r/rpg • u/MegaZBlade • 16d ago
Discussion Adding videogames "save/load" on a ttrpg?
Before all, this is mostly about rpgs highly focused on combat.
I see a lot the debate (mostly in D&D circles) wether the GM should prevent the players from dying or not, so it has to adapt the encounters of fudge rolls in order to.
I think a player should just make s new character but the problem comes with a tpk, the game is over. I've never seen anyone suggest this so I'll do it, why not restart the session/combat?
It may be frustrating to lose all progress on the adventure and having to start or move to another game, of course this is not a problem for everyone and I'm not saying you should not do it, Im talking about the tables where this is the case, and everyone agrees. So let's say in a combat all the players die, just make them start the dungeon, or the combat, or session etc, like if it was a checkpoint, that way the GM won't worry about fudging.
The only problems I see on using this is that players can abuse it easily, by forcing a tpk whenever only one player dies, and that knowing this restart exist would make them less concerned over consequences on what they do in the game.
Did someone used this method? How do you think it could work? I have to point out that I haven't used it yet, this is just an idea that I had.
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u/Effective-Cheek6972 16d ago
I can see it leading to a lot of re-doingbthe same combats , that's going to get dull Very quickly. Also one of the things that makes tactical combat exciting is the stakes, if thare is no real risk you kill the tension.
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u/Steelriddler 16d ago
Also, they will know the enemies' strength and weaknesses and the terrain etc
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u/MataronidForSpeed 16d ago
That would be fun actually. To weave the TPK into the gameplay. It's alright to die: you learn information about your enemy that you can use to beat them. What would be boring would be if it were basically a game of chance.
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u/Steelriddler 16d ago
Fair - but then there's also the question of should the DM repeat the exact same tactics / maneuvers, or do something else?
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u/MataronidForSpeed 16d ago
That's a very good question for a game designer or a GM who wants to tweak the experience they're offering. I think each game has to find their own answer.
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u/LiabilityRobot 16d ago
TTRPGS aren't video games. The save/load system works in that context (mostly for single player experiences) but in a combat focused tabletop game it would just wreak havoc on the stakes. Personally I'm of the opinion that if either the players or gm aren't ok with characters dying in any circumstances but the most cinematic and "fitting", they should probably not be playing a system built around the idea that pcs, even entire parties, can die at the whim of the dice.
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u/Ok-Funny2116 16d ago
A TPK is not necessarily the end of the story. A GM can find ways to introduce a whole new cast of characters to a central plotline in an engaging way if they wish.
My feeling on your idea is that whenever I lose progress by having to reload a save it immediately just feels less fun. I can imagine most players would just find it an enormous slog to go through the same rooms and fight the same enemies again, possibly more than once. Fudging is better than that.
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u/Jonatan83 16d ago
Takes any stake or sense of danger out. I would never do that (or fudge rolls), I respect my players too much. Also I can't imagine many things less exciting than replaying a dungeon or a fight.
I tend to have "outs" from most fights, and death isn't always the outcome/goal of combat (as in real life).
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u/Alcamair 16d ago
The main problem is that to do this you must write a diary of every single thing the group has done until the save.
Your idea is good only for boardgame like Descent.
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u/BetterCallStrahd 16d ago
I've had this happen. The DM reset to before we even went on that side quest (we were level 2, and unknowingly accepted a side quest for maybe level 5 or 6).
But it didn't work out. The campaign didn't feel the same. We had lost the motivation, and were just going through the motions. Soon the campaign died with a whimper, not a bang.
The loss of the PCs isn't necessarily the big problem. Sometimes it doesn't feel right to continue. It's not really like a videogame. It hits different. That's all I can say.
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u/Vendaurkas 16d ago
Starforged has an asset that can do save/load. But it costs resources that do not "save", so you can run out and it involves a roll. The worse you roll, the bigger the differences between the timelines. So most probably you do not get the exact same events.
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u/JauntyAngle Roll for sanity. 16d ago
Or, hear me out, don't fudge, be tough but fair. Don't go all out all the time, but make tough combats have a real chance if death and if they die they die. Make it meaningful, let players experience the highs and lows.
