Perma Death- How to cause anguish for fun and profit.

[mondblut]

You seem to be assuming that PC punishment = player punishment. That's not necessarily true even outside lulz+restart games. Setbacks in most current games tend not to provide entertainment since they don't open up interesting gameplay/content, whereas success does. There's no reason to avoid PC punishments - just so long as they don't punish the player.

Well, there are punishments and punishments. Take permanent injuries, for example. Sure, every manual on "roleplaying" is all excited about how fascinating is to play an one-handed, one-legged, one-eyed cripple. But fact is - a character who suffered a serious penalty on precision or can't handle anything bigger than one-handed sword without a shield/small handgun, is very unlikely to have a chance to survive in later part of the game, and having to watch him slowly limping from one side of the level to another is enough to stop playing altogether.

Sure, you could drop in some sort of a quest to remove this or that particular injury, but games with critical injuries tend to give them away very generously, and any entertaining setbacks are only entertaining the first time.

Further, I'd say that PC punishments that are "easily curable" are some of the worst kind - since they only act as a time-sink [[EDIT: assuming a game with no real time pressure - which is less than ideal]], and are therefore almost automatically a punishment for the player.

Every game has real time pressure, take poisonings - if you don't lose hitpoints every second, you lose them every step. Either way, injuries and afflictions which may be cured provide an additional system of challenges - a search for a healing fountain to heal a disease before it kills you, a frantic rush to a healer to get a cure poison potion before your hitpoints are over, a quest for a silversmith to replace a missing extremity, a change in magical research plan to get that stone to flesh spell before all others, you name it. If an injury is incurable, the PC is fucked up - and so is the player, if not immediately, then once the crippled PC's inefficiency starts to shine.

 

[crufty]

If an injury is incurable, the PC is fucked up - and so is the player, if not immediately, then once the crippled PC's inefficiency starts to shine.

That's a quitter's attitude! Clearly not cut for the likes of HackMaster.




I agree, it can suck to play a mute mage. BUT, there is challenge, and as long as folks don't take it too seriously, it can work out. And in hackmaster, one should always have an understudy ready to fill the void, so to speak. Phase out the pc and in comes the student...



in crpgs permadeath sucks when there is a tpk, and you have to play through the whole game again. Especially since most cprgs require a degree of meta-game knowledge to survive (Icewind dales, I'm looking at YOU).

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Permanent injuries would be very cool in a setting that has cybernetics.

 

[galsiah]

Take permanent injuries, for example. But fact is - a character who suffered a serious penalty... is very unlikely to have a chance to survive in later part of the game, and having to watch him slowly limping from one side of the level to another is enough to stop playing altogether.

That assumes a game which is balanced on the premise of power increase (or at least no power decrease), and doesn't support any negative penalties with interesting content. Neither of these needs to be true. Of course permanent injuries suck in the context of most current RPGs - since they're not set up to support them.
I'm not advocating that the player play through penalties on the basis that it's roleplaying; I'm advocating a designer making such an event interesting and balanced enough so that players will want to - whether or not they think "this will be an interesting roleplaying opportunity". Naturally this has issues for balance. It simply means that you can't predicate entertainment on some specific PC power level. Again, this isn't impossible - it just means handling things differently.

Sure, you could drop in some sort of a quest to remove this or that particular injury...

I'm not suggesting that they be removed in most cases, but rather changed. Having injuries (or similar) leave "scars" (or similar) is more interesting than having them disappear without a trace - whatever the mechanism by which they're removed. The "cure" wouldn't ideally leave the PC in a simply better/worse state than he started out - just different.

Every game has real time pressure

Not in general it doesn't. Almost every game has time pressure in some specific instances - poisoning often being one. Having to remove a poison within X time to avoid death is one possible situation. It's probably not the most interesting though - precisely because it's so extreme and one-dimensional.

It's not going to be reasonable, or interesting, to have every setback be a case of Do-X-In-Y-Time-Or-Die. In that case there needs to be global time pressure to make any setback+cure event meaningful - otherwise it's just an annoying time-sink.

If an injury is incurable, the PC is fucked up - and so is the player, if not immediately, then once the crippled PC's inefficiency starts to shine.

That needn't be true in any game which isn't about efficiently "winning". That entertainment in many RPGs relies upon consistent power increase isn't anything to be pleased about.

In any case, I'm not just talking about injuries, or permanent injuries. I'm talking about injuries with long-term implications (e.g. a "cure" which changes things in interesting ways is fine), and general setbacks which add content and gameplay.
Of course playing a character who limps blindly through a combat-heavy dungeon-crawl would be annoying. So if you're making a combat-based dungeon-crawl, don't have the long-term effects be debilitating in those terms; if you're making an RPG, don't rely upon combat prowess for entertainment value.

 

[Solohk]

What about a game where you are a leader within a cause or army? If your character eats it, your army doesn't just shrug and say "oh well." but someone else rises to take their place. So you then take control of the new character and continue the quest.

Perhaps there should be some sort of penalty, say a morale hit, to make players care a bit more about changing characters.

Anyway, I'd say in any conflict there's going to be deaths, but I don't see why the death of one particular person has to be the absolute end of every story.

 

[Woohoo]

Most of the games I've played with permadeath have been insanely hard, like Dwarf Fortress. Walk around the corner, see huge S, die like a bitch. This kinda turned me off to the whole concept.

