TheRPGSite

I really don't... I've a very high survivability rate in my games.

Admittedly, it happens the odd time. I mean, 'Are you really sure you want to do that?'. Mixed with constant player stupidity what can you do? Like the time one PC wanted to attack a proto Shoggoth in CoC. I really tried to convince him it was a very bad idea (everyone else got the hint).

But generally, I don't allow people to die for banal reasons. Like fighting against a brown bear or falling off a ledge. I'd really like a good reason for a PC to die (like in a movie). Self-sacrifice or dying while trying to kill off the big bad, etc.

That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se. So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not.

Thoughts? Seems to be quite a divisive issue when I've chatted with people before. I'm not saying that I'm right, but it's just the way I like to GM. Maybe, I'm just too soft.

Added:

Actually, I forgot to mention. I had joined a Sabbat game many years ago (it was my first and best introduction to VtM). The group were all really good mates and serious RPers. The notion of the GM killing off character was a total ‘no go’. The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I’d never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I’ve ever played to this day…

First statement, if people are having fun, there is no problem.

Second statement, death does not have to be the fail-state (Ghostbusters RPG, for instance, pretty much does not plan for a situation where the characters can die. Even falling off a skyscraper you are expected to somehow survive). As long as players are challenged, and they can experience both failure and loss, than you have achieved the majority of what death does for the game.

"That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se."

Beaten black and blue matters exactly as much as that has any real effect. Beaten to an inch of their life (but will never go beyond that)? Means nothing. Beaten unconscious and wake up in a jail cell, awaiting trial, have to talk their way out of it, oh and now their girlfriend is dating the guy who beat them up? Meaningful.

"So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not."

At this point, I have to ask if you're being honest with yourself about this? Do you honestly think that your players have not figured this out? If they are still reacting as though they are afraid of death, it is likely because they want to (or, as I said above, you have been giving them the potential for failure and loss, even if it isn't death).

Again, if everyone is fine with the status quo, rock your bad selves out. But trying to con the players into believing that their characters are at risk for their lives when you are incapable of following through is not a long term strategy.

Player character death is pretty rare in my campaigns also. Character creation in our system results in a very detailed character and losing one is usually not fun. So the rules allow for a lot of very effective healing and the chance of survival below zero and then being healed is high. This high-casualty/low-fatality system results in a meat-grinder, as you say, with very rare character death. When it does happen, it is a significant event. No one has thrown hands or broken up a friendship about it, though.

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https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218159/Glory-Road-Roleplay-Core-Rules

Fighting against a brown bear and falling off a ledge are banal ways to die?

:confused:

Quote from: Dumarest;981674Fighting against a brown bear and falling off a ledge are banal ways to die?

:confused:

Well, not if you do them at the same time I suppose.

Quote from: Dumarest;981674Fighting against a brown bear and falling off a ledge are banal ways to die?

:confused:

When there's dragons and cyborg demons and ancient cosmic dark knights it sure as heck is!  Banality is all relative though.  

"He had slain countless enemies of the Kingdom of Light, saving millions in the process.  But in the end he didn't brush his teeth often enough, and atherosclerosis set in from oral bacteria that entered his blood-stream, causing his heart to fail.  So remember adventurers: always brush your teeth!"
"Fuck you.  We have a cleric."
"Oh, well, right then."

I don't LIKE killing PCs either, but I'm not going to fudge things to save them, because I hate that as a Player... I need to know perma-death is on the table.
I'll leave a group if I sense the GM is pulling their punches.

There was a thread a dragonsfoot (IIRC) a few years ago about a Dad who was DMing his kids. He didn't kill any characters, instead they were beaten up or captured (and allowed to escape). Soon, his son caught on to the fact and whenever he was in a difficult situation, his son would say "I feint". He'd get captured, escape and be as good as new in no time.

Killing PCs is for the benefit of PCs, not for the DM.  As a player, as soon as I realize that my DM is pulling his punches, the game loses 100% of it's excitement and fun.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;981682Killing PCs is for the benefit of PCs, not for the DM.  As a player, as soon as I realize that my DM is pulling his punches, the game loses 100% of it's excitement and fun.

I feel the same way, but not everyone does.  I've actually see people declare in print that the referee does not have "permission" to kill their PC.

Death is not necessary, but there MUST be a "lose state," such that the player knows they have lost.  And it must be something the PLAYER wishes to avoid; never mind what the CHARACTER wishes to avoid.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Thoughts?

Remember, you asked.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Mixed with constant player stupidity what can you do?

Oh hell, I dunno, let them learn from their mistakes, mebbe?

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667I'd really like a good reason for a PC to die (like in a movie).

The thing I enjoy most about roleplaying games is how they are not like most movies. Unpredictability is a virtue.

And some of my favorite movies throw this convention out the window anyway.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not.

I doubt anyone ever really feels like their characters are in danger, because they''re not.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Maybe, I'm just too soft.

Probably. And too wedded to the notion that a roleplaying games should ape predictable fiction formulas.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again.

What a bunch of fucking losers.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Thoughts?

Remember, you asked.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981678Well, not if you do them at the same time I suppose.

I like the cut of your jib, sir.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I'd never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I've ever played to this day...

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981688What a bunch of fucking losers.

Pretty much, yeah.  "Grow the fuck up" also comes to mind.

And the fact that OP lauds this as "the best campaign I've ever played" makes all kinds of alarm bells sound.

Combined with the contempt the OP obviously feels for his players "constant player stupidity" what we have here looks pretty much to be Yet Still Another Frustrated Author.

Go write a fucking book.

What if the player is OK with their character losing or dying because they think it makes a more dramatic story?

Or should they always try to win?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;981691What if the player is OK with their character losing or dying because they think it makes a more dramatic story?

Or should they always try to win?

If a player is OK with dying as part of a more dramatic story, chances are a dramatic story -is- the win condition for them.  

Personally, I don't get the whole "I play D&D to -win-" mentality.  Seems like video games would be a better option, except I guess that arguing with World of Warcraft won't get you a "do over".

Quote from: san dee jota;981696If a player is OK with dying as part of a more dramatic story, chances are a dramatic story -is- the win condition for them.  

Personally, I don't get the whole "I play D&D to -win-" mentality.  Seems like video games would be a better option, except I guess that arguing with World of Warcraft won't get you a "do over".

Why? Certainly it is easier for the game-challenge types to get what they are looking for with a computer game than it is for the story-building types, but that's not a particular reason for the game-challenge people to go exclusively towards computers.

Quote from: san dee jota;981696If a player is OK with dying as part of a more dramatic story, chances are a dramatic story -is- the win condition for them.  

Personally, I don't get the whole "I play D&D to -win-" mentality.  Seems like video games would be a better option, except I guess that arguing with World of Warcraft won't get you a "do over".

If the game leads me into a combat, damn right I want to win.

So, do you play D&D to lose?

See, I can say stupid shit too.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981701Why? Certainly it is easier for the game-challenge types to get what they are looking for with a computer game than it is for the story-building types, but that's not a particular reason for the game-challenge people to go exclusively towards computers.

Actually, if you're a wargamer, computers suck.  Human opponents are infinitely more interesting.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667I really don't... I've a very high survivability rate in my games.

Admittedly, it happens the odd time. I mean, 'Are you really sure you want to do that?'. Mixed with constant player stupidity what can you do? Like the time one PC wanted to attack a proto Shoggoth in CoC. I really tried to convince him it was a very bad idea (everyone else got the hint).

Sounds like the player got tired of the complete lack of peril in the game and was pushing back against your attempts to always tell them the safe action to take.

QuoteBut generally, I don't allow people to die for banal reasons. Like fighting against a brown bear or falling off a ledge.

If you consider brown bears and high ledges to be banal, why even make them a factor in your game in the first place?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981705Actually, if you're a wargamer, computers suck.  Human opponents are infinitely more interesting.

Oh god yes. I meant human opponents in a computerized wargame, I thought that's what san dee jota was talking about. Obviously you won't have the breadth of possibilities as if you have a DM who can arbitrate if you decide to do something completely outside of the game-rules, but at least a computer can actually run something akin to a wargame. Computer-assisted story-development games are still back in their stone age (at best, maybe you can have a couple of different endings based on your choices, or whatever).

Quote from: Simlasa;981680I don't LIKE killing PCs either, but I'm not going to fudge things to save them, because I hate that as a Player... I need to know perma-death is on the table.
I'll leave a group if I sense the GM is pulling their punches.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;981682There was a thread a dragonsfoot (IIRC) a few years ago about a Dad who was DMing his kids. He didn't kill any characters, instead they were beaten up or captured (and allowed to escape). Soon, his son caught on to the fact and whenever he was in a difficult situation, his son would say "I feint". He'd get captured, escape and be as good as new in no time.

Killing PCs is for the benefit of PCs, not for the DM.  As a player, as soon as I realize that my DM is pulling his punches, the game loses 100% of it's excitement and fun.

I agree with both of you, you take death off the table and pull your punches and to me it is like cheating. About the same as the ref using loaded a loaded d20 the only rolls ones when the monsters are attacking.

Interesting... There's a lot I have to reply too.

Some very fair points made so far! So cheers for those...

One or two that I really shouldn't have to reply to (because of common sense and all) but I will.

I sympathize, I really do.  I am a GM who is a fan of the PCs.  I also feel like it is my primary duty to facilitate the group in having fun - friends, snacks, jokes and gaming. I have, at times in the past, sucked at killing off PCs because it felt at odds with my roles as PC advocate and fun facilitator.  I am, by nature, a soft GM (I feel like I am in some kind of GMs anonymous group here).  I admit it. I have been where you are at, or near to it.

However, I am here to tell you to toughen up, separate your job from your bias, and let them die.  Everybody's experience will benefit from the understanding that actions have consequences, the feeling of control that this brings to your players, the suspension of disbelief, and credibility that your world will gain. I have learned that even the most whiny Disney-princesses do not enjoy a thing given nearly as much as thing earned.  If you save your PCs from your world then your world will lose all credibility in the eyes of your players - and eventually so will you.

Quote from: Baulderstone;981706Sounds like the player got tired of the complete lack of peril in the game and was pushing back against your attempts to always tell them the safe action to take.



If you consider brown bears and high ledges to be banal, why even make them a factor in your game in the first place?

I'll take the poorer points first.

A) 'Sounds like' isn't fact though is it? He was as thick as a whale omelet and hadn't got any clue when it came to RPing. In fact, I had him gunned down the next session as he killed a CIA agent (for no particular reason other than the guy lipped off to him). As you do... when playing Delta Green. I'd only ever played with him a few times so didn't know shit about how I GM'd.

B) What? Brown Bears and ledges? Sorry, have you not heard of the RPing game Bears and Leges?? Where you constantly have to fight off Brown Bears and watch yourself falling? Sound right up your alley. Sorry, I don't generally have BB and ledges in my games. It's not a constant by any means. I was of course using, wait for it... Just using it as an 'example'. Don't take it too literally...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981704If the game leads me into a combat, damn right I want to win.

So, do you play D&D to lose?

Oh for fucks sake....

Are you seriously saying D&D is just about combat?  Because you sure sound like it to me.  And if all you want is combat there are better options than D&D.  What the hell is somebody who plays to win at D&D hoping to win when there is no win in D&D?  "Yay!  You outsmarted your DM by min-maxing your character and getting lucky in a game of craps!"  May as well flip a coin and go home if that's all you want.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981704See, I can say stupid shit too.

Hey, how's that book on the early days of D&D coming along?  How many years is it now?  No, I understand.  You're -really- busy.  But be sure to keep up with views you hold in contempt, because that's so fucking productive.

Quote from: Dumarest;981674Fighting against a brown bear and falling off a ledge are banal ways to die?

:confused:

Do I really need to answer this?

We are talking Role-playing games and not Bear Grills, right?

Quote from: san dee jota;981696If a player is OK with dying as part of a more dramatic story, chances are a dramatic story -is- the win condition for them.  

Personally, I don't get the whole "I play D&D to -win-" mentality.  Seems like video games would be a better option, except I guess that arguing with World of Warcraft won't get you a "do over".

Story? You mean "what we tell people about the game we played"? Because games are not dramatic fiction.

People are free to enjoy whatever sort of pretend-time they like, but without rules and win-loss conditions, it's not a game.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981723Story? You mean "what we tell people about the game we played"? Because games are not dramatic fiction.

People are free to enjoy whatever sort of pretend-time they like, but without rules and win-loss conditions, it's not a game.

Believe it or not, I get that.  But what's the win condition of D&D?

Quote from: san dee jota;981679When there's dragons and cyborg demons and ancient cosmic dark knights it sure as heck is!  Banality is all relative though.  

"He had slain countless enemies of the Kingdom of Light, saving millions in the process.  But in the end he didn't brush his teeth often enough, and atherosclerosis set in from oral bacteria that entered his blood-stream, causing his heart to fail.  So remember adventurers: always brush your teeth!"
"Fuck you.  We have a cleric."
"Oh, well, right then."

Thank you... Sums it up.

Quote from: san dee jota;981724Believe it or not, I get that.  But what's the win condition of D&D?

To do well. To excel. To succeed where previously you have failed.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981721Do I really need to answer this?

We are talking Role-playing games and not Bear Grills, right?

But that's at the heart of the issue: the (I think silly) notion that a PC's death "should" only happen when "dramatic" or "makes sense in the story" or similar. It's rooted in a play-style that seeks to emulate the structure and outcomes of literature or film: acts, story arcs, etc.

It also tends to reflect the opinion that somehow RPGs are fundamentally different from any other game: if you make poor decisions and roll poorly in a boardgame, you lose. If you make poor decisions and roll poorly in an RPG, you should fudge those rolls, pull some punches, and otherwise let things slide so that "the story" "feels right".

That's fine if everyone wants to spend their pretend-time together that way, but it's not how I prefer to play my elf-games. Death is a consequence/loss condition for a character who makes poor decisions and/or is unlucky in games where that is a loss condition. If people don't like that, they should play games where that isn't a loss condition.

Quote from: san dee jota;981724Believe it or not, I get that.  But what's the win condition of D&D?

Survival, typically.

In older editions, reaching name level and transitioning to a different scale of game (realm conflict).

Killing players is a bit tricky for me because I don't want to be the guy who pulled "lol this room randomly has a beholder in it, you die, the end." So I will pull a punch if I feel like I made a major miscalculation.

5e is also kind of bad about monsters who OHK weaker characters, a feature I am finding increasingly annoying.

I enjoy AD&D for many of the same reasons I enjoy(ed) sitting down to play a game of Civilization.  The obvious difference being that I'm "building" through a single-person perspective instead of an abstract civilizational perspective.  But yes, I'm playing a game.  I want to see how far I can take my character against true, unbiased adversity.  Combat is a huge part of that.  What makes AD&D great is the whole is greater than the sum of any part.  It's different than a pure wargame, or a shooter game, or character acting because it includes all three.  It also includes the risk of all my effort to date being wiped out by bad luck, poor planning, or a combination of both.  That skin in the game is the juice that brings me back time after time.  

I don't enjoy playing with people who react badly to their efforts not turning out as envisioned, usually through death of a character.  I don't connect with whatever it is that draws them to RPGs because it originates from somewhere far outside what draws me.  If I have nothing to lose - my previous investment of effort - then I'm bored as shit and don't really care to waste my time attempting to play.  I'm not sitting here because I want to think about characters per se.  They are a tool to do things, but no more than a tool.  The adventures I have using them, and the dynamic I have with the real people around me at the actual physical table (or whatever), is valuable.  But the fictional character itself?  Very little value at all.  It's a fungible collection of stats and abilities that simply channels my participation in certain ways while I'm using them.  They are valuable so far as they facilitate the actual out-of-game experience of play.    I don't value imagining a "cool character" or a "cool story" and then participating in it.

I see PCs dying as an opportunity to roll up another.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981726To do well. To excel. To succeed where previously you have failed.

You can't do well with a coin toss.  

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981727But that's at the heart of the issue: the (I think silly) notion that a PC's death "should" only happen when "dramatic" or "makes sense in the story" or similar. It's rooted in a play-style that seeks to emulate the structure and outcomes of literature or film: acts, story arcs, etc.

Stupid gamers, using an RPG to try and tell a story.  :)

Seriously though, there is another approach: let death be random, but have the results of the death have meaning.  In my Genlab Alpha game, there was a TPK due to bad decisions and bad dice, shortly before the campaign's end.  Rather than let the PCs simply die though... I turned them into mindless robot slaves to the forces that defeated them (mechanically they were all out of action, so I let the die decide if they were killed or converted).  Then the new PCs (and some NPCs) later encountered the now-converted characters as foes, making for a more interesting story than if they had just died and been left to rot (trust me, it was more interesting).  Point being, the story emerged from the dice, but the story is still the focus.

I know some players are like "oh no!  Bob the Paladin died!  Now his mechanically identical brother, Rob, will have to take his place and continue where he left off!"  But that's effectively no different than removing death from the game, with maybe a time-out penalty until Rob can meet up with the other PCs (assuming the story matters enough that the group doesn't just have Rob show up down in the dungeon ex nihilo).    

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981727It also tends to reflect the opinion that somehow RPGs are fundamentally different from any other game: if you make poor decisions and roll poorly in a boardgame, you lose. If you make poor decisions and roll poorly in an RPG, you should fudge those rolls, pull some punches, and otherwise let things slide so that "the story" "feels right".

Fair enough.  RPGs -are- different from other games though, in that (by definition) they're the only ones where you're expected to play out a role.  I can respect differing attitudes towards whether a story can ignore dice or not (I try to lean towards not these days), but without the emphasis of the shared story it's just a video game where you bash on the DM instead of the controller.  

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981729Survival, typically.

So... it's about combat then?

James II of Scotland was a fairly significant historical figure and died when a cannon blew up next to him, severing an artery in his leg.

Sometimes random shit happens, and important people die.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se. So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not.

Just want to chime in to say that this is the absolute worse to me.  I'd rather it just be on easy mode swinging through if there's no real threat of death.  If everyone just wants to be safe and play a story, that's fine, but faking danger by making encounters really difficult but pulling the fatal punches - can't stand that at all.


Added:

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Added:

Actually, I forgot to mention. I had joined a Sabbat game many years ago (it was my first and best introduction to VtM). The group were all really good mates and serious RPers. The notion of the GM killing off character was a total ‘no go’. The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I’d never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I’ve ever played to this day…

You really shouldn't play with people that would use physical violence as a response to winning or losing at a tabletop game.  No gaming is better than assault and battery.

Quote from: san dee jota;981734You can't do well with a coin toss.  

Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.  It is calculated risk and playing probabilities.  You put yourself in situations where the dice favor you, or where the dice aren't necessary, and avoid situations where the odds are against you or where the consequences of improbable outcome can be recovered or are less than catastrophic.  There are tons of decision to make in playing the odds, and that's how you game with randomness.  

I've seen that it is a current fad in boardgaming to poo poo games with dice as "random," like Axis and Allies for example, but such games are a lot more complex than a coin toss and there are constant decisions that ultimately put you in control of that probability.  Can you lose a game of Axis and Allies due to a coin toss, a single roll of the dice, or a string of bad rolls?  Theoretically you can, but there are tons of things that you can do to control the odds of such things defeating you.

My take is this- maybe the players have a lot of characters bite the dust in their quest to slay the beast, rescue the prince, save the realms- ect.  But, those ones who went through all that and lived?  Man, that's really fucking awesome and a major accomplishment.  That one goes into the Great Book of Mega Deeds or something.  Not everyone wins and that's ok.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981719What? Brown Bears and ledges? Sorry, have you not heard of the RPing game Bears and Leges?? Where you constantly have to fight off Brown Bears and watch yourself falling? Sound right up your alley. Sorry, I don't generally have BB and ledges in my games. It's not a constant by any means. I was of course using, wait for it... Just using it as an 'example'. Don't take it too literally...

You seem to have missed my point.  I was using the examples you chose. You've stated dying by a brown bear would be a lame way for a character to die. I was asking the question of why you would even have a bear show up to attack the players if you found the possibility of them losing to it to be banal? If the reason you are loathe to kill players is because the competition is boring, why not create interesting competition for them to fight. If bears are too boring to be worth being killed by, they are too boring to even make an interesting encounter.

Is the bear just a way to wind down to clock on the session? "I've run out of ideas for tonight, so I will throw a... (flips through Monster Manual) bear at them to eat up the last 20 minutes, but I don't want them to get killed by a bear, so I will keep my thumb on the scale for the whole fight to keep them alive."

If you don't like the example that you chose, feel free to replace "bear" with anything else you find banal.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981690Pretty much, yeah.  "Grow the fuck up" also comes to mind.

And the fact that OP lauds this as "the best campaign I've ever played" makes all kinds of alarm bells sound.

Combined with the contempt the OP obviously feels for his players "constant player stupidity" what we have here looks pretty much to be Yet Still Another Frustrated Author.

Go write a fucking book.

Wow... What an intellectual stumper. So much so, I'm not even arsed answering it.

Were done here, mines a pint...

Quote from: Willie the Duck;981671First statement, if people are having fun, there is no problem.

Second statement, death does not have to be the fail-state (Ghostbusters RPG, for instance, pretty much does not plan for a situation where the characters can die. Even falling off a skyscraper you are expected to somehow survive). As long as players are challenged, and they can experience both failure and loss, than you have achieved the majority of what death does for the game.

"That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se."

Beaten black and blue matters exactly as much as that has any real effect. Beaten to an inch of their life (but will never go beyond that)? Means nothing. Beaten unconscious and wake up in a jail cell, awaiting trial, have to talk their way out of it, oh and now their girlfriend is dating the guy who beat them up? Meaningful.

"So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not."

At this point, I have to ask if you're being honest with yourself about this? Do you honestly think that your players have not figured this out? If they are still reacting as though they are afraid of death, it is likely because they want to (or, as I said above, you have been giving them the potential for failure and loss, even if it isn't death).

Again, if everyone is fine with the status quo, rock your bad selves out. But trying to con the players into believing that their characters are at risk for their lives when you are incapable of following through is not a long term strategy.

I think you've made a good point about beating the players black and blue and it baing a tad meaningless. But what I've also tried to do, is always let them feel like they are in danger. So, they have no real idea that they are not in a dangerous situation. However, I always attempt to have consequences for actions... But it would be very rare for it to be a fatality.

Regarding the players figuring it out... Well, I GM'd WFRP for over three years (with that group) and towards the end campaign they didn't seem to be any the wiser and they all seemed to enjoy the game (as far as I know anyway - they kept coming back at any rate). That said, I did try to obfuscate my dealings. By awarding a bit more experience than I should have, and always kept track of their fate points. So, I'd award them at apropriate mile stones of the game. So, they would always have a get out of jail free. I was'nt trying to fudge the dice all the time, however I did do it on a couple of occasions if I'm being honest.

We did talk about character death during the campaign (mid-way), because I asked what they thought of it? The census was they were happy enough for it to happen as long as it was a meaningful death. So, that for me ruled out the Bear and Ledges RPG. ;) So your first line about just having fun makes perfect sense for our game.  

However, this was a few years ago now and I've seemed to keep up with the 'not killing PCs mentality' with some other groups that I've GMd for. So, I'm asking myself is it something I should do? I posed the question to the guys at my Deadlands Game. Again, they didn't like the idea of characters being killed arbitrarily. Unless it was again, 'meaningful'. But I can't say about the other groups. Some were one or two shots so I doubt anyone would even notice. They might have done, if it was a mini-campaign or somthing.

Ta' for the input, much apreciated. It's given me some more food for thought. :)

Quote from: Madprofessor;981738Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.

Sure it is.  It's just that the coins we use have more than two sides.  :)

But I think we digress: is there a win condition for D&D other than combat?  Because if that's all a player wants out of a game, they'd be better served playing something else.

Quote from: under_score;981737Just want to chime in to say that this is the absolute worse to me.  I'd rather it just be on easy mode swinging through if there's no real threat of death.  If everyone just wants to be safe and play a story, that's fine, but faking danger by making encounters really difficult but pulling the fatal punches - can't stand that at all.


Added:


You really shouldn't play with people that would use physical violence as a response to winning or losing at a tabletop game.  No gaming is better than assault and battery.

That's fair enough...

However, I would not like to force something on a player. So, if I knew they wanted 'full on' then I'd do that. I guess the best thing is to chat with the players before the game and see what difficulty setting they want.

Well, I wasn't very worried about the assault and battery, to be honest. They were all good mates but I was just invited to play. But I was surprised at how much passion they played with. It definitely reshaped the way I GM'd Vampire. It was very eye opening experience. The campaign (what I played of it) was class and brutal as hell.

Ta'.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;981730Killing players is a bit tricky for me because I don't want to be the guy who pulled "lol this room randomly has a beholder in it, you die, the end." So I will pull a punch if I feel like I made a major miscalculation.

5e is also kind of bad about monsters who OHK weaker characters, a feature I am finding increasingly annoying.

Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Quote from: Simlasa;981680I don't LIKE killing PCs either, but I'm not going to fudge things to save them, because I hate that as a Player... I need to know perma-death is on the table.
I'll leave a group if I sense the GM is pulling their punches.

That's fair enough... As I was saying to OP. I'd hate to force a particular playing style on a player (even if they didn't know it was happening). So, it's a case of chatting before hand to see what everyone wants I guess. Something to think about now for future games. If people all agreed to play all out then I'd go for it. Even if it's not my particular thing per se. Main thing to me as Willie said is to have fun for everyone (and not just for me as a GM).

Ta!

Quote from: san dee jota;981734Stupid gamers, using an RPG to try and tell a story.  :)

It IS stupid. RPGs are terrible tools for telling a story. Now, telling a story about your in-game exploits, that's different. But trying to generate a story with an RPG leads to all the predictable nonsense: things being "too random" or "not making sense in the story" or "not having meaning".

Quote from: san dee jota;981734Seriously though, there is another approach: let death be random, but have the results of the death have meaning.  In my Genlab Alpha game, there was a TPK due to bad decisions and bad dice, shortly before the campaign's end.  Rather than let the PCs simply die though... I turned them into mindless robot slaves to the forces that defeated them (mechanically they were all out of action, so I let the die decide if they were killed or converted).  Then the new PCs (and some NPCs) later encountered the now-converted characters as foes, making for a more interesting story than if they had just died and been left to rot (trust me, it was more interesting).  Point being, the story emerged from the dice, but the story is still the focus.

I know some players are like "oh no!  Bob the Paladin died!  Now his mechanically identical brother, Rob, will have to take his place and continue where he left off!"  But that's effectively no different than removing death from the game, with maybe a time-out penalty until Rob can meet up with the other PCs (assuming the story matters enough that the group doesn't just have Rob show up down in the dungeon ex nihilo).    

