Should we consider recanonizing how death works

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Rooshi49
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Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Rooshi49 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:26 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I once heard that death used to have a strict way of RP'ING it for everyone. As it stands there's multiple interpretations of how death works for the player which can lead to discrepancies in rp.

I personally like to think of death and revival as extremely tiring and painful, but IC my toon always remembers everything that happened. What do you all think? Should we as a community agree with a certain way of doing it? What are your ways of rp'ing death?

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ForgottenBhaal
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by ForgottenBhaal » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:32 pm

This actually might be a good idea, really. Because sometimes it can be hard to know how to play this out, as well as others just shrug it off.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Ebonstar » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:42 pm

i play anything that happens while dead stays while dead
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by MineTurtle » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:43 pm

I would appreciate a stronger ruling and guidance here, too.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by The Rambling Midget » Tue Oct 16, 2018 7:48 pm

Yeah, there was a more definitive ruling in the past, and as many people were unhappy with that as with the new more relaxed ruling. There's no way to please everyone on this point, so I'm in favor of whatever affords the greatest RP opportunities without opening up exploits.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Cybernet21 » Tue Oct 16, 2018 9:57 pm

Each player does as he wishes with death RP,as long as you RP your character being weakened for a few days (or at least until the debuffs are gone) it's fine.

IIRC It's also recommended by the DM's to simply make your character not remember what happened on the fugue plane and one hour (IG so 6 minutes)before death,although you are not obligated to.

I prefer it this way too,a definite ruling here can spoil the fun for a lot of people,just RP death the way you feel like it (as long as it doesn't lead to rule breaks or the character being perfectly healthy just after being ressurected) and most other player will roll with it.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by MissEvelyn » Tue Oct 16, 2018 10:44 pm

Harder rulings on how to RP death would result in DMs having to have to police that rather than doing better things with their time.

I've always been a fan of the saying "If you can't mechanically enforce it, don't make it a rule". Obvious situations will be obvious, such as metagaming, godmodding, WYSIWYG, PvP, and so forth. But for the majority of Arelith's rules, they're consistent and in some cases lax with the mechanics.

Now, if the devs worked on some way to make death more meaningful and that was represented through the death mechanics, by all means, I would be all for it.


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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by The GrumpyCat » Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:08 pm

To clarify the Dm stance on this:

1) You are free to remember your death, the time leading up to it, and whatever happens in the fugue itself if you wish.

2)
IIRC It's also recommended by the DM's to simply make your character not remember what happened on the fugue plane and one hour (IG so 6 minutes)before death,although you are not obligated to.
This is no longer the case (in fact I'm not sure teh IG hour thing was ever the case!) but it WAS an old ruling. Now you can remember the fugue just fine.

3) There's currently no solid rules for how to rp death. You can more or less do as you like, however it is Highly Recommended that you treat death seriously and with gravitas - especialy in cases of death via PvP.

This is just a clarification on the current Roleplay of Death stance by DMs.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by -XXX- » Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:28 pm

Well, this seems to be a twofold issue

a) many character deaths can be the result of an ongoing larger narrative plot. In such cases any rigid ruling that'd offer an arbitrary period of "pre-death amnesia" might be insufficient as many leads predating it's effect might still be present.
Simply put, characters might be easily able to figure out who killed them even if a ruling compeled them to forget the actual event, so any such ruling would be doomed to miss the mark and only further constrain RP, not to mention the needless headache for any DM trying to sort these things out.

b) because of the points outlined in a), the current stance appears to heavily rely on common sense. Ironically enough, many players choose to lean in favor of the RAW interpretation.
This often results in situations where the victim simply respawns and paints their killer. While such behavior might not fly in the past (characters doing this being more often a subject to ridicule rather than taken seriously), it currently seems to be treated as a perfectly acceptable testimony.
If this was not already bad enough, I can attest that I have commonly witnessed various characters advertise during hostile confrontations how "they win even if they lose", pretty much hinting IC (!) at their intent to respawn and have their opponent exiled if they get defeated. This can sometimes get rather frustrating as it often quickly narrows the outcomes of any potential conflict RP down to a "doomed if you do, doomed if you don't" kind of a deal.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Cybernet21 » Wed Oct 17, 2018 3:50 am

DM GrumpyCat wrote:
Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:08 pm
To clarify the Dm stance on this:

2)
IIRC It's also recommended by the DM's to simply make your character not remember what happened on the fugue plane and one hour (IG so 6 minutes)before death,although you are not obligated to.
This is no longer the case (in fact I'm not sure teh IG hour thing was ever the case!) but it WAS an old ruling. Now you can remember the fugue just fine.
I see,my bad for spreading old rulings.And the one hour thing,i could swear i saw that in the wiki,guess i remember wrong lol

EDIT:Nevermind,the 6 minutes rule (one IG hour) is stated on the wiki,but just as an example of how a player can treat their death RP not as a reccomendation
http://wiki.arelith.com/Death for anyone interested
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by kiljaedon » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:21 pm

Double post on accident
Last edited by kiljaedon on Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by kiljaedon » Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:23 pm

Honestly death removes suspension of belief when some people perm die while others seem immortal. I feel the death mechanic should be changed to being carried to the hospital when hp hits -10 except under extreme exceptions of a hungry ogre... makes me wonder why some permanently die while I seem like immortal

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by boggle99 » Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:02 pm

I tend to play it depending on weather I'm raised or I have to re spawn. If raised I tend to remember everything unless it would lead to cheesy RP (so I still wont say OMG, thingy murdered me, but I might say I saw a tall figure in this coloured armour charging at me, and then it is all a blur). If I re spawn however I take the mental death penalties to be a bit like a server crash. My PC is completely loopy and out of it till the death penalties ware off and then doesn't remember what happened or who did it, they may get a funny feeling looking at the char who did it, but they couldn't tell you why.

