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Also it was only that at low levels or if the GM went out of the way to make sure resurrection was not going to be possible. IMO when people say they want death as an option that is because it adds specifically something to combats, especially D&D style combats where having the fight end in a way other than total defeat for one side (usually the monsters) is rare. There are RPGs where the stakes in a battle are different, with a more explicitly supported and common set of outcomes other than "we won by killing everything" vs "we had to run away" or occasionally "we all died" - outcomes like, "we broke their morale and they surrendered," "we clashed and then mutually retreated to avoid anyone getting killed," "we proved our honor superior and they were disgraced, so now they owe us a boon," "we lost, they claimed our weapons as their booty, and sent us on our way bruised and shaken" or even "the cops showed up and both we and our foes were swiftly arrested." In games like these, the question of "can/should a character die easily, difficultly, or never" are maybe less divisive of repeated because the game is already making it clear what sort of outcomes are supposed to be on the table, and notions of victory or defeat aren't so necessarily tied to killing and/or dying. There is also the question of what you personally get out of the combat of an RPG. For D&D 4e, at least, what I enjoyed most was the detailed tactical combat engine, I engaged with the game in a not dissimilar way to how I engage with chess, or maybe some video game with the word "tactics" in the title. Whether or not character death is on the table has little consequence to how I engage with the interesting questions I'm faced in those combats - when/whether/how to use encounter and daily powers, finding synergies between character abilities, exploring and discovering tactically-significant aspects of the encounter map's terrain and features, the usual questions around crowd control, focusing fire, the action economy, all that jazz. Gets the brain juices going. A GM who explicitly says my character won't die, or contrarywise they totally could, isn't really fundamentally changing what I am engaging with or enjoying about this part of the game. Nuns with Guns posted:The string of swearwords and adjectives was partially hyperbolic humor. I stack words together because I find them most loving chucklesome. Thank you for saying so, although "get out of my thread" didn't come off as humorous and that felt like an overreaction. Mr. Grapes!, it'd be good if you, conversely, be aware that a certain amount of grognardy hardcore "this is the way real men play" energy is coming through with your posts and that is offputting to some folks. You are welcome to keep posting both your thoughts on gaming and your anecdotes, but it's good to keep in mind that talking about how you sabotaged someone's game when they didn't run it the way you expected is not self-complimentary.
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Apr 27, 2023 00:56
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Saguaro PI posted:Fundamentally this is one of those "Conversations about RPGs that are actually just conversations about D&D" things that was brought up earlier in the thread. D&D at its default was a game where failure means death, both in the short term sense that failing at specific tasks killed you and the long term sense that your goal was to acquire treasure and level up and you failed at those by being killed by the things guarding the treasure, so it became the default conception of what consequence meant. Ehhhh... I would disagree on painting this as purely D&D's failing(the "the only failure state is death"-part, at least). I feel like in most RPG's where I've even seen any other kind of failure state brought up, it's usually been in the sense of GM fiat punishments for players not behaving and going off the rails a bit.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:14
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PurpleXVI posted:Ehhhh... I would disagree on painting this as purely D&D's failing(the "the only failure state is death"-part, at least). I feel like in most RPG's where I've even seen any other kind of failure state brought up, it's usually been in the sense of GM fiat punishments for players not behaving and going off the rails a bit. Yeah I didn't get into that and it did come to mind. Other consequences need to be part of that conversation players are having at the table, because what works for some players will not for others. Handling real life issue between people at the table through game interactions is some serious groggery.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:22
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Does anyone have any blogs or thoughts on DMing that they do like or which inspired them at any point? A lot of words have been written on the Internet about this subject, many of them bad but not all of them. It just seems like a useful secondary purpose of this thread could be to collate material that the community thinks could be good or helpful to new and experienced GMs alike. Someone mentioned Smolensk a page or two ago and that brought back memories. When I was brand new to the game and therefore to being a game master, as the archetypal forever DM of my friend group, I ran into his blog, which was also relatively new at that point. I knew immediately that I wasn't really compatible with his philosophy about the game but just the sheer depth he put into it really started me off on thinking about DMing as an "art." I would say that Justin Alexander gives the best advice most consistently of the DM blogs that I follow, which to be fair are not a lot. I've used his hexcrawl mechanics and a lot of his advice about how to design and key dungeons, as someone who started playing well after the golden age of the dungeoncrawl, has changed the way my games work a lot. I also really like this series of blog posts but I just find them evocative. My games tend to be less dungeoncrawly, although I've definitely started to trend more towards it and away from theater of mind as time goes on. Nowadays I usually use a Go board to represent a given battlefield and chess pieces to model the party and enemies, using go stones for mooks if there's a lot. It doesn't always work that cleanly, and I'm thinking of moving to a virtual tabletop, but I'm not convinced that I like the idea yet.
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Apr 27, 2023 01:56
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My go to’s begin and end with the Alexandrian. The three clue rule revolutionized how people write modern mystery games. His adventure remixes are extremely thoughtful. And he is still active on his discord; he keeps an active streaming schedule.
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Apr 27, 2023 02:09
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remusclaw posted:That brings up another thing i find incredibly strange as regard’s rpg conversations. The treatment of death like its the only consequence that matters. And maybe it is if you create characters who are disposable, but if you take death off the table, assuming characters who have lives outside adventures, there are so many things on the table for drama. Of course death doesn't need to come off the table for that, but it does help to make it less likely to happen via rng. I was thinking of D&D and Pathfinder when I said death because those are the two games I have played. It's just having a mechanic that would cause me to take the character sheet off the table because the character is unusable by the rules of the game. That could be to many wounds, acquired too much wealth, lost to much honor or any number of mechanics. Without that threat it plays more like a collaborative story and less like a game. They're both fun but they play a lot differently from my perspective. I like the idea of non-lethal or non game ending consequences and they are pretty necessary for a good story usually. Even if we were playing magical tea party there should be consequences for breaking a cup. It would just be a minor consequence like no more sugar or something. But I would have more fun playing magical tea party if there was a rule that my character "lost" by not being invited back to the tea party and I had to make a new character. They're both games but when I can "lose" it feels more like a game, without a way to lose it feels like a collaborative story.
