Death, how important is it

[Dar]

Hello.

These thoughts mostly came to me from reading that player retention giant of a thread.  So, one of the biggest things that jars the players is the lack of return on the effort that they put in. Very very valid thought. The reasons for it are different, but one of those reasons is the ease a character can die.


2 RL year character that created enough content to write a small series of fantasy books?  Dies to a Mek that was lured in by someone else walking in and insta killing. Or crit failing climb. Or a Newly Created Templar messing up commands and causing 8 Militia NPCs insta engage a person, or messing up threaten command. The number of idiotic deaths are many.

And yes. They add a certain awesome hue to the Armageddon experience.  Life is dangerous in Zalanthas and we are all mortal. In the words of Voland, "Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!"

The question though is how awesome is that hue? Is it worth all those years upon years of stories, plots, and content that we lose? Is it worth a player pouring their heart and soul into a character, then mistyping previous character left over command that was short for gather and watching in horror how their finely crafted bard is ripped apart by NPCs in a span of a heart beat. Then not logging into the game for another RL year.

What can be done to maintain permadeath of Armageddon. A feature that, I think, is in the game's very core. And yet prevent stories and effort from being lost ... idiotically.

Here's some suggestions I'd offer you. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Suggestions:

Negative HP always regens back. Even if you're at -9, it might take you a RL Day, but you will gradually crawl back to 0.

NPCs will never land a lethal blow, but instead inflict an affect on you as their killing blow.

The affect will not end the character and they will be able to regain consciousness. But they'll have two affects sitting on them. One of them drops their stats and skills by a significant percentage. Potentially preventing skill gain until expiry/cure. Penalties on movement, item capacity, combat ability, etc etc etc.   Maybe have two affects with one of them wearing off only during online time, while the other, much longer, working like intoxication does.

Have various remedies, spells, skills, whatever that shortens the affect.


Allow permanent death to occur only when a PC deals it. Their actions will be like they usually are. Except perhaps 'mercy' toggle is a little more reliable.

Allow PCs to toggle OHK on/off. If off, then their arrows/backstabs/hits/etc can still drive a target to -9 hp and upon recovery they will be suffering the Near Death Affect.  But to bring in the final death, the PC would have to toggle on the OHK.

Make the Near Death affect thematically a 'lucky survivor' concept. Not something ICly people can rely on. Oh, if I drop off this mountain, I wont die, I just wont be able to lift a mug for a rl month. No, no. They'll survive, but will need to roleplay being the luckiest idiots still evidently alive.

Make the Near Death Affect annoying, debilitating, limiting, and very much unwelcome to have. But ... the character concept and it's plots can go on. Unless another PC goes out of their way to end them.

[dumbstruck]

I just wish it were easier to rest in the wilderness without breaking wilderness hide. Put it that way.

I am an explorer type, and while I would love to have zero chance of the game world being deadly in some cases, in other cases it would make no sense and create terrible unplayable time periods stuck at the ends of the known unable to do much of anything.

I feel more dissatisfied about a death that comes with a mantishead that appears out of nowhere from a pc than I do dying to the world in pve, because the other player COULD HAVE given me the benefit of some roleplay, and they didn't.

Maybe flattening weapons skills somehow so they increase faster overall rather than by a thousand tiny levers, or making the wilderness itself slightly less deadly on the balance, might be cool. But to make it unable to kill you at all seems... terrible for people who aren't here for the pvp game.

I hate pvp and don't typically indulge in it. I don't grudge other people what they like, but in 13 years I've pkilled a total of 3 times. I've been on the being killed end dozens of times, usually as someone's refrigeratored girl it feels like, and every time it has pissed me off that the person has not played it out more. I don't know if I have EVER had a satisfying death from another pc in this game, but I have definitely had a satisfying death on the tail end of finding some cool out in the middle of nowhere shit that was way deadlier than I thought it was or should have been in the wilderness.

Are the majority of wilderness deaths satisfying? No, but I've had a higher concentration of them that were than at the hands of other characters. I've never died in the arena, or been put on the cuddler, or whatever. I think the closest I came to a satisfying death at the hands of a pc was a narrowly escaped death from Lyvrenxice Oash 12 years ago and I sent her MAJOR kudos for coming out and roleplaying, for being convincing enough to lure someone into a false sense of security, etc etc etc.

Maybe 2 or 3 times, maybe only under certain circumstances. I don't know. But to make it so that PVP is the only way to die robs the wilderness of any real risk and makes it literally a place you can lose time but not your life, which makes it more of a risk of being a time sink than anything. And if you are far enough out, or in a weird enough or obscure enough place that no one can come get you, do you just stay stuck in limbo forever without staff intervention or what?

