Defeat, Not Death

Here's a course-correction that I wish had happened a decade ago. It's an idea surrounding the OSR that I wouldn't call a misconception, exactly, but is definitely missing out on the good stuff.

In short, I think there's an over-emphasis on deadly consequences, both in the eyes of the OSR's supporters and its detractors. The two ideas are treated as nearly synonymous, which creates bad expectations. Tons of folks who would enjoy this playstyle are turned off by it because everyone tells them how deadly it is. Meanwhile, other folks who seek it out specifically in search of grisly blood-and-guts might be disappointed.

I want us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture here. There's more to life than not being alive.

Okay, yes, death

To be clear, there absolutely is a much stronger focus on the subject of death within the OSR subculture than in nearly any other. But it's not, like, definitional to the old school. It's just one creative thread that shows up a lot. Dozens of bloggers and designers have spent the last quarter century yapping about the role of character death in RPGs, how to balance it with other design elements, how to make it awesome, etc. They've come up with tons of new pieces of design that build on it or reinvent it, from death and dismemberment to funnels to grit vs flesh to the death roll in a cup.

I'm not here to undermine any of that. Like many of you reading this, I think about death a lot. It is a rich and exciting topic to explore, and it's always been one of my favorite themes within the OSR.

But by simplifying the play philosophy of the old school to "deadlier D&D," we're kind of missing the point. The main theme of the OSR's body of theory, and the true priority of its playstyle, is consequence-based gameplay. Not necessarily deadly consequences. Just, like, consequences in general. Information, Choice, Impact, y'know?

The problem is that death is by far the easiest consequence to play around with, so it tends to overshadow a lot of other possibilities. But because there's now been so much time and energy spent on trying to handle the issue of death in RPGs, that's left a lot of fertile ground relatively untouched. Yet when you try to shift your focus on non-deadly consequences, you might find that the game keeps getting pulled back towards death. That's what happens when you play with swords!

What's wrong with death though?

The impact it has on the players' side of the table is well-known. It can be far too great a punishment for the mistakes you make. In most games, it takes a long time to make a player character. So when you kill one, you're essentially punishing your player with a homework assignment that may take them an hour or more to complete. That's usually pretty disproportionate.

Even more, it's a process that many players find takes some emotional investment, so it can even hurt for your character to die. I've definitely laughed off a lot of hilarious PC deaths in my time, but I'd be lying if I said that it wouldn't be a huge bummer to say goodbye to some of my faves.

And of course, it's (generally) irreversible. A permanent consequence for a mistake that may have been minor, or even random. Obviously, the OSR has devoted a lot to the subject of telegraphing danger, making plans that don't require dice rolls, avoiding risks like combat, etc. But death is undeniably a big deal for us mortals, and while that makes it an excellent motivator, you can't really blame some players for not wanting to play on hard mode all the time.

More than any of that, though, I'm interested in the impact of death on the entire campaign. NPC death isn't something that gets nearly as much attention, but I think is just as important.

This isn't even an OSR thing. This is true of most action games. In D&D 5E, you're always free to designate your damage as nonlethal. But the default is for your attacks to be deadly. Most players only ever opt out of lethal damage if they have a significant reason why they should spare their target. Typically, it'll be the last guy in a group of baddies, who the party then questions for information. All of this makes perfectly reasonable sense, since deadly weapons like swords and arrows are designed specifically for killing.

But it's not necessarily appropriate genre-wise. We consume action adventure fiction all the time where violence manages to be relatively bloodless, yet still tense and thrilling. A lot of superhero media like Batman and Spider-Man, kids' shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and She-Ra, a surprising amount of martial arts media like Jackie Chan movies and Street Fighter. Hell, even a lot of media with deadly violence still doesn't end all combat with a death. The Princess Bride has quite a few fight scenes before anyone gets killed.

It's hard to achieve that ideal of fantasy adventure in your game if the mechanics are working against it. Even a table that's just trying to play a light-hearted game of exploration and swashbuckling will find their stories featuring an awful lot of blood and corpses, despite nobody consciously aiming for that when they sit down to play. The Fellowship of the Ring have their fair share of dead orcs, but the body count in a typical D&D campaign puts that to shame.

The biggest price we pay for this is how rarely we get to enjoy a good recurring villain. Despite being a staple of the genre, D&D campaigns don't feature them as much as you'd think. It's certainly not impossible to pull off, but the GM has to work around a preeeeetty substantial problem: players tend to kill the big bad evil guy immediately upon their first encounter. A lot of the advice out there for making great and memorable villains in D&D is really just tips and tricks for dealing with that one obstacle. "Make their villainy a dramatic reveal! A long-trusted NPC was actually the villain, hiding in plain sight!"

To address all this, here's something I've been using a lot lately:

"Defeat"

Being "defeated" is now a formalized game state, just like how a game might codify being "tired" or being "confused" or being "on fire" with a formal rule. Here's a version of it from a project I'm working on:

Defeated characters are incapable of serious action, barely limping along and unable to succeed tests. Any further harm you suffer either knocks you unconscious or, if the attacker chooses, kills you. Once your [HP is above 0 again], you’re no longer defeated.

What's so special about this? Well as mentioned, even in games that allow nonlethal damage, it's still usually something you have to specifically choose to use. But if it were instead the default, and killing a foe required taking an extra step, I reckon you would see a whole lot less killing.