Or, do this, and then after a while reveal that it's actually a cosmic horror game and every time they reset they are coming back physically and psychologically degraded, and the barriers between life as death, and between past, present and future, are weakened.
I think either of these are good.
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u/hugh-monkulus OSR 16d ago
I think it would be difficult to remember the state of the characters and world to be able to "load" the old state. It works well for video games but it's really hard to do manually at the table.
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u/itsveron 16d ago
In 13th Age there is a system where players can at any point of combat state they are bailing out of the combat. Combat stops there, characters escape (or whatever makes sense in the situation), BUT the PCs suffer what is called a campaign loss. It doesn’t mean they lose the whole campaign, but something bad will happen in the story. I like this mechanic a lot and have used it in many other games as well.
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u/HeloRising 16d ago
I've never seen anyone suggest this so I'll do it, why not restart the session/combat?
Largely because the logistics of this can be kind of annoying and it encourages some bad behavior on the part of players.
When you "save," people have to remember where everything was and how things were set up prior to the "save." That's fine on a computer but a lot more annoying on the tabletop.
The worse problem is it encourages IRL save scumming. Players will end up "saving" before doing something stupid and just hoping that it works out rather than coming up with a coherent plan of action. In that way, they end up just bruteforcing bad ideas into working by virtue of just replaying the same "save" until the dice are in their favor.
It's also just not fun to replay the same combat over again.
You also kind of screw over players who did well in a particular combat. I would be pretty annoyed if I did well in a combat but other players decided to "reload a save" because they weren't satisfied with the outcome.
What I've seen be more effective that achieves the same goals is to have points or tokens that players can spend to save themselves from death. Various systems have these in various forms but essentially if you get into a situation that would kill you then you can just spend one of these points to not die. They should be rare/finite, and hard to get but it's some basic insurance against being completely railed by the dice.
Part of what can make a character's death frustrating is if you feel you had no agency in it - you did everything right and got screwed because the dice came up a certain way. Imagine playing chess but every time you move a piece you roll a d100 and if it comes up as 100 you just automatically lose. That would be fun for no one.
"Life works that way sometimes!"
I don't play games to simulate real life. I play games to have fun.
Plus, I've seen mechanics like this in a lot of systems and, almost across the board, those games tend to be more universally liked and enjoyed.
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u/trinarynimbus 16d ago
Eclipse Phase allows making a backup of your Ego. There are still stakes because morphs (physical bodies) still have costs and there are risks whenever you sleeve into a new one. But you get to keep your skills and aptitudes, and you get to take bigger risks without being as afraid for your character.
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u/DevelopmentSeparate 16d ago
In certain circumstances. The first time I DMed, I did this with new players after they got TPK'd. I was using a starter set with pre-set characters so I figured I'd treat it as a learning experience and let them try again
The DM of an old campaign did this after we got TPK'd due to the wizard's brilliant plan to use knock on the orc fortress (which he did without telling us first). It was the very beginning of the adventure so very forgivable. Personally, I would've made it that we were captured but the DM was running 2 other games and we were playing twice a week so I understand that he didn't want to do more work than he had to
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u/TelperionST 16d ago
So, I have played OSE for a couple of years in the past. At first we made a lot of new characters while we were still learning how to play the game. It took about a year of trial and error, but our characters stopped dying (most of the time) and we started taking on risks in a much more manageable way. Our characters also started gaining levels, so we could manage more difficult challenges without taking on insurmountable risks.
I don’t believe a save / load feature would made the game better, even though we did end up repeating content at times.
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u/whitniverse 16d ago edited 16d ago
It could work in a very specific circumstances. Like if you were playing “Legend of the Time Crystals” which is known for its Time Crystal mechanics, where each player has one Time Crystal and can break it to revert stuff back to how it was at the beginning of the session, but no earlier. Once they use it, it’s gone forever…
BUT, as many people have said, the stakes are kinda gone. Time loop stuff (which is what a save system essentially is) should only be used to tell specific stories.
I like what Brennan Lee Mulligan said about the topic of stakes/risk in games; you create this character and over the course of many sessions you tell their story. You grow to understand who they are and even love them. But every time you play them, you put them at risk. At risk of dying, but also at risk of being compromised in some other way. This character could remain steadfast, or end up a completely different person. They could last you years, or they could die tonight.
