Dungeons & Death: 4E encounters death mod (and another AD&D death idea)

It's interesting. In the local gaming store they run a D&D 4e encounters session each week, for people to drop into and try out the game. Encounters typically run from level 1 to level 3 and shortly after end. They are there to whet the appetite (and they do)

Previously what exactly happened when a PC died was kind of ... not talked about!

This time around though, actually there is a rule and...if you die, next session your down four healing surges. And that's it!

It's interesting to see an actual engagement of the scenario (a scenario one presumes is possible) and what they'd actually do with it (rather than just speculating what they'd do).

It kind of shows exactly how much death there is, rather than leaving an ambiguous mystery about the whole thing and leaving people to think their assumptions (like, maybe, that you just die and the characters gone) are true. When they aren't. But how can you prove that when you can only speculate what WOTC would do? So yeah, interesting to actually know.

AD&D

I was thinking about the last post on risk of death in AD&D. And it just didn't quite satisfy me, on reflection. The reduction in max HP just wasn't an impact. So I thought about it more and have this idea, which both combines random risk and player choice.

Survival Potions
Some monsters attacks are more vicious than others. If they reduce you to negative hitpoints, you have a 1% chance of instantly dying from the extensive wounds delivered by the attack! This is a Survival Roll! But in town you can buy Survival Potions for 500 gold. Indeed, if you have some reputation as having done good deeds, the towns folk will even let you return unused potions and receive the 500 gold back (so it's like a deposit!). If a Survival Potion is fed to a character reduced to negatives, they do not have to make the Survival Roll.

So, make your choice - lose gold! Or take a risk!

Further, for each Survival Potion used or Survival Roll made, the GM secretly rolls percentile. There is a 10% chance that the character, unbeknown to the player, gains a survival point (the GM keeps a record of this). If they have a survival point and make a survival roll and fail, the survival point is used up and they instead pass! However, the chance of failure is increased from 1% to 10% (the GM does not tell the player this unless the roll is within that range)! A character can only have one survival point at a time.

PVE Difficulty

Tippa made an interesting post over on her blog about The Miseducation of MMO Players.

Where have mmorpgs gone, in terms of difficulty? Indeed, where can they go? Back when you bounced mario around, you could lose all your lives and being sent right back to the start of the game worked out. What do you do when you have a hundreds of hours long game 'session'? Add a death jog every time someone stands in the flame?

I made a reply to someone in the comments about guild wars two supposedly not having any death penalty, which I've talked about here before. Here's the reply...

As far as I can tell guild wars 2 hasn’t removed a death penalty – if no one revives you, you have the classic death jog from some waypoint, back to where you were. Which is pretty lame – why bother coding in a time waster for players?

I think these games have trouble determining any fail point, which goes all the way back to gygax’s designs. With your traditional game, like a FPS, you have a level start, middle and end. What does a mmorpg have? middle, middle, middle, middle….

Your classic FPS can send you back to the start of a level and that works out. While mmorpgs are floundering on what the heck to do – can’t send them all the way to level one! But can’t just do nothing every time they are hit ( see my example of this: http://www.yoyogames.com/games/138974-proof-of-bad-concept ).

I think they need to do the reverse of the traditional design and grant people bonuses for doing well – like go for one hour of gameplay without being knocked to 0 hp and you will GAIN 500 gold (can be won once per RL day/X number of times per RL day)

Unconcious Vs the total toughness of being like totally killed...then cloned...

There was a post over at mmocrunch, which mentioned this, and it was worth making a post of here...
"Honestly, I don’t care what Bioware chooses, as long as it’s not this sissy “oh you don’t actually die you’re just unconscious” garbage."

If this is garbage, then the whole 'oh, your cloned' is absolute sewerage! How dumb is cloning - hey, do you treat identical twins as being the same person? No? Then a clone of your character is not your character. You cannot continue to play the guy as if your continuing the characters story (sorry, EVE, you can't), because as much as identical twins have their own seperate personalities from each other, so would a clone. Your character died and anyone who's playing the character as if it's the same person is really missplaced in their fantasy. Hey, instead of Luke getting his hand cut off and going semi unconcious (which is lame apparently), he dies - and the rest of the story is about a clone of his. C'mon, you know that's even lamer!

