# Suspense in RPGs



## pemerton (Jun 19, 2018)

Here's an old blog post from Vincent Baker's website:

*A Small Thing About Suspense*
I have no criticism cred to back this up. Just amatuer observations. So kick my butt if you gotta.

*Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.*

I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on the edge of our seats! What's up with that?

*Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.*

What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't know _what it will cost_.

Everybody with me still? If you're not, give it a try: watch a movie. Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to buy victory, it's as straightforward as that. That's why the payoff at the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we're like _ah, finally_.

What about RPGs?

Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I'm not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that's the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.

So here's a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.

Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?​
Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?


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## Aldarc (Jun 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?



I agree with a lot of what he saying here, and he offers some valuable insight, but then I also think of movies like _Cool Runnings_. Will they succeed in the end? You would think yes by standard storytelling conventions - and suspense builds in that direction - but it also turns out that they fail in the end due to their bobsled having a mechanical failure. Their "success" comes only from earning the respect of those evil Swiss, their local Jamaican community, and a world skeptical about a Jamaican bobsled team. 

In terms of RPG, I would say that Fate does what Vincent describes fairly well. There are several mechanics that provide players with options to "buy victory." You failed that roll? The player can choose to either invoke an Aspect with a fate point to either reroll the results or add a +2 to the result (and possibly more). Or the player could choose to accept the roll result, but then choose to "succeed with a cost." Part of the tension of gameplay in Fate is pushing players to make these sort of choices that highlight what moments are important for their characters and achieving their goals.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?



 Obviously, the PCs buy victory with the currency of limited resources:  in D&D, spell slots; in FATE, FATE points; in Storyteller pools/tracks (BP, Willpower, Humanity)...


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## pemerton (Jun 19, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Obviously, the PCs buy victory with the currency of limited resources:  in D&D, spell slots; in FATE, FATE points; in Storyteller pools/tracks (BP, Willpower, Humanity)...



But what have you got in mind? Eg what sorts of structures for framing challenges will lead to choices to buy victory?

For example, how do you establish stakes or buy-in?


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But what have you got in mind?



 I suppose you could just put price tags on victory conditions, take it or leave it.  Or you could put certain conditions that /could/ lead to victory on sale, for a limited time, or offer two victories for the price of one.  Or you could auction off victory, like ebay, or take sealed bids...

...puns, pemerton, puns were what I had in mind.  
Sorry.



edit: oh, and if you can't afford to pay for victory, you could always _charge_ - especially in 4e, where charging could be very effective.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 20, 2018)

OK, I feel bad about that, I'm going to /try/ to be serious, now...



pemerton said:


> Eg what sorts of structures for framing challenges will lead to choices to buy victory?



 Incremental ones, I suppose.  One giant drama-suck in many games is a skill system that goes no further than single-check pass/fail.  Similarly, for a combat challenge, 'Nova's or death-spirals can blow or drain your encounter's suspense... 

_...sorry, I slipped there for a moment..._



> For example, how do you establish stakes or buy-in?



I know those have some game-theory jargon meaning, and I'm just going to proceed, in defiance of all my past experience with game-theory jargon, as if they were the intuitive meanings implied by the words (you can skip linking the 10000-word Ron Edwards Dissertation on why 'stakes' are only tangentially alluding to something you stand to lose, and actually have to do with whether Zebras are red with black stripes, or white with red stripes).  
::deep breath::_ ...serious, Tony, serious..._

So, if you don't have buy-in, if the players don't care about the goal, then they're not going to 'pay' much to achieve it, so your suspense is DoA.  

And, to build suspense, the stakes should presumably be raised as you step through your incremental challenge structure.  

Given that, you need to establish the Goal or Victory condition, first, and assure the players are committed to it.  Best way may well be to let them define the Goal.  You can tweak the conditions that will achieve it from what they expect, perhaps, but letting them set it, and be able to achieve it, would be good.  No Gotchyas, no Deus Ex Machinas.

They should come up with "first we need to..."  if they don't, you should provide it.   If they come up with several things, great.  As they get to work, making checks or expending resources or whatever, each failure reveals/causes a complication that costs resources up-front, or needs to be dealt with in ways that may expend resources (standard resources for the game, or situational ones like time or survival-days or favors or credibility or whatever).

The players should be able to see the goal, and see that they're getting closer to it, even if the PC cannot 'in the fiction,' too. ( One GM I know uses "cut scenes" effectively - things that are happening or have happened long ago elsewhere in the setting that inform what we're doing, even though out characters know nothing about it, at the time it's revealed to the players.  That can build suspense, too, FWIW.)


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2018)

Suppose we have established a goal. (Maybe the players choose this. Maybe the GM reads them the blurb on the back of the module cover and the players agree to run with that.)

Probably the GM, or the module, provides a starting point for doing something that might contribute to that goal. Suppose that the players (via their PCs) engage that starting point and fail. How do we now respond to that - ie establish an opportunity to pay a cost ("escalation!") in order to keep pursuing victory?


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## Les Moore (Jun 20, 2018)

One way to preserve suspense is for a PC to get killed, occasionally. Sure it happens more in the lower levels, but when
a higher level character buys it, it preserves the integrity, suspense, and overall rewarding outcome of the game.


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## billd91 (Jun 20, 2018)

I think one way to build suspense is to feed the players more information that they wouldn't know but that show how their enemies are on the move. It's like the way a director keeps viewers on the edge of their seats - we see the main characters doing something, but we also see their antagonists at work - and now we're feeling tension and anticipation because we want the protagonists to prevail, but it's hard to be totally optimistic they will if the enemy is getting into a better position or nearing the completion of their goals - and we can see and feel the race against time...

I keep thinking of the late scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's *Notorious*. Cary Grant is with Ingrid Bergman and they have to escape her Nazi husband who has been poisoning her. But they keep drawing out the scene even though we've also seen her husband and his Nazi cronies and we know that if they don't get a move on and get out of the house both of them are in deep trouble. So there's this massive tension and you wonder if they will escape in time or she will die of the poison. If we didn't know the Nazis were about, much of the suspense in the scene would be gone. Same with things in *Avengers: Infinity War*. Much of the suspense in the movie comes not just from worrying about what's going to happen to our heroes, but also from us seeing how far advanced Thanos is in achieving his goal. 

So if you want to give your players a bit more suspense, reveal how close their enemies are to their goals, reveal a few bits of info about the opposition and how nearby or dangerous they are, be a bit more free with info about the antagonists and let the players stew over it. If they don't know they have enemies or they're too nebulous and ill-defined, they might not even know that they should be worried.


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## Manbearcat (Jun 20, 2018)

Well this is certainly very "Dogs in the Vineyard-ish!"

I obviously agree with what Vincent is saying here.  Victory/power/honor/survival, but at what price and all the way down to outright Pyrrhic Victories will answer questions about humanity or "who is this PC" or "what have they become?"  Ultimately, the answer to those questions are much more profound and ultimately fulfilling than questions like "did I build this guy well enough and deploy his abilities well enough so that the fiction spits out 'best swordsman who ever lived' by the time we're done playing?"  Those questions are fun and interesting, but they don't carry much emotional weight.  The fires of real suspense burn in proportion to their means of ignition...and that ignition is emotional heft.

This is why games like Dogs, Burning Wheel, Sorcerer, My Life With Master, Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark are so meaty and visceral.  The stakes are extremely high and the GMing ethos, PC build mechanics, resolution mechanics, reward cycles, and advancement schemes ensure that gain comes with cost...and oh will there be lots of cost...and with that cost change.  The entire process is extremely suspenseful because no one has to force anything or bend anything to their will.  You can merely play_the_game and this is assured to happen.  So everyone (GM included) gets to be in on the suspense ride of how this all shakes out;  who gets redeemed, who becomes irredeemable, and who ends up so broken that they care about neither.

Death isn't nearly as interesting.


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## Umbran (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?




Pain.  Possibly death.

Have you ever played Dread?  It works on the premise of delaying the inevitable - but the inevitable thing isn't success, but dramatic failure.

In Dread you have a tower of Jenga blocks.  If you need to determine if something is successful, rather than roll a die, you pull a block and put it on top, just like you were playing Jenga.  If the tower falls, bad things happen.  In the core/basic version, the last character that made a draw dies.  In other variations I have seen, it is a pretty catastrophic failure.  And we know, as the game progresses, that tower *will* fall, eventually.

So, the thing they aren't putting off is a win, but a major loss.  And yes, this does build suspense.  But you pretty much know what the cost will be, the only questions are when, and who.


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2018)

Les Moore said:


> One way to preserve suspense is for a PC to get killed, occasionally. Sure it happens more in the lower levels, but when
> a higher level character buys it, it preserves the integrity, suspense, and overall rewarding outcome of the game.



I'm not sure how this generates suspense - especially if it is predictable!

I can see that it might generate tension - "Is my PC going to die as a result of this?" - but that in and of itself, without more, doesn't seem to generate suspense (eg if the player can just bring in a new PC of roughly the same functionality, then what cost has been paid?).


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2018)

billd91 said:


> I keep thinking of the late scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's *Notorious*. Cary Grant is with Ingrid Bergman and they have to escape her Nazi husband who has been poisoning her. But they keep drawing out the scene even though we've also seen her husband and his Nazi cronies and we know that if they don't get a move on and get out of the house both of them are in deep trouble. So there's this massive tension and you wonder if they will escape in time or she will die of the poison.



But isn't this a bit like Vincent Baker's example of _Babe_? We're pretty sure, aren't we, that Ingrid Bergman will survive - so what exactly is generating the suspense?

That's not to object to the sorts of reveals (and cut scenes?) that you mention in your post, only to wonder more about how they're related to the generation of suspense.

Another issue has to do with making a RPG work - which is what I was trying to get at with [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] upthread. If the players fail their check, and so they don't get out of the house and get found by the Nazis, how does this feed into the maintenance of suspense? How does the scope for paying further costs get introduced into the play of that game at that moment?


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## pemerton (Jun 20, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Pain.  Possibly death.
> 
> Have you ever played Dread?  It works on the premise of delaying the inevitable - but the inevitable thing isn't success, but dramatic failure.
> 
> ...



I've never played Dread, but have read quite a bit about it.

Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.


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## Aldarc (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But what have you got in mind? Eg what sorts of structures for framing challenges will lead to choices to buy victory?
> 
> For example, how do you establish stakes or buy-in?



Have you read The Black Cauldron (book 2 of Lloyd Alexander's _Chronicles of Prydain_? The book has a fairly easy setup of the stakes as there are two objectives and each come with stakes and prices for success: 
1) Find and Retrieve the Cauldron 
2) Destroy the Cauldron 

The Big Bad is basically producing undead minions via the Black Cauldron. The plot revolves around ragtag group of heroes retrieving this Cauldron and trying to destroy it for the sake of the war effort. Eventually they find the cauldron in the possession of witches who refuse to relinquish it without a cost. *Stake #1*: _What possession are you willing to sacrifice to retrieve it?_ Everyone offers something of great value, which are all rejected up until main character realizes that he needs to pay with a deceased friend's brooch of oracles that he has inherited. He naturally does not want to give this up, but for the sake of the mission... 

Then he learns how to destroy the Cauldron: One must knowingly and willingly crawl in the Cauldron to die. Now we have *Stake #2*: _Who will sacrifice their life to destroy the Cauldron?_ You the GM control all the non-PCs. Could you have one of the NPCs do it? Sure. But where is the fun in that? 

The victory conditions are fairly simple and the heroes winning is inevitable. But the unknown pertains to "who will pay the costs of victory and how?"


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## Imaculata (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.




I think the general gameplay idea in CoC is also similar (and not just the Sanity system). Call of Cthulhu will often have choices where character death is highly likely, and the players have to make a difficult choice whether the reward is worth the risks. In Call of Cthulhu, much like Dread, defeat is ultimately pretty much guaranteed. Your character will probably die horribly, or go insane.

This reminds me of an entertaining situation that came up during a CoC campaign I ran: 

The players snuck into a house of a crazy cultist at night, when they heard an odd sound coming from upstairs; the sound of a piece of furniture moving slightly. It was a classic moment where they knew they were about to do something incredibly foolish and dangerous, but it was just too tempting... they had to know what was upstairs.

In any ordinary role playing game, they would have shrugged and went in to explore. But in CoC they knew that any confrontation with a monster would most likely be the end of their character, and that raises the suspense immensely. Much like in a horror movie, I described their slow ascend up the stairs, while taking my time to stretch out the suspense of the scene. Then all of a sudden I played the loud sound of a chiming clock to startle them all.


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## Manbearcat (Jun 20, 2018)

I’ll bring up the play example for Dogs that I often cite.

When the player in my home game puts “My brother is my hero” on his character sheet and his Relationship attribute has both helping and complicating dice, everyone at the table knows that something inconvenient to a happy/tidy future is going to happen with his brother.

The suspense-inducing questions are:

“When?”

And when I do ultimately put his hat on the foyer table of a brothel where cattle rustlers are partaking of entertainment, the question turns into “what?”

Then, once we find out what “what” is, the question becomes “what now (and what cost or what are we willing to risk)?”


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## Umbran (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.




With respect, I don't get at all what you are saying here.

In Dread, success is not inevitable.  Neither is failure.  In that, I'm deviating form your OP, which posits that we consider that success is inevitable.

In Dread, the inevitable thing is the fall of the tower.  Death happens when the tower falls.  Death does not postpone the fall - the player does not say, "rather than pull this last brick, I will choose to die instead".  The player may choose to die, rather than pull, but they knock over the tower in the process.  The tower falls, the character dies.  The tower is reset, and the game continues.  The suspense is in how long the inevitable can be delayed, and on who the hammer will fall.

And, if death itself is not considered a price, then perhaps our priorities are a tad askew, hm?


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## Blue (Jun 20, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Obviously, the PCs buy victory with the currency of limited resources:  in D&D, spell slots; in FATE, FATE points; in Storyteller pools/tracks (BP, Willpower, Humanity)...




Just to add to your list, players buy victory with a lot of non-mechanical currency as well.  Trading in that favor they are owed.  Accepting loss of face to the court to beg the king to intervene.  Promising an open-ended favor to an honorable villain for him to withdraw his support from the irredeemably evil big bad.  Sacrificing themselves to allow the ritual to be stopped and the world saved.


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## Les Moore (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how this generates suspense - especially if it is predictable!
> 
> I can see that it might generate tension - "Is my PC going to die as a result of this?" - but that in and of itself, without more, doesn't seem to generate suspense (eg if the player can just bring in a new PC of roughly the same functionality, then what cost has been paid?).




It re-enforces the idea that the players are going into a dangerous environment, which helps foster the suspense, by
stressing the urgency. If everybody thinks their characters are going to be safe, play gets boring. You absolutely DON't want to 
kill characters predictably, that would be a contest between boring and annoying. But, from time to time, a character, upon making a hurried or badly thought out action simply needs to pay the ultimate price for their careless play. 

As a DM, the best thing to do, IMO, to mitigate these cases, is when a character pushes the die button, jump on it. What cost has been paid? The PC loses a developed character, and has to start from zero.
It's not about punishment, so you don't really want to severely penalize a player, anyway.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 20, 2018)

Blue said:


> Just to add to your list, players buy victory with a lot of non-mechanical currency as well.  *Trading* in that favor they are owed.  Accepting loss of face to the court to beg the king to intervene.  Promising an open-ended favor to an honorable villain for him to withdraw his support from the irredeemably evil big bad.  Sacrificing themselves to allow the ritual to be stopped and the world saved.



 Yeah, that's not buying victory, it's bartering for victory.  

That's, like, _totally_ different.



Somewhat seriously, though, there is a line between a price paid that's modeled in the system (you have so many slots/points/whatever, when do you use them?), and a price paid that's part of emerging story-line (this is the current situation, it could change/might not be what it seems, what do you do?).  The former is part of the game, the latter is system-independent, so probably more relevant/helpful in a generic RPG discussion, now that I think of it.


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## chaochou (Jun 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?




For players to be able to 'buy victory' they have to have something to pay with. In the types of games lumpley is talking about, players create characters with multiple dramatic needs and progress towards fulfilling these needs, or not, is how costs are paid and what drives the arc of the story.

Yes, you can find a Jedi master to train you, but your best friend gets frozen. Yes, your informant knows where the stash house is today but your lieutenant wants the investigation wrapped up by the end of the week. Yes, your daemon can open the safe, but you only have four humanity left and you don't want to hear what it wants you to do to your cat...

However, I think it's a mistake to think of 'forcing' the players. This is stuck in a tired, old dog-eared paradigm where roleplaying is the GMs show.

To have drama, the players have to be the dramatis personae. The players have the responsibility, before anything else, to create people with relationships, flaws, desperate needs, dangerous passions. They need characters who are part of a society, carrying the burdens that societies create - weighed down with debt, loaded with expectation, over-confident, addicted, at war with their family, haunted by ill-advised lovers.

These characters, their needs and situations, create the game. The GM doesn't create a world, doesn't build it and impose it on the players. The GMs job is to see what the players have created and breathe life into it, so the tensions and conflicts envisaged by the players begin to move and develop. The GM twists and weaves the threads, but those threads were created by, and belong to, the players.

This is a type of play where the imagining of setting, situation, conflict and opportunity comes from the players. It comes from the conceptions of the dramatis personae. If anything is decided prior to those characters being realised, the game will not feature the type of drama Vincent is discussing.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2018)

Umbran said:


> With respect, I don't get at all what you are saying here.



I thought it was fairly similar to you.



Umbran said:


> In Dread, success is not inevitable.  Neither is failure.  In that, I'm deviating form your OP, which posits that we consider that success is inevitable.
> 
> In Dread, the inevitable thing is the fall of the tower.  Death happens when the tower falls.
> 
> ...



That was what I was trying to get at; and it seemed similar to CoC in that respect (insanity in CoC rather than death).



Manbearcat said:


> The suspense-inducing questions are:
> 
> “When?”
> 
> ...



This seems broadly similar to Umbran on Dread: it is known that some crisis will occur (the collapse of the tower => PC death; the need to confront the PC's brother); but there is uncertainty around when/how this will happen (until suddenly it does!).

In terms of Vincent Baker's framing, this is not uncertainty about what the cost will be. It seems to be uncertainty about what might be achieved before paying the cost. 



Umbran said:


> if death itself is not considered a price, then perhaps our priorities are a tad askew, hm?



Depends. I don't think death is much of a price in some approaches to D&D, for instance - you just bring in a new PC.


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## pemerton (Jun 21, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> there is a line between a price paid that's modeled in the system (you have so many slots/points/whatever, when do you use them?), and a price paid that's part of emerging story-line (this is the current situation, it could change/might not be what it seems, what do you do?).  The former is part of the game, the latter is system-independent



I don't think the latter is system-independent at all. Compare [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example of DitV, where the system establishes a relationship with the PC's brother; or In a Wicked Age (that's on my mind befause I GMed a short session of it not too long ago) which establishes interlinked and conflicting "best interests" for each character (PC and NPC).



chaochou said:


> For players to be able to 'buy victory' they have to have something to pay with. In the types of games lumpley is talking about, players create characters with multiple dramatic needs and progress towards fulfilling these needs, or not, is how costs are paid and what drives the arc of the story.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The players have the responsibility, before anything else, to create people with relationships, flaws, desperate needs, dangerous passions. They need characters who are part of a society, carrying the burdens that societies create - weighed down with debt, loaded with expectation, over-confident, addicted, at war with their family, haunted by ill-advised lovers.



 Ie not system-independent.



chaochou said:


> I think it's a mistake to think of 'forcing' the players. This is stuck in a tired, old dog-eared paradigm where roleplaying is the GMs show.



OK, replace "force" with "invite" or "create the opportunity"?



chaochou said:


> To have drama, the players have to be the dramatis personae.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



In relation to the question in the OP, the bit of bolded is key. _The GM twists and weaves the threads_ is metaphor; but what does it look like literally?

For instance, should every situation that is framed by the GM have, implicit in it, not just the prospect of success (in relationship to dramatic need), but the prospect of paying some cost (in relationship to a different dramatic need)? Or can the cost be brought into play in the narration of failure, if failure occurs? The latter looks like it has the potential to be narratively arbitrary, but perhaps that's just the result of stating things abstractly?


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## Bawylie (Jun 21, 2018)

Ah, yes. Well known suspense thriller BABE. 

I think I disagree with the premise here. Suspense doesn’t involve the cost of victory at all.  Not directly anyway.  I suppose it might seem that way after the fact, a sort of narrative rationale of how the conflict resolved. 

IMO suspense is actually a pause or a break in between actions taken to resolve a conflict and the outcome/resolution itself.  And tension is a sort of measure of the emotional strain between the action and resolution. 

Easiest example I can think of is the cliffhanger ending.  The protagonist dangling on the edge of peril with no salvation in sight and the narrative abruptly ends.  You might think “there’s no way the protagonist dies here” and you may reasonably conclude “it’s just a matter of what it costs him to get out of this - physical strain, injury, whatever.”  But, your assumption is faulty.  You don’t know the protagonist will survive even though you are anticipating it: you won’t actually know the outcome until you see it happen. And so long as your anticipation of the resolution is put off, you’re in suspense, experiencing tension that won’t slacken until the conflict resolved.  HOW that resolution comes to pass is emotionally irrelevant so long as it doesn’t violate or cheapen the conflict/stakes. 

Imagine a protagonist dangling over peril and the next time we see them, the fall itself is six inches to the ground - unless you’re watching a comedy, you’ve been cheated and it feels cheap.  Whereas if the story was a comedy, you’d be well paid with a good laugh from the dissonance. 

Right.  So pretty plainly, the means of resolving tension isn’t important to creating suspense in your game, even though it is important in terms of keeping to the overall theme. 

Then - how do you create suspense?  First, you need to have a conflict that does NOT have a predetermined outcome.  There has to be some risks or stakes that mean something to the people in the conflict.  Second, you need to have some endeavor, effort, or action undertaken to resolve that conflict.  And finally, you need to create (perhaps force?)  a break or pause between the endeavor and its outcome.  It is probably best if that pause capitalizes on the emotional ties the participants have to the stakes.  You’re looking for a kind of arrested feeling, like watching a tightrope walker or something like that. 

