De canistro textrinum

[Avoraciopoctules]

I only really remember one game I ran where resurrection magic was restricted. But in that, and most of my games, for that matter, death was more of an opportunity than a problem. Here's a list of some of the things I've done with PCs who died when the players still wanted to do more with them.
- Come back as an undead / ghost (at one point some came back as a MM2 Effigy when all they wanted was revenge on one NPC)
- Drag the body to a mad alchemist, who revives you as a magitek cyborg
- Your magical patron sends you back on a mission. You are now an Outsider.
- Your soul is bound to a magical ring or shapeshifting weapon, but you can still sense and cast spells through it.
- A demonic friend of yours retrieves your soul and binds it to the body of a victim that had been energy-drained into unconsciousness.

I sometimes worry that making half of these up on the spot turns death into a bonus bonanza that encourages PCs to die at strategic points. But I've never clearly articulated my respawn policy, and abuse hasn't become a problem.

[hogarth]

Lago, which do you think would be more exciting:
(1) watching an action movie where you're pretty sure that the good guys will win in the end
(2) watching half of the aforementioned action movie and then flipping a coin -- heads = you watch the rest of the movie, tails = you leave and never find out what happens in the end

Those aren't even comparable activities. The flip of a coin won't change the actual outcome of the ending.

There is no "actual outcome" for you, since you never find out what what happens after that point.

I guess you're not going to answer my question. Fine by me. The point is:
[*]Adding randomness as to when a story ends doesn't necessarily add excitement.
[*]A story can be exciting with no randomness. I'm sure there's an action movie you've watched more than once, for instance.

EDIT: Maybe you're looking for the word "suspense" or "surprise" rather than "excitement".

[Lago PARANOIA]

And yet (part II), from where in my posts did you take material to steer the discussion to hidden social contracts? I think it should be clear that I'm talking exactly about making them pretty much explicit. That the very fact that different social contracts exist right now, deviating from your cute "the game as she's played" (we never play the game as she is played in my group, Lago, except maybe once by edition, to get a feel for the probabilities. Then we start to tinker with it to suit our tastes.) and that people have fun with them, but then get butthurt when suddenly faced with the different ways different groups play should be a warning sign that this part of the game needs a better writing treatment.

WTF are you talking about. I didn't accuse you of advocating violating a social contract with weird house rules. You said the group agreed on your highly non-standard version of D&D, that's good enough for me.

The 'hidden social contract' ire is directed at Stubbazubba/Fuchs. Your position (except for that brief derp about restricting possibilities to make the game more exciting, but that's small potatoes) doesn't make me angry like Fuchs' does. Just extremely skeptical.

Backing up a bit: my problem with your position, the reason why I even jumped into this thread in the first place, is that I feel that your question is woefully slanted and misleading.

Out of rule moments are a fun and expected part of RPGs, but it's very hard to talk about them as you talk about the codified parts. How should RPG books deal with this, to avoid creating more people with the false idea that "MTP = you just lost the game"?

And my position is this: out of rules moment can be fun and expected, but they can also be total gamebreakers. Asking or advocating for guidelines how to integrate emergent MTP best into your game is a totally fair question. But if you ask someone who believes that MTP is a generic benefit for the game and someone who believes it is a double-edged sword, you will get a totally different answer.

I believe that design paradigm is a double-edged sword that can create a lot of conflict if you're not careful. Like many double-edged swords it's better not to pick it up in the first place unless necessary. Why do I believe that? Well, friggin' look at some of my replies to Fuchs/hogarth/Stubbazubba.

[Mistborn]

And my position is this: out of rules moment can be fun and expected, but they can also be total gamebreakers. Asking or advocating for guidelines how to integrate emergent MTP best into your game is a totally fair question. But if you ask someone who believes that MTP is a generic benefit for the game and someone who believes it is a double-edged sword, you will get a totally different answer.

I believe that design paradigm is a double-edged sword that can create a lot of conflict if you're not careful. Like many double-edged swords it's better not to pick it up in the first place unless necessary. Why do I believe that? Well, friggin' look at some of my replies to Fuchs/hogarth/Stubbazubba.