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Apr 27, 2023 02:15
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Collaboration is inherent to role-playing games, even if for the sake of feel, some GM's try to hide it. Be it the most structured story game or the groggiest old D&D you can find, the play is in the conversation had at and around the table. I would honestly go so far as to say its more important in a rulings not rules framework, where it seems playing your GM often becomes the game.
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Apr 27, 2023 02:24
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Golden Bee posted:My go to’s begin and end with the Alexandrian. The three clue rule revolutionized how people write modern mystery games. His adventure remixes are extremely thoughtful. And he is still active on his discord; he keeps an active streaming schedule. Beware. He is also “dissociated mechanics” guy.
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Apr 27, 2023 02:28
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Nuns with Guns posted:So you passive aggressively hosed with someone rather than just dropping the game or asking the GM to level more life-or-death stakes at your character? I'm sorry you're toxic as gently caress and I wish you'd stop posting in this thread because your advice is groggy catpiss tier story rear end. I was playing a barbarian berserker guy, and I roleplayed it to the hilt without really caring if I'd live or die because that was the character concept. I was rather new at the game and was curious about being a wizard but all the spellcasting stuff was intimidating. After we did a quick Session 1, I went and read the actual rule book and saw that it wasn't so complex. "I can do this, actually!" I figured I'd Conan my way into a cool death and then re-roll a wizard. If the DM just let the kobolds kill me, as the game was presented, then I would have simply died, laughed, and moved on. I wasn't some Essential Character to the plot. If the DM was honest with me that this was actually an impossibility, that he would literally mold the game around keeping me alive, I wouldn't have done this. I would have just asked to switch, or just quit the game on the spot. Instead, he lied. If you think going "Barbarian Charge GRAAHHHH!" is somehow being toxic when that is the character class at its most basic level, you have a real sensitivity issue. If you think me accepting the DM's word at face value and acting on it is somehow toxic, then the word has ceased to have meaning from you. This is a thread about how to teach players how to play TTRPGs, and we have had a lot of discussions about establishing expectations and tone. This DM could have been good, but he absolutely failed at establishing his game because he was unwilling to let his campaign match what he claimed it to be. Nuns with Guns posted:I don't want it here, and I guess I should clarify that the intent of this thread was to at least partially discuss ways to foster healthy communication and a positive table environment, and just consider if there are lovely things a legacy game like D&D still needs to shed in the way it trains people to engage with it or positive things that could be iterated on. You're a pretty piss poor example of someone who wants to foster healthy communication and a positive table environment. I wish you'd read the actual posts in this thread instead of whining about someone trying to die in an RPG. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 03:05
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PurpleXVI posted:I think it's more about... what's more fun and memorable? Kevin getting iced by a random exploding critical from a kobold with a sling and having to sit out the session until there's a chance to introduce a new character OR that not happening and wasting everyone's time? It's like TPK's. The threat of a TPK can add some spice, but ultimately if the party wipes then... it just wastes everyone's time. There's nothing fun or memorable about it, except for the memory of the dice going haywire or a certain GM not knowing how to balance an encounter. I know you don't agree with the way I run games, which again, is fine, because I think we've both agreed that setting up expectations with players early is primo important. I would argue that the threat of a TPK adds no spice at all if the possibility of it actually happening is zero. There is no threat of the TPK. There is the DM making theatrical threatening gestures towards it, but will ultimately never pull the trigger. To me, at least, a DM who acts as if you could die but would never actually let you die is not adding any spice at all, but subtracting player choice from the game. PurpleXVI posted:There are a lot of ways to have consequences for the players beyond "lmao, u ded now," and honestly all of them are more interesting, as they allow the story and game to continue. I agree completely! I will often have my opposition do plenty of things short of killing the PCs, because "Players Dead" is not always their goal! Maybe they want captives? Maybe they want to eat the small little wounded halfling and then gently caress off? Maybe they want to subjugate them and get them to work for them! Maybe I'll even write up metric fuckloads of entirely new campaign content to deal with the fact that the players did not, in fact, stop the Death Star from blowing up Yavin. I try and play the opposition realistically (to the extent we can in a fantasy game) and aiming for a TPK isn't always the aim of the enemies. Maybe they just want their gold? Groups of enemies who always 100% fight to the death on both sides is one of the videogamey aspects I avoid. If players surrender, then the game can continue in a new and interesting direction. Players who expect the DM to never ever kill them will probably never surrender if they are outgunned, outnumbered and surrounded, but players who fully know the regiment of soldiers will gun them down can surrender and then move onto prison-escape movie mode, or betray my employers mode, or other cool scenarios. PurpleXVI posted:Player death really only works if either players don't stay dead(Paranoia clones, for instance), if every player has a roster of hirelings and backup characters ready to flip into the fray(which also requires a game where the main characters aren't too terribly important, and their responsibilities, abilities, etc. can easily be inherited by the next person in line) or if it's at some sort of dramatically appropriate moment where it accomplishes something or at least gets an emotional response(which is usually only going to happen if death is the player's choice). It should be pretty obvious that at least some of these options don't really... work, with things like having a "story" or anything having dramatic impact. At least the way we do it, no, we do not fudge in a new identical character of Bob's twin brother Bobert. In our system: - Character creation is quick. If someone dies we pour a few drinks, commisserate, take a quick little break, and we're rolling dice again in 15 minutes. - Level 1 characters are not worthless, because HP totals and other such is lower across the board. - Players hold a funeral. They sacrifice (bury, burn, sky-expose, whatever flavor) the body with all of its goods. They then can bury it with more treasure for a more flash funeral. New player's XP total is equal to whatever the players spent on the funeral. So, they go in at Level 1 if this doesn't happen, or maybe come in a few levels higher depending on what the party chooses. - All of our classes have a D100 Level Up table. It would be almost impossible to roll up a clone of the previous guy even if you tried. - My players aren't lame enough to make Dan II, unless Dan's son was already hanging about the party as his sidekick or something. So far it hasn't happened once. People are usually pretty eager to try some new class or character concept. PurpleXVI posted:Encounters to drain resources are a legitimate thing, where the players have to either figure out a way to bypass them, spend resources(health, items, perhaps memorized spells if there's no time to rememorize before the big one) or decide that they don't want to pay the bill to get to the final encounter. But yeah did you try talking to your GM about it? Doesn't sound like it. I agree. If death is not on the line though, then why really waste all those spells and resources? I did try talking to my DM about it. Before the game even started, he sold it as a game of dangerous combat and lethal monsters and he wasn't just gonna go easy on me because I was new. I asked him what happened if we died, and he said that we could roll up a new character. I did a really toxic thing and believed the DM. I wanted to make a new character so I thought it would be way more interesting to just go out in a blaze of glory, chopping off heads, and going into Valhalla, like any real berserker would want. I tried this repeatedly and it became clearly impossible. I roleplayed in a roleplaying game, and made a suboptimal decision. How terrible! I wasn't loving this guy's game up for months, this was 2 sessions. It could have been 0 sessions if he just straight out told me "Actually, you can't die, so your question is not relevant." Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 03:24
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The way you described it at first certainly sounded more like you chose to act out rather than talk to the GM about how the expectations set in session 0 weren't what you were seeing, but it's good that you've clarified that the GM wasn't being receptive to that feedback. It also sounded based on your first description that you actually ruined the game, personally, and that it died as a result. Can you see why people would react negatively to that impression? Regardless, maybe we can extract the "learning" part from that anecdote, in that both you and hopefully the GM learned something about play from it. Session 0 expectations being set isn't the end of the conversation, it's just the first of what should be an ongoing one, out of character. "I want to kill off this PC so I can roll a new one" should have been met by the GM with either "Ah, OK, let's work towards that" or "I'd rather not" or something, rather than just a frustrating series of encounters where the GM fudged outcomes to keep your character alive.
