@Apos Is there any player alive who is truly 100% chill?
I'd also like to offer a mild correction to @Tat's post: @roz CUT OFF HER OWN GODDAMN ARM.
I think it is a lot easier to deal with your character being wrong if you aren't also wrong ooc. Because choosing to be wrong when it's ic for your character is a thing that can happen but if your character is wrong because you're wrong then you AND your character have to own it; much harder.
@coin said in Heroic Sacrifice:
I can't tell you how many times "but all my XP, I had like 3000 XP on this character and now they're dead! What a waste!" Guess what, now it weas all YOUR XP and what you spent on the character has been funneled back to you and you cans pend it however you want. Make a new character, buff some of your other ones, I don't care.
Although I want to downplay the importance of losing a character in the context of this thread (involuntary PC death happens pretty rarely, all things considered), I agree with that solution.
When your character is lost for any reason there are two things you mainly lose:
Your mechanical progress (usually XP, but also rank, connections, etc); obviously a number is easier to carry over than the rest.
Your identity. You are Joe, and once Joe dies and you become Bob. This is a subtle loss but not one to be underestimated since it does matter, and there's no way around that one (since it'd be really confusing to explain this Joe isn't the old Joe but it's just the same name for a different character).
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
@coin said in Heroic Sacrifice:
I can't tell you how many times "but all my XP, I had like 3000 XP on this character and now they're dead! What a waste!" Guess what, now it weas all YOUR XP and what you spent on the character has been funneled back to you and you cans pend it however you want. Make a new character, buff some of your other ones, I don't care.
Although I want to downplay the importance of losing a character in the context of this thread (involuntary PC death happens pretty rarely, all things considered), I agree with that solution.
When your character is lost for any reason there are two things you mainly lose:
Your mechanical progress (usually XP, but also rank, connections, etc); obviously a number is easier to carry over than the rest.
Your identity. You are Joe, and once Joe dies and you become Bob. This is a subtle loss but not one to be underestimated since it does matter, and there's no way around that one (since it'd be really confusing to explain this Joe isn't the old Joe but it's just the same name for a different character).
Some things can't be quantified and that's a bummer, but oh fucking well.
In a game with XP, Status should cost XP. If it doesn't, then every area of "specialization" should have some thing that can be gained for free and lost when a character dies. Artifacts, Rank, whatever. I don't recomend it.
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Your identity. You are Joe, and once Joe dies and you become Bob. This is a subtle loss but not one to be underestimated since it does matter, and there's no way around that one
This is not a subtle loss, though. This is the main loss for an awful lot of players, myself included. I couldn't give a crap about the XP/rank lost -- on the games I play, mechanical advancement is downplayed or non-existent. I care because my investment is in the character. Their relationships, their personality, their goals -- their story in other words. All the scenes played, all the knowledge gained ... gone. Congratulations, now you get to start from zero and do BarRP all over again to build up new relationships and get used to a new character's shoes and invent a new character's family history and life story... nope. Not interested. You couldn't bribe me enough for that.
But anything short of that? Sure, I'm game. My characters have been conned, dumped, severely injured, arrested - as long as it's on mutually-agreeable terms, I'm down with almost anything for the sake of a good story.
@faraday I think there's something to be said about the OOC shift of names too, though. It's one thing I really like about Ares - the handle system.
There is a group of players I've played with for a long, long time, and we've all sort of adopted handles for each other. This can be super alienating to new players who don't know that 'Tat' is just my OOC name and everyone else just happens to know what characters that refers to.
I think there is something real and tangible about losing your OOC identity when your IC identity dies, to an extent, and I think handles is a great way to help cope with that.
PS: SORRY @Roz I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU TOTALLY CUT OFF YOUR OWN ARM AND IT WAS BADASS.
@tat said in Heroic Sacrifice:
@faraday I think there's something to be said about the OOC shift of names too, though.
Oh, maybe I misunderstood what @Arkandel was getting at. I agree that the loss of OOC identity is a hassle. It's the IC identity that I think is a much bigger deal though.
@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:
This is not a subtle loss, though. This is the main loss for an awful lot of players, myself included.
Yeah, I meant subtle as in... it's easy to miss. But it's definitely a major factor, as big as the XP loss.
I couldn't give a crap about the XP/rank lost -- on the games I play, mechanical advancement is downplayed or non-existent.
Fair enough, but many do. More so on MU* where XP is majorly a factor of time invested, so when Joe died and your 800 XP went away, to rack them back up it would take another RL year. When you are reeling from every other part of that loss as well, this can easily push you well over the edge - and it's completely understandable. You're not a bad player if you leave a game over something like this (although you are if you respond in other, less sociable ways 
).
I care because my investment is in the character. Their relationships, their personality, their goals -- their story in other words.
