Dangerous Ideas in Roleplaying Games

This is not about murdering orc children, but it could be. Instead I want to take a look at the dangerous ideas that are out there and see what worth there is in having them in a game. Not sure I'll get too specific, not sure this is going to be complete, but I'm very sure that role playing games are the one medium in which we are safe to experiment with ideas we wouldn't want to encounter unprepared in the wild ... and those definitely exist.

To Know Is To Know

The first foray in this argument could go several directions, but we'll go with the one formulated in the intro: to give people the opportunity to reflect ideas properly in a "simulation" is the best way to give them a head start when confronted with it or to give them an understanding what they had already experienced (even "just" through close friends or family).

To some extent this is what stories already do: they allow us to experience difficult situations (drama) quasi second hand, offering us to not only understand, but to emphasize. Fear, laughter, hate, sorrow, lust ... you name it, you can experience it. Get a glimpse, if you will.

Emotions and how they connect ... sometimes I love the internet :) [source]

 

You might say now 'But that's just entertainment!' (which I've seen happening in an argument once) and I'd hold against you, that the main reason for stories being "entertaining" is the fact that we are wired to engage with patterns and make stories about them. It's the reason why I can sit down in my apartment in front of a strange contraption, typing strange symbols you can decipher into something (hopefully) carrying meaning. It's the core engine that makes us hairless monkeys as inventive as we are.

So, stories are important. They give us an understanding of the world surrounding us. The appeal is that "knowing" will always give you an advantage. This isn't even about something like "scientific truth" necessarily, as a metaphorical truth will serve you just fine as long as its base assumption leads the the right behavior when needed. Which means (not exclusively, but mainly) that abstract and strange ideas or concepts have a place in this realm.

That's what "monsters" are, for example: manifestations of truths in an abstract and strange way, that can function as a warning (which is true in mythology, not necessarily in D&D). Fairy tales will work that way and are a good example how abstract concepts can get and still work. To a degree, even, where the reader isn't even fully aware of the effect or the consequences of a story (a lessons well learned and abused in advertisement, btw).

To know is to know, that's the big lesson here. You have an opinion? Challenge it with a counter-argument by any means. Explore the possibilities of ideas by talking with others (if opportune), by reading or writing (works for me a great deal), by watching movies or tv series or, well, by playing games (of the digital or analogue variety).

Always a catch ...

As I said, we do this naturally, unconsciously even. However, we are also creatures of habit (which is nothing else but using behavioral patterns we learned and got accustomed to) and, connected but far more influential, we like to keep it simple. Simplification is just as important as the abstract and the strange, even go hand in hand. And as long as it works, there is no problem with that what so ever.

When it's not working, though, is where it gets problematic. Simplifications will always leave room for interpretation. Done wrong, different interpretations will lead to conflict and misunderstanding. It's something we can see in politics (or the understanding thereof) almost every day. In other words, every low resolution story needs to include at least pointers to what the high resolution might look like.

Good old Boromir Memes ... [source]

 "Do good" is , maybe, a good example for something like this (most idioms and proverbs work that way, I guess) because what it means is not obvious by any stretch of the imagination. However you interpret it, though, will at least be beneficial to someone and it is only the degree how many people would consider something someone did as "good" that'll determine how effective this simplification is implemented. It's also something you can find out. It comes with "pointers".

Look at the paladin, if you need a role playing example.

In a way, simplifications only work beneficial if they are a short hand for some sort of reasonable and accessible truth. You can always find out by challenging them, but there is always the danger of just trusting that they'll lead to some sort of truth.

In a best case scenario, someone using those simplifications (either with ulterior motive or, far more often, unreflected) will be challenged to look closer (going to a higher resolution, so to say). But that might go either way and the higher the stakes, the higher the potential for conflict.

Add to that the fact that we are all individuals, not only with very different approaches and ideas about life, but also with very different potential outcomes. It's not only that you can't convince everyone of your opinion (for lack of skill and opportunity), you just won't. People are different, and that means in consequence that different variants of "truths" will apply.

Easy example: what's true for someone loving nuts in everything, is very much different for someone highly allergic to nuts.

Dangerous Ideas in Roleplaying Games?

The name should give it away, one would think, but it bears repeating every now and then: those games are designed to play roles. Shocking, isn't it? The invention of character classes (simplifications, if you will) might actually sidetrack what that can mean.

