AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Party Death While Hunting: Metagaming or Not?

So! Recently I've been hunting and grinding more often (shocker-- and oooh does that sound dirty) and I've come across a scenario that I've been told different things by different people (DMs included)! I thought I'd pose a question here to get some clarity. The situation is this: You're out hunting with a few people, a party of 3-6 or so, and you get to the boss in the dungeon or stumble into somewhere harder than you expected, and you all die. All 3-6 of you. It is important to the scenario that you understand noone survives. This begets a typical conversation in party where the debate is "who should respawn?" Someone respawns and raises the rest, or multiple people do, or the whole party respawns because noone wants to go all the way back through.

This has happened to me three times now and I've gotten varying responses.

1. DM Kobra told me that when everyone in a party dies, everyone in a party must respawn. Otherwise it's considered Metagaming. (I did not know this, by the way! So I assume others do not.)

2. I was instructed by other players that had done this with other DMs that it was perfectly fine rule-wise. We had a lengthy discussion about how it could very well be IC that someone who dies distinctly before the others goes back to see if the others are okay/runs into their dead bodies/etc. (Their argument seems somewhat sound to me, as I know that we do not have a definitive ruling on what has to IC happen in your character's mind when they die. Only an IC rule that they cannot engage in the same PVP or DM event right after respawning.)

3. Everyone just respawned because noone really cared.

Now, obviously I listened to Kobra when he pointed out that it was Metagaming-- and I do not want it construed that I disagree or am upset! I do not really care and am not upset. I am simply curious because if that IS a rule, and if Kobra and others are enforcing it, I am not sure the playerbase is very aware of it. Seeing as it is a situation that is so prevalent. Seeing as how I never go hunting and I've already run across the scenario three times.

Anyways. I have read through the Metagaming terminology and it seems that this could very well be a case of it, but the wording isn't very clear. At least I couldn't find it definitively stated about hunting in parties and respawning! If someone could point it out, it'd help.

Or perhaps we can now have a discussion and people can feel enlightened and heard. I don't know. Go forth, Amians, and declare your positions.

Huh? I usually go with #2. Leveling is a painful enough process as it is, especially with my hours. As annoying as Respawning is with regards to verisimilitude, I am still attempting to play the game to not become overly frustrated with its 10-year-old mechanics. Point #2 makes no less sense to me than Respawning at all.

Not against the rules, no. If it was, it would say so in the rules. It is pretty much standard practice, and has been for as long as I can remember, that one person respawns and raises the others. If it is particularly dangerous or troublesome, everyone might respawn.

I would always go with what's the most convenient solution. Sometimes it's more convenient to just take the hit and grind back up, other times it's better to wait a while or make the effort to raise your party.

I do consider it very bad form to log out or drop from the party after someone went through the trouble of raising you, though. If they take the hit and invest in you, you better repay it by helping them grind. (Unless they don't want to, of course.)

If #1 is a thing, that is new.

The Grim in me is inclined to say if you fall while grinding retire your character :p

Joke aside I have no idea of #1. I do recall rezzing people in the start room (party wipes and all switch server and get rezzed) is far less seen now than what I saw 2 years ago but it is still a frowned upon approach.

Common sense and comraderie should be applied imo.

Yossarin wrote:

If #1 is a thing, that is new.

I am not against it becoming one, but, like Yoss, I don't think that is a thing.

There is no current ruling which states that option two is not valid. What would be metagaming and against the rules would be for someone who was not present in the dungeon to know about the death, "stumbling" upon the group after they die in order to raise them, for example. But the scene you portrayed in the original post is perfectly fine under present rules.

Silkelock wrote:

I do recall rezzing people in the start room (party wipes and all switch server and get rezzed)

That is impossible. If you die on one server and after reset or logging, hop to the other, you cannot be raised as it gives you a message saying "Person has died on other server and cannot be raised" or something to that affect. Though, that is only with scrolls .. I never tried again after getting that message so don't know if it can be done with spell raise or resurrection.

MOD

Perfect! Thanks, peepz.

It's funny because it's so confusing

So everyone dies and one "respawn" to ressurect the rest. Out of curiosity, how do you justify that? What is "respawn"? And how do you pick the one who will save others? Will you pick the most poor one so the gold loss is not that harsh? Will you pick level 30 one so there is no XP lose?

I always thought that respawn is more or less an OOC mechanism to avoid "death" - because face is, when you die, you're dead unless someone either saves you (dead = uncouncious in this case), or a divine intervention happens or whatever. When all die, there is no one to save you, right?