[Tailong]

I'd be more for a rebalance than anything. Permadeath is important. It makes our character mortal, and our decisions even more important. I think the PVE environment should be progressively deadlier as you get away from civilization, if that would even be possible. Dying to a scrab trying to greb or hunt simple skins is sometimes embarrassing.

Rebalance, but keep permadeath. And maybe require roleplay before playerkill? Meaning: you roleplay to the point that people send assassins, well you got roleplay of your own design. But, random encounters should be roleplayed out to the point that all other means are now exhausted, its time for the code. I think people would appreciate the effort more to make it enjoyable, I know I would give it my all before typing "kill (player)".

[dumbstruck]

I'd be more for a rebalance than anything. Permadeath is important. It makes our character mortal, and our decisions even more important. I think the PVE environment should be progressively deadlier as you get away from civilization, if that would even be possible. Dying to a scrab trying to greb or hunt simple skins is sometimes embarrassing.

Rebalance, but keep permadeath. And maybe require roleplay before playerkill? Meaning: you roleplay to the point that people send assassins, well you got roleplay of your own design. But, random encounters should be roleplayed out to the point that all other means are now exhausted, its time for the code. I think people would appreciate the effort more to make it enjoyable, I know I would give it my all before typing "kill (player)".

Maybe even just something requiring a single emote when you type a combat initiating command against a player to describe /how/ you are doing that thing, so that no one gets just a blank mantis head, would be nice. Like:

backstab amos (stepping out of the shadows for a moment) [lunging forward with a dagger and death in her eyes]

Amos sees:
Someone attacks you, stepping out of the shadows for a moment, lunging forward with a dagger and death in her eyes.

[Mantishead]

Idk.

I know that combat rounds go fast, and I don't think it's in the spirit of how Arm's combat culture has been for decades to suddenly ask for emotes between rounds or anything like that, but if combat has yet to be initiated, you can't say the expectation of an emote (even if just a command emote) to open it is unreasonable as a level of courtesy, but by that token I think the attack commands would all need to be coded to take command emotes like that if that were to be a thing. In any case, I think there is a happy medium between the person getting attacked gets no roleplay from their killer that they can see and an emote every round when combat can easily just go into a silly amount of rounds with how some people are matched in late game with skills/stats/etc matched in some ways.

[zealus]

I would like to say that the quick deaths are what draws me into the game. I'd hate for the wilderness to lose it's teeth, by instead of killing my PC, instead limiting me to just not go outside for a while.
Yes, wilderness deaths can be annoying, but no, I don't think outright removing them will be good. In the end, death is a part of the game, and what makes those near death moments special.

[kahuna]

It's never the death itself, it's the circumstances around how it happens. Got caught by an NPC like a mek? Doesn't bother me. Got metagamed by 3-4 players because they don't like you as a player? Probably taking a looong break after that one.

[Inks]

Without death the way things are, the rp of the game would have no meaning.

Please never, ever implement this idea.

[chrisdcoulombe]

Sometimes you die and you don't know why.  This is why I play.  If that aspect was taken, I wouldn't play this game again. Its why I started playing and why I keep coming back.

[Fragmented]

While I can certainly understand the devastation someone might feel if their story is abruptly cut short, I think that perma death and the potential for sudden, inexplicable destruction adds to the game. There is a reason why high ranking officials (i.e. POTUS) don't just slide down to their local bar for a drink, and if they do, they're surrounded by secret service. Just like POTUS wouldn't slide into the wastelands to do some grebbing, etc. There's a tradeoff here - if you've become so important (or feel you have) that the risk of death is painful, minimize that risk wherever possible. Hell, we might even see the T'zai Byn being used for more city contracts.

I hope the potential for sudden, random violence doesn't ever go away because I think it adds value to achievement for as long as you are able to avoid that violence.

[CirclelessBard]

This is an interesting proposal, as it absolutely would modernize the game, and make death more meaningful and less random. At the same time, random death is one of the characteristics of Armageddon, for better or worse.

One of my favorite tabletop roleplaying systems is Fate, so I want to link something interesting from there:
https://fate-srd.com/odds-ends/failure

Specifically, these passages:

Even players that say things like 'I want death to be a possibility' are kind of being vague and missing the point. They want the feeling of danger. They probably don't want their characters to die (or, at worst, they want death to be an inconvenience). They surely don't want a game so lethal that they have a character dying every session.

Here's an experiment: The next time that a player says 'they want a game where death is a real possibility', ask them what percentage of games that they think the game should include their character dying, and whether they think that resurrection should be freely available.

Here's the thing. I adore Fate. Truly. It's one amazingly elegant system. And I find it incredibly poor at producing the types of challenges I find in traditional games. It's a weak tactical skirmish game, at best. The rules don't have a lot of support for 'puzzle-solving' type activities, either. The existence of Fate Points essentially means that players can 'buy' success at just about anything.