At least that's what I realized just now. If you ask someone during character generation what he wants to play, it's always some sort of simplification we look for. What can I play, what's worth doing in this game? Even games featuring point-buy-systems will have discussions in that direction to some extent (being able to do EVERYTHING isn't a good idea either, as every game designer worth anything will tell you).

The answer to this question is actually the gateway to exploring dangerous ideas. It's not about a character a player is going for, it's about what potential for conflict and drama that choice has in the setting that is going to be played.

Here is the thing: ideas will always lie dormant (like a virus!) or, say, conserved in the surroundings they are created in. To activate them, you have to bring them into a context where the implications of an idea can be explored. This resonates well with everything described above, but the merit I see in doing this activation in a setting, is that the exploration not only happens in a fictional realm (which is true for all mediums, of course) but is also collaborative.

Each participant in a role playing game experiences stories through fiction that way and there is an opportunity to explore challenging ideas as well.

Here is a saying Carl Jung is famous for (not only for that, of course):

 "People don't have ideas, ideas have people."

Not Carl Jung ... you get it [source]

It really brings home lots of points I try to make above. It also might help highlighting the idea (sic!) why roleplaying is a "safe" way to explore ideas and concepts when doing said exploration through the lens of a fictional character (players) interacting with a fictional setting (gamemaster). There is an abstract distance between yourself and a your character (or setting), allowing you to become an observer and interpreter of the part you play.

If that ends up manifesting some sort of insight you didn't have before, it's a sign that you discovered a truth you weren't aware of. And if that's not worth playing for, I don't know what is.

How far people are willing to go with this, is entirely up to them. I'm just talking about the potential here. However, as far as I'm concerned, as long as all involved keep that abstract distance between themselves and their character (or setting), there is NO LIMIT to what you can do.

It brings some responsibility and maybe even requires some maturity to make it work, but that isn't even a problem, as you can scale this quite easily and "potential" also means potential for growth ... steady wins the race, and all that.

I might need to stress at this point that we (of course) play for the fun of it, and when you think playing it as vanilla and safe as you can get is the best way to go, more power to you. However, my definition of fun varies from that quite a bit and while I'm definitely not telling other people how they have to play their games ("can" is better in that context), I'd definitely see it as a sign of competency if a group is able to pull something like that of (even if they don't do it).

In other words: if you want a metric what a good DM or player makes, you could do worse than starting with how insightful their gaming is.

Dangerous Ideas need to offer insights

This is where it gets difficult, as there is a wide range of possibilities what that could entail. Playing a SS-Officer in occupied France might be an idea like that, or playing a serial killer (Vampire: the Masquerade, basically, right?). As a rule of thumb I'd say, the closer to home an idea hits, the more dangerous it can be.

Inglorious Basterds, of course [source]

If you are anything like me, you'll sit there now, thinking that there are, indeed, limits to this. You shouldn't role play whatever is considered taboo, for instance. However, given the right context and communicating it properly goes a long way. Playing a historical game can do this, for instance.

The Romans had slaves. Actually, they build a society on their shoulders. They also owned boys for sexual pleasure and married children as young as 10 ... Playing in a setting like that allows you to tackle some dangerous ideas where the abstract distance is somewhat greater because you add history as a layer.

It'll also need tact. Sure, you can play Spartacus and project your contemporary set of values to fictionally avenge whatever you take offense in. However, as far as insights go, it's better to experience something like the Roman society in day to day life, imo ... and that's where tact comes in. You have to keep the distance and to a degree rationalize the experience to allow reflection.

Have a Merchant become a good friend of the players. Someone they would protect, maybe. Then have him abuse a slave in public or marry a 12 year old and show how society reacted positive to it to a degree that the characters acting up against it would get them into trouble, actually. Let them explore the ramifications. Stuff like that.

The value of realizing how different cultures and people can be and why, is very much worth the attempt. However, it implies the requirement to do so without ill intent or malevolence. I really think that the main problem people have with bringing dangerous ideas to the table, is how it could be abused. So if you are sitting there right now, thinking how all that could go wrong, all of the examples you can come up with will be cases that go against this very basic requirement.

There are no orc babies ...

