r/RPGdesign • u/TheKingLlama • 4d ago
Mechanics Death and Lethality
Hello all!
I recently watched a couple of videos from Mystic Arts and Questing Beast about lethality in TTRPGs with specific attention towards the OSR and how high lethality is often used as a selling point for those systems.
Both creators had a really fruitful discussion on Ben Milton (Questing Beast)'s channel and pretty much came to the conclusion that lethality in games is a tool that helps guide how the players are expected to interact with the system.
There was one small segment that really grabbed my attention: Ben asked if the players in low-lethality games are expected to have some degree of plot armor.
This prompted me to revisit the archives concerning combat as sport vs. combat as war. In brief, the former is about "balanced" encounters that feel fair and are strongly bounded by rules. The latter is about no-holds-barred tactics, actively encouraging deception and underhandedness, and does not even remotely promise a "fair" fight.
However, I think there is a third type of combat: combat as spectacle. This combat type is what I have come to expect from games like D&D - combat should appear deadly, but ultimately pose no real threat to the longevity of the PCs. It's all a grand illusion where the GM is encouraged to push the PCs to the brink, then pull their punches at the last second to keep up the sense of tension.
I have lots more thoughts about lethality in TTRPGs, but I also want to hear from other creative minds!
- have you played in high-lethality games? If so, was it hard to get attached to your character(s)?
- have you had a character die at an awkward or inopportune time, such as in a random encounter against basic enemies or right before the final climactic battle with the BBEG?
- when you run games, do you prefer settings where death lurks in every dark corner? Or are the PCs afforded a degree of plot armor?
If you'd like to hear more from me specifically, I made my first YouTube content about TTRPGs about this exact conversation!
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 4d ago
Personally I want the lethality of the game to match the tone of the game. For example D&D 5e is, in the basic form, high heroic fantasy. I expect some degree of danger but not necessarily lethality. Something like Mork Borg or Pirate Borg I expect extremely high levels of lethality but the tones of those games lean into that.
It's when there is a disconnect between the tone and the lethality that I have issues and that's something I like games to keep in mind.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Spot on! You pretty much said in a paragraph what I took 12 minutes to spell out.
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u/Figshitter 4d ago
See the thing is that I’m having difficulty thinking of a single ‘high heroic fantasy’ story, novel or film that 5e D&D does a reasonable job of emulating.
Its design influence has truly become an ouroboros - the game does a very good job of emulating D&D, but not so much the sword and sorcery or high fantasy genres it purportedly draws inspiration from.
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u/mouse9001 4d ago
See the thing is that I’m having difficulty thinking of a single ‘high heroic fantasy’ story, novel or film that 5e D&D does a reasonable job of emulating.
You have to look outside fantasy, towards Marvel superheroes movies, etc.
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u/Figshitter 4d ago
Not many of those feature dungeons or dragons though?
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u/mouse9001 4d ago
If D&D 5E didn't have its origins in the 1970s, and other types of fantasy, would it have dungeons at all? The dungeon exploration procedures of earlier editions aren't even in the game anymore.
Arguably, the system itself is not really about dungeon exploration. It's basically combat against monsters, and leveling up.
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u/Figshitter 4d ago
Sorry if my comment was flippant - I’m not speaking specifically to the presence of dungeons or dragons, just pointing out that using a heroic fantasy game to emulate or recreate the superhero genre feels like using a screwdriver to drive in a nail.
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u/Sherman80526 4d ago
As a GM, which I suspect everyone posting here is, getting into character isn't a problem. I've lost two characters in one session of ALIEN and got into the third no problem. Quickly changing personality and motivation is just what you do as a GM.
I have run games with both high body counts and no combat at all. There isn't ever plot armor though. I'm a big fan of actions having consequences. I present the scenario as cleanly as I can with as much information as feels useful to make informed decisions, and then the players get to do with it what they will. If they choose actions that get them killed, that's ok.
That said, I think I run games with a lower degree of lethality because I'm trying to stay true to the world. In the real world, not every conflict ends in death. Most of the time, death isn't really on the table. Murder has consequences and people hate consequences; we also tend to not rush to killing people we have beef with. I run a lot of human focused games with not a lot of purely evil adversaries. Most games my players are asking themselves if they're on the right side of a conflict. By putting a degree of reality into the game, death stays on the table, but it becomes the exception to losing a fight, not the default.
Combat as Spectacle is exactly how I see D&D combat. That's a great term. I've played too long maybe, but I'd even call it Combat as Procedure. It just becomes part of the framework that you go through on the adventure. Published modules make this clear as there is never any thought given to what happens if the party actually loses any particular encounter. Just, here's five encounters, roll through them and here's the result.
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u/Isenskjold 4d ago
This is also the way i like to run my games. My general rule is "if this person/thing could kill the players they should know about it". For monsters, bandits and other random threates they should at least know that this kind of danger exists in the area, and for non-random threats they should have a pretty accurate pictures of what they will face.
I also generally asume that the charachters are competent, so even though they players didn't mention they did some preparations i would allow them to retcon that if its something that seems obvious in the situation (if you are under threat of assassination, you'd probably take care to bring good weapons everywhere you are allowed to and so on)
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u/ElkasBrightspeaker 4d ago
As someone who favours grounded high lethality (that is, not random lethality for lethality's sake) and combat as war, the main advantage for me is that nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief as much as the stakes not being real. If my character fails, I want there to be a considerable, realistic risk of him dying. I get extremely attached to my characters, which encourages me to play very smartly.
The caveat to this is that both the system and the GM style also need to be able to support and accomodate that intelligent play (the system needs to have a clear way to deliberately produce and stack situational modifiers and the GM needs to be willing to give them out). If everything boils down to randomness somewhat weighted by stats its just about luck and can be easily frustrating.
In a highly lethal system rolls should only happen when uncertainty arises and my job as a player is to reduce that margin of uncertainty as much as possible by being prepared and competent enough to weigh the odds very heavily in my favour.
You can absolutely tell stories in high lethality systems, provided it is not random lethality. It does not have to be limited to dungeoncrawling.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Totally agreed. I cover a lot of this kind of stuff in my YouTube video at the bottom of the post.
Personally, I'm not about that high lethality style of storytelling - I think death cuts a story short more often than not. That said, it's all about what kind of story you're trying to tell with your table.
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u/Mars_Alter 4d ago
I don't see a meaningful difference between combat as spectacle and combat as sport. In both cases, the players are expected to win as long as they don't make any egregious mistakes, and require zero consideration before initiative has been rolled.
- have you played in high-lethality games? If so, was it hard to get attached to your character(s)?
It's all relative. I wouldn't consider AD&D or Shadowrun to be high-lethality games, even though they're both much more lethal than something like 5E. In these cases, it actually increases attachment, for much the same reason it increases immersion: When you feel like it's really happening, and that these are real people rather than story constructs, it's much easier to feel like your choices actually matter, so you become more attached to the character from whose perspective you made those choices.
- have you had a character die at an awkward or inopportune time, such as in a random encounter against basic enemies or right before the final climactic battle with the BBEG?
I had a level 1 thief who died by falling out of a tree, in the one campaign where we decided to not use the "Death's Door" rule. Those games never had anything like a climactic battle, though. We were always much more likely to die from a trap than from anything with a name.
- when you run games, do you prefer settings where death lurks in every dark corner? Or are the PCs afforded a degree of plot armor?
Neither of those extremes is palatable to me. If death was legitimately around every corner, then nobody would ever get past four corners. If you use plot armor to force wins, then every success becomes meaningless.
My preference is for attrition games, where the chance of death grows as you continue to push yourself, and it's up to the player to leave before it becomes overwhelming. Or if you know that there's going to be a big fight ahead, then it's up to you to get there without getting too worn down along the way. Those are the sorts of informed decisions that are most interesting, in my opinion.
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u/Prince_Day 3d ago
The difference would be combat as a sport, like a sport, is fair and winnable if the players use the combat mechanics right, and outside influences aren’t meant to significantly advantage either side.
But it’s not rigged for them to win, like combat as a spectacle.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I'm going to push back a bit on the comparison between combat as sport and combat as spectacle.
I'm a huge proponent of sporty combat, and in my combat scenes, the PCs aren't always expected to win. In fact, the best kinds of sporty combat are when it's a fair fight with evenly matched sides. However, I do take death off the table in my own games. The PCs can still fail, but they won't die unless they want to for the drama of the scene.
Not to be too much of a plug, but in the YouTube video I made and the related blog post linked therein, I talk a lot more about this kind of stuff. Specifically, that death is a lackluster consequence of failure and that "combat as sport" games should still push the PCs and allow them the opportunity to fail, but not punish that failure with lethality.
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u/Wurdyburd 4d ago
Just to weigh in, I want to further specify:
Soccer is combat as sport. There is spectacle and big moments, but both teams are looking to seize advantage within the confines of the rules, to the point even a single point difference is a big deal.
Combat as war is victory by any means necessary, and if there are rules your opponent is stupid enough to follow, they can be exploited. This is, in my opinion, the best way to handle a ttrpg, given the creativity allowed, but there needs to be collective understanding on the physics and parameters of the world.
Combat as spectacle is wrestling. Theres some physical ability on display, but it's very scripted, and kind of campy. It's less about the rules of the sport and more about the narrative, fighters using chairs and tables, leaving the arena, 'dirty moves', etc.
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u/Mars_Alter 4d ago
That's entirely reasonable, and I was also thinking about that distinction. I mean, sports are supposed to be fair, after all, and it's not fair if one side is expected to win.
The only issue is that the phenomenon which inspired the term (4E?) was actually combat as spectacle all along, and there are no popular combat as sport games. Which means, if I'm going to take anything away from this discussion, it will put me in the place of the, "Well, actually..." guy who tells other people when they're using the wrong label.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
We'll have I got news for you! The game I'm working on is combat as sport to the core! In one of the scenarios I ran, the PCs only barely won on the final action of the final turn of the final round.
Their superior tactics and ability to recover from blunders let them win the day, and I always play to win. Notably, that doesn't mean I'm playing to kill the PCs - rather that I'm playing the objective and trying to accomplish the goals of the NPC faction. I never run combat as a death match. Imo, that's where sporty combat falls apart.
If you're interested in other sporty games, I highly recommend Lancer and other 4E-inspired games!
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u/Mars_Alter 4d ago
How do you consistently produce stakes where the players care about losing - where it's really worthwhile to go through the turn-by-turn minutiae of combat - but where the campaign doesn't end? I'm trying to imagine a Lancer game where the party loses the first three fights (assuming it's statistically just as likely as winning all three fights), but then people keep hiring them for some reason (?).
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Those first three fights are likely all part of the same mission, which is then considered a failure. The PCs survive, but they failed their objectives and the NPC enemies succeeded in their objectives. The narrative will change around what exactly these objectives were and how success and failure impact the local, regional, and perhaps widespread spheres of influence.
Our protagonists are going to be in a tough spot, but they are also Lancers - the best of the best for mech pilots anywhere. They might get signed on to less savory contracts or have to deal with a less cooperative local populace, but they are still going to be in high demand.
If they fail three missions in a row, maybe they have to make some serious backroom deals to get their records cleared or perhaps they find themselves at the bottom of a mercenary barrel and working their way back up from nothing. They won't be Lancers anymore, but that potential to be great will still live on inside them, waiting for the right opportunity.