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Apr 27, 2023 03:34
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Tosk posted:Does anyone have any blogs or thoughts on DMing that they do like or which inspired them at any point? A lot of words have been written on the Internet about this subject, many of them bad but not all of them. It just seems like a useful secondary purpose of this thread could be to collate material that the community thinks could be good or helpful to new and experienced GMs alike. I don't have any blogs to call out, so I'll just take this opportunity to describe one of my favorite bits of GM advice: the Conspyramid from Night's Black Agents. For context, Night's Black Agents is a game about former secret agents fighting a secret vampire conspiracy. So, the Conspyramid is just... a pyramid that maps out the conspiracy. Here's Dracula at the top, here's the people who report to him, here's the people who report to them, and so on. And the advice that always stuck with me is that you should leave a few columns in that pyramid blank because your players will come up with amazing theories that you would never think of during planning. They're going to be certain that if they know X, Y and Z, the only possible conclusion is that the CIA is riddled with vampiric moles and the whole organization may be compromised. And when they are you can slide the local CIA agents into those empty slots, and you'll tell your players they were compromised from the start. Your players get to feel like amazing spies, and you get one branch of your conspiracy pyramid that your players are automatically invested in because they nailed it right on the head. For another piece of GM advice I adore, let's go to Apocalypse Keys and its advice for planning a climactic final scenario. In short, the first few sessions of any campaign are always going to be a bit rough. You're all learning the rules, everyone is getting a feel for their characters, you're inevitably going to have a few loose ends. So, when you're building a final mystery that wraps everything up, fold those loose ends back in. You didn't forget about the DIVISION agent that was lost in a dimensional library halfway through the first mission, she just slipped into the Space Between Spaces when you weren't looking and now she works for the apocalyptic harbinger you're facing in the final mission. You've turned plot holes into foreshadowing. Now, why am I bringing up both of these here? It's because of the ongoing conversation in here about how all RPGs are collaborative. Because your players will probably recognize that you would have played things differently if you were always planning on the CIA being involved at some point, and because your players know that you all honestly forgot about Agent Jones halfway through. But these games are collaborations, and if you try to make this game feel like it has foreshadowed twists they can figure out they are going to meet you halfway and treat it like they are. Because that's the kind of game they signed up for. (Well, again, make sure you're communicating clearly with your players and that is, in fact, the kind of game they signed up for. But you get the point.)
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Apr 27, 2023 03:49
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I don't have any blogs to call out, so I'll just take this opportunity to describe one of my favorite bits of GM advice: the Conspyramid from Night's Black Agents. I agree with your general point here, but I also wanted to highlight the value of explicitly documented campaign/scenario construction processes. Kevin Crawford is a master of this, of course. It’s one of the subtle strengths of Apocalypse World. Monster of the Week has very good scenario design. Etc.
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Apr 27, 2023 03:57
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Tosk posted:Does anyone have any blogs or thoughts on DMing that they do like or which inspired them at any point? A lot of words have been written on the Internet about this subject, many of them bad but not all of them. It just seems like a useful secondary purpose of this thread could be to collate material that the community thinks could be good or helpful to new and experienced GMs alike. Not sure if you’re using DM as a specific “for Dungeons and Dragons and games like it” catch-all or more generically (usually I like the term referee to denote the specific difference), it depends on what you’re looking for. I happen to personally like Youtube channels like Questing Beast, Dungeoncraft, Matt Colville’s earlier works, Hexed Press, and the Alexandrian. Bat in the Attic, also, was useful in thinking about how to focus more specifically on the “world building”, that is, procedurally generating sandboxes to traipse about in. I think it depends on what you’re actually looking for, but in broad strokes I recommend playing, reflecting, and sharing game experiences, since everybody’s experience being very subjective, you can teach as well as receive feedback and learn. From the earlier portions of this thread, I’d summarize: - Play should involve four key verbs: Wonder, Explore, Create, and Remember. These are the four priorities that I want to encourage all tables to strive for, rather than telling a story - let the stories be generated by the things that happen at the table, rather than be told from the perspective of whatever an adventure path dictates has to happen or not. - Clear and frequent communication, while difficult, is the foundation of all quality play. - Proactive, rather than reactive, play is encouraged, but also to help maintain the order of the social experience. For players, be more proactive. For referees, consider being more reactive to what players do. - Play artifacts are something that are really wonderful and help to spur the imagination. Including a physical aid along with spoken word helps to reinforce key ideas in the gameplay. - Getting to the table and playing quickly is important for onboarding new players and referees. - Situations of all kinds can have multiple outcomes, so referees should consider creating situations and locations and let outcomes happen where they may. Some of the outcomes can be curated, but they shouldn’t be a binary “proceed forward, or game over” - if there’s a binary win/loss condition, make progress in the game with when players lose. There’s a saying that’s stuck with me: “Play as if you were going to play again”. That means rather than trying to go all out or be a destructive, malicious, selfish, and rebellious player / referee, instead play with the group. Even if you never play with those people again, if everybody focuses on creating a quality social experience and is able to clearly communicate what is and isn’t working for them, then this should resolve about 99% of what tables experience that send players and referees screaming for online forums.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:05
