Is Character Death Necessary?

It is a rare roleplaying game that does not include rules for character death. In the majority, death is not only possible but assumed to be the default failure state. Did you lose the combat against the dragon? Death; roll a new character.

At this point, it's so common that most people don't even question it. Of course the game allows for a character to be killed in combat; that's how combat works. It's realistic! It adds a sense of risk that heightens achievement! While this may be true, it's worth noting that most other storytelling mediums do not have regular character death.

"What about video games?" you ask. Or, "What about Boromir?" "There are countless examples of characters dying," you point out and, since this is the internet, you probably add "and you're an idiot for saying otherwise."

With the exception of video games, which are a unique circumstance that I'll tackle in more detail later, it is hard to name a story where the primary protagonist dies before the end. It's just as hard to name a story where a protagonist dies in a meaningless, random way. Death, in most stories, is used not as a failure but as a way to heighten drama and add to the story.

Yet in tabletop roleplaying games it's comparatively common and often random. Why is that?

The Reasons for Death

When you break it down, most games include death for two reasons: realism, and sense of risk.

Death for Realism

If you get into a sword fight with a rival or enemy, there is a very good chance one or both of you will be seriously injured or killed. If someone is shooting at you, and you decide to stick around and shoot back rather than fleeing, it's entirely possible you'll catch a bullet and perish. Death as a consequence for combat is just realistic.

Outside of combat, death could still be a very real threat. Traveling through a hostile environment without proper provisions could lead to death to exposure or starvation. Attempting to climb a cliff, tree, or building without a safety net or, worse yet, without proper training could mean falling to your death. Again, this is a logical consequence given what we know of the real world.

Often a player character is made to be more resilient than the average person, is given a large buffer of hit points or plot immunity. Yet, when that buffer inevitably runs out, death is still on the line; you can only push your luck so far. The harsh reality is that everyone dies, eventually.

Death for Risk

Accomplishments without risk of failure are meaningless. If students had unlimited chances to take exams, final scores become useless measurements as everyone will, eventually, achieve perfection through trial and error.

Additionally, greater risk carries greater reward. This is why gambling is so insidious: putting more money on the line means greater potential earnings, but it also means a greater rush when you beat the odds. The disparity between the worst that can happen and the best that can happen directly impacts the excitement achieved in success.

The logical conclusion is that when your player characters risk death, which in turn means the players risk losing all of their investment in those characters, victories are that much sweeter. When another character dies, the fact that yours did not makes you all the happier.

Death in Video Games

These two reasons for death are both used in another medium as well: video games. Particularly "death as risk" is a common part of most video games, from Mario to Call of Duty. By examining how video games handle death, therefore, we can learn to apply those same lessons to the tabletop.

Death is often used as a failure state in video games. If you miss the jump you fall into a bottomless pit and die. If you fail to kill the enemies in time they will eventually kill you. If you don't escape from the collapsing building quickly enough, you're caught in the explosion (or implosion) and die. At a glance, this seems to be identical to how death is handled in tabletop games.

On closer examination, however, death in video games is different in one key way. Death in video games does not mean the end of that character.

When a player character dies in a video game, the player is presented with a game over screen. Then, he or she is taken back to a previous point, prior to the death, and allowed to keep playing. This earlier point could be the last checkpoint, a previous save file, or even the start of the game; however, in the game's story the death is erased, the character is alive again, and the events continue to unfold from that point on.

No matter how many times you get your player character killed in a video game, when you eventually reach the ending the canon is that the character did not, in fact, die at all. Death is a temporary state, quickly erased in favor of allowing the player to continue the game.

There are exceptions, of course. In games with large casts of playable characters, sometimes the game will allow one or more of those characters to be killed off for good without forcing the player to restart from an earlier point. In other games, a save file (or even the entire game) may be erased if the character dies, resulting in a death that is more or less permanent.

But these exceptions are just that: exceptions. Most video games will waive realism in favor of player entertainment.

Yet in tabletop roleplaying games, death is almost always permanent. Even in settings where resurrection is possible the character still died; he just "got better". More often than not, the death of a player characters means the player is done telling that character's story and must begin anew with a fresh character. If all player characters die, often that means the end of the campaign itself.