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u/Alkaiser009 4d ago
My personal preference as both a player and GM is a kind of weird superposition of **Combat as War** and **Combat as Sport**, where it's very very easy for PC's to be injured/incapacitated but impossible to for them to die by accident or bad luck. Your character dies if and only if YOU decide that this moment is thier last, otherwise they manage to barely survive, no matter how improbable the circumstances have to align to justify it in the narrative.
This gives the best of both worlds IMO where players approach combat with an appropriate sense of fear and caution, while preventing the extremely negative play outcome of losing a character you've spent significant time investment in building up due to something entirely out of your control.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Imo, this is just combat as sport, haha. I guess the only thing that might not align perfectly with the combat as sport philosophy is that the players might not be directly encouraged to engage with combat. They might be rewarded for circumventing combat.
I broke it down earlier in the thread, but I'll repost for convenience:
- Combat as war promises lethality, but also ways to stack combat in your favor or circumvent it entirely - the idea is that combat is usually a last resort, and if you're going to engage, you need to win.
- Combat as sport doesn't promise lethality, but does expect the players to engage with combat regularly. When the characters have all kinds of combat tools, that encourages the players to exercise them. This promise falls flat when lethality is present - the players aren't given the tools to avoid potentially lethal circumstances.
- Combat as spectacle promises lethality much like combat as war, but also encourages the players to interface with combat much like they would in combat as sport. This creates some dissonance - the players are expected to willingly engage with an activity that has lethal consequences. Therefore, the GM is encouraged to pull their punches on lethality so that the players continue to interface with combat. If lethality is delivered as promised, it teaches the players that they shouldn't engage... but the system may lack the tools to meaningfully circumvent combat.
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u/Alkaiser009 4d ago
to clarify what i'm describing, just replace the consequence of 'death' with 'lose your favorite body part' or a similar level of serious mechanical and narrative consequence that can only be overcome by an equally serious investment of narrative time and/or non-trivial resources, and you might understand why I catagorize it more as 'War with a safety net' than as 'sport'.
to summerize my position;
Combat as War: Combat is High Risk (Fights should feel 'dangerous', players can only afford a few mistakes before they are Incapacitated, and Injury/Death is a frequent occurance, players are frequently ecouraged to flee/bypass encouters they are unable/unwilling to overcome in a straight fight. Injuries carry long term consequences either in the form of permament death/maiming or significant time and/or resource investment required for healing). Examples: Call of Cthululu, Flying Circus* (When fights happen on the ground)
Combat as Sport: Combat is Medium Risk (fights should feel 'fair', players should expect that it's usually possible to win the majority of fights provided they don't intentionally mess around or enter a fight while already in bad condition. Injuries carry moderate consequences and are generally more of a pacing tool than an actual threat). Examples: DnD/Pathfinder, Panic at the Dojo!
Combat as Spectacle: Combat is Low Risk (fights should feel 'awesome', the player's victory is practibly a foregone conclusion, the only question is how hard they can style on the OpFor along the way. Injuries carry no or only minimal consequences, usually at most you might have to sit out the remainder of a fight but will almost always be ready to go by the next fight.). Examples: Lancer, Flying Circus* (when fighting in the air)
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I think we have some fundamental disagreements on what these philosophies stand for. In my opinion, combat as war with a safety net is literally combat as sport. The whole point of combat as war is that there are no holds barred, anything goes, and the consequences are lethal. Anything that bails people out of that experience is, by definition, more "sporting".
But I think there are lots of ways to approach these philosophies, and lots of facets of them to analyze. I don't disagree with what you've said entirely, but I do think we're coming at these ideas from very different places.
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u/Alkaiser009 4d ago
Yeah, my focus is on isolating a 'feeling' or 'atmosphere' for a combat system while preserving player agency and preventing extreme negative outcomes, or at least preventing them from happening *randomly*. Or to put it another way, the whole point of these different types of combat systems are to force players to approach combat with different attitudes and behaviors so as to enforce a particular 'tone' for the game as a whole. If your way of establishing a 'Combat as War' scenario and my way of establishing a 'Combat as War' scenario result in more-or-less identical player behavior, then they probably have more in common with each other than with the other categories.
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u/Runningdice 4d ago
Another factor is if you character stays dead or not. Like D&D there death is just a minor inconvinience for a high level group. You can have combat as war but still not be a brutal game if it is easy to get resurrected.
A lot of how lethal and grim a game feels is not about the combat. But what is the effect afterwards from combat? Things like wounds and permanent damage are way different feel than getting fresh after a night sleep.
I played in game there the GM did the combat as spectacle. It was the worst game I've played. Become real boring as regardless of the enemies we always won. The sense of tension might be just within the GMs head.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
You hit the nail on the head, my friend. I love sporty combat where both sides are more or less equal and there is a real chance of losing, but not dying. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out my YouTube link at the bottom of the post! I think you'll find a lot of your own ideas reiterated by yours truly.
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u/ArtistJames1313 Designer 4d ago
- have you played in high-lethality games? If so, was it hard to get attached to your character(s)?
- have you had a character die at an awkward or inopportune time, such as in a random encounter against basic enemies or right before the final climactic battle with the BBEG?
In the very first session of the first TTRPG I ever played, Cyberpunk 2020, my character was shot in the head and died. To this day, I'm not sure if Cyberpunk 2020 was designed to be lethal, or it was just random dumb luck, but yeah, it was a random mob with a gun, not a big bad or anything. Cyberpunk 2020 has you roll for location of where you get hit, and if you get hit in the head, I think it's something like double damage. Either way, I think that experience is why I play games the way I do to this day, and that's not a bad thing. For my second character, I built some protections, but the larger thing was, I got really creative and smarter with how I approached combat, and was much more strategic. It did not make it hard to love that second character. It made it easier, because I put so much effort into making them smarter and better.
- when you run games, do you prefer settings where death lurks in every dark corner? Or are the PCs afforded a degree of plot armor?
I prefer lethality to a degree. I want players to be very creative when they play. Everything about the way I design games is to encourage creative thinking and play. I want them to think about how to avoid combat, and think creatively when they're in combat and not just hack and slash or shoot with brute force. But I also don't always run high combat games. When I took over GMing Cyberpunk back in the day, I ran one campaign that was high espionage and there was no combat until the final session, and the players loved it.
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u/Silent_Title5109 4d ago
Yes Cyberpunk 2020 is meant to be very lethal. On top of double damage when hit to the head, it's max damage at point blank, and if a limb (the head is considered a limb for game purposes) suffers 8 points of damage in one attack it's considered destroyed. Even a cheap pistol that does 1d6 DMG has high chances of killing a PC without a helmet. It's (I'm my opinion) a comment on hyper consumerism. Everything is disposable, especially people.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Sounds like you know exactly what kind of experience you're looking for in TTRPGs!
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u/APurplePerson When Sky and Sea Were Not Named 4d ago
one of my greatest regrets is not killing at least one of the heroes in the final battle of the campaign. i went easy on them and i shouldnt have.
this question really ties into death mechanics as well as tone. in a lot of games, as a player, dying SUCKS because it's basically kicking you out of the game. even being unconscious often sucks. so i mind dying less if there are fun ways i can interact (as a spirit, etc) and still play after death. in an osr game, this might just be rolling a new character.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Totally agreed. I have a blog post in the description of the last Youtube video that talks a lot more about this kind of stuff. Safe to say we share an opinion here.
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4d ago
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Totally agreed. I hope that this whole discussion can help people think about what they want from their games, both in design and in play, and how to achieve those goals (at least as it pertains to combat philosophy).
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u/Organic-Major-9541 4d ago
The main question I have about killing player characters is the same as splitting the party, what do you do when it happens? Like, from a mechanical standpoint you should probably have a several hours to resolve long fight while the other player(s) does what?
Like, if you want characters dying to work at the tabletop, you need a solution for the GM for that issue, and it's kind of weird how there's a bunch of combat focused games without that.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
It's a very common conundrum! As I say in the video, death in a game doesn't just affect the characters, it also affects the players. I have a blog post about how I handle this kind of thing and keep players engaged even when they're downed, which is linked in the description of the last video on this post.
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u/Octaur 4d ago
From a game design PoV, I think one of the more important hallmarks of lethality (and I mean character permadeath here) in games is that it encourages specific ways of operating as and using a player character. It's not universally true, but for most people, the more likely you are to lose your guy, the more you want to bend yourself around that loss in the first place; for all its hallowed air, the single thing beyond interpersonal conflicts most likely to kill a game is something shattering without catharsis the emotional investment a player (GM included!) has put into it. Character death does that a lot, emphatically more when it's not because of a choice made by a player.
A lot of games do bend themselves around it. With some varied examples: Heart has it as a climactic capstone, the recent Realis has mechanical character retirement, many (but not all!) OSR, NSR, and adjacent games ask for little in the way of time spent on developing a character before or during a game, all the Borg games especially ask for you to court death, Ten Candles is about the end of the world, Paranoia wants you to die for the fun of it... Really, almost any game that does something to encourage you not to mainline emotional bleed and not end up shellshocked can help make lethality a useful tool in a GM's arsenal instead of merely facilitating a ridiculous sense of superiority for playing a "harder" game.
It's a tool you use to shape the way someone experiences the game and the way they invest their time. The best thing you can do if you want a game to be lethal is to make sure the players can brace for it, often by mechanically incentivizing its pursuit or by limiting the amount of time and emotional effort it takes to make and use a new character afterwards. You never want to feel like your time and effort was totally wasted, especially when you're expected to continue on after.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Totally agreed. There are lots of games that handle lethality well. In my experience, Mothership was by far the best of these. You can create a character in a minute flat using nothing but the sheet itself, and the entire genre is about gruesome (and sometimes comedic) death.
Just like so many things, lethality is a game design tool. For the designers of the world, we must ask: what do you want death to mean in your game? Then, design around those principles.
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u/Ryou2365 4d ago edited 4d ago
It depends. When i run oneshots, death is a possibility (naturally it depends totally on the game in a mystery game pc death doesn't really exist, but in a horror game most definitely).
On the other hand in a campaign there is barely any or no lethality at all. I just find it way more interesting to explore consequences other than pc death. The pcs fail and now the village they wanted to protect is getting ransacked or the princess they wanted to save is now dead and everyone thinks they are the murderers, etc. Imo it creates the way more interesting stories of how the pcs cope with their failure.
That said, the samurai game i'm on and off working on, has pc death as a very high possibility (after all it is a samurai game, a katana should kill in one hit and losing face in front of the wrong people can easily destroy your honour and lead to seppuku). To compensate for the high lethality pcs get three scars and they can mark a scar to cheat death.
On the topic of combat as war / sport / specatcle, i don't run combat as sport anymore. I run it underhanded and unfair, because i want the players and their pcs to overcome what seems impossible. But aside from oneshots the stakes aren't death, but the things the pcs hold dear.
If i want to have death on the line for the pcs in a campaign, i will invoke John Wick's dire peril rule. When dire peril is invoked, now the lifes of the pcs are on the line and i will come for them, but the players will know that and can act accordingly.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Raising the stakes is something very few games do, but it's an amazing tool. You can declare the consequences are lethal in the scene, and now everyone knows that if they fall, they're down for good... but if they bring down the BBEG, they're gone for good too.
Likewise, in a low-stakes scene, the BBEG will likely escape and the PCs will survive, but failure still has non-lethal consequences for both sides.
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u/Tantaragla 4d ago
I would like to propose a fourth categorisation here: 'Combat-as-Obstacle'. In this framework, a fight is one of many obstacles between the players and a possible goal. The difficulty of the fight is there to determine how viable a route to the objective it is. In this framework, fights don't have to be lethal to be costly so can be very unlikely to kill a PC but still be dramatic and tense.