Fair enough.  RPGs -are- different from other games though, in that (by definition) they're the only ones where you're expected to play out a role.  I can respect differing attitudes towards whether a story can ignore dice or not (I try to lean towards not these days), but without the emphasis of the shared story it's just a video game where you bash on the DM instead of the controller.  

Continue building strawmen, please.

Quote from: san dee jota;981734So... it's about combat then?

How does survival = combat?

My Call of Cthulhu players are very interested in survival (both personal and global) and do all they can do avoid combat.

I've run economic-focused games where survival = not going bankrupt.

Any outcome that isn't a loss is survival and thus a win.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981688Remember, you asked.


Oh hell, I dunno, let them learn from their mistakes, mebbe?


The thing I enjoy most about roleplaying games is how they are not like most movies. Unpredictability is a virtue.

And some of my favorite movies throw this convention out the window anyway.


I doubt anyone ever really feels like their characters are in danger, because they''re not.


Probably. And too wedded to the notion that a roleplaying games should ape predictable fiction formulas.


What a bunch of fucking losers.


Remember, you asked.

Well... all I can say is.

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

Jobs done here. Mines a pint!

At the same time, I'm perfectly fine killing you with a bear or something mundane when I feel pretty confident I didn't just accidentally drop you into something way too hard for you with no reasonable way out. Actually did TPK with a tiger once. Just one li'l ol' tiger...had a new player who thought the thing to do was trade blows rather than GTFO when the druid went down. He died. He didn't come back.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;981682There was a thread a dragonsfoot (IIRC) a few years ago about a Dad who was DMing his kids. He didn't kill any characters, instead they were beaten up or captured (and allowed to escape). Soon, his son caught on to the fact and whenever he was in a difficult situation, his son would say "I feint". He'd get captured, escape and be as good as new in no time.

Killing PCs is for the benefit of PCs, not for the DM.  As a player, as soon as I realize that my DM is pulling his punches, the game loses 100% of it's excitement and fun.

That's interesting... I'd definitely see that happening. Or as Simlasa said, about not wanting to play with that group. Again, I've tried to hide the fact, so the players have never copped on per se. It's not all about fudging the dice as I mentioned in my previous post. Luckily in the WFRP game we as a group were all on the same page. That is to say, death was cool, only as long as it was significant and not the Bears 'n Leges RPing game that I'm now going to write. ;)

Ta'.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981752I guess the best thing is to chat with the players before the game and see what difficulty setting they want.

Being clear with your players about the game you're playing is key to avoiding the majority of the bad table drama the internet so loves to post.  I run a game that's about exploring a dungeon to try to find treasure.  Combat is deadly and to be avoided as much as possible, or stack the odds so high in your favor that we can dispense with rolling the dice much of the time.  We're three sessions into the current dungeon, and fatalities per session have been 4, 2, then 1.  You'd probably consider every one of those deaths banal, but my players considered them dire consequences of poor decisions, and as you can see, they've learned and adapted each session.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;981758At the same time, I'm perfectly fine killing you with a bear or something mundane when I feel pretty confident I didn't just accidentally drop you into something way too hard for you with no reasonable way out. Actually did TPK with a tiger once. Just one li'l ol' tiger...had a new player who thought the thing to do was trade blows rather than GTFO when the druid went down. He died. He didn't come back.

Hmm... Different strokes as they say. I'd find a tpk with a tiger a boring game to be honest. Again, I guess its about finding the right group for what style of play you're after. But as Wille said, if you're having fun that's all that counts. Ta'.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;981730Killing players is a bit tricky for me because I don't want to be the guy who pulled "lol this room randomly has a beholder in it, you die, the end." So I will pull a punch if I feel like I made a major miscalculation.

5e is also kind of bad about monsters who OHK weaker characters, a feature I am finding increasingly annoying.

That's called "being a novice/bad DM".

Random beholder on level 1 of a dungeon? Perfectly fine. Why? Because the beholder is an intelligent monster. It can act intelligently. Those 1st level PCs aren't a threat, so why react like they are? Spell-casting monsters could just charm the PCs anyway. Or coerce them into being henchmen (until such time as the clever PCs escape). Or do a million things besides kill them without batting its eye.

Or you could give alert PCs clues about the environment they're in - what they hear, see, smell, etc., that let's them know trouble is coming. The unearthly chill that heralds the coming of the level-draining undead, the cracked humanoid bones and feathers of the owlbear lair, etc.  Unless you have trained players to believe that all obstacles can be beaten, in which case they don't know that sometimes running away is the right answer. (See "being a bad DM" above).

Or (if you play an early D&D version) you could roll on the Reaction Table (the critical rule that makes Charisma the most powerful stat in the game) and find out that the random beholder is a pretty cool guy and inclined to chat. (see "intelligent monsters behave intelligently" above).

When I was 11 I would have just killed everyone with the wandering monster, because I (a) effectively treated the die roll as "monster materializes right in front of you", (b) didn't use the Reaction Table, and (c) was 11 years old.

Years later, I realized that was a shitty way to DM. So I overreacted to that and would fudge die rolls, pull punches, and otherwise make sure the "good guys won" in suitably dramatic fashion.

Then I came to the conclusion that was a shitty way of DMing, too, since it's ultimately dull and robs the players of any real agency or consequences.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981759Again, I've tried to hide the fact, so the players have never copped on per se.

Yeah, I can see why deceiving your friends is a better way to play a game.

Been there, done that, realized that was a shitty thing to do to people, even "if it's for their own good".

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981756It IS stupid. RPGs are terrible tools for telling a story. Now, telling a story about your in-game exploits, that's different. But trying to generate a story with an RPG leads to all the predictable nonsense: things being "too random" or "not making sense in the story" or "not having meaning".

Shit man.  Making sense out of the random in a game is the majority of the fun I have!

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981756Continue building strawmen, please.

Care to elaborate, or is that your go to when you have nothing else?

Seriously, if I'm wrong in that RPGs are about playing a role and that you can build an emergent story from dice, let me know.  

As for "we just had Rob take Bob's place" that's not a strawman as I know one poster in this thread who has previously proudly said that's the way to play it.  (granted it was years ago at TBP, but it still counts)  Which makes death meaningless.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981756Any outcome that isn't a loss is survival and thus a win.

Go re-read the thread.  My original response (which even I admit I lost sight of) was to someone asking if players should play to win by not dying or play to win by dying to make a better story.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667Maybe, I'm just too soft.

After reading all your posts, I think maybe you just think very little of your players.

Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

Quote from: san dee jota;981765Shit man.  Making sense out of the random in a game is the majority of the fun I have!

I'm with you there.

Quote from: san dee jota;981765Care to elaborate, or is that your go to when you have nothing else?

Your posts seem to stick to strawmen built on edge cases.

"Some anonymous guy on TBP a long time ago said this once = if you kill PCs, this is your game" is a good a strawman as you will find.

Quote from: san dee jota;981765Seriously, if I'm wrong in that RPGs are about playing a role and that you can build an emergent story from dice, let me know.  

If you choose to "build an emergent story", that's perfectly fine, but that's the purpose of an RPG.

Quote from: san dee jota;981765As for "we just had Rob take Bob's place" that's not a strawman as I know one poster in this thread who has previously proudly said that's the way to play it.  (granted it was years ago at TBP, but it still counts)  Which makes death meaningless.

Agreed, but that's tangential to the discussion.

Quote from: san dee jota;981765Go re-read the thread.  My original response (which even I admit I lost sight of) was to someone asking if players should play to win by not dying or play to win by dying to make a better story.

If a player wants their character to die dramatically, that's great. I hope they get their wish. But again, edge case.

Again, play how you want, but players getting to choose if/when they die (consent-based, context-sensitive, etc) makes death just as meaningless as the random bear attack.

But I can play this game, too:

"I think it'll be cool if I die when trying to stop the reactor from going critical, falling on the controls with my last breath."

"Sounds good, let's go with that."

Cool story, bro, but I'd rather read a good book than collaborative fan fiction storytelling in the guise of an RPG.

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

BUT BUT BUT THE STORY!!!!



Game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

Quote from: san dee jota;981734So... it's about combat then?

Wow.  You really are a world class fucknugget.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981723Story? You mean "what we tell people about the game we played"? Because games are not dramatic fiction.

People are free to enjoy whatever sort of pretend-time they like, but without rules and win-loss conditions, it's not a game.

Apparently in Sandy Asscrack's world, PCs never either succeed or ever fail at anything.  I can't imagine what it must be like.

Quote from: Madprofessor;981738Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.  It is calculated risk and playing probabilities.  You put yourself in situations where the dice favor you, or where the dice aren't necessary, and avoid situations where the odds are against you or where the consequences of improbable outcome can be recovered or are less than catastrophic.  There are tons of decision to make in playing the odds, and that's how you game with randomness.  

I've seen that it is a current fad in boardgaming to poo poo games with dice as "random," like Axis and Allies for example, but such games are a lot more complex than a coin toss and there are constant decisions that ultimately put you in control of that probability.  Can you lose a game of Axis and Allies due to a coin toss, a single roll of the dice, or a string of bad rolls?  Theoretically you can, but there are tons of things that you can do to control the odds of such things defeating you.

Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.  Sandy Asscrack has gone off to moonbat logic land.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981763(b) didn't use the Reaction Table, and (c) was 11 years old.

That is something like 90% to 95% of why some people STILL have their peeners in knots over games they played decades ago.

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

I've lost count of the number of times I've said "management of expectations is the key to success".

I think it's ok to GM like that as long as you're honest with the players, and don't try to pretend the game is much more (or less) dangerous than it really is.

Personally, as GM I kill off PCs (including good, well-played ones) and obviously I kill off NPCs, even my best-westest favourite ones, though I feel bad about it in both cases.

As player, I very much want the possibility of PC death, though IME my PCs pretty much never die unless I set things up that way, like my Frank Miller PC in an Old West game who was basically set up to get plugged by the other PCs in a dramatic showdown. I did have a PC (Zana Than) killed playing Midnight, though every other original PC had died first. Storming orc fort with my level 6 Fighter (very weak class in 3e but I played her like a badass), didn't realise the 'Enlarged' Orc in front of me was actually the fort commander - then he critted...

If a player told me I didn't have permission to kill their PC, I'd tell them to find another game.

If a GM told me they would never kill a PC, hmm, it would depend on the game & the GM. If the game is not about risking death to gain loot & XP, D&D style, it might be absolutely fine. D&D type games need some risk of death for me to enjoy.

Quote from: S'mon;981782I think it's ok to GM like that as long as you're honest with the players, and don't try to pretend the game is much more (or less) dangerous than it really is.

Basically that you're going to ignore the rules in favor of what YOU think makes for a better 'story'.
Yeah, a preamble like that would have been good warning for me on some of the games I've played in... but I think the GMs were loathe to admit what they were doing.

Part of the beauty of RPGs is that different groups can play in sometimes profoundly different ways and still have a bloody good time. As long as everyone is having fun, it's a win. That said, there's merit in considering whether or not people could be having more fun by playing in another way. When I transitioned to random, shared outcomes, other experiences felt dull in comparison.

If you would normally fudge things for your players, try running a couple of sessions in which your players know that their lives hang in the balance -- the players might like it more than they expect (especially if they respect you and enjoy your games normally).

I believe that RPGs without the threat of death turn into competency porn akin to a cartoon world where the toons constantly say "hold my beer" and then Do The Cool Things. It's cute for 2 hours in a movie where I was expecting to be wowed by Wushu god-like awesomeness AND where I was planning on dropping any expectations of reality. In an RPG? Not cool.
 
There are a TON of "setups" in RPGs. From farmers-turned-adventurers, to secret agents saving the universe, to unwitting-victims-turned-monsters, to "you wake up in a strange room..."  Despite the myriad possibilities, you MUST know you're going to play an RPG. You MUST have SOME clue there's likely to be SOME kind of shenanigans. You were not invited to play a boardgame, or a war game, or a card game, or hot swap an old-school RTS on your friends Commodore 128... You should be expecting SOME danger. You are supposed to feel a sense of anxiety about maybe dying because that is the point of danger. Something very bad might happen to you because you chose to embark on adventures where bad things can happen to people. You might also go mad, be kidnapped, have your body possessed by a ghost, or a long of list of Bad Shit. Because you can't find the lost sword of He-Man Awesome 5000 Lightning Power pulling weeds on your fucking farm!

You should shift your perspective. Let me give you an example of what I feel is a GOOD perspective;

Often times I read pop articles about actors I like. Some of them have taken on villainous roles where the character was controversially horrible. The horribleness was exacerbated by how fucking awesome the actor was. Sometimes, these portrayals are SO good, that random people on the street hate them. Of course, they don't actually hate the actor, but the performance was so excellent, they can no longer separate the two.

Some might argue that people shouldn't hate the good actor. Cool. But that's not the point. All these actors always say something to the tune of "I poured all my soul into that performance because I WANTED you to hate me. I WANTED that antagonist to be at least as well portrayed as the protagonist." The actor knew the potential blowback from being so good at being bad, but they did it anyways. They felt a responsibility to their craft, to the other performers, to the AUDIENCE that they put 1000% into it.

Your purpose as a GM is not to molly-coddle your players. You're not a fucking psychologist, nor are you a parent, nor are you really anyone's best friend. You are there to BRING IT so goddamned HARD that your players' heads spin. That they forget where they are. Who they are. All the bullshit outside, in life, in WHATEVER before they sat down at your table. Your JOB is to be EVERYTHING outside those characters. And you cannot POSSIBLY do that while trying to hold your players' hands. Im-fucking-possible.

If the world is some video-game alternate reality where you can hit "reset" and start back in town with all your shit, all healed and all OK, then it's not a fucking adventure. It's 6 people sitting around a table masturbating to each other's COOL STUFF on a piece of paper. No risk NO REWARD!!

By not BRINGING IT every time you sit down to GM your game you are essentially CORN-HOLING your players. You just fucked them. It's not about "oh poor me, my character died". It's about "OH SHIT, I charged in to save the day and I FUCKING DIED!!" Who do want to play with? What stories do you want to hear around the cheap table at the retirement home? You wanna listen to some ass-wipe cry about the character that died? Or perhaps instead you would like to be regaled a tale of death so fucking AMAZING you pop the first boner you've had in 20 years!?!?! Exactly.

You have a job. Stop pissing in your pants and fucking BRING IT!! If a player can't handle it, send 'em packing. There's likely some whiney Story Game nearby they can hold hands at.

Damn, where's that "Orson Welles Slow Clap" gif when I need it?

Quote from: trechriron;981787No risk NO REWARD!!

By not BRINGING IT every time you sit down to GM your game you are essentially CORN-HOLING your players. You just fucked them. It's not about "oh poor me, my character died". It's about "OH SHIT, I charged in to save the day and I FUCKING DIED!!" Who do want to play with? What stories do you want to hear around the cheap table at the retirement home? You wanna listen to some ass-wipe cry about the character that died? Or perhaps instead you would like to be regaled a tale of death so fucking AMAZING you pop the first boner you've had in 20 years!?!?! Exactly.

You have a job. Stop pissing in your pants and fucking BRING IT!! If a player can't handle it, send 'em packing. There's likely some whiney Story Game nearby they can hold hands at.

I think that's a fair statement... To some extent. I do hit the players very hard... But perhaps not hard enough (even though they may be none the wiser).

I think it's something that may be hard to change with my Deadlands group as we've all talked about it already and agreed on a set of parameters. My biggest beef with character death is banality (as you've probably read). You've hit the nail on the head... the best stories are the ones that have that, 'remember that fucking time...'. I think moving forward, I'll definitely amp things up and let the chips fall. Ta'!

Quote from: Majus;981785Part of the beauty of RPGs is that different groups can play in sometimes profoundly different ways and still have a bloody good time. As long as everyone is having fun, it's a win. That said, there's merit in considering whether or not people could be having more fun by playing in another way. When I transitioned to random, shared outcomes, other experiences felt dull in comparison.

If you would normally fudge things for your players, try running a couple of sessions in which your players know that their lives hang in the balance -- the players might like it more than they expect (especially if they respect you and enjoy your games normally).

That's a decent idea. No harm in changing things up for another one shot session to see how it goes... Cheers!

Quote from: S'mon;981783If I player told me I didn't have permission to kill their PC, I'd tell them to find another game.

If a GM told me they would never kill a PC, hmm, it would depend on the game & the GM. If the game is not about risking death to gain loot & XP, D&D style, it might be absolutely fine. D&D type games need some risk of death for me to enjoy.

Man, if a player told me I couldn't kill their character he'd be dead the first session and told to sod off. As a player, I don't mind my character getting whacked as long as it's not by something ridiculous. But I've played in a few games over the years where I felt the GM killed off characters unfairly. Not by die rolls, but put in situations where you'd have no chance of getting out of it.

I also like killing off NPCs left to right and center! Especially when it gets a player into action or a good plot.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981794... I think moving forward, I'll definitely amp things up and let the chips fall. Ta'!

Excellent! Also, don't make them role when walking across the ledge. Let the Ranger just calm the bear down. You brought it into the world, now they know. "Hey, there's a bear here". Now, if they decide "let's go bear hunting!" then you don't have to feel like when the bear eats them that they suffered a "banal" death. No good sir, they suffered the death they knew was possible when they went after the bear. If they come up with a great plan to ambush the bad guys, but the only fast escape route is back through the tight ledge? You warned them already by describing it... "hey, you take your time crossing the tight thin ledge and you think to yourselves this would suck if you had to run across it..." You don't have to be intentionally MEAN or intentionally TRICKY. In doing your craft the honor it deserves you're expounding on the possibilities WELL. And then WHEN the players make a choice, you're bringing the full weight of that choice. Every. Time.  Don't limit the choices. Just always BRING the consequences or rewards.

Quote from: Crimhthan;981712I agree with both of you, you take death off the table and pull your punches and to me it is like cheating. About the same as the ref using loaded a loaded d20 the only rolls ones when the monsters are attacking.

You can keep death on the table but make it less common by simply playing by softer death rules. Making player-character death impossible, as in the Vampire game the OP alluded to, would ruin a game for me as a player or as a GM. Cheating on die rolls to avoid it is horrible GMing imo. Making healing more powerful and having death less likely doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

Quote from: under_score;981760Being clear with your players about the game you're playing is key to avoiding the majority of the bad table drama the internet so loves to post.  I run a game that's about exploring a dungeon to try to find treasure.  Combat is deadly and to be avoided as much as possible, or stack the odds so high in your favor that we can dispense with rolling the dice much of the time.  We're three sessions into the current dungeon, and fatalities per session have been 4, 2, then 1.  You'd probably consider every one of those deaths banal, but my players considered them dire consequences of poor decisions, and as you can see, they've learned and adapted each session.

I think my banal comment was probably a word I should not have used. Because everyone's version of banality seems different (that's not necessarily a bad thing).

In your case players seem to be happy with dying as they are making progress and learning. I suppose a lot of my experience comes back to Vampire. Where you had people so invested in their characters that it's hard to kill them off because you know it would really upset them (these are not new characters of course). That said, most poeple seem to be saying it's a lot better to kill them off (or allow them to be killed off I should say) so as to give the game experince more worth. I get it - Risk and reward (as OP said).

Cheers!

Quote from: trechriron;981800Excellent! Also, don't make them role when walking across the ledge. Let the Ranger just calm the bear down. You brought it into the world, now they know. "Hey, there's a bear here". Now, if they decide "let's go bear hunting!" then you don't have to feel like when the bear eats them that they suffered a "banal" death. No good sir, they suffered the death they knew was possible when they went after the bear. If they come up with a great plan to ambush the bad guys, but the only fast escape route is back through the tight ledge? You warned them already by describing it... "hey, you take your time crossing the tight thin ledge and you think to yourselves this would suck if you had to run across it..." You don't have to be intentionally MEAN or intentionally TRICKY. In doing your craft the honor it deserves you're expounding on the possibilities WELL. And then WHEN the players make a choice, you're bringing the full weight of that choice. Every. Time.  Don't limit the choices. Just always BRING the consequences or rewards.

That's really good advice... I'll definitely utilize PCs skills more going forward too, as that would mitigate the chances of silly stuff happening. Sounds fair too... Cheers agian.

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

This tends to match my experience also.

I have very occasionally seen one strong-willed player exert control over the group and force them into situations where they constantly have PCs killed. But this is rare.

Quote from: trechriron;981800Excellent! Also, don't make them role when walking across the ledge. Let the Ranger just calm the bear down. You brought it into the world, now they know. "Hey, there's a bear here". Now, if they decide "let's go bear hunting!" then you don't have to feel like when the bear eats them that they suffered a "banal" death. No good sir, they suffered the death they knew was possible when they went after the bear. If they come up with a great plan to ambush the bad guys, but the only fast escape route is back through the tight ledge? You warned them already by describing it... "hey, you take your time crossing the tight thin ledge and you think to yourselves this would suck if you had to run across it..." You don't have to be intentionally MEAN or intentionally TRICKY. In doing your craft the honor it deserves you're expounding on the possibilities WELL. And then WHEN the players make a choice, you're bringing the full weight of that choice. Every. Time.  Don't limit the choices. Just always BRING the consequences or rewards.

This is good advice (for the kinder gentler GM).

Don't have a brown bear leap out of nowhere and decapitate the PCs.
If the PCs see a brown bear and decide to attack it, let the dice fall where they may.

Generally, I am not a fan of lots of PC death (unless the whole system is built around this, like DCC funnel). I generally prefer a palpable chance of death (eg: a death save when reduced to zero, but not auto death (too harsh for me) or 3 death saves ala 5e (too lenient for me) - But - I need some kind of enduring injuries (broken or lost limbs, eyes etc) or other long lasting setbacks (item broken). I want a feeling of genuine danger in every adventure - death or injury or setback.

I want to know as a player that it could all go horribly wrong, and my PC might come out of this adventure worse than when they went in (well, maybe with more XP).

Quote from: Psikerlord;981821Generally, I am not a fan of lots of PC death (unless the whole system is built around this, like DCC funnel). I generally prefer a palpable chance of death (eg: a death save when reduced to zero, but not auto death (too harsh for me) or 3 death saves ala 5e (too lenient for me) - But - I need some kind of enduring injuries (broken or lost limbs, eyes etc) or other long lasting setbacks (item broken). I want a feeling of genuine danger in every adventure - death or injury or setback.

I want to know as a player that it could all go horribly wrong, and my PC might come out of this adventure worse than when they went in (well, maybe with more XP).

Absolutely! That's a great way of putting it - 'A palpable chance of death'. I always tried to have that in my games - even though my actual boxing gloves were off so to speak.

I love set backs too, so I use them a lot. I also use bad injuries, if not the fatality (so long recovery times or perhaps a permanent limp). I always wanted it to feel tough so it felt earned. But as people seemed to point out, that maybe I was too easy and maybe a tad dishonest (although, that was never my intention) or self-deceptive. Defintely a lot of things to think about. Ta'!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981705Actually, if you're a wargamer, computers suck.  Human opponents are infinitely more interesting.

Actually, if you are any kind of gamer, human opponents are more interesting.

Quote from: jeff37923;981829Actually, if you are any kind of gamer, human opponents are more interesting.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1240[/ATTACH]

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;981691What if the player is OK with their character losing or dying because they think it makes a more dramatic story?

If a player wants their character to die in a dramatic manner or some other reason, I'm down with it. Heck, GURPs and other games I use have Disadvantages like Terminally Ill, Doomed/Cursed, etc or just those cases. I'm not a high lethality gm outside if genres were is called for (Down and Dirty Cyberpunk,some horror subgenres, for example). Death and the degree it will occur is something I like to make very clear. I don't think I've ever run a game where death is completely out off the table however.

Just throwing my $.02 in here. I get the attraction of the player confronting the challenges of the game directly, no holds barred, straight up and honest and letting the chips and PCs, lay where they fall but in my opinion it risks ruining a lot of work by the GM and possibly ending what would otherwise be a great campaign. I know there will be many who disagree but personally if I had to choose between...

1) Party is on its way toward big cool objective and suffer worse than expected difficulty during a random encounter. One or more key characters die, which essentially ends their chances of success and the adventure is concluded prematurely.

or

2) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

Im gonna pick 2 every time. Especially as a GM I dont want hours of preparation, maps, locales, NPCs, encounters and the like (Im talking open world here, not a railroad adventure so it takes even more of this to provide for the player's possible choices)  wasted because of a damn bear or whatever.

Most of the ways players deal with a dead character (bringing in a new one typically) just feels empty and opportunistic. Now if the player is excited about trying a new different character? Great! But if not? Most of my players over the years would have been as disappointed as the one who lost their character. It would have been a real bummer for everyone unless the death came at a dramatic moment. If Bummers can be avoided, as GM, I usually try to.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981802I think my banal comment was probably a word I should not have used. Because everyone's version of banality seems different (that's not necessarily a bad thing).

In your case players seem to be happy with dying as they are making progress and learning. I suppose a lot of my experience comes back to Vampire. Where you had people so invested in their characters that it's hard to kill them off because you know it would really upset them (these are not new characters of course). That said, most poeple seem to be saying it's a lot better to kill them off (or allow them to be killed off I should say) so as to give the game experince more worth. I get it - Risk and reward (as OP said).

Cheers!

Why not have an open talk with your players about what they'd like? We're just some randos on the Internet (with a fair bit of selection bias) not the people it matters too: your group.

Quote from: rgrove0172;9818331) Party is on its way toward big cool objective and suffer worse than expected difficulty during a random encounter. One or more key characters die, which essentially ends their chances of success and the adventure is concluded prematurely.

or

2) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

Im gonna pick 2 every time. Especially as a GM I dont want hours of preparation, maps, locales, NPCs, encounters and the like (Im talking open world here, not a railroad adventure so it takes even more of this to provide for the player's possible choices)  wasted because of a damn bear or whatever.

Why would these be your choices?  Key characters?  Some characters die and so your "open world" ceases to function?  Dead characters are useful roadmarks.  They warn the next adventurers of trouble ahead.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981833Just throwing my $.02 in here. I get the attraction of the player confronting the challenges of the game directly, no holds barred, straight up and honest and letting the chips and PCs, lay where they fall but in my opinion it risks ruining a lot of work by the GM and possibly ending what would otherwise be a great campaign. I know there will be many who disagree but personally if I had to choose between...

1) Party is on its way toward big cool objective and suffer worse than expected difficulty during a random encounter. One or more key characters die, which essentially ends their chances of success and the adventure is concluded prematurely.

or

2) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

Im gonna pick 2 every time. Especially as a GM I dont want hours of preparation, maps, locales, NPCs, encounters and the like (Im talking open world here, not a railroad adventure so it takes even more of this to provide for the player's possible choices)  wasted because of a damn bear or whatever.