And with a weak challenge system, the whole idea of 'gated challenges' utterly fails.

So when traditional game players say things like 'what's the point, you'll always win!' they kind of have a point. Fate is a pretty bad system to run traditional (gated challenge) adventures in.

So let's not try. Let's rethink what these 'encounters' are. And let's use the rules to guide us.

Let's look at an incredibly simple situation. A locked door.

In a traditional game, you'll have a chance to get past this door. If you fail, you fail. If you really need to get past that door, you're SOL. But nothing else will likely happen, just the door doesn't open.

But if you really need to get past that door, other options will be available, somewhere -this is often called "The Rule of Three". And while it seems like it's not the "gated challenge" structure, it really is -there's just multiple 'solutions' to the challenge.

But what about in Fate?

Fate Core, pg. 187: If you cant imagine an interesting outcome from both results, then dont call for that roll.

Whoa. That's weird. Does that mean if you can't think of how to make opening the door interesting, then it just opens? Where's the challenge in that???

The concept of interesting outcomes is meaningful to me, and I think to most roleplayers looking to tell stories online in MU*s. Zalanthan life is harsh, and death is often a random, unexpected and unfortunate occurrence. The same goes for real life, to a degree. If an aspect of a roleplaying game makes stories less interesting then it's worth considering whether that aspect is holding the game back. At the same time, some representation of that danger needs to exist or the world itself is no longer dangerous. An interesting conundrum, to be sure.

[Agent_137]

I'd rather see skills be learned faster than "NPCs will never land a lethal blow".

The other suggestions seem good, but be careful. Removing the randomness and skill factor from avoiding killing during an assault  going to lead to people being even angrier when someone PKs them with no emotes.

"lack of return on the effort that they put in."
This implies there's time being spent that isn't fun, that feels like work and effort. While that's unavoidable to a degree, I would focus on lessening it so it can be more about the journey and not the destination. This is an RPI, the roleplay should be frequent and fun. Sudden death sucks but doesn't lessen the fun had on the way. If the way isn't fun ... then that's the problem to solve, not the end.

[Riev]

Anecdotally, I'm reminded of the death of one of my PCs. Its a little magicky, but...

There was a creature that was a lot stronger than my PC. Unarmed, it did well over my maximum stun points.
However, it had Mercy turned on. It would not take the final blow.

I spent a solid hour or so waking up, getting knocked back out, waking up, getting knocked back out

[LindseyBalboa]

i cannot easily express how much i downvote this (edit: specifically, non-fatal npcs.)

[mansa]

I think death is extremely important to the life of this game.

However, I think death is often short and shitty, in this fantasy game we play.  We can say "it's just like real life", but honestly, I'm playing a fantasy game, and I want to have a long monologue of myself dying.

In my perfect world:

If you are "killed", you are put into a state where you have a time limit to say anything/emote anything in the same room.  You cannot use the way.  Your time limit is 5 minutes, but you can quit/die at anytime.  You cannot be brought back to life, even with magick.   Other players in the same room can kill you immediately by typing 'murder x' and preventing you from roleplaying out that 5 minutes.


This allows you to pause, to scream, to cry, and to roleplay death.   It doesn't take away death, but allows you to add some flair to it.

[Tailong]

I think death is extremely important to the life of this game.

However, I think death is often short and shitty, in this fantasy game we play.  We can say "it's just like real life", but honestly, I'm playing a fantasy game, and I want to have a long monologue of myself dying.

In my perfect world:

If you are "killed", you are put into a state where you have a time limit to say anything/emote anything in the same room.  You cannot use the way.  Your time limit is 5 minutes, but you can quit/die at anytime.  You cannot be brought back to life, even with magick.   Other players in the same room can kill you immediately by typing 'murder x' and preventing you from roleplaying out that 5 minutes.


This allows you to pause, to scream, to cry, and to roleplay death.   It doesn't take away death, but allows you to add some flair to it.

Add that you turn off the OOC channel to limit OOC abuse from the salty few, and I am in.

[Dar]

OOC Channel?  Are you having a laugh?

[Barsook]

If you are "killed", you are put into a state where you have a time limit to say anything/emote anything in the same room.  You cannot use the way.  Your time limit is 5 minutes, but you can quit/die at anytime.  You cannot be brought back to life, even with magick.   Other players in the same room can kill you immediately by typing 'murder x' and preventing you from roleplaying out that 5 minutes.


This allows you to pause, to scream, to cry, and to roleplay death.   It doesn't take away death, but allows you to add some flair to it.

I would love that too as it's a RPI.

[Tailong]

OOC Channel?  Are you having a laugh?