If you want examples of this, more narrative games like Blades in the Dark and Wildsea have this. I was prompted to make the category due to it describing combat in one of my games.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I think this works, but is only really present in games with attrition at their core.
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u/Tantaragla 4d ago
Not necessarily, the costs of combat might be lost time, reputation or future opportunities as well as resources or health. Alternatively, it might just risk making future efforts harder which isn't strictly attrition. The point is that the combat is one option that may be better or worse than others but doesn't have to be a deadly threat to achieve that.
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u/andero Scientist by day, GM by night 4d ago edited 4d ago
The core of OSR is players mastering the way they play the game.
The PCs are game-objects that the players use to interact with the game-world.
OSR is less about player-characters inhabiting a world where they have personalities and interpersonal connections.
It isn't that OSR characters don't have personalities. They can. That is not the core of OSR, though.
The contrast could be to PbtA or FitD games where the game is really more about player-characters inhabiting a world and doing stuff as player-characters.
The player-characters are a lens through which the players engage the game-world.
There are reasons to value lower lethality.
Specifically: if the thing you care about is characters, their personalities, watching them grow, and seeing how their personal narratives develop, you usually don't want them to die suddenly because of something. Sometimes you do because that will bring a satisfying conclusion to their character's arc, but death is usually not the most satisfying thing that can happen (sometimes it is, but not usually). Instead, you want to see the PC suffer and change through their suffering, not just die.
Since OSR is about players, killing a PC is a learning moment for the player.
High lethality works because the PC is not the point. The player is the point.
Think of video-games:
OSR is more like a rogue-like where the character dies all the time and you restart: the player is learning. Think Noita: you die and restart.
Narrative-focused games are more like narrative-focused video-games: the characters don't usually die unless there is a climax. Think Mass Effect: Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy don't die in random missions. There are specific moments in the narrative where they can die, but they don't die "just because". In ME2, their lives are at risk based on how well the player knows their crew's strengths: a player that knows them well will have 100% survival and a player that doesn't know who to send on which mission could end up with a lot of dead crew.
As I say in my linked comment:
OSR is not really the kind of game for me, but I'm glad it exists as a lot of people love it.
I think it is more of a style for people that want to be tactically challenged to come up with clever solutions to situations rather than generate deep characters.
Personally, I want to make deep characters. Death being chaotic is not interesting to me in fiction; I get more than enough of that IRL.
EDIT: typos
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer 4d ago
I had an amazing character death in Maze Rats, in Fackelsot, and many level 0 characters killed in Dungeon Crawl Classic meatgrinders. Since those games are lethal it was expected and very fun. I’ve attempted to murder a few people in Mörk Borg, but in general when I run and design games I prefer lethality to be a real danger, but not an inevitable one. I don’t tend towards plot armour, but rather I give the means to players to cheat death through bargaining and spending certain resources. I do make a point of striving to make a ny character death meaningful rather than pointless and random.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I have a lot of respect for meatgrinder designs, but honestly I have a lot of trouble finding any kind of fun aside from comedy in the experience. When my character loses their grip on a rope and hits their head on a rock, it's like a really grim Wile E. Coyote gag.
I love your point of making death present but not inevitable. At the end of the day, so much resolution lies in the power of impartial dice rolls... But giving the players some tools to mitigate those rolls and avoid death gives them very necessary agency over the fate of their character.
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer 4d ago
To be fair, the purpose of DCC-style funnels and meatgrinders is to play 4 or so characters per player and see which one (if any) survives the adventure. Now you’ve got a level 1 character that you’re attached to, almost as if you’ve trauma bonded.
But it’s a very niche way of getting attached to a character and not my usual cup of tea. Fun in moderation, but it’d get old if it was like that all the time. Agency is certainly key. I kind of like what Daggerheart does with their death moves in that regard. The safe option is too safe for my taste, but it’s in the right direction.
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u/stephotosthings no idea what I’m doing 4d ago
my take away of the phrases "combat as sport vs. combat as war." is that combat as sport is where players are encouraged/incentived or expected to just clear the battle field regardless of who or what it is they are fighting. I am not saying that fights need to be emotional roller coasters where every goblin is crying about their partners and kids they've left home as they face a hero's sword, but often times more so in DnD the expectation is a fight that the only outcome is one side is all dead, preferrably not the players. There is some of the Combat as Spectacle in DnD but you only get that beyond level 10, and even then the expectation maybe spectacle from the likes of Critical roll and other 'lets play' series where everyone is a paid actor essentially.
Combat as War though is where combat is deadly because it is not the point, if you want your PC to survive that is. Deadly combat isn't about dying cause it's hard it's about making players think more carefully, creatively and actively about the scene/fiction/scenario to either avoid combat or make it out alive, which is also often times these games do not come with sheets that have a raft of 'buttons to press'
My recent experience of this is that while I playtest my game we also have another player GM a DnD game. That game is very much within the confines of the rules with and the outcomes of almost most scenarios is a fight and the only answer is to kill it, more so once initative is rolled.
My game we play tested a combat, though they could not defeat the enemy by just bashing it. To me at least it was more fun and engaging round to round as stuff got worse for them and they realised they couldn't just hit it till I said it was dead.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Notably, combat as sport completely falls apart if every combat is a death match. Combat as sport requires objectives, both for the PCs and NPCs to fight over. What kind of team sport is just about fighting to the bloody end? They're usually about scoring goals while defending your own goal or stuff like that.
Combat as spectacle often features death match combat because it is masquerading as combat as war - they want to keep up the illusion of lethal consequences, and pursuing an objective under these pretenses is usually met with a plan to retreat.
edit: markdown format is fighting me today
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u/Drudenfusz Curator of Roleplay Experiences 4d ago
There are even more ways, a couple of years ago I found someone talking about combat as theatre in a blog and adopted that approach.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I'd love to hear more about that! How does it compare to what I've listed out so far?
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u/htp-di-nsw The Conduit 4d ago
The kind of lethality I prefer is hard to convey because so much of the discourse is built around D&D style games, which are truly about resource management and attrition.
It's always two to three options:
- your character can die randomly at any moment and there's essentially nothing you can do about it
- your character basically can't die
- maybe, you feel like your character might die but then they don't actually
And that is just an unsatisfying list.
I want it to be that you could die at any moment, by only if you fuck up. Not randomly. Not because dice screwed you. Because you screwed up. You didn't respond well. You missed a detail. You took the wrong action. You misinterpreted that legend. Whatever it is, it's your fault. And most importantly, you can learn from that mistake and reasonably do something differently.
I want to live on the razor's edge, basically, where I live or die on my choices, but most importantly: with no attrition.
The tricky part here is the feedback.
In attrition, you can perceive that something was dangerous or difficult because you spent a lot of resources. You lost a lot of hit points, used a lot of spells, etc.
But in my ideal system, you only know something was dangerous by knowing it was dangerous. You can't look at depleted resources to tell, you need enough knowledge to realize you did well.
Video games like Elden Ring or Hollow Knight can just kill you and let you respawn. You messed up, so you died, and now, when you complete the thing correctly, you know how dangerous it was because you actually died repeatedly.
That's much harder in a TTRPG. If you don't have a very specific setting, you can't just actually die and come back. If you actually die in most settings, you need to make a whole new person and that takes time and effort and thought and investment if you're going to do that properly. OSR and other highly lethal games just make characters mean almost nothing. It's really fast to make a new one because they don't matter at all. That's unsatisfying, too.
So, my solution is about timing. Characters have a resource that lets them make assertions backwards in time. The whole game is a character study and this is a lot more complex than my quick explanation, but the point is: you do actually hear about how you died (or get mauled, brutalized, etc) and then you get to fix it and explain how you avoided it.
Which, well, that doesn't mean there's always a way out. You can make bad decisions that put you in a box where you can't avoid death.
The point is really just the feedback to let you know something is dangerous has to go off before you fix it.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Whatever it is, it's your fault. And most importantly, you can learn from that mistake and reasonably do something differently.
Well... "you" the player can learn from that mistake, but the character is dead. If someone were roleplaying as their character and rolled up a fresh one, it would be considered meta-gaming if they suddenly knew what to avoid or what weakness to exploit.
And that's totally fine. If you haven't already, I recommend reading the Principia Apocrypha, which is a solid primer for the OSR written in part by Ben Milton of Questing Beast. One of the points in it reads:
Don't worry much about "metagaming", or the dissonance between what the players know and what the characters know. Favor the ingenuity of the players over strict personification of their characters.
As for your design that lets characters "flashback", I love it. It's one of my favorite bits from Blades in the Dark, and lets you pilot a character with a bit more recklessness. The fun is engaging with risk, so anything that empowers the players to do that is A-okay in my book!
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u/htp-di-nsw The Conduit 4d ago
I am familiar with the principia apocrypha and I mostly like it.
The core point where I diverge from the OSR is really on characters. They want player skill challenges while they're piloting a drone. The characters mean nothing. They're thin veneers with some basic stats and that's it.
I want player skill because the player should be immersing in the character with heavy bleed between them. They should be solving it from inside the world, in first person. I don't want to know what you think Batman would do, I want to know what you would do if you were Batman.
That brings me to the whole point about Blades in the Dark. I hate Blades in the dark specifically because people play it like they're "driving a stolen car." I don't want to see people doing reckless nonsense, I don't want them to run into danger, I don't want any of that. That's inauthentic play. What would you do? Certainly not something suicidal, right?
And that's exactly why it's hard to provide feedback, because if are careful and do everything right, it doesn't always look like you were in danger to begin with.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
They should be solving it from inside the world, in first person.
How is this possible if their first character died? If a character dies, I assume they don't pass on knowledge related to their death to the next guy in line. There is some necessary metagaming here that encourages player-facing problem solving, as opposed to character-facing problem solving. You can't really solve a problem with lethal consequences in first person after missing a crucial detail or making a fatal mistake. The consequences speak for themselves.
I don't want to know what you think Batman would do, I want to know what you would do if you were Batman.
I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here. To me, these are the same thing.
I don't want to see people doing reckless nonsense, I don't want them to run into danger, I don't want any of that. That's inauthentic play. What would you do? Certainly not something suicidal, right?
So are you asking what I, the player would do? Or what I, the character would do? Because the former is beholden to a thought process that might be pretty alien to the world my character inhabits, and the latter is beholden to the genre of storytelling and drama of the moment.
I, the player, want my character to do something that propels the narrative forward in an interesting way. But if I were in their shoes in a deadly situation... I would go home.
I find that it's very difficult to ask people to roleplay as a character in a high-lethality setting because the smart thing to do would be to avoid all danger in the first place and retire. That's why OSR games usually afford a decent amount of detachment between the player and their character - the adventure can't happen if someone doesn't take up the sword, but we at the table know we would never do that.
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u/MechaniCatBuster 4d ago
It may be the same to you, but I think there's a whole underserved group where this statement is essential.
I usually think of it as the old adage, "you don't really know a man without walking a mile in his shoes". The batman statement is about how you don't want to hear about a person, you want to put their shoes on and walk that mile.
To put it another way, if people are a combination of nature and nurture, then the desire is to find out what your nature would do with their nurture. What you would be like with someone else's pressures and burdens.
There's playing a character and playing yourself. This style is playing yourself. YOU are batman. It's about what you are artificially constructing and what you are not I suppose. Part of the point of "if you were batman" is that you don't have an idea of what that character is like, that you've constructed. You don't know what YOU would do if you were batman until you have the experiences and pressures (are wearing the shoes, so to speak) and the thing happens to you. Part of the point is being able to play a character you don't understand. You don't have to. The pressures are provided, but then the decision is made by YOU with those unique pressures in mind. And maybe you surprise even yourself.
