Dex-chan lover
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Welcome, potential Death Game Organizer.
We at the Menschentöter foundation have noticed a decline in quality in Death Games recently, which leads to unsatisfying death games with cheap tricks lowering the enjoyability of the audience.
They result in predictable outcomes and make every challenge faced in them feel meaningless as a result, disappointing the audience in the process.
Bad Traps:
Games that are about specific things, like maths, can work quite well if the participants are all well-versed in that topic. This, however, does not apply if there are only some of the participants that are, and they have a possibility of dying before it even comes to the part.
Similarly with physical ability requiring games, you always have to make sure that every death game has a possible win state. As one ending because unknown essential participant perishing and thus dooming the entire group would result in a very unsatisfying ending.
Hidden traps should be put into key places only, testing the participant's ability to be cautious, pay attention to their surroundings and make sure that overconfidence remains an insidious killer.
Avoid traps in random places as even the most observant player would eventually get exhausted and killing participants in such a way would be a pretty boring thing to behold, in fact, some of your watchers might even miss it. High and lows are both to be regarded, theatricality and clear causation are key. Capricious and arbitrary cruelty are tools of amateurs or Japanese ghosts with their haunted houses. And you don’t want that. You want entertainment!
In essence, it was a door with a sign over it signalling that only 3 survivors were allowed to be let through.
It was particularly egregious, as the previous trap, a lift that had a weight requirement and a sauna next to it had already done a similar thing, though way better in nature, which allowed the group to have 4 survivors through a creative solution was immediately invalidated through it.
It also mostly was about culling the number of participants with no regard for actual tension or schadenfreude, making it another example of bad death game design.
In theory, a good death game should be completable without any of the participants dying, even competitive ones should have a solution to complete them deathless.
This is not done out of morality or mercy, but for a better watching experience. Just because everyone can survive, in theory, doesn’t mean everyone will.
The possibility of survival will make each death feel way worse and always either the fault of the recently deceased or another participant, whose guilt will either motivate them, creating an interesting arc, or cause a demise with some story behind it, give it passion.
Another good Idea is to exploit their personal struggles. Make traps that lure in certain personality types, the ones that desire money, be it out of greed or to pay for hospital bills will be quite receptive if you seem to offer enticing treasure, but have it be trapped in a way that someone not blinded by such a desire could notice, or a viewer can see coming. This creates that certain time of setup, making the payoff oh so much sweeter.
In case the participant selection was on the random side, it is recommended to make traps to test for flaws that might not be extant among the participants. Even if no one bites, and they recognize your trap as such, don't worry: Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, and it leads to an even higher chance of your other traps biting, which then will have a sense of irony behind it that creates a very satisfying death.
In regard to the 100% survival during competitive games, try to use the prisoner's dilemma in your game design. First, create a situation where the implied solution is to win the game with the enemy side being the one dying. Such a mission statement will likely catch most cases.
However, there are enough intelligent people in the world capable of realizing how to circumvent that solution into a zero-death one is possible, and it is quite desirable for that to happen, as it creates a nice moment for the audience and rewards good thinking.
After a participant realizes that, then you unveil the new solution to all participants: That you can indeed beat it without deaths, but that there are very useful rewards for those that beat the game which will highly increase their chances of surviving in subsequent games.
Now the audience gets to watch a very fun challenge: Do the participants keep their morals or do they succumb to their desire for the reward? Either outcome leads to a great show, especially if they have multiple opportunities to change their mind, particularly if they chose the zero-death path the first time.
From a dramatic viewpoint, this is quite a good thing, as it creates a focal character for the audience to root for or wish for their demise, but they also can turn the death game into a snoozefest if they are too competent and allow for participants where it is questionable how they survived even before being pulled into the death game to get through with no effort on their own.
That type shouldn't be allowed to get away so easily.
While luck based traps - which create situations where they can't do much - are often used to temper the success of such groups, they are rather clearly poor death game design, as mentioned above. Instead, create games where teamwork is required, but also the members are tested individually, with individual consequences, during pressuring situations. While a good leader can still raise the chances of survival, it still requires a baseline of individual nerve strength during such trials.
It is another option to require group splits, the allocation of members being best left up to the organizers, as some groups have multiple competent leader types, which has the possibility of creating the situation above in smaller units.
With that, the Menschentöter foundation hopes you got some pointers for your own death games and are now aware about the potential pitfalls for them.
We at the Menschentöter foundation have noticed a decline in quality in Death Games recently, which leads to unsatisfying death games with cheap tricks lowering the enjoyability of the audience.
Bad Death Games
A bad death game creates unwinnable scenarios or forces deaths to happen.They result in predictable outcomes and make every challenge faced in them feel meaningless as a result, disappointing the audience in the process.