In the end, you’re looking to capitalize on opportunities and play with your pacing.  You’re not necessarily introducing markets or costs for victory, most probably because that’s simply transactional. No you want a feeling of gambling instead. More like a wager than a cost.  And that’s why dice can feel suspenseful!  But you might find other wagers within the game itself that have stronger emotional tension.


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## Umbran (Jun 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This seems broadly similar to Umbran on Dread: it is known that some crisis will occur (the collapse of the tower => PC death; the need to confront the PC's brother); but there is uncertainty around when/how this will happen (until suddenly it does!).
> 
> In terms of Vincent Baker's framing, this is not uncertainty about what the cost will be. It seems to be uncertainty about what might be achieved before paying the cost.




Okay, I think I get it now.  Small differences in wording matter.  

You had said, "So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome..."  And my thought was - it totally is suspense in relation to the outcome - but around When and Who, rather than What.  



> Depends. I don't think death is much of a price in some approaches to D&D, for instance - you just bring in a new PC.




That's not death.  That's a nap.


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## Aldarc (Jun 21, 2018)

Bawylie said:


> Ah, yes. Well known suspense thriller BABE.



Keeping in mind that this is also the same director and co-writer of every Mad Max film (and Happy Feet).


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 21, 2018)

For me, the real threat of character death is a source of suspense or trepidation. There are other places for suspense in the game as well (it can occur around drama or just not knowing what is unfolding). But I quite like the classic experience of walking down hall, hoping a blade trap doesn't cut me in half or something.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 21, 2018)

Suspense is definitely all about timing. When will the PC achieve what they want to achieve? Delaying that outcome is the source of suspense, as has been mentioned.

In addition, what are they willing to do to achieve their goals? I’d say this is more about drama than suspense, but the two are related.

As for PC death, I think that can be a source for suspense. If the PC has a goal, but his life is in danger, there’s the possibility he may not love to achieve his goal. That can create some real suspense.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2018)

Bawylie said:


> Easiest example I can think of is the cliffhanger ending.  The protagonist dangling on the edge of peril with no salvation in sight and the narrative abruptly ends.  You might think “there’s no way the protagonist dies here” and you may reasonably conclude “it’s just a matter of what it costs him to get out of this - physical strain, injury, whatever.”  But, your assumption is faulty.  You don’t know the protagonist will survive even though you are anticipating it: you won’t actually know the outcome until you see it happen.



 Meh. You prettymuch do know the protagonist will /survive/ in some sense.  You don't know if he'll extricate himself from predicament, or if he'll miraculously survive the fall, or get rescued, or fall presumably to his death, only to show up later with some improable story ("From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak I fought with the Balrog of Morgoth... Until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountain side... ") that doesn't really adequately explained how he survived.
;P



> Then - how do you create suspense?  First, you need to have a conflict that does NOT have a predetermined outcome.  There has to be some risks or stakes that mean something to the people in the conflict.  Second, you need to have some endeavor, effort, or action undertaken to resolve that conflict.  And finally, you need to create (perhaps force?)  a break or pause between the endeavor and its outcome.



 In a cliffhanger, you just come back later ("same bat-time, same bat-channel!"), in a movie you can cut to a different scene, or show the character's efforts in agonizing detail.  In an RPG, what are you going to do, get a /reeeeallly/ tall dice tower?  Resolution mechanics are not overly time-consuming - heck, some RPGs go out of their way to make 'em fast. 

I think that's what the point was, you put things in the way of the 'inevitable' resolution that, in turn, need to be dealt with, somehow, thus creating that suspense-filled 'pause' between the intent/need/danger and the resolution.  And, yeah, it may add up to a 'cost' (or may seem like pointless temporizing).


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## Bawylie (Jun 21, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Meh. You prettymuch do know the protagonist will /survive/ in some sense.  You don't know if he'll extricate himself from predicament, or if he'll miraculously survive the fall, or get rescued, or fall presumably to his death, only to show up later with some improable story ("From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak I fought with the Balrog of Morgoth... Until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountain side... ") that doesn't really adequately explained how he survived.
> ;P
> 
> In a cliffhanger, you just come back later ("same bat-time, same bat-channel!"), in a movie you can cut to a different scene, or show the character's efforts in agonizing detail.  In an RPG, what are you going to do, get a /reeeeallly/ tall dice tower?  Resolution mechanics are not overly time-consuming - heck, some RPGs go out of their way to make 'em fast.
> ...




I don’t think you KNOW they survive. I think you guess. And I think if the narrative is sufficiently suspenseful, you feel an amount of anxiety about the outcome. Otherwise you’re engaging the meta-narrative of a story intellectually instead of engaging what’s actually happening in this story. A sufficient cliffhanger SHOULD trigger your suspension of disbelief. If it can’t, and there’s no real tension, then it’s a squib. You might have seen more than your fair share of squibs. And ok, fair enough. 

But in an RPG what are you gonna do? I agree that’s the real question here. However, I’m not convinced a market system is anywhere near the answer.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2018)

Bawylie said:


> I don’t think you KNOW they survive. I think you guess.



 Depending on the genre and the mode of storytelling, you can absolutely know.

For instance, if the first scene of the war movie is the old veteran telling a group of people about his experiences before they screen ripples & fades to his younger self, you /know/ he didn't die.  He might very well have fallen off some cliffs and gotten shot, burned, blown up or whatever, but he didn't die. 



> But in an RPG what are you gonna do? I agree that’s the real question here. However, I’m not convinced a market system is anywhere near the answer.



 Neither am I.  It looks like a 'price' could well be extracted in the process and contribute to the suspense, but not that it's the main point.  And resource management in a pretty conventional aspect of RPGs.

But I don't find the idea that it's uncertainty of the ultimate outcome that's the main point, too compelling, either.


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## Bawylie (Jun 21, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Depending on the genre and the mode of storytelling, you can absolutely know.
> 
> For instance, if the first scene of the war movie is the old veteran telling a group of people about his experiences before they screen ripples & fades to his younger self, you /know/ he didn't die.  He might very well have fallen off some cliffs and gotten shot, burned, blown up or whatever, but he didn't die.
> 
> ...




That’s literally what suspense is though. And if your goal is “more suspense in your games” I feel like you’d probably want to understand what it is before you try to put more in.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 21, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Depending on the genre and the mode of storytelling, you can absolutely know.
> 
> For instance, if the first scene of the war movie is the old veteran telling a group of people about his experiences before they screen ripples & fades to his younger self, you /know/ he didn't die.  He might very well have fallen off some cliffs and gotten shot, burned, blown up or whatever, but he didn't die.
> .




I think this is less true than it used to be (in part because some of the suspense got lost as people became more familiar with these patterns). Even if the character is narrating, it doesn't mean he survives now. Just look at a film like Casino. Clearly not a war movie, but still one where that narrator survives lulls you into a false sense of security. I find when I watch movies these days, I am a lot less sure whether a character will survive. More importantly, I tend to find that more entertaining. I specifically seek out films where I think who survives will be less predictable. 

Not saying you can't have suspense in movies or books where you know the lead character survives. I do think it takes a lot more work though.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> Not saying you can't have suspense in movies or books where you know the lead character survives. I do think it takes a lot more work though.



That's really the point:  you absolutely can have suspense, even if you know the ultimate outcome.  Heck, re-watching a Hitchcock movie can still be suspenseful.     In an RPG, the player often knows more about the probabilities and mechanisms of what's going on, not only than their character, but than a hypothetical reader/viewer being told their story, which can get pretty close to 'knowing the outcome,' so it's harder to do suspsense.

It obvious/intuitive answer is, "well, make it easier, then!"  Take more resolution behind the screen, keep modifiers and the like secret, roll player dice as well as monster dice back there.  Just put the player in the deep, scary, dark, and leave him there.   

That may not always be a good answer.  It could rob the player of some of the experience, some of the 'agency,' and even lead to frustration rather than suspense.   

So, since it /is/ possible to have suspense even without much uncertainty about ultimate outcome, in, say, the movies, how can we do it in RPGs?  Building a 'pause' before the final resolution by introducing more complications/challenges that add up to management-resource-metagame 'costs' might be one way to do it.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how this generates suspense - especially if it is predictable!



But it's not.  Nothing is, when left to the whims of dice.



> I can see that it might generate tension - "Is my PC going to die as a result of this?" - but that in and of itself, without more, doesn't seem to generate suspense (eg if the player can just bring in a new PC of roughly the same functionality, then what cost has been paid?).



Tension and suspense are largely synonymous here; and if the table rules say new characters come in at lower level than the party average, say, then right there's a good reason not to die....or to make sure you've laid in for revival insurance.


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## Lanefan (Jun 21, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> For instance, if the first scene of the war movie is the old veteran telling a group of people about his experiences before they screen ripples & fades to his younger self, you /know/ he didn't die.  He might very well have fallen off some cliffs and gotten shot, burned, blown up or whatever, but he didn't die.



As most fantasy RPGs have revival mechanics, this example doesn't quite cross over perfectly: the veteran might have died several times, in fact, and been revived each time.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> As most fantasy RPGs have revival mechanics, this example doesn't quite cross over perfectly: the veteran might have died several times, in fact, and been revived each time.



 Well, sure, if it were a hypothetical old-school-D&D movie instead of an old war movie, the Veteran might have died and been resurected, but it'd seem unlikely, as he's only a 1st-level Fighter.  

...oh, he could have been level drained.


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## Bawylie (Jun 21, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think this is less true than it used to be (in part because some of the suspense got lost as people became more familiar with these patterns). Even if the character is narrating, it doesn't mean he survives now. Just look at a film like Casino. Clearly not a war movie, but still one where that narrator survives lulls you into a false sense of security. I find when I watch movies these days, I am a lot less sure whether a character will survive. More importantly, I tend to find that more entertaining. I specifically seek out films where I think who survives will be less predictable.
> 
> Not saying you can't have suspense in movies or books where you know the lead character survives. I do think it takes a lot more work though.




Yeah. Well the cliffhanger is just the most immediately easily understandable example of suspense. 

That’s not to say “life or death” is the only way to get suspense. Another example is the high stakes card game type of scene. Those too are often suspenseful.  

Really I think the key to it is investment in the outcome and some delay between the action and the outcome.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 21, 2018)

Bawylie said:


> Yeah. Well the cliffhanger is just the most immediately easily understandable example of suspense.
> 
> That’s not to say “life or death” is the only way to get suspense. Another example is the high stakes card game type of scene. Those too are often suspenseful.
> 
> Really I think the key to it is investment in the outcome and some delay between the action and the outcome.




True. But in all these cases I think stakes and not knowing the outcomes matters a great deal. A roll of dice at a gambling table or card game, are suspenseful if the players stand to lose a lot. But that suspense hinges on them actually being able to lose whatever is at stake. Again, this is where the 'game' side of RPGs, and the inherent lack of predictability in RPGs can be a strength.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> True. But in all these cases I think stakes and not knowing the outcomes matters a great deal. A roll of dice at a gambling table or card game, are suspenseful if the players stand to lose a lot.



Problem is that brand of suspense lasts until the die stops.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Problem is that brand of suspense lasts until the die stops.




All suspense eventually gets closure. If the players are at a casino, you'll have building suspense as they win, until they place that final bet. If it is a single hand or something, well, sure, but the suspense also ends in a James Bond movie when the cards are laid on the table. There is plenty of room in an RPG for the suspense to build prior to that (particularly if players and/or NPCs are using dodgy means or trying to psyche each other out). If the situation is role-played, it won't just be a quick moment of the die roll. 

How long the suspense lasts is entirely dependent on what is going on. The suspense can last a long time if the player is moving down a mile long corridor filled with traps; it can also last a long time if the player gets news that someone he loves is about to be shot on the other side of town, and he needs to race their as quickly as possible before the tragedy unfolds.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> All suspense eventually gets closure.



 But if your source of suspense is just the uncertainty of the die roll, 'eventually' comes pretty quick...


> If it is a single hand or something, well, sure, but the suspense also ends in a James Bond movie when the cards are laid on the table....If the situation is role-played, it won't just be a quick moment of the die roll...



In the James Bond movie stuff happens as they play the hand.  You can 'RP' that stuff to stretch out the moment, but you're just stalling, nothing is going to make a difference, the die will fall where it will.
Now, if the game is more than a die roll, if there's a series of decisions or complications or whatever, then the delay feels purposeful.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> But if your source of suspense is just the uncertainty of the die roll, 'eventually' comes pretty quick...




The suspension is resolved by the die roll, and much of the suspense is set by the stakes involved. But you are going to have things leading up to it naturally in play. It isn't like you are just rolling a series of dice and saying what happened. People are explaining what they want to do, asking what they see, NPCs are responding. There is a lot that will be going on prompting the die roll in the first place (and it might not be a single die roll---depends on the situation). 



> In the James Bond movie stuff happens as they play the hand.  You can 'RP' that stuff to stretch out the moment, but you're just stalling, nothing is going to make a difference, the die will fall where it will.
> Now, if the game is more than a die roll, if there's a series of decisions or complications or whatever, then the delay feels purposeful.




It isn't just a delay. What the players are doing leading up to that is definitely going to affect the roll. I mean, again without specifics it is hard to say, but if the players are trying to psych out the opponent or trying to cheat, that could result in a relevant penalty or bonus. Also they could be trying to get information if things are literally being resolved by the draw of the cards (which might be fitting if they are playing something like poker). The RP shouldn't just be stuff you say between the rolls, or just a way of playing out die roll results. It should be shaping things as well. The die roll is just there to resolve any uncertainties.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> The suspension is resolved by the die roll, and much of the suspense is set by the stakes involved. But you are going to have things leading up to it naturally in play. It isn't like you are just rolling a series of dice and saying what happened. People are explaining what they want to do, asking what they see, NPCs are responding. There is a lot that will be going on prompting the die roll in the first place (and it might not be a single die roll---depends on the situation).
> It isn't just a delay. What the players are doing leading up to that is definitely going to affect the roll. I mean, again without specifics it is hard to say, but if the players are trying to psych out the opponent or trying to cheat, that could result in a relevant penalty or bonus. Also they could be trying to get information if things are literally being resolved by the draw of the cards (which might be fitting if they are playing something like poker). The RP shouldn't just be stuff you say between the rolls, or just a way of playing out die roll results. It should be shaping things as well. The die roll is just there to resolve any uncertainties.



Reasonable enough.  As you add more decisions points and complications and opportunities to affect that final die roll, you're also, presumably, making it less uncertain, and, you're adding drama & suspense to the intervening time, because what's going on bears on the final result and how that final result is coming about is unfolding.

So, if loading stuff like that in between a declaration and a die roll that's "uncertain" (for the sake of suspense) can /add/ suspense, can't loading it in front of relative certainty (you know the hero isn't going to die, but not what bad stuff might happen shy of that) also add suspense?  It seems like it should. 

And, IMX, a die roll, however uncertain can be a brief, anti-climactic affair, and so be contributing relatively little suspense.

And of course, the cost of that uncertainty is toted up in dead heroes, anti-climaxes, de-railed stories, and the like.  Oh, hey, I'm back to "cost" - that wasn't even intentional.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Reasonable enough.  As you add more decisions points and complications and opportunities to affect that final die roll, you're also, presumably, making it less uncertain, and, you're adding drama & suspense to the intervening time, because what's going on bears on the final result and how that final result is coming about is unfolding.
> 
> So, if loading stuff like that in between a declaration and a die roll that's "uncertain" (for the sake of suspense) can /add/ suspense, can't loading it in front of relative certainty (you know the hero isn't going to die, but not what bad stuff might happen shy of that) also add suspense?  It seems like it should.
> 
> ...




Again, I am not too worried about every beat being from a story here. You might have anti-climax, dead heroes and the like, but you'll also generate suspense that is meaningful. If I know my character can really die, or easily die, the suspense of that die roll when I trigger a blade trap is palpable. I also find this a much more exciting mode of play. Obviously I don't want my character to die, but when those are the stakes, there is more of a rush of excitement when it is clear a roll might result in death. There is a lot in between of course. Every single die roll won't be 'live or die'. But you will get to those points more if you are handling die rolls honestly and fairly. 

I'm also talking much more about organically having things arise between die rolls. This isn't about laying out a plan in advance. It is more like, the players decide to go to a casino and bet all their haul on cricket fights. I don't know how they are going to navigate that situation, but I know from experience I can bring that situation to life and respond believably as they do. And that interaction is where a lot of the interesting details will unfold. I may be resolving each cricket match with a die roll between the handlers or the crickets themselves (I actually have a system for handling cricket fights). The excitement and suspense comes from all sorts of things leading up to the rolls. First, they'll probably spend time figuring out which cricket to bet on. This can be as quick or as drawn out as they need. They might just eyeball them, they could examine them more closely, or they could spend an hour investigation the handlers and trying to gather intel. Each step is going to be like that. But I don' know what the steps are until the players start talking and doing things. 

And here the die rolls are important. When those happen, they are big moments that everything can hang on. Stuff they've done will certainly have an influence, could even circumvent a roll. But I think the big suspense is going to be felt around that roll as everything gets revealed.


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## billd91 (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> And, IMX, a die roll, however uncertain can be a brief, anti-climactic affair, and so be contributing relatively little suspense.




I agree. That's why just facing an obstacle or challenge or roll of the dice isn't really all that suspenseful - at least not in my experience. You need some other information. That's why I was referring before to knowing something about the antagonist in the situation. A baccarat scene between a PC and an antagonist is a lot more suspenseful if PC knows his antagonist has a hand of 7 when he, himself, has a 5. The hospital scene in *The Godfather* is suspenseful because we can see the rival gang members walking about the hospital as Michael is trying to hide his father from the ordered hit. And, of course, directors do this all the time in movies - they focus on or reveal the actions of the antagonists to us as observers and then draw out the protagonist's actions until we're on the edge of our seats concerned that they're too slow and will be caught out.

I'm working on doing similar things in a Curse of the Crimson Throne AP for Pathfinder. For those of you who aren't familiar, the PCs ultimately end up on a collision course with an increasingly despotic monarch. At the stage I'm running now, I'm revealing insights into how the queen is building her power base and eroding the PCs' allies - they've witnessed the arrival of recruited troops, they've witnessed the slow gutting of the town guard, they're learning more about the disappearance of certain significant power brokers in the city, they've just had their first run-in with external allies of the queen - all of her pieces are falling into place and doing so fairly visibly. A little of this was part of the AP as written, I'm adding more to flesh things out for the group I'm running including giving them informants who know more about the behind-the-scenes activity. Ultimately, what's happening is they're being given reason to be more and more uneasy with the situation - not only do I expect it to drive their outrage, but also drive their feeling that the outcome is uncertain and perilous - a feeling sharpened by the fact that they are learning so much rather than have it all be hidden or revealed only at the last confrontation.


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## pemerton (Jun 22, 2018)

On definitions: Google gives me _suspense_ = _a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen_.

On outcomes: some outcomes (in films, say, or novels) are known. When I'm watching The Bourne Identity, and 10 or so minutes in Matt Damon's character is involved in some mad hijinks the lead to him being chased by security guards, police, etc - well, I know that he's not going to be shot dead (there's another hour-and-half of running time). And I know that he's not going to be locked up with no hope of escape. And, given the posters I saw on the way into the cinema, I can be pretty sure that he's not going to be arrested and put on trial - because this hasn't been billed as a courtroom drama!

But there can still be suspense - _anxious uncertainty over what may happen_. So what is the event that is generating anxiety because it is possible but not certain?

Let's say it's the manner and consequences of the character's escape from the security guards and police. What approach to RPGing will allow this to be replicated (in some fashion, to some degree of approximation)? For instance, what would GM prep look like?



billd91 said:


> directors do this all the time in movies - they focus on or reveal the actions of the antagonists to us as observers and then draw out the protagonist's actions until we're on the edge of our seats concerned that they're too slow and will be caught out.



So how do we do this in a RPG (if we take it as a premise that the GM is not just going to narrate cut-scenes to the players)?

For instance, the player(s) make a check, and it fails (so they eg aren't able to successfuly disguise themselves so they can walk out unnoticed) - if we want suspense, rather than just a cut straight to failure of the sort that you and [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] noted might be anti-climactic, what should be the response?

Do the players get a reroll by staking more? If so, is the reroll purely metagame (that's how 4e, by default, tends to handle it) or something further in the fiction (that's how DitV handles it, and I've done it that way in 4e).

Or some sort of "fail forward"? Which raises the question of where we get the requisite story elements from eg must they have already been implicit in the scene, or just implicit on someone's PC sheet? (Say as a relationship, or Bond in 5e.)

Something else?


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## Jhaelen (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> For me, the real threat of character death is a source of suspense or trepidation. There are other places for suspense in the game as well (it can occur around drama or just not knowing what is unfolding). But I quite like the classic experience of walking down hall, hoping a blade trap doesn't cut me in half or something.



I agree about the former, but not about the latter:
A character dying out of the blue because he didn't bother to check everything for traps is not something I enjoy*. I prefer it, if death results from combat encounters; ideally meaningful encounters.

I don't fudge die rolls, so characters will occasionally die through no fault on the player's side, but I vastly prefer if they're forewarned and death is a consequence of their making bad decisions.

(*: Well, you don't give any context: I dislike (death) traps in general and only use them if the characters have had the opportunity to gain hints about their existence. If they choose to cast all warnings aside, it serves them right if their innards become part of a room's decoration...)


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Jhaelen said:


> I agree about the former, but not about the latter:
> A character dying out of the blue because he didn't bother to check everything for traps is not something I enjoy*. I prefer it, if death results from combat encounters; ideally meaningful encounters.
> 
> I don't fudge die rolls, so characters will occasionally die through no fault on the player's side, but I vastly prefer if they're forewarned and death is a consequence of their making bad decisions.
> ...




I think if you are in a campaign where death traps are known to exist, it can be incredibly suspenseful going into virtually any corridor. If you know for sure this place has traps, it is also going to be a suspenseful time getting through that gauntlet. Obviously if you don't like characters dying without forewarning, this approach isn't for you. As both a player and GM, I enjoy this sort of approach. But everyone in the games I play in, knows what the stakes are. 