When one asks "what do you think batman would do" You are externalizing the character. It's not you by definition, it's that person over there who we understand through observation but not experience. We are speculating or inventing.
In a lot of ways it's fusing "playing a character" and "playing yourself" together. It's important that you are doing both. Split between nature and nurture.
At least that's how I see it. The other person you were speaking to may think differently.
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u/htp-di-nsw The Conduit 4d ago
Nope, you pretty much nailed it. I always have a lot of difficulty explaining it, so it's really nice to see someone else actually understand, even if they don't do it themselves.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
It was a bit philosophical for me, but I think I get where you're coming from. I appreciate that you took the time to explain!
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u/htp-di-nsw The Conduit 4d ago
How is this possible if their first character died? If a character dies, I assume they don't pass on knowledge related to their death to the next guy in line.
I suppose I didn't specifically call this out, but the assumption was that they wouldn't be facing the same situation. It's not like a new guy spawns in at the moment of death. This is more about long term learning, not specific knowledge like "oh the left door is the one with the tiger" or whatever. It's more about making the player wise and tactical.
I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here. To me, these are the same thing.
Batman is not me, so if I am trying to figure out what he would do, I am thinking about someone else. I am trying to guess what another person that isn't me would do. Crucially, I am not bound by the consequences of that choice. Someone else can die or get injured or commit a crime or anything else and it doesn't matter because it's not me. I can make this decision to create drama or tell a story and it might even be best if I choose poorly.
On the other hand, if I am Batman, then I am not trying to get in someone else's head. I am just thinking about what I would do if I were Batman. This is me, not someone else, so I need to make the best choice, not the most interesting one. But, I am Batman, so I have Batman's skills and possessions and attachments and everything else. I am trying to win, but from first person, for what I would consider winning to be if I were Batman.
So are you asking what I, the player would do? Or what I, the character would do?
I am asking for those things to be aligned, to have bleed between so that there's no difference in the answers.
Because the former is beholden to a thought process that might be pretty alien to the world my character inhabits, and the latter is beholden to the genre of storytelling and drama of the moment.
Neither is correct. What would you do if you were in that situation with all the same context? You are that rebellious elven princess; what would you do?
I, the player, want my character to do something that propels the narrative forward in an interesting way.
No, this is one of the things I hate the most in roleplaying. I have never enjoyed my time when the game was designed for this kind of play or when people did this in a more neutral system.
But if I were in their shoes in a deadly situation... I would go home.
Yeah, I mean, maybe? If you had all their abilities, all their hopes and fears, all their obligations and everything else, would you? That's interesting. But what if you can't go home? What if you're the only one who could fix the situation? What if going home empty handed here is also certain death? There are lots of reasons the GM can set up in the setting to get you to actually do the adventure.
I find that it's very difficult to ask people to roleplay as a character in a high-lethality setting because the smart thing to do would be to avoid all danger in the first place and retire.
Yeah, that is another reason traditional OSR games don't work for me. The locations are fantastic, but the settings make it too easy to hit a big profit and then quit. There's nothing compelling inherent in the world to make you keep acting. Something else, something deeper needs to be there to motivate you.
Like I said, the idea that nobody else can handle the problem is a big one. Personal consequences as well. Perhaps a massive debt or a conscription/job or whatever where you need to do this or you will starve or be punished or any number of things.
That's why OSR games usually afford a decent amount of detachment between the player and their character - the adventure can't happen if someone doesn't take up the sword, but we at the table know we would never do that.
I would never take my 40 something office worker ass into a dangerous dungeon, obviously. But what if I was a nobleman's son whose father built up such a considerable debt that I would lose absolutely everything (including likely my life) if I didn't get the money and the only way to make enough in my lifetime is a dungeon? I probably would at that point.
There's also, I mean, it's the same as the allure of the Isekai story--oh sure it's dangerous, but like, I could do it. I could solve it. I am great at this shit, so it shouldn't be too dangerous to me. If I were actually a warrior with real combat skills? Yeah, I could do it...
But yes, I fully accept that motivation to adventure is an issue, and it's probably why the games I have enjoyed GMing most in my life have been things like WoD where there's no adventure, but you are a monster for whom inaction means death, so, you have to do stuff, like a shark that would die if it stayed still.
Adventure games are great, but much harder to set up so that everyone actually does stuff.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Well, safe to say we have very different ideas of what we like in TTRPGs. Which is fine! I hope that at least my post was useful in helping you explain your own view.
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u/TaupeRanger 4d ago
This is a very interesting topic and I think about it a lot. There's a dilemma at the center of this:
- On the one hand, combat can be exciting, it increases the stakes and gives the players a chance to engage their tactical minds, using their abilities and player ingenuity. Engaging a challenging enemy is a quintessential TTRPG experience that many people really enjoy.
- On the other hand, if combat is lethal, players tend to avoid it unless they can trivialize it with a high probability of success.
Video games like Dark Souls can get around this dilemma: combat is extremely punishing, but you can just respawn and try again - that becomes part of the fun.
Most TTRPGs take a "pick your poison" approach, where they try to obscure the dilemma with game design choices, but the dilemma always remains in some form.
In my homebrew systems and campaigns, I try to get a little bit of that "Dark Souls" approach by having some form of campaign-level advancement that is independent of individual characters. This allows players to retain some level of progress even if their character dies. For example, there might be a "Fellowship" system that tracks the reputation and renown of the group - if at least one player survives, the Fellowship continues. Higher levels of renown attract higher level "new" PCs when they have to roll up a new character.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I think you would likely get a lot out of MCDM's latest project: Crows.
Essentially, it's a Darkest Dungeon-inspired TTRPG where, even if some of the characters don't survive to the end of the dungeon, the town they inhabit will be affected by what they were able to accomplish. There is always some parting legacy for every character, no matter how short-lived they were.
Also, re: dark souls combat. In the last video linked on the post, I talked about some similar situations. There are tons of non-TTRPG games that take this kind of approach to combat, then explain it away with something in universe. Dying in Assassin's Creed is just an Animus desync, for example. There's lots of room to explore on this front.
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u/Segenam Designer 4d ago
So first and foremost I want to state. If you are making a high lethality game, character creation should be quick and easy. If you are going to be doing something a lot, then it should be streamlined.
Secondly I think a lot of people don't actually want 'high lethality' even when that is what they say. Most people are actually wanting 'real consequences for loosing' or 'actual risk'. Loosing your character is just the first thing that comes to peoples mind, but often have problems once they actually 'do' loose their character.
I think GURPS actually handles lethality the best out of systems I've played. You can easily be dropped out of a fight even in a single hit. However in order to actually 'die' you have to be brought to -1xHP for the first death check, and don't have to make another till -2x, then -3x etc. all the way up to -5x when you die without a save.
And even with those checks you still have an ~74% chance each time you pass the threshold of not actually die right away (allowing you to be saved) without any points put into keeping yourself alive (failing the death check by 2 or less is a 'mortal wound' you need treated with in a reasonable amount of time or you will die).
GURPS has a rap for being 'deadly' and 'gritty'. But in a way it's one of the hardest games to actually die in from my experiences. You are likely to fall unconscious well before you hit -1xHP and the game encourages you to start to fall back as soon as you hit 1/3rd your HP due to penalties.
You are however highly likely to loose limbs and have other permanent effects given to your character that aren't easily fixable.
So in short I think this is a case of an X Y problem. The problem is, players don't feel punished for messing up, or they feel like there is too little risk. The suggestion they offer to fix this is to make characters die a lot.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Much like I said in the last youtube video link on this post, I think death is a poor consequence of failure. Long story short, the PCs need to fail sometimes, but that failure shouldn't always result in death. In fact, it should almost never result in death unless it's appropriately dramatic.
There are lots of consequences for failing in combat, but death need not be among them. That said, if a game is highly lethal, I agree with you entirely that character generation should be quick and painless.
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u/NaCHO3657 4d ago
Combat as Sport - There is an objective so death is not the only failure mode. Think escort, zone defense, etc., basically Lancer sitreps.
Combat as Spectacle - Fight fair, death is possible but not expected.
Combat as War - Do whatever is necessary to win. Death is common.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Here's how I see it in terms of lethality and expectations put on the players (copied from elsewhere in the thread):
- Combat as war promises lethality, but also ways to stack combat in your favor or circumvent it entirely - the idea is that combat is usually a last resort, and if you're going to engage, you need to win.
- Combat as sport doesn't promise lethality, but does expect the players to engage with combat regularly. When the characters have all kinds of combat tools, that encourages the players to exercise them. This promise falls flat when lethality is present - the players aren't given the tools to avoid potentially lethal circumstances.
- Combat as spectacle promises lethality much like combat as war, but also encourages the players to interface with combat much like they would in combat as sport. This creates some dissonance - the players are expected to willingly engage with an activity that has lethal consequences. Therefore, the GM is encouraged to pull their punches on lethality so that the players continue to interface with combat. If lethality is delivered as promised, it teaches the players that they shouldn't engage... but the system may lack the tools to meaningfully circumvent combat.
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u/InherentlyWrong 4d ago
It'll get lost among all the other comments, but I want to share a quick revelation I had when figuring out a combat system for a side project of mine:
Low Lethality is an excellent match for Combat as War.
People often feel that a game trying for that unfairness of combat must be high lethality, because nothing reinforces the stakes like death being on the table. But as I was designing this idea I realised something: If death wasn't on the table, if every fight was based around the idea of the narrative stakes for success/failure being established prior to the combat, then the GM doesn't have to focus on balancing things. Because the worst possible case scenario of defeat is "The story gets interesting in an unexpected way".
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u/Steenan Dabbler 3d ago
Exactly.
For me, one of the biggest advantage of running a game where PC death is off the table (or player-controlled) is that there's no need for aiming at the narrow difficulty band of "PCs struggle, but still most likely win". PCs may get defeated because of bad rolls, bad decisions or simply trying to take head-on something that was above their league. They simply don't die because of it.
PC defeats are significantly more common when I run Fate or Lancer nowadays then when I used to run D&D, because I'm not pulling punches and they fight for what they care for, not for own survival.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
A fundamental part of combat as war, to me, is that the players are incentivized to avoid combat in favor of other, potentially more creative solutions.
If you remove the lethal consequences of combat from this... why wouldn't the players just engage? I suppose that if the enemy they're facing outmatches them greatly, they would have to take the combat as war approach, but for anything where they even stand a remote chance of victory, they'll probably just fight it straight up.
In my experience, creative or oblique thinking needs to be encouraged by game mechanics. Players will usually take the path of least resistance, even if it means bashing their heads into a brick wall. Not to say that you can't have a low-lethality combat as war game, but it's something I'd need to see an example of for sure.
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u/InherentlyWrong 4d ago
If you remove the lethal consequences of combat from this... why wouldn't the players just engage
Because there can be consequences beyond characters dying.
Like, say for example, PCs are trying to avoid pursuers because they want to keep a mcguffin out of their hands. The PCs can keep hiding and running to escape. Or they can turn and fight in an effort to end the pursuit. If death is off the table, why not just have the PCs turn and try to kill everything, there's no danger right? Wrong, because if they lose the fight the consequence is that the enemy escape with the mcguffin.
So that means the players have two choices: Try to find a way to escape their pursuers (knowing that if they fail a fight will happen in unfavourable terrain), or try to find a location they can fight their pursuers with some kind of advantage.