As for the why some people die and some return, the best reason I heard IC which my PCs now follow is that the wall is nothing to do with us. Kelemvor has trapped some monster that exists in death in the labyrinth and it stalks through it, those who don't come back either chose to pass the wall or the monster got them. All of my PC's are terrified of the thought of the monster, and thus of going to the labyrinth. As a result they are also frantic to get some one raised as quickly as possible, in case the monster gets them in the meantime.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:22 pm

The policy change of remembering the Fugue was so abrupt and unexplained that I don't know why ... it was necessary.

You'll always be on the right side of the law if you bend to obscure and vague rather than explicit retellings. And it's bizarre how following the letter of the ruling actually results in more problematic roleplay than just pretending the ruling never changed.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Rooshi49 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 3:23 am

kiljaedon wrote:
Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:23 pm
Honestly death removes suspension of belief when some people perm die while others seem immortal. I feel the death mechanic should be changed to being carried to the hospital when hp hits -10 except under extreme exceptions of a hungry ogre... makes me wonder why some permanently die while I seem like immortal
I kind of agree with this, it would make so much more sense if you woke up in a hospital or something.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Amineh123 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 6:58 am

boggle99 wrote:
Wed Oct 17, 2018 4:02 pm
As for the why some people die and some return, the best reason I heard IC which my PCs now follow is that the wall is nothing to do with us. Kelemvor has trapped some monster that exists in death in the labyrinth and it stalks through it, those who don't come back either chose to pass the wall or the monster got them. All of my PC's are terrified of the thought of the monster, and thus of going to the labyrinth. As a result they are also frantic to get some one raised as quickly as possible, in case the monster gets them in the meantime.
I love that idea!

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Durvayas » Thu Oct 18, 2018 3:42 pm

Seven Sons of Sin wrote:
Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:22 pm
The policy change of remembering the Fugue was so abrupt and unexplained that I don't know why ... it was necessary.

You'll always be on the right side of the law if you bend to obscure and vague rather than explicit retellings. And it's bizarre how following the letter of the ruling actually results in more problematic roleplay than just pretending the ruling never changed.
I agree. The old ruling, I feel, was much better for immersion. The policy change to allow it to be remembered took virtually all the fear out of death for so many PCs. It removed the mystery of the afterlife and resulted in little more than PCs on opposite sides of a battle snarking at eachother after death while waiting for respawn.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Tryn Dralar » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:22 pm

Rooshi49 wrote:
Thu Oct 18, 2018 3:23 am
kiljaedon wrote:
Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:23 pm
Honestly death removes suspension of belief when some people perm die while others seem immortal. I feel the death mechanic should be changed to being carried to the hospital when hp hits -10 except under extreme exceptions of a hungry ogre... makes me wonder why some permanently die while I seem like immortal
I kind of agree with this, it would make so much more sense if you woke up in a hospital or something.
Pretty sure some years ago, a respawn point in Cordor was the Temple before the Triad, in a corner where there was this lady npc walking about a couple of beds as if it was a small hospital there.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by LichBait » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:55 pm

I personally prefer that memories of death, or even some time up to your death are better left vague. A person that can just respawn and remember with clarity what happened during a traumatic event just seems cheesy.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by boggle99 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 7:06 pm

I liked the old ruling, but I get that it was hard to enforce, and even then it led to loads of people being blasé about death. Years ago when I played a guard half of the stuff people would come to him with was "X just murdered me" and that was with the old ruling. Also just because a rule says you can do something doesn't mean you have to, only the rules that say you can't do something are the ones you must obey.

I also dislike the hospital idea, I would find it far more immersion breaking if it turned out that I woke in hospital after say fighting a dragon on my own, or that I ended up there while some other PC has my head as a trophy, or one of my trophy heads says I must have faked it as they woke up fine in the hospital. This is FR, the land where the person who mutters to their god to smite the unbelievers is answered by a bolt of fire from the sky. It doesn't break my immersion at all that said gods will happily remake their body and shove their soul back into it because they ain't done with them.

On a RP note, I have also seen some really interesting new takes on death since the ruling was changed. I already mentioned my personal favourite but there have been some really great others. A warlock or blackguard, I cant remember, said that returning from the dead was part of their pact but that there was a price each time. Such as slaying a boss and burning the head as a offering instead of cashing it in, I've known a cleric do similar but instead they gave all the gold they made from their next adventure to the temple or sacrificed it on a alter. Because these characters knew for certain that they had died and their deity had saved them it influenced their RP while also giving death meaning.