My position is that out of rules moments are only useful as a way to quickly resolve situations where the rules are unclear.

My reasons for this are fairly simple.

1) MCs are by default jackasses. Thus the idea that the majority of power has been handed not to the MC but the rules of which the MC is merely an interpreter of does a lot do stop the MC from getting a swelled head.

2) In my view being saved from death or carried to victory by MC fiat is inherently unsatisfying.

3) If bullying the MC or sucking his cock in order to get a favorable ruling nets tangible rewards then people will do that. Thus TTRPGs should not encourage antisocial behavior by default.

So Lago how do you think MTP adds something to the game?

[Lago PARANOIA]

There is no "actual outcome" for you, since you never find out what what happens after that point.

Okay, but that doesn't change the fact that the story/movie/play/whatever was already made. Not watching the end of Easy Rider doesn't make it so that there was the possibility of Dennis Hopper and Henry Fonda living to be nihilistic dirtbags. You just don't know the actual ending.

When you die, however, you DO know the actual ending. You dead. There's not the possibility of 'and then you make an epic comeback and the story continues' unless the game allows for that. The story is over. And there's no changing the fact that the game at that point in time generated the story of 'you dead'.

I guess you're not going to answer my question. Fine by me. The point is:
[*]Adding randomness as to when a story ends doesn't necessarily add excitement.
[*]A story can be exciting with no randomness. I'm sure there's an action movie you've watched more than once, for instance.

You know, exciting is a term that's too easily equivocated. People
use it to mean 'pleasant surprise' or 'agitation' or 'sudden motivation'. So let's back up a bit.

When large portions of the story become a priori inevitable or impossible, that forces an amount of predictability to the game. Whether or not the predictability is a good thing or at least leads to a good thing, it still comes at a cost. Being told something you don't know is inherently more interesting than being told something that you do know. While getting unexpected bad news is often less satisfying than getting expected good news (though t'aint necessarily so), getting unexpected good news is just all things being equal flat-out more satisfying than getting expected good news.

That is precisely why people band together to do cooperative fiction at all rather than just sitting at home and writing stories by themselves while using the group time to do anything else. Because unexpected twists, threads, and additions to the story that you like are more fun than anticipating and committing to them. Otherwise why would people put up with the possibility (I say necessity) of the story going in ways that they don't quite want it to? If you're writing a story by yourself then by definition the story will go in the direction you wanted it to at the time.

[nockermensch]

WTF are you talking about. I didn't accuse you of advocating violating a social contract with weird house rules. You said the group agreed on your highly non-standard version of D&D, that's good enough for me.

The 'hidden social contract' ire is directed at Stubbazubba/Fuchs. Your position (except for that brief derp about restricting possibilities to make the game more exciting, but that's small potatoes) doesn't make me angry like Fuchs' does. Just extremely skeptical.

Oh, that clears up. Cool.

Backing up a bit: my problem with your position, the reason why I even jumped into this thread in the first place, is that I feel that your question is woefully slanted and misleading.

Out of rule moments are a fun and expected part of RPGs, but it's very hard to talk about them as you talk about the codified parts. How should RPG books deal with this, to avoid creating more people with the false idea that "MTP = you just lost the game"?

And my position is this: out of rules moment can be fun and expected, but they can also be total gamebreakers. Asking or advocating for guidelines how to integrate emergent MTP best into your game is a totally fair question. But if you ask someone who believes that MTP is a generic benefit for the game and someone who believes it is a double-edged sword, you will get a totally different answer.

I believe that design paradigm is a double-edged sword that can create a lot of conflict if you're not careful. Like many double-edged swords it's better not to pick it up in the first place unless necessary. Why do I believe that? Well, friggin' look at some of my replies to Fuchs/hogarth/Stubbazubba.

I'm cool with this, too. My enthusiasm for MTP is quite obviously biased by my own highly positive experiences with it.

