Death Shouldn't Feel like a Punishment

[HEEGZ]

We could change the XP for bios to the original proposal. Make them worth 1000xp instead of 250xp, and able to receive at PC creation instead of after level 2. I agree that people no longer seem to log in very often just to hang out and RP. I'm glad the gnoll plot idea carried some weight. I wonder what helped, the gnoll spawn encounters?

I've started doing something new, and tested it last night. DMs can now change the description of items and placeables and NPCs in game. This means I can make a NPC such as "Merchant Bob OOC Examine Me!" And then when you examine him, his description gives the plot hook for a staged encounter including any IC dialog he would give to PCs. Could leave a trail of bread crumbs for players to follow and so on. Although I think my time is much better spent DMing, I may place some from time to time as I have done. Sorta rambling now, sorry.

[hollyfant]

Higher survivability for new characters strikes me as a solution that's looking for a problem.

Character death is a punishment. How could it not be? Your plans get cut short and you lose the comfortable position you earned within the groups of PCs that yours ran with. And the replacement is a feeble nobody. Too weak to play with the big kids, too unknown to be in on the various social goings-on.

But characters die. They have to; it's what makes their lives worth while (while they live, anyway). Trying to "race" a new PC to a position where it might replace the previous one isn't a penalty mitigation for death. It's just powergaming. Grinding. Like leveling an "alt" in an MMO.
And that's just not ALFA.

Leave things as they are. Accept that with your PCs' death, you also lose their place. Don't try to reclaim it. Just roll up a new gall or guy, and go do something new. New face, new town, new goals with new means. If playing a level 1 character isn't any fun, then why did we ever roll one up to begin with?

[Twin Axes]

But characters die. They have to; it's what makes their lives worth while (while they live, anyway).

This is the bittersweetness that makes Alfa so addictive. The threat of losing something you love and invest in makes it more than just your own little sandbox, it's what makes it cathartic. It's the spice of tragedy that makes it just that much more meaningful.

That said, I think the issue raised points to one of the basic flaws of D&D. The main reason my tabletop group never developed any long running campaigns in D&D was that we never seemed to get very far past the giant rat-kobold-goblin stage and every time we started over we just had to go through the same thing again. As the group's DM I found it very frustrating. I think in terms of ALFA though we are stuck with D&D.

[Xanthea]

Character death is a punishment.

Frankly, that's stupid. This is a game. And if playing the game in a certain way results in an OOC punishment then you're just encouraging OOC behaviour by making people optimize their characters for survival at any cost, both mechanically and RPwise.

If playing a level 1 character isn't any fun, then why did we ever roll one up to begin with?

Presumably for the same reason anyone does anything in life that they don't want to and don't need to. Expectation of future payoff. However as we get older and busier some of us have a much lower tolerance for wasting their time with "Game G", as I call it. I have better things to do with my time than grind xp for a few months until I can do anything again.

[Brokenbone]

I like getting into a groove with people I enjoy gaming with. I don't know what kind of pixie dust makes for a "good group" (not just talking IC, but OOC a fun mix of people you enjoy gaming with... enjoyment being a benefit of playing) but once you've got a good group, it sucks to be sidelined. It's cool to hear invites for other opportunities but remember our population is sparse, there's time zone separations, and any random mix of people playing has a chance of either clicking or, y'know, not clicking. Say the "simulationist vs. adventurer" vibe reason, or "way into PnP and out of engine vs. WYSIWYG in engine," or "smashy vs. talky" or "high adventure vs. kissy kissy."

If we had huge population and density, which isn't going to happen this late in (or after?) the product's lifecycle, the normal idea is "try to adapt", adaptation can I suppose be of the game and its rules (like the 2nd PC business) or of the players (mostly the "suck it up buttercup" position seen in abundance here). Remember the idea of games as a "fun" diversion is kind of key to attracting / retaining an audience. Now, even "lowbies" can certainly have fun, particularly if surrounded by and playing with other lowbies under a DM. But all alone in the vast empty of ALFA ("oh look, 0 players on all 3 servers as usual, maybe I will be #1?"), there are lots of other things to do either in RL or other more engaging games, including in the NWN1/2 world still out there, rather than twiddling thumbs alone someplace safe online, or killing rats in a bar basement, picking mushrooms, delivering mail, whatever.