Hey man. I'm old. I have a bad memory. Where am I even? But you can go ooc. Might have to code it but turning off at death would be nice.

[Inks]

You would not see an increase in numbers with this implemented. The opposite I think. The world just becomes less real and more gamey. This thread is making me sick. That's enough gdb for me for a while.

[Rogerthat]

I think the opposite as well, I like like two minutes of rp time, but also i dont like the idea, death is why I play. Its what keeps me coming back, what messes with my emotions, I personally like to really get into my pcs - It is why when im trying to go balls to the walls i know whats gonna happen, if you dont want death, choose better things to do ig, if you go out, why go out alone? Meet friends, create a community, more is better in a sense, if your in a group and you see someone who has a bounty for 50k, if you choose lets kill this guy and he rocks you all, well your death was based on that. Now if your in a group and you see this same guy and you all decide to avoid it, then do so.

Death mostly happens based on what you do, or what others do. Yes there is those random deaths by scrabs, creatures, etc. But again, dont go out alone and this fixes some of this, join the byn learn to fight. Look around when you go outside, be paranoid. Its a perma death game and this game is built on three things Murder, Corruption, and Betrayal. Death is the game and sometimes you get good ones and you get bad ones, its way of life, sometimes you go to starbucks and that one day that drink is kick ass then the next fuck its not so good.

[HazelHomewrecker]

I think death is extremely important to the life of this game.

However, I think death is often short and shitty, in this fantasy game we play.  We can say "it's just like real life", but honestly, I'm playing a fantasy game, and I want to have a long monologue of myself dying.

In my perfect world:

If you are "killed", you are put into a state where you have a time limit to say anything/emote anything in the same room.  You cannot use the way.  Your time limit is 5 minutes, but you can quit/die at anytime.  You cannot be brought back to life, even with magick.   Other players in the same room can kill you immediately by typing 'murder x' and preventing you from roleplaying out that 5 minutes.


This allows you to pause, to scream, to cry, and to roleplay death.   It doesn't take away death, but allows you to add some flair to it.

I TOTALLY agree with this! It would be an awesome addition to make, and would probably help with the feeling of finality and closure if you actually get to write that last line or two before you crank-out.

Death has a very important place in the game, and trying to remove the threat of it (even if it's just from NPC's) wouldn't be healthy I don't think. When you stop and consider that when you think of an NPC death, you're talking about Tarantulas/Raptors/Scrabs/etc. all of which would have legitimate cause to KILL something, rather than leave it for dead. They are living creatures that have the need and drive to survive, and eat--most of these things would probably eat you immediately just because they're probably pretty damn hungry.

Of course there's the rebuttal about NPC thieves in the Labyrinth or non-carnivorous beasts like Carru(? i think?), but that's not really true either. The average thief in the Labyrinth would kill you for your boots, then sell everything else to afford food and water. The carru would mince you into a pulp just because they're territorial as HELL.

I hope that makes some sense? At least, that's my view of it.

[Halaster]

Yeah, I've seen mansa's idea of the 'death scene' and I really like it.  A while back I added it to my 'to do' list, but it's not high on the list.  So hopefully "one day".

[Tuannon]

While I do like the idea of NPCs having 'on incapacitated' scripts for things they beat to 0 hp, I feel like the time and testing could be better spent in more useful ways. I also think mobs that regularly leave you beaten but alive would be used as training dummies in certain areas.

Additionally roles who are perceived as being 'cowards' in a harsh place such as Allanak for avoiding dangerous situations are in fact acknowledging that the world is dangerous just as much as you the Byn trooper with the thousand yard stare. So complaining that they stayed behind His walls while you and your unit died to a scrab nest in the desert might make good IC sense, OOC it is empowering the idea that the desert is harsh just as much as you are.

I suppose it's the same as the 'I was killed for no reason' conversation.

[ShaiHulud]

I don't want anything to really change. I enjoy the investment and the inevitability of death. I try to prolong it like we all do in rl. Or some or most.  If I could rez and rejoin, I wouldn't play this game.

[LindseyBalboa]

Yeah, I've seen mansa's idea of the 'death scene' and I really like it.  A while back I added it to my 'to do' list, but it's not high on the list.  So hopefully "one day".

I like this idea and have hoped for something similar, as well, but for this idea to work it needs a toggle BEFOREhand to murder, or beforehand to not murder, whichever the default is. And this is a necessity because the PC can still talk, and there are too many situations where it wouldn't make sense to stop murdering someone so they could reveal all they know about the perpetrator, etc.

Which, typing it out, sounds like mercy could just be reworked if it ends in a death. (edit: Although currently I like mercy as is because it allows a few post-fight emotes WITHOUT the downed PC able to talk, to wrap up the death, if there's time.)