With that being said, let me now rephrase it taking your and Frank's points in consideration:

Out of rule moments can be fun and memorable or jarring and frustrating. And yet, any RPG that dares to simulate a living world will need some of them, because the rules can't cover everything. Knowing this, how should RPG books deal with this problematic but essential part of the simulation, to avoid creating the present confusion about the limits between rules/fiat?

Ideally, I think we need a system that supports the different paradigms spoused here without breaking apart. So that you or Frank can say "the expected in our games is X and X" and me or Fuchs can say "it's alright, but we prefer our games around Y and Y".

And then I think the current name-calling between groups that are both having fun in their way will stop, and everybody will then hold hands in a beautiful harmony, to together mock and drive away the jackasses that actually hurt the game, people who enjoy the current muddled waters to milk unfair advantages, play favorites without telling, impose their own standarts as the "one and true", etc.

Optionally, candy can also be distributed at that point.

[nockermensch]

Right, lets review your belated assignment:

1) MCs are by default jackasses. <...>

3) <...>Thus TTRPGs should not encourage antisocial behavior by default

You're sitting down to play with people who you think that are by default jackasses. It's kind of difficult for me to imagine a more antisocial and antagonistic starting point to have a game.

But well, whatever. I asked you to elaborate your own thoughts and you did that. That I wouldn't agree with them, it was a kind of a given, but you passed. Thank you.

For the next assignment, consider the following: From your 1, most DMs are power-crazy lunatics that need to be kept in check by absolute rules. From your 2, DM fudging to save characters is wrong. From 1 and 2, explain now what impedes the jackass DM to create encounters and adventures that will grind down your characters to nothing.

Or, more clearly: If DMs have power fantasies, they only need to refer to the broken CR and monster creation guidelines (lol, Nonassociated Class Levels, lol) to utterly assert their dominance over the PCs. Over and over, and all perfectly valid under the rules. What force in the universe impedes jackass DMs of doing just that?

Good luck!

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm cool with this, too. My enthusiasm for MTP is quite obviously biased by my own highly positive experiences with it.

I'm aware that a lot of existing rules are bad -- and some are so bad that you're better off doing almost anything but following them. Nonetheless, I'm broadly against on-the-fly MTP for things that already have established rules and precedents. Why is that?

• I simply cannot say this enough, but, What people want and what will make them happy rarely coincide. Anyone going 'yeah, I know what I said earlier, but now that we're at the moment of truth I think it would be more fun to suddenly do it this way' should automatically peg the fuck out of your skepticism meters. Not least because just the act of discussing emergent changes or deviations to the rules imposes a finite cost in of itself.
• The Past You making decisions for Now-Present You should be trusted more than Present You making the decision without Past You's input. As long as it wasn't too far back. That's not just a fact of gaming, that's a fact of life. Past You realized that Now-Present You'll need to devote a weekend to studying to get a good grade and that you'll need to endure months of exercise to get a killer bod. But Now-Present You does not want to commit to those things.
  
  The website You Are Not So Smart makes an extremely strong case, (which I agree with) that the secret to success is for Past You to tie the hands of Now-Present You. When we're talking about games this means to uphold the rules. Even when it's personally inconvenient. Past You realizes that a game in which you were never challenged, attack rolls always went the exact way you want (including dramatically appropriate or inconsequential misses that 'hurt' you), you got every piece of treasure you wanted when you wanted it, etc.. would in fact get very boring very quickly. That's why Past You agreed to a rules-set where those things wouldn't be guaranteed. But if you allow Present You to override the guidelines/rules Past You laid out for you, experience has shown that people make locally optimal choices that end up hurting the whole of the game experience.
  
  Past You isn't completely trustworthy, mind. Past You couldn't predict that Now-Present You would be getting an unexpected offer to an STD-less sex party or that you got whalloped in the neck by a softball the second day of your exercise routine. So Now-Present You will need to have the ability to override decisions made in the past if the tides have shifted enough. But if Now-Present You wants to take a course of action that disregards or delays a known negative cost or consequence that Past You anticipated your default response should be to be extremely skeptical of Now-Present You; chances are Past You knows what you should do better than Now-Present You.
  