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Thanlis posted:I agree with your general point here, but I also wanted to highlight the value of explicitly documented campaign/scenario construction processes. Kevin Crawford is a master of this, of course. It’s one of the subtle strengths of Apocalypse World. Monster of the Week has very good scenario design. Etc. Oh, definitely. And I definitely recommend checking out Apocalypse Keys if you can, because it builds mysteries in a very collaborative improv way but it still puts a lot of time into explaining how to create and run them. That approach to building mysteries is different enough for the average game that I'm not sure how much you could directly apply to other systems, but I appreciate it all the same.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:05
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Mr. Grapes! posted:If you think me accepting the DM's word at face value and acting on it is somehow toxic, then the word has ceased to have meaning from you. The part that people believe is toxic is that in your own words you noticed an issue: Mr. Grapes! posted:but I could tell it was pissing him off, but he wouldn't break kayfabe. And decided to keep pushing rather than openly address the problem. "But the DM started it, he shouldn't have promised X and Y" isn't an acceptable response. Object lessons sound fun in theory, but socially responsible adults communicate. I myself have been in games where the GM set the expectation that it would be grim and gritty and anyone can die at any moment and then balked on pulling the trigger when the time came. It happens, people are a mess of contradictions and competing preferences. We talked about it and adjusted our expectations. That's what you do.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:09
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I was playing a barbarian berserker guy, and I roleplayed it to the hilt without really caring if I'd live or die because that was the character concept. I was rather new at the game and was curious about being a wizard but all the spellcasting stuff was intimidating. After we did a quick Session 1, I went and read the actual rule book and saw that it wasn't so complex. You didn't say "the DM promised this would be a deadly, dangerous game and then it turned out it he was pulling his punches" until you just replied to PurpleXVI, and you didn't specify what you were doing or how long, just that it was a sufficient amount of time and frequency to troll the DM. To clarify then, you asked the DM why he wasn't hitting as hard as he promised then? Did you say you were trying to die in a badass way so you could switch characters? Mr. Grapes! posted:You're a pretty piss poor example of someone who wants to foster healthy communication and a positive table environment. I can't read what's not there. This also isn't a pen and paper gaming group I'm running, so this analogy you're trying to make about me being a dick here means I'm failure as a GM doesn't really fit.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:32
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May I, hopefully gently, ask that we set aside attacks of personal character and move towards asking and answering some of the broader questions being asked in this thread? Given that the original scope of the thread is thinking about learning about learning how to play and run TTRPGs, anecdotes will be common, but more specific focus may be beneficial to help guide conversation. To use my own phraseology, wonder about new questions, explore the answers, and create some novel resources. Lastly, remind ourselves of why we’re even talking about this topic at all - not to poo poo on other folks as they share whatever experiences they observed or were directly part of, but how to move past them. I think perhaps the next bits that I’ll write and think about is the topic of letting go and defining boundaries to know when something is enough.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:45
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aldantefax posted:The biggest takeaway of all of this was that as a referee you have a practice and mindset of flexibility, which is probably one of the biggest things that new (and even seasoned) referees don't have nearly as well developed, to the point where the extent that you've gone in each of the cases beyond what a lot of referees would even consider. Yeah I agree. I don't think my way is the one true game or anything. I think a lot of friction develops in TTRPGS because it is an incredibly diverse array of games that also get mixed the gently caress up when combined with DMs, all of whom have their own House Style. I'm not against railroading as a concept, as long as everyone agrees to get on the train. I think a lot of problems arise when the DM obfuscates what they are actually doing, maybe because they want to oversell the game, or maybe they just bit off way more than they can chew and want to dial it back, but still maintain the illusion to the players that X is happening when it absolutely isn't. I know that open-world hexcrawls are not good for everyone, because it takes a real commitment to the concept to actually make it work for the goal of "Players actually are free to make their own choices to succeed or get hanged". As for whether the core rules frameworks admit this is different for each game. I'd posit that a lot of the rules-lite systems are somewhat designed for this with the idea that the rules are simple enough that the DM isn't overwhelmed just keeping up with a normal state of play, and that it is easier to temporarily or permanently bolt some stuff onto them that largely works. Let's be honest, there are thousands and thousands of RPG rules pages that ultimately boil down to "% random chance that something succeeds". People can fight tooth and nail over the probabilities but it is all bullshit, really we don't know the likelihood that some samurai in full battle harness can leap off the rolling ship in a storm and land on the kraken's eyeball. Many games will have endless rules about whether this works or not, while others will basically have the DM eyeball it and give some odds. "Your dextrous, so + 1, but it's raining, and the ship is moving, so -2" and just have them roll a D6 or whatever. I myself find this works and leads to meaningful choice if you don't play GOTCHA with the players and "Ha gently caress you, you failed" and instead said "It's a tough jump. If you succeed, you're gonna stab that bastard in the eyeball. If you fail, you're gonna be plopped into a stormy ocean in heavy metal armor, and have a possible chance to drown. With modifiers, you've gotta roll a 3 out of 6. Gonna go for it?"
