To Die Ecologically (1, Coming Up Short)
A big part of this is inspired from Avery Alder's talk entitled "Design Wisdom from Elsewhere," so check that out with the link.
I've been thinking a lot about death. On a metaphorical level, I've been thinking a lot about death. (On a real level, I've been thinking a lot about death, but that's not what this is about. Hey, hey, let's write out abilities and charts for dealing with grief. What a fun game we could play.) It's something that, as someone who's been playing specifically D&D and more specifically 5e for the better half of a year at this point, is doomed to come up.
Why do we die (in games)? What does it mean to die (in games)? Is dying useful (in games)?
Do we die ecologically (in games)? (More appropriately: do we die in an ecologically minded way [in games]?)
The long-short of it is: no, we don't. Death—death without immediate resurrection—comes with a few neat terminals: 1) draw up a new character sheet and just wait, lol, 2) take over this hireling until we can find a town or appropriate juncture where a new character can show up (and also draw up a new character sheet), or 3) we'll call you when the group decides to do a quest to really resurrect you. (Let's not go into the fiction preferred by the ruleset itself. Death in a world where a mediocre cleric can show up for last rites and end it with a resurrection? Even a very meager 10% reduction mortality would wildly shoot up population growth and put an immense strain on local resources. Let's throw that out there and drop it for another day.)
Mechanically, though: death, yeah. Let's go into that. Is it ecological to kill a character?
Let's look at it in terms of player investment and narrative enforcement of the concept of challenge—risk's benefactor. At the first level, there's not much attachment to a character, so killing's easy. Character sheets fly and new faces and identities come in freely. This serves the purpose of amping up the sense of risk in the world -- the dice own the world, and their will is harsh and fickle. As the levels climb, the risk of death -- obscenely immediate death -- increases less with the hardier foes, who might be more sturdy as to drain party resources, but more so with the priests of the dice, the save-or-suck spellcasters (or ability-slingers) who dominate the later game. Waltz on into some thousand-year lich's tomb, and pass all of your first three WIS saves, or get lost. (Really -- just lost eight months of a character. Whomp whomp.)
Before anyone gets nasty, yes—it's hard to die in 5e. You don't need to remind me. Onwards.
In either case, did the character's death betray something other than the whims of the ruleset itself? No. Not really. From a narrative investment perspective, there was no hero's descent to compare to the hero's rise—nothing like the foreshadowing demise of Beowulf, facing off against the third-such aglaeca'd person of the story (himself and Grendel's loving mother as others). Instead, death often comes with a heft of dice that resembles a Coen Brothers' sledgehammer. Oops, the character's dead now. What a whoopsie. Hope you didn't give a shit about them. Guess that proves how much of a badass this villain was.
To the point: I've killed someone with a fishperson jamming a spear in her eye. It was the definition of anticlimax. I regret it deeply so very much. I handwaved it and put her in a coma instead. It was a really bad death. To segue, that was a wasteful death. I wasted energy, I wasted time, and I wasted a roll. Did the devil make me do it? Yes. But, to go on.
Death (in D&D) is a waste.
That's kinda the point. You had a good run. It's over. All inertia stops. Start over again. When this happens in nature, it comes from a very subjective standpoint—usually the biggest, most energy-sucking creatures' standpoint, to be specific. So, I guess if we view D&D from the standpoint of a bunch of dinosaurs hanging out in the Yucatan several million years ago, ta-da. We've solved good death design. Congrats. Otherwise, for those of us who came from small furry blobs, there's work to be done to explain the loss of narrative inertia.
The thing about it is, death doesn't kill a good story. It usually propels it forward. In the medieval epics, death is precisely the call to action from a narrative perspective; the story doesn't end with the end of the verse, but instead pushes out into the audience and propels them to live the virtues of the deceased. In more modern literary ventures, death is only the beginning to understanding the peculiarities of life. As I Lay Dying. Crime and Punishment. Yabo. What's death in those books? It's the propeller. (Let's talk about mysteries.) We think of death as a cooling, as heat leaving the body. That's not death in fiction; death in fiction is the heat. Larmarque is dead. His death is the hour of fate!
Let's think about mushrooms. Mushroom suits, actually. Your death can become fruitful for the ecosystem. How can we mushroom suit D&D? (Can we? No. Yes. I don't know. Is that the point?)
Idea: when a character dies, all party members receive +1 to all subsequent rolls. Death inspires the rage and resilience of friends.
No, though. The conventional wisdom is that death, for players at least, inspires mostly despair—oh shit, our friend just died (and we're probably next). And, really, does this create a new ecosystem for death? No. It provides a small reward for those who didn't die and does nothing for the player who has to sit there and think about their new build. (Is it bad if I build the same character again?) Let's think about Aeneas facing down a defeated Turnus, looking at mercy. He sees the belt of Pallas, and then... he gets a +1 to execute. No, wait. That's a horrid rule.