I think I understand now why the ideas of "killing orc babies" gets dismissed by some and is offensive to others. It illustrates how the abstract distance can vary from individual to individual. I don't say this to invalidate either claim. Actually, if anything, it validates both sides.

In that sense it also shows another quite obvious aspect of all of this: different people have different levels of maturity and experience. Stories that are engaging for some (within the limitations discussed above), might have others somewhere between bored or even offended!

So maybe the first thing we can learn by playing role playing games like this, is to not only accept that others are in different places about different topics (which already is very important), but also that that is totally alright. The important thing is that we find ways to talk about those things and find a consensus about them. Role playing is one of those ways.

There is no better message to end this post, I think, so I'll leave it be. What I'm interested to hear is if people did something like this already and how it worked out. Share your experiences, if you are so inclined. I'd love to read them!

Zen Baboon! [source]

Isn't that lovely? - Not a rant about role playing games with "light" rules (and not a review of Against the Unknown or InSpectres ...)

I should be sitting here writing something else. It just ain't happening, because what's really bothering right now is not a post about Murder in Role Playing Games or Why I love HackMaster or [insert neglected topic here], but the question why some (all?) role playing games with light rules don't satisfy my urge to DM role playing games anymore (if ever, really). I feel compelled to write that this is not a rant and if anything else, it's my opinion. Please consider this before screaming at the monitor :)

What is this about?

Don't really know yet, but I keep writing it anyway. It's one of those posts where I start writing about something and end up writing about something else, I guess. It's also my second introduction for this post ... Ah well, here we go. Between testing the beta-rules for Lost Songs we had a few opportunities to test some other games, namely Against the Unknown and InSpectres. I aimed to give some light rules games a chance, since I haven't had much time to prepare anything. And although I've been told that they all had been great fun for the players, the experience had left me somewhat unsatisfied and a Game Master.

I had a hard time so far finding out why that is. I couldn't quite put a finger on it, since I liked both games a lot (and will talk about them a bit more in this post, I suspect). My conclusions so far might not be very popular, but I'll at least try to explain them in detail. The short of it: Games with light rules force a DM to make uncomfortably arbitrary decisions where a more complex system would still produce information for a DM to work with. I don't like it. I really don't.

I'll go into detail later on, but lets talk a bit about those games first.

Against the Unknown - Not a review I (but ...)

I read the game on a Friday morning on my way to work and DMed it that Friday in the evening. It's a fast read with very few rules to speak of (seems to be inspired by the GUMSHOE system) and I liked it quite a bit. I couldn't tell you why, though. The premise is not new: hardboiled-stories in the 1920s with some supernatural flavor. Cthulhu already does that quite well and that's just the biggest dog in the yard. It couldn't been the games main feature: as a default players will gain every clue necessary to solve a case. The reasoning behind this idea is that this way an adventure won't "fail" because the players fucked it up somehow (bad rolls and/or bad decisions ...).

Anyway, at the time I thought "why not?!", sounds reasonable enough. Let's run with it. Character creation had been a mix of players deciding what abilities they should take and all of us discussing what that actually means in the setting. The game had been set in the city Mayence in the year 1924, French occupied German city. The French had been working hard to assimilate the city, teaching French in school and all that. Of course a lot happened in the shadows in such an environment: black market, smuggling, trafficking, gambling, prostitution, you name it.

Little known fact: after the first big war the winners had reduced the German army to 100.000 soldiers, but there still had been 400.000 soldiers under weapons. Unemployed, so to say, and still out for a fight. German politics at the time denied any knowledge or connection to those Freikorps (irregular military groups), of course.

Interesting times to live in, I guess, but there were those tired of the war and an occupied city like Mayence was the right place to lay low for some time. That had been the setting for this one shot, the pitch had been a suicide by a caricaturist which his family actually believed to be a murder ...

A setting a bit like in Casablanca ... [source]

Anyway, I know a bit of history, so setting the mood hadn't been that difficult. The players really liked it, too, so everything was A-Okay, as they say.

And yet, every time I had the impulse to make something a bit more difficult, the game's main feature made me say "Yeah, you get that clue ..." and every time I wished to get some system response to what was happening at the table I'd either have to decide what happened or fall back to using DM tools from other games. In the end it felt like telling the players the story I had come up with, only restricted by them asking the right questions (which is bound to happen with four experienced players or more).