On character death, I just think it is really important if you want a sense of meaningful risk. I don't like it when it feels like the GM is protecting me from death. If the ogre smashes me with a club and does enough damage to kill me, even if it is anticlimactic or out of the blue, I'd rather that be what happens. That way, when I am staring down a corridor of blade traps, I know the GM isn't going to pull punches and the stakes are high (which for me is going to enhance the suspense of the moment).

On death traps: I quite like them. I think they ought to be used sparingly. If everything is a death trap all the time, then they become meaningless. I generally don't have them come completely out of no where. There are exceptions of course, but most traps in any campaign I run, can be discoverable or navigated around. 

It doesn't have to be death though. Any permanent condition is pretty high stakes. I've also used traps that cut off limbs (in the game we play there isn't any kind of limb regeneration ability). In one recent campaign, there was a ghost at the bottom of a well who called for help and ripped tried to rip out the eyes of anyone who peered down (one character went blind). Even in combat, I'll have enemies do the same (we had one character get his leg chopped off with a thrown axe in my current campaign when they were ambushed by a group hired to kill them).

With traps, I don't think there is one size  fits all. A lot of people like to avoid the ten foot pole situation for instance (and that can arise if traps are too frequent and too out of the blue). I tend to run smaller, more contained dungeons that usually have one or two traps in them (but they are often quite lethal). Keep in mind, for the past five years or so, I've been running almost exclusively wuxia campaigns and they are often modeled after films like Web of Death where you have this horrifying traps and characters frequently get taken out like flies.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> I think if you are in a campaign where death traps are known to exist, it can be incredibly suspenseful going into virtually any corridor.



 Suspense also wears off, if not eventually resolved or, if continuously repeated in spite of resolutions.  It becomes stress, or boredom, or fatalism, or PTSD, eventually, I guess. 







> If you know for sure this place has traps, it is also going to be a suspenseful time getting through that gauntlet. Obviously if you don't like characters dying without forewarning, this approach isn't for you.



 In other words, if you /like/ arbitrarilly killing off PCs without warning... ;P



> It doesn't have to be death though. Any permanent condition is pretty high stakes. I've also used traps that cut off limbs (in the game we play there isn't any kind of limb regeneration ability).



 (...and, I assume, no resurection?) 
In D&D, specifically, Death & Dismemberment are technically, with high enough level magic, temporary conditions.   

One conclusion I reached a long time ago was that the loss condition of an RPG wasn't character death or failure to attain an objective in a scenario - it's /loss of control of the character/.   I've heard a similar idea put a different way in recent years:  "the prize of 'winning' an RPG is that you get to continue playing."


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## chaochou (Jun 22, 2018)

pemerton said:


> In relation to the question in the OP, the bit of bolded is key. _The GM twists and weaves the threads_ is metaphor; but what does it look like literally?




Well, to be fair I did give three solid examples of what it looks like literally... 

Yes, you can find a Jedi master to train you, but your best friend gets frozen. Yes, your informant knows where the stash house is today but your lieutenant wants the investigation wrapped up by the end of the week. Yes, your daemon can open the safe, but you only have four humanity left and you don't want to hear what it wants you to do to your cat...



pemerton said:


> For instance, should every situation that is framed by the GM have, implicit in it, not just the prospect of success (in relationship to dramatic need), but the prospect of paying some cost (in relationship to a different dramatic need)?




I can't answer 'should' questions! But in my own play, the answer is 'mostly yes'. So when I run a game, every situation develops with both opportunities and threats. Only if a character steadfastly refuses to engage do I cut and move on.

But in practical terms, a lot of the time a player is aiming to make progress towards one of their goals, and either succeeding, failing or getting to trade off progress here for difficulties there.

However, there are times - eg, in the PbtA games there's a move called 'announce future badness' - where I'm simply describing some new facet and throwing it in the mix. It's generally broad brush stuff, and it will only take form as the players decide if and how to interact. In Apocalypse World it could be a plume of thick, oily smoke on the horizon. Could be a mean, mile-high wall of red dust closing in. Could be a the stench of something long dead and decaying blowing up through the sewers.

In those cases no-one (including me, the MC) knows what it all means. There's no answer until the interaction of the characters in the world and the dice hitting the table forces the creation of an answer. So it can't be said to be related to an existing dramatic need... but it is fuel for the players to ignite something new, or if left alone for me to build a new line of pressure on them.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Suspense also wears off, if not eventually resolved or, if continuously repeated in spite of resolutions.  It becomes stress, or boredom, or fatalism, or PTSD, eventually, I guess.  In other words, if you /like/ arbitrarilly killing off PCs without warning... ;P




You can spin any playstyle negatively if you want. And every play style has an extreme mode that isn't fun under the wrong GM. But there is nothing wrong with having death on the table, even allowing it to come in suddenly without warning. Doesn't mean it is omnipresent. It means it is a possibility in the game. If you don't like it, don't play that way. I am talking about what I enjoy. 



> (...and, I assume, no resurection?)
> In D&D, specifically, Death & Dismemberment are technically, with high enough level magic, temporary conditions.




Sure, but D&D isn't the only game out there. And I specifically said in the game I use, maiming has rules and is permanent (unless something really extreme like the intervention of a deity undoes it). 



> One conclusion I reached a long time ago was that the loss condition of an RPG wasn't character death or failure to attain an objective in a scenario - it's /loss of control of the character/.   I've heard a similar idea put a different way in recent years:  "the prize of 'winning' an RPG is that you get to continue playing."




I think there are lots of potential loss conditions in RPGs. Not succeeding at the adventure is a potential loss condition. So is dying, or losing an arm. Having your family or close friends wiped out is a potential loss condition. Not winning an election can even be a loss condition. Losing a powerful magic artifact could be another. I don't think it is all about loss of control of the character.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 22, 2018)

Bedrockgames said:


> You can spin any playstyle negatively if you want. And every play style has an extreme mode that isn't fun under the wrong GM. But there is nothing wrong with having death on the table, even allowing it to come in suddenly without warning.



 There's nothing morally/ethically wrong with the style, no.  But, it's not the only way to build suspense, and may well work against the experience of suspense if over-played.



> I think there are lots of potential loss conditions in RPGs. Not succeeding at the adventure is a potential loss condition. So is dying, or losing an arm. Having your family or close friends wiped out is a potential loss condition. Not winning an election can even be a loss condition. Losing a powerful magic artifact could be another. I don't think it is all about loss of control of the character.



There's a lot of potenital victory/loss conditions for a character, in a scenario, certainly. They're internal to the larger context of the RPG, though.  Your character can fail to find (or manage to lose) the Lochnar, and fail his mission, but, if the world doesn't blow up or anything, there may be other missions.  Your character can die in the process of saving something bigger than himself (like "the World," or something less over the top) and count that a victory, or lose an arm and become a more 'interesting'/fun-to-play character (or just crack the occassional Admiral Lord Nelson joke - heck, in some systems you could just decide to play a one-armed character).  

(Why, yes, I am arguing both sides of the 'death is good/bad' thing - it's nuanced, I guess.)


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 22, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> There's nothing morally/ethically wrong with the style, no.  But, it's not the only way to build suspense, and may well work against the experience of suspense if over-played.




I never suggested it was the only way.


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## Bawylie (Jun 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> On definitions: Google gives me _suspense_ = _a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen_.
> 
> On outcomes: some outcomes (in films, say, or novels) are known. When I'm watching The Bourne Identity, and 10 or so minutes in Matt Damon's character is involved in some mad hijinks the lead to him being chased by security guards, police, etc - well, I know that he's not going to be shot dead (there's another hour-and-half of running time). And I know that he's not going to be locked up with no hope of escape. And, given the posters I saw on the way into the cinema, I can be pretty sure that he's not going to be arrested and put on trial - because this hasn't been billed as a courtroom drama!
> 
> ...




Thinking about this a little bit. What if you did just straight delay the time between a declared action and a die roll?

Like say you have a player who decides to sneak into somewhere an steal something. Most people start asking for stealth checks pretty quickly in most systems. But what if you just had the player pick up and hold the dice? Just hold them until the results of a check need to be known. Say there’s a specific security guard with a flashlight and the beam is swinging right toward you, ROLL for all that’s good and holy, ROLL! 

Yeah. Now I’m thinking of Alien. Moments of suspense there are where the audience knows the alien is around but the character in the scene is unsure or unaware. So there may be situations where you might play on the paranoia of a player by telling them that their character doesn’t know they’re getting snuck up on.  So they’re gonna keep doing whatever they were doing while you get to just describe an impending doom. That might be interesting, even if it does pit the player knowledge against the character’s ignorance. I’d be up for it, personally, but maybe not everyone.


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## hawkeyefan (Jun 23, 2018)

I’ve always found that having a player roll a die, and then not revealing any kind of result to be a pretty basic way to build suspense. Even if there is no need for a roll. If you had a scene where you wanted to build tension, I’d probably have a series of such rolls combined with some fitting narration to help establish the feel. Some of the rolls may be for a skill check or what not, and others can simply be to ramp up the tension. 

This is probably the most basic and immediate way I can think of to achieve the goal.


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## pemerton (Jun 23, 2018)

chaochou said:


> Well, to be fair I did give three solid examples of what it looks like literally



True, but not with RPG techniques attached!



chaochou said:


> However, there are times - eg, in the PbtA games there's a move called 'announce future badness' - where I'm simply describing some new facet and throwing it in the mix. It's generally broad brush stuff, and it will only take form as the players decide if and how to interact. In Apocalypse World it could be a plume of thick, oily smoke on the horizon. Could be a mean, mile-high wall of red dust closing in. Could be a the stench of something long dead and decaying blowing up through the sewers.
> 
> In those cases no-one (including me, the MC) knows what it all means. There's no answer until the interaction of the characters in the world and the dice hitting the table forces the creation of an answer. So it can't be said to be related to an existing dramatic need... but it is fuel for the players to ignite something new, or if left alone for me to build a new line of pressure on them.



OK, that's a technique, thanks!

In my BW game, the PCs getting word of the marriage of the Gynarch of Hardby to an established nemesis NPC played a similar sort of role.

To go back to the Star Wars example:

How do we set up (something like) Han being frozen as a possible cost of finding a Jedi Master?

I'm not that good at weaving split party stuff together (but need to get better - it's an important GM technique in Cortex+ Heroic), so when I say what I'm thinking about this it will probably be a bit half-baked.

But what I'm thinking is that first we need to split the "party": Luke goes one way, Han and friends the other. (In Cortex+ Heroic this is a simple GM move, requiring some Doom Pool expenditure).

Then, it needs to be clear that delays or setbacks on Luke's side (faffing around when he meets Yoda; failing the test in the tree; trying rather than doing) escalate the consequences for failure on Han's side. In Cortex+, this can be done mechanically by using the Doom Pool dice that Luke's player is generating in resolution aginst Han's player - but there is no easy way, I think, of revealing this in the ficiton before you do it, because Doom Pool dice just sit there untagged.

But now that I'm thinking about it, one way is to use those Doom Pool dice to establish assets for Vader - Complian Planetary Authorities; Readied Carbon Freezing Plant; etc - which build up the threat against Han, which Luke's player is not able to help against because (in the fiction) Luke is still on Dagobah and so has no means of acting at that distance.

In my next Cortex+ Heroic session I'd already been thinking that I have to run a split party (because one of the players missed the last session and so his PC was not with the other characters, presumably having gone off on his own path). I'm going to have to see if I can do something like the above to generate suspense as to the fate for one group resulting from challenges faced by the other.


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## Umbran (Jun 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But now that I'm thinking about it, one way is to use those Doom Pool dice to establish assets for Vader - Complian Planetary Authorities; Readied Carbon Freezing Plant; etc - which build up the threat against Han, which Luke's player is not able to help against because (in the fiction) Luke is still on Dagobah and so has no means of acting at that distance.




Which makes sense, except you then have the meta-issue of Luke's player deciding to quit before things get dangerous for Han.  If they see these assets start to build up, the threat to his friends become obvious, and they are apt to stop before the situation gets so critical that Han ends up in carobonite.


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## Umbran (Jun 23, 2018)

It occurs to me that, in general, mechanics may not be the best place to look for creating suspense in RPGs.  As soon as you have a player _doing math_ to see uncertainty or danger looming, they're out of the immersive moment, and dong metagame analysis - logical thinking - which isn't what you want when you want suspense, right?  You want visceral thinking.

I may not have missed it earlier in the thread, but there are immersive approaches as well.  Sound and lighting, for example.  If you're running a Hunt for Red October scenario, having the room be a bit stuffy... these things may raise suspense.  In the construction of your scenario, not having your villain jump out in the open all at once - but giving the PCs hints and glimpses.  The gruesome dead body here, the low pitched rumble and ripples in the water glass there, the glimpse of a form mostly obscured (the cinematics of Alien, or some sections of Jurrasic Park, for example) may go a long way in building suspense in a way that is mechanic-agnostic.


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## Bawylie (Jun 23, 2018)

Umbran said:


> It occurs to me that, in general, mechanics may not be the best place to look for creating suspense in RPGs.  As soon as you have a player _doing math_ to see uncertainty or danger looming, they're out of the immersive moment, and dong metagame analysis - logical thinking - which isn't what you want when you want suspense, right?  You want visceral thinking.
> 
> I may not have missed it earlier in the thread, but there are immersive approaches as well.  Sound and lighting, for example.  If you're running a Hunt for Red October scenario, having the room be a bit stuffy... these things may raise suspense.  In the construction of your scenario, not having your villain jump out in the open all at once - but giving the PCs hints and glimpses.  The gruesome dead body here, the low pitched rumble and ripples in the water glass there, the glimpse of a form mostly obscured (the cinematics of Alien, or some sections of Jurrasic Park, for example) may go a long way in building suspense in a way that is mechanic-agnostic.




Eyup


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## chaochou (Jun 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> How do we set up (something like) Han being frozen as a possible cost of finding a Jedi Master?
> 
> I'm not that good at weaving split party stuff together (but need to get better - it's an important GM technique in Cortex+ Heroic), so when I say what I'm thinking about this it will probably be a bit half-baked.
> 
> But what I'm thinking is that first we need to split the "party":




I don't know Cortex+ well, added to which this is a tricky question because many games wouldn't be very satisfying with this type of 'Train with Yoda / Han is Frozen' action resolution.

But I think it's correct to identify it with a troupe or faction-based play, where the PCs can and do act reasonably independently while driving towards a common faction goal.

So it doesn't really work for, say _Burning Wheel_ or _Apocalypse World_, certainly the way I run them - where the PCs are independent, but working within their own spheres of influence and self-motivated towards their own (often conflicting) ends.

However, it's viable in a superhero set-up as you describe, with doom pools escalating between independently acting parts of the faction. I can see that same technique working where you've got teams on their own but trying to co-ordinate. A couple of PCs trying to infiltrate a base and take the shields down while a couple more lead the ground troops in to attack.

It's also notable that it's an explicit downtime option in _Blades in the Dark_, which again is a clear 'faction' game.

From p148 (Incarceration): When one of your crew members, friends, contacts, or a framed enemy is convicted and incarcerated for crimes associated with your crew your wanted level is reduced by 1 and you clear your heat.


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## darkbard (Jun 23, 2018)

Umbran said:


> In the construction of your scenario, not having your villain jump out in the open all at once - but giving the PCs hints and glimpses.  The gruesome dead body here, the low pitched rumble and ripples in the water glass there, the glimpse of a form mostly obscured (the cinematics of Alien, or some sections of Jurrasic Park, for example) may go a long way in building suspense in a way that is mechanic-agnostic.




So foreshadowing, essentially. But then doesn't this run up against the problem of railroading? Telegraphing too far in advance presupposes certain PC actions in response to the stimuli.


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## billd91 (Jun 23, 2018)

darkbard said:


> So foreshadowing, essentially. But then doesn't this run up against the problem of railroading? Telegraphing too far in advance presupposes certain PC actions in response to the stimuli.




For those of us with regular groups, it’s not that hard to predict how they will react to certain stimuli. But you still give them the choice and, if they do the unusual, you go with it. That avoids the railroading enough.


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## GrahamWills (Jun 23, 2018)

Umbran said:


> It occurs to me that, in general, mechanics may not be the best place to look for creating suspense in RPGs.




This would be my feeling also. Suspense requires two things; one is the knowledge or expectation that something is going to occur, and the second is uncertainty over the outcome. As discussed in the thread, the uncertainty can be about what happens (does the bomb go off or not?) or about how it happens (we know the bomb is deactivated, but the flash forward scene was set in a hospital)

I would suggest that it is extremely hard for to play a character acting under suspense without the player being under suspense. Harder than playing an angry, lustful, drunk, aggressive, sad, lonely, tired or upset character. So I would suggest that the GM’s best line of attack is to make the player feel suspense.

As mentioned above, frequently, uncertainty over the survival of a character is suspenseful for a player. It’s easy to do; most systems have ways to kill things in ways that can be signaled in advance:


Seeing deadly traps lying around
Rumors of a powerful monster in the area
Villain swearing to kill you
Helpfully scared NPCs telling stories of doom


The mechanics of the suspense resolution aren’t really relevant, so long as there is uncertainty. If a player had a D&D 3.5E focused trap specialist character, for example, you might not be able to scare them with the first item. There is no suspense because by the rules of the game, he is certain to defeat the obstacle. But in general, most games can kill characters in a variety of ways, and so predicting them is a way to build suspense.

Mechanics aren’t really an issue, though, once you get through the gate of knowing that the outcome is uncertain. The GMs goal is to make players uncertain and to make them care. 

Right now, almost certaintly, someone is being operated on in hospital, and you don’t know if they will live or die. That isn’t suspenseful because you don’t know them and so don’t have any buy-in. If, however, they were your partner, it becomes the most suspenseful moment of your life. Similarly, as a GM, you need the players to buy in to suspense. Again, character death is one such way — and explains why cheap resurrection makes the GM’s job harder in this respect. But there are other ways.

Here is where the player comes in. If you have a character who the player has not given much of a background to, and who plays really just for social fun, then you may be restricted to suspense over their character’s life and loot. But most people have somewhat deeper characters and you can look at how to create suspense using the things that the player has identified as important to their character. A threat to things their characters love is the next easiest way to generate suspense: the classic ‘villain holds your partner hostage’ is a classic for a reason — it works! Nearly all the time you expect them to be rescued, but how? At what cost? Will you be forced to reveal your secret identity?

A lot of horror games stress character background, and building relationships, sources of stability, inter-character connections, and so on. I think it is for this reason. It’s hard to generate suspense over Fighter Bob #7. Even if I kill them, the player is likely to shrug and roll up Fighter Bob #8. Roberto, secretly the lover of known villain Eric the Bloody, who adores his saintly sister and has a prized collection of antique glass angels, is crying out for suspense. 

Honestly, he is. Anyone who’s backstory involves a collection of glass anything might just as well send the GM a note saying “please threaten these with destruction”. As a GM you are morally bound to have him learn, in the middle of an important combat, that the new maid he has hired is short-sighted and clumsy ... and she is due to clean the collection in only 15 minutes!

Ask your players for backstories that highlight what they hold valuable. Then threaten it. 

The above examples are of a short-term threat; many suspenseful moments are resolved in a scene, or in a session. Maybe even in a single exchange and roll (is this monster resistant to magic?). I do want to call out the Clock System used by the Apocalypse Engine as a simple, but highly effective way to generate long term suspense. Although the base idea is non-mechanical (there are a set of looming threats that get worse over time) the mechanics associated with it and the visual and emotive feel of a clock heading to midnight, make it an outstanding tool for generating suspense. I’m not a fan of the whole moves system, so the base engine isn’t for me, but I’m stealing  this implementation of long-term suspense for future games!

Suspense is found when a player cares about the unknown in the future; players should make sure they care about things, and then the GM can create uncertainty. Will Fighter Bob #12 survive? How much of Roberto’s collection will remain unbroken if he stays at the ball long enough to save the life of the King?

There may be other ways to generate suspense, and I’d love to hear them, but for me, threatening something a character loves is the go-to plan. So make your player’s characters love more, and opportunities will abound!


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## Umbran (Jun 23, 2018)

darkbard said:


> So foreshadowing, essentially. But then doesn't this run up against the problem of railroading? Telegraphing too far in advance presupposes certain PC actions in response to the stimuli.




The atmospherics I'm talking about don't give detailed prophecy that falls apart if the PCs don't act a certain way.  Plus, we aren't talking about doing it an hour in advance.  By the time the atmospherics apply, they are in the relevant scene - and a tense scene is a tense scene, no matter how the PCs choose to deal with the issues at hand.


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## Aldarc (Jun 24, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Which makes sense, except you then have *the meta-issue of Luke's player deciding to quit before things get dangerous for Han.*  If they see these assets start to build up, the threat to his friends become obvious, and they are apt to stop before the situation gets so critical that Han ends up in carobonite.



Isn't that Luke essentially did with "the Force"?


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## Umbran (Jun 24, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Isn't that Luke essentially did with "the Force"?




He only got the message from the Force once The folks on Bespin were already in danger.  In game terms, he's already failed several times, and the assets required to doom Han to carbonite were already created, even if they hadn't come into play.  I'm saying that in a game, a player would know about the assets *earlier*, and would have punked out on Yoda, or stopped his training, or found some way to not fail so much, so as not to set up his fellows for such trouble.  

Some players are selfish enough to plow forward for their own narrative and mechanical benefit, at the cost of the rest of the party, but not many.  The problem, then, with some mechanical setups of suspense is that the players have some measure of control, and can de-escalate.  That is an entirely rational thing to do, but it also does not help set up a suspenseful game.


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## Imaculata (Jun 25, 2018)

I managed to scare my players very recently just by saying they could hear ghostly whispers from behind a door. They never actually opened the door to see what was in that room, but I guess my description was effective.


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## Caliburn101 (Jun 25, 2018)

The Babe example is too simplistic.