Of course, it is far more jarring to introduce "save game" features to a roleplaying game, or to allow characters to respawn. The takeaway from video games, then, is to instead substitute the consequence of death for something less permanent: capture, injury, humiliation or the like.

Why is Death the Default?

In some games, it makes sense for death to be on the table. In a horror game, characters can and should die, in order to add to the sense of despair and inevitability. In a survival game, never having a chance of dying seriously undermines the theme and tone.

Yet death is not always appropriate. In a heroic action-adventure game, the protagonists are supposed to be larger than life; how can you be larger than life without also being larger than death? In a game about characters' stories, death means a sudden and unsatisfying severance of one or more major plot threads.

So why is death almost always assumed to be a possibility?

My argument is that it shouldn't be. Or, more accurately, in certain games it should only be possible at dramatically appropriate times.

In the Lord of the Rings, Boromir doesn't die to a random encounter with a bunch of goblins. No, he dies in a heroic sacrifice to buy his friends time to escape. In The Princess Bride, when Westley and Inigo duel, Westley doesn't end the fight by taking Inigo's life; Iniqo still has more story to tell. In Star Wars, when Luke and Darth Vader finally meet, Vader could have easily ended Luke's life. Instead, Luke only loses a hand and the plot is deepened.

So the next time you're running a game about heroes doing heroic things, and that random kobold rolls well enough to kill one of the player characters, ask yourself: would this character's death at this moment be appropriate to the type of game we're playing and the type of story we're telling? If the answer is no, consider an alternative.

All Things Must End

Does a story have meaning without an ending?

In this hobby of ours, it is all too often the case that a game never reaches its conclusion. Real life gets in the way, or the GM or players lose interest, or a new shiny comes to the group's attention. Other times, the game gets stretched out, whether because the players latch on to every red herring the GM throws their way, or because the GM doesn't want to stop running her game just yet.

Sometimes the game does end, but not in a satisfactory way. Maybe everyone decides to quickly wrap it up so they can start the next game, or maybe the game was only going to last for so many sessions and the player characters didn't move through it quickly enough.

Still other games are designed to never end. A "monster of the week" style game often just keeps going until everyone loses interest, with no real conclusion beyond one game being the last one ever played. Some are episodic for other reasons, such as inconsistent player attendance or rotating GMs.

Today I'll be discussing railroading and...

Just kidding. Obviously, this article is about endings.

What Value is an Ending?

With few exceptions, all stories should work towards an ending. In order for a storyteller to pull this off it is reasonable to expect that he must have, at the least, a rough idea of the ending before he starts the story. This can be as detailed as a fully-choreographed scene, or as vague as "the story ends when the characters find some way to deal with the crime boss".

Knowing how the story ends allows the storyteller to hone his story, to eliminate the chaff that doesn't work towards that conclusion. It produces a more consistent and focused story. The storyteller can pose questions confident in the knowledge that the conclusion will provide satisfactory answers. Further, it allows for foreshadowing: if the author envisions his conclusion as a climactic battle atop the rooftops of the city, he can throw in a scene where a near-fall causes his character to develop a mild fear of heights.

Knowing where you story goes allows you to eliminate dangling threads, or at least curtail them. If you know your story is building towards a courtroom debate, you can rethink whether it's a good idea to introduce a character with a violent grudge towards one or more protagonists; alternately, you could change that "bloodthirsty brawler" into a "cutthroat lawyer" to bring the grudge into line with the planned story.

Even more importantly, knowing where your story ends allows you to end it. This sounds obvious, but it's much harder than it seems. All too often, a story limps along well past the perfect conclusion, overstaying its welcome. Or it ends before the central question of the plot is actually answered.

If your campaign is about the destruction of a powerful, evil artifact, the game should end shortly after it winds up in the volcano. If, however, the story was instead about the cost of that quest and the impact it had on the lives of those who took part, then the story doesn't end until we've seen the aftermath in everyone's life, whether it be a return to their old lives or an inability to do so.

In the first example, trying to carry on past that climactic moment when the ring sinks into the lava will result in a limping, slow series of scenes. However, in the second example where the story is more about the impact the quest had, ending before seeing Frodo's departure is just as unsatisfactory.