Most of the ways players deal with a dead character (bringing in a new one typically) just feels empty and opportunistic. Now if the player is excited about trying a new different character? Great! But if not? Most of my players over the years would have been as disappointed as the one who lost their character. It would have been a real bummer for everyone unless the death came at a dramatic moment. If Bummers can be avoided, as GM, I usually try to.

Strokes, folks, different.  One artifact of the original referees' style of "Come over Thursday to play" is that you didn't know who else would be there, and it changed.  So we all ended up with several characters, because if you were playing with a couple folks who only had 3rd level characters you didn't want to play your 7th level magic user.

This was considered a feature.  Of course, fast character creation helps.

And remember, the theme is "This is the story of a world.  Twenty groups of heroes tried to loot the Tomb of the Unknown Horrible and died.  The twenty-first succeeded."

Quote from: under_score;981842Why would these be your choices?  Key characters?  Some characters die and so your "open world" ceases to function?  Dead characters are useful roadmarks.  They warn the next adventurers of trouble ahead.

Yep.

Also, wargamers.  You can't win a battle without risking your troops, and if you risk your troops, you WILL lose some.  The assumption was baked in from the first time we played.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981843Strokes, folks, different.  One artifact of the original referees' style of "Come over Thursday to play" is that you didn't know who else would be there, and it changed.  So we all ended up with several characters, because if you were playing with a couple folks who only had 3rd level characters you didn't want to play your 7th level magic user.

  Why not? Too little reward for the risk/effort? Or was it considered 'bad form' to overshadow the other PCs by such a margin?

Quote from: hedgehobbit;981682There was a thread a dragonsfoot (IIRC) a few years ago about a Dad who was DMing his kids. He didn't kill any characters, instead they were beaten up or captured (and allowed to escape). Soon, his son caught on to the fact and whenever he was in a difficult situation, his son would say "I feint". He'd get captured, escape and be as good as new in no time.

In Honor+Intrigue feinting, a minor action, is a frequently used combat maneuver.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981687Death is not necessary, but there MUST be a "lose state," such that the player knows they have lost.  And it must be something the PLAYER wishes to avoid; never mind what the CHARACTER wishes to avoid.

Oh you with your insistence on keeping the "G" in RPGs.

Quote from: san dee jota;981724Believe it or not, I get that.  But what's the win condition of D&D?

Whatever the player thinks it is. Not dying is usually a necessary, though rarely a sufficient part of the D&D win condition.

Quote from: san dee jota;981734You can't do well with a coin toss.

Of course you can. Probably you have a 50% chance of doing well. And of course there is always the old "Heads I win, tails you lose" way of playing a coin toss.

Quote from: Madprofessor;981738Nah. Randomness, primarily through the use of dice, in RPGs, as in wargaming, is not just a coin toss.  It is calculated risk and playing probabilities.  You put yourself in situations where the dice favor you, or where the dice aren't necessary, and avoid situations where the odds are against you or where the consequences of improbable outcome can be recovered or are less than catastrophic.  There are tons of decision to make in playing the odds, and that's how you game with randomness.  

I've seen that it is a current fad in boardgaming to poo poo games with dice as "random," like Axis and Allies for example, but such games are a lot more complex than a coin toss and there are constant decisions that ultimately put you in control of that probability.  Can you lose a game of Axis and Allies due to a coin toss, a single roll of the dice, or a string of bad rolls?  Theoretically you can, but there are tons of things that you can do to control the odds of such things defeating you.

Based on a comment in another thread, I ended up reading some stuff Greg Costikyan wrote recently. This article (http://www.costik.com/randomness-blight-or-bane.htm) discusses how randomness factors into a strategy game and how it can increase (or decrease) player satisfaction. One key point is that using a single coin toss or die roll does not allow player competence or strategy to matter. But having many tosses where each toss has an incremental (but not an all-or-nothing result) can allow for profound strategy and can highly reward player competence.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;981849Why not? Too little reward for the risk/effort? Or was it considered 'bad form' to overshadow the other PCs by such a margin?

Both.

Either the low level players do nothing, or the high level player gets nothing.  Remember, a 7th level magic user wasting kobolds gets 1/7 XP per gold from the kobolds.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981749Regarding the players figuring it out... Well, I GM'd WFRP for over three years (with that group) and towards the end campaign they didn't seem to be any the wiser and they all seemed to enjoy the game (as far as I know anyway - they kept coming back at any rate).

They might have been complicit in your deceit without you knowing it. Afterall, unless they complained it's unlikely that you would ever be any the wiser.

Some players are good at accessing risk and understanding the game rules. Those sorts of players are very likely to figure out when a GM is pulling his punches. They may say something they may not. For reasons of their own. And if they say nothing you may be none the wiser.

Some other players aren't very good at accessing risk or at understanding game rules. In the short term they are unlikely to figure out when a GM is pulling his punches. And if they never play with a different GM, they may never figure out that that first GM was pulling his punches. Or they might and they might just not saying anything. Because they don't want to be critical, or hurt the first GM's feelings, or because they like playing with the risk removed so their PC can't die. In which case you may again be none the wiser.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981851Both. Plus its boring for your fighter who has reached the rank of "Champion" to help a group of third levels clear a room of 2d6 goblins or 1d6 Ogres.

Either the low level players do nothing, or the high level player gets nothing.  Remember, a 7th level magic user wasting kobolds gets 1/7 XP per gold from the kobolds.

Plus rewards aside, its boring for your fighter who has reached the rank of "Champion" to help a group of 3rd levels clear a room of 2d6 Goblins or 1d6 Ogres.

To get back to the original point. I don't particularly like killing PCs. Killing off a PC long ago lost any enjoyment for me. So I don't kill off PCs.

Sometimes the NPCs do. Or the players' bad ideas or their unfortunate die rolling does. But dead PCs doesn't happen very often. Even less often when I play games with radical new ideas from the 1980s like Hero Points and stuff that make it easier for PCs (and some NPCs) not to die.

I usually run games with real risks and consequences, and relatively low access to healing beyond medical attention and rest. Usually one of the main points is to have lots of action, which usually means combat, but I use tactical combat systems that are not just rolls to see who dies. You can learn to play to minimize your risks, and that's one of the main focuses of play - how can you stay alive and have good outcomes given dangerous situations that really are as dangerous as they seem. Fudging rolls would undermine one of the main points and interesting things about playing, and reduce the game to something other than it says it is - i.e. a game where you get to face those situations.

PC death and dismemberment is pretty rare in my games in practice - much rarer than one might expect, but it can and does happen, especially when players do something foolishly dangerous.

I don't "like killing off PCs". I might if I played with more annoying players, but I don't tend to have such annoying players, and players tend to be cautious in my games because the danger is clearly real. Sometimes when I hear about other players' games, particularly those where the GMs avoid killing PCs and the PCs act like fools as a consequence, I do think I might like GMing them and watching natural consequences kill off those PCs. But in any case, I would say something is fishy with thinking of it as a GM killing PCs. I prefer games where at most the GM would allow a PC to die based on what happens, not that the GM himself kills PCs.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981833Just throwing my $.02 in here. I get the attraction of the player confronting the challenges of the game directly, no holds barred, straight up and honest and letting the chips and PCs, lay where they fall but in my opinion it risks ruining a lot of work by the GM and possibly ending what would otherwise be a great campaign. I know there will be many who disagree but personally if I had to choose between...

1) Party is on its way toward big cool objective and suffer worse than expected difficulty during a random encounter. One or more key characters die, which essentially ends their chances of success and the adventure is concluded prematurely.

or

2) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

Im gonna pick 2 every time. Especially as a GM I dont want hours of preparation, maps, locales, NPCs, encounters and the like (Im talking open world here, not a railroad adventure so it takes even more of this to provide for the player's possible choices)  wasted because of a damn bear or whatever.

Most of the ways players deal with a dead character (bringing in a new one typically) just feels empty and opportunistic. Now if the player is excited about trying a new different character? Great! But if not? Most of my players over the years would have been as disappointed as the one who lost their character. It would have been a real bummer for everyone unless the death came at a dramatic moment. If Bummers can be avoided, as GM, I usually try to.

I'm gonna choose 1) every time, and don't want to play 2). If there is no risk why pretend there is? Also, if a vital PC falls to a random encounter, that does not need to mean "the adventure concludes prematurely" - it means a new situation has developed, and everyone gets to play an actual game about the consequences of that and what develops. Whatever peculiar situation happens to require that PC will still be there and available for later discovery. Seems to me though that an adventure that depends on a particular PC being there or else it's not interesting, is one designed for a limited situation, which I'd tend to prefer to re-cast in a way that is interesting no matter what happens. Some of the most fun and interesting RPG situations I've played have been ones that were organized one way, but due to what actually happened in play, turn into something rather different. Unexpected events that change the expected situation, even PC death, are interesting opportunities for dynamic gameplay.

As for replacement PCs being empty and opportunistic, I think that's an important thing to not let be that way, and it doesn't have to. It seems to me this tends to be caused when a game has replacement PCs appear immediately who weren't already NPCs present and part of the group, or with a good reason to join. But that can be avoided by not doing that. Even more so for when a GM lets players start replacement PCs at the exact same power level as the dead PC, which can even become an incentive for players to die so they get a new design. This is one of the reasons I like having several allied NPCs around the PCs (a player whose PC dies can play one of their allies, either ongoingly, or until there's an occasion for someone else to join the group).

It can be sad when a PC dies. Even more disappointing to me would be to find out that the GM was faking all the danger so that none of us were really facing the situations we thought we were playing a game about. Also, when the danger is real and everyone knows it, players tend to take it more seriously, learn and practice ways of dealing with it, and appreciate their actual successes and failures.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;981729Survival, typically.

In older editions, reaching name level and transitioning to a different scale of game (realm conflict).

Disagree, we had 2/3rds of the party die heroically in a fight with a red dragon in 2e and no one felt they had 'failed.' Because of the RPing element in D&D traditional ideas of game-like 'failure' don't always apply. We also had CoC games where everyone either died horribly or went insane and everyone was laughing and having a blast. Again, 'failure states' don't always apply.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Skarg;981864Unexpected events that change the expected situation, even PC death, are interesting opportunities for dynamic gameplay.

Richard the Lionheart and Sir John Chandos both instantly come to mind.

Really, "key people" die all the time and the damn world doesn't end.  The campaign shouldn't either.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981833Just throwing my $.02 in here. I get the attraction of the player confronting the challenges of the game directly, no holds barred, straight up and honest and letting the chips and PCs, lay where they fall but in my opinion it risks ruining a lot of work by the GM and possibly ending what would otherwise be a great campaign. I know there will be many who disagree but personally if I had to choose between...

1) Party is on its way toward big cool objective and suffer worse than expected difficulty during a random encounter. One or more key characters die, which essentially ends their chances of success and the adventure is concluded prematurely.

or

2) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

Im gonna pick 2 every time. Especially as a GM I dont want hours of preparation, maps, locales, NPCs, encounters and the like (Im talking open world here, not a railroad adventure so it takes even more of this to provide for the player's possible choices)  wasted because of a damn bear or whatever.

Most of the ways players deal with a dead character (bringing in a new one typically) just feels empty and opportunistic. Now if the player is excited about trying a new different character? Great! But if not? Most of my players over the years would have been as disappointed as the one who lost their character. It would have been a real bummer for everyone unless the death came at a dramatic moment. If Bummers can be avoided, as GM, I usually try to.

IME PC death or TPK is a momentary setback. In the long term the possibility of such things happening always strengthens a D&D (or similar) game*, certainly the sort of game you seem to be describing. Very frequent PC death can harm some sorts of campaigns; generally I think the best thing for the typical campaign is that PC death be possible but rare, given moderate player competence.

IME I usually see fudging because the GM wants a high-drama low-death game, but then throws these ridiculously tough fights at the PCs, who MUST fight or the game ends. I find a much better approach in a high-drama game is to allow an almost arbitrarily low threat level, GM the fight fairly. If there's a 0.1% chance of PC death in the battle, players will be sweating it, just like IRL.

*OK it may end a particular Adventure Path, at least temporarily. In 2013 my group on Dragonsfoot were loving Rise of the Runelords, and complained when they TPK'd. I had to shelve that campaign (am playing it now with different group, tabletop). But I think ultimately sticking to my guns was the right decision; I started a new campaign with those players & it has made every subsequent victory sweeter.

Well, you don't have to like it;)!

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

I don't wear horns, but other than that, I've got the same explanation for the same phenomenon.

Quote from: trechriron;981787Some might argue that people shouldn't hate the good actor. Cool. But that's not the point. All these actors always say something to the tune of "I poured all my soul into that performance because I WANTED you to hate me. I WANTED that antagonist to be at least as well portrayed as the protagonist." The actor knew the potential blowback from being so good at being bad, but they did it anyways. They felt a responsibility to their craft, to the other performers, to the AUDIENCE that they put 1000% into it.

Your purpose as a GM is not to molly-coddle your players. You're not a fucking psychologist, nor are you a parent, nor are you really anyone's best friend. You are there to BRING IT so goddamned HARD that your players' heads spin. That they forget where they are. Who they are. All the bullshit outside, in life, in WHATEVER before they sat down at your table. Your JOB is to be EVERYTHING outside those characters. And you cannot POSSIBLY do that while trying to hold your players' hands. Im-fucking-possible.

Yeah, and I must add this.
By doing this, they make the protagonists seem cooler for defeating them! You don't get that if the GM is pulling punches, though.
That's why arguments like "killing PCs would disrupt my narrative" are inherently laughable, from a narrative point of view, and that's why most narrativist games (which are all narrativist games worth playing, IMNSHO) prescribe that the GM doesn't pull any punches within the rules:D!

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981688What a bunch of fucking losers.

Remember, you asked.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981690Pretty much, yeah.  "Grow the fuck up" also comes to mind.

And the fact that OP lauds this as "the best campaign I've ever played" makes all kinds of alarm bells sound.

Combined with the contempt the OP obviously feels for his players "constant player stupidity" what we have here looks pretty much to be Yet Still Another Frustrated Author.

Go write a fucking book.

Because to TRULY be gamers you MUST BE HARDCORE!

Can anyone point to me where these statements can be construed to not be veiled "You're DOING IT WROOOOOONG!!" once more?

I mean seriously, this is ridiculous.  There is not "ONE TRUE WAY TO PLAY!" really!  People like different styles!  And you know what?  We should respect their choices.  Crom on a Pogo Stick, that's just sad the amount of trying hard to be so hard.  You DO remember this is a elf game of MAKE BELIEVE?  Right?  Or did no one tell you that?

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667I really don't... I've a very high survivability rate in my games.

Admittedly, it happens the odd time. I mean, 'Are you really sure you want to do that?'. Mixed with constant player stupidity what can you do? Like the time one PC wanted to attack a proto Shoggoth in CoC. I really tried to convince him it was a very bad idea (everyone else got the hint).

But generally, I don't allow people to die for banal reasons. Like fighting against a brown bear or falling off a ledge. I'd really like a good reason for a PC to die (like in a movie). Self-sacrifice or dying while trying to kill off the big bad, etc.

That said, I always put them through the meat grinder. That is to say, they get beaten black and blue constantly, but not killed off per se. So, they always feel like they are in danger even though they are probably not.

Thoughts? Seems to be quite a divisive issue when I've chatted with people before. I'm not saying that I'm right, but it's just the way I like to GM. Maybe, I'm just too soft.

Added:

Actually, I forgot to mention. I had joined a Sabbat game many years ago (it was my first and best introduction to VtM). The group were all really good mates and serious RPers. The notion of the GM killing off character was a total 'no go'. The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I'd never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I've ever played to this day…

I think that I have said this before.....

Without character death, there is no final loss, without that final loss being a possible outcome, there is not as much risk in the game play, without as much risk in the game play, there is not as much of a feeling of reward when the players have their characters risk it all and succeed.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;981894Can anyone point to me where these statements can be construed to not be veiled "You're DOING IT WROOOOOONG!!" once more?

I mean seriously, this is ridiculous.  There is not "ONE TRUE WAY TO PLAY!" really!  People like different styles!  And you know what?  We should respect their choices.  Crom on a Pogo Stick, that's just sad the amount of trying hard to be so hard.  You DO remember this is a elf game of MAKE BELIEVE?  Right?  Or did no one tell you that?

I just did.

I can understand if you do not grok that, but it is just common sense.

Quote from: rgrove0172;9818332) Party has the same difficulty but in that this was a sideline encounter and not related to the main plot the GM cuts them some slack and pulls some punches, fudges a couple damage rolls and lets them squeak by to continue on with the adventure to save the kingdom or whatever..

I'm gonna pick 2 every time.

This has been my reasoning as well over the years. Usually, I use the analogy of a movie. It would really suck if Neo got run over by a car on the way to take the pill from Morpheus. :)

Quote from: Bren;981856To get back to the original point. I don't particularly like killing PCs. Killing off a PC long ago lost any enjoyment for me. So I don't kill off PCs.

Sometimes the NPCs do. Or the players' bad ideas or their unfortunate die rolling does. But dead PCs doesn't happen very often. Even less often when I play games with radical new ideas from the 1980s like Hero Points and stuff that make it easier for PCs (and some NPCs) not to die.

Mechanics like Hero Points really save the day... I suppose where I did fudge things is that I'd give them the extra hero or fate point (in WFRP) here and there. So, they could always soak a bad fall or hard die roll.

Interestingly enough, in Deadlands, I find it hard to even injure the players. Because of the 3 Bennies, they get every time the game session starts. I actually started to ramp up the opposition so they would feel that sense of danger. But so far the game is working out well. That is to say, they keep coming back and seem to enjoy it. Ta!

Quote from: Nexus;981835Why not have an open talk with your players about what they'd like? We're just some randos on the Internet (with a fair bit of selection bias) not the people it matters too: your group.

You probably didn't read the entire thread (I wouldn't blame you as it's getting pretty big). But I've already chatted to my Deadlands group about it, and we did the same (but halfway through the WFRP a year and a half in).

I'm really thinking about GMing moving forward now. I've got a couple of one shots that people want me to run. Maybe some day I'll get a chance to play in the next decade and not be a GM for once. :)

Quote from: The Exploited.;981914You probably didn't read the entire thread (I wouldn't blame you as it's getting pretty big). But I've already chatted to my Deadlands group about it, and we did the same (but halfway through the WFRP a year and a half in).

I'm really thinking about GMing moving forward now. I've got a couple of one shots that people want me to run. Maybe some day I'll get a chance to play in the next decade and not be a GM for once. :)

Whoops! I did miss that. Sorry :o

Quote from: The Exploited.;981912Mechanics like Hero Points really save the day... I suppose where I did fudge things is that I'd give them the extra hero or fate point (in WFRP) here and there. So, they could always soak a bad fall or hard die roll.

Interestingly enough, in Deadlands, I find it hard to even injure the players. Because of the 3 Bennies, they get every time the game session starts. I actually started to ramp up the opposition so they would feel that sense of danger. But so far the game is working out well. That is to say, they keep coming back and seem to enjoy it. Ta!

Had the same experience with Savage Worlds... PCs had a hard time hurting bad guys too as I recall. Tried SW for a couple years and finally just had to walk away.

I've been running the FFG Star Wars games for awhile now. It's very easy to take down characters, but fairly difficult to kill them (they usually just get a lingering critical effect of some sort and are out until the encounter ends). Because the game has a built-in safety margin, I make it clear that I play the dice as they roll. I've only had a few character deaths over a few years of steady play, but we've also had characters retired after in-game consequences for their actions made them undesirable to play (which actually has happened more often than death).

Quote from: The Exploited.;981907This has been my reasoning as well over the years. Usually, I use the analogy of a movie. It would really suck if Neo got run over by a car on the way to take the pill from Morpheus. :)

The simple consideration of that question is evidence of such a fundamental philosophical divide between the game you want to play and the game I want to play that I pretty much feel there's no point in a discussion between the two of us.  We have different concerns and priorities.  There's nothing wrong with that either.  Just the way it is.  We see these games in a different way...

Quote from: The Exploited.;981907This has been my reasoning as well over the years. Usually, I use the analogy of a movie. It would really suck if Neo got run over by a car on the way to take the pill from Morpheus. :)

Not really. All that would do is show us that the guy they were calling Neo wasn't really the chosen one. After all in the film they didn't know that he was Neo until after he demonstrated that he had kool powerz.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981912Interestingly enough, in Deadlands, I find it hard to even injure the players. Because of the 3 Bennies, they get every time the game session starts. I actually started to ramp up the opposition so they would feel that sense of danger. But so far the game is working out well. That is to say, they keep coming back and seem to enjoy it. Ta!

The problem is that the Bennies reset every session. But some sessions (whether do to player choices, good die rolling, or simply random events) will not have heavy opposition. But they still have all 3 Bennies. So there is little danger or difficulty for the PCs. I found this occurring after a time in my Honor+Intrigue campaign. It was exacerbated as the campaign went on for two reasons. First the PCs got much more capable than a starting PC (and starting PCs in H+I, like BoL, start out capable) and second the number of players doubled. So now it wasn't just 2 PCs using Bennies it was 4 PCs doing that.

Star Wars D6, on the other hand, which also uses Force Points and Character Points (in the versions after 1E), didn't have that same feeling. I ran Star Wars even longer, but because the Force Points didn't reset each session (and depending on use one might lose a FP permanently) that players still felt challenged and threatened because they knew that if they used up all of their Force Points in tonight's session they wouldn't reset until that scenario was finished and that was likely to run 3 or more sessions.

Christopher, did you even read the portion of the OP Black Vulmea & Gronan were responding to? The point isn't that you "MUST BE HARDCORE". The point is that if, as OP said "The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again." then those individuals are immature or so violent you should probably find some more stable friends. If you get so upset that your character died in an RPG that you never speak to what used to be your friends ever again, I feel pretty good about saying "You're doing it wrong". This isn't "One true way-ism" unless "I believe people shouldn't blow up friendships and get violent at the table over what happens in a 'let's play pretend' game" is some sort of controversial imposition of play style.

I can only assume you misread?

I do not normally derive GM enjoyment from "killing characters." In fact, I am often a fan of the PCs. I'll even make sure my players understand the context and their risks, to ensure my communication to them is clear. Yet, when the consequences demand it -- death, unflinching. No pulled punches, and done so for the sake of respect of myself, my setting creation, and my players' choices.

Granted, what I find as coherent, contextual, consequences may have a range of interpretation. But it is my judgment you came to experience. So, as trenchiron says, I tell myself to bring it because my table deserves it.

Quote from: Nexus;981915Whoops! I did miss that. Sorry :o

No worries my friend easy to do. :)

Quote from: rgrove0172;981916Had the same experience with Savage Worlds... PCs had a hard time hurting bad guys too as I recall. Tried SW for a couple years and finally just had to walk away.

I actually do like SW as a rule system in general and it does a good job to encompass so many good sourcebooks. But I found that as well... Not only are the players hard to touch, but so are the 'named' enemies.

However, I've noticed recently quite a few people saying the same thing the game it. The combat system appears to be nearly 'binary' in the resolution. You either miss or 'hit' (but no harm was done) or the die explodes and the character is pretty fooked. But not really... 3 bennies will pretty much see them through one adventure. Plus, 3 wounds is a lot considering you have the 'shaken result' as a pad for the first wound. The enemy also get bennies as well! Gah!

The last game they came across a 'mechanical construct' armed with a Gatling gun. They couldn't really hurt the construct (I didn't write the adventure) and the construct was just using up their bennies. I had to invent a remote control device (that they could find) so they could switch it off in the end. Otherwise, they whole adventure would be them running around a junkyard. But it worked out well in the end.

I feel SW needs a bit of tweaking to get that balance right.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981958I actually do like SW as a rule system in general and it does a good job to encompass so many good sourcebooks. But I found that as well... Not only are the players hard to touch, but so are the 'named' enemies.

However, I've noticed recently quite a few people saying the same thing the game it. The combat system appears to be nearly 'binary' in the resolution. You either miss or 'hit' (but no harm was done) or the die explodes and the character is pretty fooked. But not really... 3 bennies will pretty much see them through one adventure. Plus, 3 wounds is a lot considering you have the 'shaken result' as a pad for the first wound. The enemy also get bennies as well! Gah!

The last game they came across a 'mechanical construct' armed with a Gatling gun. They couldn't really hurt the construct (I didn't write the adventure) and the construct was just using up their bennies. I had to invent a remote control device (that they could find) so they could switch it off in the end. Otherwise, they whole adventure would be them running around a junkyard. But it worked out well in the end.

I feel SW needs a bit of tweaking to get that balance right.

Yes, Ive read lots of commentary by SW fans to the contrary - declaring you have to use the various combat options correctly but in practice I just didnt see it working. We played Tour of Darkness, a horrific version of the Vietnam Conflict. It was a great idea and we had fun but I had to fudge lots of combat rolls - guys getting hosed by AKs and never getting hurt or slamming bad guys with mortar rounds for no effect etc.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;981923The simple consideration of that question is evidence of such a fundamental philosophical divide between the game you want to play and the game I want to play that I pretty much feel there's no point in a discussion between the two of us.  We have different concerns and priorities.  There's nothing wrong with that either.  Just the way it is.  We see these games in a different way...

This is it... Everone is different and as it's a game we all enjoy we kinda' just want to do our own thing. But I am always open to criticism or improving how I GM for the future. So, any advice as long as it's constructive (positive or negative) is always good.

Most people have made good points here, so I'll take everything on board and then take time for some self-introspection. :)

Quote from: rgrove0172;981960Yes, Ive read lots of commentary by SW fans to the contrary - declaring you have to use the various combat options correctly but in practice I just didnt see it working. We played Tour of Darkness, a horrific version of the Vietnam Conflict. It was a great idea and we had fun but I had to fudge lots of combat rolls - guys getting hosed by AKs and never getting hurt or slamming bad guys with mortar rounds for no effect etc.

Hmm... That's a fair point...

That really pissed me off in the last encounter. You're hosed (and hit) by the big 'effing Gatling gun for the third time. And not even a scratch!!!

So, if I was to play Tour of Darkness and wanted a more serious tone - I'd probably go the Delta Green/CoC route.

I think SW is probably geared to that more, 'over the top' action play. But as you pointed out, that does'nt work for everything. You get away with it for Deadlands because it's basically a spaghetti western meets horror. But even then I had to start fudging stuff like you guys did. :(

Quote from: The Exploited.;981907This has been my reasoning as well over the years. Usually, I use the analogy of a movie. It would really suck if Neo got run over by a car on the way to take the pill from Morpheus. :)

Only if the directors were so attached to their pre-conceived story that they failed to think of anything else interesting to have happen in their world after that.