Not knowing the costs isn't the only way in which suspense can be built up, and one only has to look at Game of Thrones to see that sometimes certainties can turn out to be fleeting and ultimately end in utter failure and death, and the story is all the better for it.

Likewise, if the players think they will always win, because you fudge it so that they do, then your game will not be as suspenseful as it could or in my opinion _should_ be.

There are rules for death, rules for resurrection, and rules for the failure of resurrection for a reason. Characters should die on occasion and not come back.

Campaigns without that risk hanging over the players are ultimately far duller and less satisfying than ones with it.


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## Lanefan (Jun 25, 2018)

darkbard said:


> So foreshadowing, essentially. But then doesn't this run up against the problem of railroading? Telegraphing too far in advance presupposes certain PC actions in response to the stimuli.



That assumes you're dead set on using later that which you're foreshadowing now.

Foreshadowing is (close to) just another way of setting a plot/adventure hook.  You can give hints and glimpses of all kinds of things which may or may not be related to each other, some-all-none of which may ever become relevant in later play, depending on what the players/PCs choose to do.

Put another way, just because the party find a still-warm murder victim in an alley and due to some movements in the shadows think the murderer might still be nearby watching them doesn't at all mean the party is going to get involved with that scenario.


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## Umbran (Jun 25, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Likewise, if the players think they will always win, because you fudge it so that they do, then your game will not be as suspenseful as it could or in my opinion _should_ be.




Why do you have an opinion on what other people's games _should_ be?  Do you have opinions about what other people _should_ have for lunch?  Or what TV shows they _should_ watch?  

This smacks of, "I now what's good for you better than you do."  Which... you don't, generally speaking.  You're not an authority, you don't generally know the people at the games of your audience.  So, your assertion is pretty weak, rhetorically speaking.

This is an age-old argument, and some of it is spilling over from another thread (qnd really, how about we leave it in that thread, please and thank you).  Ultimately, the answer, "I find this is better, but you should choose what your players like best," is superior to, "I know what's better for your players than you do."

IMHO, anyway.


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## Imaculata (Jun 25, 2018)

I think it would be (more) fair to say that one of the risks of saving your players too often with fudging, is that it 'could' undermine the suspense in the game. If you always save your players, then they may not feel like their characters can die.

But this all depends on how you fudge, how often you do it, and your players.

I think we can learn a lesson or two from Game of Thrones in this respect. Put the fear of death into your audience early, and you will clearly establish the stakes for the rest of the story. Don't be afraid to kill off some beloved characters to make them afraid.


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## Aldarc (Jun 25, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> I think we can learn a lesson or two from Game of Thrones in this respect. Put the fear of death into your audience early, and you will clearly establish the stakes for the rest of the story. Don't be afraid to kill off some beloved characters to make them afraid.



I can give you another lesson worth learning from Game of Thrones - particularly from my own experience with the Song of Ice and Fire community - is that this "fear of death" regarding beloved characters can also trigger a different emotional reaction than suspense to cope with the constant threat of death: emotional detachment/divesting from characters and the story. If you are afraid for the characters, then one solution is to stop caring. This is the reaction I have seen from so many longtime readers and viewers. They have become increasingly jaded and their engagement with the respective media has become more akin to participatory autopilot.


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 25, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> I think we can learn a lesson or two from Game of Thrones in this respect. Put the fear of death into your audience early, and you will clearly establish the stakes for the rest of the story. Don't be afraid to kill off some beloved characters to make them afraid.



 And, 1st level D&D (most eds, anyway), does that as a matter of course...



Aldarc said:


> I can give you another lesson worth learning from Game of Thrones - particularly from my own experience with the Song of Ice and Fire community - is that this "fear of death" regarding beloved characters can also trigger a different emotional reaction than suspense to cope with the constant threat of death: emotional detachment/divesting from characters and the story. If you are afraid for the characters, then one solution is to stop caring.



 Sure, "Don't bother naming your PC until 5th level," for instance.


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## Lanefan (Jun 25, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Why do you have an opinion on what other people's games _should_ be?  Do you have opinions about what other people _should_ have for lunch?  Or what TV shows they _should_ watch?



Though I'm not the person you quoted to ask this, I'll answer anyway:

Sure I do.

I don't necessarily expect anyone to agree with my opinions, but I'm entitled to have them and to - within the bounds of reason and decency - express them.

Without this ability to have and express opinions, there'd be nothing to discuss and this forum (among many, many others) would have much less reason to exist.

Lan-"but this is only my opinion, of course"-efan


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## pemerton (Jun 27, 2018)

Fudging is a red herring in relation to Vincent Baker's remarks. The play of a RPG can establih that something is at stake in action resoution, and that the players care about that, without any need for GM fuding.

I also think a focus on the risk of PC death is spmewhat misplaced. I do'nt think the threat of protagonist death is necessary to create suspense. And in RPGing, relying on that as the sole, or principal, means of creating suspense can tendsto be unsatisfying for the sorts of reasons [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] and [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] have given just upthread.


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## Umbran (Jun 27, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> TSure I do.
> 
> I don't necessarily expect anyone to agree with my opinions, but I'm entitled to have them and to - within the bounds of reason and decency - express them.
> 
> Without this ability to have and express opinions, there'd be nothing to discuss and this forum (among many, many others) would have much less reason to exist.




Please stop and consider the difference between the opinions, "I myself like X or Y, but not Z," and, "You should have X or Y, but not Z, because I like them."

'Cause, this site is even more built on the idea that there isn't One True Way in gaming.  And the latter is pretty strongly OneTrueWayism.


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## Caliburn101 (Jun 27, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Why do you have an opinion on what other people's games _should_ be?  Do you have opinions about what other people _should_ have for lunch?  Or what TV shows they _should_ watch?
> 
> This smacks of, "I now what's good for you better than you do."  Which... you don't, generally speaking.  You're not an authority, you don't generally know the people at the games of your audience.  So, your assertion is pretty weak, rhetorically speaking.
> 
> ...




Stories without risk are dull - they lack suspense. When was the last time you watched a movie, series or play where there was physical conflict and absolutely no risk of death?

That's right - you didn't, because writers know it won't work. This is very, _very_ long established truism - not an opinion, which if you knew anything about the history of storytelling, you wouldn't have gotten confused about.

That's been the opinion of story-makers since at least the ancient Greek playwrights, and probably long before that.

A GM in a _campaign_ (and I did clearly make that distinction) who constantly fudges to keep PCs alive takes that risk away. Players are not stupid - they notice these things.

I've been running games for 40 years. I run convention games on a regular basis, and I have successfully completed all the novel and script writing courses offered in the Groucho Club in Soho - London.

I wouldn't use the word 'authority', especially as a backhanded put-down, but I would say that I have the experience to comment with clarity and insight. The word 'should' was offered quite clearly as an opinion after the equally stated caveat that games of other sorts are in no way invalid, just duller if they involve a risk of death that everyone knows is fake.

Why not do some homework on what makes a good story - there is so much material online you cannot possibly miss it all.

Everyone here is entitled to an opinion, especially when they back it up with some reasoning. I am not sure that telling anyone their opinion smacks of <<insert putdown here>> based on you opinion (which seems ignorant of the long-established best practices of conflict in storytelling) is a productive response.

Let me say it again - stories with physical and violent conflict should have a risk of death or they lose suspense and are dull.

If you really want to argue otherwise - then by all means do so - _addressing the argument_ and not deploying your virtue-signalling spun ad hominem routine.


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## Aldarc (Jun 27, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Stories without risk are dull - they lack suspense. When was the last time you watched a movie, series or play *where there was physical conflict and absolutely no risk of death?*
> 
> *That's right - you didn't, *because writers know it won't work. This is very, _very_ long established truism - not an opinion, which if you knew anything about the history of storytelling, you wouldn't have gotten confused about.



Ummm... there are a lot of movies, series, or plays that may feature fist fights, brawls, or other forms of physical conflict where there is no "risk of death" but simply in externalizing inner emotional conflict between characters. It may just be a mild-mannered person who finally throws a punch to show (1) they have "grown a spine" or (2) show how debased/desperate their situation has become that they have been pushed to this point (e.g., Jimmy Stuart in _It's a Wonderful Life_ at the bank). Media with physical violence without the risk of death is probably even more common than media with the "risk of death." Consider that we had three Rocky movies of physical violence before "risk of death" really entered the picture with Apollo Creed.


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## Caliburn101 (Jun 27, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Ummm... there are a lot of movies, series, or plays that may feature fist fights, brawls, or other forms of physical conflict where there is no "risk of death" but simply in externalizing inner emotional conflict between characters. It may just be a mild-mannered person who finally throws a punch to show (1) they have "grown a spine" or (2) show how debased/desperate their situation has become that they have been pushed to this point (e.g., Jimmy Stuart in _It's a Wonderful Life_ at the bank). Media with physical violence without the risk of death is probably even more common than media with the "risk of death." Consider that we had three Rocky movies of physical violence before "risk of death" really entered the picture with Apollo Creed.




The physical conflict I refer to is that which arises in rpgs.

Rpgs are what we are talking about - OK?

Rpgs are the point, movies etc. merely the illustration.

I _really_ didn't think I had to spell out that we are talking about rpgs - it seemed entirely axiomatic, you know, from the title of the thread and every post thereafter...

We are not talking about gentle fisticuffs in a black and white feelgood movie - we are talking (in the case of let's say D&D) about the longsword version of Rambo, if you want to use Stallone here.

The term 'murder hobo' was coined from roleplay games - precisely because the conflict in these leads to death on a very, very regular basis.

There is a simply MASSIVE proportion of the rules dedicated to how to kill, survive being killed and the process of dying and recovery.

OF COURSE there are comedy movies, kids movies, romcoms, personality pieces and all the other types of story. But when was the last time a D&D _campaign_ had no death-dealing conflict in it?


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## Lanefan (Jun 27, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Please stop and consider the difference between the opinions, "I myself like X or Y, but not Z," and, "You should have X or Y, but not Z, because I like them."
> 
> 'Cause, this site is even more built on the idea that there isn't One True Way in gaming.  And the latter is pretty strongly OneTrueWayism.



Both are opinions; but the first is statement, the second is advocacy.

Nothing wrong with advocating for what one likes or supports, is there?


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## Aldarc (Jun 27, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> The physical conflict I refer to is that which arises in rpgs.
> 
> Rpgs are what we are talking about - OK?
> 
> ...



You are impressing no one but yourself with this sort of attitude. Sorry that your illustration was terrible and phrased poorly. You want to talk about RPGs? Fine. Then do so. But it does not help your case when you use false illustrations as part of generalized statements that are demonstrably untrue and then act all uppity towards others. What does your posturing achieve here? 



> The term 'murder hobo' was coined from roleplay games - precisely because the conflict in these leads to death on a very, very regular basis.



The term 'murder hobo' says more about the play style or nature of the player characters than any actual risk (of death or otherwise) on the part of the player characters. That things often escalate to death in D&D says nothing about the presence (or absence) of suspense in RPGs as per the thread topic. It would be silly to conclude, for example, that since "risk of death" is required for good stories, that good stories filled with meaningful suspense are therefore produced by players wantonly killing, pillaging, and rampaging the lands and peoples across the countryside. 



> But when was the last time a D&D _campaign_ had no death-dealing conflict in it?



In a D&D campaign? No. It's par for the course and part of the expectations of the game, essentially in the social contract that you will kill monsters. Though again, this says nothing about whether said "death-dealing conflict" has any actual suspense or whether the "death-dealing conflict" even creates said suspense or tension. We are not in a D&D thread, however, but a General RPG thread and multiple non-lethal/deadly RPGs exist. Does the threat of death exist in a No Thank You Evil campaign? Nope. Does a threat of death exist in a Fate super game? Potentially, but generally not because the conventions of the genre coupled with Fate's "being taken out" rules often leads to situations where the heroes find themselves _defeated_ but alive. 

And this last point is where I would drive my own point. The "risk of defeat" does more to create suspense in RPGs and other previously listed media than the "risk of death," with death being but one form of defeat. And this gets back to    [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and Vincent Baker's original point that connects suspense with "victory." Simply surviving or "not dying" is not inherently victory. "Dying" and the "risk of death" in physical conflicts do not necessarily generate any real suspense. Building tension between "victory" and "defeat" drives a lot of conflict and suspense in many campaign narratives more so than simply risk of death and survival. For many games, IME, the suspense of the campaign, adventure, or session does not rest on the fulcrum of death, but, rather, on the player-driven question of "how will I be required to achieve victory?"


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## Jhaelen (Jun 27, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Why do you have an opinion on what other people's games _should_ be?
> [...]
> Ultimately, the answer, "I find this is better, but you *should* choose what your players like best," is superior to, "I know what's better for your players than you do."



(Emphasis mine)
Aren't you doing here exactly what you're trying to condemn? Imho, your reaction to [MENTION=6802178]Caliburn101[/MENTION] is totally out of proportion. Let's relax a bit and look again at what he wrote:


> *if* the players think they will always win, because you fudge it so that they do, *then *your game will not be as suspenseful as it could or *in my opinion* should be.



(Emphasis mine)
1. Note the conditional statement. 2. Note the qualifier IMO. I fail to see any One-True-Way-ism here.

What am I supposed to tell a GM with a preference of fudging die rolls who then starts complaining that his games somehow fail to create a suspenseful atmosphere? Isn't it fine to point out the elephant in the room?

I think it's totally okay to prefer a game of cinematic action where the PCs can feel completely safe at all times because they're the heroes of the story. But you need to be aware of and accept the disadvantages that approach may carry with it.


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## Umbran (Jun 27, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Both are opinions; but the first is statement, the second is advocacy.
> 
> Nothing wrong with advocating for what one likes or supports, is there?




Again, consider the difference between, "I like haggis.  Haggis should exist," and, "I think everyone's meal should be haggis."

There is advocacy for existence, and advocacy for pressing one's own desires on others.  "I should be able to have the game I like" and "Your game should be the game I like" are not the same thing.

I find it strange that it is difficult to see why these are different, or why the latter is a problem.  Let me put it this way - ask for what you want for yourself, but don't force you will on others.


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## Umbran (Jun 27, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> I _really_ didn't think I had to spell out that we are talking about rpgs - it seemed entirely axiomatic, you know, from the title of the thread and every post thereafter...




Dude, do you realize how condescending this sounds?  If not, be advised.  If you did realize, please knock it off.  Snark doesn't make you sound more correct.

And, you seem to have missed the idea that  folks might want their RPG to mirror what is seen in other media.



> We are not talking about gentle fisticuffs in a black and white feelgood movie - we are talking (in the case of let's say D&D) about the longsword version of Rambo, if you want to use Stallone here.
> The term 'murder hobo' was coined from roleplay games - precisely because the conflict in these leads to death on a very, very regular basis.
> 
> There is a simply MASSIVE proportion of the rules dedicated to how to kill, survive being killed and the process of dying and recovery.




Interestingly, in 5e, we find the following text:

_"Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable."_

So, I'd correct you to say that a massive proportion of the rules are dedicated to reducing the enemy to zero hit points, to "taking them down" so to speak.  Whether that means death is a separate question.




> OF COURSE there are comedy movies, kids movies, romcoms, personality pieces and all the other types of story. But when was the last time a D&D _campaign_ had no death-dealing conflict in it?




Don't drive to the extreme and strawman the point in the process.  We aren't talking about "no death dealing conflict."  We are talking about how threat of death needs not be the only source of suspense - the piece may feature conflicts that aren't deadly.  Not "the piece only has conflicts that aren't deadly".

Mind you, we are talking about RPGs in general, not 5e in specific.  There are games which are not comedy, but in which death is nigh non-existent.  Many Superhero games, for example, simply because they are modeled on a genre in which character death is traditionally rare.


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## Lanefan (Jun 27, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Interestingly, in 5e, we find the following text:
> 
> _"Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable."_



Bleah!  Retroactive fiction!  Ugh!!!

This is something I'd change in a heartbeat: you'd have to declare whether you're striking to subdue *before* you swing, to indicate you're using a different combat style (e.g. flat of the blade, striking with the pommel, etc.).

Saying "Oh, I only meant to knock him out" is kinda pointless after you've already killed him. 

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jun 28, 2018)

Can we stop talking about fuding? It's irrelevant to this thread. (Maybe some people think that D&D can't involve escalating stakes without fudging? But even were that so, this thread is in General RPGs, not a D&D sub-forum.)


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## Manbearcat (Jun 28, 2018)

pemerton said:


> > And when I do ultimately put his hat on the foyer table of a brothel where cattle rustlers are partaking of entertainment, the question turns into “what?”
> >
> > Then, once we find out what “what” is, the question becomes “what now (and what cost or what are we willing to risk)?”
> 
> ...




Let me extend things a little bit to talk about cost as the relevant piece...



chaochou said:


> Yes, your daemon can open the safe, but you only have four humanity left and you don't want to hear what it wants you to do to your cat...
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is a type of play where the imagining of setting, situation, conflict and opportunity comes from the players. It comes from the conceptions of the dramatis personae. If anything is decided prior to those characters being realised, the game will not feature the type of drama Vincent is discussing.




So chao is talking about Sorcerer here, but its relevant.

So the PC's big brother is the best man he ever knew.  Raised him when their parents died.  Is a retired, legendary Dog who lost his gun-fighting hand when a nasty infection from a wound took it that he got rescuing a child straight from the jaws of a mountain lion.  But he lost worse than that.  His wife and (would-have-been) first-born died in childbirth a few years ago and he hadn't seen him since.  

So what happens if his brother isn't in a shallow grave somewhere (maybe he lost a poker hand and more than that to a couple of rustlers) and that hat is now the possession of the man who took it from him.

* What if his brother is in that brothel sinning something fierce and, when confronted, we CLEARLY won't just be talking this out.

* What if his brother is in that brothel sinning something fierce and, when confronted, he won't comply with justice...nor will his rustler companions.

* What if his brother is in that brothel sinning something fierce and, when confronted, he brashly bears the heretical branding and demonic influence of the rumored Sorcerer that has been corrupting this town...and the girl's face he was getting it on changes into a horrific visage and her hands and claws elongate...and unfixed objects suddenly rise of their own volition and hurtle through the air...

Now all of these get a little bit worse.  They get progressively more dangerous to the Dog/s, progressively more emotionally brutal, progressively more dangerous to the fallen brother, and progressively more costly (in social currency to the Dog with respect to his duty) to attempt to undo the damage to the brother's soul in the eyes of the King of Life, and potentially more costly to the Town and the Faithful if this wickedness isn't rooted out and justice not swiftly meted.

So in each of these scenarios we have cost-related suspense.  How will the Dog respond?  What will he prioritize; family, his immediate duty before him, the ability to live and fight another day (for the Town)?  If he lets his brother and/or the rustlers go, what havoc will they wreak before he catches up to them with the rest of the Dogs, and perhaps a posse, as backup?  Will his companions go along with him, whatever he decides?  What if they try to save/redeem the brother and its deemed to be nepotism by the Faithful or the territorial authorities?  What if he doesn't and the fact that they allowed a legendary Dog perish under demonic influence utterly demoralizes the Town, therefore making it vulnerable to further Sin?

In terms of mechanical implications, this conflict is going to impact the Dog (possibly severely depending upon how things go), and the likelihood is extremely high that his Relationship dice with his Brother are going to change.


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## Shasarak (Jun 28, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Bleah!  Retroactive fiction!  Ugh!!!
> 
> This is something I'd change in a heartbeat: you'd have to declare whether you're striking to subdue *before* you swing, to indicate you're using a different combat style (e.g. flat of the blade, striking with the pommel, etc.).
> 
> ...




I guess if you make the decision in the instant that damage is dealt then you never have to retroactively unkill him.

If you wait until after the DM applies the damage then yeah retroactive unkilling :bleagh:


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## Shasarak (Jun 28, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Again, consider the difference between, "I like haggis.  Haggis should exit,




Best spelling mistake I have seen today!  Haggis will exit whether you like it or not!


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## Tony Vargas (Jun 28, 2018)

pemerton said:


> (Maybe some people think that D&D can't involve escalating stakes without fudging? But even were that so, this thread is in General RPGs, not a D&D sub-forum.)



 There is no RPG but D&D and Gygax is it's prophet!


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 1, 2018)

Umbran said:


> Interestingly, in 5e, we find the following text:
> 
> _"Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable."_
> 
> So, I'd correct you to say that a massive proportion of the rules are dedicated to reducing the enemy to zero hit points, to "taking them down" so to speak.  Whether that means death is a separate question.




That last line is I assume tongue in cheek? I suggest you do a death count in the next game you join - one where the rules use '0 HP = taking them down' for NPCs. Then, after a big combat, ask the GM how many of the party's opponents are dead, and compare it to the number he/she has decided are merely incapacitated instead.

I don't think I need to further predict the results of such an exercise, or indeed that you would doubt it yourself.

The vast majority of them would be dead.

Let me ask you two things;

1. When was the last time you were in, or ran a campaign in any rpg system whatsoever where death was not generally the main point of combat?
2. If you can think of one - how many such campaigns out of all those you have been involved in does this represent?

I didn't construct a strawman. Death is extremely common in rpgs, and the amount of rules covering combat is ample testament to that.

Campaigns without lethal combat are corner cases. Campaigns without the risk of character death are corner cases.

Are they invalid ways to play? No of course not. But they are very uncommon.

In a game where challenge is valued, risks are overcome (with all the catharsis that comes with that) and lethal combat rules take up a large part of the rulebook, it is entirely obvious that there should be a risk of death for PCs or an element of risk is taken from the game and it loses the capacity to keep players on the edge of their seats during the vast majority of physical combats (i.e. those in which death is a part of the scene).

That there is a risk of death for the PCs is a baseline assumption of  the vast majority of rpgs. A game can run without this happening, but the moment is becomes clear to the players that they cannot die because the GM won't let it happen, it will lose the excitement of that part of the game...

… and it is nearly _always_ a significant part of the game.

If you disagree - I challenge you to run a campaign where you make the combat challenges consistently easy and so imply with your rulings that PCs have 'script immunity' - do it with any randomly selected players and see what the feedback is.