Seriously, if going unconcious is bad, cloning is about twenty times worse. Even if you buy it, what's the point - there is no real death in that case. Why bother having death in the game, then adding rediculous setting elements to basically remove death again? It's a pointless two step dance! Just don't have death in there, then you don't have to tack on this cloning malarky to counter that first bad move.

There's no hard, macho thing about death if you clone factory it all away a moment latter. Don't bother trying.

If you come back, it's not death. You can't have death be in the game, yet also get to keep playing your character no matter what. Make a choice, instead of a weak ass 'Oh yes you can die...oh, but then there's clones'.

Eve, I'm looking at you as well.

Defeat penalties - a peace offering middle ground which will no doubt not be enough

Tesh has made a post about a line I looked at awhile ago with Guild Wars 2 : Death and other inconveniences

Okay, I had an idea, but honestly I suspect until a full on explorationist agenda is supported by games with no real trace of play to win, it wont satisfy. Ironically the explorationists wont be happy until the play to wins are driven before them and they hear the lamentations of their womens. I'll describe it anyway.

Something like if you go for ten minutes and kill X number of monsters in that time all without being defeated or dying, you get $$$ bonus gold. Fail = don't. Actually that's a little like the optional extra challenges you can take on in doofus, if you've ever read about them.

But I suspect it'll still be taken as a penalty, as the person who is defeated isn't having taken gold away, but they are missing out on extra gold. And aren't we all being a bit limited in our view by having (any) play to win challenge?

Torchlight - Return of the ghost run

Whoa, what a fart, man!

No, not the name of a sequel. It's pretty much looking at something which seems even to be embedded in the upcoming and ground breaking guild wars two.

It's that when you 'die', you pay a bit of money, then go for a jog.

Granted Torchlight has an option to respawn on the spot, but the cost in experience and fame is a mighty one - it seems quite the non optimal path to take.




So instead you pay some gold and get sent back to the start of the level.

Why? Why this jog? Essentially the same as the wow ghost run? And is repeated in guildwars two from what I understand of their death penalty

If no one revives you, you can spend a small amount of gold to come back at a waypoint.

Why? Why send the player back to a waypoint - because it doesn't feel like death if you don't do a little light jogging?

Four levels and a funeral

I've been playing alot of the warhammer endless trial recently, just in case it wasn't obvious :)

And because you will end up 'dying' quite a bit in it, it makes me wonder what on earth is the point of depicting death in mmorpgs?

Granted in lord of the rings online your not supposed to die but simply have your morale beaten and you retreat, but given the format is exactly the same as death in other mmorpgs, it doesn't feel any different. Like a short cut scene of the character clutching his side and shuffling away would show he's just really hurt and retreating.

It's only a flesh wound!

I mean, what is so much the thrill of 'ohh, yeah, killed ya...oh there you are, fifteen seconds latter?' that you need to preserve it?

It's kind of like one of those glaring graphic glitches that makes your characters head dissapear or all the trees turn into solid colour blocks. It kind of spoils things?

Here with death, your character like totally died...but he's alive...oh he died...oh he's alive. It feels more like a big presentation bug.

If he retreats though, clutching his side, there's continuity.

If you want some gore, you could even have the character lose fingers and toes or even a hand (quickly replaced with a hook or magical construct) and the 'killing' player gets notified, so he gets his gory jollies (well, what else would you call it?). From what I've heard this can happen in, of all places, puzzle pirates - you can lose an arm or leg and get a peg leg or hook. BUT also like puzzle pirates you would have items to regrow fingers or hands/feet/forarms. Usually with the magic or technology in most settings, this is fairly believable (far more believable than perfect ressurection any time you want it).

Lord of the rings online (LOTRO) almost broke out of it - and maybe it's unfair to say given that it still seems to be a death system in LOTRO because it looks like death in every other mmorpg. But it still leaves you being ravaged by monsters and then...popping up elsewhere. You wouldn't do such a harsh transition in a movie - you would explain with a short cut away what happened in between.

Death - you can't have it, mmorpgs (because of your own design choices)! So quit trying to pretend its happening and just smooth out the wounded retreat presentation.

It's like the want to be macho manly 'you can totally die in our game', except it's faux-macho, because even the most minor amount of critical thought disproves that idea. But maybe alot of people (men?) can't give up that bullshit?