Look, most people don't really want to kill. Even people who do it as a part of their job! Most soldiers never kill anyone, even the ones who see battle. So I don't think it's totally unreasonable to require an extra step for it, a commitment to taking a life. Merely defeating an opponent is usually sufficient for the players' goals, and often even the bad guys' goals, too. And a bad guy who does choose to kill? That's a lot scarier when you're using a rule like this. It speaks to their villainy through an expression of the mechanics, the primary language of play.

Having a default consequence less serious than death solves so many other problems, too. When all you have is death, there are really only two approaches. Either you go old school and you embrace the weight of death as a consequence, forcing players into a ruthlessly methodical, calculated, and cautious approach to every problem, or you go new school and just... never risk making a fight deadly, since you don't want to discourage your players from pursuing the life of derring-do they came here for.

But we shouldn't have to settle for picking one or the other. We can play consequence-driven games where player failure is very possible, yet without consequences so dire that they keep the players from acting like the swashbuckling rapscallions they aspire to be.

Another unexpected perk is that PvP becomes much less icky. A lot of people are terrified of intra-party conflict, but I've found it to be the stuff of great drama (assuming all players consent and nobody is abusing it to be a bully). Sometimes there's an issue between two characters where a fight seems only appropriate to resolve it. Yet if the default outcome of combat is death, then that's way thornier to deal with. Replacing death with defeat means that one of the players can lose without necessarily getting hurt. Combat can become a matter of pride, which opens up lots of story possibilities.

Another reason I like this is that it broadens the genres that you can emulate within this playstyle. I once wrote about a bunch of genres that I felt were largely incompatible with most OSR principles, and this was one of the biggest reasons for that. I pointed out that Mecha games already have a similar solution: your mech can be killed without your pilot being killed, so you retain the penalty of "combat death" without also having "campaign death." But Superhero games and (some) Kung Fu games would also benefit from a combat fail state that conveys "you have been bested by a superior foe and now you're at their mercy" but without anyone dying.

You know Tricks & Treats? That Halloween project I talk about on here all the time? For a game where the players are all kids and teenagers, even if they're fighting spooky monsters, I surely wouldn't want to see them be gruesomely torn apart. I'm aiming for The Goonies and Killer Klowns from Outer Space and the first season of Stranger Things, y'know? Yet I cannot betray my old school principles, of needing a rule chance for the players to fail and for there to be consequences. Thus:

Get hit enough times and you get taken out. The GM decides if someone can take 1, 2, or 3 hits. Tricksters take 2 hits. Getting taken out isn't just getting killed. It might mean you're crying and running, or you've been stuffed in a sack. A quick breather is usually enough to heal a trickster.

It really is that simple. Just redefine the fail state. You're still out of the fight at 0 HP, no longer able to contribute to your party. But you'll be back in the game in a few minutes, and your failure will have given you a fresh set of problems to now deal with. That's usually punishment enough.

But don't give me the credit. All of this was actually inspired by Octave, by Level2Janitor, which has an excellent "villain's agenda" mechanic in lieu of death. Plot twist! Now go check out their game because it's very good. I owe this whole train of thought to them and their innovation.

What issues does this create?

"Defeated" is a lot more arbitrary than "dead," I'll admit. The nice thing about death as a fail state is that it's pretty concrete. You're either or you're not dead, no room for argument. By contrast, how are you supposed to know when someone has definitively been "defeated?" You risk an argument from a stubborn player who refuses to concede.

This doesn't bother me that much, though. Yes, "defeat" is a bit arbitrary and contrived, but you know what else is arbitrary and contrived? Hit points, as well as most of their popular alternatives. We're already in the business of abstracting life and death in silly, game-y ways. Who cares if "defeat" is kind of nebulous?

Another problem you may be concerned with is how to follow the moment of defeat. Again, death is simple and final, and we're quite used to relying on it at this point. But what do the villains do with you when you're defeated? How do we know the defeat is a meaningful consequence?

In truth, it shouldn't be that difficult to answer this question. Why were you fighting to begin with? Each side presumably had a reason. The villains might...

• Knock you out and cost you some time
• Injure / maim you
• Steal something from you
• Trap you in restraints
• Kidnap / arrest you
• Kill or kidnap an NPC you care about
• Humiliate you
• Exile you
• Interrogate you

Likewise with the PCs. If the party defeats their foes, those NPCs are now at their mercy for a few moments. They might try slipping away, but they aren't going to be able to launch a counter-attack any time soon. And the players may be fine with that!

Lastly, I can absolutely understand if you object to this idea simply on the basis that this is a fantasy version of violence. In reality, the power to perform violence should be seen as a terrible burden, not something resorted to so casually. As those trained with firearms know, there's no such thing as "shooting to wound." Whether you're shooting a gun or swinging a sword, you are accepting the risk that you could kill your target. It's all too easy to inflict more harm than you intended. This harsh reality may be something you insist on holding to, even in games of make-believe.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this is an alternative, not a replacement. I love my grindhouse blood-and-guts OSR gaming. I love running splatterfest funnels where someone dies in the first couple minutes. I love the fear of death and the contemplation of one's own mortality, of the thin line we walk.

But that's not the be-all, end-all. It's a subgenre within the OSR that's great and fun, but sometimes I want something a little more heroic. That shouldn't mean we have to shift to playing a wildly different game. It's only a small tweak away.

EDIT: Ian of Benign Brown Beast has pointed me towards another who had basically the same thoughts as I did, 13 years hence. It's very worth the read.

-Dwiz