If that seems like too much work, a straw poll of randomly selected rpgs to see how many of them have large combat chapters and equipment lists with large numbers of weapons and armour should make what I am stating more evident. Of those, count how many weapons etc. cannot kill - merely 'take out'?

I have run 12 hour marathon games without a whiff of combat - I am not always interested in combat in a game, and it isn't necessary in every game for everyone to enjoy it. But to make it so insignificant as to be no threat to the PCs is a very, very rare thing.

In fact I have never encountered it in 40 years of personal play, only _once_ experienced it at a convention (kind of - it was the star trek rpg and we were Federation officers - so lethal force was the last resort, so we worked _hard_ to avoid it...), and never heard or anyone running an ongoing campaign without lethal combat in it. There may be an element of unconscious selection bias evident in that observation, but I have played a _lot_ of different rpgs.

That's not to say it doesn't exist - but it makes it highly likely it is not statistically relevant.


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## Emerikol (Jul 1, 2018)

I think the threat of death and it being possible to happen is in keeping with my predilection for character viewpoint.  I believe threat of death is a builder of suspense.

But... 

I agree with you that there are other ways to add to the suspense beyond just threat of death.  

1.  Finding evidence of the enemies plans is one way.  
2.  Finding evidence of the enemies handiwork/power.  e.g. evidence of a fireball explosion.
3.  Atmosphere and mood in describing things.  
4.  A ticking clock.  Meaning that time is running out and will the group make it.  
5.  Basically almost anything that increases suspense in fiction could be used to amp fiction in a game with a little modification.


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## Nytmare (Jul 1, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Let me ask you two things;
> 
> 1. When was the last time you were in, or ran a campaign in any rpg system whatsoever where death was not generally the main point of combat?
> 2. If you can think of one - how many such campaigns out of all those you have been involved in does this represent?




I'd point out however that there are a lot (a LOT) of systems out there now where the chance of character death is entirely in the hands of the players.  Historically it might be a relatively newish exercise, and might be relegated to the realm of corner cases, but I'd say that overall, the number of combatey RPGs with a death flag mechanic, or RPGs where combat isn't the main source of conflict are getting a much stronger foot hold.

In D&D (or D&D system inspired) games?  Sure it's uncommon.  But in RPGs in general, I think it's getting more common every day.


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## Emerikol (Jul 2, 2018)

An rpg needs stakes and no one is doubting that.  And I'll even concede that most of those stakes lead to death for the enemy.  It is not mandatory though.  Look at fiction.  The amount of killing definitely depends upon the genre.  If your games "genre" is massive killing all the time then fine but every game does not necessarily have to be that way.

My games tend to be games where death is a definite threat.  PC's at low levels can outright die.  And they don't come back at the same level.  At higher levels they are resurrected but in most of my games that at minimum costs a level.

If I were doing PF2e, I might permanently reduce their resonance by one with each death.  Death should not be something ignored or uncared about.  Another option would be to reduce a random ability score.  My characters fear death even if it is not eternal.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> That last line is I assume tongue in cheek?




No.  Aside from the rule I already mentioned (which was used by my players in the last session they played - they didn't fully know the moral position of their antagonists, so they refused to outright kill them), other games have mechanisms in which you decidedly beat your opponents, but don't kill them.  I the end, the point is to overcome a challenge, and death of the opponent is only one way to achieve that.

I will note that, looking at something like D&D - the number of rules around _actual death itself_ is pretty small.  Most of the combat rules are about removing hit points, which is necessary for death, but not equivalent to death.

Outside D&D, some FATE variants, for example, have physical, mental, and social health tracks.  The exact same mechanics is used for conflict resolution for each track (using different skills), but only one of them can result in physical death of the PC.  You can take an opponent out of the story with mental stress, or social pressures, without so much as scratching their skin.


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## Aldarc (Jul 2, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Let me ask you two things;
> 
> 1. When was the last time you were in, or ran a campaign in any rpg system whatsoever where death was not generally the main point of combat?
> 2. If you can think of one - how many such campaigns out of all those you have been involved in does this represent?



You are presenting death as the ends of combat, but I find that death, even in combat, is not an _end_ but a _means_. 

*Hypothesis:* The main point of most combat in RPGs is not the risk of death. 

Most RPGs, including many D&D, frame combat as an _obstacle_ to the goals of the PC for them to overcome (e.g., proceeding to the next room, retrieving the item/person, the countdown clock, etc.). Combat can serve as a means to buy/achieve victory: i.e., "kill all the monsters, and we can take their stuff without fear of reprisal." In fact, often risk of death is entirely absent in combat because the characters are at such high level or advantage over their foes that combat exists primarily as a means to dwindle character resources rather than any risk of death on the part of the players. "Risk of death" may not even be feasibly considered by the GM or players until the Big Bad Evil of the dungeon or campaign. Sometimes combat is tangential to why combat is even transpiring in the first place: e.g., the mooks are there to introduce a plot hook, provide exposition, etc. Sure "risk of death" may transpire, but I don't think that it's even remotely the most prevalent way to create suspense. (I also personally find "threat of death" kinda boring.) 

Again, often when watching television or reading comics, the "risk of death" may be a given of the genre so there is not really any genuine suspense generated there unless you possess ignorance or naivety of the genre. Superman puts himself repeatedly in harms way, but how often exactly does Superman risk death? Not often. Superman will win, but we are curious about how that will transpire. How will the antagonist push Superman? At what cost will he earn his victory? We are curious about whether he will bend on his virtues. Will he manage to save others? Or SG-1 put themselves in the line of danger, and they repeatedly find themselves "defeated." They are "taken out" by some stunning blast or are captured. Will they die? Probably not. The antagonists often find themselves in a position to kill the protagonists. But there is no real suspense there when it comes to "risk of death," because we are more interested as viewers or participants in the costs or process of victory. 

Sure, "risk of death" is still a prevalent part of tabletop games and stories, but I do think that we are increasingly moving away from that as a focal point for creating any real sense of tension. As evidence, you are even having to broaden the scope of your purview to "campaigns" rather than sessions. Within the nebulous scope of a "campaign," then yeah it is likely that "risk of death" will come up at least once, but it's not going to be the primary psychological mechanism that drives suspense in most campaigns.


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## Imaculata (Jul 2, 2018)

I ran a session with a big battle not so long ago, where death certainly wasn't the main focus of the combat.

-The players had to stop an enemy invasion
-The players had to keep two large gates closed, to prevent reinforcements
-The players had to stop the enemies from opening the previously mentioned gates.

The threat of death was minor, in comparison to the threat of losing an important location/war-asset to the enemy. If the place became overrun, the players would need to abandon it.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 2, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> 1. When was the last time you were in, or ran a campaign in any rpg system whatsoever where death was not generally the main point of combat?   2. If you can think of one - how many such campaigns out of all those you have been involved in does this represent?



 2008, I think was when my last Champions campaign wrapped, it had gone six years, and had been concurrent with two 3.x campaigns.  I'd also run a campaign in the 90s, from '93 through about 2000 I think, concurrent with a shared Storyteller campaign that also wasn't too into killing as the whole point of every combat (nor, indeed, combat as something that happened in every session), and, before that from '84-'89 (that was a crazy time, we had 5 campaigns going at once, 2 or three Champions, a D&D and a Traveler), those two overlapped by AD&D campaign, which spanned 1e/2e going from '85-'95.  If we want to go with 'not exclusively' instead of 'not generally,' the 4e campaign I've run since 2012 and the one I've been in since 2010 would also both count, since there have been quite a few scenarios where killing at least some enemies was undesirable for whatever reason (two quite challenging battles in the last few months have been issued as non-lethal challenges, one was an 'all comers' arena battle, one was a contest of champions).  And in 4e that's very easy to do, lethal or not was decided when you drop the target.   5e kept that, mechanically, though the 5e games I've run have been very AD&D inspired, so quite killy.  



> Campaigns without lethal combat are corner cases. Campaigns without the risk of character death are corner cases.
> 
> Are they invalid ways to play? No of course not. But they are very uncommon.



 Anything that's not the way D&D does it comparatively uncommon in the hobby, of course, just like people are a tiny minority of earthlings (be it by individuals or biomass) compared to insects (nevermind fungi).  But in terms of games out there, there's quite a lot that de-emphasize random/arbitrary character death and the murder-hobo lifestyle.  

Probably in reaction to D&D, but also in accord with some genres, especially superheroes, obviously.  



> In a game where challenge is valued, risks are overcome (with all the catharsis that comes with that) and lethal combat rules take up a large part of the rulebook, it is entirely obvious that there should be a risk of death for PCs or an element of risk is taken from the game and it loses the capacity to keep players on the edge of their seats during the vast majority of physical combats (i.e. those in which death is a part of the scene).



 Yet a lot of folks do tweak D&D to make PC death less common, the game's always included copious magical healing, and Raise Dead when that wasn't enough - and PC durability (or at least, death-avoidance) has been trending upwards for practically the whole run of D&D.


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## Psikerlord# (Jul 3, 2018)

I disagree with the basic premise, that we know Babe is going to wow the sheep/audience. Sure he probably will, but we dont know for sure.

I think in a dnd-like game, removing the genuine threat of death is a big mistake, and takes a big chunk of tension out of the game. As I get older however I seem to be getting increasingly enamoured with old school genuine danger in games, and increasingly jaded with "easymode" games such as - ime - 5e, where it is almost impossible for a PC to die.

There can always be other stakes of course. And there should be. But there is no good reason, as far as I'm concerned, to remove death as the grand daddy of stakes. I dont believe in heavily pre-plotted adventures, or 1-20 campaign paths, or anything similar. No plot protection. No tyranny of story. Gameplay > Story. #PrepToImprov, #HooksNotPlots.


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## Aldarc (Jul 3, 2018)

Psikerlord# said:


> I disagree with the basic premise, that we know Babe is going to wow the sheep/audience. Sure he probably will, but we dont know for sure.



Counterpoint: The theatrical trailer for Babe reveals that he will succeed as a sheepherding pig and that some grand audience will cheer for him. So yeah, we know but are presumably watching anyway. 



> I think in a dnd-like game, removing the genuine threat of death is a big mistake, and takes a big chunk of tension out of the game. As I get older however I seem to be getting increasingly enamoured with old school genuine danger in games, and increasingly jaded with "easymode" games such as - ime - 5e, where it is almost impossible for a PC to die.
> 
> There can always be other stakes of course. And there should be. But there is no good reason, as far as I'm concerned, to remove death as the grand daddy of stakes. I dont believe in heavily pre-plotted adventures, or 1-20 campaign paths, or anything similar. No plot protection. No tyranny of story. Gameplay > Story. #PrepToImprov, #HooksNotPlots.



I don't think anyone is necessarily advocating the complete removal of death for the PCs. The issue raised by Vincent Baker is having uncertain outcomes serve as the primary method of creating suspense and tension. 

Here is really the core nugget of the essay that pemerton quotes: 


> Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I'm not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that's the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming.



None of this, mind you, says anything about player death or removing it. The issue is about player success, and here I think we should avoid equating success with player survival. Will King Theoden succeed in leading the Rohirrim at the Battle of Pelennor Fields to ensure victory? Yes. Does he survive? No, because that victory costs his life. And I find this an interesting question. If my GM told me, "You will succeed, but what cost will you pay to achieve it?" I would be intrigued.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 3, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> 2008, I think was when my last *Champions* campaign wrapped, it had gone six years, and had been concurrent with two 3.x campaigns.  I'd also run a campaign in the 90s, from '93 through about 2000 I think, concurrent with a shared Storyteller campaign that also wasn't too into killing as the whole point of every combat (nor, indeed, combat as something that happened in every session), and, before that from '84-'89 (that was a crazy time, we had 5 campaigns going at once, 2 or three Champions, a D&D and a Traveler), those two overlapped by AD&D campaign, which spanned 1e/2e going from '85-'95.  *If we want to go with 'not exclusively' instead of 'not generally,'* the 4e campaign I've run since 2012 and the one I've been in since 2010 would also both count, since there have been quite a few scenarios where killing at least some enemies was undesirable for whatever reason (two quite challenging battles in the last few months have been issued as non-lethal challenges, one was an 'all comers' arena battle, one was a contest of champions).  And in 4e that's very easy to do, lethal or not was decided when you drop the target.   5e kept that, mechanically, though the 5e games I've run have been very AD&D inspired, so quite killy.
> 
> * Anything that's not the way D&D does it comparatively uncommon in the hobby*, of course, just like people are a tiny minority of earthlings (be it by individuals or biomass) compared to insects (nevermind fungi).  But in terms of games out there, there's quite a lot that de-emphasize random/arbitrary character death and the murder-hobo lifestyle.
> 
> ...




To answer the bolded parts in turn;

The superhero genre of yesteryear avoided death like the plague because of the child-audience assumed. Not so much more recently, or with more noir iterations (proper Batman, Watchmen etc.) and Champions was the poster child for 4-colour child-friendly goodness. So not typical.

"If we want to go with..." - no, I didn't, and don't, as it changes the point of the discussion beyond what I focussed on.

D&D isn't implied as the benchmark in my argument. Actually the skills based systems are far more lethal in general - d100 (RuneQuest, Cthulhu, Pendragon) and let's not forget GURPS as just a few examples. here are plenty of levelling system as or more lethal than D&D. Traveller can kill you in character generation! lol

They have to tweak the rules as the mainstream RAW assumption is that there is a chance of PC death. That serves my point very well - games have kept or enhanced this aspect of play through various iterations of edition based on feedback from players and what sells. Hence the drama of the risk is again shown to be important. Again - Game of Thrones!

PC death is the predominant primary source of suspense for the vast majority of games because combat-challenges are a primary source of conflict and death in conflict resolution. Not the only source, not the only valid or entertaining source - but most certainly predominant.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 3, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> You are presenting death as the ends of combat, but I find that death, even in combat, is not an _end_ but a _means_.
> 
> *Hypothesis:* The main point of most combat in RPGs is not the risk of death.
> 
> ...




You miss the point.

Death may not be the end point for the PCs most of the time, but it is nearly always the end for the enemy, and if the game is being run with an eye on suspense, the enemies will be trying to kill the PCs in some credible way.

It IS the point of the _combat_, it may not be the point of the _adventure_.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 3, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> "If we want to go with..." - no, I didn't, and don't, as it changes the point of the discussion beyond what I focussed on.



 OK then...


> The superhero genre of yesteryear avoided death like the plague ..So not typical.
> .



 Any franchise built around the serial exploits of a character tends to avoid killing off that character, sure, but you didn't specify genre and you asked about experience, not popularity.  So, yeah, roughly half the campaigns I've run or played in have not generally included combats about killing.  

And even those, like D&D, that casually default to 'life is cheap' murder-hoboism don't /need/ to go there all the time, and even be more meaningful if something is on the line beyond just grinding down the next block of hps...



> D&D isn't implied as the benchmark in my argument.



 When you started appealing to common practice, it became about D&D.



> They have to tweak the rules as the mainstream RAW assumption is that there is a chance of PC death. That serves my point very well - games have kept or enhanced this aspect of play through various iterations of edition based on feedback from players and what sells.



 In the past, we did often tweak D&D, especially, to make it less randomly/pointlessly lethal. The other super-randomly-lethal games you mention were from the 70s, as well. But, D&D has become less lethal with each iteration.  5e death saves are the most forgiving yet, and you can choose to knock out rather than kill at 0 hps.  The same is broadly true of RPGs in general.  Killing off protagonists for no reason is just not how storytelling is generally done...



> Hence the drama of the risk is again shown to be important. Again - Game of Thrones!



 GoT is virtually unique in it's killing off of seeming protagonists without rhyme or reason.  It's a novelty.


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## Imaculata (Jul 3, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> You miss the point.
> It IS the point of the _combat_, it may not be the point of the _adventure_.




Death may not even be the point of the battle, depending on what the reason for the battle is. Not all battles have death as their only goal. Some battles are about repelling an invasion, conquering something of value, or protecting something of value.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 3, 2018)

Umbran said:


> No.  Aside from the rule I already mentioned (which was used by my players in the last session they played - they didn't fully know the moral position of their antagonists, so they refused to outright kill them), other games have mechanisms in which you decidedly beat your opponents, but don't kill them.  I the end, the point is to overcome a challenge, and death of the opponent is only one way to achieve that.
> 
> I will note that, looking at something like D&D - the number of rules around _actual death itself_ is pretty small.  Most of the combat rules are about removing hit points, which is necessary for death, but not equivalent to death.
> 
> Outside D&D, some FATE variants, for example, have physical, mental, and social health tracks.  The exact same mechanics is used for conflict resolution for each track (using different skills), but only one of them can result in physical death of the PC.  You can take an opponent out of the story with mental stress, or social pressures, without so much as scratching their skin.




Do you have legal training, because you are dancing on the head of a pin with some skill.

There only needs be one ruleset for dying, but there will be many for taking away 'hit points' which you deliberately neglect to mention are generally used to kill the opponents.

Modiphius Conan has Resolve attacks and only one rule for dying (a Wound Track) - that does not mean S&S fantasy isn't intended to be lethal, and frequently so.

Putting the cart before the horse in such a way may score you points on the forums but fails any logical scrutiny. The number or rules for x or y is secondary to how often they are used, and as I have made clear - the number of times in any game (beyond corner cases) where death isn't the point of combat are a very small proportion. Those games where risk of death for PCs is not present or not credible is also very rare as rpg have combat and death front and centre as the predominant challenge scene, and there being no risk of failure in a scene robs it of gravity and catharsis upon achieving victory.

That was the point of the thread, and stating the entirely obvious point that sometimes resolution of a challenge isn't lethal does nothing to undermine my point. Combat, which is very, very usually lethal for someone involved it (NPCs mainly of course unless you are playing Paranoia) is dull if the players understand that their PCs cannot die. Just like a social challenge where they players know the King will fold and give them the support they need regardless of how inept they are, or a Cthulhu game where the investigators know they cannot go mad no matter how many things man was not meant to know, that they know...

It isn't my fault that most conflict resolutions are in the form of combat with lethal endings in rpgs.

That's down to the dark little corners of human nature - as reflected in rpgs the world over, which are written by the same species.


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## Imaculata (Jul 3, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Combat, which is very, very usually lethal for someone involved it (NPCs mainly of course unless you are playing Paranoia) is dull if the players understand that their PCs cannot die.




That depends entirely on what's at stake.

If the lives of the PC's are on the line, then not being able to die indeed undermines those stakes. But if something else entirely is at stake (which the players are fighting for), it is a whole different matter.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 3, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> Death may not even be the point of the battle, depending on what the reason for the battle is. Not all battles have death as their only goal. Some battles are about repelling an invasion, conquering something of value, or protecting something of value.




Not all battles - just the vast majority of them.

Your examples can have life-saving goals, but you have to admit that in your first one (to use a D&D example), invaders will die unless the defenders have a LOT of sleep spells and rapid roping squads deployed. In your second, how many examples can you think of conquerors who didn't kill anyone with their armies? In your third example - what do the defenders do if the people who want that thing of value get lethal in their attempt?

Death is fast and easy. Tazers, force cages, sleep mist, sonic stun crowd control weapons - these are deployed much more rarely in rpgs compared to old knife in the gut, axe in the head, bullet in the brain or poison in the cup.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 3, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> That depends entirely on what's at stake.
> 
> If the lives of the PC's are on the line, then not being able to die indeed undermines those stakes. But if something else entirely is at stake (which the players are fighting for), it is a whole different matter.




To b clear, I meant dull when lethal combat is happening, not when it isn't. If lethality is the way to win, and you need to win to save the child-like-empress, then knowing you cannot die is a pretty good way to make your chances of saving her much more certain, and much less dramatic.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 3, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Death is fast and easy. Tazers, force cages, sleep mist, sonic stun crowd control weapons - these are deployed much more rarely in rpgs compared to old knife in the gut, axe in the head, bullet in the brain or poison in the cup.



 That's an easy point to make, and not an unfamiliar one.  Mind you, it's usually being made by folks like BADD, with an anti-RPG agenda...  ;P

Seriously, though, the fact it takes even a teeny bit of extra thought to go non-lethal does help with drama, in that killing can be the expedient way of dealing with conflict, but not the best way.  When killing is automatic, thoughtless, assumed - life is cheap - drama & suspense fall away, because there's nothing much left to care about.


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## Lanefan (Jul 4, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> In the past, we did often tweak D&D, especially, to make it less randomly/pointlessly lethal. The other super-randomly-lethal games you mention were from the 70s, as well. But, D&D has become less lethal with each iteration.



Generally, yes; but that also goes along with another development that's also become more common with each iteration: the campaign as a simgle start-to-finish adventure path.  Here it does make sense to try and have the same PCs around at the end as at the start.

But for more open-ended or sandbox or multi-party games (which is what I run) there's no reason to make 'em any less deadly. 



> 5e death saves are the most forgiving yet, and you can choose to knock out rather than kill at 0 hps.  The same is broadly true of RPGs in general.



Things like this are why I kitbash... 



> Killing off protagonists for no reason is just not how storytelling is generally done...
> 
> GoT is virtually unique in it's killing off of seeming protagonists without rhyme or reason.



Which is (a large part of) what makes it excellent.

The overarching story is clearly shown to be bigger than any individual participant...which is the same way I view a campaign: the overall campaign is bigger than any one character within it.

Lanefan


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## Aldarc (Jul 4, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> You miss the point.
> 
> Death may not be the end point for the PCs most of the time, but it is nearly always the end for the enemy, and if the game is being run with an eye on suspense, the enemies will be trying to kill the PCs in some credible way.
> 
> It IS the point of the _combat_, it may not be the point of the _adventure_.



Is there much of a point to miss? On one hand, you seem to be arguing that death happens in roleplaying games, which is a banal argument to make. On the other hand, you are arguing that death "IS the point of combat," which is demonstrably false and any time someone provides counter-examples and counter-opinions, you cast your net wider. 