  The analogies with rules and emergent MTP should be obvious.

Mid-game paradigm shifts and rules changes happen. It's just something you have to live with. And sometimes they can be fun. But considering what can go wrong from both a gameplay, metafictional, and psychological perspective it should be a last resort. Having fun with these kinds of moments should be viewed as black swans, not something that you encourage groups to look for.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Lago, how would you react if a player whose character just died asked to come back from the dead "as a wight or ghost or something"?

Assume that people had agreed on character death as a possibility, but not really discussed resurrection or other ways character death could be reversed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, how would you react if a player whose character just died asked to come back from the dead "as a wight or ghost or something"?

Assume that people had agreed on character death as a possibility, but not really discussed resurrection or other ways character death could be reversed.

I don't know. That's way too generic of a question as-is. Some questions that need to be answered before I could commit to a response:

[*] Is such a possibility a priori allowed by the rules with minimum DM intervention? Getting a 'no' to this question won't automatically make me say no to the request, but there's no question that it would reduce the possibility greatly. At the very least I would confer with the rest of the group.
[*] What are the current expectations of the game setting and would this disrupt them? Is it in-genre for people to come back as PCable ghouls or wights? In Shadowrun or Ravenloft this is not-uncommon occurrence; in Ninter Vale or Lunar Exalted it is not.
[*] If the possibility is allowed by the rules but only by a specific player seizing of the plot -- for example, people only come back as ghouls and wights in a specific part of the campaign setting and the players would have to travel with the corpse there -- how far are the players willing to go to achieve this?
[*] Would the changed character unnecessarily tie the hands of the party more than if the changed character didn't exist? If the ghoul-PC needed a fresh diet of sentient flesh, for example.
[*] Does the player actually plan on roleplaying out the new changes or will the player just plan on downplaying their new undead existence because they really just want to play the same old character but can only do it via ghoulform?

Etc, etc,

If the group had worked out that possibility ahead of time and as a condition of playing said that I had to offer undead resurrection within the terms of the setting (or whatever they/I put forward) and I agreed, I would almost certainly say 'yes'. If this is a last-minute surprise I would almost certainly say 'no'.

[Username17]

Lago, how would you react if a player whose character just died asked to come back from the dead "as a wight or ghost or something"?

Assume that people had agreed on character death as a possibility, but not really discussed resurrection or other ways character death could be reversed.

That is an entirely different question, and one whose answer depends heavily on the game's setting. If you die in a Law & Order game, you don't come back (although you may get to play a relative who looks surprisingly familiar) , if you die in Paranoia you get a clone popping out of the vat.

But if you really don't have a good set of ideas on how to proceed from the past (maybe you're playing in a totally un-fleshed out setting like Nentir Vale), then you'd be 100% in "what does Current You think would make a good story?" Because apparently Past You didn't account for this possibility at all and didn't leave you any instructions.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes. That's of course going to color their views.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Okay, some more specific hypotheticals. This is just a group of people who decided to "play some D&D" without much complicated discussion on the matter. One of them has a book titled "Ghostwalk", which purports to have rules for playable ghost PCs, but nobody else has bothered to read it.

When asked if he is going to do authentic ghost RP, the player starts going "hells yeah, I'll be the spookiest tomb looter around. The mummies will be like, 'I curse you, mortal' and I'll be like, 'boo!' and they'll be all 'ah snap, he already dead'."

[Mistborn]

Or, more clearly: If DMs have power fantasies, they only need to refer to the broken CR and monster creation guidelines (lol, Nonassociated Class Levels, lol) to utterly assert their dominance over the PCs. Over and over, and all perfectly valid under the rules. What force in the universe impedes jackass DMs of doing just that?

Good luck!

Wow I must be a huge jackass since I send monsters with nonassociated class level at my PCs all the time. Since they're not basket weavers they don't die though.

In my experience DMs that are rigid in their rules interpretation are not jackasses since that feeling of being constrained by the rules has the effect of people not being jack asses

Now your homework nocker is to go suck a barrel of cocks and stop being a condescending douchebag.