That's a really tough problem to fix from a systemic point of view. The way I'd put it is that your RP partners are gone as part of those relationships vanishing into the ether; your character's boy/girlfriend, their hard earned alliance with that tough S.O.B. Gangrel with a heart of gold... gone.
Hell, sometimes (and this is another 'subtle' thing) players are discouraged from rolling their next PC into the same faction let alone group out of concern it would be a clone of their last PC, or a 'revenge character' or... whatever. So basically what this translates to is that if you are removed from play you can't rejoin your friends, which is also a major blow.
So of course most people don't want that to happen to them. Barring truly exceptional, mature players you know who doesn't mind? Someone who has nothing to lose. No shit I'm okay with my character dying when I'm barely playing him, he has no allies and next to no past.
I don't think the solve is anything mechanical. It is a balance of plot and staff-player relations; basically, as someone earlier said, the tone you set for your game.
It's easy to be a hero if the world that is created is black and white, if the villain everyone is up against is Big Bad. But if you make things grey and have conflict where neither side is wholly right or wrong, it will be much harder for players to always do the 'right thing'. It will force people to make choices, especially if you forward plots where those choices come at a cost. Saving the lives of many comes at the price of a few -- but those few are important. So what do you do? Make the villain well-rounded, someone/thing that people can empathize with, maybe even identify with their goals -- do they jump sides, try to change their methods?
Pair this with everything that @Apos said and I think you have an environment that fosters people to wear many different kinds of hats, not just white ones.
@apos said in Heroic Sacrifice:
OOC environment is the #1 reason very chill, story focused players aren't on more games. If someone is just looking to collaborate and tell stories with other people and only invested in RP, what do you think they do when they log into the game and their first experience is seeing someone be a dipshit in an ooc room? They are gone immediately.
Quoted for truth.
@saosmash said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Is there any player alive who is truly 100% chill?
I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never lost my shit as a PC on a game.
Catch me outside? How bow dat.
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Fair enough, but many do.
Yeah, I wasn't meaning to downplay the impact of XP loss when it happens, merely to illustrate that you can take advancement completely out of the equation and a lot of people still won't want to start over purely for social reasons. As you say, it's not a systems problem, which is why I don't think it's going to be solved through systems/incentives.
@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Fair enough, but many do.
Yeah, I wasn't meaning to downplay the impact of XP loss when it happens, merely to illustrate that you can take advancement completely out of the equation and a lot of people still won't want to start over purely for social reasons. As you say, it's not a systems problem, which is why I don't think it's going to be solved through systems/incentives.
Agreed, but I think that's not relevant to most of this debate here. I mean the question isn't really how to handle character death but overall adversity.
You don't lose the character - which we agree on carries heavy social consequences - because someone called them a poohead and everyone laughed OMG.
@tat said in Heroic Sacrifice:
PS: SORRY @Roz I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU TOTALLY CUT OFF YOUR OWN ARM AND IT WAS BADASS.
To be fair, @Tez tried to remove my arm first before I insisted on doing it myself.
As for what made me chill with losing an arm: because it was a sci-fi setting and I knew I could get a cool robot arm or something so that the PC's combat utility wouldn't be nerfed and also I got lots of great angst out of him really not liking the robot arm.
Also because his PB was Sebastian Stan so, like -- Bucky.
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Agreed, but I think that's not relevant to most of this debate here. I mean the question isn't really how to handle character death but overall adversity.
You don't lose the character - which we agree on carries heavy social consequences - because someone called them a poohead and everyone laughed OMG.
Absolutely - but the OP did ask what would incentivize people to allow their character to be killed or maimed, so I think it's relevant. And I think for an awful lot of MUSHers the answer is: absolutely nothing.
The laughing thing - yeah. 
Two popular RPGs that reward failure:
I think @faraday absolutely nailed it with the fact that we take our characters as avatars, with the whole "takes too long to join the action" discussion.
Above are listed two RPGs that frame characters as story participants, as distinctly separate from the player, and where creating characters and getting in the action are key parts of their very chargen.
Starting there would be good.
@kestrel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
(Side note, is anyone else ultra excited for Season 5 airing tonight?)
Actually, surprisingly, I am. The ending of Season 3 (and Season 3 in general) kind of lost me, but I watched Season 4... and was pleasantly surprised.
On another side, I agree with you on the feel of the MUSH--there was certainly interpersonal conflict, and that was all well and good, but in general there was definitely a kumbaya feel. It would have been hard to go full Echo or Murphy, and I salute you for taking Cass as far in that direction as you did.
@apos said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Way, way, way more people are okay with their characters dying in a cool way than they are ever okay with being made to look like an idiot, or just being wrong about something. It isn't even close.
I upvoted already, but I just wanted to reinforce this. Yuuuuuuuuup.
@coin said in Heroic Sacrifice:
I would aim for a middle ground. Pick a number of "areas" a character can be skilled at...