Lanefan said:


> Generally, yes; but that also goes along with another development that's also become more common with each iteration: the campaign as a simgle start-to-finish adventure path.  Here it does make sense to try and have the same PCs around at the end as at the start.
> 
> But for more open-ended or sandbox or multi-party games (which is what I run) there's no reason to make 'em any less deadly.



I suspect that there are reasons to make 'em less deadly, but they are reasons that you either don't put much stock or value in for what you want in your game. My gaming group has always been relatively small set of friends (4-6 people) with different gaming needs and wants. 



> The overarching story is clearly shown to be bigger than any individual participant...which is the same way I view a campaign: the overall campaign is bigger than any one character within it.



Seems like that moves the game away from the character as the player's ego and more towards the campaign as the GM's ego. Though I admire the design goals of this approach, I can't see myself running these sort of games.


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## Lanefan (Jul 4, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> I suspect that there are reasons to make 'em less deadly, but they are reasons that you either don't put much stock or value in for what you want in your game. My gaming group has always been relatively small set of friends (4-6 people) with different gaming needs and wants.



Ditto here, with one major caveat: not only do I have character turnover within a campaign, on a slower scale I also have player turnover - new players join, existing ones leave or move away or whatever, and so on.

My current campaign has seen 13 players (of which one was a one-session wonder, so 12 that matter) during its 10 years.  Three or four, depending on week, remain: one founding player is still in; another founding player is the fourth who comes in for a bit then leaves, then comes back; and the other two joined along the way.  I'd probably still have a few more but due to time constraints I had to shut a party down a few years back, and those players didn't jump to the remaining party due to a combination of a) some personality conflicts and b) they wouldn't all fit at the table.



> Seems like that moves the game away from the character as the player's ego and more towards the campaign as the GM's ego. Though I admire the design goals of this approach, I can't see myself running these sort of games.



My usual (admittedly imperfect) analogy is that of a sports franchise - the actual players on the field (analagous to PCs) come and go over time, but the franchise itself (analagous to the campaign) carries on.


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## Emerikol (Jul 4, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Generally, yes; but that also goes along with another development that's also become more common with each iteration: the campaign as a simgle start-to-finish adventure path.  Here it does make sense to try and have the same PCs around at the end as at the start.
> 
> But for more open-ended or sandbox or multi-party games (which is what I run) there's no reason to make 'em any less deadly.
> 
> ...




I think that a big difference between playstyles.  There are no protagonists foreordained in my campaign world.  There are just people (of all races) who will prosper only if they play well otherwise they will fail.  If a story comes out of a campaign it will be by accident.  Now having said that many memorable stories have come out of it.  Not forcing it though has made those stories all the more glorious.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 5, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Is there much of a point to miss? On one hand, you seem to be arguing that death happens in roleplaying games, which is a banal argument to make. On the other hand, you are arguing that death "IS the point of combat," which is demonstrably false and any time someone provides counter-examples and counter-opinions, you cast your net wider.
> .




Is there much of a point to miss?

Yes, and I will answer as curtly as you have - you missed it again.

I suggest you look up the literal meaning of combat - a conflict between armed forces, or battle.

Then look at my comments on proportionality, which I have been entirely consistent about - not as you falsely claim - 'ever widening the net', and ask yourself the honest question;

"How many battles or conflicts between armed forces haven't involved trying to kill the enemy?"

Of course you can take the lazy way out and try to redefine what combat means retrospectively, but that's a strawman argument. You can as some have use only the exceptions to the norm to try illogically to undermine the entire premise.

But the exceptions don't prove the rule - there are exceptions to everything, even the operation of gravity - and you don't hear physicists arguing that gravity doesn't make things come back down again when you throw them up in the air because it might not exist as we understand it in a black hole.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 5, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> That's an easy point to make, and not an unfamiliar one.  Mind you, it's usually being made by folks like BADD, with an anti-RPG agenda...  ;P
> 
> Seriously, though, the fact it takes even a teeny bit of extra thought to go non-lethal does help with drama, in that killing can be the expedient way of dealing with conflict, but not the best way.  When killing is automatic, thoughtless, assumed - life is cheap - drama & suspense fall away, because there's nothing much left to care about.




Well, yes, stating the obvious is indeed easy. But some people seem to have missed it, or at the very least don't care to acknowledge it for some reason.

As I made clear earlier - I have had 12 hours games run without a single drop of blood spilled or even a tavern brawl. Combat isn't needed to have drama.

But because I said rpg combat is dull without the risk of death (The English dictionary definition of COMBAT that is - not a non-lethal physical contest as some are trying to redefine it as), it is lazily assumed that I advocate it in all cases of conflict.

Such thinking is of course ridiculous.

Once again I am drawn back to Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings. The moments when combat is ongoing, if the audience thought there was no chance of characters dying (very similar to a player knowing the DM just wont let their character die) then those scenes would not work.

I am not saying combat should always happen, or that if it happens there must always be death, but it is a very common scene in rpgs and very commonly ends in death for someone.

I am getting very tired indeed of those who argue that other outputs or purposes are valid (which I have never denied) means that I am talking rubbish.

That is demonstrably not the case.


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## Aldarc (Jul 5, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> *Is there much of a point to miss?
> 
> Yes,* and I will answer as curtly as you have - you missed it again.
> 
> ...



I have apparently missed it again because I do not see here where you state it. So what is your point here? That combat frequently involves death, killing, and violence? Is your grandstanding point really that insipid?


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 5, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> But because* I said rpg combat is dull without the risk of death* (The English dictionary definition of COMBAT that is - not a non-lethal physical contest as some are trying to redefine it as), it is lazily assumed that I advocate it in all cases of conflict..



 It is necessarily assumed that you meant that in all cases of RPG combat, yet more than a few RPGs stand as stark counter-examples.

Now you want to invoke a RL definition of combat to completely change the meaning of what you said, even though, in doing so, you have shifted the topic from RPGs to military simulations, and made your original assertion a self-defeating tautology:  "RPG combat _lethal conflict between armed forces, not a non-lethal physical contest_ is dull without the risk of death."  Well, without the risk of death, it no longer fits your definition.  

When I see discussions start to twist in the wind like that I begin to suspect that they have slid from the topic, to the need to avoid the appearance of having been wrong.


Since you have now clarified that your assertion about RPG combat being dull without the risk of death was meant only to apply to the actual literal definition of combat, not to any application of RPG rules under a 'combat' heading that might include non-lethal resolutions,  and since you acknowledge that the latter 'non-lethal physical challenges' are not necessarily dull (they are 'valid'), there's no further need to continue that tangent.


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## Lanefan (Jul 5, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> I have apparently missed it again because I do not see here where you state it. So what is your point here? That combat frequently involves death, killing, and violence? Is your grandstanding point really that insipid?



At a guess, as I'm not [MENTION=6802178]Caliburn101[/MENTION] , I think it's a combat-as-war vs. combat-as-sport thing.

Cali, I suspect (and please correct me if I'm wrong), sees combat as war almost all the time, save for a few exceptional situations as posted.

I'm also in this camp.  The as-war aspect and risk of death (or worse) is what makes it entertaining and (usually) suspenseful; vastly more so than it would be were it sport without the possibility of lasting (or any!) consequences.

If a character is plot-protected then any combat - no matter how superficially exciting or suspenseful it may be at the time - is redundant, and merely an exercise in going through the motions; because one way or another the end result is preordained*.  This is even more the case if-when the player is aware of said protection.

* - that the PC will survive.  The manner of that survival - as a prisoner, as a slave, as a triumphant victor - remains in doubt; but as the plot protection is almost certainly going to extend to being afforded ample opportunity to escape from prison or slavery or whatever it still doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things: the PC will still win in the end.

Heroic, perhaps....and fine once or twice, but it quickly loses its appeal if done every time.

Lan-"and yes, I find the 'good guys always win' aspect of movies books and other media also gets boring sometimes"-efan


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## Aenghus (Jul 5, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> At a guess, as I'm not [MENTION=6802178]Caliburn101[/MENTION] , I think it's a combat-as-war vs. combat-as-sport thing.
> 
> Cali, I suspect (and please correct me if I'm wrong), sees combat as war almost all the time, save for a few exceptional situations as posted.
> 
> ...




As I and over people have mentioned more than once, if there is some sort of script immunity in operation in a game the play is about stakes other than mere survival. The very script immunity allows players to feel safer forming bonds with NPCs and laying down roots in setting, safe in the knowledge that a random deathtrap won't meaninglessly kill them the next day. 

The village can burn, the beloved npc can be hurt, killed or kidnapped, war can break out etc (I'm assuming the feelings are "real, not faked here). There's a whole multiverse of stakes other than personal survival to play for.

I find "combat as war" to degenerate into a "PCs escalate first" until one side is wiped out cycle that I see as just as unrealistic as the alternatives. 

Negotiation and treaties aren't an unrealistic way to temporarily or semi-permanently end hostilities, but IMO they are less likely if the PCs are just trying to wipe out the opposition (which can seem rational if the PCs only care about themselves and don't give a damn about the setting).


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 5, 2018)

Aenghus said:


> I find "combat as war" to degenerate into a "PCs escalate first" until one side is wiped out cycle that I see as just as unrealistic as the alternatives.



 Every playstyle has its degenerate forms, sure.  CaW can also devolve into a metagame of DM manipulation (yes, either the players manipulating the DM to get easy victories every time, or the DM manipulating the players to jump through his hoops in pursuit thereof).  CaW is also the style that makes "what if LotR were in D&D" jokes, where Gandalf scry/buff/teleport pwns Sauron or whatever, funny - because to a much lesser extreme, some of the fun of an RPG /can/ come from doing the 'smart' thing in defiance of genre conventions.


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## Lanefan (Jul 6, 2018)

Aenghus said:


> Negotiation and treaties aren't an unrealistic way to temporarily or semi-permanently end hostilities, but IMO they are less likely if the PCs are just trying to wipe out the opposition (which can seem rational if the PCs only care about themselves and don't give a damn about the setting).



Negotiation will only realistically happen when a) one side knows it cannot win and tries negotiation as a plan B, or b) both sides realize the cost of continuing (or starting) battle will be too high.

For a) to work the winning side has to consent to negotiate - which IME isn't something PCs often do, though the opposition will on occasion.

For either a) or b) to work there needs to be enough intelligence and reason on both sides to make it worthwhile.  Negotiating with a purple worm, for example, is only going to get you eaten faster; negotiating with fanatical cultists is also likely doomed to failure before it starts.

And, for either a) or b) to work one or both sides has to have something to bargain with that the other side wants and can't otherwise easily get: this isn't always the case.

And whether or not the PCs give a damn about the setting, I always take it as default that the setting doesn't give any more of a damn about the PCs than it does any of its other many inhabitants.

Lanefan


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## Jhaelen (Jul 6, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Negotiation will only realistically happen when a) one side knows it cannot win and tries negotiation as a plan B, or b) both sides realize the cost of continuing (or starting) battle will be too high.



The lethality of the RPG system you're using is definitely a big factor in this. In games like Runequest or Ars Magica, negotiations are quite frequent, if not the default. And if the PCs are facing an opponent that cannot be negotiated with, .e.g. in RQ the Broo or in Ars Magica (magical) beasts without an IQ stat, they'll either try to avoid combat completely (by fleeing) or at least delay it until they've taken measures to stack the odds in their favor (preparing an ambush, hiring reinforcements, etc.).

But even in our Earthdawn games, we often tried to negotiate with our enemies (the exception being Horrors and their constructs). Here, however, it was entirely because of our GMs preference of presenting us with adversaries that clearly weren't 'evil'. Instead they may have been misguided, desperate, or simply acting out of fear. I've never been faced with so many moral dilemmas as in this game group!


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## Emerikol (Jul 6, 2018)

In my games, it is war and not sport.  More often than not the monsters are trying to kill the PCs.  There are exceptions of course but they are exceptional.   The same is true of the group.  They may want to capture someone for interrogation so they don't kill every enemy.  That would be an exceptional case.  Most of the time they just kill the enemy.

Now given all of that above, that does not mean that there are no other activities beside combat going on.  No every encounter with NPCs is a situation where they are viewed as an enemy.  That is less true in a traditional dungeon but still true in exceptional cases.  So one does not preclude the other.  

In my games poor play will result in death a lot.  So if a PC is dying over an over that means the person playing that PC is not playing very well.  Part of that is group dynamics.  Even a new player will understand when a group lays out a battle plan or a marching order.  My group works like a well trained military unit early on.   Why?  Because death happens more often otherwise.  Because they play well though, even at low levels, death is rare.  As they get into the higher levels where raise dead is available (at mid levels by paying a kinds ransom and at 9+ by casting it themselves), the downside to death is that the PC loses a character level.   Now in 5e perhaps that is a little more difficult so I could just reduce a random attribute by one point ( or just go with one point of CON every time ).

So my players have always treated death very seriously.  Given that truth though, they still have lots of other in game goals. They have even risked their PC lives for those goals on occasion.  They roleplay.  They make alliances.  They do everything outside of combat that I think a lot of you do.  They always have a lot of downtime activities in play (more as they advance in level of course).


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## Emerikol (Jul 6, 2018)

As an addendum to my previous post.

1.  I am not a big CR guy.  I do of course build dungeons around some concept of a level but I don't have a preset bunch of planned encounters that have an appropriate CR.

2.  I prefer the 1e philosophy where the wilderness is random (though perhaps I create my own wandering monster tables based on the world).  The dungeons are based on the habitat of the enemy.  So if for example my group wages a long battle in a particular room within earshot of other rooms, the monsters in those other rooms are going to come running. (Assuming they are allies of course and not some lurking creature).  

3.  Running is definitely on the agenda for my PCs.  How to do a fighting retreat is one of their "close action drills" if you will.  Seek favorable terrain for a fighting retreat etc...

4.  Sleeping/resting whatever are not accomplished easily within the dungeon and leaving often leads to unpleasant surprises when the PCs return unless they've truly finished a particular enemy first.  This partly depends on the intelligence of the monsters of course.  So my groups tend to face at minimum the recommended encounters and often more.

5.  All of the above tends to eliminate the Wizard dominates the game problems.  A wizard will very rarely expend a resource if he doesn't have to because he may need it in the next encounter.  The group treats all the casters as valuable reservoirs of expendable resources.  


I try to avoid too much obvious structure.  No given that my 1st level PCs are not going into a dungeon to battle an Arch Devil.  They might be fighting kobolds but if not careful the number of kobolds could easily exceed the CR if they don't play things right.

My group depending on the level typically has "stances" that they go into which they document.  They then just state they go into the stance and a whole bunch of things happen.  Just like a combat team.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 9, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> It is necessarily assumed that you meant that in all cases of RPG combat, yet more than a few RPGs stand as stark counter-examples.
> 
> Now you want to invoke a RL definition of combat to completely change the meaning of what you said, even though, in doing so, you have shifted the topic from RPGs to military simulations, and made your original assertion a self-defeating tautology:  "RPG combat _lethal conflict between armed forces, not a non-lethal physical contest_ is dull without the risk of death."  Well, without the risk of death, it no longer fits your definition.
> 
> ...




My admittedly repeated mistake proceeding from the assumption that the dictionary definitions of words are those understood by people using English to communicate with.

As for the bolded part of your response - you should consider that this kind of thing also has the appearance of doing so when those who are wrong critique someone who is right demanding ever more myopic clarifications on this word or that, that phrase or the other (targeted incrementally out of context) in order to massage the debate into a 'winning' position by them. Some might even then characterise the respondent as having been guilty of the same tactic to cover their own verbal sleight of hand.

This draws in a lot of people because they understandably cannot be bothered to take all the time necessary to backtrack the argument to it's source point and follow it with an analytical frame of mind. The one doing it can then accuse first and like every kid in the playground knows, as they called foul first with something at least appearing to be some kind of justification group-think will assume there is no smoke without fire, and they can trumpet their 'win' either directly or by a generally framed reference to the specific person, so as not to trigger moderation.

Most people on here who cynically and consistently indulge in that sort of thing are on my ignore list, but it's a common enough tactic to be almost unavoidable.


----------



## Caliburn101 (Jul 9, 2018)

Aenghus said:


> As I and over people have mentioned more than once, if there is some sort of script immunity in operation in a game the play is about stakes other than mere survival. The very script immunity allows players to feel safer forming bonds with NPCs and laying down roots in setting, safe in the knowledge that a random deathtrap won't meaninglessly kill them the next day.
> 
> The village can burn, the beloved npc can be hurt, killed or kidnapped, war can break out etc (I'm assuming the feelings are "real, not faked here). There's a whole multiverse of stakes other than personal survival to play for.
> 
> ...




You are conflating quite unfairly the 'risk of death provides drama' point I support with a 'arbitrary death is unfair' statement.

Combat as war leading to escalation is usually what the antagonist are about - not the player characters as antagonists.

Where death has occurred for instance, have you ever heard of a cliché involving Orcs entering a pub to meet and old Night Hag whose coven was raided and murdered by adventurers, and who is offering gold for the terrible threat to be dealt with?

Characters are commonly reactive, and lots of people like it that way - they get to have fin adventures and the GM has the time to prepare the adventure in advance.

Think about all the published adventures you can and ask yourself how many of them start with 'evil x does something really bad and brave heroes are called to fix it' and how many of those things involve either death, the threat of death, or death and further death in support of some scheme against the interests of someone(s) or something(s) that was/were innocent, or wealthy enough to employ adventurers to fix it.

If your PCs are escalating unduly, that's on them, but usually the BBEG got there well ahead of them or is prepared to escalate at the drop of a hat.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 9, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> I have apparently missed it again because I do not see here where you state it. So what is your point here? That combat frequently involves death, killing, and violence? Is your grandstanding point really that insipid?




Arguing my corner is grandstanding?

Why is that?

Because I feel the need to point out the obvious to those who won't acknowledge it because it doesn't suit their argument?

I stated entirely that - and some respondents said that was false and the rarer examples cited proved me wrong. I made the obvious point that exceptions, however valid, do not prove the rule.

If you are going to lower the bar so far on what you rather uniquely think 'grandstanding' means, then we are all guilty of it on these forums, including you.


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## Aldarc (Jul 9, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Arguing my corner is grandstanding?
> 
> Why is that?



Your rude, condescending tone that reeking of one-true-wayism you have been repeatedly called out for using for starters. Or maybe comments like this: 


> I've been running games for 40 years. I run convention games on a regular basis, and I have successfully completed all the novel and script writing courses offered in the Groucho Club in Soho - London.
> 
> I wouldn't use the word 'authority', especially as a backhanded put-down, but I would say that I have the experience to comment with clarity and insight. The word 'should' was offered quite clearly as an opinion after the equally stated caveat that games of other sorts are in no way invalid, just duller if they involve a risk of death that everyone knows is fake.



Were we not supposed to bask in awe at your experience and expertise as you toot your own horn? 



> Because I feel the need to point out the obvious to those who won't acknowledge it *because it doesn't suit their argument?*



Theirs or yours?  

Perhaps if you want people to be receptive to the sagacity of your arguments, you should work on your tone and how you are coming across here because you are clearly not making much headway and possibly quite the opposite. Of course, you could continue insulting their intelligence or talking down to other posters while insisting thing that you have done no wrong and are in the right, but I don't foresee much progress on this forum should you choose that path.


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## Les Moore (Jul 9, 2018)

Dudes and Master Gamers, can't we all just get along?


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## Umbran (Jul 9, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> My admittedly repeated mistake proceeding from the assumption that the dictionary definitions of words are those understood by people using English to communicate with.





Oh, come on, dude.  Really?

If I wrote:

"Here is hoping you avoid the other oft-repeated mistake of posting a highly condescending, passive-aggressive, and rude manner that leads to moderators posting in colored text to remind folks that if they cannot discuss things in a polite manner, they should walk away from the discussion."

That woudn't put you in a good mood to actually listen to me, would it?  Of course not.  You're setting yourself up for more conflict, rather than actually resolving or just avoiding the conflict.  So, you know, how about not doing that?  Thanks.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 9, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> My admittedly repeated mistake proceeding from the assumption that the dictionary definitions of words are those understood by people using English to communicate with.



 Here's a few more:

Definition of combat
1 : a fight or contest between individuals or groups 
2 : conflict, controversy 
3 : active fighting in a war : action ·casualties suffered in combat


But, more seriously, "Combat" has it's own range and nuances of meaning in our hobby.  It can be outright rules jargon, but, at least, it should reasonably be understood to mean anything pertaining to the combat rules/resolution/play in an RPG.  

Many RPGs have Combat rules that make it quite hard for a PC to die, and fairly convenient for them to avoid killing.  Even the most popular RPG of all time, D&D, currently has very generous 'death save' rules, healing, &c, that make combat far from lethal after 1st level or so, and makes it pretty easy (declare after the fact with any melee attack) to KO rather than kill.

And with good, gamist, reasons, too.  If there were an appreciable risk of PC death in every, or even most combats, few PCs would rise even to the levels were Raise Dead becomes practacble.  It's just statistics.  Even a 5% risk of PC death per 'hard' combat would have more than half of 5e D&D PCs dead by level 4, for instance (there's just a lot of combats to earn the neccesary exp to level up).

Heck, even a 1% chance of death per combat would statistically work out to half of PCs dying before 10th level.  Most campaigns, that doesn't seem to happen, so I don't think that the risk of death is generally that meaningful in RPG combats.

Now, maybe you're right and it's a smoke & mirrors thing - the /perception/ of the risk of death is there to provide drama, though the reality isn't meaningful.  That's not unfair:  it's not like any of it's real to begin with, what's one more layer of illusion or imagination?


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## Emerikol (Jul 10, 2018)

I think in my games the players do try options other than immediate enemy destruction.  I'll also admit they will run more than they will talk but they do talk sometimes.  In my games there is no guarantee that the monster you face is beatable for a fair challenge.  Also a loud battle will often lead to additional allies coming into the battle on the side of your enemies so stealth is important.

I try to map out the "plans" of the bad guys ahead of time so that I'm not influenced by the PCs and their planning.  I like to see a good plan work.  If the PCs are able to turn a hard encounter into an easy one because of cleverness that is a good thing.  It's fun.  It doesn't happen every time though of course.