Again, the players had a blast, but as a DM I felt unchallenged and unhinged because the system really did nothing to restrain me. I consider this a bad thing. If I as a DM am not bound to certain rules in a game, it basically invites capriciousness. Not on purpose, maybe, but by default. A player of mine diagnosed I feel uncomfortable with this because I'm a "sandbox DM" and I believe he is right.

But my main problem became the games main feature: they always find the clue. That's just wrong for how I DM games. Everything players can do should have consequences. Not finding a clue or making the wrong decisions actually produces consequences and I'm not to use it against the players? It just feels wrong.

I know, many people like this mechanic, but please consider the following: the main theme of the game is finding clues and solving crime, the main feature makes that possible without any resistance. Now, were the game about killing monsters and taking their stuff and people would just get that done because they shouldn't fail at it, it sure would make people feel downright uncomfortable. Right?

Or take it from a game design perspective: if the main feature is about waving through what is considered the main theme, doesn't that automatically make those things the main feature where the systems actually responds to what happens at the table? And wouldn't shift this the game actually away from the main theme?

I still think Against the Unknown is a well done game and I'd really recommend it beginning DMs that know enough about the 1920s (history, pulp, hardboiled-fiction, Lovecraft, etc.) to fill a setting with flavor text. It's also recommended if you think the story told at the table and atmosphere are actually more important than bothering how those elements come alive in a game.

Against the Unknown is Pay What You Want at DriveThru and I'd suggest checking out the bundle No Feet to Follow Us, No Hands to Strike Us because it's a lovely combination of a Weird Tales story, a follow up adventure and the rules themselves, all in one sweet package.

Again, I'm aware that Gumshoe games like AtU, Trail of Cthulhu or Esoterrorists are quite popular and maybe I'd have fun sitting in such a game as a player, but as a DM it's just not for me. I'd have to add and change so much on the system, I might as well start a Cthulhu campaign right away ... 

InSpectres - Not a review (and yet ...)

It took even less time to prepare InSpectres than it took to prepare AtU, but I own the book for some time now and already had an opportunity to test it (a long time ago, but anyway). Players are encouraged to form some sort of Ghostbusters franchise and hunt the paranormal.

[source]

Fun premise and fun rules. The main feature is that when players roll high when checking for the result off an action, they are allowed to tell what happens (and are free to add new details). Over the course of an evening they are to collect story awards (which they get every time they add something relevant to the story) until a show down is triggered. Another great feature to support this is the spot light. In every scene one player is allowed to take a spot light, which means he'll stand up and talk to the others players as if in an interview, talking about what happened in the story. It's a great way to add new details to a story, which (if the players can make it actually happen in the game) results in more story points and getting closer to a conclusion.

In the end it's basically the players having narrative control in the game, the DM just awards story points and makes live difficult for the players when they roll low. I love those ideas and it really results in a fun game, but a total newb could DM it without ever breaking a sweat. There is just nothing to do for a DM but drinking beer and eating potato chips (things I'm never able to do when I'm DMing, so that's something, I guess).

The idea behind the main feature of this game is very much the same as in AtU, it's about avoiding the (seemingly) common mistake of allowing players to fail in an adventure. But it results in something far more entertaining: the players are to come up with ideas how the story continues. It made my players realize what my job as a DM actually is and that it's actually hard work. I'm talking about providing believable continuity in a highly random and improvised narrative environment, of course (or "winging it", as they say).

So although I love how this game works, it really ain't for me, because I DM to be challenged by the players and (ideally) the system at hand to create a compelling and believable story from all that talk and rolling the dice. I don't have that in InSpectres, so it really isn't for me (unless I'm in the mood to get drunk during DMing ...).

That being said, I really recommend giving InSpectres a look and would totally play in such a game (a campaign, even). There might be dead tree copies around in your FLGS and DriveThruRPG offers a pdf of the game. There are also some supplements about playing this in InSpace or in a Lovecraftian setting floating around, if that's more your cup of tea. Just google it, there's some strong community support out there.

No more light rules games for me, I say

So this turned out to be what I like about being a DM, the thrill of thinking on your feet and connecting dots as they appear in the narrative. Complications are my tools. If I can't make life complicated for the players, why even bother to start playing a game. You might just as well tell each other a story or see a movie. I wrote one sentence further above that summed it up rather nicely, I believe:

"I'm talking about providing believable continuity in a highly random and improvised narrative environment ..."