Maybe just a "flaw" and "contributing factor to inevitable demise" of project. Peeling off a copy of this or that server for campaign only use has its appeal sometimes in theory, but it is still fun to bump into and involve other wandering actors doing their own campaigns or filling various roles in a server too. I guess if going off to "campaign only server," there'd probably be no coming back, no "mixing" with a regular ALFA population again.

Still I guess we could play illithids over in some hypothetical TSM-clone and eat Felbarr.

[Zelknolf]

Character death is a punishment.

Frankly, that's stupid. This is a game. And if playing the game in a certain way results in an OOC punishment then you're just encouraging OOC behaviour by making people optimize their characters for survival at any cost, both mechanically and RPwise.

Of course we punish people for playing the game a certain way. That's what rules are. (or, rather, rules are series of conditions and responses. They become punishment when an affected party doesn't like them)

Of course death means the loss complete loss of agency to the dead, and the loss of a friend (both as an asset and as a source of interaction) to the survivors. That's what death is. Players and their characters often both have an aversion to death, but it seems like this is trying to claim that because the character and player both have the same motivations, it becomes "OOC"?

Fun-seeking by the player through actions that don't make sense for actual people to take isn't?

[Xanthea]

Fun-seeking by the player through actions that don't make sense for actual people to take isn't?

We aren't playing the Sims, thanks. We are playing a game striving to emulate the heroic fantasy genre and people who play extremely risk-adverse PCs are playing the game wrong.

Can we drop this approach now, please?

[Heero]

Gotta say Im with Xan here. I get enough livin' life by...ya know...livin' my life. Ive always logged in hoping to have the sort of adventure that just aint possible to have livin' my life. Ya know, playing that conquering hero ya read about in the great stories.

Like that.

[kid]

Dunno, Sims gets you to lv20 by performing the heroic act of staying online longer than everyone else.
Of course, we have no issue with that...

But omg no if someone will start at a slightly higher level and didn't "earn it" by having less life than other people and mindlessly farm various riskless statics and mindless walking.

Truly, this is the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, the game we all loved as kids.

Hah.

[Zelknolf]

Then use the real terms. Call yourself the metagamers you are, say that you're pursuing fun at the expense of characterization, and stop pretending that this about other people behaving "OOCly."

[Xanthea]

Then use the real terms. Call yourself the metagamers you are, say that you're pursuing fun at the expense of characterization, and stop pretending that this about other people behaving "OOCly."

If I thought this attitude was characteristic of ALFA then I wouldn't be playing here. But I don't think many people actually agree with it.

[Brokenbone]

Take that, Xan!

Game = try to have fun with it. Happens to be a swords n' sorcery kind of game where the fun is often in some monster filled ancient ruin-y pits and whatnot. Talking to yourself through mundane tasks like I don't know, doing the laundry or chopping vegetables for a stew, whether for ten minutes or a hundred hours, I am not sure if that is exactly a "game", it's some kind of roleplay I guess, but it is not a roleplaying game. RP vs. RPG I guess.

[FoamBats4All]

Up advancement + Up starting level = Stop complaints about character death.

Players want to have fun and be useful.They can't do that when most people have to spend a month as level 1-3.

[Zelknolf]

There is a distinct difference between playing the details of laundry and openly and actively selecting character actions by a player's wants when those wants are contrary to the character's. "I won't run through a gauntlet of traps, undead, and fiends for a finite and replaceable quantity of stuff when there is no meaningful consequence for inaction. The whims of people who do not exist to me do not influence that." is not "Watch me scrub my unmentionables."

But if we are indeed a community that wants to make that metagame decision-- to shove aside characterization and pursue adventure regardless, and encourage the matching stupid risks required-- we should seriously reconsider our community's format and branding (and death rules, but there's already a stalled proposal there). That's not what we're currently telling the rest of the world about us.

[Mick]

Would you, for instance, ship down to Mexico with four friends to clear out the holdings of a drug cartel (then, same question but there's a big bag of money waiting for you in the event of success)?

For the record, I would totally do this if I had enough stoneskins, fireballs, and dimension doors. No question.