On the other hand, if they had a fuller grasp of what's possible, they could develop the story with other characters after Neo turned out not to be The One and got squished. Maybe Cleo is The One, or Theo... Or maybe their annoying repetitive theory about The One is wrong - that could lead to more interesting things, too. I remember getting a bit more interested in the Star Wars OT when both sides' strategic leaders started to realize there was another Force person to obsess about other than Luke - maybe the story _wouldn't_ predictably end with Luke saving the day - maybe he was going to fall into one of the many pits The Empire likes to build, or get turned into a Sith Lord, and another character will unexpectedly become the focus.

Quote from: Skarg;981972Only if the directors were so attached to their pre-conceived story that they failed to think of anything else interesting to have happen in their world after that.

On the other hand, if they had a fuller grasp of what's possible, they could develop the story with other characters after Neo turned out not to be The One and got squished. Maybe Cleo is The One, or Theo... Or maybe their annoying repetitive theory about The One is wrong - that could lead to more interesting things, too. I remember getting a bit more interested in the Star Wars OT when both sides' strategic leaders started to realize there was another Force person to obsess about other than Luke - maybe the story _wouldn't_ predictably end with Luke saving the day - maybe he was going to fall into one of the many pits The Empire likes to build, or get turned into a Sith Lord, and another character will unexpectedly become the focus.

My movie analogy was perhaps a bit of a blunt weapon to use.

As you said, one could easily adapt the story for a roleplaying game. Ta!

I root for the investigators in the Call of Cthulhu (or Delta Green) campaigns that I run, but I don't pull any punches. Several die over the course of a campaign - some from poor decisions, and some from circumstances. But, the players knew what they were in for when they've joined my campaigns.

The investigators that survive - or last through multiple campaigns - get a kind of "heroic" status in the campaigns. Average joes that are elevated due to their sacrifice or brave actions. Those that die are remembered fondly.

I've posted this before, but it's a memorable quote from a player in a DG campaign I ran last year:
"..., I would like to say that I had probably the most glorious character death I've ever had in an RPG:

After blasting the ritual leader off the building and thwarting Cthuga's malevolent entry into this world, I was hacked to death by a large, angry cultist fireman wielding a fire ax, on top of the Bank of America building in San Francisco. Then the building fell down."

There can be a lot of entertainment and enjoyment that, ironically, can result from a character death.

Quote from: K Peterson;981975I root for the investigators in the Call of Cthulhu (or Delta Green) campaigns that I run, but I don't pull any punches. Several die over the course of a campaign - some from poor decisions, and some from circumstances. But, the players knew what they were in for when they've joined my campaigns.

The investigators that survive - or last through multiple campaigns - get a kind of "heroic" status in the campaigns. Average joes that are elevated due to their sacrifice or brave actions. Those that die are remembered fondly.

I've posted this before, but it's a memorable quote from a player in a DG campaign I ran last year:
"..., I would like to say that I had probably the most glorious character death I've ever had in an RPG:

After blasting the ritual leader off the building and thwarting Cthuga's malevolent entry into this world, I was hacked to death by a large, angry cultist fireman wielding a fire ax, on top of the Bank of America building in San Francisco. Then the building fell down."

There can be a lot of entertainment and enjoyment that, ironically, can result from a character death.

I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981958I actually do like SW as a rule system in general and it does a good job to encompass so many good sourcebooks. But I found that as well... Not only are the players hard to touch, but so are the 'named' enemies.

However, I've noticed recently quite a few people saying the same thing the game it. The combat system appears to be nearly 'binary' in the resolution. You either miss or 'hit' (but no harm was done) or the die explodes and the character is pretty fooked. But not really... 3 bennies will pretty much see them through one adventure. Plus, 3 wounds is a lot considering you have the 'shaken result' as a pad for the first wound. The enemy also get bennies as well! Gah!

The last game they came across a 'mechanical construct' armed with a Gatling gun. They couldn't really hurt the construct (I didn't write the adventure) and the construct was just using up their bennies. I had to invent a remote control device (that they could find) so they could switch it off in the end. Otherwise, they whole adventure would be them running around a junkyard. But it worked out well in the end.

I feel SW needs a bit of tweaking to get that balance right.

Weird, because I've never had that. And I ran a campaign for what would be years of gametime to other groups, meaning we played every day for hours for over a year of real time:D!
And it was one of my highest bodycount campaigns;). A lot of them were due to the Irish Sorceress, which had little combat training and skill. Normally, she'd lose most fights...
But never when she picked a telescopic baton. Don't ask me why, her dice always seemed to explode when she did that, no relevant Edges:).
Once, she killed a werewolf-type with a swing of said weapon. The thing mauled her, she soaked most of it and made her Spirit roll to become unstuck and act.
Then her dice exploded and dealt it over 30 points of damage in one go. I blew all my bennies on trying to soak it up, and the best I got was that the Werewolf had 4 wounds:p.
He wasn't even the first named enemy to meet this fate;).
At the end of the campaign, there was a group that tried very hard to steal her telescopic baton, reasoning it should be just some artifact (they had researched her magic school and concluded it wasn't her skills that were responsible). When they did, she bought another, and waved it off as a "I still wonder what those guys wanted, but if they don't appear again, they can keep it". Of course, they never appeared again, since they were too busy trying to attune to the artefact;).

Another way to reduce the chances of death can be to offer in-game ways to do that. I started out with _The Fantasy Trip_, whose first game is _only_ hex-based tactical arena combat, with high risks of death, but ways to mitigate them, which you eventually learn with experience. The next games in the series were programmed adventures that were mainly a context that results in a series of many dangerous combats with death and TPK a likely result, but also ways to develop tactics that make PC death much less likely. If PC death and TPK were rare or impossible, they would have been far less interesting or even fairly pointless games. So that was the baseline expectation I started with. When moving on to the full campaign rules, there was much more to do and less focus on deadly combats and also other options such as running away, avoiding great danger to do something safer, negotiating, capture, etc., became other interesting possibilities.

With a dangerous tactical combat system, players who learn tactics and to take risks seriously can use caution, scouting, information, examining opponents to assess the threat they pose, strength in numbers, tactical movement, taking cover, ambush, retreating, fleeing, using terrain, etc etc etc to get good odds of survival, with no fudging required, except perhaps restraint in terms of how nasty the GM has the enemies be.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981976I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

Depends on circumstances, IMO. If the swim-attempt is occurring during rough weather... or in extremely choppy water... or in the fricken ocean to reach the boat, then the chance plausibly exists that a character could fail and drown. And the player should be aware of the risk and make the decision on whether they want to face it, and possibly lose their character. And there has potentially already been a 'dramatic' event that has occurred to place the character in this swim-and-reach-the-boat-or-die situation. And that might have been damned exciting.

If it's a mundane situation, with little chance of risk, then why are you, as a GM, calling for a swimming roll in the first place? That seems like stupid-adjudication to me. IMO, call for skill rolls when shit matters; when the outcome is practically random, and skill and physical ability impact it; when real risk and danger exist. Not with every action the character takes, especially if it's something with a lot of assured success.

If you don't want critical failures to "unfairly" risk a players life, then either don't use a system that has critical failures. Or leverage hero/fate points to provide players with an OOC mechanic to protect them from fate, by allowing skill rerolls. There are a lot of options out there.

Quote from: Skarg;981980Another way to reduce the chances of death can be to offer in-game ways to do that. I started out with _The Fantasy Trip_, whose first game is _only_ hex-based tactical arena combat, with high risks of death, but ways to mitigate them, which you eventually learn with experience. The next games in the series were programmed adventures that were mainly a context that results in a series of many dangerous combats with death and TPK a likely result, but also ways to develop tactics that make PC death much less likely. If PC death and TPK were rare or impossible, they would have been far less interesting or even fairly pointless games. So that was the baseline expectation I started with. When moving on to the full campaign rules, there was much more to do and less focus on deadly combats and also other options such as running away, avoiding great danger to do something safer, negotiating, capture, etc., became other interesting possibilities.

With a dangerous tactical combat system, players who learn tactics and to take risks seriously can use caution, scouting, information, examining opponents to assess the threat they pose, strength in numbers, tactical movement, taking cover, ambush, retreating, fleeing, using terrain, etc etc etc to get good odds of survival, with no fudging required, except perhaps restraint in terms of how nasty the GM has the enemies be.

Agree.  This is basically my strategy.  I typically have some casual players and/or players not all that hot at tactics or risk assessment.  And I want real risk, but not frequent character deaths.  So I set up a campaign that is slightly favorable to the players and use rules that give them some chances to learn from mistakes before they become fatal.  For example, I'm no longer running a grim, dark setting using AD&D.  Accordingly, the players don't need to bring their A-game, especially if they don't have one.  

They do need to bring their B game.  Because once the dice hit the table, it's all played as it falls.  Do something stupid. you'll probably have enough mechanical/world support to find a way out, but live life on the edge, you'll fall off sooner or later.  And "sooner" happens just enough that everyone is reminded of this fact.  Furthermore, it's explicit at the table.  This is the way we play.  A new player usually gets a few sessions where the group picks something a little on the weak sauce side so that the beginner can recover from mistakes more easily, but after that it's back to "tangle with it if you've researched and scouted enough to think you can handle it," or go in blind and maybe not come out.

I figure that I pulled enough punches on the setup and rules selections to cover anything that needs covering for a casual, B game.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981976I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

That's it for me in a nutshell...

Cool getting hacked to death while trying to prevent the entities entry to our world. Especially, as DG is a very dangerous game.

But drowning with a bit of bad luck would feel very unsatisfying. In that case, I'd have him be allowed to have another attempt to grab the boat, rope or whatever.

Quote from: AsenRG;981979Weird, because I've never had that. And I ran a campaign for what would be years of gametime to other groups, meaning we played every day for hours for over a year of real time:D!
And it was one of my highest bodycount campaigns;). A lot of them were due to the Irish Sorceress, which had little combat training and skill. Normally, she'd lose most fights...
But never when she picked a telescopic baton. Don't ask me why, her dice always seemed to explode when she did that, no relevant Edges:).
Once, she killed a werewolf-type with a swing of said weapon. The thing mauled her, she soaked most of it and made her Spirit roll to become unstuck and act.
Then her dice exploded and dealt it over 30 points of damage in one go. I blew all my bennies on trying to soak it up, and the best I got was that the Werewolf had 4 wounds:p.
He wasn't even the first named enemy to meet this fate;).

At the end of the campaign, there was a group that tried very hard to steal her telescopic baton, reasoning it should be just some artifact (they had researched her magic school and concluded it wasn't her skills that were responsible). When they did, she bought another, and waved it off as a "I still wonder what those guys wanted, but if they don't appear again, they can keep it". Of course, they never appeared again, since they were too busy trying to attune to the artefact;).

Ha ha... Sounds like you guys had a blast! :) Exploding dice can give you some wondrous results. ;)

Well as Peterson said above, if it isnt critical why roll in the first place? I find that thinking a little too far down the 'narrative' approach for me - wherein the game sort of goes along as everyone likes until something "important" happens and then we roll. I like the idea that the guy might have trouble and require rescue during the swim, or maybe get caught in the current and pulled down stream, or even miss the boat entirely and get left behind to find his way. Dying though? I find some sort of mechanism to temper really bad luck handy.

Quote from: Skarg;981980With a dangerous tactical combat system, players who learn tactics and to take risks seriously can use caution, scouting, information, examining opponents to assess the threat they pose, strength in numbers, tactical movement, taking cover, ambush, retreating, fleeing, using terrain, etc etc etc to get good odds of survival, with no fudging required, except perhaps restraint in terms of how nasty the GM has the enemies be.

That's true... if you've got sensible players that are willing to learn the rules that's a great help indeed. Most of the people I play with are. 'Ah! Rob, sure you figure it out for us'. I think I'm getting soft in my old age.

Quote from: jeff37923;981829Actually, if you are any kind of gamer, human opponents are more interesting.

I find the AI at the University of Alberta a very interesting opponent at headsup limit holdem. I haven't beaten the damn thing in eight months.

Quote from: K Peterson;981981Depends on circumstances, IMO. If the swim-attempt is occurring during rough weather... or in extremely choppy water... or in the fricken ocean to reach the boat, then the chance plausibly exists that a character could fail and drown. And the player should be aware of the risk and make the decision on whether they want to face it, and possibly lose their character. And there has potentially already been a 'dramatic' event that has occurred to place the character in this swim-and-reach-the-boat-or-die situation. And that might have been damned exciting.

If it's a mundane situation, with little chance of risk, then why are you, as a GM, calling for a swimming roll in the first place? That seems like stupid-adjudication to me. IMO, call for skill rolls when shit matters; when the outcome is practically random, and skill and physical ability impact it; when real risk and danger exist. Not with every action the character takes, especially if it's something with a lot of assured success.

If you don't want critical failures to "unfairly" risk a players life, then either don't use a system that has critical failures. Or leverage hero/fate points to provide players with an OOC mechanic to protect them from fate, by allowing skill rerolls. There are a lot of options out there.

Okay, when you put it like that... :) It sounds a lot better. Because you're now telling us that it's a pretty dramatic scene.

I agree... I never really call for mundane rolls myself. So, when I want somoene to roll it will always have a dramatic effect on the game.

But back to the boat's example. However, even if they failed their first roll, I'd still give them a second chance to make another. Especially if the player was trying something to help him accomplish it. But having them continuously rolling until they managed to get aboard or whatever would break the game for me. So, basically I'm okay with giving them a second chance.  

I think a second chance can also heighten the drama if done in a 'relatively' believable manner.

For example, in our WFRP Enemy Within campaign. One of the main characters fell through a rotten bridge on the way to a chaos infested old castle. He had no fate points left. I gave him a roll to see of he could grab part of the floor as he fell through. He failed it... So that's pretty much death right there. All the players were on tenterhooks! But becase the bridge was originally used to trasport goods up to the castle I said it had plenty of rusty chains hanging from the structure (from the winch, etc). So, I gave him a second chance to grab it. He managed it was was pulled to safety. He was delighted... And the whole group sighed with relief. So did I as he was the main fighter and they would have failed the second part of that compaing if he'd have perished.

Quote from: The Exploited.;982004That's true... if you've got sensible players that are willing to learn the rules that's a great help indeed. Most of the people I play with are. 'Ah! Rob, sure you figure it out for us'. I think I'm getting soft in my old age.

God isnt that the truth. My player pool has pretty much dried up in the past few years as new players rarely even want to read the rules. I have no time or patience for that. Id rather play solo.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981976I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

Don't ask for a roll where there is a possibility of critical failure if in your mind as DM there shouldn't be the possibility of critical failure.  Why is the character rolling to swim to the boat in the first place?  It's just swimming to a boat.

Quote from: rgrove0172;982001Well as Peterson said above, if it isnt critical why roll in the first place? I find that thinking a little too far down the 'narrative' approach for me - wherein the game sort of goes along as everyone likes something "important" happens and then we roll. I like the idea that the guy might have trouble and require rescue during the swim, or maybe get caught in the current and pulled down stream, or even miss the boat entirely and get left behind to find his way. Dying though? I find some sort of mechanism to temper really bad luck handy.

I guess it depends on how much you want bad luck to pop up during your game. To be honest, having bad luck is one of my favorite parts of an RPG. Player failure often creates a more interesting game. :) So I'm well up for consequences as you mentioned but death for a petty fail not so much.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981999But drowning with a bit of bad luck would feel very unsatisfying. In that case, I'd have him be allowed to have another attempt to grab the boat, rope or whatever.

And, what would have happened had the character failed the second attempt? Would you throw the player another bone to avoid death?

Quote from: rgrove0172;982001Well as Peterson said above, if it isnt critical why roll in the first place? I find that thinking a little too far down the 'narrative' approach for me - wherein the game sort of goes along as everyone likes until something "important" happens and then we roll. I like the idea that the guy might have trouble and require rescue during the swim, or maybe get caught in the current and pulled down stream, or even miss the boat entirely and get left behind to find his way. Dying though? I find some sort of mechanism to temper really bad luck handy.

I think that's the first time I've been accused of taking a "narrative approach". :)
You might be reading into my playstyle a little differently than how I actually run games. Maybe it didn't come across in my post. I like involving a lot of risk and danger in my campaigns; they're not cakewalks of mutual agreement with a few highlights of importance.

What you're describing are circumstances of failure, that are more than just binary pass/fail. Which is easy enough to adjudicate if you want, based on degree of failure or just GM-whim. And your failures seem very incidental and inconvenient rather than involving risk - even the ultimate risk. Fine, it's your playstyle to present inconvenient failures. (Ironically, I find that to be a very narrative approach. Maybe protagonism, or script-immunity, or whatever).

Quote from: K Peterson;982025And, what would have happened had the character failed the second attempt? Would you throw the player another bone to avoid death?


I think that's the first time I've been accused of taking a "narrative approach". :)
You might be reading into my playstyle a little differently than how I actually run games. Maybe it didn't come across in my post. I like involving a lot of risk and danger in my campaigns; they're not cakewalks of mutual agreement with a few highlights of importance.

What you're describing are circumstances of failure, that are more than just binary pass/fail. Which is easy enough to adjudicate if you want, based on degree of failure or just GM-whim. And your failures seem very incidental and inconvenient rather than involving risk - even the ultimate risk. Fine, it's your playstyle to present inconvenient failures. (Ironically, I find that to be a very narrative approach. Maybe protagonism, or script-immunity, or whatever).

Apologies, I probably just misread or misinterpreted your comment. Obviously many actions take place without die rolls in the game and each GM has a different opinion of what needs to be rolled for and what doesnt. Ill admit the results of some are more or less dramatic than others... interpreting the results are strictly my responsibility as GM and I vary them as I see appropriate. Death is typically only an option when its clear it was a possible outcome and the players took the risk.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981973My movie analogy was perhaps a bit of a blunt weapon to use.

It makes sense to me. If the game's" premise the single PC (Mr. Anderson) finds out the truth of the world, blah blah, becomes the One,fights to free humanity having him die by being hit by a random cab  because his player chose to jaywalk and rolled poorly kinda sucks while losing a battle against Agent Jones is more entertaining (MMV). I think most movies and novels with that kind of Gotcha twist aren't very good.

The game isn't necessarily "You're a dude in the Matrix, interesting things might happen to you." for everyone. Different strokes and all.

Quote from: Bren;981931Not really. All that would do is show us that the guy they were calling Neo wasn't really the chosen one. After all in the film they didn't know that he was Neo until after he demonstrated that he had kool powerz.

This.

Quote from: Skarg;981972Only if the directors were so attached to their pre-conceived story that they failed to think of anything else interesting to have happen in their world after that.

On the other hand, if they had a fuller grasp of what's possible, they could develop the story with other characters after Neo turned out not to be The One and got squished. Maybe Cleo is The One, or Theo... Or maybe their annoying repetitive theory about The One is wrong - that could lead to more interesting things, too.

And bloody this.

And ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, "Games are not movies."

Quote from: The Exploited.;981999That's it for me in a nutshell...

Cool getting hacked to death while trying to prevent the entities entry to our world. Especially, as DG is a very dangerous game.

But drowning with a bit of bad luck would feel very unsatisfying. In that case, I'd have him be allowed to have another attempt to grab the boat, rope or whatever.

One of my rules of thumb for more heroic, cinematic game is "One failure won't kill you." It might put you in a worse position, cost you something or some other consequence but it generally won't kill your PC. And if it will I'll tell the player before they make the attempt. There's usually more interesting consequences than death, IMO.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981976I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

Like happened to Sir John Chandos' senior squire in Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, you mean?

Or, once again, the main character is Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seven Geases?"  

"But at this point the web gave way beneath him. He caught wildly at the broken, dangling strands, but could not arrest his fall. With several pieces of Atlach-Nacha's weaving clutched in his fingers, he was precipitated into that gulf which no one had ever voluntarily tried to plumb.

This, unfortunately, was a contingency that had not been provided against by the terms of the seventh geas."

Quote from: rgrove0172;982017God isnt that the truth. My player pool has pretty much dried up in the past few years as new players rarely even want to read the rules. I have no time or patience for that. Id rather play solo.

Send them to me.

"Just tell me what you want to do.  Don't worry about the fucking rules."

Quote from: Nexus;982033iIt makes sense to me. I got  If the game's" premise the single PC (Mr. Anderson) finds out the truth of the world, blah blah, becomes the One,fights to free humanity having him die by being hit by a random cab  because his player chose to jaywalk and rolled poorly kinda sucks while losing a battle against Agent Jones is more entertaining (MMV). I think most movies and novels with that kind of Gotcha twist aren't very good.

The game isn't necessarily "You're a dude in the Matrix, interesting things might happen to you." for everyone. Different strokes and all.

yr sort of missing the point.  

First, using movie and literary analogies in relation to rpgs is (for myself of course) a mistake right from the get-go.  They are different mediums and they work well for different sorts of narratives.  Inspiration from movies and novels/stories is fine, but worrying about the action in an rpg "playing out" the way the story in some movie does is (again, for me) a fools game.  

But lets roll with it.  So ok, Neo get's run over by a taxi cab.  What happens?  In a meta sense, the Wachowski Bro's probably have a different character who will be the protagonist of their story right?  Because authors don't set out with an idea in mind, then imagine a major character gets killed accidentally and thus shelve their idea, right?  That would be borderline insane...lol.  But even in the movie's "world," it doesn't mean the end of the story.  I mean the mythology of The Matrix tells us that prior to Neo, there has already been several potential candidates for the title of "The One" who have presumably failed to pan out...so in other words there actually may have been a Neo (or a Geo or a Leo) who got hit by a cab crossing the road, lol.  Since the prophecy tells us that "The One" will undo The Matrix, then obviously anyone who gets crushed by a cab prior to doing so can't have been "The One."  So in rpg terms, if your character named Neo slips on a banana peel and dies, time to roll up a new "Potential One."  :D

Now, the problem some of you have is that you want to roll up a character, have that character be "The One," and not ever have to roll up another.  That, or you want to ensure that if you're character does have to bite it, the death at least meets some suitable degree of dramatic gravitas.  I don't have that concern.  Actually, I also don't have any desire to play in games where my character is any kind of "The One" character.  If I signed up for a game of D&D and when I showed up for the game the DM said "OK, here's the plan.  There's a big bad evil in the world and your character is The One that is destined to destroy that big bad evil." I would say "thanks, but that isn't the game I'm really looking for.  Have fun though."  But that's me...  :D

Quote from: rgrove0172;981976I dont think anyone would disagree under those kind of heroic circumstances but when your character rolls a critical failure while swimming to the boat they were a little late in catching and drowns, its a different feeling entirely.

But that doesn't make it bad for them to feel that.

In the "they were late to the boat" scenario, why roll the dice unless you want them to have a chance to fail (and fail means "drown" in your example)?

Look at it this way, if you don't want players to fail a particular attempt, don't roll the dice. Just tell them they succeed without the illusion of meaningless die rolls.

If you don't want players to die, don't put them in situations where they can die.

The "I don't want people to be disappointed" motivation is, upon reflection, a poor excuse to mislead players as to how you run a game. It makes the worst assumptions about the personal character of your players and ones own integrity.

Regarding the talk of banal deaths to falling off a ledge or drowning in a creek or whatever, and when to call for a roll or not, reminds me of some podcast I was listening to recently (Drink Spin Run or Save Or Die I imagine).  One of the hosts said he picked up an old scout's handbook and looked through at the stuff that 12 year old kids were expected to know of wilderness survival, and essentially assumes that level of competency for the adventurers.  Taking that mindset, I think you'll find the need to call for rolls against banal death a lot less frequently.  It's usually when circumstances add to the inherent risk of the situation that things get dicey, and then most of the time I think you'll find that those deaths that occur are less banal.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;982047yr sort of missing the point.  

First, using movie and literary analogies in relation to rpgs is (for myself of course) a mistake right from the get-go.

Not to my perspective, I view rpgs as highly interactive movies more than virtual worlds. I used to lean more towards the former, found it wasn't enjoyable and required to much work for too little fun. If there is one PC then obviously (IMO) he is the one and having him die a pointless death 20 minutes into the first session isn't enjoyable even if might logical from "cold, mechanistic universe" standpoint.* I mean there are allot of simple meaningless things that can potentially kill you in the real world but most gms don't have characters make "walking down the stairs" checks. So it seems more a matter of where you draw the line and what consequences.

*Unless the genre/mood I want to strike is a cold mechanistic universe that doesn't give a damn.

Quote from: Nexus;982057Not to my perspective, I view rpgs as highly interactive movies more than virtual worlds. I used to lean more towards the former, found it wasn't enjoyable and required to much work for too little fun. If there is one PC then obviously (IMO) he is the one and having him die a pointless death 20 minutes into the first session isn't enjoyable even if might logical from "cold, mechanistic universe" standpoint.* I mean there are allot of simple meaningless things that can potentially kill you in the real world but most gms don't have characters make "walking down the stairs" checks. So it seems more a matter of where you draw the line and what consequences.

*Unless the genre/mood I want to strike is a cold mechanistic universe that doesn't give a damn.

Well, like I said I don't even want to play in a game where my character is "The One."  For me, playing the character who is The One destined to get to the end of the story is pointless...I mean if I'm the One and I'm getting to the end, then where's the "game?"  What are we bothering to pretend there's any need to waste time with rules for?...just tell me the story.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;982065Well, like I said I don't even want to play in a game where my character is "The One."  For me, playing the character who is The One destined to get to the end of the story is pointless...I mean if I'm the One and I'm getting to the end, then where's the "game?"  What are we bothering to pretend there's any need to waste time with rules for?...just tell me the story.

Whereas I'm much more likely to simply get bored with "being The One."  How many times can we throw Sorhead's Doohickey of Doom into the Zazu Pitts of Fordor?

Quote from: Nexus;982043One of my rules of thumb for more heroic, cinematic game is "One failure won't kill you." It might put you in a worse position, cost you something or some other consequence but it generally won't kill your PC. And if it will I'll tell the player before they make the attempt. There's usually more interesting consequences than death, IMO.

That sounds not a million miles away from what I was doing as well.
 
Death is a lot more boring that lots of interesting failures and consequences by driving the plot forward. I think it was Jim Butcher who said about his writing (and I'm paraphrasing): You fail but... Or you succeed but... I think it's very applicable to RPGs as well.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;982065Well, like I said I don't even want to play in a game where my character is "The One."  For me, playing the character who is The One destined to get to the end of the story is pointless...I mean if I'm the One and I'm getting to the end, then where's the "game?"  What are we bothering to pretend there's any need to waste time with rules for?...just tell me the story.