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Ninjimmy » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:03 pm

I've got one character whose got a backstory and an RP focus relating to why Arelith is unique in the Forgotten Realms for having this re-spawn/coming back from death thing. He wound up occupying a different body than his original after he messed around with it in the past. The fact different people react to it differently, IC, is fascinating for him because it means different people have different relationships with the phenomenon be that because they're more tightly bound to the Prime Material, their god intervenes, it's all case by case data. He's even begun trying to interrogate anyone he brings back to see if he can work out what the deal is because, in character, it's weird as hell that it seems to be a localised event.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by The Kriv » Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:34 pm

Given the obviously mixed opinions on death, how to treat it IC as well as the importance of it... would it be worthwhile to CHANGE the # of negative HP's required to SEND your character to the death plane?

the -10 HP rule, has come to us from standard table-top D&D rules. And EVERYONE who has played even ONE session of traditional table-top D&D combat with more than 2 actual players knows that dropping to the negatives doesn't push you to DEAD-DEAD in nine (9) or less ticks of a 6-second "round", because D&D is a turn-based game. So your party members have lots and lots of time to both recognize their party member has dropped, and formulate a plan to move to and stabilize them to save them from DEATH... a luxury we in the video-game version of D&D are not presently afforded.

But we are playing a live-action, real-time game... why then MUST we beholden to this very clear and obvious TURN-BASED mechanic? Is it REALLY necessary?

Would it be worth extending that number from -10 to -100? it would give a lot more leeway in that death-blow to keep you from being drop-kicked to Kelvemoor's wall.

once combat ceases, the 'dying' stabilization roll could shift from Turns (6 seconds) to Rounds (60 seconds).

And if you decided you wanted to -not- wait for the timer to tick out... say, your entire party is down, and instead of lying there waiting for your death to slowly consume your points... a console command could be written up with a creative name like:
-release_spirit .... or ... -gointothelight
so that when you activate this console command, it calls up your HP total, and if it returns true for < 0 you immediately die and go to the death plane ... and things proceed as normal.


...suggesting this, since this is a discussion of recognizing how death works, maybe the death-system itself is flawed, and extending the 'dying' phase of the system might be worth expanding. I think everyone could agree on: "When you are DYING you are UNCONSCIOUS and therefore have no memory of what happens to you" . and the Player-Killing of a "dying" person is murder and must be RP'ed as such... Maybe there could be a script written that DISABLES your ability to 'talk' / 'whisper' / 'shout' while your character is in this state for any text that doesn't strictly adhere to the established "EMOTE" styles currently in place...

Violators of the "no talking/shouting" while in the negative HP range would be met with punishments of fury and great prejudice.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Coul » Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:07 pm

I haven't spent very long playing on arelith and I have yet to experience someone permadying but I would like to share my two-cents on the situation. I think people don't really take death that seriously because not only do people come back and remember everything, it's pretty common for people to assume that someone isn't dead even if they've fallen in combat and most times it's nothing more than an inconvenience because they are now out of commission for the rest of the battle/writ. Now I also want to add that I haven't been in any PvP situations either so I don't know if people are different in that case. But from what I've seen death really hasn't been treated the way it should be and people usually shrug it off and its kind of hard not to when someone who just died is probably gonna be walking back down to town until the weakness debuff wears off. Now I don't really know how to solve this issue without being super strict about death rules or enforcing permadeath in certain situations(this would be a horrible solution).

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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by The Rambling Midget » Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:06 pm

Coul wrote:
Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:07 pm
I think people don't really take death that seriously because not only do people come back and remember everything, it's pretty common for people to assume that someone isn't dead even if they've fallen in combat and most times it's nothing more than an inconvenience because they are now out of commission for the rest of the battle/writ.
That's one way to view the system, but the healthiest way, in my opinion, is this:
You know that returning from death is a common occurrence, and you trust that your patron deity will watch over you for as long as you remain faithful, but you'll still do nearly anything to avoid death, because it's painful and traumatizing, and you never know when death might become permanent for you. Permadeath happens often enough that most characters on the island will know of it as a possibility.

And the last part is a very real concern, because if the DMs find that you're not taking death seriously enough, they have the option to give you a Mark of Despair (deletion after 10 deaths) as motivation.
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Re: Should we consider recanonizing how death works

Post by Cybernet21 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:23 pm

I like the way it is atm honestly.Plus i feel like people are mixing in RP elements with game elements too much on this topic. Just do as the Rambling Midget said,your character knows they mght come back because they are faithful to their deity or know that ressurection magic exists,but they never know when they won't be coming back (wich is of course when you as a player decide,but your character doesn't know that),plus they feel all the pain of death no matter if they ressurect later on so it makes sense characters still being afraid of it,this is the healthiest way to go about it.

Oh and avoid going with "x murdered me" type of RP,if something can correct that is simply making the "x killed me" forbidden and reportable since it's very poor RP.
My family were all knights,but none protected those who cannot fight for themselves.They all cared about their noble status more than anything else.I would be a true knight,i would train on the ways of the paladin -Arcavius Ryde

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