2 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

A lot of factors have to converge to get a critical roll of 141+. When things are tending towards that direction you've got a lot of control as a GM to course correct and provide alternatives to players if you don't feel like a death would be dramatically appropriate right now.

As far as I'm concerned, players should be able to tell a death is coming, and generally be able to take measures to mitigate the risk and avoid it. If a player comes out of a character death frustrated and disappointed, something's gone wrong. A death should feel deliberate, a real high point in the story that has big effects on the other surviving party members (if there are any), and a good end-note to that character's story arc.

I mean, obviously everyone enjoys different things and the whole cruel uncaring universe approach is what some people like, but it seems pretty unfitting to the tone of this universe and the rules of this game.

The Fett family would tell you meaningless deaths happen in the SW universe if they weren't dead. Biggs and captain Antilles too. And all of those Jedi on Geonosis or at the execution of Order 66. Sure, these weren't the stars of the movies, but neither are PCs. PCs are characters in a game and that means they don't have the kind of plot armor that on-screen stars have.

2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

The Fett family would tell you meaningless deaths happen in the SW universe if they weren't dead. Biggs and captain Antilles too. And all of those Jedi on Geonosis or at the execution of Order 66. Sure, these weren't the stars of the movies, but neither are PCs. PCs are characters in a game and that means they don't have the kind of plot armor that on-screen stars have.

I have a feeling most of the people here would disagree.

1 hour ago, korjik said:

I have a feeling most of the people here would disagree.

That matters not a bit to me, and I never bother trying to "agree to disagree" when their agreement means nothing to me.

Then, frankly, you are "doing it wrong". If your players don't feel like they are the Skywalkers/Solos of your adventure, you've really not set it up properly.

1 hour ago, Endersai said:

Then, frankly, you are "doing it wrong".

Respectfully, I believe that this is a matter of personal preference. I've had players complain that they didn't feel that their characters were important enough in the grand scheme of the campaign and I've also had players complain that they felt too important. It's one of the many, many aspects of these kinds of games for which (contrary to common assertions) there is really no 'right' or 'wrong' way. The only time it potentially becomes a problem is if you have heavily-differing expectations among those playing.

I think the PCs should definitely be the stars of the show.

They might not be stars of a movie. Maybe they're the stars of an obscure EU novel that barely impacts on the wider galaxy. Maybe we're looking at a Rogue One situation, where it's clearly spinoff material, but significant spinoff material. Or maybe they genuinely do eclipse the significance of movie characters and spin the plot off in an entirely different direction. Scope can vary massively.

But random dramatically unsatisfying protagonist death would be pretty crappy in all of those contexts. The protagonists can die, certainly, but it adds to the narrative and provides good material for developing the world, story and other characters.

I fondly recall when gamers never appealed to "the narrative" to spare them from untimely deaths. Players had to play smarter then, and the games were better for it.

The Tomb of Horrors mentality seems pretty strongly against the design themes of this game.

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I fondly recall when gamers never appealed to "the narrative" to spare them from untimely deaths. Players had to play smarter then, and the games were better for it.

If there's no risk, what's the reward? I suppose there's room for many styles of play, but I agree that character death is always a possibility even in this system. While I of course consider the narrative, the difference between that and plain old storytelling is the dice adding an element of uncertainty, and thus making it a game. I think there's a fuzzy line in this new trend of narrative storytelling games that will have to be established at each table, even case-by-case.

2 minutes ago, themensch said:

If there's no risk, what's the reward? I suppose there's room for many styles of play, but I agree that character death is always a possibility even in this system. While I of course consider the narrative, the difference between that and plain old storytelling is the dice adding an element of uncertainty, and thus making it a game. I think there's a fuzzy line in this new trend of narrative storytelling games that will have to be established at each table, even case-by-case.

That trend has been there for more than 30 years, no matter what Happydaze may think. The first instance I know of being needing to go to -10 HP to die in AD&D. Most people dont have unlimited time to game, and frequently dont have the time to game and prep for the game. So for most people, having characters slaughtered out of hand means someone, or frequently everyone, gets to waste an entire game session making a new character, then trying to refit the new character into the game, instead of doing what they wanted to do that day, namely play.