I don't think the movie analogy that I used was all that refined especially involving the matrix as it's being interpreted a bit too literally. I don' think anyone really wants to play 'the one' an invulnerable hero who just can't lose. I was only using it to talk about mundane kills being a bit pointless (to me at any rate). Although, I did say somthing similar before in another post but you might have missed it.

But let us assume if you were to play something like Savage Worlds's 'Slipstream', where the heroes can't actually die, because it's played in the style of the old Flash Gordon TV show. There is still plenty of room for epic failures. So, while you might not die per se you could certainly fail the campaign or adventure.

Quote from: The Exploited.;982079But let us assume if you were to play something like Savage Worlds's 'Slipstream', where the heroes can't actually die...

It says they can die, if a villain takes time out to do a finishing-movie action. Which mine would. :D

I find an occasional "mundane" death more dramatic than the supposedly dramatic deaths.  That is, if I bored you with the story of that time the rogue got shredded by a random owl bear because she decided to try to solo it for a round while the rest of the party awakened, it would sound mundane.  It wasn't to the players at the table at the time.  It was intensely dramatic, both in why it happened and how they dealt with it.  Oh, and the player really enjoyed her replacement character, who was a more warrior type, because she wanted to play the kind of character that would tangle with an owl bear directly. :)

My fav death of all time was of my own making in a 13th Age game. I had an elf ranger, 2-h sword. Charged a demon woman in an underground passage, missed and lodged her sword in the doorframe (fumble). Demon woman was next up in initiative order. Critical! Ah! We were using the Paizo crit deck... Decapitated! Jesus christ, damn demon just ripped my poor ranger's head straight off with her inhuman claws while the elf vainly struggled to pull her sword free (failed the save vs decapitation, whatever it was, I forget now). Ahh memories.

Quote from: S'mon;982089It says they can die if a villain takes time out to do a finishing-movie action. Which mine would. :D

Okay... I forgot about that! It's a long time since I read it.

But it's kind of a given that they will very nearly die as opposed to an actual character death - Thus leaving the PC with a dramatic cliff hanger, but only to be saved by 'insert inplausable reason here' at the next session. So you can technically kill them off should you want to. :)

Quote from: Psikerlord;982105My fav death of all time was of my own making in a 13th Age game. I had an elf ranger, 2-h sword. Charged a demon woman in an underground passage, missed and lodged her sword in the doorframe (fumble). Demon woman was next up in initiative order. Critical! Ah! We were using the Paizo crit deck... Decapitated! Jesus christ, damn demon just ripped my poor ranger's head straight off with her inhuman claws while the elf vainly struggled to pull her sword free (failed the save vs decapitation, whatever it was, I forget now). Ahh memories.

Good times! And it wasn't a just brown bear!

In college I had a reputation as a "Killer DM" despite almost never killing a PC.

I don't enjoy killing player characters, but if it happens, it happens.

Sometimes the dice go against the players, sometimes they go for them. I watched a first level thief roll beneath an owl bear, I expected sudden death! Instead I rolled a succession of to hit rolls, none of which were above "5". Not only did the thief live, he managed to kill the owlbear with a little help from his friends.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;982092I find an occasional "mundane" death more dramatic than the supposedly dramatic deaths.  That is, if I bored you with the story of that time the rogue got shredded by a random owl bear because she decided to try to solo it for a round while the rest of the party awakened, it would sound mundane.  It wasn't to the players at the table at the time.  It was intensely dramatic, both in why it happened and how they dealt with it.  Oh, and the player really enjoyed her replacement character, who was a more warrior type, because she wanted to play the kind of character that would tangle with an owl bear directly. :)

Well, you hit the nail on the head... The players and you thought it was anything but mundane. So ergo the characters death was justified... Plus, the PC was happy with the new character. So, all went well according to the group's playstyle.

My last character death was in an online game of Symbaroum (my first ever). I moaned about it before on this forum (for a different topic). But our characters essentially got to the big bad which was a troll who was trying to awaken some kind of dark entitiy. With a few elves thrown in to boot. Incidentally, Elves in Symbaroum are fooking nasty. Long story short it ended up in a TPK.

While I thought it was a somewhat pointless game overall (because I'm not mad about TPKs). Plus, I felt that we never really had a chance to win the encounter. At least we got to the end and my character died trying to save the land so to speak. So, I was okay with that...

But I would have been bummed out if it was in the first hour of the adventure, where we had to cross a frozen lake. If I had died because I failed my agility roll (which we all had to make). I reckon whoever failed it was a goner (just judging by the GMs style).

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;982065Well, like I said I don't even want to play in a game where my character is "The One."  For me, playing the character who is The One destined to get to the end of the story is pointless...

I think you misunderstand. "The One(s)" isn't going to inevitably but they are not some rando that's going trip and fall on his knife or get killed by random thug in some pointless battle. If they/them go down I want it to be something dramatic, interesting and suitable to the type of setting and mood I'm trying to create in the game. The PCs are the principle/only characters, they're the focus and will live in interesting times. Possibly die in them too.

And there are worse ways to fail than dying.

I suppose I were trying to emulate a GoT (or what people think its like) I'd be open to some random death. True survival thrives on the concept "almost anyone can die at any time"' as another examples where a more hard line approach would be fitting but its not my usual cuppa.

Quote from: Nexus;982125I think you misunderstand. "The One(s)" isn't going to inevitably but they are not some rando that's going trip and fall on his knife or get killed by random thug in some pointless battle. If they/them go down I want it to be something dramatic, interesting and suitable to the type of setting and mood I'm trying to create in the game. The PCs are the principle/only characters, they're the focus and will live in interesting times. Possibly die in them too...

If it's a pointless battle, why have it?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;982092I find an occasional "mundane" death more dramatic than the supposedly dramatic deaths.  That is, if I bored you with the story of that time the rogue got shredded by a random owl bear because she decided to try to solo it for a round while the rest of the party awakened, it would sound mundane.  It wasn't to the players at the table at the time.  It was intensely dramatic, both in why it happened and how they dealt with it.  Oh, and the player really enjoyed her replacement character, who was a more warrior type, because she wanted to play the kind of character that would tangle with an owl bear directly. :)

Sacrificing your life to save your friends from a monster wouldn't be mundane, IMO. Mundane is relative and dramatic is often a matter of context and subjective.

Quote from: Nexus;982128Sacrificing your life to save your friends from a monster wouldn't be mundane, IMO. Mundane is relative and dramatic is often a matter of context and subjective.

Sure, but that isn't what she was doing.  She was thinking, roughly, "I'll take my chances with a random monster on night watch, how bad could it hit me in one round?  If it mauls me, I'll back out, and the cleric will be awake by then."  Instead, one claw, claw, rend later, pushing max damage, she was a bloody heap, with the party scrambling for weapons, the cleric still not awake, it was dark--and the hungry owl bear drug her off into the woods. She actually officially died while it was dragging her.  

We talked about it afterwards.  I said as a rogue if she wanted to save the group, she could have tried to distract it, or lead it off, or almost anything except charge straight in.  Also, the group had gotten sloppy on setting up their camp, having guards, having options and plans for dealing with situations, and so forth.  One more person on watch with her (in a group of 9 players, no less), and she probably lives.  That's when she decided she wanted to play the kind of character that smashed things as her first instinct.

When most people mean "mundane, undramatic death," the first example they usually pull is a few unlucky rolls from a random critter.  Whereas, I think this was dramatic to the players in part because someone getting shredded so fast by a random critter was an eye opener about how I wasn't pulling  punches.  That is the context that made it dramatic, which is exactly the context that several people have been saying in this topic is part of letting the players reap what they sow.  

BTW, we had three other deaths in that campaign.  The next two were from traps, and in both cases there was plenty of warning, and the players got careless at a bad time.  (Other times, they got careless and got away with it.)  The last death was a knock-down, drag out, running fight over several hours, with some pauses, with a white dragon.  The players were sure it was a TPK about to happen.  They brought their A game that time.  When the dragon retreated (almost dead) to its lair to heal up, they had a quick conference, and decided that despite being almost dead themselves, and dragging the corpse of a friend with them, if they didn't go after it, it would heal faster than they would, and come after them again.  That was heroic.  A group that hadn't learned the hard way from the three previous deaths might have gone after the dragon, but it wouldn't have been as dramatic. :)

My old group had three of us that rotated as DMs over a couple of decades. I don't think any of us ever liked killing characters, and usually if they died it was because of gross stupidity. One way we handled it was a house rule that anyone can decide to pull a punch, even if it should have been a killing blow. This was mostly because of me, my main character over the years was a monk who preferred not to kill, unless it was pretty certain that whatever she was fighting was going to be a clear and imminent danger the moment it regained consciousness. This filtered over to DMs. It became a fun thing because villains like to do things like capture heroes, and then put them in inescapable death traps which the thief quickly finds a way out of. :D And sometimes they even gloated or soliloquized. It was done for the fun of it because players get bored of the same old thing.

This is where the Menzter Monster Reaction table came in handy. We used that thing for everything. It was the Frank's Red Hot Sauce of tables. I know you are supposed to use it for initial monster reactions but it became such a useful thing for diplomacy, bluffing, or even cavorting. It started with one DM, and then we were all using it. This is because a lot of our games ended up being kingdom building as well as trade and commerce. I mean, imagine a group of halflings in the Underdark walking up to a group of Drow and instead of combat, they pull the tarp off of the cart they are pulling miles underground, and reveal that they are traveling merchants whose nifty wagon of goods is but a sample of the wares the Drow could trade for if they play nice and cut a deal. In combat, diplomacy may be a little more aggressive. Having a conversation during a battle may not be realistic, but it is a staple of fiction in several genres.

Don't get me wrong, characters died. Stuff like pulling punches was mostly away to mitigate stupid deaths by an unlucky roll of the dice. Though that happened too, because in order to rationalize someone not dying when they should have, you have to have a good reason. Really though we called it on a case by case basis. Most of the time, there was no plot protection, but more like "Um... roll a percentage dice and let me know if you roll under a 10." In real life, people do miraculously survive things that should kill then so in a fantasy game that should be a possibility. Worse comes to worse, hopefully someone was around to bring them back to the Capital city and have them resurrected. Of course that meant they owed whatever Cleric saved them a favor. Oh yeah, that was a big one. There were some powerful PCs and NPCs, and PCs who became NPCs when they got powerful enough. So we could pull out someone who might be able to save a fallen character, but then that character is indebted to the NPC. That usually meant they had to do some job, which was an excuse to go on another adventure but often entailed a change of scenery, like going on a ship or traveling to another country or even plane. My aforementioned Monk character was great at heists and used some of her capers to finance an entire country that she was ordered to rule by an Elven Emperor. Well, he asked nicely but you weren't really going to say no. Anyway part of that was setting up a Monastery and Temple to her Goddess, which gave her quite a few Clerics to tap. So when running a game, I had a reason for healing and resurrection services to be available, which was deducted from the PC's pay. :D

This was great when players wanted to play characters with more evil alignments, because my Lawful Neutral champion of Meerclar will probably cut a bit more slack than my friend's Cleric/Assassin of Set. Keeping characters alive served a major purpose which was that it kept the game moving. Still, death and injury still happened.

Ah yeah injury, including serious and critical. This is another option if you want to avoid death. One of our DMs who was basically the main DM did this. Sometimes you are defeated in battle. Maybe you hung on by a thread if you rolled whatever roll (usually percentage dice) he wanted you to roll, or you were brought back but... You are hurt. Well, your character. This DM kept track of game time meticulously and was adamant about keeping his time flow. So he could determine that you were hurt instead of killed and then pretty much tell you how long your character was going to be hospitalized for. In sessions. Fortunately everyone had multiple characters plus extras in case a player needed one.

Now that was our main campaign, and one play style but hopefully relevant because that particular play style favored characters not dying if possible. It probably boils down to that. The other group I played with, if you died you died. The DM had no mercy, but his combat and mass combat was really really fun so no one cared. I had a blast playing Aliens powered by Phoenix Command, where no one expected to live, and the GM and most of the players were in some branch of the military so it felt more like a war game.

The important thing here when it comes to player character mortality or lack thereof is to try and find a common ground with your players. Most will favor survivability over lethality, though sometimes you have players who want to live dangerously. I personally like smaller groups from 3-6 players so I can try and tailor the experience for each of them. Preferably while keeping them in the same room. :D If a player wants a low risk game, then I don't question it, I give them a low risk game. If a player wants high lethality, then that is what I give them. If those two are both in the same party then I plan encounters accordingly, and hopefully keep them in the same room.

I have one yardstick for this. I don't want bored players. Period. If I am running a game, I want everyone to have fun. If you're not having fun then there is no reason to be there. So the best way to deal with this, survivability and lethality aside, is to find out what your player likes, what their character is good at, and make sure they have something to do. In my opinion the most fair way to do things is to know your player character's stats and arrange encounters that give them a fair shake. Of course there are exceptions for encounters which might be quite deadly but at the very least they should get some sort of warning.

If you really want to control the survivability to lethality ratio then my recommendation is to be conservative with encounters in order to gauge what they can handle. If you give them a minimal encounter and the player characters slice through it then arrange for reinforcements to arrive. Eventually you'll figure out what you can throw at characters based on how survivable you want your game to be.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;982149Sure, but that isn't what she was doing.  She was thinking, roughly, "I'll take my chances with a random monster on night watch, how bad could it hit me in one round?  If it mauls me, I'll back out, and the cleric will be awake by then."  Instead, one claw, claw, rend later, pushing max damage, she was a bloody heap, with the party scrambling for weapons, the cleric still not awake, it was dark--and the hungry owl bear drug her off into the woods. She actually officially died while it was dragging her.  

Speaking for myself,* drama is in the context and the results of the action. Facing down a homicidal monsters alone in defense of others is a pretty damn heroic action. The character was facing death vs a abominable monster even if she thought she might survive.  Heroism doesn't require certain death. It would have been a pretty awesome moment. Sometimes the dice help create drama, they're a tool like anything. But other times they spoil it. When that happens is up to the individual.

It would have been less so if it had been, for example,  a hungry stray dog she stumbled across and due to  lucky dice roll, it punctured her femoral artery and she bled out.

I don't really play D and D or in that style, so I'm perhaps I'm imaging the wrong context. And we're not usually thinking so mechanically oriented when we play so that's bias on my part. Also, I'm not trying to say you're wrong about how you view it. Sounds like everyone had a good time with it. That's really what matters.

Quote from: Nexus;982125...

I suppose I were trying to emulate a GoT (or what people think its like) I'd be open to some random death. True survival thrives on the concept "almost anyone can die at any time"' as another examples where a more hard line approach would be fitting but its not my usual cuppa.

Of course as you suggest the deaths in GoT are not random at all but carefully built towards and tragic (death of Ned, the Red Wedding) or full of bathos (Robert, Tywin).

Quote from: darthfozzywig;982126If it's a pointless battle, why have it?

Generally I don't. My games don't have random encounters (aside from random player instigated shennanigans :) ) But fights can have other impacts aside from dead PCs, loss of time, resources, diversion, etc. Sometimes fight scenes just liven things up or let the character show off a bit, like mook fights in other forms of entertainment. Someone can lose a fight without being killed.

And its not  just battles, its random pointless death like the hit by a cab and killed example earlier. If I couldn't think of some interesting consequence for it, I wouldn't bother to roll, just narrate the character dashing into traffic, maybe a near miss, blaring horn and the cabbie hurling some invective. If I did think it might have some meaningful and he blows the roll, the cab clips him, hurts him, weakening him later, or something is loss, etc. Depends on the situation.

Quote from: Nexus;982057...I mean there are allot of simple meaningless things that can potentially kill you in the real world but most gms don't have characters make "walking down the stairs" checks...

Speak for yourslef, I'm working on a Roland Barthes: RPG Degree Zero (http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/03/19/death_of_an_author) game as we speak. ;)

Quote from: Voros;982183Of course as you suggest the deaths in GoT are not random at all but carefully built towards and tragic (death of Ned, the Red Wedding) or full of bathos (Robert, Tywin).

Yep,  R.R. Martin has a rep has a Killer DM that's not entirely deserved. :D

Quote from: Voros;982185Speak for yourslef, I'm working on a Roland Barthes: RPG Degree Zero (http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/03/19/death_of_an_author) game as we speak. ;)

Never say never :D

Quote from: Voros;982183Of course as you suggest the deaths in GoT are not random at all but carefully built towards and tragic (death of Ned, the Red Wedding) or full of bathos (Robert, Tywin).

You would think that people would learn not to go to weddings.

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I remember one PC who got knocked into shallow water during a low-level combat, and didn't have any swimming skill, and the player was shocked to see their character suddenly starting to drown and taken out of the fight. He was rescued by his friends, but it was eye-opening to the players and also hilarious and memorable. If he'd actually died, I expect it would have been taken as even more hilarious and memorable by those particular players, who had a good sense of humor and were fascinated by what happened during play.

I remember a knight too who also got knocked into water - well, the sea, and went blub blub blub because he was in full chainmail. That was also an eye-opener for the newer players in that game, and it completely changed the situation the PCs were in, and was also taken as fun and funny by all.

I really appreciate the way using detailed and reality-based rules helps a lot in these cases, so these events aren't arbitrary GM rulings or even random crit results, and the drowning system matches reality pretty well and has mitigations built-in, as opposed to rules which seem arbitrary and severe such as roll one die and see if you die.

Reminds me of the 2e Ravenloft module (Ghost Ship?) where your ship gets boarded by ghoul pirates that paralyze their opponents and throw them overboard to drown. Had a party of eight characters and we lost three of them to that.

Quote from: Nexus;982184And its not  just battles, its random pointless death like the hit by a cab and killed example earlier. If I couldn't think of some interesting consequence for it, I wouldn't bother to roll, just narrate the character dashing into traffic, maybe a near miss, blaring horn and the cabbie hurling some invective. If I did think it might have some meaningful and he blows the roll, the cab clips him, hurts him, weakening him later, or something is loss, etc. Depends on the situation.

This is it mate... Being clipped by the cab and having consequences that could impact the story would be infinitely more interesting than, 'you die'.

If we keep that urban example going for a moment. If one was playing Spider-Man (or some such line swinging hero) and as he was swinging away high above New York, his line was suddenly cut by a villain. Let us say he failed a further opportunity (roll) to grab the usual flagpole and was, therefore, to plummet to his death. I think it would be far more interesting for him to smash into the side of a building rolling around the 35th floor like a rag doll.

Now he's pretty screwed up, maybe with a broken arm or bad limp. Maybe his web slingers are toasted (you get the idea). Now you got some cool extra drama for the next big fight. So because he 'failed' he's now paying with it through a setback. The player now has to come up with some asymmetrical tactic to win the fight.

The story is still driving forward now because he's not a pizza! You could easily apply something similar to a fantasy game. Just change the decor and props, etc.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;982149When most people mean "mundane, undramatic death," the first example they usually pull is a few unlucky rolls from a random critter.  Whereas, I think this was dramatic to the players in part because someone getting shredded so fast by a random critter was an eye opener about how I wasn't pulling  punches.  That is the context that made it dramatic, which is exactly the context that several people have been saying in this topic is part of letting the players reap what they sow.

Exactly.  I don't "enjoy" killing PCs, but the dice are the dice.  Keeping only one person on watch is simply foolish, and the world is not kind to fools.

Quote from: Krimson;982150This is where the Menzter Monster Reaction table came in handy. We used that thing for everything. It was the Frank's Red Hot Sauce of tables. I know you are supposed to use it for initial monster reactions but it became such a useful thing for diplomacy, bluffing, or even cavorting. It started with one DM, and then we were all using it.

OD&D has the same basic thing.

I frankly continue to be appalled at how many people never used any sort of monster reaction.  CHARISMA gets more page space in OD&D than any other attribute; just how fucking stupid are people, that they can't figure out the implications behind that?  (That, of course, is a well with no bottom)

Quote from: Nexus;982181Speaking for myself,* drama is in the context and the results of the action. Facing down a homicidal monsters alone in defense of others is a pretty damn heroic action. The character was facing death vs a abominable monster even if she thought she might survive.  Heroism doesn't require certain death. It would have been a pretty awesome moment

No.  No, it wouldn't.

You have 9 people.  Having only one on watch is simply stupid.  There is nothing heroic about being a dumbass.

To quote Goose in Top Gun, "The Department of Defense regrets to inform you that your sons have been killed because they were stupid."

Quote from: The Exploited.;982272This is it mate... Being clipped by the cab and having consequences that could impact the story would be infinitely more interesting than, 'you die'.

If we keep that urban example going for a moment. If one was playing Spider-Man (or some such line swinging hero) and as he was swinging away high above New York, his line was suddenly cut by a villain. Let us say he failed a further opportunity (roll) to grab the usual flagpole and was, therefore, to plummet to his death. I think it would be far more interesting for him to smash into the side of a building rolling around the 35th floor like a rag doll.

Now he's pretty screwed up, maybe with a broken arm or bad limp. Maybe his web slingers are toasted (you get the idea). Now you got some cool extra drama for the next big fight. So because he 'failed' he's now paying with it through a setback. The player now has to come up with some asymmetrical tactic to win the fight.

The story is still driving forward now because he's not a pizza! You could easily apply something similar to a fantasy game. Just change the decor and props, etc.

Yep and for me, it would be even more appropriate for a comic book game. Death is a rare visitor in comics. And even more rarely permanent guest. Spider-man is down, hurt and the villain(s) likely complete whatever scheme they were up and now the weakened protagonist needs to find them.

This thread is a good example of the extremely broad spectrum that gets lumped under "RPG".  Read closely the posts by Exploited and the ones by Zevious.  The default assumptions about what the game is and what it's about are in some cases almost mutually exclusive.  There's far more difference in what they are doing then say the differences between 5-card Stud or 5-card Draw, or even Texas Hold 'em.  Like any activity/hobby, we have loads of arcane jargon to define things in the RPG area, except one of the most fundamental, types of RPGs.

Anyway...:D

Back to the OP:
No one who's not an asshole likes killing PCs, but:

• Actions must have consequences for choices to have meaning, period.
• If you don't want to give players some form of narrative control through mechanics, then the dice are the dice - they giveth and they taketh away.
• Shit happens.  The smarter and more clever you are, shit happens less.

Hey story guys, Dicaprio finally got an Oscar because fighting a brown bear turned out to be somewhat less than banal. :D

Quote from: trechriron;981787I believe that RPGs without the threat of death turn into competency porn akin to a cartoon world where the toons constantly say "hold my beer" and then Do The Cool Things. It's cute for 2 hours in a movie where I was expecting to be wowed by Wushu god-like awesomeness AND where I was planning on dropping any expectations of reality. In an RPG? Not cool.
 
There are a TON of "setups" in RPGs. From farmers-turned-adventurers, to secret agents saving the universe, to unwitting-victims-turned-monsters, to "you wake up in a strange room..."  Despite the myriad possibilities, you MUST know you're going to play an RPG. You MUST have SOME clue there's likely to be SOME kind of shenanigans. You were not invited to play a boardgame, or a war game, or a card game, or hot swap an old-school RTS on your friends Commodore 128... You should be expecting SOME danger. You are supposed to feel a sense of anxiety about maybe dying because that is the point of danger. Something very bad might happen to you because you chose to embark on adventures where bad things can happen to people. You might also go mad, be kidnapped, have your body possessed by a ghost, or a long of list of Bad Shit. Because you can't find the lost sword of He-Man Awesome 5000 Lightning Power pulling weeds on your fucking farm!

You should shift your perspective. Let me give you an example of what I feel is a GOOD perspective;

Often times I read pop articles about actors I like. Some of them have taken on villainous roles where the character was controversially horrible. The horribleness was exacerbated by how fucking awesome the actor was. Sometimes, these portrayals are SO good, that random people on the street hate them. Of course, they don't actually hate the actor, but the performance was so excellent, they can no longer separate the two.

Some might argue that people shouldn't hate the good actor. Cool. But that's not the point. All these actors always say something to the tune of "I poured all my soul into that performance because I WANTED you to hate me. I WANTED that antagonist to be at least as well portrayed as the protagonist." The actor knew the potential blowback from being so good at being bad, but they did it anyways. They felt a responsibility to their craft, to the other performers, to the AUDIENCE that they put 1000% into it.

Your purpose as a GM is not to molly-coddle your players. You're not a fucking psychologist, nor are you a parent, nor are you really anyone's best friend. You are there to BRING IT so goddamned HARD that your players' heads spin. That they forget where they are. Who they are. All the bullshit outside, in life, in WHATEVER before they sat down at your table. Your JOB is to be EVERYTHING outside those characters. And you cannot POSSIBLY do that while trying to hold your players' hands. Im-fucking-possible.

If the world is some video-game alternate reality where you can hit "reset" and start back in town with all your shit, all healed and all OK, then it's not a fucking adventure. It's 6 people sitting around a table masturbating to each other's COOL STUFF on a piece of paper. No risk NO REWARD!!

By not BRINGING IT every time you sit down to GM your game you are essentially CORN-HOLING your players. You just fucked them. It's not about "oh poor me, my character died". It's about "OH SHIT, I charged in to save the day and I FUCKING DIED!!" Who do want to play with? What stories do you want to hear around the cheap table at the retirement home? You wanna listen to some ass-wipe cry about the character that died? Or perhaps instead you would like to be regaled a tale of death so fucking AMAZING you pop the first boner you've had in 20 years!?!?! Exactly.

You have a job. Stop pissing in your pants and fucking BRING IT!! If a player can't handle it, send 'em packing. There's likely some whiney Story Game nearby they can hold hands at.

(http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/orson_wells_Slow-Clap.gif)

You applaud such absurd tough guy rhetoric about a TTRPG?

I was killed and killed many an investigator in CoC, never thought that made me some manly man as some of the posts here ridiculously suggest. The overcompensation is so naked it is a bit embarrasing.

I've hung out in boxing gyms with less macho posturing.

Why is character death considered the only metric of failure?

Quote from: Voros;982288You applaud such absurd tough guy rhetoric about a TTRPG?

I was killed and killed many an investigator in CoC, never thought that made me some manly man as some of the posts here ridiculously suggest. The overcompensation is so naked it is a bit embarrasing.

I've hung out in boxing gyms with less macho posturing.

Look, we all know that Gronan, CRK and BV are part of the same 'try hard' crew.  They always come in with some sort of 'hardcore' BS about how their way is the 'right way', usually trying to couch in how it was done back in the day.  They're clearly out of touch and shouldn't be taken half as serious as they do.