If I did not read the replies I would say that Kobra's explanation is the most valid, both IC and OOC wise.

i don't really consider dying while out hunting to even be 'death' more like getting knocked out in pokemon or something.

IronAngel wrote:

I do consider it very bad form to log out or drop from the party after someone went through the trouble of raising you, though. If they take the hit and invest in you, you better repay it by helping them grind. (Unless they don't want to, of course.)

Why? If you're in a group that utterly wipes, obviously something is wrong. Sometimes leadership is bad, builds are weak, the group suffers from that one lone gung-ho idiot who's tactic is to charge -everything- mindlessly. Something has to be off a whole lot to the point there are no survivors. There is no shame in recognizing a terrible group and withdrawing rather than suffering more and more avoidable mishap all session long just because you got raised. Sure, give a leader the benefit of the doubt if it is the first time attempting a particular encounter, but there's no reason to dumbly stick by the side of a group that isn't working like a battered wife with Stockholm syndrome when you could be doing anything else.

Leadership is a skill like any other and many groups in that form are just random pick-up groups that have no leadership and most fall apart the moment it's obvious characters involved cannot simply zerg-rush encounters and win. That said, if a group forms and someone steps forward to lead, that leader should feel responsible if things go bad to the point someone dies to the point they make it right. If you're a member of a group and follow the leader's strategy, die, and they leave you to respawn without making an effort for your behalf afterward, that is probably a good sign of someone who shouldn't be leading you.

I enjoy leading groups and do so almost every session I play. A good leader won't suffer defection if someone dies simply because followers can recognize a good leader. If someone can recognize mistakes and acknowledges them, properly deals with problems, learns from failures, makes strong and fair policy to handle common situations before they arise, they have the makings of a good leader.

On occasion a follower will die, even under a great leader. Simply because you got rezzed doesn't mean your leader is good. Watch what they do afterward ţo decide. Do they realize what went wrong and address it or mindlessly retry it again? Do they make a better plan? Can they recognize that retrying is pointless if the encouter is simply too overpowering for the group? Do they play good diplomat if there is infighting or just remain silent? When you mess up and make a mistake, do they privately and respectfully (in tells) give you proper instruction and encouragement so you can learn and better your play or do they call you out publically in front of the others, belittling you and making you feel less inclined to try harder? A great leader can have a party-wipe, particularly if they've never helmed an encounter new to them or have a lone rogue player that does something disastrously foolish, so give anybody a chance. However, needlessly sticking with them mindlessly through mishap after mishap gives them a convenient body that's little more than an NPC henchman and will cost you wasted time and energy.

I always prefer the entire party respawn simply because waiting for the spawn to despawn wastes up to 10 minutes and is boring.

^ I've come to learn that even if everyone respawns you can probably make up the XP loss in about 10 min or so anyways.

Honestly the biggest reason I have to not respawn is gold. All my characters have an issue with that (except my wizards, but none of them have tons of it either).

Yeah I think number 1 is just that DMs view, and not a rule at all as I have never seen it posted or even mentioned by anyone till this point.

Technically, after you've played more than one PC, almost everything you do is metagamming just by the nature of the player having that particular knowledge.

Be that as it may, one DM ruling on a particular and likely specific event does not a server rule make. Especially where the IC and OOc are so intertwined in the whole respawning mechanic. That is not to say that any reasonable action is right or wrong but a DM has the power to make arbitrary rulings based on knowledge, desire, and experience as specific circumstances require.

A players responsibility on a server like Amia is to find a happy medium of RP and OOC to have fun and deal with a sometimes messy mechanic that is the NWNEngine. Hunting in general is considered an OOC adventuring device and kudos to those who manage to fill that space with wall to wall RP. However, how exactly does one justify maintaining strict IC actions after spending the last two hours liquidating the caverns of any illithid in sight and suffering a party wipe? RP wise, just how fast do illithids breed, that one can run through their small kingdom endlessly and kill their Domingus repeatedly in the space of a few real and game hours? Anyone? No matter how you slice it, it still comes down to how comfortable a particular player is with the level of OOC included in their play time.

This thread is yet another proof that death system here on Amia is nothing but "meh".

I would be completely okay with a game mechanic that automatically perma kills your charcter after X amount of deaths (pvp and pve included). But that's just me

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

This thread is yet another proof that death system here on Amia is nothing but "meh".

Not a constructive post. If you have a problem with something you should come up with what you think is a good solution. Just posting you dislike something serves no purpose and only creates a negative atmosphere.

