Quote from: Black Vulmea;699837Still butthurt about that banana peel, I see.

You were the one to throw a claim that your opponents are acting like children, while acting like a child yourself. I just call it as I see it.

Quote from: Omega;699828Sorry there sport. You are 100% wrong.

Really?

Quote from: Omega;698875I dont fudge combat rolls unless it serves a purpose.

Good example is if the villain has used some sort of trick to appear more wounded than they really are, Or in one actual play session case, was actually faking taking damaging hits via magic armour. I rolled out in the open. But what the players saw and what was really happening were not the same thing. At key points through the battle they had to make wisdom and intelligence checks. But did not know the reason.

And to answer the recurring question of "Why roll if you arent going to accept the roll" the answer is simple. "So the players dont know."
They do not need to know that the orc would have actually missed the fighter in that battle if it had been left to the dice. They do not need to know that the temple healer rolled straight 1s when they needed healing for a big fight upcomming.

Sometimes I just say, "That entry didnt work, Im rerolling it" and reroll. Or "This doesnt feel right. What do you guys and gals think?"

And sometimes I just take what happened and run like crazy with it.

Are you still sure I'm 100% wrong?

Quote from: Emperor Norton;699839You were the one to throw a claim that your opponents are acting like children, while acting like a child yourself.

Well, I know of one person who's acting like a child in this thread.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;699839I just call it as I see it.

Then perhaps you should open your eyes more often.

What sort of weird settings are these where everything goes aggro at the players upon sight, including the towns, farm fields, livestock, etc.? Most settings have civilization, and though civil areas carry their own risks, it can only be as lethal as can be sustainable within a productive population. Even resource gathering (forestry, grazing, mining, etc.) has to be rather stable to maintain functional societies in settings. Otherwise ideas of food, money, weaponry, treasure and such goes right out the window.

There is a wide spectrum of risk within an old skool game. There has to be wide swaths of relative safety to give any contextual meaning to the setting if it has any societies, and their trappings, at all.

And this is from a GM who has already killed PCs with an exaltation of larks (angels are a lot more frightening than given credit ).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;699840Really?


Are you still sure I'm 100% wrong?

Hey. Good. You took my comment for a totally different subject and inserted something else from me. We can now totally see how possibly considering having a save zone at start - and tweaking rolls are the same thing. Way to go proving your point there sport.


You are now at 200% wrong. Keep going. Or better yet.

Try having a meaningful argument next time instead of spin doctoring worse than a four year old. You have other posts here that show you can put fourth cognitive discussions. What possesses you to keep making yourself look the village idiot?

Good song for this thread -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7FQeFOBtBk

"I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive"

Quote from: Opaopajr;699847What sort of weird settings are these where everything goes aggro at the players upon sight, including the towns, farm fields, livestock, etc.? Most settings have civilization, and though civil areas carry their own risks, it can only be as lethal as can be sustainable within a productive population.

I think sometimes its the players that are the problem rather than the setting.

Even way back there were players who saw everything as EXP on legs. Hence the tales of slaughtering whole villages and murdering children for a measly exp point or two.

Sometimes they get away with it. Which then becomes the DMs fault for letting this go on unchecked.

More often it can lead to a-lot of dead characters.

Some players see only combat. Diplomacy and interaction are deadly boring.

I had one player like that in a session. The minute negotiations with NPCs opened up. That one player would head off and pick a fight with someone. Twice he actually interrupted negotiations and deliberately antagonized the NPC. This was not fun for the other players and talking with the problem player did not work. I even specifically had good combat oriented encounters to accommodate this person. But it had to be kill-kill-kill every moment. Soooooo. Eventually he tried to off a kid who turned out to be a halfling fighter of slightly lower level who proceeded to take the character apart. Then the local temple refused to raise him because of his reputation.
I set him up for that encounter, gave him other targets that were actually viable. And he went after the kid. That was it. Better yet. The player was dead sure I was fudging rolls left and right. I was not. And for that encounter I rolled it all out in the open and just trounced him with tactics and planning. "Roll new character." (This was another case of I couldnt just kick the player out without impacting other players ability to attend.)

But I think in most of the instances mentioned of high mortality sessions. Its from adventuring. When you have say 3HP at start then even a dagger or club can be lethal in the hands of a 1hp kobold.

Think of it like some Roguelikes where you tend to die a-lot untill you get "that one character" who somehow lives past level 1. In fact Rogue-likes are based on D&Ds lethality pattern.

As others have stated. Some are fine with it. Some aren't. Different gaming styles.