In Star Wars, the case is a little different, because truly random deaths are extremely difficult to pull off. Crits arent just because the GM rolled a bunch of 20s on the to hit roll, but are a deliberate choice by the GM. Getting to a 140 roll on the crit chart means bonuses to the crit roll or multiple crits. Both require the GM to make specific choices to make death more likely. The only non-choice crits are when WT is exceeded, but dying that way usually requires the GM to shoot you when you are down, repeatedly. His choice to kill you again.

So this game is very much not like AD&D where 'The orc hits the wizard with his sword. He does 3 damage and the wizard dies' was pretty common. This is a game where 'You shot my character six times when he was on the ground!' is pretty much needed to kill someone. As a result, it is alot more a choice by the GM to kill, not just a random chance, that causes a character death. That is why there is pushback on deaths. Not really narrative, but the mechanics making it the GMs choice.

But to get back to the discussion that started this bit: Most people dont play to be the unknown guy who dies the first time they get into combat. The class is called 'Ace' not 'Died first time out'. Yeah, it is more realistic to have random deaths. Life is like that, but most people here arent playing 'real life'. We are playing 'Fantasy', and want to be heroes and go on adventures, and only want to remember the good and exciting bits, not the cold uncomfortable bits. Randomly dying isnt fun, if that is how every character dies. Getting deliberately killed by the GM is even less fun. Sitting around doing nothing cause the GM didnt plan for 'half the party is dead' isnt fun either.

Yeah, YMMV, but when you've only played once in the last month, and that session was half the normal duration cause of someones family issues, getting shot in the head and killed five minutes into the game session would be more than a little irritating.

2 hours ago, korjik said:

That trend has been there for more than 30 years,

Perhaps, although having been around that long I can say it's really come to the fore in the past say, 10 years. It was a play style back then, whereas it's actually more codified now. No disagreement with the rest of what you said, I just think it's gone from table preference to industry preference. Heck, I play D&D differently now because of this game, it not only changed how I run games, it changed how I play games too.

5 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

The Tomb of Horrors mentality seems pretty strongly against the design themes of this game.

Exclude the middle much?

21 hours ago, Vorzakk said:

Respectfully, I believe that this is a matter of personal preference. I've had players complain that they didn't feel that their characters were important enough in the grand scheme of the campaign and I've also had players complain that they felt too important. It's one of the many, many aspects of these kinds of games for which (contrary to common assertions) there is really no 'right' or 'wrong' way. The only time it potentially becomes a problem is if you have heavily-differing expectations among those playing.

You missed the point.

Note, I said "of your adventure". Not as important as Solos/Skywalkers; just, for your adventure, that's how they should feel. If the adventure is low key, or of galactic importance - that's up the GM. What is constant is how the characters feel central to that story.

Being the most important part of an adventure is not an absolute statement or a prescriptive one.

11 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Exclude the middle much?

"Oh, you thought your character was the hero of this story and destined for greatness? I guess you should have rolled better."

Weird sounding middle.

18 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

"Oh, you thought your character was the hero of this story and destined for greatness? I guess you should have rolled better."

Weird sounding middle.

There is a middle that you aren't seeing. Allowing the PCs to fail is not the same as forcing them to fail. IoW, they shouldn't be forced towards either success or failure. There is a middle in allowing the players' choices and the randomness of the dice to create outcomes that don't fit a carefully constructed "narrative" path.

Narrative campaigns don't have to be "carefully constructed". Virtually nothing in my campaign is clearly planned out, I let the story go in whatever direction the players pull it, which is often completely unexpected, so planning things out would be pretty silly.

You seem to be implying that taking a lenient approach to death and having a rigidly planned campaign are mutually inclusive? I don't really get it.

"Failing forward" is not a new concept in RPGs. It saw its birth the first time a Dungeon Master ever put into practice that old chestnut of crime novel design just to get his/her players out of a rut: whenever you don't know how to move the story forward , have a couple of armed men burst into the room. Conveniently of course, said armed men will either talk or have physical evidence on their person as to where the party needs to go next.

People got tired of seeing the following scenario play out at tables: you roll a test, you fail, you roll again, you fail, you keep rolling until you succeed. Out of this frustration, a couple of ideas came out:

1) We shouldn't be doing mechanical tests for success if the outcomes won't matter (if either success or failure wouldn't be interested, why is the test revolving around this)
2) Failure shouldn't stop continued play ("being stuck at the door you can't unlock").

7 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

"Oh, you thought your character was the hero of this story and destined for greatness? I guess you should have rolled better."

Weird sounding middle.