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Apr 27, 2023 04:53
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hyphz posted:
I'm 100% ignorant of RPG podcasts and youtubers and such. I'm curious about this, is the mystique related because they're doing it as a business or something, and they have already kind of selected players that know this (but the audience doesn't quite) and will absolutely play ball in the 'correct way', while regular RPG groups are kind of messy and human in ways that produced podcasts don't really replicate? Like, high budget porno vs real hookups? Not trying to nitpick, I'm curious about this whole line of though.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:55
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Leperflesh posted:
He didn't run the game the way I expected, because he set up those expectations himself by deliberately misleading me. I mentioned offhandedly how some game went off the rails and now that is the most important thing I ever posted here, despite writing out huge effortposts on mechanics, theme, blah blah blah. But sure, I will bear the cross of Leroy Jenkins for that time I tried to die, and could not. As for Grogginess: I think I've gone out of my way to emphasize that this is just the way we do things at our table, and specific ways in which we onboard new players. I've repeatedly said that I'm cool with Fudging and Railroading and all that common stuff as long as the DM is honest up front about it - if that is some Hardcore Grognard stuff then so be it, I'll be the Grog. I think a lot of "problems" at RPG tables come from the DM flubbing the initial conversation of expectations vs what they're actually gonna do when the dice hit the table. The idea that this is some Groggy Hardcore Man's Man RPG is not my intent at all. We've had a lot of discussions about player death and consequences and from the way some people discuss it, it makes me think that they are imagining some heartbroken player sitting in tears while a smug neckbeard DM gloats about how stupid they are. Even though it is not the only consequence, something I agree with completely, we have it happen at the table and we have fun with it. It is destigmatized with us, [insert my Nth paragraph about how its how we do it, and other ways are cool], most of the time it is just funny. We laugh about it, we pour a drink for the deceased, we smoke a joint while holding the funeral, we discuss whether it was just poo poo luck or someone hosed up, we're back in the game shortly and moving on. Players talk about and relive dramatic, useless, and heroic deaths, and they add a texture to long campaigns. People talk about player death like I stomped someone's loving dog to death, and not rolled some dice and had the orc stab a fictional dude real hard. I suspect a lot of people play these games online with people they don't really know. I think these scenarios can magnify problems because someone is expecting precisely 4 hours of Proper Game and if some players spend 20 minutes chatting to the Mushroom Man they are wasting the game when Bob is really here to do tactical combat and he doesn't give a gently caress about the Mushroom Man and the other player is stealing 8% more spotlight time damnit. I play with my friends. Whatever happens, we're just laughing and having a good time and playing a game, and if every few weeks somebody dies and there is like 20 minutes of downtime where they can throw together some bagel pizzas or go on a beer run or pet the loving cat, it's not a problem whatsoever. If I've come across as some Groggy Edgelord, part of that is on me, but I think there are a lot of people reading my posts in the least charitable way possible when I've gone out of my way to explain my though process, experiences, and mechanics I've used whenever questioned about it. Did I act like a jackass by trying to get killed? Yes, and no. I was a new player, and I'd toss a lot of the blame on the DM. Would I do it today? No, but I'd also know better questions to ask about how the game is gonna go. Now that I've been behind the screen awhile, I'd know exactly how to handle a Mr. Grapes Leroy Jenkins player and it wouldn't rankle me whatsoever. I think the fact that in Real Life I am a teacher might be helpful here, in that whatever stupid nonsense a player can do at my table pales in comparison to the dumb poo poo I put up with daily from rooms full of teenagers. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 05:18
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Tosk posted:Does anyone have any blogs or thoughts on DMing that they do like or which inspired them at any point? A lot of words have been written on the Internet about this subject, many of them bad but not all of them. It just seems like a useful secondary purpose of this thread could be to collate material that the community thinks could be good or helpful to new and experienced GMs alike. Personally, I learned a lot, for better or worse, from: https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/ They have a rules-lite system I don't use, but has tons of cool monsters. I stole his False Hydra and trolled my players with it for months wherein I'd give them lots of handouts, then in between sessions I would steal the handouts and replace them with subtly different ones that changed the information. It took them ages to catch on and blew their minds. Before anyone uses the toxic word, this is a monster specifically about altering memories and the danger of using that in a DnD game is metagaming, so I jumped the gun on meta-gaming by actually depending on them doing it. Seeing them saying "I remember X, it was written on Handout Y!!!!!!" and when they pull out Y and it doesn't support their thesis they get a big O face and it is delicious. I even would erase features from the map, print it out again, and replicate the rips and Doritos stains or whatever to make it all seem real. Probably the most memorable monster (hurrr hurrrr) my table has ever faced, and I don't know if I could ever top it. Here's the False Hydra: https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/false-hydra.html Goblin Punch's Dungeon checklist is good: https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/01/dungeon-checklist.html https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/08/nameless-queen-yama.html His "Nameless Queen" has been a factor in my campaigns for years and years now. I also recommend the (free) Lair of the Lamb adventure from this blog, even if it doesn't have a bearskin. http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/ Lots of artsy-fartsy stuff, but what can I say. Deep Carbon Observatory (his dungeon) kind of singlehandedly converted me from the 5e Arena Style to OSR weirdness. https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/ He just brutally rips apart adventures, but in there is good advice on how to write them. https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/06/osr-tomb-of-serpent-kings-megapost.html Coins and Scrolls is good for artsy fartsy stuff and Hardcore Groggy rear end in a top hat Medievalism but his Tomb of Serpent Kings is a good OSR beginner dungeon that teaches both DMs and players How to do it. https://lastgaspgrimoire.com/ Last Gasp has lots of gritty grimy grotty splatter stuff. His free adventure "Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine" is a great body horror short little OSR adventure.
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Apr 27, 2023 05:34
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Leperflesh posted:The way you described it at first certainly sounded more like you chose to act out rather than talk to the GM about how the expectations set in session 0 weren't what you were seeing, but it's good that you've clarified that the GM wasn't being receptive to that feedback. It also sounded based on your first description that you actually ruined the game, personally, and that it died as a result. Can you see why people would react negatively to that impression? I'm happy to answer whatever questions about it. It didn't ruin his life or anything, he just plays with other people and we're still friends. We still play other games together, just not DnD or whatever. The game broke because after the umpteenth time where I didn't die, I straight out accused him of 'cheating'. Maybe that is the wrong word. He admitted that dying to mooks like kobolds would be 'dumb', so the DM NPC helper would come in and save me everytime I went down, and the kobolds would absolutely ignore my body every time I went down, and not eat me, or drag me off to the soup pot, or whatever. I simply would get up and dive right back into the fray, I'd describe my gooey popped eyeball running down my own face, a mouth full of broken teeth, singed and torn beard, and my thirst for blood. Nonetheless, I could not die! At the end of the session I asked him specifically how many Heal Spells or whatever the NPC helper had, the answer that ultimately came out, after a lot of dodging and waffling, was "As many as it takes to keep everyone alive". I said "I'm out", and two other players did the same. At that, there was only 2 players left and he cancelled the 2-session long campaign. I don't think I ruined some life's work of campaign writing. I was a newbie, and I was unaware that people actually secretly message the DM to kill them. To me, that was never communicated as some sort of standard idea, and I still find the concept rather odd, but different strokes etc. I thought that if the game allowed death, and the game allowed rolling new characters, then the coolest most fun and thematic way for that to happen is that I charge to my own death, die while shouting oaths of battle, and then my new character can try and avenge me or something. I was capable of rolling up a new character by myself, and would not care the loving slightest if I had to miss 20 minutes of kobold encounters (that we obviously could not lose) while I picked my spells or whatever. I didn't communicate this to anyone because I thought it would be breaking kayfabe to just say "Hey everyone, this is the encounter where my PC dies, so if ya'll could just let me have my dramatic moment, that'd be great." I didn't want it to happen in some scripted death, I wanted to fight hard and recklessly, like a berserker with a death wish, and then meet my end. On the bright side, in my own game I have specifically made a character class called Flagellant that is made for having a death-wish, a character that gains in-game bonuses for losing limbs, attack bonuses for being near death, and XP bonuses for going under 0 HP (which is always a death-risk). The brightest candle burns half as long, and the flagellant burns so brightly! It's not for everyone, but for people who pick it, knowing going in that it is almost certainly gonna end in horrible death, they have a loving blast.