This is where I strive and it's where I want the system, as well, to challenge me and feed me with input. I believe that players should not only be challenged, but also should be able to fail. They are not playing to tell me what happened, we play together to find out what happened. At least that's what they get when I'm DMing.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that allowing them to find every clue in a game so that they don't fail in solving the crime is just one step away from not harming them so they won't die (which might be seen as another kind of failing to solve an adventure). And I won't have that in my games.

So for all their clever and funny ideas, I won't DM those two games again (could be convinced to attend as a player, though) and I'd be hard pressed to DM games praised for their light rules again (or even bother reading them). It's just not for me.

(Dynamic) Balance in Role Playing Games

Every now and then you'll see a post floating the blog-o-sphere that discusses the importance of balance in the design of a game. Not without reason, of course. To give a DM some tools to ensure balanced encounters is an idea at least as old as the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, got quite famous with the third edition's Challenge Rating  and is opposed by such concepts as Tucker's Kobolds and the (I'd say, controversial) Quick Primer to Old School Gaming. There's a whole plethora of arguments one could muster for both sides, I guess. But when all is said and done, one fact will remain: balance ain't something a set of rules can produce. There, I said it, both sides are "wrong" or, rather, get right answers to the wrong questions. It's not a question of perspective, either. It's, in my opinion, a question of definitions that leads to the right questions, which in turn might lead to some better understanding of what a game needs and how that could be achieved. I'll try and go there.

Challenge Rating = Bad Game Design

Done right, the idea itself might have merit. But D&D (and especially the 3rd Edition) ain't the game to support it, because it can't provide the constants a game would need to make it work. To give but one example, 3E needed so much revising, that you couldn't call it "done" until it changed it's name to Pathfinder. Add third party publishers muddying the water further with alternative (mostly even more unstable and untested) rules, items, spells and monsters and you end up with a game where you couldn't tell anymore what a group of any level might be capable of. Challenge Rating became very fast a very dangerous tool to trust in (or it made things far to easy for the players).

And yet, people often enough believed in it to be an essential part in providing some, as I've read so many times on several occasions, needed balance. Functional as a set of rules or not, this is (for me, at least) the main reason to call this bad game design: it undermines a Dungeon Masters authority in making players believe that if something went wrong, it's not because the game is broken, but because the DM fucked up in assessing the Challenge Rating right. A cynic might say it's more like a marketing tool to ensure that a DM would rather buy more product than bother with a much to complex system where he might end up taking the blame for something that ain't his fault ... Anyway, let's just say it's bad game design for lots of reasons.

Ignoring Game Balance = Bad Advice

Because consistency creates room for balance. As much as no player has the right to expect an even challenge he'll be just good enough to overcome every time he has an encounter, he has every right to count on the rules that are agreed upon to be in place. A sword will always do the damage it is supposed to do and everything in the shared imagined world works under the same assumptions, with the same machinations. Rules that support the idea of game balance are, to give a few examples:

• hit points - everyone has them, everything dies if they are gone
• armor class - things are more or less hard to hit, but everything can be hit
• levels - indicate the position of an element in the power structure of a game, higher level = better position
• saves - a tool to give a character a chance to react against something he couldn't have been aware of
• ...

The list goes on, but I believe the point is made: although, for instance, the amount of hit points of a creature might vary, the effect of what happens, if they're gone, is a constant. And this form of consistency in a set of rules allows some balance in the game. A player can't be sure what lurks around the next corner, but he can be sure that the game allows a correct assessment of the thread a possible encounter might pose. Telling someone to ignore or forget this, is very bad advice, giving an impression of anarchy that really isn't there.

Balance is NOT Fairness

Really a common and, I think, rather annoying mistake to make. Take chess, for example. The rules are the same for every player. One could say they are very balanced. But if a beginner plays against a very experienced player, it won't be very fair for the beginner. The same goes for D&D (or role playing game in general, as a matter of fact). Or take the infamous "Save or Die"-rule: A Save Or Die is never something a player could experience as "fair" in any way, but I believe it is a balanced aspect of D&D as it reflects a certain aspect of the game that is very real for every imagined party interacting with it.