Quote:

I would be completely okay with a game mechanic that automatically perma kills your charcter after X amount of deaths (pvp and pve included). But that's just me

I'd personally rather not see a toon with a rp focussed build (pure wizard) perma'd because someone who has a better pvp build dislikes him or because I lagged once too often in a big DM event. But that's just me.

Hudson wrote:

Not a constructive post. If you have a problem with something you should come up with what you think is a good solution. Just posting you dislike something serves no purpose and only creates a negative atmosphere.

Ideas how to improve death system were given, tons of them. Repeating them would hardly make any sense.

And quite frankly, every time I see a post where "death" is taken with a shrug of a shoulder, like if nothing happens, a tiny little part of me pulls me away from here. Thus the ventilation of my opinion.

That thing where I treat RP as Let's Pretend does make it pretty easy for me to shrug those shoulders.

Don't get me wrong -Let's Pretend is rightly a children's favourite cos it's awesomesauce, but just like I wouldn't play Musical Chairs if the rules were that I'd be standing for the rest of my life after being last to the seat too many times....

Hudson wrote:

I'd personally rather not see a toon with a rp focussed build (pure wizard) perma'd because someone who has a better pvp build dislikes him or because I lagged once too often in a big DM event. But that's just me.

You can always get out of a pvp situation and dying due to lag is just tough luck. But if you have, say 20 lives, that wouldn't really be much of a problem.

It would make death meaningful and it would open up a lot of new roleplay possibilities. You could genuinely intimidate someone to back off from a pvp for instance. As it is now, not many people will back out of pvp even if they're outnumbered 5 to 1. Everyone is a badass because there are no consequences. Also, if your character is disliked, it means he made enemies and it would be fun if that actually meant something. If you crossed a powerful group of people you should expect consequences. Assassin characters could benefit from this as people would maybe start employing them rather than risk their own life.

Factions could also benefit from it because as people die, positions in the factions would become open to new people. This might cause a faction to change policies for better or for worse. People could write history books on what was the faction like under the rule of this or that leader etc. I see a lot more good coming out of it than bad but this is starting to get off topic so I'll stop here.

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

Hudson wrote:

Not a constructive post. If you have a problem with something you should come up with what you think is a good solution. Just posting you dislike something serves no purpose and only creates a negative atmosphere.

Ideas how to improve death system were given, tons of them. Repeating them would hardly make any sense.

And quite frankly, every time I see a post where "death" is taken with a shrug of a shoulder, like if nothing happens, a tiny little part of me pulls me away from here. Thus the ventilation of my opinion.

Here, I made a thread for you: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=75897

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

Out of curiosity, how do you justify that? What is "respawn"?

The way I play respawns generally, is that some adventurer came across your unconcious/dead body and brought it to some temple for tending. Also explains the gold loss, being what ever the nameless adventurer who rescued you took of you, and the fee from the temple for your treatment.

Pony wrote:

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

Out of curiosity, how do you justify that? What is "respawn"?

The way I play respawns generally, is that some adventurer came across your unconcious/dead body and brought it to some temple for tending. Also explains the gold loss, being what ever the nameless adventurer who rescued you took of you, and the fee from the temple for your treatment.

Perfectly fine. And so it should be done when a whole group die - they are saved by a random force and they all pay the price.

Not that one of them "respawn" to the place they have died / been beaten unconcious and ress them one by one. That just makes no RP sense whatsoever.

As for the OP's question: I think its only metagaming rulewise if you log on a differant toon and run to the dead party to ress them.

Polris wrote:

I would be completely okay with a game mechanic that automatically perma kills your charcter after X amount of deaths (pvp and pve included). But that's just me

Knowing that I only have to PvP someone who is annoying 'X' amount of times to be rid of them, what exactly would be the incentive not to do so?

I've always done a full part respawn but because of my love of corner sneaks, if shit hits the fan, they run and hide and sneak back to raise the others' or cast darkness when someone dies and use the opportunity to regroup and such. Depending on situation of course.

Also I thought the death thing on amia came down to *You remember up until your death and after respawning, nothing in between, I.E. the fugue* so if you did fall in battle and woke up in Cordor/Bendir/L'obsul or wherever you may be, the last thing you'd remember would be that felling blow and could justify going back to the scene of your demise.

That's what I was told was ruled on it when I was asking around.

Bravo21 wrote:

Knowing that I only have to PvP someone who is annoying 'X' amount of times to be rid of them, what exactly would be the incentive not to do so?