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Apr 27, 2023 05:52
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remusclaw posted:That brings up another thing i find incredibly strange as regard’s rpg conversations. The treatment of death like its the only consequence that matters. And maybe it is if you create characters who are disposable, but if you take death off the table, assuming characters who have lives outside adventures, there are so many things on the table for drama. Of course death doesn't need to come off the table for that, but it does help to make it less likely to happen via rng. i think this comes down partly to an issue of what RPGs are for. Assuming part of the joy of RPGs is in playing a role, then any consequence in which you continue to play the role doesn't really parse as a consequence, it's just a potentially cool complication (thinking of the classic "a narrative flaw like a rival or debt in systems that have them at character creation is almost always a boon, because either the DM ignores them or writes story obstacles specifically for your character, which just means you get to roleplay more"), and i think that's actually especially true in games where death is off the table. if your call of cthulhu investigator accumulates increasing madness as she continues to hunt dark truths, good! that's kind of what you made her for! if she loses her job or home or loved one, all the better! that's Tragic! outside of a game declaring one directly (i know in I think AW and Blades and their ilk there's a fair number of "retire this character" mechanics, there's probably some in spire etc.), I think it's kind of hard to assert any state in which a character is explicitly unplayable beyond death, and most "consequences" can just be further narrative grist for the mill. The only real possible consequence, then, is no longer continuing to play a role, and (again, outside of a game declaring specific non-death mechanics that take a PC outside the player's control) that usually means death. e: thinking here particularly of my own players, who complained for a while that i needed to beat them up more and were only truly happy when i had a PC tied to a chair and beat up a la morpheus in the first matrix in a sequence that ended with him getting stunning and personally embarrassing plot revelations. i think i would find it very difficult to craft any kind of choice with consequences that truly gave them pause, whether that's personal setbacks or NPCs dying, because they expect that it's a continually-moving story and good and bad things will continue to happen anyways, and they're just happy to participate in choosing what flavor of good or bad thing happens. the only consequence that's really spooked them is a choice that could have changed the whole tone and direction of the campaign, because it could have curtailed their preferred style of play. in a lot of games, facing consequences, then spitting some blood in the camera and continuing despite them, is a central part of player enjoyment in itself, whether you fight through pain to fell the mighty ogre or struggle tragically but movingly against your need for human blood or suffer a slightly absurd but ultimately fitting coenesque fate. Valentin fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 06:06
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Nuns with Guns posted:You didn't say "the DM promised this would be a deadly, dangerous game and then it turned out it he was pulling his punches" until you just replied to PurpleXVI, and you didn't specify what you were doing or how long, just that it was a sufficient amount of time and frequency to troll the DM. To clarify then, you asked the DM why he wasn't hitting as hard as he promised then? Did you say you were trying to die in a badass way so you could switch characters? I didn't write every single thing about the game because I was illustrating an example of dishonesty in establishing the initial game leading to friction when the dice hit the table and the expectations that were stated are not meant. I was not writing an exact by the minutes play report of a session I played like 9 years ago. If you want a more detailed play-by-play I can construct without extraneous detail, well, here it is, and I'll never mention this horrible atrocity I committed again. 0 I am friends with DM. DM and I play all sorts of "gently caress you" sort of boardgames in which we enjoy pissing each other off. Stuff like Game of Thrones, or Resistance, you get the idea. 1 DM invites me to join the game. "Session 0", if you can call it that at all, was at a bar we were just drinking at and he lamented that we always play boardgames but we never play TTRPGs. I had a tiny bit of experience and was playing in some other game at the time, and I agreed to join his. At Session 0, he sold the campaign as a dangerous zero to hero adventure where we would become utter baddasses of the highest legends, or die trying 2 Session 1. I play a dumb dwarf barbarian because I am still unclear about the rules. I kinda wanted a wizard, but the rulebook was intimidating and I said gently caress it, give me the simplest one. Barbarian is born. I know nothing of Forgotten Realm so I just make him a Dwarf because dwarfs are funny and I specifically chose "Reckless" as my Character Flaw. 3 Wow, we got some experienced roleplayers here. Everyone is talking in character, so I just roll with it and do the same. We follow the breadcrumbs and murder some monsters and get some loot. Standard stuff. We find out about the Big Spooky Castle Full of Bad Buy's Boss and resolve to raid it. DM NPC is around and basically acts like a modern videogame where the sidekick tells you exactly what to do if you spend more than 2 minutes puzzling over the problem. Level up. 4 First session is over. I ask to borrow the rulebook so I can look it over. I ask what happens if we do die, and am told that we just roll up a new character. This was a lie. We couldn't die. I make the mistake of believing this. 5 In between sessions, I read the player's handbook. I realize this isn't so complex. I could be a wizard! I want to be a wizard! Spells look fun! It is not in my rulebook that I should message the DM and tell him I actually want to die. I just assume the most Role-Playery way to do this is to just get killed in battle, and then bust out the new character when I get the green light. I didn't think it was necessary to give everyone a pre-written scene where I die and they have to weep over me or whatever. 6 Session is almost all combat. Any time anyone (not just me) goes down, the NPC helper heals them back up. I go down 'naturally' once, and describe myself spitting blood in the faces of the kobolds and insulting them (thinking, maybe they'll kill me!). NPC helper picks me up and heals me while the kobolds totally ignore me as if they are not fighting, they are playing some sport. Maybe this would have been thematic and cool if it was an honorable samurai, or something, but they were described as grubby little fucks that have no honor and eat people. I then recklessly charge back into combat, again, and go down, again. NPC picks me up and heals me. I get a bit of good natured chiding and then Leroy Jenkins my way into battle and go down again! 7 I can see the DM is getting kind of annoyed that I keep going down, but doesn't tell me I'm breaking the rules or anything, just sighs. I expect he was tired of picking me up with the healer, and that he would just let me bleed out or something. Instead he picks me (and others) up again. I suppose the unspoken game here is that I am gonna charge in, without ever complaining he doesn't kill me, and he is gonna heal me, without ever directly telling me to knock it off. I can tell it is annoying him, and he is annoying me, but I turn it 'fun' by just pressing my luck and seeing how many obstacles this NPC is gonna run past to get me up before I die. It became a game within a game. 8 Session ends. I accuse him of 'cheating' by healing me after asking how many times can this loving guy heal me? I never directly told him to kill me, and he never directly told me to stop doing it. He admitted that the NPC healer basically existed to get us through all these fights so we could meet the boss with a good amount of health remaining, and that it would be a good fight against the boss (we didn't reach the boss before the end of the session.) 