So "fairness" describes a very subjective concept, while the idea of balance describes a very objective condition of harmony between the involved parts. A feeling of getting a fair treatment is one of the results of a balanced game, though. But it really ain't the same by a long shot.

I also think it is important to understand that the set of rules used in a game is just ONE part of what constitutes a balanced game. Which leads me to my next point ...

Balance starts with a DM, not with the rules

There are at least two ways to support this argument: (1) the DM is the one choosing the system and interpreting the rules, so balance starts with him or (2) the DM is the one that decides how the world reacts to the players and how it interacts with them, so he regulates balance in every instance before any other element of the game might act (and yes, using random tables is a form of decision making, writing them up is a direct act of influencing balance in the game ...).

This has a lot of implications for the role of the Dungeon Master in a game and some of them don't come up often in discussions. Well, at least not often enough. It actually demands a lot from a DM, but I believe there's no other way. There is, for example, the idea of fudging results. If the primary goal of every DM is to produce balance in a game, fudging some results to achieve a certain flow in events (for the sake of balance!) is more than legit. It might even be necessary to filter some glitches in a set of rules. House rules, same idea. The DM is the first to propose and the last to approve of house rules in a game. He is the one to decide if they hurt the balance of the game from the very beginning and on every instance down the road.

Every aspect of a DMs job is somehow connected to the idea of a dynamic balance, every roll he enforces, every decision he makes. All of it. Is it something you'll find in a rule book? Not that I'm aware of. Certainly not in D&D.

Players threaten the balance. And they should ...

But the players have a very important part in that balance, too. They test it at every turn. Seek loopholes and try to use the system to their advantage. It's the definition of balance that there is a counterpart for every force to even it out. It's the dynamic of the game. The players test the limits of the system/the world/the story and the DM improvises/prepares/decides countermeasures to generate the flow necessary for a good game.

In an ideal group, the game becomes more than the sum of it's parts. Just like the ideal cast for a group of D&D characters creates a balanced entity that is able to confront all aspects of the game one way or another, it's the blend of player personalities that decides about balance in a game. A Munchkin will test the bounds of what's possible, a player who's there for the story, will demand a certain depth of what happens to the group and a rules lawyer will constantly check how a DM interprets the rules and question those decisions occasionally.

"Threatening the balance" doesn't mean in an abusive way, though. There are boundaries to what is healthy for the game and what is not. Again it's on the DM to have the final word here to establish a certain balance.

Please, question those ideas!

When I started writing this post, I didn't think I would end up here. System is not an important part of the game, it's actually quite secondary what you play. Much more important is the role of the DM at the table. Which leads to far more questions than answers right now. For me at least. The main question being: am I right in my conclusions? And if so, what does it mean for how we perceive the game and talk about it? What tell a newbie DM? How is this idea challenging published descriptions of what constitutes a DM or a group or the position of the set of rules in this context? And that's just the tip of the iceberg, right?

But in the end, the funny thing about dynamic balance is, if you argue it in a Daoist fashion (and that's where I got the term from), that achieving it is an act of doing without doing (wei wu wei). Which would mean a good DM is defined by what he's achieving in decisive non-action.

Or does it?

Don't try too hard, things will come natually [source]

Character Death vs. (Emotional) Reasons to be Cautious

This is, loosely, connected to noisms' discussion on Monsters and Manuals about how the length of character creation is related to the players being cautious or not (here) and Billy's answer to that over at Billy Goes to Mordor (here). Both talk about arguments a player might have to fight a characters death after the fact. Both make valid points, I think. Players will have immersive and external reasons, as Billy puts it, to be cautious. And how extensive character creation is, might be a factor, too.

But, this being about a game, both disregard one perspective: playing the game proper and under optimal circumstances, the death of a character is never a coincidence (with flexible systems taking a less optimal treatment of the game into account by giving safety nets to compensate failure to a certain degree). So this is not about the reasons a player might have, but how the game is related to those reasons. First of all:

Being cautious does not mean one will survive

I have two long-time players, let's call them Mr. K and Mr. L, both of them are similar in one aspect: they are survivors. They are just not to kill the way I DM the game. I have a high body count in my games and it is lethal, but they manage getting out of harms way on a regular basis. Their threat assessment is impeccable (and the dice like them, but that is another story...).

