forgiving of fatal choices than it was when I was but a kid playing in my mom's basement. So to the end of "years and years of design", sorry that dog don't hunt. Further, if you look at the RPG's produced now rather than those produced in the 80's and 90's, more and more are shifting away from harsh death and more into narratives and story as the primary drivers. Even video games are moving away from "you get 3 lives and then you start over" to auto saves, respawn points and integrated "quick saves" that we didn't even think of back in the 90's. Again, decades of game design are based around encouraging risk with the realization that destroying hours, days, months of work on a bad choice isn't conducive to good game design.
Character death should be possible but it has to service the broader enjoyment of the game. Death is always possible in a world of magic and swords. I've never said "Never kill a character". What I said was to use it carefully and when it works for the story.
To the OP, I stand firm that "Just Kill off their characters and make them roll new ones" is the wrong way to go. Consequences come in dozens of forms, and making "your character dies; start over" is taking the easy way out. Talk to the players, learn what they want. Tell them what you want. Make a plan as a team that enjoys playing a game together.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
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I can kind of understand @BigLizard that for you the possibility for death is an important part of the game. I can see how it gives some kind of more excitement. However I seems that this is the only consequence that matters to you, and that for those of us who chooses to somehow restrict it, we're not playing the "real" game? This I don't understand.
For me as a GM, it's a question of what's best for the story. If this is a face down with a long lasting enemy, then fine. Put death on the table. I can for instance show that by rolling dice openly. However if John Doe who started a fight at the pub with a PC just "happens" to roll high enough to kill the player - unless I think as a GM that would make a great story, I fudge the dice. (This is actually a bigger "problem" in other systems who have an open ended crit system).
I think a good story is all about consequences, but I think there are a lot of equally interesting consequences as PC's death. If I as a player loose a duel over my title as King of the Isles, is it best for the story if I die, or if I survive and have a chance to swear revenge? If our goal for the session is to free my brother, isn't it a "consequence" if he dies if I fail? Depending on different settings and games, there are a lot of consequences other than death that can really hurt players - at least that's how we play role playing games.
Ludo ergo sum!
Here I think we disagree. D&D (as all RPG's) is flexible. I AM interested in how you're doing it at home. Why? Because it's obviously different from me. If I only was interested in what the rules said, I would have read them instead of discussing. Many uses miniatures when they play D&D - I don't. That's a huge difference in how combats play out, but I can't see that either of "us" doesn't play "real" D&D? The DM-guide even have a section for house rules where it mentions fudging dice to avoid killing a character - it doesn't recommend it, but it doesn't say don't do it either.
You are free to play D&D anyway you want. I however find your "ownership" to the only "true" D&D to be a little off. I have never said death isn't a part or an opportunity in my games, I have simply said that as a DM I choose which situations death is on the table, and that I do give players a warning before it happens. To me that is building up drama and tension. Dying from a boulder because someone forgot to sy "I check for traps" - well that's just an anticlimax.
I went back and read the OP. And I'll agree on one thing - he might should have been harder on the players ingame. He writes:
Here I agree. Yes, he should probably have warned them that this is probably going to get you killed. If the players went on. Well - let the dice rule.
However I was more startled about this sentence:
To me this seems like the real problem - they don't want to play the same game. The DM want a more plot and roleplaying focused game, the PC is basically only interested in beating things up. I really don't see how killing the player's character would change that. To me it seems like the DM's problem is why his character(s) doesn't care about killing innocent bystanders. The solution to that problem in my world is to either have the player staring to care for some NPC's so it hurts if they're killed - if that doesn't work, I think I would have sat down and had the talk: you don't want to play the same game as me. I am the DM, so either you get along, or you leave.
Ludo ergo sum!
I don’t want to get too into this debate between you two:
”best for the story” every story has an ending. And most stories have chapters. Sometimes main characters have to die for a story to continue even though their chapter ends.
see: GoT, see Harry Potter, see etc etc etc etc.
Not everyone gets to live to be the hero they want to be.