Tension is lovely but it's a hard rope to walk because it can easily morph into hair pulling. Tension requires the fear of losing your progress. If you die all the time, there's no tension, just frustration. So generally speaking, I'm not in favor of permadeath unless the game is very well balanced.

 

[deuxhero]

It really depends on the game, and how it is set up.

In Real time games (or at least ones with companions) this would only serve to frustrate the player, take KotoR, if it had permadeath the game would be one big escort mission because the AI has no self preservation (and seems to insist on useing the basic attack option when you dumped 3 feats on them for master power attack/flurry/critical strike/sniper shot/rapid shot) and you can't manualy take over for the idiots without leaveing the player character victim of the horrible AI (or at least carefuly plan so they don't die).

Now in a turn based game it is acceptable, as you can plan to avoid deaths, and the AI tends to be less suicideal and the deaths seem to be more "your fault" then poor design.

 

[zenbitz]

Anyone heard of a cRPG with "pseudo-permadeath". When you are defeated in combat, or otherwise are ignominiously dealt with - you don't die, but are "stripped and imprisioned" or "rescued by deus ex machina". In any case, you are basically teleported to another part of the game, to continue - with some failure penalty.

You could also mix this with some actual permadeath in there as well, if you do something really stupid (jump off of a 1000 foot cliff, for example)

 

[Andhaira]

Yes. Morowind, Realms of Arkania and ultima 7 +8 had a jailing mechanic. But that was usually nly if you committed a crime.

Ultima 8 had a partularly sweet mechanic. This powerful sorceror teleports up and subsues you. Until you get powerful enough and crush him ofcourse. :D

 

[zerotol]

It doesnt matter cause i just never die. Yes i pwn games. All of them, every single time. I am the master of all games. The first and the last.

 

[spectre]

I think we should focus on games that consciously implement permadeath as a design decision, rather than speculate how it would fit into KOTOR, and other games that didn't plan for the feature.
I personally like ADOM in this respect.

But fact is - a character who suffered a serious penalty on precision or can't handle anything bigger than one-handed sword without a shield/small handgun, is very unlikely to have a chance to survive in later part of the game,

It's only a fact if you tried to apply this directly to, say Diablo. A few questions that enter my mind at this point:
What if it's a bad assumption to make that you can win the game unscathed? And it's not the question of if I get seriously injured, but when.
And second, did the character gain anything in the process, something that you were unable to get for the last few games? Perhaps, despite crippling injuries he now has a powerful companion in his group, or he was blessed by the gods with an artifact gift?

Most of the games I've played with permadeath have been insanely hard, like Dwarf Fortress. Walk around the corner, see huge S, die like a bitch. This kinda turned me off to the whole concept.

Mhm. So a few questions again, does this big S teleport straight at you, hit you in the ass and leg for 1024 and you die, or does it happen after a prolonged fight? Is it possible to avoid the monster, run awya from it maybe?
(I didn't play DF adventure mode, so I am asking honestly)

I think well designed permadeath enriches your typical typical RPG gameplay with a few things:
You have to be constantly aware of dangers, especially if you see a type of monster for the first time, it may not be a good idea for a berserker charge.
Sometimes you have to (shockngly) consider running away from the fight and admitting that this 'ere fellow is beyond your character's skill. Or, even better, sometimes you'll have to admit that this type of monster is better left alone, cause fighting it is simply too costly (does it rust your weapons? Pehaps it drains your attributes?, or can it paralyze and eat you if you're unlucky? Or is is simply too much a hassle, sice it will summon a million of it's little brothers and you'll spend a few good hours hacking away at them)

 

[Imbecile]

Permadeath is the way forward, at least as an option. I'd like quicksaves to die a slow painful death certainly.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

For once I agree with mondblut, although permadeath in MMOs would spice things up a bit. Not that it would work, it would just break up the monotony.

 

[zenbitz]

Here is a quote from an indy PnP game called "Dogs in the Vineyard":

Also, occasionally, your character will get killed. The conflict resolution rules will keep it from being pointless or arbitrary: it'll happen only when you've chosen to stake your character's life on something. Staking your character's life means risking it, is all.

Now that is something that I would like to put in a cRPG.

 

[sqeecoo]

Well, ironman is great if implemented in a non-frustrating way. It depends on the game, really.

If you have a PC whose death means game over, ironman is just frustrating. The same goes for a small group of non-replaceable PCs. In games like JA2 and especially X-Com it works much better.
EDIT: Of course, if the game does not feature too much combat, or if it's only rarely that your character risks his life, than ironman is more than welcome.

It also depends on the goal of the game. If there is a set goal that requires you to accomplish increasingly difficult tasks, ironman can be frustrating if you end up simply too weak at some point due to some failure a long time ago. On the other hand, in games with a more flexible goal, like Dwarf Fortress (or even a RPG with endings where you are only partially successful), part of the fun is loosing half your dwarves in a horrible accident and then trying to survive a goblin siege while the survivors go beserk from grief.

Basically, I think ironman works well for sandbox games and strategies, as long as the PCs are replaceable.

For normal RPGs, I'd like to see a good autosave/checkpoint (I actually like those) system, where you can skip back a bit if you make a stupid mistake or perhaps misinterpret a dialogue option, but your choices are not reversible. The player could still reload combat encounters (but not failed skill checks), so what this system would do is force you to stick to your choices, as opposed to making you restart every time you are killed by a Invisible Trap of DOOM. This would strike a solid balance between preventing recklessness but avoiding the need for insane carefulness.