9 I tell him that there is no way I believe the boss fight is gonna be good because he's just gonna heal us again. He denies it, but at this point I don't believe him, because I couldn't possibly die before, so I tell him I'm not going to continue the campaign. Two others agree. The campaign ends. 10 He starts a new campaign again with some other people. I start my own campaigns later on with some of the people that got frustrated and quit his game. We still hang out, we just don't play in each other's RPGs. Nowadays, would I just repeatedly go in to die? Probably not, but I probably would have seen the signs earlier since I've played hundreds of sessions in the ensuing years. Back then I had no idea. I was also a decade younger. If you think this is TOXIC and AWFUL, I don't really care. The DM and I both hosed up in our own ways, but even now I'll put the blame on him since he was willfully dishonest until he was called out on it. We don't hold any sort of grudge about it, and still hang out frequently, and still can piss each other off rightly in Twilight Imperium. Nowadays, he doesn't DM like that, and I don't play like that, so we both have grown in that sense. If you hate my posts, just be a big lad and hit the ignore button. I respond when I am tagged. If you don't want a response, don't tag me. This is not complicated. I didn't ever imply you were a lovely DM, unless you yourself identify with the behavior that I complained about in another DM that you've never met. I meant you're being a dick right now, in this thread Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 06:22
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gurragadon posted:I like the idea of non-lethal or non game ending consequences and they are pretty necessary for a good story usually. Even if we were playing magical tea party there should be consequences for breaking a cup. It would just be a minor consequence like no more sugar or something. But I would have more fun playing magical tea party if there was a rule that my character "lost" by not being invited back to the tea party and I had to make a new character. They're both games but when I can "lose" it feels more like a game, without a way to lose it feels like a collaborative story. I think the main problem with character death is that you have to undermine the effect somewhat in order to not make it a vicious slog for everyone involved. Yeah, you have to make Kevinnnn to replace Kevin, but unless we start him at the same power level as everyone else is currently, encounter balancing is going to be near-impossible in most systems. So if we actually carry through and force you to start over as a level 1 character, it's going to direly impact everyone's fun and give the GM a headache, if we don't, then the only consequence is if you were super attached to Kevin's character and story. It just all feels kind of like a Catch-22 situation to me. The only way I could see it working is if EVERYONE died and had to start over(to avoid both power imbalances and making the character replacement meaningless), but then it kind of gets into the issue of "how the hell do you even pick up the threads and continue in the same world in a satisfying way?" It's just wasting everyone's time to set up a new world unless the GM was randomly generating it as he went along like a roguelite game.
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Apr 27, 2023 09:33
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I'm 100% ignorant of RPG podcasts and youtubers and such. I'm curious about this, is the mystique related because they're doing it as a business or something, and they have already kind of selected players that know this (but the audience doesn't quite) and will absolutely play ball in the 'correct way', while regular RPG groups are kind of messy and human in ways that produced podcasts don't really replicate? Like, high budget porno vs real hookups? Not trying to nitpick, I'm curious about this whole line of though. That’s true, but it works more direct ways as well. For example, the vast majority of Podcasted games are railroaded, even if they don’t appear to be on the podcast. In many cases, the players and GM together will have decided on the plot of the next session before recording starts, and then the players will fill-in reasons why the characters take actions which lead along that plot. If they’re good actors - and the most successful podcasts are all done by actors - they can make this appear to be spontaneous even though it isn’t. And it’s a terrible image. There are plenty of descriptions online of people being told to accept their GM will not be as “good” as Matt Mercer, but not that their GM is not even working within the same structure as Matt Mercer is.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:47
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Heard a good discussion about this from Alexander Newell, the GM of Rusty Quill Gaming. He was emphasising that the home games he runs are nothing like the podcast game he runs because every part of the expectation is different. In a podcast game you're driving the action, trying to get a coherent beat about once an hour, and ultimately playing to an audience. In a home game things take as long as the players want them to take and it's entirely possible to have a full evening session where the "plot" doesn't advance an inch but everyone feels happy with how things went. In his case I'm largely certain he doesn't railroad, but he very much does hurry people if they're grinding dirt.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:00
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I didn't write every single thing about the game because I was illustrating an example of dishonesty in establishing the initial game leading to friction when the dice hit the table and the expectations that were stated are not meant. I was not writing an exact by the minutes play report of a session I played like 9 years ago. Okay, I'll dig the two things I asked about out. Mr. Grapes! posted:
I don't think it's necessary to pre-script a death scene, I just wondered why you didn't ask your DM directly if you could switch characters. Inexperience, it sounds like? You're sarcastic, but you do hit on a good point that rulebooks should have guidance on how to change characters if you don't find one that fits right away. Old school games I suppose did presume you'd just die so fast that most players would lose their first character anyway. I more often see guidance on respec-ing or changing characters in newer games, or occasionally now baked-in options to swap out "builds" in those books. There was clearly a communication breakdown where the DM did not explain what he intended to do with the healer NPC, the expectations of the players clashed with what the DM is doing because of prior DM communication, and then when the concern was finally raised after the single session where it was an issue, it was done in a frankly crappy way that was picking a fight: Mr. Grapes! posted:8 Session ends. I accuse him of 'cheating' by healing me after asking how many times can this loving guy heal me? I never directly told him to kill me, and he never directly told me to stop doing it. He admitted that the NPC healer basically existed to get us through all these fights so we could meet the boss with a good amount of health remaining, and that it would be a good fight against the boss (we didn't reach the boss before the end of the session.) Your original anecdote was raised as evidence that fudging is bad, but there was apparently a lot more