[Kaelik]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes. That's of course going to color their views.

I think you are full of shit. Lago has consistently established a complete worldview of why people should play in games that follow rules even when those rules result in bad things happening to you that has nothing to do with assholes.

You are just doing that "No one could possibly ever disagree with me and also be a worthwhile human, so I must find Lago's damage that causes him to disagree" thing again.

[Fuchs]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes. That's of course going to color their views.

I think you are full of shit. Lago has consistently established a complete worldview of why people should play in games that follow rules even when those rules result in bad things happening to you that has nothing to do with assholes.

You are just doing that "No one could possibly ever disagree with me and also be a worthwhile human, so I must find Lago's damage that causes him to disagree" thing again.

No, I took this from this quote:

It depends. If when they originally made that agreement they had a good faith in fulfilling it then I would be willing to renegotiate the social contract. If they had pretended to agree to the social contract with the intention of, Darth Vader-style, springing their actually demands at an inconvenient time for better leverage then they can go fuck themselves and I will strongly consider never playing with them again.

Honestly, if I had any reason to expect this behaviour from people I play with, I'd stop playing. I cannot imagine playing with people were I actually would assume this attitude to be possible.

So, yeah, I think Lago has had more than his share of assholes to play with, hence he is always fearing people will backstab him, and advocates to make everyone adhere to a social contract for fear of gettign backstabbed.

Edit: That should be "advocates everyone should adhere to a social contract more rigidly than most people will consider appropriate for a game".

[crasskris]

Out of rule moments can be fun and memorable or jarring and frustrating. And yet, any RPG that dares to simulate a living world will need some of them, because the rules can't cover everything. Knowing this, how should RPG books deal with this problematic but essential part of the simulation, to avoid creating the present confusion about the limits between rules/fiat?

Well, the best advice you can actually give is 'Play a lot of games, and ignore your comfort zone.' TTRPG, CRPG, other tabletop games, other computer games, anything; especially anything that simulates a part of life you haven't seen simulated before.
Stack up on energy drinks and cocaine and go to GamesCon or SPIEL or any of the other big games conventions, and refuse to leave the convention hall for three days straight, testing one game after the other. Buy the guy who habitually buys all the new games at the gaming store a drink, and ask to become a member of his gaming table.
The overall intention would be to amass knowledge about what works as a game in a specific niche and what doesn't.

For the non-fanatic non-millionaires who actually have better things to do with their time, I'd advise spontaneous design calls whenever a non-trivial situation arises that is not covered by the rules.
Ask your players if they are alright with you improvising, and if they aren't, ask them how challenging, tactical and/or rule-heavy a resolution should be. And then design something together that approximates the mean value, preferably re-using existing rules so everyone has a chance to gauge chances and possibilities.
Having a ruleset that measures every skill to the same set of difficulties, e.g. every task extremely hard in the real world being keyed to a +30 difficulty, surely helps with that.

Of course, you need to include the kindergarten spiel about behaving like grown-ups and listening to each other and agreeing to a style of play up front and yadda-yadda-yadda.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Honestly, if I had any reason to expect this behaviour from people I play with, I'd stop playing. I cannot imagine playing with people were I actually would assume this attitude to be possible.

So, yeah, I think Lago has had more than his share of assholes to play with, hence he is always fearing people will backstab him, and advocates to make everyone adhere to a social contract for fear of gettign backstabbed.

This is one of the occasions where I suspend my belief in Grey's Law. I don't believe that most gamers deliberately act the way that they do because they feel that they have less of a chance to get what they want by being upfront and honest ahead of time instead of holding the game hostage at a critical moment. I mean, I do know assholes who do things like agree to help splurge for pizza but then keep 'mysteriously' leaving their wallets at home. After the third or fourth time this happens you're forced to conclude that this is deliberate and require this guy to either put the money up front or exclude him from group pizza purchases. But most of the people who fuck you over on group pizza purchases only do it like once or twice over the course of years. There's no real harm in letting them have some pizza even though you had to cover for them.