Let's consider: when a character dies, the player has the option to make a deal with the avatar of Death, their deity, the devil, &c. They will return to life, but with the stipulation of fulfilling a new contract. This is, roughly, the rule of Dungeon World, and I really go in for it. Death isn't a binary boundary—it's once again pushed into the realm of narrative possibilities. It isn't a tactical consideration so much as a possibility to elevate the player's conceptualization of the character. In a moment of true weakness or a moment of total loss of leverage, would a character deign to make a deal with the devil?
Is this more ecological? It allows for death as a conversation piece, death as an extension of the will of the character and less of that of the mechanical possibilities. Death becomes something the fiction has a say in. This certainly reduces the narrative waste of death that we usually encounter. It opens the opportunity for transformation, the natural property of death in our living world. If Death, God, the Devil, whatever demands something different of a character, they must enter a new natural state or face a contractual penalty.
What about no death at all? Whenever a player is reduced to zero HP and has failed whatever test appropriate for death saves, &c., they simply act as unconscious. In this case, we'd say that challenge or the threat of the ruleset's mechanical—and therefore fair—judgement has been thrown out. We've come back to a non-option.
What about ghosts, though? Yes. Ghosts are a good option. That's a simplistic way to put it, but providing the player the transformation process of becoming something else provides exactly the premise of death in the natural sense without an inertia interruption. Ghosts, inheriting a possessed body, becoming monstrous in the process. There's a sword Pokemon I can't shake.
Reincarnation? If the pacing makes sense, yeah, sure. If this is an easy way to marry the fiction to the mechanics and nothing else, well—y'know—bless yer heart.
And that's really it. What's an ecological way D&D can manage death? To see it not as a way to finalize a character, or to push a character into its mechanical limit and terminate it accordingly. (Or, in the absolute worst case scenario, frame the death of a character as a punishment and punish the character for dying. If loss of XP or gold, then gain of something—a character's personal experience or insight—in equal stature.) To see death as an opportunity for transformation, a gateway into a new personhood and full of new challenges. I'm less fond of presenting the contractual-angel-of-death scenario as one where the character simply needs to solve a quest or do one thing for the requester, but something that fundamentally alters the way the character ontologically—at their very core being—is. When mortals die, they die. When they come back, they come back because of fantasy. Fantasy changes us, molds us into something new. This is why we are attracted to fantasy.
Now, that's a scratch at the surface, and in one direction. Let's—later—consider death in a more intense way.
I've been thinking a lot about death. On a metaphorical level, I've been thinking a lot about death. (On a real level, I've been thinking a lot about death, but that's not what this is about. Hey, hey, let's write out abilities and charts for dealing with grief. What a fun game we could play.) It's something that, as someone who's been playing specifically D&D and more specifically 5e for the better half of a year at this point, is doomed to come up.
Why do we die (in games)? What does it mean to die (in games)? Is dying useful (in games)?
Do we die ecologically (in games)? (More appropriately: do we die in an ecologically minded way [in games]?)
The long-short of it is: no, we don't. Death—death without immediate resurrection—comes with a few neat terminals: 1) draw up a new character sheet and just wait, lol, 2) take over this hireling until we can find a town or appropriate juncture where a new character can show up (and also draw up a new character sheet), or 3) we'll call you when the group decides to do a quest to really resurrect you. (Let's not go into the fiction preferred by the ruleset itself. Death in a world where a mediocre cleric can show up for last rites and end it with a resurrection? Even a very meager 10% reduction mortality would wildly shoot up population growth and put an immense strain on local resources. Let's throw that out there and drop it for another day.)
Mechanically, though: death, yeah. Let's go into that. Is it ecological to kill a character?
Let's look at it in terms of player investment and narrative enforcement of the concept of challenge—risk's benefactor. At the first level, there's not much attachment to a character, so killing's easy. Character sheets fly and new faces and identities come in freely. This serves the purpose of amping up the sense of risk in the world -- the dice own the world, and their will is harsh and fickle. As the levels climb, the risk of death -- obscenely immediate death -- increases less with the hardier foes, who might be more sturdy as to drain party resources, but more so with the priests of the dice, the save-or-suck spellcasters (or ability-slingers) who dominate the later game. Waltz on into some thousand-year lich's tomb, and pass all of your first three WIS saves, or get lost. (Really -- just lost eight months of a character. Whomp whomp.)
Before anyone gets nasty, yes—it's hard to die in 5e. You don't need to remind me. Onwards.
In either case, did the character's death betray something other than the whims of the ruleset itself? No. Not really. From a narrative investment perspective, there was no hero's descent to compare to the hero's rise—nothing like the foreshadowing demise of Beowulf, facing off against the third-such aglaeca'd person of the story (himself and Grendel's loving mother as others). Instead, death often comes with a heft of dice that resembles a Coen Brothers' sledgehammer. Oops, the character's dead now. What a whoopsie. Hope you didn't give a shit about them. Guess that proves how much of a badass this villain was.