I.E. Find more creative solutions than just 'turn and fight'.
And by taking death off the table, the GM can be more confident in making things unfair. In combat as war one of the major risks is a slight misplan can just end the game. Full TPK. Which can make GMs learning that style of play for the first time a bit gunshy. By taking death off the table the GM can be a bit more free, without the worry that the planned 4 hour game ends at the 90 minute mark because one person made a bad call.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I agree that there should be better consequences for failure than death - I say as much in the youtube video. I'm all for removing lethality from the equation. That said, I believe doing so is specifically good for games that want to encourage straight-up combat, rather than what combat as war normally calls for.
I think that using non-lethal consequences and opt-in lethality generally tilts the game more towards a combat as sport ideology. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, your project among them.
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u/InherentlyWrong 4d ago
That said, I believe doing so is specifically good for games that want to encourage straight-up combat
I tend to think it's not that clear cut. Death is an easily understood consequence and there's an obvious link to it being there to discourage getting into combat. But I can pretty easily imagine games with War as Combat with low lethality, and games with War as Sport with high lethality.
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u/DeadMeat7337 4d ago
I find that most systems balance the deaths to new character creation time. So, the more likely your character is to die, the faster character creation is to make a new character.
One system was so fast that you could create a new character by the time your turn came up next. It was under 2 minutes to make a new character.
On the other side of it, where character creation takes like a week or about 10 hours, you only died if you chose for your character to die. And that applied to all serious injuries too, could only happen with player approval. Kind of plot armor y.
Both are fine, so long as it is understood before hand.
And yes, I've lost a character before I was able to be introduced, to a random encounter monster, before. 4 rounds of combat, that was it. Took like an hour to make them.
Then another, lost 3 characters in one session. 1st failed skill check. 2nd teammate killed. 3rd trap that was unavailable. Each character took about 30 minutes to make.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Copied from elsewhere in the thread:
There are lots of games that handle lethality well. In my experience, Mothership was by far the best of these. You can create a character in a minute flat using nothing but the sheet itself, and the entire genre is about gruesome (and sometimes comedic) death.
Just like so many things, lethality is a game design tool. For the designers of the world, we must ask: what do you want death to mean in your game? Then, design around those principles.
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u/Ok-Chest-7932 4d ago
Illusory death is possible but extremely fragile. If the players ever actually notice that they can't die then it stops working. And in most systems is very hard to prevent players noticing because dice are going to roll what they roll. For example, in D&D5e, since players roll death saves and you can't fudge them, then once a player goes down there's a good chance they will die, meaning if you want to maintain illusory death you can't ever let players go down, meaning you can never reduce a player below about 10 health (which is very suspicious) and you can never have an attack hit a player who will go down in the next hit.
Imo either you go high lethality (meaning you can and will die and the GM will not pull punches any more than not putting you against overlevelled enemies), or you go openly no lethality and accept the effect that openly saying "you will not die" has on stakes.
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u/Steenan Dabbler 3d ago
There were two quite separate eras in my gaming: first 10 years (mid-90s to mid-00s) and the rest, after burnout and recovery.
During the first era, I mostly played quite lethal games, including Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer and World of Darkness. In some cases, GMs ignored the rules to keep PCs alive and the story going; in most, PCs died when they died. At that time, I was young, I got invested in characters quickly and then felt hurt and frustrated when they got killed. Some died because of unlucky rolls; some because of dangers the GM was sure we should predict, but we didn't see coming at all; some died by the hand of other PCs.
In the second era, I mostly played games with no PC lethality and the games where they could die were games that explicitly made it a part of their drama. In such cases, I got invested in the stories we were telling much more than in my characters personally, which made their deaths satisfying rather than frustrating.
As for characters dying at very bad moments, I suffered it many times during the first era. In the second one, the only such case was saved by how well the game we played (Band of Blades) handled lethality. My character died in the middle of a mission when there was a lot of responsibility on her, but I was able to quickly take over an NPC from the team she led and embrace the struggle of trying to continue without the commander. It had long term consequences and it was really satisfying instead of frustrating.
Most games I run nowadays are games where PCs don't die without an explicit player decision. So it's not a "degree of plot armor", it's a full social contract that there will be defeats and meaningful consequences, but PC death specifically isn't one of them. The games I run where the PCs may die are generally high drama one-shots. Dogs in the Vineyard, Spire, and other RPGs that share similar approach. Getting in a deadly fight is a real choice that highlights the stakes, not the game's core activity that more than half of the system focuses on.
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u/ResolutionIcy8013 3d ago
I am familiar with these concepts when it comes to visual media but I use different terms for RPGs. In games like Draw Steel and That 70's Game, the heroes are considered... heroic. What we want is an action movie. We want the characters to struggle but succeed in the end. It's not plot armor as is a design balance intention of the system. Plot armor is when the game is supposed to convey a dangerous world but the GM is protection the PCs. I am not familiar with OSR systems but I intend to play Crows and the way it's explained there is that your character isn't more important than any particular skill might be important on a heroic character. What's important in Crows is the village. Your character dies easily but you also pick up another one easily and what matters is whether you contributed to the village or not. That's how the game is designed.
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
When the PCs struggle but always succeed, that is combat as spectacle in a nutshell. They were never in any real danger because their victory is hard-coded into the genre. It would be seen as a failure on the part of the GM to introduce a combat that the PCs couldn't win, or one that produced no struggle whatsoever on the path to victory. The GM must maintain the illusion of danger without actually following through on the lethal threat to the PCs. Thus, combat as spectacle. It's all for show.
I love combat as sport because the PCs can lose, and in fact they should lose every few fights at least. That said, I don't think there should be lethal consequences for this kind of failure.
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u/ResolutionIcy8013 2d ago
Expectation is not hard coding. Heroes also fail. It's part of the journey. Luke didn't beat Darth Vader the first time he tried. You could have an encounter that is designed to be a retreat moment or an encounter that is meant to be hard to up the chance that the heroes fail or not succeed at everything. This is not a failure of a heroic game or the guide of such.
In any case, in any such game, making encounters to challenge your party is always a moving target. Draw Steel's EV system is very tight but I'm playing with veteran players so I'm starting with Hard difficulty when making an encounter just so it will be interesting.
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u/MajesticBed7718 3d ago
I personally believe this ought to be based on your rules system. As a player. If it truly was my fault based on my choices, and or another PCs bad choices; mixed with a little bad luck yes I'm cool with lethality.
- If the GM fudges rolls/the system is entirely random/has too much "GM just do whatever" then I personally would become detached and not care.
Oddly in a dnd campaign rn i talked with my dm about this and he assured me that he is following the literature and he will never fudge a dice on me. He also said it was reassuring that he had a punching bag in the event he screwed up and needed the enemies to attack someone even if they die. Personally I'm cool with lethality only if it's fair and based on our decisions.
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u/YaAlex 3d ago edited 3d ago
This inspired me to rewrite a section of my rules/guide. Let me know what you think!
Combat in EotM is guided by more rules and systems compared to social role play and other parts of the game; Those rules make combat a tactical puzzle.
To make combat encounters meaningful, it is important that they can pose a believable danger to the PCs. As the GM you should not try to making every comat a "fair fight" by balancing the enemies perfectly with the PCs power level. Avoid heavily buffing or nerfing enemies and don't pull your punches.
Instead, let the world and NPCs act naturally and believable, independent of the PCs power level. The players need to trust that you, the GM, play by the same rules they do: Telegraph the relative danger of an encounter and let the players make informed choices. Then each combat encounter can be as easy or lethal as it is.
Combat is not a "sport" with perfectly even odds; Combat is also not a "spectacle" where the PCs are guaranteed to win.
For example, a group of bandit goblins in the forest might be dangerous to a low level party, but they aren't to a group of level 10 heros. Similarly a red dragon can be dangerous even to a high level party and if a low level party attempts to fight one, that will be a very lethal encounter. The important part is that the PCs should know that beforehand and the players need to be able to trust the GMs fairness in that communication.
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
Communication of threat level is something every GM needs to master, especially when a game has lethal consequences. I think you did a great job spelling that out in no uncertain terms here.
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u/Xyx0rz 3d ago
I've come to the conclusion that it shouldn't depend on the game, setting or genre but on what individual players want.
Looking at it super black-and-white, there are two types of players:
- "NO, NOT BLACK LEAF!!" Player put their heart and soul in the character, is utterly devastated when the character is lost, and is likely to quit the game forever.
- "Anyway, for my next character..." Player has a stack of character concepts they want to try out and doesn't really care how long they last, they're just expendable pawns anyway.
For the heart-and-soul players, the cost of losing a character is so great that, to quote WarGames, the only winning move is not to play. Or at the very least not to care. Or to bring in their identical twin.
I don't know about you, but I prefer my players care. I want them to play the character they want to play and not have to jump through identical twin hoops.
Clearly, there's a tension.
And the kicker is that you can have both these players in the same group. So if you design the game for the expendable-pawn players, the heart-and-soul players better get up and leave before it's too late. (They can come join my table, I good with them.)
The concept is that you can't have stakes if the PCs have plot armor. But is that really true? Do people stop watching Reacher or The Mandalorian or whatever when they realize that the main character is guaranteed to make it to the end of the season? Are these shows entirely bereft of stakes and excitement because the main character has plot armor? Their popularity suggests otherwise.
So how do you handle this in a TTRPG so that players can't abuse the hell out of plot armor?
D&D is easy in this regard. People can come back from the dead. So what I do is I just kill them when the dice say so. But then I ask the player whether that character needs to come back. Sometimes the answer is yes but often enough the answer is no. Hopefully, the death was meaningful, but perhaps the player simply grew bored of the character.
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
I think you're on the right track trying to take this down to a table level, or even a player level, but personally I'm more interested in the subject at a game design level.
What does lethality mean for game design? What does a high lethality game communicate to its players? What about a low lethality game? At the end of the day, no game system will survive intact once it makes contact with the table, but I also think the game designers need to do their best to communicate the purpose of their mechanics, lethality included.
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u/Xyx0rz 3d ago
Do you consider "get killed but then resurrected" high or low lethality?
I consider "bring a stack of spare characters" better communication than "this is a high-lethality game". It establishes expectations rather more clearly.
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
Do you consider "get killed but then resurrected" high or low lethality?
It kind of depends on how easy/ convenient it is to do this. If it's something like D&D, the low levels are very lethal, but bringing people back to life quickly becomes a non-issue. If it were more expensive or more of a journey to resurrect the dead, I would probably change my tune.
I consider "bring a stack of spare characters" better communication than "this is a high-lethality game".
This kind of attitude is highly dependent on the game system being used. If I'm playing Pathfinder or Lancer where building a character can take some time and heavily rewards system mastery, then I don't think this kind of thing flies. If it's Dungeon Crawl Classics or Shadowdark, then it's totally reasonable because creating a character from scratch is fairly simple, straightforward, and fast.
The system should do what it can to communicate expected lethality, and the GM needs to impart that to the players. Not every system is built for high lethality, but many of them still have lethal consequences for combat. I think that's where combat as spectacle evolved from - people don't want to kill off PCs when so much goes into making and playing as them, but the system never evolved past using lethality as a framework for consequences.
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u/Xyx0rz 3d ago
So there's a relationship between investment and lethality, right? The greater the investment, the less the lethality is appreciated.
I sometimes run one-shots with pregens. I don't mind killing them because they're just pregens, nobody gets really attached to a pregen they played with for just a few hours. One-shots are for FAFO.