Knowing the ultimate goal of your story allows you to recognize the appropriate time to wrap things up for good.

What Happens if I Don't Have an Ending in Mind?

Madness. Cats and dogs living together. Sunrise at midnight. A million voices cry out and are suddenly silenced.

Without knowing your ending in advance, things becomes much harder. The storyteller might throw in a hint about a dark and shadowy figure lurking outside a protagonist's house, without knowing what she wants to do with it. If she remembers, she might discover an opening to further develop that opportunity later on in the story; however, it is just as likely that no such opening will appear, or that she will forget to do anything with it. Each time this happens, someone in the audience will be left wanting at the end, wondering what ever happened with Shadowy Figure anyway.

You run the risk of stretching things out too long, of including a plethora of scenes that have no real place in the story. What starts out as a tight story about a group of friends taking their first steps into the wider world winds up, by book ten, being about a hundred different bit players each reacting to the events that took place in the last three days of the previous book. A battle which takes place on a planet fated to explode in a handful of minutes is still carrying on over a dozen episodes later.

By the end of your story, even if you managed to make it to a decent conclusion, the lack of coherency in leading up to it may leave the audience asking "That's it?"

The exception to all of this is episodic stories. When each episode, novel, or game session is a self-contained story with very little carry-over into the next, it is safe to carry on without an ending in mind.

That's All Well and Good, but How Does This Relate to Gaming?

The problem is exacerbated when it comes to tabletop roleplaying games. Not only does the GM not know how characters in her story will act at any given moment, she can't even guarantee they will latch on to the story at all.

This does not mean that a GM shouldn't give some thought in advance to how her game will end. What it does mean is that she shouldn't plan the ending in great detail. As a GM, you should think of your ending as a question, rather than a specific scene.

In a game where the characters must defeat an ancient evil, the ending would occur when the group has answered the question "how will the heroes stop the deadly king from overthrowing the benevolent lich?" She shouldn't plan an epic battle between the heroes and the king, occuring in the throne room where the king has begun a ritual to seal the kindly lich away in the same prison that once held him; the players might decide they want to try a political approach, or attempt some more subtle sabotage, in which case that ending would not fit. However, knowing that the game ends when the evil king is dealt with, the GM can react to anything the players do and adapt her story to fit it perfectly.

For the tabletop, a vague question is better. You could build the game around "will the heroes discover that the dragon is only tearing up the country because he's searching for his stuffed lamb that he loved as a hatchling?", but that forcess one path upon the players. Instead, you could ask "will the heroes find a way to pacify the poor dragon before he accidentally destroys all the nearby farms?" They may still discover the key lies in the lost little stuffed lamb, and go on an epic quest to find it, but now you've left open other options. Including, if the heroes are sufficiently heartless, killing the poor dragon in cold blood.

Another problem is that, even with an ending in mind, it can be difficult to "trim the fat". Just because the GM knows where things are headed, the players don't necessarily. They may take actions that don't lead anywhere, effectively spinning their wheels in frustration; maybe they even enjoy taking advantage of several unrelated plot threads.

Tabletop roleplaying is a strange medium in this regard. It is perfectly acceptable to let your players do as they wish, regardless of its impact on the eventual conclusion; as long as they are having fun, the game is working as intended. Of course, eventually it is best to find a way to continue the story, whether you do so by nudging the players back onto the path, changing the path to fit where they've decided to go, or even changing the ending entirely and building towards a new, more fitting conclusion.

This Article Must End Too

Have you ever successfully ended a campaign? Did you have the end in sight the whole time, or allow the story to find its own ending over time? If you've done both, which have you found works better? Feel free to leave your answers in the comments.

Declassified: Dilettante

In this article I will discuss my personal design for the Dilettante class, which may be found here. The class is for use in D&D 5th edition.

What Is A Dilettante?

The Bard class is one possible take on the Jack of All Trades, with a wide body of knowledge that draws from all manner of sources. However, it is tied inextricably to the concept of a traveling musician and storyteller, which is a turn off for some people. Additionally, the bard is limited in many ways, preventing it from being a true dabbler.

