https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G5PjlCMlGw...75ncRlVlg-79nFP

Just watched this Spoony Experiment thing on how in RPGA D&D campaigns apparently characters aren't supposed to die.

I thought D&D was all about random player character mortality; hence "fantasy fucking Vietnam". Is there an organization that gets together to run games where you play D&D but no one is allowed to fail? Strange.

The RPGA is an international organization run by Wizards of the Coast, as explained in the beginning of the video.

Members in the early days could really only play at sanctioned events. If you did not have a RPGA sanctioned local game store or gathering, that meant traveling to gaming conventions. Sometimes, a lot of traveling. A trip to Gen Con will cost many folks a few hundred dollars. Sometimes more. Entrance fees, travel costs, hotel room costs, etc.

So, there is a reluctance to kill the character of someone who may have traveled a thousand miles and spent a lot of money to be at your event. Especially if he had been planning to be there all weekend and now that his character is dead is locked out of half the events because he might not have another character in the right level range.

There's also the PR aspect. Members are at the end of the day, customers. Since most organized play living campaigns are run by the company who makes the associated game, they have a vested interest in not pissing off too many members. And getting your high level character killed off that you've invested potentially years of time and lots of money (see above) into pisses off some folks greatly.

Hell, Shadowrun has it's own Shadowrun Missions campaign. It's nominally a deadlier game than D&D, yet there are few deaths at most SRM events.

In a home game where everyone knows each other and is friends and can learn each others habits, preferences, and tendencies, a character death isn't usually so bad.

In a living campaign where the GM and other players may be complete strangers, it's potentially a lot harder to accept.

Add all that together, and you result in very few deaths in the campaign, and sometimes you get players who realize this metagame and come to expect it.

This kinda thing is, by the way, much the same reason you don't see many MMO computer games with perma-death as a feature.




-k

At least at conventions you won't die if someone turns on a microwave.

Thanks for the rundown. Too bad they wouldn't let someone simply create a character at appropriate level in order to participate in a campaign. This is pretty cool to read about because I didn't even know about this stuff.

The last campaign run by the RPGA allowed folks to jump in at higher levels. Unfortunately it was also seen as somwhat of a failure compared to previous ones. It started out fairly strong but a combination of dislike towards the 4th edition D&D ruleset and an apparant lack of cohesive plot direction from the campaign's administration caused it to hemorrage players pretty quickly.

Also, in my couple of decades of participation in the RPGA, I have NEVER heard any coordinator brazenly utter anything like "characters aren't supposed to die". Certainly, as I said there was a tendancy among the GM pool to go easy on players, but if you played stupid or sometimes just from bad luck, your characters could and did die.

There WAS a forbiddance on altering the prewritten adventure in any signifigant way, but that was out of a desire for consistancy of play experience from game to game, player to player. Not because they wanted to avoid character deaths. The intent was that someone who played that event in New York would have the same general experience as someone playing in, say, Australia.

Additionally, what the erstwhile GM in the video may not have realized is that while some adventures were overall easier than others, many featured an "easy" fight to the beginning both to get the players warmed up and to allow the GM insight on the capabilities of the characters. Because of the living campaign format, often the GM and players were complete strangers to each other. That opening combat allowed players to get to know each other's preferred role and tactics, and let the GM have a clue on how hard he might be able push the later combats.

I have since switched away from RPGA play to participating in other company's campaigns, mostly Pathfinder Society and Shadowrun Missions. It's pretty fun and participating in a tournament style organized play structure with thousands of other players and GMs is a nice contrast to playing in a private home game.


-k

I was involved in the RPGA's Virtual Seattle for years, from its second year to the end of the campaign. It eventually encountered the same problem other RPGA Living campaigns did, which was that eventually PCs gained so much experience that it was difficult to write adventures/runs that were usable for all levels.

In particular, I think either in SR2 or SR3 there was the karma pool that allowed multiple rerolls of the same test. High level PCs could basically guarantee a critical success anytime they wanted to, and combat became non-threatening... and therefore the option of choice for many of the heavy hitters. The players had no fear their characters could die.

The writing team, of which I was a peripheral part, struggled with this problem. I came up with a run that could be solved by the greenest of teams, who applied some thought and creativity to the problem, but, with fair warning before the hammer fell, would severely punish blind aggression.

Through several conventions including Gencon and many home games, even rookie teams were able to find a solution with little or no damage to themselves, but several teams chose to ignore the warning against frontal assault and suffered accordingly. At least one TPK of a powerful team was reported from Gencon.

My general experience of the more experienced players in the RPGA years ago (all acquainted with each other and accustomed to playing together), especially in D&D, was that they were more interested in 'emoting' and relating to each other in their usual ways than achieving the objective(s) of the scenario. Death was unlikely as the game tended to be more about stopping to smell the roses than killing the dragon. I grew tired of this and restricted myself to Shadowrun and played more with newer players.

I was happy to see Missions arrive after the demise of Virtual Seattle (when the RPGA became overtly an organ for the commercial promotion of D&D), even though I had a lot of good times in VS despite the RPGA's involvement.

EDIT: I do now recall one RPGA D&D game at Gencon in which my thief joined five paladins in the adventure. My play was cut short when the thief fell into a pit of lava. Still, it was a notably enjoyable game. Five paladins with a guy who was continually assessing whether portable and therefore easily acquired objects were valuable.