I like it. I was pretty much going for bare-bones story-driven, nearly stat-less (as @faraday spotted when she compared it to story-telling on Storium), but your suggestions would certainly turn it into more of a game system than a simple economy.
I think I would skip the subgroups though, just stick with 4-6 areas of expertise and the modifiers.
I like the modifier working for both spending and earning Karma.
I'm not sure I would put the "tax" on losing a lot, because it's introducing more game mechanics into what was intended to be a very, very simple system, but I do like the cooldown for gaining Karma in a particular way.
I would say that ties are just that... ties. Both sides lose their Karma. Want to win? Spend more Karma. Want more Karma? Take an intermediate failure (nasty scar, lose a hand, split your pants wide open, whatever) to gain more Karma to spend.
Perhaps you can spend X time shifting a point from one to another if you would like (probably something like a month or two) as a simpler way to allow for some "character growth."
@arkandel said in Heroic Sacrifice:
When your character is lost for any reason there are two things you mainly lose:
I would say that there are three:
I know I give @faraday a ton of props for Ares around here, but here's another one: with FS3 and web chargen, creating a new character is really fast and easy (assuming that your Staffers don't nitpick BGs too much, or you don't go too in-depth with the BG for your new character).
I vaguely recall there's another game... Arthurian game? Something? That has this really funky set up for the characters where you can end up playing three+ for the price of one, effectively. You go through time? Something like that?
... Don't look at me that way, I have a perfect recollection of all the kinds of coffees I've ever liked, ok. My brain knows what is truly important.
But it was set up in a way where it was absolutely definitely clear that the characters themselves were less important, and it was about the story you were making and the health of the group. Place. Thing. Ugh. On the other hand that meant that our involvement in the characters themselves was also greatly lessened, and we were more focused on developing the... settlement? and how the group as a whole interacted with the other factions in the kingdom at the time. As I recall walking away from it I found it was a fun novelty, but it didn't have the satisfaction I get from really getting into a single character. It very much felt like an Arthurian tabletop version of Dwarf Fortress, pretty much.
I do wonder, thinking about it and that The Greatest Generation game if maybe that would be a partial solution, though. Follow the same group of people through time, play Joe then Joe's son then Joe III then Joeanna daughter of Joe III etc. Speed up the time some, maybe? This is spring in 111, now it's summer in 112, etc. Or faster yet, maybe. Timewarping could be an interesting feature to emphasize the story over the characters whilst still keeping you involved.
@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:
Side note - Cooperative tabletop games work by making it all about the group rather than the individual. The group wins or loses together.
Another thing to note is that the group in these cases is most commonly a group of RL friends.
If I am playing coop game I am a lot more likely sacrifice personal accomplishment for the over all success when the other players are my friends, with a group of strangers in person or on line I am much less likely to sacrifice personal gain even if it leads to the loss of the over all game.
@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:
This is the main loss for an awful lot of players, myself included. I couldn't give a crap about the XP/rank lost --Congratulations, now you get to start from zero and do BarRP all over again to build up new relationships
I agree with this 100 percent, hell i love social rp more than most do but I hate those early "Hi My name is Bob and I just transferred in from Dover," scenes with a flaming passion, I can handle them when I am new to a game because I am still learning the place OOCly but after a PC death and doing again...ungh there would be nothing I would want to avoid more.
I think this is also why I am more of a multi-gamer than a multiple alts on one game person as well.
@thatguythere said in Heroic Sacrifice:
but after a PC death and doing again...ungh there would be nothing I would want to avoid more.
Yeah especially because you, the player, already know so much about these people from your old character. There isn't even the pleasure of social discovery. It just becomes monotonous. I just can't support forcing that on people just to provide some illusion of "stakes" in the story. When main characters die in a novel or on a TV show, there's a point to it. Their death serves some purpose in the story. It's not because "Oh, you rolled a 1 on save vs death... sucks to be you. Game over."
Not meaning to harp on PC death since that's only a part of the discussion here, but I think you can make the same arguments for failure in general. Characters in (good) stories don't just randomly fail. There's a greater narrative purpose, and the failure feeds into the next part of the story. That just doesn't happen in MUs. So can you really blame people to not want to fall flat on their face for no narrative reason other than a fickle die roll?
@faraday said in Heroic Sacrifice:
So can you really blame people to not want to fall flat on their face for no narrative reason other than a fickle die roll?
It can quickly become more like one of those "cat forgets how to cat" gifs than a good part of a story.
Couple real life examples of botched rolls though:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/dealing-with-olympic-failure
@Apos Is there any player alive who is truly 100% chill?
I'd also like to offer a mild correction to @Tat's post: @roz CUT OFF HER OWN GODDAMN ARM.
I think it is a lot easier to deal with your character being wrong if you aren't also wrong ooc. Because choosing to be wrong when it's ic for your character is a thing that can happen but if your character is wrong because you're wrong then you AND your character have to own it; much harder.