Nah mang, I think that most gamers, including yours truly, simply just plain have low willpower. They both overestimate their luck and underestimate their ability to procrastinate. Like people who drive without seatbelts, they honestly didn't adequately foresee the possibility that they would be dying in a roadside ditch to Orc #237. So they freak out when the moment of truth comes and attempt to negotiate a one-time exception despite the fact that when asked if they wanted to play a version of the rules with Perma-death and Plot Filler-death turned off they said 'no'.

More generally, my time in college and the Navy have shown me that people are more trustworthy when the stakes are higher. As paradoxical as it seems, the number of people in a group of acquaintances I would trust to save my life or tell me if my SO was cheating on me is higher than the number of people I would trust not to stiff me on Halo tourney slots or pizza slices. Even in both of subsets were derived from the same base set.

[crasskris]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes. That's of course going to color their views.

I think they play often with ad-hoc or fresh groups, or newbies. Well-acquainted groups are usually beyond that, and usually communicate their habits rather quickly to new members (vocally or by play).

[Mistborn]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes. That's of course going to color their views.

I think you are full of shit. Lago has consistently established a complete worldview of why people should play in games that follow rules even when those rules result in bad things happening to you that has nothing to do with assholes.

You are just doing that "No one could possibly ever disagree with me and also be a worthwhile human, so I must find Lago's damage that causes him to disagree" thing again.

No, I took this from this quote:

It depends. If when they originally made that agreement they had a good faith in fulfilling it then I would be willing to renegotiate the social contract. If they had pretended to agree to the social contract with the intention of, Darth Vader-style, springing their actually demands at an inconvenient time for better leverage then they can go fuck themselves and I will strongly consider never playing with them again.

Honestly, if I had any reason to expect this behaviour from people I play with, I'd stop playing. I cannot imagine playing with people were I actually would assume this attitude to be possible.

So, yeah, I think Lago has had more than his share of assholes to play with, hence he is always fearing people will backstab him, and advocates to make everyone adhere to a social contract for fear of gettign backstabbed.

Wow, are you sure that you're not Benoist. You're really starting to sound like Benoist now he does the same "If people don't enjoy playing in the way I personally like it then it must be because their DM is an asshole" thing.

[hogarth]

I think both Mistborn and Lago - judging from the way Lago expects people to lie and stab him in back in his social contracts - don't play with friends but assholes.

Or possibly just strangers. I know I've been bitten in the ass more times than I care to remember by joining a new group where the GM has various weird (to me), non-obvious assumptions that are part of his game world and/or GMing technique. And it's not because they're all assholes -- they just aren't even aware that other groups don't play that way.

[nockermensch]

<snip extremely entertaining read>

That was good and it's extremely hard to disagree with the majority of you wrote because that shit makes sense. I'll still do that, anyway. If my past self was so smart, why didn't he study to become an orthopedist instead of a developer? Given the amount of Fail videos on youtube, the job market for bone and tooth repairmen is infinite.

More seriously now, there are two problems on your argument. First is this hidden assumption here: "Everybody desires to play the game as closely by the rules as possible but lack the willpower to do actually do that." This is problematic not only because some of those rules have the consistency of jelly, but because it begs the question that everybody thinks like you. I certainly don't desire to play a game with random dying to orc #237, so that fails right there.

More telling, the second problem is a strawman which I extracted and pasted below:

Past You realizes that a game in which you were never challenged, attack rolls always went the exact way you want (including dramatically appropriate or inconsequential misses that 'hurt' you), you got every piece of treasure you wanted when you wanted it, etc.. would in fact get very boring very quickly

I don't remember ever playing this game. Regarding character death (which seems to be a critical point where mostly everybody rules differently) Most of the times there were consequences instead dying that made the adventure more tense or unpleasant for the not-dead PC. Not to ignore all the characters that actually died and remained dead in those games.