To that end, I present the Dilettante. It has some limited ability to cast spells, a bit of combat capability, some skullduggery and subterfuge, and a pinch of healing. Based in part on the Monk, in addition to the obvious inspiration from the Bard, the Dilettante also draws class abilities from just about every other class.

Though not as skilled as Rogues, Dilettantes have more options in the skills they take, as well as a few abilities to augment their proficiencies. Though not a full spellcaster, Dilettantes recover their spellcasting ability more quickly than other classes, similar to the Warlock. Though they lack the weapon and armor proficiencies of the martial classes, Dilettantes may learn a variety of maneuvers to aid them in combat.

This class was designed to replace the Bard (and to some extent the Monk), though of course there is nothing preventing your group from using all three in the same game.

So let's get to it.

Hit Points and Proficiencies

Being based primarily on the Bard class, the Dilettante is proficient only in light armor. His weapon options are more limited, but a certain maneuver provides potential proficiency in any weapon the Dilettante may need.

Skill-wise, the Dilettante is identical to the Bard: any three skills. She also gains the Jack of All Trades ability at first level, so that she has some ability with any skill; at 3rd level, she gains the Expertise class feature to further expand her utility with skills. The Dilettante does not gain proficiency in any musical instruments, as the class is not meant to be shoehorned into the role of musician. Also, the Dilettante's hit points match the Bard, at 1d8 per hit die.

The final difference between the Dilettante and the Bard is that the Dilettante has proficiency in Intelligence saving throws, rather than Charisma. The Dilettante learns her abilities through study and applied knowledge, rather than relying heavily on sheer force of personality.

Spellcasting

Now things start to get interesting.

Rather than utilize spell slots, as every other class does, our Dilettante has a new resource to limit his spellcasting ability. Based on a mixture of the Sorcerer's Sorcery Points and the Monk's Way of the Four Elements, the Dilettante has a resource called Inspiration points that may be spent to cast spells, as well as a variety of other effects that we'll discuss later.

The cost to cast a spell is based on the cost of the Sorcerer's Flexible Casting ability. The maximum spell level a Dilettante may cast is based on the medium progression of the Paladin and the Ranger; unlike the 5th edition Bard, our Dilettante is not a full spellcaster. She doesn't begin casting spells until second level.

To represent that the Dilettante learns her craft through eclectic study, she memorizes her spells. As such, she has a limited list of spells known, and may cast any spell she knows without needing to prepare it in advance. She uses Intelligence as her spellcasting trait.

The Dilettante uses the Bard spell list, though obviously she does not have access to any spells of 6th level or higher.

Eclectic Learning

The backbone of the Dilettante class, and primary outlet for expenditure of her inspiration points, is the list of Cunning Maneuvers. In effect, these are a list of features that a Dilettante may learn from other classes, such as the Rogue's Evasion or Sneak Attack, or the Druid's Wild Shape.

The Dilettante must choose which Maneuvers to learn; she does not have access to every Maneuver for which she meets the prerequisite. Most Maneuvers require spending one or more inspiration, though some (such as Cunning Evasion) are free.

Inspiration points are based on the Monk's Ki. She has a pool of Inspiration Points equal to her level, which recovers whenever she finishes a short or long rest.

The number of Maneuvers a Dilettante knows at any given level are based on the Warlock's Invocations. As such, she learns a maximum of 8 Maneuvers by 20th level. However, as it is the core feature of the class, our Dilettante gets to learn a single Maneuver at 1st level, rather than having to wait until 2nd before she may begin her journey.

Of note, the Dilettante may learn a limited form of the Rogue's Sneak Attack (Careful Strikes), the Druid's Wild Shape (Fluid Form), or the Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity (Primordial Ward), among others.

Unique to the Dilettante, Mental Armory supplements her limited weapon proficiencies by allowing her to learn any weapon she draws for a short time; this includes weapons which may be considered exotic for your setting. Walking Library serves a similar role for skills and tools, allowing the Dilettante to learn any craft she may need.

A Bard By Any Other Name...