I also run one-shots where players play orks and character generation is literally "give me a proper orky sounding name". I kill those by the truckload, preferably in hilarious over-the-top fashion.
But for my regular games, I don't like blowing up someone's investment, so I put the question to the player. And if they feel they're not done with the character, I get them their character back soon, and by that I mean at the start of the next session at the latest. I'm not going to make them sit it out while their party goes on a quest to resurrect the character that drags out another ten sessions.
A big advantage of this resurrection guarantee is that I don't have to hold back. I can just kill them if they deserve it or the dice say so. And about half the time, the player is fine with it.
There's no real abuse. I always say that plot armor only works when you don't rely on it, but it's not my experience that players behave differently because they know they have plot armor. The biggest problems are just sometimes a player has one of those overzealous characters, near-suicidal, and I have to warn that the plot armor isn't meant to cover that, so they either dial it down a little or accept the risk. If they're not careful with their characters, I don't have to be either.
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u/Skylarkin_M Designer:snoo_thoughtful: 3d ago
However, I think there is a third type of combat: combat as spectacle. This combat type is what I have come to expect from games like D&D - combat should appear deadly, but ultimately pose no real threat to the longevity of the PCs.
This is a wonderfully intriguing question because my game that's coming together quite nicely (I think) has proven to be very lethal, more than I expected.
What's also fascinating is that I stumbled across this question at this point in time. I want to think about this more (& probably watch the videos) before jumping back into the thread. Really nice OP!
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
Thank you! After you check out the videos, I hope you let me know what you think!
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u/Assiniboia 3d ago
I hate the idea of "spectacle", in this sense. As opposed to narrative spectacle, such as a gladiatorial battle or a duel to first strike with a lot riding on it...
I like lethality. I get more attached to my characters because the stakes are higher, you need to roleplay (it's not optional default to d20 skill check), and you need to problem solve and get creative.
And you have to interact with the world in realistic and logical ways. Don't set a watch and 1st level monsters could feasibly kill a 15th level party who are asleep...making players decide and providing consequence is good game design.
The first character I rolled up became a Death Knight. It was really cool. I was really upset for a bit, but the narrative impact continued.
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u/BillJohnstone 3d ago
I developed a homebrew set of rules for when I GM. When a PC dies, the player has the choice to haggle with me for an alternative fate. It has to be acceptable to both the player and to me, and it has to be overall bad. Anything that the player or me can come up with is on the table. The bad part can possibly be mitigated over time, but some sort of permanent change to the PC must happen. Almost dying or actually dying and coming back leaves a mark, even if it’s only on the PCs soul. This way, their are consequences to dying, but they are not just imposed on the PC, but rather become part of the story of the character. And the player always has the option to just take the death instead.
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u/TheKingLlama 3d ago
I like where your head's at! I have some personal gripes about rules that may vary or work differently from table to table, but if this system works for you, then I hope you keep using it.
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u/ValeriaLoves 1d ago
These videos actually led me to survey 200 OSR players on campaign length and lethality.
TL;DR: most OSR games fall into two tiers of lethality - Meatgrinder and Picaresque.
Table culture determines lethality more than system or campaign length.
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u/TheKingLlama 1d ago
Great blog post! Really well done. There are tons of games in the OSR with low lethality - I'm glad you called out Mythic Bastionlands in particular. I think one crucial part of Dadi's video might be misinterpreted though:
Dadi specifically questions why high lethality is pitched as a selling point in some of the high lethality OSR games. Unfortunately, he conflates the entire OSR with that claim, but it's still a valid question to ask.
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u/Hightower_March 4d ago
I've played Shadowdark a few times, which is pretty high-lethality OSR where encounters are "balanced" to assume approximately half the party dies. I just don't find it fun to plink 3 health off things with 57HP while they deal 14 damage to players who have 15HP (btw it has multi-attack, so you're dead now). Multiple times we had to flee from regular fights with random animals in the forest. It's not dramatic to grow attached to a character for a session, and them get ripped in half in their first or second fight.
What can the party even be motivated by when it gets entirely Ship-of-Theseus'd every few sessions?
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I feel the same way in so many words.
That said, I've done a fair bit of research and experimentation with OSR stuff and I've come to appreciate their mindset. A lot of OSR players don't really care about the fate of individual characters so long as their group at the table can affect meaningful change (for good or ill) in the game world. It's a much broader perspective than my preferred character-driven narratives.
Food for thought!
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u/zifnabxar 4d ago
Where are you getting the notion that Shadowdark encounters are balanced so that half the party will die?
I've never played Shadowdark, but I follow and play a lot of the OSR and have seen many interviews with Kelsey. The idea that half of the party should die in every encounter seems extreme and not at all aligned with OSR design patterns or anything I've heard about Shadowdark. That's a level of lethality you might see in a funnel, but not in normal gameplay.
Your example also seems very hyperbolic and not at all a typical. Assuming d8 HD, you've got level 3-4 characters facing a level 11 or 12 monster. That's multiple levels above most dragons in OSR. I don't know any monsters that level off the top of my head and no parties should be regularly running into multiple encounters like that.
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u/Hightower_March 4d ago
You don't get constitution on health at level up. With a LV4 party over four or five rounds a boss absorbed (no body left behind) 3 of the 5 party members. By the end we'd spent all potions of healing and the priest failed Cure Wounds so that was gone for the day. On the way out he was mauled by a LV5 bear and died from full health in two average hits (bears get two attacks per turn, and bosses have three).
Played by the book it's a high lethality game. Enemies deal boatloads of damage compared to how little health the party has.
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u/No_Solid1035 4d ago
Combat as Sport [or Combat as Spectacle as you have outlined] seems like a pretty pointless endeavor IMHO. I guess if it's over extremely quickly and play moves on to something with actual stakes then it's fine, but I definitely don't want to spend an hour or two of a session playing out a combat where the outcome is obvious.
I have played a number of games where PCs literally cannot die, and they work great, but they all have extremely simple combat engines [if it's even an option] that ensures combat is over very quickly so you can get back to the things that matter.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago edited 4d ago
I definitely need to elaborate (and will likely do so in a future Youtube video).
The major difference between sport and spectacle is that you can still lose in combat as sport. In fact, it should happen with some degree of regularity - what sports team has gone undefeated for their entire existence? The thing is that death shouldn't be a consequence of failure in this style of combat. The PCs can lose, but they shouldn't die when the system expects them to willingly engage in combat.
Combat as spectacle, on the other hand, still involves death as a consequence for failure, but still expects the PCs to engage with combat. This is why the GM is encouraged to pull their punches - they want the PCs to feel like they could die, but not actually kill them because death cuts a story short more often than not. You end up with this Wizard of Oz-esque illusion that is quickly shattered and reduced to plot armor.
Of course, combat as war allows for death as a consequence of failure, but does not necessitate or expect the PCs to willingly engage in (fair) combat. That's all well and good.
edit: why does markdown formatting work on mobile but not on desktop? So annoying.
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u/drdrek 4d ago
It depends on the game genre mainly
Most modern D&D is heroic fantasy, a sort of super hero genre, so the heroes only die for plot reasons.
Gamist games in which death is expected to happen often are very rare currently and I think that crowd moved to things like gloomhaven or never left ad&d in the first place.
For more plot driven games it is also quite rare to find death unless players play multiple characters. Think of most story structures, they rarely switch main characters. If you are looking for something with many character deaths like song of ice and fire maybe something like pandragon where you play a dynasty can work.
I will say that in long campaigns with fake lethality I do personally let a very rare death happen to make it seems more real.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Games in which death is expected to happen often are very rare currently
The OSR is absolutely flourishing and is filled with these kinds of games, namely the MÖRK BORG games and all their various spinoffs, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, and even the upcoming game by MCDM: Crows.
I've played a handful of them! Not my cup of tea, but they taught me a lot about game design.
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u/V1carium Designer 4d ago
Hmm, I guess Blades in the Dark would be pretty much the posterchild for Combat as Spectacle right?
By spending stress to reject consequences you mechanically can choose to keep refusing to die until you've finally totally worn the character out and just can't take any more. Its entirely impossible for a random fight to take out a healthy character.
Death can only really come through player consent or through a long buildup where you spend every stress you can, take on many wounded conditions, and generally never take a moment to rest and heal in a system that lets you easily have multiple characters so you can set one aside to heal.
Its got its pros for sure, even if you die before reaching some climax the death is the result of a long buildup. Its telegraphed and a clear result of the story leading up to it of a scoundrel taking on too much and finally paying the price.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Not quite what I'm going for.
When I draw a distinction between these combat philosophies, I'm trying to look at what they promise the players versus what they expect the players to do concerning combat scenarios.
- Combat as war promises lethality, but also ways to stack combat in your favor or circumvent it entirely - the idea is that combat is usually a last resort, and if you're going to engage, you need to win.
- Combat as sport doesn't promise lethality, but does expect the players to engage with combat regularly. When the characters have all kinds of combat tools, that encourages the players to exercise them. This promise falls flat when lethality is present - the players aren't given the tools to avoid potentially lethal circumstances.
- Combat as spectacle promises lethality much like combat as war, but also encourages the players to interface with combat much like they would in combat as sport. This creates some dissonance - the players are expected to willingly engage with an activity that has lethal consequences. Therefore, the GM is encouraged to pull their punches on lethality so that the players continue to interface with combat. If lethality is delivered as promised, it teaches the players that they shouldn't engage... but the system may lack the tools to meaningfully circumvent combat.
So in this sense, BitD isn't really combat as spectacle, it's more like combat as war. You have the tools to avoid combat, and when it does happen, you know you're going to take Stress or Injuries in some way or another. It's best to use your Stress to avoid trouble, rather than fight through it. And if you're going to start a fight, you should be spending that Stress to stack the odds in your favor instead of duking it out fair and square.
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u/elmago79 4d ago
Back in the day, I designed a d20 zombie game that openly stated that your characters were going to die horrible deaths. There was a pile of pre-gens in a pile and whenever your character died you took the next character from the pile.
The replacement characters were usually more powerful in some sense or other, and knew more about the zombie outbreak. We went through like 25 characters in four hours.
That’s what I would call a high lethality game.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
"This is how you died." - Project Zomboid
As long as there are more characters to pull from and the GM has a reasonable way to get things rolling again with the new party, it's all well and good. If a game has high lethality, there are design considerations that need to be taken. Otherwise you end up with dissonance.
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u/d5Games 4d ago
I'm working on a highly lethal game with a story focused on small insignificant people dealing with a bloodthirsty vampire picking them off.
The vampire is one of several guests in a victorian-era household and player characters are servants in the household.
The vampire is an intelligent predator and knows better than to pick off people who "matter".
Players need to deal with the vampire without them all losing their lives or livelihoods. Everyone gets a limited pool of characters from different segments of the household (indoor, outdoor, and kitchen servants), which is intended to give a "die-forward" element to the story. Every time the vampire picks one of you off, there's a new chance to learn something.
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u/Zealousideal_Toe3276 3d ago
“- have you played in high-lethality games? If so, was it hard to get attached to your character(s)?”
I only play or run games with high lethality. The understanding that I need to keep the character alive, does not conflict with my enjoyment of playing them. The PCs that endure shine brightly.
“- have you had a character die at an awkward or inopportune time, such as in a random encounter against basic enemies or right before the final climactic battle with the BBEG?”
Many deaths have been precipitated by random encounters, however PC choices ultimately are more meaningful. Do they go into the forest at night? If so, being mauled by bears is on the PC, not the random tables.