[Fuchs]

In any case, it will color your views. I know the stance of "you agreed to this rule, if you try to get it changed you're Darth Vader" would not exactly be a good thing to take in my group - and I gather in many other groups composed of friends, not distrusted strangers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

First is this hidden assumption here: "Everybody desires to play the game as closely by the rules as possible but lack the willpower to do actually do that." This is problematic not only because some of those rules have the consistency of jelly, but because it begs the question that everybody thinks like you. I certainly don't desire to play a game with random dying to orc #237, so that fails right there.

That wasn't a statement about you or even how the playerbase at large feels about player-death, it's just what I thought was an 'obvious in retrospect: thanks, YANSS!' aspect about human psychology.

People can and often do imagine things that they want to have happen in the future yet will require some expenditure of resources and effort to have happen. Things like exercising, studying, doing chores, etc.. It's just easier for your past self to imagine committing yourself to the effort than doing it when the time comes. Yet when it comes time to hit the books or scrub the toilet or do sit-ups people end up putting it off.

Some people are genuinely able to start and commit to an exercise routine or adding 15 extra hours of studying a week or quitting smoking cold turkey. You people make the world go round and God bless you all. For people who aren't fucking mutant freaks however the best path to success -- even moreso than gradual adjustment -- is somehow tying your hands to stop Present You from freaking out and eating that extra snack cake / playing Smash Bros. instead of studying / not letting you trade in a Bag of Tricks for a +4 flaming sword. In a TTRPG, we do this by sticking to rules.

Of course, that's not the only reason why I say that rules should be the first, but not last resort of game design and deliberate MTP moments should be eschewed. But that's the big one.

I don't remember ever playing this game. Regarding character death (which seems to be a critical point where mostly everybody rules differently) Most of the times there were consequences instead dying that made the adventure more tense or unpleasant for the not-dead PC. Not to ignore all the characters that actually died and remained dead in those games.

Look, I'm not here to argue about what an appropriate level of difficulty or fatality rate or treasure rate or whatever the fuck is appropriate for your or any version of D&D. If you want to argue that, that's a totally different thread.

If you think that your game would be better served by sticking to or avoiding player death, so be it. You absolutely must be upfront about this possibility before it happens, because D&D's default assumption is 'people die when they're killed'. And in a game as violent as D&D, there's absolutely no excuse not to have this debate ahead of time.

Once the contract is set, however, while you are allowed to renegotiate it (or at least should be), you need to be aware that there's a very real chance that the group or its arbiter is not going to let you change it. And you will need to be mentally prepared to live with it.

All that said, as far as player death is concerned my default stance towards lightening the frequency or burden is 'very skeptical'. Because of my response to the previous quote. Of course, I feel the same way about treasure payouts, skill checks (even or especially catastrophic ones, like whether your army won the decisive battle or not), and other assorted game decisions.

[Kaelik]

No, I took this from this quote:

It depends. If when they originally made that agreement they had a good faith in fulfilling it then I would be willing to renegotiate the social contract. If they had pretended to agree to the social contract with the intention of, Darth Vader-style, springing their actually demands at an inconvenient time for better leverage then they can go fuck themselves and I will strongly consider never playing with them again.

Honestly, if I had any reason to expect this behaviour from people I play with, I'd stop playing. I cannot imagine playing with people were I actually would assume this attitude to be possible.

So, yeah, I think Lago has had more than his share of assholes to play with, hence he is always fearing people will backstab him, and advocates to make everyone adhere to a social contract for fear of gettign backstabbed.

Edit: That should be "advocates everyone should adhere to a social contract more rigidly than most people will consider appropriate for a game".

No, you took it from your ass. That quote is him answering the question "What would you do if people did the exact opposite of your experience."

There is no possible way you can answer a question that begins with "What would you do if someone did the one thing you most hate in the world, that you would never hang out with someone who did it" without sounding like you think the people you are talking about are assholes.

Because those hypothetical people are assholes. If they were upfront about what they were ahead of time, Lago would not play with them, and would therefore not be in a situation where they did that to him.

You are asking him what he would do if he was hanging out with people he would never willingly associate with.

I have some pretty harsh things to say when someone asks me "what would you do when someone starts exterminating all the Jews in front of you" too.