The remainder of the Dilettante's features are drawn from the Bard class. Neophyte Healer, based on the Bard's Song of Rest, augments any healing spells she may know in order to provide the much-needed Cleric aspect of the "Jack of ALL Trades". Magical Secrets allows the Dilettante to truly dabble in any class she wishes, drawing a small number of her spells known from any spell list.

Finally, Perfect Mind at level 20 is based on the Monk's Perfect Self, ensuring that a Dilettante is always ready to throw down in any situation.

Dilettante Paths

Like many classes, the Dilettante has a choice of three archetypes. Each is based loosely on one of the four "core" classes: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard. Cleric gets left out, as the Path of the Mage allows access to Cleric spells just as easily as Wizard or Sorcerer spells.

The Path of the Mage supplements the Dilettante's spellcasting (go figure) by providing a couple of cantrips, and later increasing the damage she deals with those cantrips. It provides an extra opportunity to plunder another class's spell list at 6th level, and finishes at 15th by greatly expanding the Dilettante's magical versatility with access to a couple of Sorcerer's Metamagic abilities.

The Path of the Thief turns the Dilettante into a master of the shadows, literally. These abilities are drawn from the Monk's Way of Shadow. Though not strictly Rogue features - after all, many of the Dilettante's Maneuvers are drawn from the Rogue class - these abilities augment the Roguish playstyle.

Finally, the Path of the Warrior provides our Dilettante with some extra survivability in the form of medium armor and a bit of self-healing. It allows her to attack more often, and to greater effect in certain circumstances.

The Dilettante: Declassified

So that is the Dilettante class.

Do you like this take on the Jack of All Trades more, or do you feel the Bard did it best? Do you have your own idea for how to handle a "bit of everything" class? Leave it in the comments!

Active vs. Passive Skills

Most tabletop role-playing games use skills to model what a character can do. They can cover anything from your ability to attack accurately with a weapon to your knowledge of obscure political information, from your athletic prowess to your ability to persuade. For the sake of simplicity and elegance, all of these things use the same mechanics. That's fine; I'm a fan of elegant simplicity, after all. Yet it leaves me to wonder just how similar swinging a sword could possibly be to remembering a fact.

Some games, such as Shadowrun, recognize the differences by categorizing skills: some skills in Shadowrun are Active, some are Knowledge. Yet the mechanics for both categories remain the same; the categorization has no real impact on the feel. Most games don't even go this far.

Is it even worth treating different skills differently? The more subsystems and exceptions we build, the harder the rules are to remember and teach, after all. Yet, there are some advantages for this increased complexity.

Are All Skills Created Equal?

In a game where every skill uses the same mechanic, the results can occasionally be jarring.

When swinging a sword, or climbing a brick wall, there may well be a good chance of both failure and success: a skill check makes sense in these circumstances. But when facing down a monstrous creature, does rolling to recognize it make sense? You've either heard about it or you haven't. You can try to justify this as measuring the odds that you've heard of this creature before, or determining whether you remember the knowledge; however, this doesn't match what's happening in the heat of the moment. Remembering something, or recognizing something, isn't an action you choose to take.

In maintaining immersion, I find it helps to match each roll of the dice to some action the character is taking; when the character swings his sword, the player rolls the dice and the two are in sync. If the roll does not correspond to some action taken by the character, then immersion is broken by the sudden introduction of a loading screen. The character stands there doing nothing while the player takes time to do math and wait for the GM to adjudicate her result. It also interrupts the flow of the game: the GM has to pause her narration and wait for the result of a die roll before she can continue setting the stage for the upcoming scene.

Furthermore, treating all skills the same gives rise to the age-old problem that all GMs must eventually handle: should the players roll Perception to notice something hidden? The very act of rolling a skill check gives the players information that they may not have, if the check is failed. Good players won't use that knowledge, staying firmly in the head of their clueless character, but that disconnect still puts distance between player and character.

So how do we fix it so that skills that behave differently in the game world are treated differently by the rules? It's simple: we break skills down into two categories, Active skills and Passive skills.

Active Skills

The rules of most games are already set up to handle Active skills perfectly. When a character performs an action, the player rolls the skill check. Active skills include things like weapon skills (Blades, Archery, Firearms), athletic skills (Climbing, Running, Jumping), technical skills (Repair, Construction), and the like.

