How many low-level PC fatalities does your game usually have?

Have you ever run into players who really dislike the mortality level?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1038147How many low-level PC fatalities does your game usually have?

I run OD&D as survival horror. I'm all about "dungeons as haunted houses" and I'm an unapologetic fan of splatterpunk and gory movies. I build my worlds to support this concept, so lots of sword & sorcery live for today for tomorrow we die.

I generally start campaigns at 3rd level, players often have 2 PCs. PC death is usually one per session or two. Half the table dying isn't uncommon, but its also common for adventures to pass without any fatalities. Depends on lots of factors. TPKs are very rare, especially as usually the last duo run for their lives.

This is about the same fatality level in my Traveller campaigns. Gamma World is trickier as the PCs tend to be hardier, but there's less healing options.

My last GW game was a TPK...and it was the first session of the campaign. They made a crazy last stand against a hardcore group of opponents who used tactics against them while they ran in circles. I didn't expect them to stir up the hornet's nest and then stand their ground. Had they made a fighting retreat and then fled the island, they probably all would have lived. Nope...let's fight on the beach, in alien tidepools and bad terrain, against foes with high HD, good gear and lots of mutations.

My last RIFTS game was also a TPK, but those players were sorta idiots and they attacked a demigod because it ruled over the islanders with strict rules. They wanted to be heroes, but didn't take the time learn the WHY behind the demigod's power.

Come to think of it. My last CHAOS EARTH was also a TPK, but a heroic one. It was a one shot where the PCs had to pull survivors out of Area A and move them safely to Area B and reestablish their survival zone. Instead, the PCs decide that Area A should be saved and the survivors not forced to move (I had originally planned some Lifeboat like quandaries about moving the sick, disabled and elderly). However, this meant taking down nasty threats bearing down on the area...and they certainly did...but none survived.

I wrapped it up with a fast forward of 50 years, the survivors built a thriving town and erected statues of the PCs in their honor and the city defenders have codes of conduct based on the PC's actions and many survivors name their kids after them. So dead, but not forgotten.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1038147Have you ever run into players who really dislike the mortality level?

Absolutely. I'm not a good match for them. I am upfront about this. My convention blurbs often have words like "doomed mission", "bloodbath" and other "this ain't Kansas" phrases that tend to warn away those players while drawing the players who love the challenge. Also, those players at cons and game days almost always just stick to Organized Play events where they can sit safely for 4 hours and get spoonfed their XP rewards.

My home crew knows me and invite people they know are a good fit. They know I pick systems where its easy to make new characters and they know I do backflips to swiftly bring their new characters into the game. In Traveller, I've even had the PCs find a cold sleep chamber hidden in the wall of their ship and they defrost the unit and the new PCs wakes up, just as confused as they are to how he got aboard. Movies do absurd things to keep protagonists alive and I feel those deux ex machina actions only work when introducing new characters. I would FAR rather fudge when bringing a PC into the game than ever fudging to keep them IN the game.

My games tend not to have very high lethality at starting level. If running old school/OSR I typically give max hp at 1st level and die at -10. Players are very conscious of PC mortality and play cautiously. I tend to find most fatalities are at around 4th level when players start to feel confident and reckless, but aren't really powerful enough yet to handle major threats. Sometimes there is a similar spike around 10th-11th level when PCs start to tangle with top-end bad guys.

Characters below about 4th Level die regularly in my game, even with max HP to start. My world is a no-holds-barred sandbox. My players love it, and embrace the culture. Running jokes about survivability abound.

I like the setting and rules ever so slightly skewed in the players' favor.  Then I set up the opposition to be what it is, where information is needed to know what to tangle with and what to leave alone.  And then I play that opposition to fit their motivations and goals.  I fudge nothing.  It all works together to produce a game where death is relatively rare, but always possible at any time.  

I've had no fatalities for a couple of years now because I had a long-standing group that was willing to really push the information route, go a little slower, and try not to get in over their heads.  Lately, they've been more aggressive, and then my second group is much more aggressive.  Both groups have avoided deaths only because of some ridiculous luck right when they need it most.  I won't be surprised at all if we get a TPK when the luck runs out.  We've had three close calls in the last few months.  Two were not TPKs because they ran AND got lucky at just the right time.  The last one was only not a TPK because the foes were deliberately looking for slaves to use in the mines.

In the old days my campaigns were pretty brutal and unforgiving. Nowadays I'm a lot more mellow and don't allow as many characters to die.

Quote from: finarvyn;1038232In the old days my campaigns were pretty brutal and unforgiving. Nowadays I'm a lot more mellow and don't allow as many characters to die.

I'm exactly like this. Except the second sentence doesn't apply to me at all.

My AD&D and B/X D&D campaigns were always highly lethal at low levels. A PC had maybe a 25 per cent chance of surviving to level 4. When I read about the funnel format in Dungeon Crawl Classics, it didn't seem innovative to me at all - that was the way my group had always played. Make a bunch of disposable, 1st level characters, and the ones that survive the murderous gauntlet of low-level D&D are the keepers.

These days I play 5E, and the lethality is much lower. Part of that is the system - PCs are simply far more resilient than back in the days when a level 1 Magic-user had 3 HP, a Thief probably had 4, and the only source of HP recovery was the cleric, who had two or three spells at first level. And these days we sometimes start campaigns at 2nd or 3rd level, as we can't manage weekly sessions and we have higher-level content we want to play. We have nothing left to prove with level 1 play anymore.

All the pre-3E rules sets and OSR knock-offs I've run have had very high mortality rates for 1st and 2nd level characters (I feel like 3rd is where they start to survive short runs of bad luck). I have never really  thought too much about what the players think of this; it is just how the game works. It's like wondering what players think of landing in 'jail' in Monopoly: If they don't like it they can always do something else with their time.

I guess I'm pretty brutal, here. Only one character has survived all 4 years of the current campaign, and he's at 5th level (just switched back to 5e, from AD&D).

The players don't mind, there are so many character classes and uber-powers to try out that death is basically an opportunity to use a whole different section of the PHB.

My D&D games always start at Level 1 and are essentially a survival horror sandbox.

Depends on how careful the players/characters are. I tend to play sandbox, dice fall as they may, etc., but also in more low-scale settings. My current Beyond the Wall campaign has the characters running from all sorts of things (including their own shadows/imaginations upon occasions). Ruleswise, I tend to prefer something like negative hp or death-save at 0 hp to determine if you are dead, or just on the ground unconscious, so if you aren't up against zombies or wild animals, your friends probably can drag you away after the fight (unless everyone dies).

The lethality is completely dependent on the players' skill, to a minimum threshold of purely random lethality.  

Good players can materially reduce their mortality threat, but not completely.  The last game I DMd had one fatality and a near TPK, but those were due to poor scouting choices (leaving a PC on an island to scout and search for traps simultaneously, and surprised when doing so, and then a fight with a number of glass cannon monsters where the M-U dithered before using their sleep spell to change the math).

The last time I ran D&D was at GaryCon.  They all died.

I am very up front about the lethality level, but people just don't listen.

When they walk right past the "Player Characters Who Dithered Around With Their Thumbs Up Their Asses Until A Wandering Monster Ate Them Memorial Garden," and you tell them the place is packed and there are a dozen burials happening simultaneously, and they get down into the dungeon and dither around with their thumbs up their asses until a wandering monster eats them...

Not an exaggeration.  An accurate report of that game.  Including the graveyard.

The only real meatgrinder I ran was the funnel for DCC. And even then, after the funnel, character death was super rare.

I feel like I need to up my game, but I also don't want to be a "Rocks fall, everyone dies" GM either.