Quote from: Voros;982288You applaud such absurd tough guy rhetoric about a TTRPG?

I was killed and killed many an investigator in CoC, never thought that made me some manly man as some of the posts here ridiculously suggest. The overcompensation is so naked it is a bit embarrasing.

I've hung out in boxing gyms with less macho posturing.

Oh please, get over yourself already.  You're the one bringing the manly crap into it, who's the one overcompensating?  The bombastic internet rant is a performance unto itself, but the points are sound.  Here it is rephrased in a way that maybe doesn't threaten you somehow.

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767Here's my secret sauce.

I have a reputation as a "Killer DM" and I boast of my merciless viking horns.

In actual play, most sessions pass without a PC death.

Why?

It's not me. I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

You don't get PC investigators to be deathly afraid of Hannibal Lector, or Bill the Butcher, or the Witch King, or Gallandro, or whoever if you don't bring the A game.  Sometimes that means trying to kill the PCs with everything at the NPCs disposal.  It's like several posters have said already, they don't want a GM who pulls punches, they want their PCs to earn their accomplishments.  

They want to be a hero because they survived, not survive because they are a "Hero".

Quote from: Voros;982288You applaud such absurd tough guy rhetoric about a TTRPG? ...

Yeah, yeah, but does it make my penis LOOK bigger?

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek mate. I can get a little excited and I also like to have a little fun. What I'm generally shooting for (in tone): We're in the GM's Green Room, shooting the shit about our games, and I stand up and make my Jester's Rant not only to get a couple chuckles but also to nudge you with my elbow and say "... you know what I'm saying?" I'm well aware there are lots of way doing things. I'm not here to try and catalog all of them; I'm here to share my opinions, experiences and approaches.

In other words, it's not about YOU Voros. It's about ME. Duh. (<-- poking fun again...)

Quote from: trechriron;982399Yeah, yeah, but does it make my penis LOOK bigger?

Ha! That was good, gotta give it you. :D

Quote from: trechriron;982399Yeah, yeah, but does it make my penis LOOK bigger?

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek mate. I can get a little excited and I also like to have a little fun. What I'm generally shooting for (in tone): We're in the GM's Green Room, shooting the shit about our games, and I stand up and make my Jester's Rant not only to get a couple chuckles but also to nudge you with my elbow and say "... you know what I'm saying?" I'm well aware there are lots of way doing things. I'm not here to try and catalog all of them; I'm here to share my opinions, experiences and approaches.

In other words, it's not about YOU Voros. It's about ME. Duh. (<-- poking fun again...)

The fact that CRK thought you were dead serious...  That's comedy gold.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;982412The fact that CRK thought you were dead serious...  That's comedy gold.

I do mean what I say, I just say it in over-the-top funny ways. I don't think GMs should pull punches. Also, I like CRK, were generic system enthusiasts.

Quote from: trechriron;982431I do mean what I say, I just say it in over-the-top funny ways. I don't think GMs should pull punches. Also, I like CRK, were generic system enthusiasts.

GURPs or Hero System, by any chance?

Quote from: CRKrueger;982283No one who's not an asshole likes killing PCs, but:

• Actions must have consequences for choices to have meaning, period.
• If you don't want to give players some form of narrative control through mechanics, then the dice are the dice - they giveth and they taketh away.
• Shit happens.  The smarter and more clever you are, shit happens less.

The thing is you're not wrong to be fair.

Point 1 - I think we all agree on this. It's how they are applied will probably delineate in game preferences. For me, I want to drive the story on and forward.

Point 2 - Totally... Again, I'd personally use the term narrative control more for a story game (working with a different framework or ruleset like fate or 'summit). For me, it's GM's Fiat for rules that may or may not have such mechanics. For example in WFRP fate points are endemic to the system (and you'll need them!). But in say, something like CoC, Symbaroum or OSR D&D there's no such mechanics per se. So, I'd be giving them a second chance to 'grab that rope' where possible (like in my hero example). You can certainly play the dice rule all. But then agian, that's player/GM's preferance. But there's nothing wrong with paying a very brutal game if that's what you're after.

Point 3 - It certainly does... Dumb players will live less time than smart ones. But this crosses over to the second point as well - The dies decisions are sacrocsanct. Unfortunately, this can screw the smartest player out of life. Which brings me back to my original statement. I don't like deaths that are banal. But as we've seen in this thread a lot of peope have different opinions an what banal actually means to them.

But there's technically no right or wrong way to play an RPG if people are enjoying themselves. It's finding the right balance for the right group that is the tricky part IMO.

Especially some of the games I've got coming up where I don't know the players at all. Which brings us to the other concept of discussing stuff with the group.

Ta!

Quote from: trechriron;982431I do mean what I say, I just say it in over-the-top funny ways. I don't think GMs should pull punches. Also, I like CRK, were generic system enthusiasts.

So you're another try hard.  Nevermind then.

Quote from: The Exploited.;982449The thing is you're not wrong to be fair.

Point 1 - I think we all agree on this. It's how they are applied will probably delineate in game preferences. For me, I want to drive the story on and forward.

Agreed. I don't think anyone has said "actions shouldn't have consequences" or "PCs can never fail" but that the consequences don't have to be death even if they might be in real life. Its up to the GM.

QuotePoint 2 - Totally... Again, I'd personally use the term narrative control more for a story game (working with a different framework or ruleset like fate or 'summit). For me, it's GM's Fiat for rules that may or may not have such mechanics. For example in WFRP fate points are endemic to the system (and you'll need them!). But in say, something like CoC, Symbaroum or OSR D&D there's no such mechanics per se. So, I'd be giving them a second chance to 'grab that rope' where possible (like in my hero example). You can certainly play the dice rule all. But then again, that's player/GM's preference. But there's nothing wrong with paying a very brutal game if that's what you're after.

As far as I'm concerned, I run the game not the dice. I decided when to use them and what those results might entail. They're a tool not the master. I base my choices on what I think will be fun for the players and myself. There's nothing wrong with a Let the Dice fall game. Its just not a play style that's proven satisfactory.

QuotePoint 3 - It certainly does... Dumb players will live less time than smart ones. But this crosses over to the second point as well - The dies decisions are sacrosanct. Unfortunately, this can screw the smartest player out of life.

This goes back to variable consequences, the set backs from making choices aren't limited to death. And AFAIK, player knowing its a rare option hasn't affected their enjoyment of my games. They keep coming back, asking me to run things and responding to my player calls.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;982452So you're another try hard.  Nevermind then.

I'm not a trechriron fan by any means, but he and CRK have made good points. Here, I will add another along those same lines.

If you want to promote a serious game that will bring the best out in your players then you need to have serious consequences to their character's actions, even if that results in character death. I had a player in a Traveller game who didn't take it seriously while everyone else at the table did. They rest of the group did not want to exclude this twatwaffle, so he had to shape up. What shaped him up was seeing the consequences for not only his character, but the entire group when he did something stupid for the lulz. Nobody had a problem with him after that because it was demonstrated to him that while it was a game, it simulated real life enough to know that the environment will react in accordance to his character's actions.

So yes, chalk up another vote for try hard, fuck-o.

Quote from: Nexus;982434GURPs or Hero System, by any chance?

I have played and loved both. I prefer GURPS 4e. Currently I'm working on my own generic system derived from several OGL sources.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;982452So you're another try hard.  Nevermind then.

I am not a dick when I gm. However, I also don' pull my punches. I play as a HUGE fan of both the players and the characters (as discussed in Apocalypse World, a GREAT game for GM advice!), I want them to succeed. I'm just not going to coddle them or fudge rolls to "help" them. The odds are equal for the NPCs/foes as it is for the characters.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982318Oh please, get over yourself already.

Seriously. Voros whines louder and longer than Michael Bolton's playlist.

Enough of this meta bullshit, already. Don't like it? Your EN World safe-space is thattaway ------------------------------> (http://www.enworld.org/)

Quote from: Spinachcat;981767. . . I create nasty worlds full of psycho-monsters and I roleplay them to the hilt.

It's my players. They can bring their D game to other tables. At my table, they know they MUST bring their A game to survive and succeed.

Thus I have set the expectation.

...and the players [to] rise meet the expectation.

...and we have a great time because success at my table is an achievement they earned.

Battles in our Boot Hill campaign are bloody brutal. There's no such thing as a straight-up fight: ambushes, running gun battles, guerrilla tactics - it's Wild West-fucking-Vietnam, which is to say, it's rather like the real gawdamn thing.

All of us are careful about throwing down. Impetuous fights and senseless risks will seal your fate, as a half-dozen player characters discovered. So far.

And that's with a gentlemen's agreement among us not to use dynamite or coal oil in town. Again, so far.

So you choose your battles carefully. You make friends who will have your back by having theirs.

And as a result, the player characters make themselves a part of the setting.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;982497And that's with a gentlemen's agreement among us not to use dynamite or coal oil in town. Again, so far.

Wimp.

The reason characters in Boot Hill smoke is so they can quickly light the fuse on one of the sticks of dynamite they stashed in the pocket of their duster.

And the light of the burning town illuminates my foes so I can pick them off at range with my handy Buffalo Rifle.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;982412The fact that CRK thought you were dead serious...  That's comedy gold.

Quote from: trechriron;982431I do mean what I say, I just say it in over-the-top funny ways. I don't think GMs should pull punches

Hence why I said "The bombastic internet rant is a performance unto itself, but the points are sound."  In other words, the clueless one, as always, is Brady.  What a goddamn shock.

QuoteSeriously. Voros whines louder and longer than Michael Bolton's playlist.

Whoa is it the 90s again? That Bolton reference is really cutting edge BV. Is that what was playing last time you left your house?

BV follows so closely behind me his nose is constantly up my ass. A bit uncomfortable but if he didn't have someone to take his alcoholic rages out on he'd have to eat the end of a shotgun as he is clearly friendless and a closet pillow fucker.

Quote from: S'mon;981782I think it's ok to GM like that as long as you're honest with the players, and don't try to pretend the game is much more (or less) dangerous than it really is.

Agreed. It is vital to be upfront and honest with your players about expectations.

I want to be surprised as a GM and that's why I roll with the dice results.

Quote from: jeff37923;981829Actually, if you are any kind of gamer, human opponents are more interesting.

Because you can't victory dance over a crying computer!

Quote from: rgrove0172;981833I get the attraction of the player confronting the challenges of the game directly, no holds barred, straight up and honest and letting the chips and PCs, lay where they fall but in my opinion it risks ruining a lot of work by the GM and possibly ending what would otherwise be a great campaign.

Never been an issue.

Used content always gets recycled somewhere.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982318You don't get PC investigators to be deathly afraid of Hannibal Lector, or Bill the Butcher, or the Witch King, or Gallandro, or whoever if you don't bring the A game.  

True.

Villains who only prey on NPCs are meaningless.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982318Sometimes that means trying to kill the PCs with everything at the NPCs disposal.  It's like several posters have said already, they don't want a GM who pulls punches, they want their PCs to earn their accomplishments.

It's amazing this is even a discussion. It's the very basics of board game, card game and minis gaming.

I was at our local playtest meetup today. One of the games was a mess. My friend's 11 year stepson won that game and immediately declared it worthless because the win wasn't based on him doing anything. He much preferred losing an earlier game because it was hard and required both skill and luck.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982318They want to be a hero because they survived, not survive because they are a "Hero".

Good quote!

Quote from: Spinachcat;982515It's amazing this is even a discussion. It's the very basics of board game, card game and minis gaming.

As well as the possibility of loss being necessary for the player to feel challenged, something I don't see discussed much is its importance for immersion. I can vicariously experience the emotions of my playing-piece PC a lot more easily if the threat of death he thinks he's facing is an actual risk of the PC being killed.  A GM who tells me "don't worry, I won't really kill your PC" gives a big gut punch to that sense of immersion, and turns the game into at best a collaborative story-creation exercise.
Now, the risk can be almost arbitrarily low. Green Berets taking on Afghan insurgents may have a huge tactical advantage, yet they're still going to fear death and injury. For a long term campaign the risk of death in any particular battle really ought to be low, unless combat is extremely rare. It just has to be a real risk.

Quote from: Nexus;982464Agreed. I don't think anyone has said "actions shouldn't have consequences" or "PCs can never fail" but that the consequences don't have to be death even if they might be in real life. Its up to the GM.



As far as I'm concerned, I run the game not the dice. I decided when to use them and what those results might entail. They're a tool not the master. I base my choices on what I think will be fun for the players and myself. There's nothing wrong with a Let the Dice fall game. Its just not a play style that's proven satisfactory.



This goes back to variable consequences, the set backs from making choices aren't limited to death. And AFAIK, player knowing its a rare option hasn't affected their enjoyment of my games. They keep coming back, asking me to run things and responding to my player calls.

Damn straight mate! :)

For some reason not wishing to kill off characters arbitrarily has been equated with your PCs being invulnerable and having plot immunity. Which has never been the case (I think that's been covered pretty well over this thread).

That's exactly the same for me... I run the game as a GM and I'm not a slave to the whim of the dice. That said if a group wants to play like that, where the die rules all, then that's cool. But it's just not for me...

And as you pointed out Nexus the proof is in the pudding... I mean, I've not had any complaints so far about any of my games, and the same people keep coming back. But I'd be fully open to criticism or willing to sit down and find out what a group wants to play. But so far we all seem to be on the same page.

Quote from: The Exploited.;982543For some reason not wishing to kill off characters arbitrarily has been equated with your PCs being invulnerable and having plot immunity. Which has never been the case.

Or that the only negative outcome that matters is death and every opponent and all opposition is always gunning to their utmost to kill the PCs in every situation. And I guess across all settings and genres.

Also, why I look at it, if I say that instead of being killed instantly, the PC is incapacitated by an attack that doesn't mean their attacker wasn't trying to kill them. It was my choice as a GM. If Hobgoblin cuts Spiderman's swing line and sends him plunging 30 stories, he was doing his best to kill him. Fate (me) intervened.

I've had entire games change course because of the PCs failing their objectives to the point their goals was unreachable or their focus had to shift dramatically. Though disappointed the resulting struggle and adaptation were fun, more so than just making up a new character would have been. Hasn't been for everyone nor did I expect it to be but that approach has granted the best results for me.

I think these conversations would be more productive if people acknowledged their preference without feeling compelled to piss on someone else's preference.

Quote from: Nexus;982554

Quote from: The Exploited.;982543For some reason not wishing to kill off characters arbitrarily has been equated with your PCs being invulnerable and having plot immunity. Which has never been the case (I think that's been covered pretty well over this thread).

Or that the only negative outcome that matters is death and every opponent and all opposition is always gunning to their utmost to kill the PCs in every situation. And I guess across all settings and genres.

I equate PCs who won't ever die with characters who aren't mortal. Literally.

That doesn't mean that there aren't other negative outcomes that may apply to that character. Trust me when I say that I understand there are other negative outcomes that may occur in play. But if death is not one of the possible negative  outcomes for a PC that means that one very important negative outcome that humans throughout the ages have feared and wrestled with has been taken off the table. And as a player of such an undying character I'm not going to be able to worry about whether or not my character is going to die when threatened. And I don't like that.

My sense is that there are other people who play RPGs who like not having to worry about the death of their PC when they play. Not wanting that worry doesn't make those people morally inferior, but it does mean that it's going to be difficult, even impossible for both of us to play in the same game and for us each to get what we want out of the experience.

Quote from: trechriron;982399Yeah, yeah, but does it make my penis LOOK bigger?

No, but it makes your butt look fat.  Sorry, but better I tell you now than let you wear that Friday night.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;982497There's no such thing as a straight-up fight: ambushes, running gun battles, guerrilla tactics - it's Wild West-fucking-Vietnam, which is to say, it's rather like the real gawdamn thing.

I helped playtest BH.  I remember talking about that with Gary, who said that as far as he could tell there were maybe two "gunfights" like on TV in the entire period.  He had about a two foot high stack of books, I remember.  And I think there was some TV show about the old west on... something about some character saying "He wired his trigger down and fanned the hammer, no wonder he couldn't hit anything."

Gary also told about one guy who was killed in the outhouse when the killer kicked the door open and blasted him with a shotgun.

"Fair play" is for chumps.

Quote from: Bren;982500Wimp.

It's a fair cop.

Quote from: Bren;982500The reason characters in Boot Hill smoke is so they can quickly light the fuse on one of the sticks of dynamite they stashed in the pocket of their duster.

And the light of the burning town illuminates my foes so I can pick them off at range with my handy Buffalo Rifle.

Truly, you would fit in well with our group.

Quote from: Bren;982500they can quickly light the fuse on one of the sticks of dynamite they stashed in the pocket of their duster.

I saw that movie.  I don't remember if it was originally named "Fistful of Dynamite" and renamed to "Duck, you sucker!" or vice versa.

Quote from: Voros;982514Whoa is it the 90s again? . . . Is that what was playing last time you left your house?

You can have my original vinyl pressing of Electric Youth when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. (Call me, Debbie! It's never too late for a second chance at love!)

Quote from: Voros;982514BV follows so closely behind me his nose is constantly up my ass.

Dude, your ass is in everyone's face, in every fucking thread.

I don't expect brilliance out of players, but I do expect a certain minimum competency.  I've noticed that an occasional character death reveals player mistakes to those same players, and they seldom make that mistake again.  Of course there are other failure option.  At times, those work better than death, other times not so much.  Depends on the campaign, the player, and the character.  Also, I've noticed in a long campaign that a few character deaths early tends to result in less character deaths overall.  I'd rather have a few mundane deaths early, than a TPK later due to coddled stupidity.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;983093Truly, you would fit in well with our group.

While we did have some fun with seeing how many average thugs the greased lightning gunfighter could take out at once, the Sharp's Buffalo Rifle was the favored weapon by most of us. The difficulty was finding a way to get the other guy to move out of cover so you could get a clean shot.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;983100I saw that movie.  I don't remember if it was originally named "Fistful of Dynamite" and renamed to "Duck, you sucker!" or vice versa.

I wasn't thinking of that one in particular, but its not like there was just one movie where someone tossed around dynamite while smoking a cigar.

Some of you are unbelievable. Why in the world would you view PC death or a TPK as a bad thing? By and large the vast majority of the time PCs die because they earned it, either through stupidity or over-confidence (stupidity). Rarely is it because the referee had a hot streak with the dice.  PC Death and TPK's are part of the game. I know many games either carefully balance things to remove all challenge from the game to ensure that the PCs never experience anything other than success or continually cheat (fudge die rolls) to keep PCs alive when they didn't earn it. I don't do that, actions have consequences.

One thing to remember about PC death is that - as a condition - it's often reversible.  A design ethos baked into D&D from the earliest days was that easily and permanently negating the previous effort of the player was a risk to discouraging further participation of the player.  

No game wishes to casually discourage further participation.

At lower levels death is more likely to be final, due to the logistics involved in the most common solution of clerical raise dead.  But even so, the game provided wishes and other get out of jail free cards.  An excessive drive by many DMs to make their games more gritty or realistic, or perhaps to reduce the likelihood of a DM having to adjudicate something completely unanticipated,  lowered the frequency of those items in many campaigns.  But even distributed in a frequency similar to the designers' games, a death that couldn't be reversed for whatever reason was most likely when PC investment was the lowest.

So death is most often sharp feedback encouraging the player to get better, focus on not over-extending themselves within the campaign, etc.  Less often, death is simply bad luck or the fate of the dice even when the player has positioned their PC very well.  I think that's a good mix of risk.  The player has influence over their character's risk profile, but not control of it.  

If a DM has a preferred arc to the current activities then all of this is disrupted, because now the DM is invested too.  That distorts everything.  It is up to the DM to fashion a new risk profile for the campaign other than the one presumed in design.  Whether this itself will encourage or discourage participation depends on the people involved.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983345I don't do that, actions have consequences.

Haven't we all established that though, several times now?

Quote from: Bren;983326While we did have some fun with seeing how many average thugs the greased lightning gunfighter could take out at once, the Sharp's Buffalo Rifle was the favored weapon by most of us. The difficulty was finding a way to get the other guy to move out of cover so you could get a clean shot.

Same here.  I once shot a fleeing bandit and it took three turns for the bullet to catch up to him.  I got him, though!

Quote from: The Exploited.;983357Haven't we all established that though, several times now?

That's no reason to stop arguing. ;)

Quote from: The Exploited.;983357Haven't we all established that though, several times now?

No, what we have established is that the majority does not think that the PCs should experience consequences for making bad decisions.

Quote from: EOTB;983352One thing to remember about PC death is that - as a condition - it's often reversible.  A design ethos baked into D&D from the earliest days was that easily and permanently negating the previous effort of the player was a risk to discouraging further participation of the player.  

No game wishes to casually discourage further participation.

At lower levels death is more likely to be final, due to the logistics involved in the most common solution of clerical raise dead.  But even so, the game provided wishes and other get out of jail free cards.  An excessive drive by many DMs to make their games more gritty or realistic, or perhaps to reduce the likelihood of a DM having to adjudicate something completely unanticipated,  lowered the frequency of those items in many campaigns.  But even distributed in a frequency similar to the designers' games, a death that couldn't be reversed for whatever reason was most likely when PC investment was the lowest.

These things all come into play, although my players rarely bring a PC back. They usually save that for bringing back dead children of they or their families.

Quote from: EOTB;983352So death is most often sharp feedback encouraging the player to get better, focus on not over-extending themselves within the campaign, etc.  Less often, death is simply bad luck or the fate of the dice even when the player has positioned their PC very well.  I think that's a good mix of risk.  The player has influence over their character's risk profile, but not control of it.  

Exactly! This is it.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983377No, what we have established is that the majority does not think that the PCs should experience consequences for making bad decisions.

Some people just don't take elf games as seriously as they should. :D

Quote from: Crimhthan;983377No, what we have established is that the majority does not think that the PCs should experience consequences for making bad decisions.

Are you reading a different thread than the rest of us?

Virtually everyone agrees there should be some consequences. Where there is some disagreement is when and if those consequences include the death of a PC.

I happen to prefer that death is one consequence. But just because there are people who disagree with me or who disagree with how often death should be a consequence I don't get confused into thinking that they don't want there to be any consequences at all. Why for some D&D players taking away all their shiny little magic items is a fate they consider worse than death.

Quote from: Krimson;983390Some people just don't take elf games as seriously as they should. :D

Exactly. Clearly you do though. I can tell because your avatar has a frowny, serious face. ;)

Quote from: Bren;983393Exactly. Clearly you do though. I can tell because your avatar has a frowny, serious face. ;)

I paid a semi-famous YouTuber good money to draw my original character. And yes, she doesn't smile very often. :D

Quote from: Crimhthan;983377No, what we have established is that the majority does not think that the PCs should experience consequences for making bad decisions.

Nope. Crossed wires me thinks.

Quote from: Bren;983393Are you reading a different thread than the rest of us?

Surely you must have noticed by now that his schtick is primarily to muddy the waters of any discussion going on.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;983418Surely you must have noticed by now that his schtick is primarily to muddy the waters of any discussion going on.

Sometimes I'm slow. I just thought he was incredibly obtuse.

Quote from: Krimson;983390Some people just don't take elf games as seriously as they should. :D

Hey if cheating floats their boat and makes them happy, then go for it.

Quote from: Bren;983393I happen to prefer that death is one consequence. But just because there are people who disagree with me or who disagree with how often death should be a consequence I don't get confused into thinking that they don't want there to be any consequences at all. Why for some D&D players taking away all their shiny little magic items is a fate they consider worse than death.

I don't think I could run a game where the goal is to think up new ways to destroy magic items, in order to take them away from players. Seems rather counter intuitive to the game. As a player instead of a ref, if you want to take my magic away, just kill me and I'll start fresh at first level, less hassle and avoids deus ex machina.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;983418Surely you must have noticed by now that his schtick is primarily to muddy the waters of any discussion going on.

Wow, you are getting really good at trotting that lie out, every time we disagree.

Quote from: The Exploited.;981667
Actually, I forgot to mention. I had joined a Sabbat game many years ago (it was my first and best introduction to VtM). The group were all really good mates and serious RPers. The notion of the GM killing off character was a total 'no go'. The PCs were so invested that if the GM had killed one of them off it would have resulted in blows being thrown at the table and mates probably never speaking to one and other again. I'd never seen anything like it. But it was the best campaign I've ever played to this day...

Death isn't the failure. Not solving the problem is the failure.

My players and I talked about how they wanted the game to run and they were basically invested in their characters, and didn't really want character deaths. They were interested in the role-playing aspect and rolling dice, and in killing monsters when needed.

So, the solution is to make problems that can't be solved by violence alone. Yes, my players slaughter lots of monsters, but the actual problem they're solving is creating peace between a goblin and orc tribe that are mistakenly at odds with each other. That's what they're having fun at--solving the problem, not the killing monsters. (Although they enjoy battles too.)

I wonder if this lack of concern of character death (either as in it won't happen, or knowing it is mandatory) is what makes story games attractive to some people? My players hate the idea of having narrative control, but they don't want to worry about character death, since that isn't what they are interested in. Fighting is just like any other skill to them, an obstacle that gives a chance to roll dice and to role-play.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983464I don't think I could run a game where the goal is to think up new ways to destroy magic items, in order to take them away from players. Seems rather counter intuitive to the game. As a player instead of a ref, if you want to take my magic away, just kill me and I'll start fresh at first level, less hassle and avoids deus ex machina.

First, I didn't say "destroy magic items." They might be taken away so that the NPCs can use them. Second I didn't say taking away magic items was the goal of the campaign. Its simply that the loss of magic items is a reasonable consequence of a game.

I find it interesting that you would be upset over the loss of your PC's magic items but not upset over the death of your PC. I guess we know which consequence really matters in the games you play and which are easily reversed with a readily available clerical spell. One thing I always find amusing in these discussions is the folks who say death must be something that can (and does) occur in play while at the same time they play in settings where spells like resurrection are readily available so that death is no more than a temporary inconvenience. Try playing without the safety net.

In my day ressurections costed one point of permanent CON, and when you were out you were dead foreverz! Get off my lawn! Time for my nap. :mad:

Quote from: Opaopajr;983500In my day ressurections costed one point of permanent CON, and when you were out you were dead foreverz! Get off my lawn! Time for my nap. :mad:

Ironically, that's one thing I would never allow in my game is a resurrection of any kind. I despise that concept... When you're dead you're dead. But that's just my personal preference.

Quote from: The Exploited.;983501Ironically, that's one thing I would never allow in my game is a resurrection of any kind. I despise that concept... When you're dead you're dead. But that's just my personal preference.