Bad Traps:
- require death
- use cheap gotchas in order to kill their participants (This doesn't mean hidden traps in general, though they can count as such)
- require information that not every participant could reasonably have or achieve
- don't allow for creative solutions
Games that are about specific things, like maths, can work quite well if the participants are all well-versed in that topic. This, however, does not apply if there are only some of the participants that are, and they have a possibility of dying before it even comes to the part.
Similarly with physical ability requiring games, you always have to make sure that every death game has a possible win state. As one ending because unknown essential participant perishing and thus dooming the entire group would result in a very unsatisfying ending.
Hidden traps should be put into key places only, testing the participant's ability to be cautious, pay attention to their surroundings and make sure that overconfidence remains an insidious killer.
Avoid traps in random places as even the most observant player would eventually get exhausted and killing participants in such a way would be a pretty boring thing to behold, in fact, some of your watchers might even miss it. High and lows are both to be regarded, theatricality and clear causation are key. Capricious and arbitrary cruelty are tools of amateurs or Japanese ghosts with their haunted houses. And you don’t want that. You want entertainment!
Examples of Bad Death Games:
A door that only allows a certain amount of survivors to go through at the end of the game
This trap, appearing in Chapter 5 of Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table was pretty boring and cheap in nature.In essence, it was a door with a sign over it signalling that only 3 survivors were allowed to be let through.
It was particularly egregious, as the previous trap, a lift that had a weight requirement and a sauna next to it had already done a similar thing, though way better in nature, which allowed the group to have 4 survivors through a creative solution was immediately invalidated through it.
An object that spins around and randomly chooses the ones that die
This trap, apparently based upon some sort of children's game, appeared in a Death Game inside a Manga whose name was forgotten, but it was essentially a combination of pure luck with no possibility of skill or creativity to overcome it.It also mostly was about culling the number of participants with no regard for actual tension or schadenfreude, making it another example of bad death game design.
Good Death Games
A good death game rewards ingenuity and punishes carelessness.In theory, a good death game should be completable without any of the participants dying, even competitive ones should have a solution to complete them deathless.
This is not done out of morality or mercy, but for a better watching experience. Just because everyone can survive, in theory, doesn’t mean everyone will.
The possibility of survival will make each death feel way worse and always either the fault of the recently deceased or another participant, whose guilt will either motivate them, creating an interesting arc, or cause a demise with some story behind it, give it passion.
Another good Idea is to exploit their personal struggles. Make traps that lure in certain personality types, the ones that desire money, be it out of greed or to pay for hospital bills will be quite receptive if you seem to offer enticing treasure, but have it be trapped in a way that someone not blinded by such a desire could notice, or a viewer can see coming. This creates that certain time of setup, making the payoff oh so much sweeter.
In case the participant selection was on the random side, it is recommended to make traps to test for flaws that might not be extant among the participants. Even if no one bites, and they recognize your trap as such, don't worry: Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, and it leads to an even higher chance of your other traps biting, which then will have a sense of irony behind it that creates a very satisfying death.
In regard to the 100% survival during competitive games, try to use the prisoner's dilemma in your game design. First, create a situation where the implied solution is to win the game with the enemy side being the one dying. Such a mission statement will likely catch most cases.
However, there are enough intelligent people in the world capable of realizing how to circumvent that solution into a zero-death one is possible, and it is quite desirable for that to happen, as it creates a nice moment for the audience and rewards good thinking.
After a participant realizes that, then you unveil the new solution to all participants: That you can indeed beat it without deaths, but that there are very useful rewards for those that beat the game which will highly increase their chances of surviving in subsequent games.
Now the audience gets to watch a very fun challenge: Do the participants keep their morals or do they succumb to their desire for the reward? Either outcome leads to a great show, especially if they have multiple opportunities to change their mind, particularly if they chose the zero-death path the first time.
On dealing with Leaders
Inside groups, there are likely to be participants that will take charge and convince the others to follow them through the game.From a dramatic viewpoint, this is quite a good thing, as it creates a focal character for the audience to root for or wish for their demise, but they also can turn the death game into a snoozefest if they are too competent and allow for participants where it is questionable how they survived even before being pulled into the death game to get through with no effort on their own.
That type shouldn't be allowed to get away so easily.
While luck based traps - which create situations where they can't do much - are often used to temper the success of such groups, they are rather clearly poor death game design, as mentioned above. Instead, create games where teamwork is required, but also the members are tested individually, with individual consequences, during pressuring situations. While a good leader can still raise the chances of survival, it still requires a baseline of individual nerve strength during such trials.
It is another option to require group splits, the allocation of members being best left up to the organizers, as some groups have multiple competent leader types, which has the possibility of creating the situation above in smaller units.
With that, the Menschentöter foundation hopes you got some pointers for your own death games and are now aware about the potential pitfalls for them.