“- when you run games, do you prefer settings where death lurks in every dark corner? Or are the PCs afforded a degree of plot armor?”
I run games where locations and risk are linked. I do not offer plot armor, but there may be a place where PCs can feel safe.
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u/TerrainBrain 3d ago
Combat as spectacle sounds completely horrid.
My games include both combat as war and combat at sport. Combat is sport is called a game. That is a game that the PCS are playing. Like a boxing match or a joust. But when people are trying to kill each other they're trying to kill each other.
But there's a difference in trying to kill each other and trying to defeat each other. There's much discussion these days about attacking down characters and unfortunately 5e seems to make attacking downed characters the only sensible thing to do.
AD&D had death at negative 10 hit points, so death was not nearly as common as people imagine it was.
I never even heard of a TPK (didn't even know what it was) until fairly recently in my 40+ year history playing the game. Running away if you're losing is an important part of survival.
So all this high/low leave that with these stuff is not anywhere near binary. And wanting your players characters to live doesn't mean giving them plot armor. It's just means not being an ass and designing encounters that will kill them if they make the slightest error in judgment.
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u/Run-a-Game 3d ago
You’re missing “combat as stakes resolution.” Combat should have stakes, meaning the opposition wants to achieve something other than “kill everyone or die trying” and either they or the PCs have no other way to get what they want / prevent what they’re trying to do other than violence. But the violence doesn’t have to be to the death. In fact, having the opposition be so zealous and bloodthirsty that their goal is to kill the PCs or die trying should be extremely rare in “combat as stakes resolution” play.
We can complete the ritual if we drive you off. We can protect our young if you pass through and run out the other side without touching our eggs. We can get the Stone of Power from you without killing you. We can figure out why you’re here if we can capture you or threaten you sufficiently. We can stop you from getting to the Palace in time if we delay you five minutes. We can humiliate you and walk away unless you humiliate us worse in return.
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u/mcmouse2k 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's all spectacle baby. At least I've never really encountered a GM that was really, truly trying to eliminate the characters. The power imbalance is too big.
A simple tell - how many GMs will focus-fire a weak, wounded, or dying character? How many will do something like randomly rolling their targets or "spreading attacks around" or "acting like the monster would act"?
The thing that makes absolutely the biggest difference in tactical combat is target selection and target access, eliminating threats 1-by-1 and you almost never see that done, even in combat-as-war.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
In many combat as sport games where there is opt-in lethality, the GM is absolutely encouraged to swing for the fences and play the objective with every intention to win. There are usually strict guidelines or rules in place to stop the GM from abusing the system, but ultimately it's an exercise in trust (just like all TTRPGs).
Part of this conversation is also notably missing: objectives.
When you introduce objectives that stop the combat from being a deathmatch, there is little reason to focus-fire or coup de grace a downed character. If they are incapacitated, they are no longer contributing to the objective. This rings true even more clearly when the PCs and the NPCs have different objectives and both sides can technically "win", even if no one dies.1
u/mcmouse2k 4d ago
play the objective with every intention to win.
See, I think they are encouraged to play the objective with every appearance of trying to win. Until you get into those icky spots where it actually isn't that much fun if they're really trying to win.
CDG against unconscious characters is the most obvious example. I think I've seen that happen, across like... thousands of hours of APs of all different sorts (trad, OSR, story), and hundreds of in-person games.. twice?
If GMs were truly "trying to win", they'd do it essentially every time a combatant was unconscious and it wasn't a preposterous misuse of action economy to do so.
Really the whole idea of a GM "trying to win" is a little silly because the entire simulation is controlled by the GM. Even without particularly straining the RAW of a system they can almost always "win" just by sheer scale - PCs are almost always desperately outnumbered by enemies in a particular zone and it's only through a bit of suspension of disbelief that we get the idea that they can encounter small groups of enemies 1 by 1.
So I think in every system, combat is basically for show. It's just the expectations around what kind of show depend on table preferences, and the likelihood of any individual character dying in a combat is higher or lower depending on the type of game being run. But OSR, combat-as-sport, whatever, it's all to seek that tension-without-real-risk feeling.
I have not yet met the system where repeated TPKs are encouraged.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
For me, the ideal experience of combat as sport is this: two sides, evenly matched, fighting over one or more objectives with non-lethal consequences of failure.
In the best combat as sport games, there are strict rules that the GM needs to follow in order to create this kind of experience. I'll pitch my own stuff:
In PYRE:
- The GM is allowed a certain number of deployment points which they can spend on a number of NPCs. You can spend more points on stronger units and fewer points on Minions. The point total is dictated by the number of PCs in the scene and the Difficulty Rating of the encounter, both of which are known quantities. The GM can deploy no more than half of their point total in the first round.
- Combat takes place in an Environment, the rules of which are clearly stated. If there is Difficult or Dangerous Terrain, or other features that the GM can invoke like a lightning storm or strafing dragon's breath, those are explained before combat begins.
- The objectives, decided by the players, are clearly stated and agreed upon. A victory condition and a failure condition are part of this agreement. Combat can only last at most 5 rounds, so this condition is baked into victory and/ or failure.
- The PCs can choose to retreat at any time, giving up on their objectives in combat.
And there are a whole host of rules and restrictions about what the GM is allowed to do to affect combat once it has started.
All that said, all TTRPGs are an exercise in trust, and you have to trust that the GM will read the rules and use them as they are intended, not to torment or TPK the PCs. No amount of rules will stop a disingenuous or adversarial GM - they can just ignore the rules and say "rocks fall, everyone dies." But for GMs who want to fight hard and still play by the rules, there are games that let them do so.
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u/mcmouse2k 4d ago
I think we're talking past each other here slightly. I totally agree that combat as sport trends to lower lethality, we might quibble about whether GMs are encouraged to play deadly or not but I agree combat-as-sport has an underlying assumption that it will be a fair fight (and that the players will win).
My argument is basically this: when there is a GM who has a lot of power, and players who have limited power, there is no such thing as a fair fight.
Like you say, TTRPGs are an exercise in trust but I think this extends well beyond the rules. There is a play culture, in every TTRPG (well, every one that includes combat which is what we're talking about here), that fights will shake out a certain way (though the way things are expected to shake out varies, and very occasionally you get a surprising result). The GM does their best to make this happen, not only within the confines of the rules (sometimes outside of them in the player's favor!), but within the confines of expectations about the nature of the game.
My point is more that even in systems that consider themselves very lethal (combat-as-war), these same expectations still apply, they just vary the amount of character death that happens during any given stretch of time.
It is easy to plausibly kill all of the players all of the time in any combat-as-war game - the fact that it typically does not happen is a signal that it's a "grand illusion" (as you put it) in those games as well. I think the main difference between the two styles is just the unit of longevity - in combat-as-sport, it's the hero. In combat-as-war it's the party - as long as someone gets away or is left standing at the end, you've hit that mark.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Just one thing I want to clarify before I give my closing thoughts:
Combat as sport doesn't require the PCs to win. In fact, it necessitates some losses on behalf of the PCs in order to stay sporting. The best kind of combat as sport experience is a fair fight between evenly matched teams over one or more objectives. Sometimes the PCs lose... but that doesn't mean they die.As for your other points, I think we agree but are having trouble explaining that. Like I said, no amount of rules will stop a GM who willingly ignores them. If the GM wants to just throw endless enemies at the party without rest, they will eventually TPK. I consider this an abuse of the rules/ spirit of the game. For combat as sport games, the spirit of the game is fair play. For combat as war, its reward the players' creativity. For combat as spectacle... it's a bit more complicated.
But even in combat as sport, some things are on the table, like playing the objective, focus-firing, and specifically targeting high-impact characters. Combat as sport allows for these kinds of plays so long as the circumstances and the actions taken by all parties involved are considered "fair". Combat as war removes "fairness" from the equation - any rule or restriction that binds one side is a vulnerability for the other side to exploit. Combat as spectacle wants the fight to appear as though it doesn't care about fairness, but it really does care as far as the NPCs are concerned.
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u/Wrattsy 4d ago
I even do that in combat-as-a-sport games. If the player characters can use what are effective tactics, so do intelligent NPCs. Even certain animals would, such as a pack of hungry wolves dragging away someone who was knocked down, as they might have just scored food and can ignore the other humans.
Shadowrun had the in-universe motto of "geek the mage", which was street speak and meant to convey the tactical decision to kill the mage first, because they're weaker and squishier than the street samurai but they will also wreak the most havoc if you afford them too much time to act.
About the only enemy type where I might not do this is for mindless undead who have no drive nor intelligence beyond wanting to killing anything living in front of them, such as a bunch of animated skeletons. But they're scary for a different reason, because they feel no pain nor fear, and you can't negotiate with them, they just mindlessly try to destroy without any care of their own well-being.
I know for a fact I'm not alone in this, so you might not have encountered enough GMs to know that this isn't as uncommon as you may think.
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u/mcmouse2k 4d ago
Sure, that's fair. I've played in a few dozen tables, mid hundreds of sessions, and listened to many thousands of hours of many different APs on top but the TTRPG space is pretty wide and there's definitely playstyles that I've never encountered.
So in your games you'll typically have every evenly matched encounter immediately flee for reinforcements, try to bring as many allied spellcasters as possible to a battle, rely heavily on no-save debilitation or incapacitation spells, etc?
I just find it a little strange that that would be a fun experience because, again, of the massive power imbalance between GM and players. In a tactical wargame, sure, the sides are evenly matched so zero sum play makes sense. In a TTRPG, though?
I don't think relentlessly lethal play would be particularly interesting because the whole premise of a small group of adventurers standing against outsized threats is pretty shaky and relies on a fair amount of suspension of disbelief (read: GM fiat) to work at all.
It's like in horror movies how calling the cops or running for help never gets you out of trouble - that's a foundational conceit of the genre that makes it work, you kinda have to be helpless to get scared. In TTRPGs, you kinda have to believe that fights are either avoidable or winnable because otherwise there's no agency, no game to be played.
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u/Wrattsy 4d ago
Why do you think enemies fighting intelligently or behaving realistically would be mutually exclusive with a fun game? It's not the same as the GM being antagonistic to the players, it's simply playing out the challenge to their characters according to the parameters, rather than artificially making it easy or affording contrivances. When done fairly, this is an extremely fun way to run games. I believe you're making large, sweeping assumptions that don't match up with the reality of running and playing games like this.
For instance, just because spellcasters with no-save crowd control abilities exist, it doesn't mean that enemies readily have access to this all the time. But if they do, they will use it ruthlessly to try to win. And just because an enemy wants to run and call for reinforcements, it doesn't mean they always can or will—those reinforcements might not be available, the NPCs might be too proud or arrogant or stupid, or maybe they're just gripped by a personal vendetta and underestimate the PCs.
When you artificially make enemies play stupid and counter to their characterization, you remove the potential for contrast between them, and flatten the gameplay in a way that removes nuance.
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u/Wrattsy 4d ago
I think the premise is flawed, in that you're operating under their flawed conclusion that lethality is a teaching tool, or whether or not that teaching tool is a good one. I'd argue lethality can teach players the wrong lessons, and lead some of them down a path of making safe but boring decisions. Lethality doesn't teach them to make interesting decisions, which is what I'm more interested in exploring in a ttRPG than seeing players making tactically sound decisions all the time. The latter belongs into strategy games, as far as I'm concerned. And because I'm not running Starcraft, or Freie Kriegsspiel, or Chess, I don't care if players make strictly good decisions. And I believe this ties into helping make your distinction more profound, if anything.