I don't care much for easy resurrection either, not for most settings/genres anyway.

Quote from: Nexus;983509I don't care much for easy resurrection either, not for most settings/genres anyway.

Just takes me out of the game... That really is plot immunity.

Quote from: Opaopajr;983500In my day ressurections costed one point of permanent CON, and when you were out you were dead foreverz! Get off my lawn! Time for my nap. :mad:

So average PCs could get 10 or more resurrections before they finally died the real death? I declare that you sir are a wannabe hipster storygamer. :D

Runequest 2 had a pretty good resurrection mechanic. You could get divine intervention to be resurrected (assuming you weren't an initiate of the Death God, he was older than old school and didn't allow any resurrections). But as an initiate you had to roll against your Power. Which is a stat, in the same way that Wisdom or Constitution in D&D is a stat and with about the same range. If you rolled less than your Power with a d100 you got resurrected but you permanently lost the amount of Power that you rolled on the d100. If you rolled over your Power you didn't didn't lose any Power. But you remained dead.

Runelords had it easier. They rolled 1d10 and lost that much Power and got resurrected. But since they needed to have POW 15 to be a Runelord getting resurrected could take away their important Cult status.

And a low Power sucked since that was the upper limit of your resistance to magical attack and your ability to attack others or to power other magic.

Quote from: The Exploited.;983501Ironically, that's one thing I would never allow in my game is a resurrection of any kind. I despise that concept... When you're dead you're dead. But that's just my personal preference.

If I were playing a fantasy game, mine too.

I don't mind resurrection as long as it isn't something that players do themselves easily or pay modest cost to get.  If getting resurrected breaks the bank or embroils the party in a quest they might not have taken otherwise, then we are back to other drawbacks besides dying.  And until you hit the upper end of the curve, there's always the problem that "raise dead" requires a body to be raised into.  Most of my permanent character deaths have been "too broke to afford such magic" or "when the critters eat you, that's it."  Plus, I also enjoy those occasions where the character is dead, and the rest of the players aren't sure if they can get the body back, and how many of them might die trying.  Puts another spin on the problem.

Well, when I was playing D&D and someone got killed, usually no one else was going to risk his life to drag the body to safety and then tote around a literal dead  weight looking for someone to resurrect it...assuming anyone could be found and we could afford it...we'd be more inclined to take his stuff if it was any good and we could get our mitts on it...and a few good laughs at the player as he rolled up his replacement...which we saw as an opportunity to try a new class if the  dice allowed, or else to bring in a long-lost cousin seeking revenge...and those are the occasions when the body wasn't burned to ashes, washed away in the rapids after plunging from a cliff, eaten by wild animals, or otherwise not in a condition to be saved...ah, good times.

Quote from: The Exploited.;983501Ironically, that's one thing I would never allow in my game is a resurrection of any kind. I despise that concept... When you're dead you're dead. But that's just my personal preference.

Were the characters dead when they reached 0 HP? Back when I ran D&D several DMs in the area made up "harder to die, no (or very, very rare) resurrection" rules that I thought made our campaigns better.  I have carried that over into my current system, which is high casualty/low fatality. It doesn't have to be. A GM could easily run a high-fatality campaign and my friend Andy does.

--------------
https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/

Quote from: Bren;983532So average PCs could get 10 or more resurrections before they finally died the real death? I declare that you sir are a wannabe hipster storygamer. :D

Not only can you not be raised more times than your CON, but there's a chance the Raise Dead will fail, based on your CON.  So even if you cough up the moolah for the Raise Dead and the Patriarch casts it, your friend may still be all dead.

Also, once we got a bit higher level we started adventuring solo.  No mates to carry back your dead ass!

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;983544I don't mind resurrection as long as it isn't something that players do themselves easily or pay modest cost to get.  If getting resurrected breaks the bank or embroils the party in a quest they might not have taken otherwise, then we are back to other drawbacks besides dying.  And until you hit the upper end of the curve, there's always the problem that "raise dead" requires a body to be raised into.  Most of my permanent character deaths have been "too broke to afford such magic" or "when the critters eat you, that's it."  Plus, I also enjoy those occasions where the character is dead, and the rest of the players aren't sure if they can get the body back, and how many of them might die trying.  Puts another spin on the problem.

Yeah resurrection is a powerful trope in fantasy. But it should be difficult and rare. As usual BtW has some of the best ideas around this.

Regardless, the point is that death is not inherently the biggest potential consequence. Even if death is hard or permanent, there's always the solution of rolling up 'Joe's brother, Joe2' and throwing him at the situation. Taking/ destroying magic items might matter, or not. 'Failure to achieve one's goals' is the most relevant consequence of poor decisions, and hopefully that occurs in all games (but more to my point, it occurs in the good games, and not in the bad, regardless of things like character death).

But, in the end, there's no 'easy answer.' Well made, challenging, and engaging campaigns are that way because they are well made, challenging and engaging, not because they include some specific stance on issues like 'GM is willing to kill PCs' or 'resurrection is hard to accomplish.'

Quote from: Willie the Duck;983621Regardless, the point is that death is not inherently the biggest potential consequence. Even if death is hard or permanent, there's always the solution of rolling up 'Joe's brother, Joe2' and throwing him at the situation. Taking/ destroying magic items might matter, or not. 'Failure to achieve one's goals' is the most relevant consequence of poor decisions, and hopefully that occurs in all games (but more to my point, it occurs in the good games, and not in the bad, regardless of things like character death).

But, in the end, there's no 'easy answer.' Well made, challenging, and engaging campaigns are that way because they are well made, challenging and engaging, not because they include some specific stance on issues like 'GM is willing to kill PCs' or 'resurrection is hard to accomplish.'

That's true, but to some people any game with a GM that is unwilling to kill PCs fails the test for "challenging".

Quote from: Dumarest;983549Well, when I was playing D&D and someone got killed, usually no one else was going to risk his life to drag the body to safety and then tote around a literal dead  weight looking for someone to resurrect it...assuming anyone could be found and we could afford it...we'd be more inclined to take his stuff if it was any good and we could get our mitts on it...and a few good laughs at the player as he rolled up his replacement...which we saw as an opportunity to try a new class if the  dice allowed, or else to bring in a long-lost cousin seeking revenge...and those are the occasions when the body wasn't burned to ashes, washed away in the rapids after plunging from a cliff, eaten by wild animals, or otherwise not in a condition to be saved...ah, good times.

Hah... Good point. Usually, there's not much to resurrect.

Quote from: Bren;983476First, I didn't say "destroy magic items." They might be taken away so that the NPCs can use them. Second I didn't say taking away magic items was the goal of the campaign. Its simply that the loss of magic items is a reasonable consequence of a game.

I find it interesting that you would be upset over the loss of your PC's magic items but not upset over the death of your PC. I guess we know which consequence really matters in the games you play and which are easily reversed with a readily available clerical spell. One thing I always find amusing in these discussions is the folks who say death must be something that can (and does) occur in play while at the same time they play in settings where spells like resurrection are readily available so that death is no more than a temporary inconvenience. Try playing without the safety net.

Another nice try at slandering me and my game and my players.  Your sick amusement is misplaced. We do play without a safety net and as I noted earlier in this thread my players rarely ever make use of those options(and those options are rare and hard to obtain IMC) and save those things for the family. See below quotes.

Back in post #212. I said

Quote from: Crimhthan;983380These things all come into play, although my players rarely bring a PC back. They usually save that for bringing back dead children of they or their families.

This was in response to

Quote from: EOTB;983352One thing to remember about PC death is that - as a condition - it's often reversible.  A design ethos baked into D&D from the earliest days was that easily and permanently negating the previous effort of the player was a risk to discouraging further participation of the player.  

No game wishes to casually discourage further participation.

But even distributed in a frequency similar to the designers' games, a death that couldn't be reversed for whatever reason was most likely when PC investment was the lowest.

He noted that bringing players back from the dead was built into the game. I noted that my players rarely ever do that, saving such things for their families. Out of over 450 TPK's over the last 43 years, no one from a TPK has ever been brought back and out of the original 9 players who each has had roughly 550-750 characters each, no more than 10 were ever brought back. I am slightly easier on the younger players (our children and grandchildren). My players are all Lawful in alignment and live by the the old adage women and children first. In the real world that has been the rule since the beginning of time, although it has been abandoned completely over the last 40 years by most of the world. Most of you likely haven't even heard of that concept. (I wonder if it would even occur to you to honor that adage even if you knew about it.)

So IMC PC death is part of the game and the players accept it and deal with it. They don't expect or rely on a never having to face death because it has been "written" out of the game.

My players recognize that honor requires that they not lose their hard won magic items (and treasure) and they only lose them, when monsters pry them from their cold dead fingers. They would never accept having those items removed arbitrarily, if your players are fine with you arbitrarily taking their magic items way, that is your game not mine.

My players recognize that those things are for their families and they hope to pass those items down to their sons and daughters.

Quote from: AsenRG;983629That's true, but to some people any game with a GM that is unwilling to kill PCs fails the test for "challenging".

That is only one of the tests it fails.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;983558Were the characters dead when they reached 0 HP? Back when I ran D&D several DMs in the area made up "harder to die, no (or very, very rare) resurrection" rules that I thought made our campaigns better.  I have carried that over into my current system, which is high casualty/low fatality. It doesn't have to be. A GM could easily run a high-fatality campaign and my friend Andy does.

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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/

I think back int he day once it hits zero your dead. We usually allowed I think up to -4 I can't quite remember now. Sounds like we were in a similar camp.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983639Out of over 450 TPK's over the last 43 years, no one from a TPK has ever been brought back and out of the original 9 players who each has had roughly 550-750 characters each...

I feel sorry that your players never learned to get good at playing D&D.

Edit: But way to go having a group of 10 of you since 1974. That's ...miraculous.

That one thing that's annoying me about GOT. The resurrections... Although, I would have been pissed if Jon Snow was killed off.

But it feels that anyone now could suddenly have plot immunity if they have access to the red order or whatever they are called. At least when they resurrected the mountain - he wasn't himself. He was some kind of 'thing'. Now that I like!

Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

First, resurrection should never be easy.  It should be super expensive at least, and probably very risky as well - there should be a decent chance that Sir Gilligad comes back a little "off"...or maybe even really off.  Resurrection fits in the D&D milieu - it's a world where gods interact with men for goodness sake - but it shouldn't be easy.  But I don't think any of us are saying the game needs to be made so punishing that it isn't fun anymore.  We just want the dice to define the outcome and if they say you're dead, you're dead.  The consequence is that you have to start over again.  If the character was 5th or 6th level and died and you have to roll up a new one - even if the GM allows you to start at level 2 or something that's still a price to pay.  I mean losing a couple levels of progress hurts.

Quote from: AsenRG;983629That's true, but to some people any game with a GM that is unwilling to kill PCs fails the test for "challenging".

"Well made" and "engaging" are subjective quality measures, and I'll grant that for many-to-most gamers, a chance of death is a minimum necessary requirement to meet these criteria. "Challenging," on the other hand, at least has a touch of quantifiability--something is challenging if it is difficult for you to accomplish (in this context, a game is challenging if is difficult for you to accomplish your goals).

My point, however, is that there is no fast-track to quality.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983657The consequence is that you have to start over again.  If the character was 5th or 6th level and died and you have to roll up a new one - even if the GM allows you to start at level 2 or something that's still a price to pay.  I mean losing a couple levels of progress hurts.

And, potentially, that the initial goal/reward might no longer be available in full. Which was my initial point to the OP -- it is the consequences to failure that is the primary requirement for the game to have, and character death is only a specific example.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I've almost always played with mixed levels in a party.  For the first three or four years I never played with everyone the same level.  Hell, the OD&D differing XP for levels almost guarantees that.  Of course, there was no "party," there was "which subset of players are here this time."

And of course new PCs start at first level, period, absolutely.

And in 45 years I've never had trouble filling a game.

Quote from: Opaopajr;983500In my day ressurections costed one point of permanent CON, and when you were out you were dead foreverz! Get off my lawn! Time for my nap. :mad:

Quote from: Bren;983532So average PCs could get 10 or more resurrections before they finally died the real death? I declare that you sir are a wannabe hipster storygamer. :D

Runequest 2 had a pretty good resurrection mechanic. You could get divine intervention to be resurrected (assuming you weren't an initiate of the Death God, he was older than old school and didn't allow any resurrections). But as an initiate you had to roll against your Power. Which is a stat, in the same way that Wisdom or Constitution in D&D is a stat and with about the same range. If you rolled less than your Power with a d100 you got resurrected but you permanently lost the amount of Power that you rolled on the d100. If you rolled over your Power you didn't didn't lose any Power. But you remained dead.

Runelords had it easier. They rolled 1d10 and lost that much Power and got resurrected. But since they needed to have POW 15 to be a Runelord getting resurrected could take away their important Cult status.

And a low Power sucked since that was the upper limit of your resistance to magical attack and your ability to attack others or to power other magic.

I started with TFT, where resurrection requires a very recently-slain and intact body, a _very_ powerful wizard who happens to know that spell and be willing to cast it on your dead pal, a lot of fatigue, a success roll, and costs five attribute points (which are a big deal - it's about like losing 5 D&D levels). I remember one character who was resurrected twice - the first time she wasn't her old self, and the second time she became a fairly annoying/appalling mentally/behaviorally challenged embarrassment. It was something of a mercy when she died the third time, though I also felt rather guilty since it was my character who accidentally killed her trying to help her by hacking at the foe she was grappled with and accidentally dealing her a killing blow.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I completely agree that insta-replacements at same level removes the consequences. To my mind, it also ruins the sense of what's happening: if the idea is this is a story about interesting remarkable people, but when one dies, his clone brother (or even just another similarly-special hero) appears out of nowhere, to me that completely undermines the premise, the believability, the sense-making, and my interest all at once. I'd probably _prefer_ a miraculous resurrection to a "his identical cousin shows up and joins the party".

However in my experience no, it's not rare at all to start replacements at starting level (or even, less than starting level if the game started with strong PCs), for those reasons. Groups tend to be mixes of levels and it's not a problem because there game systems don't have so steep an experience curve.

Also, I don't even have new PCs just "appear" except when it makes sense that the group is someplace where there would be new people to enlist (and the typical NPCs in a party also helps have this be normal rather than artificial).

Quote from: S'mon;983642I feel sorry that your players never learned to get good at playing D&D.

Edit: But way to go having a group of 10 of you since 1974. That's ...miraculous.

Sorry 9 total counting me. Two have passed away, so only seven of us left, four of us still game together and the other three show up 4-6 times a year, now down to 3-4 times per year. Unfortunately several of the guys are in poor health. We have had a regular game night since back in the 1950's. I don't play a lot but I do play. Also my players play just fine, my game is Arduin Bloody Arduin deadly and always was from the beginning. But I am getting soft now from what it was 25 years ago, the first 18 years were brutal but has gotten a little less brutal so it is not full-blown Arduin style anymore.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Just a thought but I can see where even rolling up a new character, be it cousin Joe or just another schmuck at the Inn, in a way removes the consequence of dying. Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one. Whats the difference between that and resurrecting the guy easily or avoiding the death by some mechanic in the first place.? Oh there is a difference plot wise (story, whatever) but in a mechanical sense the group's resource of that character is still there. If your a GM that would require a new character to begin at level 1 ( a real rarity if the party were all at level 6 or something) then thats quite different but Im willing to bet most groups wouldnt go for that, for reasons discussed before about the problems with mixed levels in a party.

I always start people at Level One regardless of the level of the rest of the party.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983657there should be a decent chance that Sir Gilligad comes back a little "off"...or maybe even really off.

I like this, a lot, wish I had thought of it.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983821I like this, a lot, wish I had thought of it.

It's wise for the rest of the party to have weapons at the ready during the incantation, just in case Sir Giligad sits up and immediately starts trying to rip the flesh off anyone within reach.  :D

Restarting at 1st level is where I put all my softy side outside the game play proper, and stay relatively mean within it.  For example, I'll usually have an accelerated XP gain plan, if the game mechanics themselves don't already handle that.  In D&D 5E, I'll give +20% XP to anyone less than the max level in the party, plus award XP more often, maybe every couple of hours.  Recently, we had a new player go from 1st to 4th in 7 hours, playing with a bunch of 5th and 6th level characters.  But it's up to the group to manage how to keep that character alive during the transition.  If they leave a new character exposed to something nasty, the obvious will happen.  We see that situation as a challenge to the players with experienced characters.  Sure you take on that nest of gnolls, and probably slaughter them.  Can you do it and keep two green replacements alive at the same time?

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983843It's wise for the rest of the party to have weapons at the ready during the incantation, just in case Sir Giligad sits up and immediately starts trying to rip the flesh off anyone within reach.  :D

If I had thought of this, then my players might be really into raise dead, since it would be a different type of challenge where you never know what is going to happen and there would be some many ways to play it, so no obvious warning until it goes sideways. I may have to add this in.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983882If I had thought of this, then my players might be really into raise dead, since it would be a different type of challenge where you never know what is going to happen and there would be some many ways to play it, so no obvious warning until it goes sideways. I may have to add this in.

Well yeah, then it becomes a boss raid. :D

Quote from: Crimhthan;983639Another nice try at slandering me and my game and my players.  Your sick amusement is misplaced.

Quoting you is not slander. You said you value your PCs magic items over the life of your PC. I find that laughably silly. And there is nothing at all sick about my very healthy laughter.

But if your group really has 10 TPKs per year for each of 43 years they have to be the saddest bunch of saps that ever rolled a D20.

QuoteMy players recognize that honor requires that they not lose their hard won magic items (and treasure) and they only lose them, when monsters pry them from their cold dead fingers. They would never accept having those items removed arbitrarily, if your players are fine with you arbitrarily taking their magic items way, that is your game not mine.

Based on the campaign stats you gave us there are a whole lot of monsters prying magic items out of the hands of the thousands of dead PCs owned by your sad players.

Let me correct another one of your mistakes. I never said that the GM should arbitrarily take away magic items. That's not something I said so either you are confused or you just made that up...or both.
 

QuoteMy players recognize that those things are for their families and they hope to pass those items down to their sons and daughters.

I'm going to assume that you meant to say that your players want their PCs to be able to pass magic items on to their sons and daughters not that the players are passing on magic items to the players' families.  Roleplayers occasionally mix player and PC so ordinarily I'd pass over this sort of careless language use but with you it's difficult to tell which idiosyncratic language usage is accidental and which unusual usage is intentional on your part. For all I know your players really are intending to pass magic items on to their real world children.

Quote from: rgrove0172;983645Im sure you have all experienced, as I have, the players simply scratching out the name on his character sheet and inserting a new one.

I saw that a few times when we were all still in high school. It seemed to silly to me at the time so I didn't allow it, though some other DMs did.
 

Quote from: Skarg;983774I started with TFT, where resurrection requires a very recently-slain and intact body, a _very_ powerful wizard who happens to know that spell and be willing to cast it on your dead pal, a lot of fatigue, a success roll, and costs five attribute points (which are a big deal - it's about like losing 5 D&D levels). I remember one character who was resurrected twice - the first time she wasn't her old self, and the second time she became a fairly annoying/appalling mentally/behaviorally challenged embarrassment. It was something of a mercy when she died the third time, though I also felt rather guilty since it was my character who accidentally killed her trying to help her by hacking at the foe she was grappled with and accidentally dealing her a killing blow.

Now that's the sort of resurrection mechanic that makes you think hard about whether the candle is worth the coin.

Also put me down for new characters don't start with the same experience as established characters, that character clones annoy me and are unacceptable unless the setting already includes clones of characters e.g. Paranoia, and that new PCs don't appear until it makes sense for someone new to join the group – until then the player can run one of the NPCs (when we play there usually is one or more NPCs in most RPG parties).

Quote from: Crimhthan;983817I always start people at Level One regardless of the level of the rest of the party.

Same here.

Quote from: Crimhthan;983817I always start people at Level One regardless of the level of the rest of the party.

Me too. But I've never played a game where we didn't always start at 1st level of its equivalent. Not my bag.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: trechriron;982399Yeah, yeah, but does it make my penis LOOK bigger?

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek mate. I can get a little excited and I also like to have a little fun. What I'm generally shooting for (in tone): We're in the GM's Green Room, shooting the shit about our games, and I stand up and make my Jester's Rant not only to get a couple chuckles but also to nudge you with my elbow and say "... you know what I'm saying?" I'm well aware there are lots of way doing things. I'm not here to try and catalog all of them; I'm here to share my opinions, experiences and approaches.

In other words, it's not about YOU Voros. It's about ME. Duh. (<-- poking fun again...)

I didn't see the original post just CKruger quoting it. Would have known it was tongue in cheek if I knew it was you. I always identify you by the Jack Black avatar.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;984045It gets sadder the more you look at it:

Quote from: Crimhthan;983814Sorry 9 total counting me. Two have passed away, so only seven of us left, four of us still game together and the other three show up 4-6 times a year, now down to 3-4 times per year.



If you run the numbers, this almost certainly means that each individual player was averaging a PC death once every 2-4 sessions for 43 years. With 8 players and conservative estimates, each individual session averages at least 2 PC deaths. Obviously they're having fun, so more power to them, but that is the bleakest and most nihilistic D&D campaign I've ever heard of.

(I wrote this before seeing the analysis in the other thread demonstrating that Crimhthan's claims about his frequency of play are actually complete bullshit. But I'm going to go ahead and post it any way.)

It sounds hilarious, though, these guys playing forever yet never getting any better with tactics or planning, like a perpetual Groundhog Day campaign where they just keep delving into the same DIY dungeon and never get past Room 13 for 43 years...

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;983843It's wise for the rest of the party to have weapons at the ready during the incantation, just in case Sir Giligad sits up and immediately starts trying to rip the flesh off anyone within reach.  :D

Hehe... funny but of course...

Quote from: Crimhthan;983882If I had thought of this, then my players might be really into raise dead, since it would be a different type of challenge where you never know what is going to happen and there would be some many ways to play it, so no obvious warning until it goes sideways. I may have to add this in.

If it's a known possibility, hopefully they have some rope and think to tie him down instead.

The very first Revival spell we saw cast in TFT (on a close NPC ally & party-member), the GM thought to not only reduce the attributes but also have the personality affected, and when she got revived the second time, he did a brilliant job of taking that further, creating a childish stubborn not-all-there personality that frustratingly thought she was right about everything, and would call people who disagreed with her dumb, and believe it. It was funny, interesting, sad, and made it extremely clear that even with a revival, death had awful consequences.

In GURPS there are all sorts of possible side-effects for revival detailed in the Fright rules and the huge list of Disadvantages.

Quote from: Dumarest;984052It sounds hilarious, though, these guys playing forever yet never getting any better with tactics or planning, like a perpetual Groundhog Day campaign where they just keep delving into the same DIY dungeon and never get past Room 13 for 43 years...

Well Room 13 has some really experienced and well-equipped monsters by now. :D

Maybe they've even raised the slain PCs into a zombie brigade.

Quote from: Skarg;984217Maybe they've even raised the slain PCs into a zombie brigade.

Never underestimate the horror of a familiar PC or NPC returning as the undead. Good times!

Quote from: Skarg;984217Well Room 13 has some really experienced and well-equipped monsters by now. :D

Maybe they've even raised the slain PCs into a zombie brigade.

Oh, the awful feeling when you realize you were playing the NPC opposition:D!

You know, I also don't like killing characters and TPKs, especially TPKs, because I don't want to have to redesign the campaign.  When a player dies and changes a character, I suddenly have to do more work to balance the encounters again.  And worse, if everyone dies, I suddenly have to think of a new reason why they're after "Morgath the Mummer", because my players role play.  Which means that they won't know of Morgath or his temple complex, because cell phones don't exist in most fantasy settings.

And if everyone starts back at the starting point (assuming D&D or other level based game system) means that Morgath (who's a level 4+ adventure series) may never show up, meaning I have to redo everything.

It's a hassle.

Also, character death is not nor should be the only measure of failure.  It's lazy to think that way.

Quote from: AsenRG;984296Oh, the awful feeling when you realize you were playing the NPC opposition:D!

I do love (seeing) that feeling (in my players' eyes). :D It only happens occasionally - only when sandboxing, never going to happen running a Paizo AP - but I remember my 4e Southlands game, the rise of the Black Sun, the final revelation in the eyes of the players when they realised they'd been comprehensively out-maneuvered by Borritt Crowfinger the Necromancer... the great PC hero Varek Tigerclaw ended up in a doomed defence of Bisgen the starter town, & everyone died.

The best thing was how that campaign provided fodder for years of future games, and a Warning From History - so the current PCs & players 7 years later are way more careful & clever.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984306You know, I also don't like killing characters and TPKs, especially TPKs, because I don't want to have to redesign the campaign.  When a player dies and changes a character, I suddenly have to do more work to balance the encounters again.  And worse, if everyone dies, I suddenly have to think of a new reason why they're after "Morgath the Mummer", because my players role play.  Which means that they won't know of Morgath or his temple complex, because cell phones don't exist in most fantasy settings.

And if everyone starts back at the starting point (assuming D&D or other level based game system) means that Morgath (who's a level 4+ adventure series) may never show up, meaning I have to redo everything.

It's a hassle.

Also, character death is not nor should be the only measure of failure.  It's lazy to think that way.

I'm with you on that! I'm getting lazy in my old age. So, I don't want to keep having to redo the same stuff or change it over and over.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984306You know, I also don't like killing characters and TPKs, especially TPKs, because I don't want to have to redesign the campaign.  When a player dies and changes a character, I suddenly have to do more work to balance the encounters again.  And worse, if everyone dies, I suddenly have to think of a new reason why they're after "Morgath the Mummer", because my players role play.  Which means that they won't know of Morgath or his temple complex, because cell phones don't exist in most fantasy settings.

And if everyone starts back at the starting point (assuming D&D or other level based game system) means that Morgath (who's a level 4+ adventure series) may never show up, meaning I have to redo everything.

That's just dumb. The world doesn't need to change to match some new character. The world is the world. Characters deal with it. TPK? The world moves on. Make up new characters. Maybe they are interested in pursuing what happened to those other fools (a common Call of Cthulhu trope), or maybe you don't railroad the players into doing the same thing.

Of course, if you're concerned with some plot narrative you've created, then I can see why it would be inconvenient. That's why RPGs aren't good vehicles for telling stories, they're good for generating them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984306Also, character death is not nor should be the only measure of failure.  It's lazy to think that way.

Again, the same tired false argument. Guess what? No one has ever said character death is the only measure of failure. We use all the other (capture/ransom/consequences/poverty/et al) outcomes as well. We just keep death on the table as a final possible consequence.