To the point: I've killed someone with a fishperson jamming a spear in her eye. It was the definition of anticlimax. I regret it deeply so very much. I handwaved it and put her in a coma instead. It was a really bad death. To segue, that was a wasteful death. I wasted energy, I wasted time, and I wasted a roll. Did the devil make me do it? Yes. But, to go on.
Death (in D&D) is a waste.
That's kinda the point. You had a good run. It's over. All inertia stops. Start over again. When this happens in nature, it comes from a very subjective standpoint—usually the biggest, most energy-sucking creatures' standpoint, to be specific. So, I guess if we view D&D from the standpoint of a bunch of dinosaurs hanging out in the Yucatan several million years ago, ta-da. We've solved good death design. Congrats. Otherwise, for those of us who came from small furry blobs, there's work to be done to explain the loss of narrative inertia.
The thing about it is, death doesn't kill a good story. It usually propels it forward. In the medieval epics, death is precisely the call to action from a narrative perspective; the story doesn't end with the end of the verse, but instead pushes out into the audience and propels them to live the virtues of the deceased. In more modern literary ventures, death is only the beginning to understanding the peculiarities of life. As I Lay Dying. Crime and Punishment. Yabo. What's death in those books? It's the propeller. (Let's talk about mysteries.) We think of death as a cooling, as heat leaving the body. That's not death in fiction; death in fiction is the heat. Larmarque is dead. His death is the hour of fate!
Let's think about mushrooms. Mushroom suits, actually. Your death can become fruitful for the ecosystem. How can we mushroom suit D&D? (Can we? No. Yes. I don't know. Is that the point?)
Idea: when a character dies, all party members receive +1 to all subsequent rolls. Death inspires the rage and resilience of friends.
No, though. The conventional wisdom is that death, for players at least, inspires mostly despair—oh shit, our friend just died (and we're probably next). And, really, does this create a new ecosystem for death? No. It provides a small reward for those who didn't die and does nothing for the player who has to sit there and think about their new build. (Is it bad if I build the same character again?) Let's think about Aeneas facing down a defeated Turnus, looking at mercy. He sees the belt of Pallas, and then... he gets a +1 to execute. No, wait. That's a horrid rule.
Let's consider: when a character dies, the player has the option to make a deal with the avatar of Death, their deity, the devil, &c. They will return to life, but with the stipulation of fulfilling a new contract. This is, roughly, the rule of Dungeon World, and I really go in for it. Death isn't a binary boundary—it's once again pushed into the realm of narrative possibilities. It isn't a tactical consideration so much as a possibility to elevate the player's conceptualization of the character. In a moment of true weakness or a moment of total loss of leverage, would a character deign to make a deal with the devil?
Is this more ecological? It allows for death as a conversation piece, death as an extension of the will of the character and less of that of the mechanical possibilities. Death becomes something the fiction has a say in. This certainly reduces the narrative waste of death that we usually encounter. It opens the opportunity for transformation, the natural property of death in our living world. If Death, God, the Devil, whatever demands something different of a character, they must enter a new natural state or face a contractual penalty.
What about no death at all? Whenever a player is reduced to zero HP and has failed whatever test appropriate for death saves, &c., they simply act as unconscious. In this case, we'd say that challenge or the threat of the ruleset's mechanical—and therefore fair—judgement has been thrown out. We've come back to a non-option.
What about ghosts, though? Yes. Ghosts are a good option. That's a simplistic way to put it, but providing the player the transformation process of becoming something else provides exactly the premise of death in the natural sense without an inertia interruption. Ghosts, inheriting a possessed body, becoming monstrous in the process. There's a sword Pokemon I can't shake.
Reincarnation? If the pacing makes sense, yeah, sure. If this is an easy way to marry the fiction to the mechanics and nothing else, well—y'know—bless yer heart.
And that's really it. What's an ecological way D&D can manage death? To see it not as a way to finalize a character, or to push a character into its mechanical limit and terminate it accordingly. (Or, in the absolute worst case scenario, frame the death of a character as a punishment and punish the character for dying. If loss of XP or gold, then gain of something—a character's personal experience or insight—in equal stature.) To see death as an opportunity for transformation, a gateway into a new personhood and full of new challenges. I'm less fond of presenting the contractual-angel-of-death scenario as one where the character simply needs to solve a quest or do one thing for the requester, but something that fundamentally alters the way the character ontologically—at their very core being—is. When mortals die, they die. When they come back, they come back because of fantasy. Fantasy changes us, molds us into something new. This is why we are attracted to fantasy.
Now, that's a scratch at the surface, and in one direction. Let's—later—consider death in a more intense way.
Comments
Post a Comment