[RPGs] Minor Rant (Not fair, completely biased, and YMMV)

[pyrephox]

From BRPS, not commented there because it would be diverting the discussion from the topic of the post. But.


1. The ability to play a character in a setting where it's kill or be killed is limited. Sooner or later you die, you lose the character and the time you wasted creating the character is gone.

I HATE THIS. Yes, I use the big, scary caps of doom. I hate it. Time playing or creating a character is not 'wasted' if that character dies, damn it. If you're having fun, then the game is doing what it's supposed to do: be a game. You play.

It is not an investment. (Yes, you are investing time. However, the payoff is immediate: fun and interaction with others. That is all there is.)

I hate the line of thought that says it only matters if the character survives. Stop worrying about the damned character.

Play the game. If you didn't spend so much time bending over backwards to try and negotiate your way out of harm, or whining about the danger that you character might die, then you MIGHT be able to seize the moment and get some roleplaying done.

The code of Bushido says something along the lines of, "A samurai must accept that he will die. Death is inevitable. It is only by accepting death that he can live in the present moment, and attend to the battle right here and now. Fear of death distracts. It's only by understanding that you /will/ die that you can learn to truly live."

In RPGs, at least, it makes sense.

Comments

Re: Part 2 of 2

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

*grins* Aside from Paranoia, I don't think there's any game that's going to average one character death a day (unless we're talking seriously crazed GM, here), and I don't like games that are filled with random, pointless battles. But the battles that do occur...they're not random encounters to my character, if that makes any sense? I want them to have the chance of death, because my character thinks they do. She's fighting for her life, or her cause, or whatever, every time, whether it's a random demon tormenting a random human, or the end of game showdown with the Big Bad, whatever it is.

Too many battles, or too pointless of battles, is a seperate issue, I think. Related, but seperate.

Re: Part 2 of 2

[sariel-di.livejournal.com]

(Well, depends on how "kill or be killed", "a game of murder [and money and whatever else the tagline said]" is run... but. [snrks])

[nodnods] I can see that as a perfectly valid take, definitely. [grins] It's just that, for me, all I need of OOC "realism" in random encounters is risk of loss/pain/mutilation/Trauma. I can RP a character convinced that she's risking permanent death while OOCly confident that she'll live through this unless I screw up massively or there is Sudden Attack of Plot Dramatics involved. And I'll have fun with the RP, and still have adrenaline/worry because of it (there are LOTS of ways to hurt a character without killing them...), and not get too distracted by the dicerolls to enjoy the roleplaying.

(And, well...I'm more likely to try and figure out if my character would be willing not to fight if I do have significant OOC worry about her dying. If I know she's not dead and gone barring major, major screwup, I can play fight scenes or run-and-hide or what-have-you no problem. If I know she has a good chance of permanent death, I'm either going to mutter about playing Malakim kamikazes and suck it up, or I'm going to start playing Loopholist with my character's psyche as far as I can without breaking character. [coughs])

[wobbles a hand] Well, it does affect responses to character death, IMO. If you like combat-heavy games, you're less likely to twitch at character death (or you'll cling like mad to Exalted and other games with Dramatic Combat Mechanics and Near-Unkillable Characters). If you can't stand them, you probably have more issues with unplanned character death. (Not a hard-and-fast rule in either case, but a general tendency, I think. [laughs]) --Also, for what it's worth, my start in RPGs was "freeform" and then "Mage" and then "survival horror which I didn't like much" and then "In Nomine which I did" -- as opposed to, say, D&D or d20 or dungeoncrawly anything. Which may well affect my take. [snrks] But, yeah, not quite the exact same issue. [grins]

Re: Part 2 of 2

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

That is, to be honest, part of my issue with no-death, the idea that because the character isn't going to die, someone reacts differently than if they knew the character /could/ die, if they did Risky Thing X. And no, I'm not talking about every moment being deadly. As I mention elsewhere, I've killed /very/ few characters, and I don't usually run games where combat is the focus (although /conflict/ often is, because without conflict, you've got a freeform chatroom with endless bar RP and not much else).

*nods* And likely, we are coming at it from different angles. I started with D&D, and I liked to play Mages. My characters died, a lot, and we never played a game past 10th level before getting bored and starting a new campaign. Now that I'm in my current group, made up largely of people who aren't in college and who have real lives...we do pretty much the same thing. One of us GMs a campaign, and then when they get bored, we switch off to a new set up.

Online games, I have a tendency to find frustrating, because without character death, they're so.../static/. It all becomes long monologues and romances and conversations about nothing in particular, because even if characters have a reason to go after each other, or if NPCs have a good reason to after PCs, nothing ever happens. There are no consequences for what a character does, for good or for ill. You can never get rid of your character's enemies, no matter how good your plan is or how ill-thought their response, and you have negotiate every little thing...and vice versa. People pull their punches, even when your character deserves to get smacked down, hard. It frustrates me. It likely always will.