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## Les Moore (Jul 10, 2018)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I also encourage teamwork.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 10, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Your *rude*, *condescending tone* that *reeking of one-true-wayism* you have been repeatedly called out for using for starters. Or maybe comments like this:
> Were we not supposed to *bask in awe* at your experience and expertise as you *toot your own horn*?
> 
> Theirs or yours?
> ...




 Thanks.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 10, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Here's a few more:
> 
> Definition of combat
> 1 : a fight or contest between individuals or groups
> ...




Mostly fair points, but I never characterised the risk of PC death as 'appreciable' (see bolded above) - I was clear that it should not be trivialised by the equivalent of script immunity, or drama in such scenes would be lost.

That is of course something of a balancing act, and D&D has used TL and CR to try and codify it (if rather poorly at higher levels). Many games do not do so at all and rely upon the GM's judgement. I am not and have indeed have never advocated 'do or die' risks in every combat, merely that death, as predominantly the point of combat in rpgs should always have some possibility of PC death - albeit not in bar-room brawl, joust or zero-g laser tag competition _et al_.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 10, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Mostly fair points, but I never characterised the risk of PC death as 'appreciable' (see bolded above) - I was clear that it should not be trivialised by the equivalent of script immunity, or drama in such scenes would be lost.



 What should it be trivialized by, then?

Even at 1% chance of croaking in each combat, half of 5e characters'll've died at least once before reaching 10th level.  Raise Dead willl likely be availble in time for some of 'em, and then become a regular feature.  

Risk of Death when Death is just a condition that can be removed isn't quite all it's cracked up to be, either, is it?



> That is of course something of a balancing act, and D&D has used TL and CR to try and codify it (if rather poorly at higher levels). Many games do not do so at all and rely upon the GM's judgement. I am not and have indeed have never advocated 'do or die' risks in every combat, merely that death, as predominantly the point of combat in rpgs should always have some possibility of PC death - albeit not in bar-room brawl, joust or zero-g laser tag competition _et al_.



 Death is the point of combat in an RPG, if the setting/genre/adventure calls for it, and the players are down with it (non-lethal options generally being there if you want to use 'em, even if it may be contrary to genre, a player can swim upstream if he wants).  Since there are RPGs that manage to be fun & have drama without consistently (or even occassionally) making death the point of combat, I can't agree with your generalization.  

I quite like the OP's idea of suspense as being what happens between the set-up of conflict and the likely genre-consistent (even 'predictable') climax & resolution thereof.  It's more broadly applicable than just x% chance of failure (or death), and potentially a lot more interesting.

It also fits in the with indie ideas of 'the reward for winning is to continue playing' and 'playing to find out what happens' as well as with more old-school (I can say that now, since it goes back to the 90s!) storytelling ideals.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 10, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> What should it be trivialized by, then?
> 
> Even at 1% chance of croaking in each combat, half of 5e characters'll've died at least once before reaching 10th level.  Raise Dead willl likely be availble in time for some of 'em, and then become a regular feature.
> 
> ...




The thread is not just about D&D though, and of course the trivialisation of a great deal of the threatening content by around 12th level onwards means many people don't play past this level. D&D still to this day has superhero levels of power creep.

All of that other stuff is valid suspense material, but as I have said, rpgs are commonly combat heavy, and combat, like other forms of challenge in the game should not be trivial and without the chance of failure for the PCs or it loses suspense.

Of course if there is an rpg campaign without any combat, then the point is moot, but I cannot say I've ever encountered one.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 10, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> The thread is not just about D&D though, and of course the trivialisation of a great deal of the threatening content by around 12th level onwards means many people don't play past this level.



 D&D is a just a current example, since you were wanting to focus on what's generally going on out there, and it's by far the most popular game, people are generally sitting down and having RPG combats in D&D.  Rather a lot of them, based on the exp it takes to level up, and even a non-trivial chance of death in each combat mounts quickly.

(Besides, when I used Champions! as an example, you cried 'corner case.'  Sorry, it was a /really/ popular game in my area in the 80s & 90s.)



> All of that other stuff is valid suspense material, but as I have said, rpgs are commonly combat heavy, and combat, like other forms of challenge in the game should not be trivial and without the chance of failure for the PCs or it loses suspense.



 That's just it, chance of failure, alone, doesn't produce suspense (it might only produce frustration, or just end the 'story' in an unsatisfying, un-suspensful way), and 'certainty' (whether via system bias or genre convention) of success doesn't eliminate it, because suspense can still exist in getting to that success & in the prices paid to get there.


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## pemerton (Jul 11, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Negotiation will only realistically happen when a) one side knows it cannot win and tries negotiation as a plan B, or b) both sides realize the cost of continuing (or starting) battle will be too high.



Or when one or both sides regard negotiation as demanded by honour or morality or custom. Or when one or both sides think they are better talkers than fighters. Or when one or both sides believe negotiation is more likely to deliver desirable results.

Aragorn negotiates with Sauron's armies, once Sauron has been defeated, because that is what will serve Gondor's interests, and what is fitting for an honourable king who rules justly rather than by force and terror.



Caliburn101 said:


> Combat, which is very, very usually lethal for someone involved it (NPCs mainly of course unless you are playing Paranoia) is dull if the players understand that their PCs cannot die.



It's pretty standard for a player in Burning Wheel to keep at least 1 persona point in reserve to ensure that his/her PC won't die if a mortal wound is suffered. This doesn't make combat dull.

In RPGs like BW, RM and RQ, it is also quite common for combat to end with one participant alive but hors de combat due to wounds suffered.

So a PC being unable to die is not tantamount to a PC being unable to lose.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 11, 2018)

pemerton said:


> It's pretty standard for a player in Burning Wheel to keep at least 1 persona point in reserve to ensure that his/her PC won't die if a mortal wound is suffered. This doesn't make combat dull.
> 
> In RPGs like BW, RM and RQ, it is also quite common for combat to end with one participant alive but hors de combat due to wounds suffered.
> 
> So a PC being unable to die is not tantamount to a PC being unable to lose.




I never said it was. I also never said that death should occur regularly - encounters the PCs should win, or survive should be the norm for a campaign game.

But that was not what the thread or my posts are about - it's 'chance of' vs 'no chance of' and the players understanding there is no chance of PC death that makes combat, where killing is so frequently the point, dull.

As I have said, sit down at any rpg table and killing the enemy is in the vast majority of cases, the point of combat. This is what happens - it just usually happens to the bad guys.

Where it isn't the point, or doesn't happen is a much rarer occurrence, and everyone here, as much as one accepts that all other forms of challenge can be dramatic in their own way, knows that's what happens most of the time.

D&D is the most popular game, even though this thread isn't just about D&D, and I defy anyone to claim that combat in D&D doesn't end in death, with no chance whatsoever of PCs being killed.

As for d100 RQ - I've played every version, and it is and always has been far more lethal than D&D in terms of getting killed.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 11, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> D&D is a just a current example, since you were wanting to focus on what's generally going on out there, and it's by far the most popular game, people are generally sitting down and having RPG combats in D&D.  Rather a lot of them, based on the exp it takes to level up, and even a non-trivial chance of death in each combat mounts quickly.
> 
> (Besides, when I used Champions! as an example, you cried 'corner case.'  Sorry, it was a /really/ popular game in my area in the 80s & 90s.)
> 
> That's just it, chance of failure, alone, doesn't produce suspense (it might only produce frustration, or just end the 'story' in an unsatisfying, un-suspensful way), and 'certainty' (whether via system bias or genre convention) of success doesn't eliminate it, because suspense can still exist in getting to that success & in the prices paid to get there.




I never claimed otherwise.

But death is the aimed-at end point of most combats. Most challenges in a game like D&D as you want to focus on that (I have previously been told by a respondent that it isn't the only game btw) are combat based, ergo death it is the most common risk of failure factor.

I haven't at any point said that other forms of failure or other forms of challenge are dull, and I am being told repeatedly that I have somehow stated it, so let's not revisit this misconception.

Champions, and in fact all superhero roleplay games are not mainstream examples to use due to relative rarity of people playing them, and style of game further cuts that down. Some will play it more cartoonish, with no appreciable risk of death, and some won't.

So a superhero game without any chance of PC death is a corner case when we look at the wide sweep of rpgs and rank the most popular. This may have been different in the 1980s, although I didn't personally witness that, but I was by default talking about the present.

On your point about failure 'might only produce frustration etc.' I challenge think about this. Imagine a game (or actually run it) where there are no dice rolls and thus every chance of failure a dice roll represents is therefore always a success, or always a failure (those are your two choices if you take chance of failure out of the equation) and tell me if you really think that makes for a satisfying experience?

Chance of failure is central to rpgs, and the very, very few who I recall tries to use a non-random based resolution methodology have never been popular.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 11, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> I never claimed otherwise.



 Y'know, I'm starting to think you never claimed anything.


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## pemerton (Jul 12, 2018)

Classic D&D has many action declarations that are auto-successes - eg _I cast Transmute Muck to Rock_, assuming the character is a magic user of sufficient level who has memorised that spell.

But a lot of people describe that as "creative casting", not "dull".


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## Emerikol (Jul 12, 2018)

For me, if you are playing a traditional swords and sorcery style game, then death is definitely one of the stakes.  I mean how would the character if he really existed feel about it? He'd be worried about death a lot I think.  For me that says it all because I want player character unity to the degree I can get it.

Now, on the flip side, there are a whole lot of things in life worth pursuing besides the avoidance of death.  In fact a few are worth risking death.  I know if someone were threatening my loved ones I would assuredly risk my life to save them.  So it seems crazy to say the only stake is death.  The stakes for me are identical to the stakes that actual character would have if he really existed in such a fantasy world.  At least that is the goal.  

And death only really means the end of your character during the first five or six levels.  After that, you will pay and perhaps your character will suffer but the party will find a way to get you raised.  

I want my games to be about good play.  Good preparation, good strategy, and good tactics are all important to success.  I want parties that exhibit such characteristics to survive more often and those that don't to survive less often.  

I really don't see the argument here between everyone.  Most games have death as a possibility.  Most games also have a lot of other stakes besides death.


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## Lanefan (Jul 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Classic D&D has many action declarations that are auto-successes - eg _I cast Transmute Muck to Rock_, assuming the character is a magic user of sufficient level who has memorised that spell.
> 
> But a lot of people describe that as "creative casting", not "dull".



Muck to Rock? 

In a safe situation where the caster has time and a clear view, yeah, that's pretty much an auto-success.  But in any situation where the caster is under any sort of duress there's the risk of interruption (a bigger issue in early D&D than in the recent versions) and, at least if I'm the DM, a roll to aim or place the spell where you want it to go; so no guaranteed success at all.


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## billd91 (Jul 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Classic D&D has many action declarations that are auto-successes - eg _I cast Transmute Muck to Rock_, assuming the character is a magic user of sufficient level who has memorised that spell.
> 
> But a lot of people describe that as "creative casting", not "dull".




The creativity or dullness depends on why and where you're casting that _transmute rock to mud_ spell. The fact that, barring interruption, it successfully turns rock into mud without an additional die roll strikes me as being far less important.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 12, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Y'know, I'm starting to think you never claimed anything.




It would appear (although I am not 100% clear on how) you have assumed too much about what I have said, and worked from that assumption rather than the actual statements. If that's down to a lack of clarity on my part, then that's on me, but having had a quick review of my responses, I honestly don't see where I claimed what you imply I did.

By all means point it out if I have missed it, or if you would prefer, we can leave the discussion here.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Classic D&D has many action declarations that are auto-successes - eg _I cast Transmute Muck to Rock_, assuming the character is a magic user of sufficient level who has memorised that spell.
> 
> But a lot of people describe that as "creative casting", not "dull".




Actions, sure, but not many of of them are without risk to carry out in combat (casting spells has a range and so do your enemies ranged weapons and spells that casting the spell may have put you within). Nor does using a spell which is automatically successful (in most cases) mean you cannot lose and suffer some kind of loss.

I don't think therefore that the comparison is a robust one.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 12, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> For me, if you are playing a traditional swords and sorcery style game, then death is definitely one of the stakes.  I mean how would the character if he really existed feel about it? He'd be worried about death a lot I think.  For me that says it all because I want player character unity to the degree I can get it.
> 
> Now, on the flip side, there are a whole lot of things in life worth pursuing besides the avoidance of death.  In fact a few are worth risking death.  I know if someone were threatening my loved ones I would assuredly risk my life to save them.  So it seems crazy to say the only stake is death.  The stakes for me are identical to the stakes that actual character would have if he really existed in such a fantasy world.  At least that is the goal.
> 
> ...




Yes, there isn't actually a real argument here. I think it is the general experience of rpg'ers that combat in rpgs is most frequently 'to the death'; that without the risk of death for PCs in such combats it would be a relatively dull affair, and on the flipside, that all kinds of other challenges can of course be suspenseful and entertaining. Nobody actually said otherwise, but some contributors to the thread conflated the two into a 'you cannot have both' 'either/or' argument.


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## Nytmare (Jul 12, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> On your point about failure 'might only produce frustration etc.' I challenge think about this. Imagine a game (or actually run it) where there are no dice rolls and thus every chance of failure a dice roll represents is therefore always a success, or always a failure (those are your two choices if you take chance of failure out of the equation) and tell me if you really think that makes for a satisfying experience?




I play in games like this quite frequently nowadays and they're incredibly satisfying.  Check out The Quiet Year (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year) if you're interested in one of them.  

Primarily I'd point out that they very rarely work along binary choices of success or failure, they usually push you to choose something along the spectrum of fail but learn something to succeed but it costs you.


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## Nagol (Jul 12, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> D&D is a just a current example, since you were wanting to focus on what's generally going on out there, and it's by far the most popular game, people are generally sitting down and having RPG combats in D&D.  Rather a lot of them, based on the exp it takes to level up, and even a non-trivial chance of death in each combat mounts quickly.
> 
> (Besides, when I used Champions! as an example, you cried 'corner case.'  Sorry, it was a /really/ popular game in my area in the 80s & 90s.)
> 
> That's just it, chance of failure, alone, doesn't produce suspense (it might only produce frustration, or just end the 'story' in an unsatisfying, un-suspensful way), and 'certainty' (whether via system bias or genre convention) of success doesn't eliminate it, because suspense can still exist in getting to that success & in the prices paid to get there.




I've been letting this topic rattle around in my head for a while as I've been distracted by other things.

Stakes don't necessarily provide suspense.  If I immediately claim my character would rather die than allow the villain to succeed and jump into the infernal machine to stop it with my corpse, there is no suspense.

Chance of failure doesn't necessarily provide suspense.  There isn't much suspense if I declare I'm throwing a smoke grenade through a window even if there is a chance I can roll poorly enough that it bounces off the glass and lands at my feet.

What seems to provide suspense in my experience are situations where (a) the result is unknown, (b) the stakes can escalate as one or more sides vies for a preferred outcome, and (c) there is some uncertainty in how the participants will respond to the changing stakes.  

Charging someone $1 million dollars for a painting doesn't generate suspense.  Having someone wager $1 million dollars against the ownership of the painting on a single roll of the dice doesn't generate suspense.  Holding an auction where the participants each have _about_ $1 million dollars of cash and cash equivalents to their name can generate suspense -- if at least two participants are interested enough in owning the painting.


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## Emerikol (Jul 13, 2018)

Nagol said:


> What seems to provide suspense in my experience are situations where (a) the result is unknown, (b) the stakes can escalate as one or more sides vies for a preferred outcome, and (c) there is some uncertainty in how the participants will respond to the changing stakes.



I believe facing an enemy you don't know how you are going to defeat can generate suspense.  I believe if the group begins to spiral down with some characters nearing death, that creates suspense.  I believe approaching a battle with the final big bad guy can be suspenseful.  



Nagol said:


> Having someone wager $1 million dollars against the ownership of the painting on a single roll of the dice doesn't generate suspense.



Really?? Unless I was a billionaire, this would be very suspenseful.  If in a game it would be if the PCs are risking all of their resources.




Nagol said:


> Holding an auction where the participants each have _about_ $1 million dollars of cash and cash equivalents to their name can generate suspense -- if at least two participants are interested enough in owning the painting.



Sure.

Risk of failure in some way can be suspenseful.  Death is failure.  Other things can be failure too.  If you have a goal and don't achieve that goal that is a form of failure.


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## Nagol (Jul 13, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> I believe facing an enemy you don't know how you are going to defeat can generate suspense.  I believe if the group begins to spiral down with some characters nearing death, that creates suspense.  I believe approaching a battle with the final big bad guy can be suspenseful.




Facing an enemy with an unknown weakness hits points a and c, at least.  B is likely if the group takes casualties before discovering a method to success or changing response (i.e. running away).  The combat with losses hits a, b, and c.  BBEG battles can be suspenseful.  They can also just be slogs or anticlimactic.  It depends a lot on how the preparation and battle go.



> Really?? Unless I was a billionaire, this would be very suspenseful.  If in a game it would be if the PCs are risking all of their resources.




When it has happened near me, it's typically been "Yep we'll take that bet!" <dice roll> followed by one of { "Yay!", "Boo!" }.  Alternatively, the offer is turned down.



> Sure.
> 
> Risk of failure in some way can be suspenseful.  Death is failure.  Other things can be failure too.  If you have a goal and don't achieve that goal that is a form of failure.




It not just a risk of failure: trying to pick a lock runs a risk of failure, but is rarely suspenseful in and of itself.  Part of suspense comes from the "what happens if" questions attached to failure.  What happens if we misjudged how cowardly he is and he does stay on track?  What happens if this gambit fails?   What happens if we fall here?  What happens if we bail out and the BBEG gets his prize?  

If the answer is "We move on" or a shrug then there is no suspense.


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## Emerikol (Jul 13, 2018)

Nagol said:


> It not just a risk of failure: trying to pick a lock runs a risk of failure, but is rarely suspenseful in and of itself.  Part of suspense comes from the "what happens if" questions attached to failure.  What happens if we misjudged how cowardly he is and he does stay on track?  What happens if this gambit fails?   What happens if we fall here?  What happens if we bail out and the BBEG gets his prize?



Sure you want to make the stakes as interesting as possible.  I think the suspense is on the risk of the big goal.  So sure most groups assume if they can't pick the lock they will find another way.  It's a minor roadblock so there is minor suspense.  So the two competing sources of suspense in my games is survival and original goal achievement.  The original goal is the point of the adventure.  Those sorts of points can be anything that motivates real human beings.  Avarice, revenge, love, renown, etc..  I think in most of my campaigns my players have a long term strategic goal of advancing and become more proficient in their chosen profession (class).  



Nagol said:


> If the answer is "We move on" or a shrug then there is no suspense.



Have you ever been on a sports team? After a lose you move on because you can't change the outcome. Until you knew it was a loss a lot of suspense could have been happening.

So if you are raiding a lost tomb for an ancient treasure, you really want that treasure but if in the end it slips away that doesn't make the journey unsuspenseful.


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## Aenghus (Jul 14, 2018)

I find suspense is highly personal and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. Fairly often referees get this wrong and their attempts to create suspense can fall flat for some or all of their players. What players care about in games varies hugely, which is one of the reasons DMing for random people is difficult. 

Primarily unless the players want suspense in their game, attempting to create it may be a lot more difficult. Players who are primarily target or objective driven, whether that's hack and slash, loot, spotlight grabbing etc may not want suspense because suspense is often about the unknown and unknown variables increase the chance of failure. Players who want to succeed in game probably try to minimise the number of unknowns in the game and reduce suspense. 

If you find this badwrongfun, well, not everyone wants suspense as a major component of their game just like not everyone wants drama, or PC death.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 16, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> I play in games like this quite frequently nowadays and they're incredibly satisfying.  Check out The Quiet Year (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year) if you're interested in one of them.
> 
> Primarily I'd point out that they very rarely work along binary choices of success or failure, they usually push you to choose something along the spectrum of fail but learn something to succeed but it costs you.




Do you have any evidence of it's relative popularity, or is it niche to the point other such games have been? I remember playing one rpg without dice (Amber) which was ok - if it was a little like a long, long LARP session with no action scenes, and another was a tabletop board game. The tabletop boardgame (the original Civilisation) was rather more engaging in my opinion despite having battles in it.

As I argued, I think it is clear that exceptions really do not prove the rule - whether they are interesting examples or not. Randomisation next to a chance of success and failure is overwhelmingly mainstream and here to stay, especially in combat. Ask any casino craps table operator why human psychology will always make that the go-to game mechanic and they can give you a pretty straight answer.

We love gambling, and the chance of losing everything excites a primitive part of humanity's brain.

There is no choice based system that can provide that, and indeed, if no dice are used, they cannot throw up an extreme result that throws the plot and narrative in a surprising and unanticipated direction.

To cite some populist sources of the excitement to be had with such normal mechanics, both the Matthew Mercer and Joe Manganiello have publically stated that the dice providing such surprises is one of the great attractions of D&D for them.

I have to agree with them.


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## Nytmare (Jul 18, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Do you have any evidence of it's relative popularity, or is it niche to the point other such games have been? I remember playing one rpg without dice (Amber) which was ok - if it was a little like a long, long LARP session with no action scenes, and another was a tabletop board game. The tabletop boardgame (the original Civilisation) was rather more engaging in my opinion despite having battles in it.




You said that a game with no dice rolls would be a game in which, and I quote: 



> every chance of failure a dice roll represents is therefore always a success, or always a failure (those are your two choices if you take chance of failure out of the equation) and tell me if you really think that makes for a satisfying experience?




I explained that not only could I imagine such a game, but that I frequently play them.  I also explained that such a game would not be limited to results that were "always a success or always a failure" because they don't. 

Why is the goalpost now being moved to whether or not it's as popular as D&D?  And how is it that the _fact that games like this exist_ is not acceptable proof that there are games like that that exist?

An RPG doesn't have to be an exercise in risk and reward, and "extreme results" that throw the plot into surprising and unexpected directions can just as easily be generated by other players making surprising and unexpected choices as they could be by rolling a die.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 18, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> You said that a game with no dice rolls would be a game in which, and I quote:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




So you don't agree with them, or me, or the vast numbers who play dice-based games because diceless choice games lack suspense, as the end is never really in doubt as the players choose, and of course every player who chooses can NEVER fail to know in advance what is going to happen.