Some skills are ordinarily Active, but occasionally function Passively. An example could be Firearms: to fire a gun is an Active skill check, but recognizing the make and model of a pistol would be something a character does Passively. Other skills are normally Passive, but can be used Actively: knowledge skills can be rolled Actively when doing research.

So games already handle Active skills. What about Passive skills?

Passive Skills

You may already have an idea of what I'm going to propose. Since dice rolls should sync with character actions, and Passive skills do not involve action, you shouldn't roll a Passive skill.

D&D has already dabbled with this idea, with Passive Perception. The idea is that any time a Passive skill needs to be checked, you compare the difficulty of success against a passive score (often the result of an average die roll plus the amount of training in the skill); if the number is higher than the difficulty the character knows or notices the thing, otherwise she doesn't.

However, even as Active skills have slight differences in how they're handled (an attack is rolled against a target's defense, for example, while a Climb check is rolled against a fixed difficulty), so too do Passive skills. There are three main categories of Passive skills, each needing to be handled slightly differently.

Knowledge Skills

A knowledge skill is any skill related to remembering or recognizing something. These can be primarily Passive (such as Theology), or can be a restricted use of an Active skill (using Firearms to recognize a gun by the sound it makes when fired). Either way, the way they're adjudicated is simple: compare the passive score of the skill against the difficulty or rarity of the knowledge the character is seeking, with success resulting when the score is higher.

This means that, excepting strange corner cases where a skill's rating decreases, a character will always know the same things today that she knew yesterday. You don't have to remember, for every type of creature or organization or bit of occultism, whether the party has encountered it already; if they knew obscure facts about it the first time, they'll still know the second time and every subsequent time.

Perception Skills

Obviously, Perception falls into this category of skills, but so do things like Insight. Any skill that determines whether you notice something subtle or hidden is a Perception skill.

You could handle these skills the same way you handle knowledges: compare the passive score against a difficulty, with success meaning you notice the detail. However, hidden information can be a major part of certain types of challenges, and just always giving the characters that information can be anticlimactic. Here's my recommendation.

Instead of success meaning the character automatically notices the detail, it instead means some vague inkling that there's something she's missing. If walking down a hallway with a disguised door, a high Passive Perception could mean that she gets the feeling she should search this corridor more carefully. Then, when the party decides to actively search for something, the perception skill becomes Active and is rolled.

If engaged in a conversation with someone who's got something to hide, a high Passive Insight could mean the character senses that the person is avoiding certain topics. It is then up to her to press for more information.

This maintains a sense of mystery in the game, and also has the advantage of cutting down on the players' need to search every nook and cranny, or cross-examine everyone they talk to, for fear of missing something. If their Passive Perceptions don't ping, they know (or think they know) that they don't have to worry about searching.

Resistances

The third and final type of Passive skill is the Resistance skill. These are things like Willpower and Fortitude (often they are a stat instead of a skill). In effect, a Resistance is any skill that acts as a defense.

Rather than comparing the passive score of a Resistance against a fixed difficulty, the Resistance instead acts as the difficulty for an attack made against the character.

You can even handle Active skills as Resistances. For example, if a guard is searching for the character, you might decide that the guard rolls Perception against the character's Passive Stealth. Of course, if the character is actively hiding, the dice come out.

Some defenses are more active than others. It is up to the GM and players to determine whether skills like Dodge fall under the category of Active or Passive. Personally, I feel that it's only Active if a player declares that his character is doing it in advance; if the character is focused on doing something else (say, attacking an enemy), the defense is Passive.

Writing a Conclusion: An Active Skill

By treating Passive skills differently, a game can mold the proper feel for knowledges and perception. A GM can keep a list of each player character's passive scores, speeding up play and improving the flow of the game. Every die roll becomes more exciting, as it actively maps up to some important action taken in the game, never being watered down with things like "knowing something".

What do you think? Are the benefits worth the extra bookkeeping? Maybe you refuse to give up your dice, and will roll for everything you possibly can; maybe you're like me, and have such terrible luck that avoiding rolling whenever possible is a good thing.

Now roll me a Reading check to see if you remember the content you've just read.