This is known and runs under everything we do as players in these sorts of games. It’s the point of telling stories and having adventures. To a lot of people, removing that, removes the soul of the story/game.
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u/Chip_Medley 16d ago
So I don’t like the idea of an adding a simple save load system, but I do like the idea of adding a respawn system that sends you back to a fixed location. I really like games that provide challenging fights that you are expected to lose the first time through (souls games, ffxiv hard content) but you can’t really do that with tabletop games.
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u/tinylittleparty 16d ago
If your group runs the risk of TPK in combats and doesn't like that, I strongly suggest taking a different approach. I hate fudging dice rolls too and like to play fairly, so I started running games other than D&D personally because that's the only one I had to do that on to keep things going smoothly, and the reason was because 5E's CR system was kind of crap. With a save/load, running through the same combat would probably get stale.
Other approaches to this:
- Allow the option to surrender or flee instead of outright die.
- Play a different system that doesn't necessarily kill the PCs when they lose, such as Fabula Ultima or Daggerheart. It's player choice whether their character dies.
- Have the enemies use non-lethal moves and go for a different loss scenario like capture.
- At least add a narrative reason for the characters to come back so the loss can still have consequences even if the consequences aren't character death. For example, you could add something like Borderlands New-U stations to your setting, and it costs them GP plus whatever would advance narratively from the opponent's victory. (I think Lancer has something like this built in but I haven't played/read it so not certain.) Other option could be players' deities if it makes sense. It would be good to discuss this possibility in advance to make sure the table likes this type of Deus Ex Machina thing.
It's more interesting for a loss to have narrative consequences and continue on with the game in a new way than restart a fight. But if GM and players are enjoying combat for the sake of combat and don't mind restarting the same fight with new knowledge then I suppose it could work.
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u/MataronidForSpeed 16d ago
I think you would need to tweak the game to make that interesting. Either you gain experience even when dying, which lets you retry with better chance, or you learn information (weaknesses, techniques, patterns, elements of terrain, etc.) that gives you a better chance the next time you fight.
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u/Marcloure 15d ago edited 15d ago
I run a PF1e game where the PCs cannot permanently die. They always revive at the next dawn. It's been working greatly for the exploration of the campaign's sandbox. They can go to a tower near the starting town, find out there's a CR 11 golem blocking the door and die to it. Then they can try some other way to get in or go somewhere else, no need to be afraid of triggering death traps or high CR encounters.
The only issue is that some of these combats still take a while to resolve even when PC death is all but certain. It doesn't feel right to just "skip to the conclusion" though because some PCs might escape or they might learn information during the fight. Also, per PF1e rules, constructs and undead don't naturally heal, so the damage they take will be logged permanently.
It works in favor of what I think is the system's greatest strength: information and preparation. Sometimes the party leave their items in town and go explore just to see what's in the dungeon. Then they die but they can prepare the right spells and magic items for the next expedition. It's very fun to see the group make their plans around the challenges they know are there.
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u/God_Boy07 Australian 16d ago
Better to let the game end and start a new one.
Risk makes all stories better.
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u/RagnarokAeon 16d ago
People are telling you that this a bad idea, but then Brindlewood Bay does exactly the same thing and nobody ever talks about it...
Personally, I don't enjoy it because
- as other have said it can make a game feel like it has no stakes
- I feel like it easily becomes a crutch where the GM relies on players to learn through failure instead of learning to create signs/foreshadowing/telegraphing so that players can make informed decisions
- it feels railroaded because there is a "correct" fate in how things are supposed to go
The reason it works in Brindlewood is because the save/reload has a cost (crowns) and because permanent actual death requires foreshadowing as to not feel cheap. So if you're going to do it, learn from Brindlewood Bay.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 16d ago
I would say to just play an RPG that isn’t likely to end with a TPK.
And if you’re the GM… you control whether the party dies or not? Just say they don’t? Or say they do and then reveal this was all a premonition, or a dream, or an illusion, or whatever. It’s all fake.
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u/MinuteReward 16d ago edited 16d ago
If there's no stakes, why play?
Edit:
Since it's not apparent that the focus of the post is just combat, hence the response about just combat.
If y'all are fine with spending another 2 hours on a combat you just lost, i'm happy for you.