Skarg the way your GM handled the Revival spell in TFT was great. It would also be a perfect way of handling something like that in Call of Cthuhu. I did something similar in CoC with some NPCs who lost INT due to some blasphemous horror or weird effect. One guy was an Australian Geologist. I think his INT went down to 6 or 8. He still liked rocks though he didn't exactly remember why. Very Flowers for Algernon.

Your description of Revival makes me want to give the players in CoC access to a spell with that sort of side effect just to watch the horror that ensues.

Quote from: Skarg;984216Tthe GM thought to not only reduce the attributes but also have the personality affected, and when she got revived the second time, he did a brilliant job of taking that further, creating a childish stubborn not-all-there personality that frustratingly thought she was right about everything, and would call people who disagreed with her dumb, and believe it.

For some reason this sounds really familiar right now.

Quote from: Dumarest;984052It sounds hilarious, though, these guys playing forever yet never getting any better with tactics or planning, like a perpetual Groundhog Day campaign where they just keep delving into the same DIY dungeon and never get past Room 13 for 43 years...

Phil Connors must be one of his players.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984306And worse, if everyone dies, I suddenly have to think of a new reason why they're after "Morgath the Mummer"

Well you could always let Morgath successfully advance his plans. Since he's the villain, he'll probably do some more villany that will serve as a hook for the next party. Or just let them roll up a bunch of PCs with a grudge against Morgath....

Hello Morgath, my name is . You killed my father, prepare to die!

Side note: a failed resurrection attempt producing undead is official AD&D rules ... in Ravenloft. :)

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;984362Side note: a failed resurrection attempt producing undead is official AD&D rules ... in Ravenloft. :)

Oooh... No that's something that's really interesting. I love it when shit goes wrong in RPing!

Quote from: darthfozzywig;984355Again, the same tired false argument. Guess what? No one has ever said character death is the only measure of failure. We use all the other (capture/ransom/consequences/poverty/et al) outcomes as well. We just keep death on the table as a final possible consequence.

There have been statements and insinuations in this thread that low death campaign are campaigns were there are no consequences for failure,

I'll be contrary and say that a magnificent TPK is a sure sign of an awesome game. Going out with a blaze of glory like Butch and Sundance or Thelma and Louise...priceless!

Quote from: Nexus;984412There have been statements and insinuations in this thread that low death campaign are campaigns were there are no consequences for failure,

I'd bet there is a high correlation between low death campaigns and functionally no consequences for failure, but correlation is not causation. I'd say GM-driven plot is more often causation. :)

Nevertheless, it's nonsensical to argue that allowing characters to die means no other consequences exist.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;984355That's just dumb. The world doesn't need to change to match some new character. The world is the world. Characters deal with it. TPK? The world moves on. Make up new characters. Maybe they are interested in pursuing what happened to those other fools (a common Call of Cthulhu trope), or maybe you don't railroad the players into doing the same thing.

Look, yes a world tends not to change in a broad way.  It's a matter of scope.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;984355Of course, if you're concerned with some plot narrative you've created, then I can see why it would be inconvenient. That's why RPGs aren't good vehicles for telling stories, they're good for generating them.

This is a false argument, though.  Look, let's pick on Fantastica Generica, and the party left the main city IMMEDIATELY, they didn't care to stay or even bother with NPCs.  That's OK, so they went 'Right' on the map.  So the GM details the all the stuff before hand, you know things like ruins, dungeons, villages and various types of monsters he wants to populate the setting.  None of that has anything maybe beyond a cursory background, just things to do.

And after a series of adventures it ends.  Badly.  Everybody dies.

But the players like the world and want to continue, so they make new characters.  Now, because going Right on the map went badly, they decide to go Left.  But the GM didn't bother with anything left of City Fantastica Capitalica because the players didn't  care to even go back.  So now the GM has to sit down and do all the work for a new area, and effectively ignore what's on the Right Side of The Map, because story and consequences and having 'reoccurring villains' smack too much of the dreaded STORYGAME!

That's a lot of work, especially when you effectively have to start from scratch because the types of encounters and adventures players had last week, or even a few hours ago might be too hard for these new guys.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;984355Again, the same tired false argument. Guess what? No one has ever said character death is the only measure of failure. We use all the other (capture/ransom/consequences/poverty/et al) outcomes as well. We just keep death on the table as a final possible consequence.

It's been implied a lot that if players 'can't die' (which no one has said, just that they dislike killing PC's and try to avoid it) then 'you're doing it wrong'.



For those of you who DO think that not being able to die is somehow an 'I WIN' button...

Example, I once had a 'superhero' more like a vigilante, possessed by a demon, who was effectively unkillable.  He had regeneration, the ability to phase and teleport via shadows, and to actually kill him, you had to magically separate him from his demonic companion.

So yeah, very hard to even hurt.  Did that mean he never failed?  I once took a look at the success rate via the GM's notes, and I think it worked to something like 29% victories.  And almost 75% death rate for innocents.  Survival is not always a win, depending on the game system.  Just because he can't be killed doesn't mean he can't be distracted, fooled, slowed down or otherwise messed up.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984440But the players like the world and want to continue, so they make new characters.  Now, because going Right on the map went badly, they decide to go Left.  But the GM didn't bother with anything left of City Fantastica Capitalica because the players didn't  care to even go back.  So now the GM has to sit down and do all the work for a new area, and effectively ignore what's on the Right Side of The Map, because story and consequences and having 'reoccurring villains' smack too much of the dreaded STORYGAME!

GM should have started new group in the middle of the sandbox, not on one edge.

Also, IME sandboxes work best when they're already designed for a variety of groups of different power levels. My Ghinarian Hills sandbox has PCs up to 19th level, but we started a new group at 1st level there recently and they are adventuring in level-appropriate areas.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;984418I'd bet there is a high correlation between low death campaigns and functionally no consequences for failure, but correlation is not causation. I'd say GM-driven plot is more often causation. :)

Nevertheless, it's nonsensical to argue that allowing characters to die means no other consequences exist.

It is just a silly to accuse and insinuate that because we don't like killing off player characters frequently or for what we feel are pointless reasons that there are no consequences for failure and the PCs are coddled or that we're running railroads, particularly when its been said otherwise in this thread. You can bet anything you like, but if you're going make sweeping assumptions based on biases, bristling they're made about you is hypocritical.

Everyone isn't running sandbox dungeon fantasy games for roaming bands of  adventurers, all settings and genres don't run the same way. And death not being a major options isn't an I win button or 'coddling' the players and somehow meaning the game is driven by the GM's plot. Those are just some BS assumptions about a different play style.

Quote from: S'mon;984469GM should have started new group in the middle of the sandbox, not on one edge.

Also, IME sandboxes work best when they're already designed for a variety of groups of different power levels. My Ghinarian Hills sandbox has PCs up to 19th level, but we started a new group at 1st level there recently and they are adventuring in level-appropriate areas.

So your saying that published sandbox 'adventures' are better than making shit up because they will have done all the work for you?  If you are, I see your point.  I don't particularly like it, as I personally like world building but you have a legitimately have a point.

Here's the thing, for ME, because I'm crippled and unemployable, I have a LOT of time to work on settings and ideas and if I wasn't as lazy as I am, I could easily flesh out an entire sandbox.  Except for one small issue.  I'd end up tossing out about 80% of my work because my players, and because one of the funnest things I find is watching my friends deal with situations in RPGs, would go in a way that would not utilize most of the information.  Hell, I had that situation happen, back in my youth.

Now, assume that the average person has other obligations, like family and work, and you expect them to sit down and spend potential hours to rifle through books for information on a particular setting, or just creating potential maps and adding monsters that may never see the light of day?  Really?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984440This is a false argument, though.  Look, let's pick on Fantastica Generica, and the party left the main city IMMEDIATELY, they didn't care to stay or even bother with NPCs.  That's OK, so they went 'Right' on the map.  So the GM details the all the stuff before hand, you know things like ruins, dungeons, villages and various types of monsters he wants to populate the setting.  None of that has anything maybe beyond a cursory background, just things to do.

And after a series of adventures it ends.  Badly.  Everybody dies.

But the players like the world and want to continue, so they make new characters.  Now, because going Right on the map went badly, they decide to go Left.  But the GM didn't bother with anything left of City Fantastica Capitalica because the players didn't  care to even go back.  So now the GM has to sit down and do all the work for a new area, and effectively ignore what's on the Right Side of The Map, because story and consequences and having 'reoccurring villains' smack too much of the dreaded STORYGAME!

Mistakes the Fantastica Generica Campaign ref made (great name for a campaign btw)

I. He from what you say only created details on one side of the city, instead of putting the city at the middle of a 100 mile radius area. There should be at least something up front in every direction they could go for at least some distance. Now if they take off on 500 mile trip to get completely outside the area that they have even vague knowledge then you wing it and between adventures you use what time you have to build. (Players don't often do this of course) Again you should prepare cursory background in more than just one direction from where you start the players.

II. Of course the players don't take their shiny new first level characters to somewhere that they now know is too difficult, they go someplace else and they can go back to the first place when they think they can handle it(whatever handle it means for that place). That is smart play, feature not a bug.

III. The conclusion in the last sentence is illogical, why would you want your players to commit suicide over and over, do you really have fun when your players are too stupid to make better choices?

I don't know about anyone else, but for me, death being on the realistic list of possible consequences means that it happens relatively infrequently.  I've run both ways, with plot immunity and without it.  With it, players do stupid stuff (or properly cinematically daring, depending upon your perspective) constantly.  Sometimes, this tendency pushes things a little too far into implausible territory for me to enjoy the game.  I like me some over the top, but not as a constant diet.  Without plot immunity, players spend a lot of time investigating, scouting, thinking, and so forth.  For me (and our group), that kind of activity being required is part of the fun.  And no, it's not the same thing if you investigate, scout, and so forth with plot immunity.  That's just going through the motions.

Quote from: Dumarest;984413I'll be contrary and say that a magnificent TPK is a sure sign of an awesome game. Going out with a blaze of glory like Butch and Sundance or Thelma and Louise...priceless!

Strangely my players in D&D4e would have agreed with you. I ran, and we all played, that version of the game more as a competitive miniature wargame with some roleplaying to connect the battles. With this, a TPK was almost certain to occur eventually, so you might as well have fun with it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984306Also, character death is not nor should be the only measure of failure.  It's lazy to think that way.

Left here for reference.

Quote from: Nexus;984412There have been statements and insinuations in this thread that low death campaign are campaigns were there are no consequences for failure,

Yes. And people have responded to it multiple times. Myself two or three times. These other respondents managed to do so without (possibly accidentally) implying* that the opposing side were lazy thinkers. There are a myriad ways of coming into a conversation, posit that one does not agree with a widespread position, and present counterarguments. Some are better than others.
*yes, implying, as in I'm aware that that was not actually said.

But you are not wrong. There is definitely a pissing match going on. Same as with the storygame thread. There's a bit of 'there's no right way to roleplay (but my way is awesome)' going on. But it's 1) kinda unavoidable, 2) not one-sided, and 3) if you give in kind, you're just like your opposition.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984440That's a lot of work, especially when you effectively have to start from scratch because the types of encounters and adventures players had last week, or even a few hours ago might be too hard for these new guys.

Agreed. It is a lot of work. Putting in work for anything that you don't end up getting to use is always going to be a lot of (often frustrating)work, and having to do so multiple times will magnify that workload. The absolute minimum amount of work one can put in is a absolute railroad with player survival and success predetermined--because you literally only have to populate the scenes you know the players will be involved in. On the opposite end of the spectrum is either genuine random roll or made up on the spot world (which is limited by your ability to generate quality product in real time), or an infinitely detailed world premade. Everything any of us has ever played in is pretty much somewhere between these theoretical extremes.

As you correctly point out, that's not an unreasonable consideration. And to head off some theoretical jibes, it is not some namby-pampby whiny whiners kind of complaint or anything. A given DM, given a certain amount of time and competence, will turn out better quality material if they have less to produce. That's true at all levels of gamer manliness or whatever.

The question becomes, 'are the benefits to workload worth the consequences of what removing/reducing-in-frequency does to the way that the game plays out?' I think this is the real crux of what we're talking about, and it involves a lot of intangibles.

QuoteIt's been implied a lot that if players 'can't die' (which no one has said, just that they dislike killing PC's and try to avoid it) then 'you're doing it wrong'.

And, again, you've implied that people who use character death as a/the primary measure of failure are [strike]doing it wrong[/strike] lazy thinkers. That's just tit-for-tatting.

QuoteFor those of you who DO think that not being able to die is somehow an 'I WIN' button...

Example, I once had a 'superhero' more like a vigilante, possessed by a demon, who was effectively unkillable.  He had regeneration, the ability to phase and teleport via shadows, and to actually kill him, you had to magically separate him from his demonic companion.

So yeah, very hard to even hurt.  Did that mean he never failed?  I once took a look at the success rate via the GM's notes, and I think it worked to something like 29% victories.  And almost 75% death rate for innocents.  Survival is not always a win, depending on the game system.  Just because he can't be killed doesn't mean he can't be distracted, fooled, slowed down or otherwise messed up.

Superhero games are actually a really good example (similar to my Ghostbusters one). They are inspired by comic books, which absolutely often have nonlethal consequences (depending on era and genre). The evil not-joker knocks out not-Batman and not-Robin with sleeping gas, and they wake up tied up suspended over a tank full of sharks we no they aren't going to get eaten by. It's a classic. So it does depend on what game you are trying to play.

But it sounds like that was part of the shared table understanding of what the game was about. In the OP's scenario, it sounds like the players think they are playing in a game in which their characters can die (at least, he asked them if they were okay with characters dying, so they undoubtedly now think that's on the table). That bugs me a bit because it seems that... well, they could reasonably believe that they are improving their skill at surviving within the rules of the game (when in fact the DM just won't pull the trigger), so that seems like a bit of a disservice to them.


So I'll restate my initial comment with a qualifier. If people are having fun, and have an informed understanding of what type of game they are truly playing, then there is no problem.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;984539I don't know about anyone else, but for me, death being on the realistic list of possible consequences means that it happens relatively infrequently.  I've run both ways, with plot immunity and without it.  With it, players do stupid stuff (or properly cinematically daring, depending upon your perspective) constantly.  Sometimes, this tendency pushes things a little too far into implausible territory for me to enjoy the game.  I like me some over the top, but not as a constant diet.  Without plot immunity, players spend a lot of time investigating, scouting, thinking, and so forth.  For me (and our group), that kind of activity being required is part of the fun.  And no, it's not the same thing if you investigate, scout, and so forth with plot immunity.  That's just going through the motions.

This is an excellent explanation of why plot immunity is a bad idea.

This

QuoteThat's just going through the motions.

is exactly what what plot immunity means. I also

QuoteI like me some over the top, but not as a constant diet.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;984539I've run both ways, with plot immunity and without it.  With it, players do stupid stuff (or properly cinematically daring, depending upon your perspective) constantly.  Sometimes, this tendency pushes things a little too far into implausible territory for me to enjoy the game.

Plausibility seems to be a separate spectrum though. In movies, people can fall 15, 20, even 30 feat (and not onto conveniently placed soft objects) and get up and run/fight/etc. That's not realistic--any of those distances you are at least injured. But if a far enough fall can still kill you, you don't have plot immunity. It's just up-scaling what a life-threatening fall looks like. Extrapolate that out and you can have cinematic daring without plot immunity.

My (as a player) current Mad Max-inspired game is a great example. PCs jump from one moving car to another and fight with enemies on top of the moving vehicles all the time. But it's not really them doing stupid stuff--they are making tactically sounds, smart decisions inside a universe with physics that support such things.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984482Now, assume that the average person has other obligations, like family and work, and you expect them to sit down and spend potential hours to rifle through books for information on a particular setting, or just creating potential maps and adding monsters that may never see the light of day?  Really?

No one is drafting anyone to run a sandbox.

I don't think anyone should run a sandbox if they don't enjoy the creative activity of making shit up, at their desk, when no one else is around.  If potential DM X asks himself the question "if I spend 3 hours on a Sunday working on something and it never sees direct play, will I be upset?" and the answer is "yes" - don't run a sandbox.

Sandbox campaigning is two activities that don't necessarily interact, one of them is entirely solo, and both must be enjoyable for their own sakes.

No, "plot immunity" not equal to "going through the motions."  For some activities, they are one and the same, but not all.

For example, if the realms of snappy dialog, creating an atmosphere, and so forth, having plot immunity or not is largely orthogonal.  There might be a mild correlation favoring plot immunity, in that it allows the players to relax and focus on snappy dialog and the like, but it is an indirect support and not at all required.  Either way, in the end snappy dialog is snappy dialog.

Let's consider scouting in contrast, and at first strictly from the "consequences of failure" perspective, whether that failure be the risk of character death, failure of the mission, or something else significant.  I think we can all agree that there is a difference in the activity if the scouting can fail, as opposed to going through the motions of scouting as relevant to the atmosphere of the game?  Those are both called "scouting," but they are fundamentally different activities in the game, no matter how similar they may seem in the emergent story.

Now, it is my contention that the players I have been around (not talking for anyone else) mostly fall into a category of players that don't really respect the "failure" side of that equation unless death is at least a little on the line.  I've seen just enough of the opposite to know that this is not universal.  And I know enough statistics to not get fooled into thinking tiny little player sample is sufficient.  Nevertheless, these are the players I find attracted to games that I run.  Maybe I'm just lousy at really making them feel the sting of mission failure--but I doubt it, because I haven't pulled any punches there, either.  I think it is probably the combination of other failures supported by infrequent deaths that gets the maximum benefit.

Thus my conclusion that in at least some players there is some kind of switch that flips the moment that character death comes off the list of options such that other failure states are insufficient to produce thoughtful behavior about character consequences.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;984567Plausibility seems to be a separate spectrum though. In movies, people can fall 15, 20, even 30 feat (and not onto conveniently placed soft objects) and get up and run/fight/etc. That's not realistic--any of those distances you are at least injured. But if a far enough fall can still kill you, you don't have plot immunity. It's just up-scaling what a life-threatening fall looks like. Extrapolate that out and you can have cinematic daring without plot immunity.

My (as a player) current Mad Max-inspired game is a great example. PCs jump from one moving car to another and fight with enemies on top of the moving vehicles all the time. But it's not really them doing stupid stuff--they are making tactically sounds, smart decisions inside a universe with physics that support such things.

Right.  But I wouldn't enjoy a Mad Max-inspired game.  It's just too over the top for me.  I don't really enjoy the hyper realistic side, either, but that's a different issue.  I grant that in theory that the issue is simply one of scaling the game, but if you look at my previous post, you'll see why I don't think that is so for all players.

Quote from: S'mon;984469Also, IME sandboxes work best when they're already designed for a variety of groups of different power levels. My Ghinarian Hills sandbox has PCs up to 19th level, but we started a new group at 1st level there recently and they are adventuring in level-appropriate areas.

It never occurred to me that anyone would design a sandbox/setting/world any way other than for it to be for a variety of groups of different power levels. Rumor "Hill giants by been spotted in the Shattered Lands (a really rugged broken landscape area) and this would be the clue to the players that that would be a good place not to go at first level."

Quote from: Willie the Duck;984561Yes. And people have responded to it multiple times. Myself two or three times.

I was responding to the statement that No one had ever said that games without death are games with consequence which implies death is the only consequence or at least the only meaningful consequence" when that is not true of this thread. Yes, others have said differently but that didn't make the other statement vanish.  

This is the problem with forum communication, particularly when the threads get lengthy. The participants are discussing several points of view, sub threads develop, who exactly said what is forgotten or garbled, etc. And if you go to the length the specificity demands to prevent confusion you run into the "Too long, didn't read" problem

QuoteBut you are not wrong. There is definitely a pissing match going on. Same as with the storygame thread. There's a bit of 'there's no right way to roleplay (but my way is awesome)' going on. But it's 1) kinda unavoidable, 2) not one-sided, and 3) if you give in kind, you're just like your opposition.

Personally. I've been trying to avoid crapping on other people's play style. Maybe I haven't always succeeded but I do try. And from my perspective, I've seen more dumped on mine. But its fair to say that if you're not the target you don't notice as much. I think a little more good faith and picking words a bit more carefully might help keep but that makes me a thread nanny. I don't consider people that play differently from me my opposition. Opposing someone implies there something to win and there's nothing to win here. They aren't going to take over my games, I'm not going to take over there's.
Even if I argue with someone over how they play Let's Pretend until they stop responding I don't know if I convinced them their preferences are "wrong", they got bored screwing with me or decided I was a douche and put me on ignore.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984482Now, assume that the average person has other obligations, like family and work, and you expect them to sit down and spend potential hours to rifle through books for information on a particular setting, or just creating potential maps and adding monsters that may never see the light of day?  Really?

No, not at all. You spend some time roughing out an area and defining in a maybe a 100 words or so some basic parameters. Create perhaps 10 rumors/possibilities and place them on the rough map. Rough out ten non wildlife encounters using about 100 words tops. If you have limited time, you are now ready to play. You should have enough now to start the game and spend the first game traveling to the thing they said they want to investigate.

Between games you add another 200 words or so fleshing things out. You think about those things as you can and when game time rolls around you are ready to go. If you have time to do more great, but if you don't you have enough short notes to roll with. If you are gaming with friends, they will cut you some slack. As you get to know you sandbox/setting/world better and better through play, it will get deeper and more complete. It doesn't start massive, it becomes massive over long periods of time. I picked my world's size at the beginning, but I didn't need to do that, I could have waited at least 25 IRL years to make that decision, you might never need to make that decision.

I can't emphasize this enough, always try to have a small notebook with you to jot down ideas when they happen if at all possible. If you are able to do this, in a short time you will have dozens of ideas, eventually you will have more ideas than ten people could ever begin to use and you can skim the cream for your game.

As others have said, a city with only the road east detailed, and the content on that road all designed for higher-level characters, seems clearly like a pre-planned adventure, not a dynamic campaign world or sandbox.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;984482So your saying that published sandbox 'adventures' are better than making shit up because they will have done all the work for you?  If you are, I see your point.  I don't particularly like it, as I personally like world building but you have a legitimately have a point.

Here's the thing, for ME, because I'm crippled and unemployable, I have a LOT of time to work on settings and ideas and if I wasn't as lazy as I am, I could easily flesh out an entire sandbox.  Except for one small issue.  I'd end up tossing out about 80% of my work because my players, and because one of the funnest things I find is watching my friends deal with situations in RPGs, would go in a way that would not utilize most of the information.  Hell, I had that situation happen, back in my youth.

Now, assume that the average person has other obligations, like family and work, and you expect them to sit down and spend potential hours to rifle through books for information on a particular setting, or just creating potential maps and adding monsters that may never see the light of day?  Really?

Well, the thing I learned about sandboxes is that you should be using and re-using them with a variety of PC groups over years of play. IME ignored material rarely stays ignored forever.

I like to use published material mixed with my own ideas, all-homebrew is good if you prefer. But a big advantage of published stuff is that I can buy* an adventure (eg Caverns of Thracia) and place it, but I DON'T HAVE TO READ IT - I hardly have to spend any time on it unless and until the PCs go there. I read the adventure intro and the material affects and informs my sandbox, but very little time is wasted. And IME eventually someone goes there.

*Or download free stuff. Dyson Logos has tons. Dragonsfoot has tons. Basicfantasy.org has tons.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;984584Right.  But I wouldn't enjoy a Mad Max-inspired game.  It's just too over the top for me.  I don't really enjoy the hyper realistic side, either, but that's a different issue.  I grant that in theory that the issue is simply one of scaling the game, but if you look at my previous post, you'll see why I don't think that is so for all players.

You do play fantasy RPGs don't you? They are far more unrealistic than the Mad Max 2+ universe both in term of physics and everything else. Seems arbitrary.

Quote from: Skarg;984665As others have said, a city with only the road east detailed, and the content on that road all designed for higher-level characters, seems clearly like a pre-planned adventure, not a dynamic campaign world or sandbox.

It's only detailed because that's what the players did.  They never went anywhere else, they weren't interested.  So sitting out and fleshing out Capitcalica Fantastica was a really big waste of time.  No one cared what boroughs or districts, or that the undercity has an undead infestation, nope, the players wanted to go 'East', so they did.  There was no point in detailing the West.  Most people have only so much time they want to devote to their world building.

Quote from: Voros;984817You do play fantasy RPGs don't you? They are far more unrealistic than the Mad Max 2+ universe both in term of physics and everything else. Seems arbitrary.

It is arbitrary in one sense, but not in another.  Let's take, as something that could happen in a fantasy game, the rogue swinging from a chandelier to swing into the bad guy.  I want some of that, but not the same stunt every single time there is a fight in the inn/ballroom/castle/etc.  Or for more fantastical, "Raise Dead" happens, but not every time someone with a bit of money gets sliced by an orc.  However, "over the top" is always a personal sensibility issue, not entirely amenable to logic.

Oh for chrisakes, if he doesn't want to play over-the-top games, he doesn't have to. My point was that that seems to be an orthogonal issue to plot immunity.

I have a player-character in my current campaign that some gamers would say ought to be dead. She's a knight (Elite Warrior class) and she's been stretched out on the ground at some point during every major fight this summer. They don't have major fights every gaming session but that's at least three times she has been below zero hits. The other characters give her advice but she makes her own decisions. Most of the time, she isn't wrong to go charging in; it's what is expected of people of her training and social class but the time before last she precipitated an unnecessary fight with a very dangerous opponent. Not only that, but the player has another character in the general area, so it would not be a pain to replace her.

However, she keeps making her below zero save and there is lots of healing available. I am quite willing for her to die but see no need to force it. If she failed her save, fine. If her side lost and could not recover her body, fine. But I like the combination of medieval weaponry and magic that Is at least as good as modern trauma medicine, so Lady G fights on.

Quote from: Crimhthan;984537III. The conclusion in the last sentence is illogical, why would you want your players to commit suicide over and over, do you really have fun when your players are too stupid to make better choices?

You meant PCs not players, right?
   
What would you say about a GM whose players have killed their PCs over and over and over again thousands of times?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;984561

This is one of the most fair minded posts I have ever read on this topic. Anywhere.

Well done!

Quote from: Willie the Duck;984906Oh for chrisakes, if he doesn't want to play over-the-top games, he doesn't have to.

This violates his agreement. He must play correctly or return his games immediately. This is the last warning.

Quote from: Dumarest;985045This violates his agreement. He just play correctly or return his games immediately. This is the last warning.

Guess I'd better pull out that home brew system design that went on the shelf this summer due to being too busy.  Heh.