The difference is, where Mr. K is a little hot headed and reckless most of the time, Mr. L is level headed and cautious. Whatever character any of them might play, both of them know what they are able to get away with. Being reckless or being cautious have nothing to do with it. They know the game (not necessarily the rules), they know what to do. And they do it the way they see fit. It works either way.

Being cautious or not is not inevitably connected to survival. The reasons why they don't wanna die aren't either. But the way a player handles the system is relevant.

So PCs die anyway, it happens, but...

If you have those players, that seem to survive every challenge you throw at them (without cheating), while others perish, it tells you (at least) three things: 1) there is a way to play this game and survive, 2) those that died, did make a mistake and the game punished it.

Not the DM, the game punished it.

-----------------------------------------

Digression: how to know, it was not the DMs fault

This is about the safety net D&D provides (and it applies to most other rpgs). Early D&D didn't care that much for that, but with time it became obvious that not every DM is able to wing the game like Gygax & Co. and I think it was a natural development. It's also about what a DM can do to keep his hands clean. Let's see:

• A full hit die at first level.
• Negative hit points are allowed (a wide variation of rules about dying...).
• Hit point kicker (more of an odd bird, but Hackmaster allows +20 hp for (nearly) every character at first level; weapons do make more damage, though).
• Allowing saves vs. dying.
• Various damage resolution systems, like every weapon does 1d6 damage, etc..
• Fate points or something down that road (again Hackmaster, there you could sacrifice 90% of your honor to survive, I do something similar with Luck).
• Creative off-hand rulings to allow avoiding death occasionally (let's call this the "What-if..." rule).
• The sandbox approach is a good way to free a DM from how a setting reacts to player interaction.
• Rolling the dice, open or not, was always one of the easiest ways to keep a DM safe from accusations (this includes giving the dice the chance to answer most questions in the game).
• Rules for critical hits, the wild card most variations offer (even if the odds are against them, luck might be on their side and I saw this happening far to often...).
• Rules for resurrecting characters.
• Knowing helps avoiding, threat assessment is a viable player option and really helps surviving the game (this is a player's duty, not a DM's, but some DMs warn players and "help" with the threat assessment).

This should cover most of it. A DM should (and will) use some or all of this rules depending on how sure he is of his own judgement, how aware he is off the complex machinery that is the system and how experienced his players are (or how flexible when it comes to dying...). Nonetheless, even only playing it with the sandbox approach, leaves the DM (most of the time, really) out of the equation if a character is facing death. It's all the systems responce and the system is never "unfair", it's impartial.

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Back to he initial insights, concluding with point 3) sure, they don't wanna die, but caving in to their objections leaves only one impression: the DM is taking responsibility. And he shouldn't. Dying in D&D is one of the few things that help a player learn about the game. It has an impact. It is hard on them, because they invested in a character. But it is also a chance to get better at it.

In conclusion (or: Beware The Purple Worms)

During the time I DMed 3e, one of the guys, let's call him Mr. G, played a paladin. They were down in Rappan Athukk, level 3. Lethality was very high (yet Mr. K and Mr. L still prevailed...), but Mr. G stood his ground with (I believe) his second character in the game. They encountered a purple worm and one of the other characters was swallowed. The rest soon realised, fleeing was the best option (the worm being busy with chewing and all). Mr. G, on the other hand, decided to leave no one behind and stayed back to fight the monster. He was a paladin, after all. Well, he didn't make it. Mr. G reacted very emotional to that. He felt punished for playing his character "right", decided the game was not for him and left for good. I could only agree with his decision.

Emotional reasons for player decisions (immersive or external) are not connected to surviving or dying. At least, they shouldn't be. Because as soon, as a player believes this to be relevant in the game, he will argue his characters death as unjust. And as soon as a DM takes responsibility for the life or death of characters, he might tend to cave in to that argument. But it's the wrong cause to the effect.

Not that an emotional connection between player and character is a bad thing (in the contrary, I believe it to be crucial), but as far as the game is concerned, it is just another tool to produce tension. And sure, a DM should care. But if happens what tends to happen and a character dies, he should also point out that that's the way it is. Helping players to accept that, helps the gaming experience in the long run.

Or to put it another way, investing in a character while being fully aware of the fact that he is "mortal", makes the struggle so much more intensive and gives a character life. That's what you play the game for. Death is only the end of this particular story. But an end it is.