Bravo: "Hey imebecile freak, you're about to die!"
Polris: "Sorry sir, I don't want any trouble. I'll be on my way. I'm sorry if I've offended you." *walks away*

That's what's stopping you.

Polris wrote:

Bravo21 wrote:

Knowing that I only have to PvP someone who is annoying 'X' amount of times to be rid of them, what exactly would be the incentive not to do so?

Bravo: "Hey imebecile freak, you're about to die!"
Polris: "Sorry sir, I don't want any trouble. I'll be on my way. I'm sorry if I've offended you." *walks away*

That's what's stopping you.

Perfect response.

My tongue in cheek analogy aside, I've had toons never die due to careful planning and RP cowardice, and at the same time had toons PK'd for the hell of it by some random passerby. It's simply not fair to any player to have a clock ticking on their creation that is so arbitrary. If this was a PvP server, sure knock yourself out and have a permadeath threshold, but Amia is still an RP server is it not? Leave permadeath to a particular players epic story and the DM team.

Wait, what's this death you speak of? My characters are merely knocked out!

MazeOfThorns wrote:

Wait, what's this death you speak of? My characters are merely knocked out!

Oh, good. Remind me of that if I ever find you "knocked down". Instead of using "raise dead" or "ressurection" I just splatter cold water on your face and give you a friendly "wake up" cheek slap.

I tend to RP Raise Dead scrolls as powerful first aid spells. They may restart the heart or snap you out of a beginning coma, but they're used before the soul has departed for the Fugue. That's what I imply when I use them, anyhow.

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

MazeOfThorns wrote:

Wait, what's this death you speak of? My characters are merely knocked out!

Oh, good. Remind me of that if I ever find you "knocked down". Instead of using "raise dead" or "ressurection" I just splatter cold water on your face and give you a friendly "wake up" cheek slap.

I reject your "reality" and substitute my own.

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

MazeOfThorns wrote:

Wait, what's this death you speak of? My characters are merely knocked out!

Oh, good. Remind me of that if I ever find you "knocked down". Instead of using "raise dead" or "ressurection" I just splatter cold water on your face and give you a friendly "wake up" cheek slap.

*//friend in party uses raise dead scroll// sputters awake with a groan and mutterings about how a real friend would have at least have a decent ale ready for consumption.*

"Damn did I slip and fall /again/?" *rises slowly, head spinning //barters raise dead scroll back to individual who used it as if it were never needed in the first place//*

"What are we standin around for? Only way ta rid me of this headache is to give it to one of these damn monsters. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGG!"

Well... if what you say is really how people are rping "death", then I guess we have to make some adjustments. Like... Finger of Death will be Finger of Unconsciousness (or Blackout Finger, my favourite), Power Word : Kill is therefore known as Power Word : Coma, Destruction will be... I don't really know what. Oh, and Slay Living turn into Sleep Living. And so on...

But nevermind. You are free to RP whatever you want despite the obvious nonsensicality.

MazeOfThorns wrote:

The_Last_Helmite wrote:

MazeOfThorns wrote:

Wait, what's this death you speak of? My characters are merely knocked out!

Oh, good. Remind me of that if I ever find you "knocked down". Instead of using "raise dead" or "ressurection" I just splatter cold water on your face and give you a friendly "wake up" cheek slap.

*//friend in party uses raise dead scroll// sputters awake with a groan and mutterings about how a real friend would have at least have a decent ale ready for consumption.*

"Damn did I slip and fall /again/?" *rises slowly, head spinning //barters raise dead scroll back to individual who used it as if it were never needed in the first place//*

"What are we standin around for? Only way ta rid me of this headache is to give it to one of these damn monsters. ARRRRRRRRGGGGGG!"

His point is that if you die in battle you are dead unless it's PvP and the winner says otherwise or a DM says otherwise.

That's the official DM stance last I heard.

Naivatkal wrote:

His point is that if you die in battle you are dead unless it's PvP and the winner says otherwise or a DM says otherwise.

If that is what he is trying to say then I misunderstood and am perfectly fine with it.

XD I meant that was your point, hehe

That's not the official DM stance. I can think of one DM whose personal stance that was. There is no official DM stance that would have been run by the playerbase and officially declared, and some DMs have stated quite strongly that they rarely RP PvM death as death. Because that's what really cheapens death. It depends on how you die, of course. And it's not like you just get knocked out; you might get ripped to shreds. But the idea that every PC has the ability to entreat two gods (their patron and the victim's) and get their approval with a piece of parchment, on a regular basis, is ludicruous. It's not hard to see which is the lesser evil.

Party Death While Hunting: Metagaming or Not?

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