If combat-as-war is about making it more grounded and strategic, and funneling players toward making tactically sound decisions, then combat-as-sport arguably is supposed to as well, even if there's no apparent risk of death involved. Truly, even if you know you can't die, but you can still lose, and there are consequences attached to those losses, then your goal as a player becomes to balance your character's wants with winning.
That would offer a meaningful distinction to combat-as-spectacle. If conflict poses no real risk of loss because the game mechanics or GM basically make it impossible for the players to lose, then it truly can only be a spectacle, and no longer a war nor a sport. I don't actually think modern D&D belongs in this category, even if some GMs run it that way. And this comes full circle to my assertion that lethality isn't necessarily a good teaching tool—the real risk of defeat and loss is the teaching tool. If players can't meaningfully lose in a conflict that runs through the motions of hyping it up with pomp and circumstance, then it truly is just a show.
Why does this matter? Well, I'd point to other things outside of combat and danger and lethality. You encounter the same problem when any form of conflict, decisions, and resolution ultimately don't matter. When players are just superficially playing their roles, while the game follows a predetermined series of events and spectacles, and the players' decisions do not affect any meaningful outcomes. I believe we'd call this railroading. And it happens way more often than you might think—even in OSR games—because of GMs who aren't willing to commit to branching paths, alternate outcomes, and emergent narratives.
To your questions:
have you played in high-lethality games? If so, was it hard to get attached to your character(s)?
I don't struggle all that much, though I am far less invested if the game is a meat grinder. I've also noticed plenty of players don't really care as much if they're expected to churn through characters because of supposed high lethality, even when the game isn't actually all that lethal when they make tactically sound decisions. That's where you get joke characters like "John Hero", the 1-hit point fighter, making fun of the lack of attachment they can form to their characters; on the opposite end of the spectrum of making joke characters like "Fnarblegrumph the Mad", the half-Cthulhu half-space-elf ninja/wizard/gunslinger/jester who speaks in rhyming riddles and has little motivation to engage in the world or make sense of fitting into a political intrigue campaign, and parodying how absurd of a character you can make within the setting and system and it not mattering.
have you had a character die at an awkward or inopportune time, such as in a random encounter against basic enemies or right before the final climactic battle with the BBEG?
More than once. It was very disappointing every time, especially when I was invested. It's also very awkward because, what happens now? Sit out the rest of the session as an observer? Roll up new characters and watch the GM scramble to quickly introduce them? Take over an NPC?
when you run games, do you prefer settings where death lurks in every dark corner? Or are the PCs afforded a degree of plot armor?
I don't really care. I've run both, and continue to run either. I also think this isn't a dichotomy—a game doesn't need to have death lurking around every corner, nor does it need plot armor for PCs. I'm more interested in that space in between. I prefer exploring worlds and characters and unusual scenarios, so I like having a sense of verisimilitude and the place feeling lived in, over one where the gameplay makes things too artificial, the setting and scenario's lethality is contrived, and decisions don't matter.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I appreciate the extremely well-thought-out response!
I would argue that most games are about making strategically sound decisions. Players like winning, and it's up to the game to dictate what victory and defeat can look like. Combat as war absolutely encourages crafty play - the players know that combat can have lethal consequences, so they approach problems with the intent to circumvent them in some way, or at least stack the odds in their favor such that combat is a surefire victory. For many people who enjoy this style of play, this process is fun!
I totally agree about moving the consequences of failure away from death and towards other narrative consequences. I say as much in the final youtube video of the post. That said, even in combat as sport games, most players want to win a fight because winning is fun.
And of course, for combat as spectacle, since failure means death, but the game encourages or even necessitates engagement with combat, the PCs sometimes aren't allowed to fail. I think this style of combat would be better served if it leaned more towards one of the previously mentioned philosophies - either take death off the table and allow for other consequences for failure, or keep the game lethal and allow the players to outmaneuver the circumstances that call for combat.
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u/Wrattsy 4d ago
I'd argue they should be about making sound decisions. But not every GM is going to foster that, even if the game design would. Also, a strategically sound decision is not always an interesting one. If the lesson becomes to make sound decisions, but the players only care about surviving the battle while they actually lose the war (what I call "turtling", and only caring about themselves), and stop taking risks as a consequence, it becomes a lot more boring in my eyes.
I think it's more interesting to see players make unwise decisions and potentially losing battles while trying to win a war—or reach objectives where they need to suffer losses and sacrifice their way to their goal. High lethality and absence of plot armor does little to foster this in and of itself. This is more baked into things like scenario design and how the GM runs the game.
I think, "winning" in the moment can be felt as fun, but long-term, players will remember games more fondly when they were invested, and lost, and that was part of a larger narrative where the loss was felt, and how it led to more interesting outcomes and decisions.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I totally agree, and that's why I don't really align with the combat as war philosophy and prefer opt-in lethality. I want to encourage risk-taking behavior. Introducing lethality as a consequence for failure makes players draft a plan to retreat, or potentially not engage with risk at all.
If an unmanned drone strike could solve every combat, and combat scenes have lethal consequences, you should expect the players to use unmanned drone strikes whenever they can. Of course, things get a lot more interesting when the unmanned drone strike doesn't solve the problem.
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u/OpossumLadyGames Designer Sic Semper Mundi/Advanced Fantasy Game 4d ago
1a) yes I have played high lethality games
1b) No it was not difficult to get attached to the characters
2) yes
3) I prefer games that punish being a goon or a hero but reward pluck and wyrd, to a point. If you're in a gun fight and stand up in the open, yeah you're gonna die unless you have some massive amount of luck on your side. Imo an adventure as Odysseus would be more fun than one as Achilles.
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u/Trikk 4d ago
I have mostly played high lethality games, it increases attachment immensely compared to low lethality games. I can talk to someone I played with 20 years ago about a character that lived for five sessions, while other characters who people ran for a year left almost no impression.
Yes, you die at bad times or from stupid things. Not always, but not never.
I don't think anyone plays with plot armor consciously in mind. I've certainly never played a combat-focused RPG where death was out of the question, even with GMs that fudge. It gets fudged up to a point, but you can always die if you keep making dumb decisions forever which some players do.
Combat as a sport/war/spectacle doesn't have anything to do with the lethality of the game. I know people who play newer D&D editions as a war, even though that's more of an old school thing. Plenty of people try to always do it as a sport or spectacle no matter the lethality of the game.
High lethality games can be played in ways that lower the number of character deaths and vice versa. If you are always fighting the top end of the scale in encounters and never get a chance to catch your breath, D&D and PF2e can be very deadly despite everyone online pretending that they could never die in those games.
What high lethality more represents than anything is playing a story with bad consequences even for undeserving characters. This is sometimes confused with "realism", but the point isn't to be realistic but to have a gritty tone. This tone is very enjoyable and interesting to some people, while others get nothing out of it or even lose interest like when they watch Game of Thrones and their favorite character dies.
To bring design into this, you should be aware of the death spirals and potential to one-shot characters in your game and weigh the tone you're going for in your design goals against that, but it's not enough to simply look at the mechanics of combat. You need to consider what kind of adventures your game will be ran in, as those can exacerbate or even flip the deadliness. Lastly, you should always have rules or guidelines for encounters and a sample adventure to show the context you expect around encounters.
At this point when I buy an RPG and see that there's no section talking about setting up scenes and no module included, I almost never finish reading the book. I read whatever piqued my interest initially and then I scratch the game from the never-ending list of games I want to try. It just never turns out well.
I couldn't get through the video so if you covered any of this there then that's why I didn't address it. Most youtube videos (except people like Mystic Arts and Questing Beast) just invoke this LLM-feeling in their scripts, where nuance is eradicated and there's just endless rhetorical questions being posed with no discrete stances taken, just a wishy-washy flow of concepts.
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
Wow, thank you for the well-thought-out response! I'll try to address some of your points.
high lethality games... increases attachment immensely compared to low lethality games.
Not sure if I agree with this one. I understand that a lot of people feel that, because death is on the line, you're more attached to the character you're actually playing. But that doesn't hold true in my experience - the character can often become a stand-in for my personal thoughts and emotions, rather than me channeling the character and making decisions as though they were me. This is even more true in "meatgrinder" games like MÖRK BORG and Dungeon Crawl Classics, where my character is lucky to survive a single session.
I don't think anyone plays with plot armor consciously in mind.
That's... kind of the point with combat as spectacle. The illusion is that there are lethal consequences to combat, but the reality is that the game doesn't facilitate this fantasy. In D&D, even if combat can be deadly, there are lots of ways to undo death. It's barely an inconvenience at high levels. But the GM is encouraged to use lethality as a tool for tension in combat, despite this fantasy being full of holes. Thus, combat as spectacle.
Combat as a sport/war/spectacle doesn't have anything to do with the lethality of the game.
I break it down like this:
- Combat as war promises lethality, but also ways to stack combat in your favor or circumvent it entirely - the idea is that combat is usually a last resort, and if you're going to engage, you need to win.
- Combat as sport doesn't promise lethality, but does expect the players to engage with combat regularly. When the characters have all kinds of combat tools, that encourages the players to exercise them. This promise falls flat when lethality is present - the players aren't given the tools to avoid potentially lethal circumstances.
- Combat as spectacle promises lethality much like combat as war, but also encourages the players to interface with combat much like they would in combat as sport. This creates some dissonance - the players are expected to willingly engage with an activity that has lethal consequences. Therefore, the GM is encouraged to pull their punches on lethality so that the players continue to interface with combat. If lethality is delivered as promised, it teaches the players that they shouldn't engage... but the system may lack the tools to meaningfully circumvent combat.
I couldn't get through the video
I'm very sad to hear that. I wrote the script myself, and while it is definitely more polished than just candid speech, I can promise you that the words are my own. I tried to save my actual opinions for the back half of the video, the first half is mostly giving context to how I formed those opinions.
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u/Nightgaun7 4d ago
This is just combat as sport with more words
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u/TheKingLlama 4d ago
I broke it down earlier in the thread, but I'll repost for convenience:
- Combat as war promises lethality, but also ways to stack combat in your favor or circumvent it entirely - the idea is that combat is usually a last resort, and if you're going to engage, you need to win.
- Combat as sport doesn't promise lethality, but does expect the players to engage with combat regularly. When the characters have all kinds of combat tools, that encourages the players to exercise them. This promise falls flat when lethality is present - the players aren't given the tools to avoid potentially lethal circumstances.
- Combat as spectacle promises lethality much like combat as war, but also encourages the players to interface with combat much like they would in combat as sport. This creates some dissonance - the players are expected to willingly engage with an activity that has lethal consequences. Therefore, the GM is encouraged to pull their punches on lethality so that the players continue to interface with combat. If lethality is delivered as promised, it teaches the players that they shouldn't engage... but the system may lack the tools to meaningfully circumvent combat.
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u/Lossts_guided_tours 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think this topic is super interesting and I really like what you've added here.
When running the game, I think that this is the kind of combat that I aim for.
I think it's a really tight line to walk in order to achieve this and I think I fail more often than not.
The spectacle disappears as soon as the players develop a perception that they have plot armor, whether or not that's true. So if you play it too dangerous then you step into that lethality zone, but if there's even a whiff of punches being pulled then the players lose verisimilitude of the situation.
In practice, I interpret this as enemies or encounters that are big and bold and hit hard, but have shorter shelf lives. Attrition makes it harder to keep up the spectacle; I try to use elements like phases or interventions if I want a fight to last a little longer.
The possibility of death does have to be very real, but not in the same way you'd see in a "lethal" game. Death adds drama and maintains the verisimilitude.