Hi Robazthus,
I really, really don't see how you are answering me. I said that as a GM if I found it best for the story that death was on the table, then it is! I then continued to say that I don't mind fudge dice to not have a PC killed on random because I suddenly roll a crit for a random drunk at the bar who does a swing at a PC. Do you really mean that storys get better because of "random" deaths?
To compare this with film and literature isn't really working. What would Harry Potter be if Harry died in the first book because of a random bad roll? It wouldn't be a story! Dumbledore more or less HAD to die in the story - that is the main part of the mentor in a heros journey. Same actually goes for Ned in GoT (or Gandalf in LoTR or Obi Wan in Star Wars and so on...). The mentor is there to get you on the path, then he dies, so the hero can prove himself. It's slightly better hidden in GoT because Martin fools us into believing that Ned is the protagonist, while he actually is the mentor in the story of his children.
I have no problem with players dying, but the thing is that I see each and every player as a protagonist in the stories I GM. They aren't supporting mentors who are supposed to die. I have no problem with killing players, but I think it is best to do it when it makes dramatic sense, and I usually never do it unless I have stated that this is a lethal situation.
Ludo ergo sum!
Harry’s bad roll wouldn’t matter. Plot armor Horcrux. Bad example.
edit:
protagonists in “the stories I GM”
interesting view. That to me, looking at the linguistics of it. Say you are rigid with the story, and would get upset if the players’ actions/choices deviate from the story you envision.
whether or not that’s what you meant, that’s how it reads raw.
i look at the stories, of non modules, that I Gm, as “stories woven together by the pcs and myself”
100%
you don’t just change Monopoly because it’s not interesting to land on luxury tax and go bankrupt.
Either I completely misunderstands what you are trying to say, or we are in two different universes here. I am certainly not wrong in mine. To me there is absolutely no drama or tension to me saying: "I roll to jump that cliff, I rolled an 8." "DM: Not enough. You die!". You have at least to tell me before I roll that "this is it!", if you haven't I think I would simply have left the table, and never returned. Because I really think the GM should be clear on the odds before I roll.
Yes I know D&D is not all RPG's, and I stand by the quote that like most other RPG's, D&D is flexible. Probably more flexible than some, less flexible than others.
I also know that there are several versions of D&D, but neither you, nor anyone else here has made a point of making a difference of that here. Even in your answer you say: "D&D is a very specific thing, ..." So you are both telling me that D&D har several versions, AND that it's a very specific thing! Since you don't differentiate between what version you are talking about, why should I? I'll make it simple - I'm on a discussion board where we discuss D&D 5e. That's the system/RPG I'm talking about, and I'll state if I'm talking about earlier versions.
I guess I'm putting more weight on this paragraph from the introduction to the Dungeon Masters guide than you then:
Ludo ergo sum!
I completely agree that we are playing roleplaying game and not writing a story. That was actually my POINT! I thought it was strange to use the deaths in Harry Potter, GoT etc as examples of why it's OK to kill of characters. To me that is two very different things.
Ludo ergo sum!
Natural selection is not “slaughtering your players”
Whats the players intelligence score? Unless it’s 5 or less... they would know jumping over lava has the potential for death.
I guess you warn your players “drinking poison will poison you”
“getting stabbed will stab you”
”walking into fire will burn you”
I explaining every little thing like that just to “save” the players from themseves has nothing to do with that paragraph you cited.
Then I think it's bad lingo.
A protagonist is THE MAIN character in a story. In most RPG's the players are either collectively the protagonist as a group, but I usually call them all protagonists. It was to differentiate them from "main characters". An NPC can also be a main character in my games, but he's never a protagonist. The protagonists are those the story resolve around - the players. The other reason I used it was to underline that I view ALL my characters as protagonists, not only some, and some others as "main characters" that can be sacrificed - (like Obi Wan is a main character, but no protagonist). Hope that clarified it somehow?
And my stories are very little rigid. I usually present some kind of problem I have no idea how the players can solve, and rather like them to be creative of how to do it. The I try to be open for their ideas and suggestions.
Ludo ergo sum!