To go back to the OP, I think my ultimate conclusion on musing over the thread's title question, is that this is purely a matter of player expectation vs GM expectation, which is an overall problem in all aspects of roleplaying not just mortality, and is easily solved by communication. As a GM I do a "pitch" of the sort of game I want to run to all players. I layout the general mood I'm trying to capture, genre I'm playing with, setting of the game, and system Im using. Included in that I'd discuss if I was planning on making the game exceptionally gritty or deadly. My players know that my Call of Cthulhu games are more than likely to end up in player death if not tpk, whereas my Tribe 8 game hasn't had a player fatality in 2 years.

The pitch also helps with chargen. I'll usually to point to some media to watch/read for inspiration.

The point I guess is just to make sure everyone's on the same page from the beginning. I don't need this in the actual rules of a game, and I feel like vomiting when I hear the term "social contract" applied to game prep, but the underlying assumption of a decent level of communication between everyone playing seems to me would avoid the possible problem of the thread title altogether.

I don't mind playing an old school game with high mortality just as long as the dm runs the game in an old school way.  The problem I encounter frequently is when a dm tries to run high mortality d&d with a severe nerfing of old school tactics like not allowing us hirelings or dogs, nerfing spells like sleep and charm, removing gp for xp, and then expecting us to actually worry about backstories and shit when our life expectancy is effectively one encounter.

Quote from: Old Geezer;699799I remember the first fight where the Cardinal's Guard interrupt the duel between Athos and d'Artagnan, and Aramis says "There are three of us and five of them."  They are the fucking THREE MUSKETEERS and they're afraid of 3:5 odds.

I believe Porthios response is "Yeah, that's not fair odds. We should give them a chance to surrender first..."

I do not believe they were afraid of the Cardinal's Men. Quite the contrary.

Quote from: Novastar;699877I believe Porthios response is "Yeah, that's not fair odds. We should give them a chance to surrender first..."

I do not believe they were afraid of the Cardinal's Men. Quite the contrary.

Go re-watch that scene.  They are obviously quite worried, which is their rationale for welcoming d'Artagnan into their company.

Quote from: Novastar;699877I believe Porthios response is "Yeah, that's not fair odds. We should give them a chance to surrender first..."

That's Porthos' reply the Stephen Herek movie, not the Richard Lester movie.

Lester's TTM is closer to the book, at least in that scene.

Quote from: mhensley;699876I don't mind playing an old school game with high mortality just as long as the dm runs the game in an old school way.  The problem I encounter frequently is when a dm tries to run high mortality d&d with a severe nerfing of old school tactics like not allowing us hirelings or dogs, nerfing spells like sleep and charm, removing gp for xp, and then expecting us to actually worry about backstories and shit when our life expectancy is effectively one encounter.

Player: Well Im done with my MU's backstory and chargen as you requested. Lets get adventuring."
DM: "An irate squirrel bites your ankle. Take 1d3 damage... oop, 3 damage.
Player: "Nooo! I have only 2 HP."
DM: "Thems the breaks kid. Now roll up a new character and come up with a longer backstory."
Player: "Thats the 5th one this morning... darn..."
DM: "Well I did warn you the land was harsh and cruel..."

Now some groups play their characters as a blank slate. No backstory - just the tale of their adventures from there. A high mortality session will not impact them as much as the character has not yet come to life as it were.

On the other hand I've heard players comment that Keep on the Borderlands was a meatgrinder for starter characters...

Quote from: robiswrong;699812I think there's a disconnect here. Mostly I think that Old Geezer thinks that even in old-school AD&D, characters *do* have a good chance of getting to high levels.

Yes, there's a disconnect between the reality that everyone has an opinion, even people who don't insist on being assholes, and the imaginary universe in which OG is The Privileged Frame of Reference that uniquely and magically turns "good" into a quantitative fact. Maybe he'll show us where the Cheshire Cat replaced his logic with hairballs.

QuoteAn assumption that if the combat system gives you bad odds, you're screwed, kind of rests on the idea that the players have no choice on whether to engage in that combat or not, and that tactics like those described above aren't really available.

Your assumption kind of rests on sheer speculation.

QuoteEither that, or that players really just want to wade into combat, and aren't interested in the types of tactics described above.

Or something else, such as, hmmm, maybe they want not to have such a high chance of their figures getting whacked with one hit.

But no, people can't possibly mean what they actually say, can they?

Since OG is at least half a badass, he could donate all those spare HP to charity and have a real chance to brag about his generalship versus hobgoblins. I think it's tax deductible in Munchkinland.

Quote from: Omega;699901Player: Well Im done with my MU's backstory and chargen as you requested. Lets get adventuring."
DM: "An irate squirrel bites your ankle. Take 1d3 damage... oop, 3 damage.
Player: "Nooo! I have only 2 HP."
DM: "Thems the breaks kid. Now roll up a new character and come up with a longer backstory."

As if that DM would give one damn about some stupid backstory.