If this is how everyone decided to play in session zero, then sure! However, I feel like a lot of people want to be the heroes or antiheroes in their stories.

19 minutes ago, themensch said:

If this is how everyone decided to play in session zero, then sure! However, I feel like a lot of people want to be the heroes or antiheroes in their stories.

I would wager that 100% of gamers want to be the heroes - or the interesting protagonists - of their stories.

23 hours ago, korjik said:

Yeah, YMMV, but when you've only played once in the last month, and that session was half the normal duration cause of someones family issues, getting shot in the head and killed five minutes into the game session would be more than a little irritating.

Pretty much this for me. I don't have enough time to play as it is, and I'm not going to invest the energy into inhabiting my character if they're just going to be killed off because of random dice rolls or even mistakes. And as a GM, my players take a few sessions to get into their characters before they really start to like them, I'm going to go through that process more than I have to.

This is probably more a function of regularity of play. If I played weekly I'd be more okay with higher lethality.

2 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

I would wager that 100% of gamers want to be the heroes - or the interesting protagonists - of their stories.

I personally feel that way, but I've been around enough to know that there are some folks that don't want to necessarily be the heroes. Interesting protagonist, sure, but I hesitate to throw the word "hero" around as casually as is the norm these days. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I suppose.

4 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Pretty much this for me. I don't have enough time to play as it is, and I'm not going to invest the energy into inhabiting my character if they're just going to be killed off because of random dice rolls or even mistakes. And as a GM, my players take a few sessions to get into their characters before they really start to like them, I'm going to go through that process more than I have to.

This is probably more a function of regularity of play. If I played weekly I'd be more okay with higher lethality.

Some folks like a challenge despite play regularity. It's why I play in the Dark Sun setting. However, I do agree with the proper seasoning of a character and that investment shouldn't be taken lightly.

8 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

I would wager that 100% of gamers want to be the heroes - or the interesting protagonists - of their stories.

But what do they do to make that happen? It's not solely the GMs responsibility. As a GM, I just have to allow the opportunity for them to be heroes, then it's up to them to take that opportunity, or not, as they choose. When they do take that opportunity, they still risk failure because not everyone that tries to be awesome will succeed.

2 minutes ago, themensch said:

I personally feel that way, but I've been around enough to know that there are some folks that don't want to necessarily be the heroes. Interesting protagonist, sure, but I hesitate to throw the word "hero" around as casually as is the norm these days. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I suppose.

"Interesting protagonist" also covers antiheroes and villains. Not to be overly reductionist but a gamer wants to share in the concept of character struggle and accomplishment. In a non-competitive environment, winning all the time becomes as boring as constant failure. A narrative system allows GMs to more easily balance both in order to keep players invested.

There's a certain Gygaxian train of thought that supposes that RPGs are meant to be puzzles where players can lose/die and that's the end of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with this idea. However, there are other forms of tabletop gaming, such as board games, that accomplish the same goal while minimizing frustration by requiring less time investment and rules mastery. Video games are also a thing though a lot of AAA console games, like Grand Theft Auto, have invested so much money into production that they go out of their way to allow players to explore the entire world and see their way through the entire game, even if they die. Personally speaking, I would prefer to see more AAA games that have an actual Hard Mode and inflict genuine setbacks to play. Again, that's just me.

10 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

"Interesting protagonist" also covers antiheroes and villains. Not to be overly reductionist but a gamer wants to share in the concept of character struggle and accomplishment. In a non-competitive environment, winning all the time becomes as boring as constant failure. A narrative system allows GMs to more easily balance both in order to keep players invested.

There's a certain Gygaxian train of thought that supposes that RPGs are meant to be puzzles where players can lose/die and that's the end of it. There's nothing inherently wrong with this idea. However, there are other forms of tabletop gaming, such as board games, that accomplish the same goal while minimizing frustration by requiring less time investment and rules mastery. Video games are also a thing though a lot of AAA console games, like Grand Theft Auto, have invested so much money into production that they go out of their way to allow players to explore the entire world and see their way through the entire game, even if they die. Personally speaking, I would prefer to see more AAA games that have an actual Hard Mode and inflict genuine setbacks to play. Again, that's just me.

Preaching to the choir here my good fellow human, but I would have to point out that it just doesn't apply to everyone. That's where I'm picking nits. It's impossible to classify player motivations despite the wealth of resources on the topic.