A players turn is their main chance to act, or influence, to move, etc.

Knowing everything that is going to happen as a result of your own character's actions in advance ironically means that it is other players turns which end up being more suspenseful.

That's why relative popularity is absolutely relevant. Because it has been tried before and most people don't want to play it. It takes one of the central aspects of the fun away for them.

Of course you can personally like that - no problem there, but the vast majority of people don't...

… or that is what they would actually be playing, and diceless games would rule the roost.

Lastly, the bit I highlighted in bold about "Results". Every action taken by a PC is because their player wants to do something. Pick up a sword, open a lock, chat up the barman, spot the thief, heal the innocent, win the horserace, walk over the rickety bridge safely... need I go on?

What aspect of the game you are talking about here has choices which don't have either a chance of success or failure as a result?

Please give some examples - and please make them examples that cannot happen just as well in a dice-based mainstream rpg… like "my PC gets out of bed", or "my PC holds he breath for 5 seconds..."


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## Emerikol (Jul 19, 2018)

I believe in these director stance games, Caliburn, there is never any suspense per se but there is anticipation of what the other players will do.   This is akin to writing a novel where one person writes to a point and then stops mid sentence and another person starts writing.  The story goes around the room from player to player.  Obviously in an rpg, they've got it down where all the players are affecting the fiction every turn.

No doubt from our perspectives that wouldn't even be what we've always thought of as roleplaying.  It would be alien.  It exists though I am not making this up.  It's just an entirely different style of play.  I don't think it's for me but it has it's adherents.


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## Nytmare (Jul 19, 2018)

*Goalposts and Strawmen: A Play in Three Acts*

Caliburn: It is a fact that a game without dice is a game where you only get to choose 100% success or 100% failure.

Me: I just played in a game with no dice where you get to choose something between success and a little bit of failure, all the way to failure, but with a little bit of success.

Caliburn: Yeah, but you can't possibly have found that satisfying.

Me: Yes, I found it satisfying.

Caliburn: Yeah, but it's not popular.

Me: But we weren't talking about whether or not it was popular?

Caliburn: And two Youtube D&D guys said they like D&D more.

Me: Yes?

Caliburn: So you're saying that me and the Youtube guys and everyone else who doesn't like your game are wrong?!

Me: Whowhat?

_-fin-_

What are you even arguing?  I never said that diceless games were superior to dice-full games.  I never stated what my personal preference was between them (I don't have one).  I never suggested that people should prefer diceless, or that dicey games shouldn't be or aren't as popular.  I never said that diceless games can't have the same kinds of results as a diced game.  

I'm not sure what you're asking with regards to all those actions, but I'll try to take a swing at what a player might decide a result would look like in a pass to fail spectrum.

* You pick up the sword, but the shopkeeper notices you trying to steal it.

* You try to pick up the sword, but your opponent is faster and gets between you and it and tells you to yield.

* You successfully open the lock, but you trigger a trap.

* You fail to open the lock, but you know where you saw the key that would fit this lock.

* You chat with the barman, and even though you learn where the Duke is holding your friends captive, you don't notice the pickpocket making off with your coin pouch.

* You spot the thief, but she spots you too and your hopes of an ambush are dashed.

Do any of these answer your question?


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## pemerton (Jul 22, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> I believe in these director stance games, Caliburn, there is never any suspense per se but there is anticipation of what the other players will do.   This is akin to writing a novel where one person writes to a point and then stops mid sentence and another person starts writing.  The story goes around the room from player to player.



Sometimes when talking about RPGs it's helpful to actually _talk about RPGs_ rather than just make stuff up.

From Ron Edwards:

this isn't what most people are talking about, when we talk about non-railroady Narrativist play. This is kind of a consensual-storytelling, make-it-up-as-we-go, round-robin type thing. Frankly, it's pretty boring in most circumstances and tends to create wandering, meaningless pseudo-narratives.​
From Eero Tuovinen:

I think that a logical division of tasks is important for a roleplaying game to such a degree that it actually prescribes and explains much of what we find interesting in the game in the first place. Specifically, I find that the _riddle of roleplaying_ is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship. This is why many people find conch-passing games to pale next to a proper roleplaying game; the advocacy/referee/antagonism division of responsibilities is simply a more dynamic, interactive, emergent and fun way of crafting stories than undiluted and complete dramatic control for many of us.​
I don't know the game that  [MENTION=55178]Nytmare[/MENTION] referred to (_The Quiet Year_) other than from the website link, but I had a look at the PDFs for the free _Deep Forest_ variant. It uses a random card draw to drive both complications and narration, and has rules that structure what sorts of narration are permitted or not.

It's doesn't look like conch-passing to me.

(There's also this puzzle: in the context of playing a game which focuses primarily on narration of shared fiction, what is the difference between _suspense_ and _anticipation of what another will do_? It's not intuitive to me.)

(Edit: fixed typo in Eero's name.)


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## Aenghus (Jul 22, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Do you have any evidence of it's relative popularity, or is it niche to the point other such games have been? I remember playing one rpg without dice (Amber) which was ok - if it was a little like a long, long LARP session with no action scenes, and another was a tabletop board game. The tabletop boardgame (the original Civilisation) was rather more engaging in my opinion despite having battles in it.
> 
> As I argued, I think it is clear that exceptions really do not prove the rule - whether they are interesting examples or not. Randomisation next to a chance of success and failure is overwhelmingly mainstream and here to stay, especially in combat. Ask any casino craps table operator why human psychology will always make that the go-to game mechanic and they can give you a pretty straight answer.
> 
> ...




Some people like gambling. Some people avoid gambling. Most are in the middle somewhere. 

Being far closer to the "avoid" side of the spectrum, IMO gambling isn't the universal sales point you portray above. Over the decades I've been involved with RPGs, it's clear to me that some people love taking risks, while others are risk-adverse and keep looking for the safer, lower-risk path. 

It's important for GMs to be aware of this because trying to force risk adverse players into taking lots of risks is probably a mistake, as they likely won't enjoy it, and that's not where their skills lie. Conversely, not providing risk-fans with opportunities for risk will probably bore them and have them wander off to find risk elsewhere.

One fallacy is that higher risk should provide higher reward. That's not necessarily true in the real world, and  IMO there's even less chance of that in a gameworld, (unless it's written into the gameset being used, or provided by houserules). All too often I've seen players take dumb risks in the hope of greater rewards that are all in their heads, and not anywhere in the rules or on the table, and haven't been negotiated beforehand.

Fortunately, it's possible to dial the amount of risk within a game up and down, and even allow different levels of risk to different players.


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## Emerikol (Jul 23, 2018)

Aenghus said:


> Primarily unless the players want suspense in their game, attempting to create it may be a lot more difficult. Players who are primarily target or objective driven, whether that's hack and slash, loot, spotlight grabbing etc may not want suspense because suspense is often about the unknown and unknown variables increase the chance of failure. Players who want to succeed in game probably try to minimise the number of unknowns in the game and reduce suspense.




I agree with your points.  So this is just me adding a nuance.  

There are two types of target driven groups..
1.  Those that always want to win and want to look good doing it.  The process of being victorious over their enemies is enjoyable.  If you make things hard for them, they aren't happy.

2.  Those that want to work hard to achieve their goals and if they get it easy it's unsatisfying.  And when I say "work hard", I mean the group using their wits and strategic planning to out smart enemies.  


Gygax in teaching DMs in the DMG 1e had this sort of group because what he taught in that book was how to handle a #2 sort of group.  I've since learned that there are more varieties than this one type.   I've also noticed in newer editions of D&D that the presumed type of group has swung a bit in the direction of #1.

Still good points and each group likely falls on a scale between extreme #1 and extreme #2.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 23, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> *Goalposts and Strawmen: A Play in Three Acts*
> 
> Caliburn: *It is a fact that a game without dice is a game where you only get to choose 100% success or 100% failure.*
> 
> ...




No - they only answer a question you have fabricated by design or mistake as passed off as my position on the issue.

What I actually said was that all choice-based mechanics lead to a choice of failure or success - you make it seem as if it has to be ONE HUNDREN PERCENT SUCCESS or ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FAILURE. I emphasise the 100% in text for you there to make it clear where my argument has been fundamentally misrepresented in your post.

I never said degrees of success were not possible or not desirable. I did not make such a black and white statement. I would hope that you have made the mistake of thinking that all choices resulting success or failure means that all failures are utterly wretched and all successes are utter triumphs. That is in no way what I said.

As for the rest of what you said, including all the examples you gave of degrees of success and narrative consequences, as it was all predicated on your erroneous opening statement they serve no purpose in relation to the argument, except to illustrate my point relevant to the second bolded text section above where you actually agree with me - openly admitting that all the examples are examples of pass or fail - _precisely_ what I was saying all along!

So you see, you can state that all choices will be either pass or fail without making these extreme 100% versions of the same. You just did it in your own post!

This thread was about suspense in rpgs and as combat is a large part of rpgs, the suspense of not knowing where you will win is a big part of that. None of your examples provide that specific suspense as no surprise is involved. The actor _chooses_ whether they succeed or not and the GM narrates the follow on consequences by _choosing_ them. That's effectively writing a novel as cooperative author's - a form of cooperative storytelling, not roleplaying as it is most widely practiced. Emerikol in his #161 post clarifies that well.

I suggest you look at permerton's post #163 quoting Ron Edwards and Eero Tuovinen who speak perfectly eloquently on the shortcomings of what you are talking about in the context of suspense. Do you think that Ron and Eero are somehow telling other people that they are gaming 'wrong', or are they just stating what is very well known already?

The vast majority games have randomisation mechanics because the vast majority of players prefer them, and that the alternatives that exist whilst no less valid forms of storytelling entertainment have never, despite various incarnations, been anything other than niche games precisely because they are not the preferred mode of gaming. Likewise, combat is very common in rpgs and narrative combat, or combat with no chance of death (where, as it is so very commonly the _point_ of combat) would be dull, and lacking suspense. That's my opinion, clearly stated, repeatedly, and I am far from the only one to hold it.

Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they think what you do with your own game is wrong.


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## Nytmare (Jul 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> *(There's also this puzzle: in the context of playing a game which focuses primarily on narration of shared fiction, what is the difference between suspense and anticipation of what another will do? It's not intuitive to me.)*




Beat me to it.

Does this possibly fall back to an offshoot of the argument about die rolling vs DM fiat?


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## pemerton (Jul 23, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> This thread was about suspense in rpgs and as combat is a large part of rpgs, the suspense of not knowing where you will win is a big part of that.



I think this is overstated.

Given that most RPGing is D&D, and that most, or at least a fair chunk of most, D&D play involves combat, what you say is true from the point of view of a census. But it's not true from the point of view of varieties of RPGs and RPGing.

I have been running a Classic Traveller game on-and-off for the past year or so. It's something like 7 or 8 sessions in. There was no combat in the first two sessions, which involved the PCs meeting a patron, going on a mission, doing some trading en route, collecting intelligence, disrupting an organisation, and planning a mission out onto the surface of a barren world. The third session involved combat - there was an assault on an enemy outpost. The fourth session involved the PCs being fired upon by an orbiting starship as they tried to return from said outpost to a city in their ATVs, but the PCs weren't fighting - they were driving, hacking communications, negotiating their attackers, interrogating their prisoners, etc. The fifth session mostly involved exploring an alien world - there was no fighting. The sixth and seventh sessions involved another assualt, starting with starship combat and then interpersonal combat.

I don't think what I've described is particularly atypical for Traveller, which has fairly robust resolution mechanics for quite a lot of stuff besides fighting.

And I think lack of suspense about winning combats is overstated even in relation to D&D. Given the importance so many D&D players seem to post on combat as a cause of resource attrition, I think many combats do not generate uncertainty about whether or not the PCs will win, as opposed to uncertainty about what resources might be consumed in the process.


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## pemerton (Jul 23, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> Beat me to it.
> 
> Does this possibly fall back to an offshoot of the argument about die rolling vs DM fiat?



What have you got in mind?


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I think this is overstated.
> 
> Given that most RPGing is D&D, and that most, or at least a fair chunk of most, D&D play involves combat, what you say is true from the point of view of a census. But it's not true from the point of view of varieties of RPGs and RPGing.
> 
> ...




Yes, all good stuff. But I was referring to the most played rpgs and most rpgs in fact - not all - and certainly not things such as Traveller, Cthulhu etc. But randomisation and not knowing how challenges will turn out is a big part of those too - san checks when encountering a Mi Go victim's body, piloting checks in an asteroid field.

Combat is just a common go-to example, not the whole point and taken as a whole, not overstated if you see that I have not referred to it exclusively.


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## Lanefan (Jul 23, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> I agree with your points.  So this is just me adding a nuance.
> 
> There are two types of target driven groups..
> 1.  Those that always want to win and want to look good doing it.  The process of being victorious over their enemies is enjoyable.  If you make things hard for them, they aren't happy.
> ...



There's an extension of the two group definitions which I'll take the liberty of adding in here, as I see it as very relevant:

1.  Those that always want to win and want to look good doing it.  The process of being victorious over their enemies is enjoyable.  If you make things hard for them, they aren't happy.  Failure is not seen as a possible outcome and is not taken well when-if it occurs.

2.  Those that want to work hard to achieve their goals and if they get it easy it's unsatisfying.  And when I say "work hard", I mean the group using their wits and strategic planning to out smart enemies. Failure is accepted as a possible outcome, and taken in stride when-if it occurs.

The game overall is more or less set up to allow success.  I think it's the handling and acceptance of failure that marks the biggest difference between 1. and 2.

And it's not just each group that's somewhere on this scale, but each individual player; and having in the past run games with players near opposite ends of this scale sitting at the same table I can say the difference causes headaches.

Lanefan


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## Nytmare (Jul 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> What have you got in mind?




The age old divide between people who feel as though a DM fudging a die roll is part and parcel of the D&D experience vs those who consider fudging a die roll anathema.

If wondering what happens and rolling a die on a chart is suspenseful for someone, but asking a person to be a temporary DM to effectively choose an item off a chart _isn't_, maybe the difference for those people just hinges on whether or not it's a person making the decision?


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 24, 2018)

No productive idea has ever started "there are two kinds of people... " 

That's just the basic formula for bigotry:  Define an in group (so as to include yourself, of course).  Drop everyone else in the out group.  Build up the in group.  Tear down the out group.  Feel good about yourself on the basis of your group membership.

When I was much younger I had this delusion that RPGs innately worked against that sort of thing, that they gave us the opportunity to see things from radically different points of view, that the very process of roleplaying opened our minds...


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## Emerikol (Jul 25, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> There's an extension of the two group definitions which I'll take the liberty of adding in here, as I see it as very relevant:
> 
> 1.  Those that always want to win and want to look good doing it.  The process of being victorious over their enemies is enjoyable.  If you make things hard for them, they aren't happy.  Failure is not seen as a possible outcome and is not taken well when-if it occurs.
> 
> ...




Excellent and valid points.  My groups have tended towards #2 overall and I definitely DM that way but like you said I probably had some at the table more gung ho than others.  It's not that they weren't happy as is but they might have been a little more happier if it was a bit easier.


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## Nytmare (Jul 25, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> No productive idea has ever started "there are two kinds of people... "




If that was directed at me, I'd argue that, for the people involved in that argument, there are definitively two different groups arguing.

I am not saying that there are two kinds of people, I'm saying that for the people who _have_ that argument, there are two sides.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 25, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> If that was directed at me,



 Not so much, no.



> I'd argue that, for the people involved in that argument, there are definitively two different groups arguing.
> I am not saying that there are two kinds of people, I'm saying that for the people who _have_ that argument, there are two sides.



There are at least two sides to every argument, sure.  



Nytmare said:


> The age old divide between people who feel as though a DM fudging a die roll is part and parcel of the D&D experience vs those who consider fudging a die roll anathema.



 Those are just two extremes of the range of opinions, I'm sure.  I do feel the former is pretty fair, personally:  it's just my experience that DMs who do a decent job are usually overriding the system one way or another (fudging secretly or openly, modding the rules up front or ruling notwithstanding the rules they go), and I find when I run D&D that it's usually better to trust your skills/experience as a DM rather than trust the system & the dice.  
But there are many ways of coping.



> If wondering what happens and rolling a die on a chart is suspenseful for someone, but asking a person to be a temporary DM to effectively choose an item off a chart _isn't_, maybe the difference for those people just hinges on whether or not it's a person making the decision?



 I think there's an ideal of impartiality involved.  It'd be rooted in the game's early wargaming history, IMHO, a tradition left over from when more complex wargames would use a 'judge,' an impartial 3rd party to fairly settle issues between competing players.  While judge and GM are analogous (and still synonymous, apparently, in some regions), they're not identical:  the judge must be impartial, because he's facilitating a competition, while the GM is facilitating a cooperative challenge (or even a storytelling exercise).


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## Emerikol (Jul 29, 2018)

Nytmare said:


> If that was directed at me, I'd argue that, for the people involved in that argument, there are definitively two different groups arguing.
> 
> I am not saying that there are two kinds of people, I'm saying that for the people who _have_ that argument, there are two sides.




There are two types of people.  Those who can understand the intent of the author of a post and respond to what he intended and those who want to nitpick every semantic nuance so as to cloud the original discussion.  ;-)

In every individual argument (assuming it's a logically constructed argument), there are exactly two sides.  That is not true in all discussions because of course we have multiple arguments going at once.   The key is that an argument is asserting something so you accept the assertion or you rebut it.  Of course the reasons an argument can be wrong are theoretically limitless.


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## Lanefan (Jul 29, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> There are at least two sides to every argument, sure.



In here there are often about five, roughly equating to one per D&D edition.


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## Lanefan (Jul 29, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> In every individual argument (assuming it's a logically constructed argument), there are exactly two sides.



Well, in fairness there are three "sides" with the third "side" having some subgroups; those three sides being pro, con, and both/neither/neutral.

For example, take the 3e-4e war from the 4e supporter perspective:

Pro - 4e is good, 3e is bad
Con - 4e is bad, 3e is good
Both - both are equally good / Neither - both are equally bad / Neutral - this debate is irrelevant

Lan-"neither"-efan


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## Emerikol (Jul 31, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Well, in fairness there are three "sides" with the third "side" having some subgroups; those three sides being pro, con, and both/neither/neutral.
> 
> For example, take the 3e-4e war from the 4e supporter perspective:
> 
> ...




You didn't make an assertion though.  Sides can have all sorts of views.

The individual assertions are 
1.  4e was good.
If you think 4e was bad or your neutral then for you the above is false.
2.  3e was good
Same as for 4e.  

I said a logical assertion.  It has to be stated as a truth statement.  Thus it's always yes or no.  (true or false)


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> You didn't make an assertion though.  Sides can have all sorts of views.
> 
> The individual assertions are
> 1.  4e was good.
> ...



That's just binary logic, which almost never applies to real-world debates particularly if more than two people are involved and even more particularly when there is more than one binary variable (in this case good-bad) and-or that variable isn't in fact binary at all.  With the 3e-4e debate we have both these complications: more than two people, and more than one beyond-binary variable.

I can hyopthetically make an assertion that 4e was good.  You can claim this is false as for you it is neither good nor bad e.g. maybe you've never heard of it, or you have no opinion.  A third person could claim both our assertions are false and that 4e was bad.  Already we've gone beyond simple binary as just this one variable in fact has three states: good-bad-neutral.  

Add in other variables (was 3e good or bad or neutral; were both 3e and 4e good; were both 3e and 4e bad) and any usefulness binary logic might have once had has long since been left dying by the trail.

Lanefan


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## Emerikol (Aug 1, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> That's just binary logic, which almost never applies to real-world debates particularly if more than two people are involved and even more particularly when there is more than one binary variable (in this case good-bad) and-or that variable isn't in fact binary at all.  With the 3e-4e debate we have both these complications: more than two people, and more than one beyond-binary variable.
> 
> I can hyopthetically make an assertion that 4e was good.  You can claim this is false as for you it is neither good nor bad e.g. maybe you've never heard of it, or you have no opinion.  A third person could claim both our assertions are false and that 4e was bad.  Already we've gone beyond simple binary as just this one variable in fact has three states: good-bad-neutral.
> 
> ...




Not at all.  Debate has to involve binary assertions at some point.  Yes in a discussion about the various merits of some game we may engage in many small logical debates.  The only way we can make a valid argument is one that ends in a truth statement.   You, me, and someone else could all argue about a game and come to three different evalutations.  Each one is a truth statement.  An argument against one statement may not be valid against another.

So complex arguments are just a series of smaller logical assertions that are either valid or not.  Naturally some things like taste are by definition undeniable.  So if I say "I liked 4e" that cannot be disputed.  If I say "4e is a great game" that could be disputed.  We'd have though to agree on what a great game is in general and I suspect it would end up devolving back to matters of taste.


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## Lanefan (Aug 1, 2018)

Emerikol said:


> Not at all.  Debate has to involve binary assertions at some point.



Even here I disagree, in that a true binary - only one 'yes' option and only one 'no' option - is very rare indeed outside of spaces like arithmetic.  Take something as simple as the colour of a clear sky:

"The sky is blue"
"The sky is pink"
"The sky is gray"

These can all be truthfully said simultaneously by three people standing side by side, giving a three-way (trinary?) condition.

The person who says the sky is blue is looking straight up.
The person who says the sky is pink is looking west at the sunset
The person who says the sky is gray is colour-blind



> Yes in a discussion about the various merits of some game we may engage in many small logical debates.  The only way we can make a valid argument is one that ends in a truth statement.   You, me, and someone else could all argue about a game and come to three different evalutations.  Each one is a truth statement.  An argument against one statement may not be valid against another.



But as soon as you hit three evaluations (or conditions) you're no longer binary.  Each evaluation has two "no" conditions (those being the other two evaluations); and in this example there has to be a fourth option: "none of these are true".

Contrast that with a true binary: the electric light is either on or off; in either state one statement about its condition is true and the other is false.


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