at play than the DM lying about some dice results here that led to a breakdown of your two-session campaign. I don't blame anyone for destroying it or something, but there's more at play than just "fudging. It also opens up discussion about what counts as "fudging" and what is outright "cheating." I'd treat fudging as ignoring a die roll or maybe permitting a spell to do something not explicitly outlined in its rules, like a fireball setting curtains on fire. Is an OP NPC follower "fudging"? It sounds like stronger manipulation of the rules to me. Is all fudging "cheating"? I'm talking in a broader sense because the whole concept and how it is ingrained in TTRPG culture is certainly a complicated and hot-button issue. Mr. Grapes! posted:Nowadays, would I just repeatedly go in to die? Probably not, but I probably would have seen the signs earlier since I've played hundreds of sessions in the ensuing years. Back then I had no idea. I was also a decade younger. If you think this is TOXIC and AWFUL, I don't really care. The DM and I both hosed up in our own ways, but even now I'll put the blame on him since he was willfully dishonest until he was called out on it. We don't hold any sort of grudge about it, and still hang out frequently, and still can piss each other off rightly in Twilight Imperium. Nowadays, he doesn't DM like that, and I don't play like that, so we both have grown in that sense. 1 I'm not a lad. 2 Knowing it was a two-session deal that broke down into an argument, and knowing you were still pretty new does change the level of toxicity I read into what happened. Your original post framed it as a much longer-running affair where tensions built up over multiple sessions of you becoming "the problem player" with escalating ridiculously suicidal stunts, and not you running into a mob of kobolds 6 or 8 or 10 times in a night. 3 I don't like using the ignore button. I find it pretty useless to actually filter out posts, since it's not like it hides people block quoting someone you've ignored to reply to them. I just scroll past a post I don't feel like engaging with. I'll be sure to exercise that right in the future, if I feel it is necessary.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:19
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PurpleXVI posted:I think the main problem with character death is that you have to undermine the effect somewhat in order to not make it a vicious slog for everyone involved. Your right that when one character dies you do have to undermine the effect. It can be lessened by not making a carbon copy of the character you were playing before, but then you run into the problem of how this new character just happens to be at the right place right time. I usually just roll random race, class, background so I don't deliberately try to fill the old role. Most of our deaths in combat in the groups I play end up being TPK's. When we are at the place where one or two characters are dead, it usually leads to a cascading effect of us all dying because the remaining characters can't handle the combat by themselves. That kind of leads into the type of game you are wanting to play though and expectations going in. All of our campaigns are basically just hex crawls where we start doing some random mission and kind of just go where the story leads us. We always deal with the lingering effects that our old characters left on the world and that's how our DM develops the world. For example, a wizard in our group planted a bean from the good old bag of beans, but it ended up causing a mummy lord to rise and enslave part of the sword coast. Our characters in that campaign died before they could even deal with it, but the next characters we made had to deal with it as well. We've gotten 3 groups up to various levels, the highest was 9th, and they have all had impacts on the common world the DM is building. The plot armor really benefits campaigns that are trying to tell an epic or long story because if you leave death up to the dice then it is very unlikely you will finish the story. Something like Descent to Avernus or something in D&D 5e. If you're playing that then it should be known that the group probably wants to finish the story, so the DM is probably gonna fudge the dice to keep us alive. If they said they didn't I wouldn't believe it, because it's just so unlikely that the dice are going to be so kind. I think that's the main difference in the significance of death between playstyles though. Sometimes it is a positive that adds extra danger to the game, but it can be a negative in campaigns that are trying to tell a story because it's going to happen if you let it.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:50
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, you have to make Kevinnnn to replace Kevin, but unless we start him at the same power level as everyone else is currently, encounter balancing is going to be near-impossible in most systems. So if we actually carry through and force you to start over as a level 1 character, it's going to direly impact everyone's fun and give the GM a headache, if we don't, then the only consequence is if you were super attached to Kevin's character and story. It just all feels kind of like a Catch-22 situation to me. Perhaps a sidekicking system of some sort? Make a beginning character, with all the limitations that entails, but assume their attacks and abilities hit at the current party level -1. Keep giving them party-level XP, maybe with a slight bonus, and they'll be right back up even with everyone in no time. (Idea shamelessly stolen from City of Heroes.)
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Apr 27, 2023 14:55
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Mirage posted:Perhaps a sidekicking system of some sort? Make a beginning character, with all the limitations that entails, but assume their attacks and abilities hit at the current party level -1. Keep giving them party-level XP, maybe with a slight bonus, and they'll be right back up even with everyone in no time. (Idea shamelessly stolen from City of Heroes.) I prefer to just make character death optional if they ever fail 3 death saves or hit negative bloodied or w/e. That way someone who really enjoyed playing kevin can come back on the next long rest and someone who is okay with how their character died can roll up a new character. There's a lot more that factors into when a character dies than just tactical error so I don't see a need to punish them if the dice don't go in their favor.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:01
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There's also a lot to be said (if people want to bring that character back) for a Resurrection Quest. I had a character die in a game this weekend, in a very close knit party. As it turned out the party had a paladin with Revivify and managed to bring him back in the first minute, but before this happened (there was some drama about spell slots), there was table discussion about bringing the character back, during which the DM texted me about the idea of me running the quest to resurrect the character, along the lines of his soul having been diverted on death and them needing to recover it. Honestly the idea was fun enough that it was almost a shame that I got revivified.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:12
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Lamuella posted:There's also a lot to be said (if people want to bring that character back) for a Resurrection Quest. That sounds like it was a rad af experience.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:14
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I always made them start over as feeble level 1s, but get big xp until they reach parity. They're learning from seasoned adventurers 
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Apr 27, 2023 15:53
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gurragadon posted:That kind of leads into the type of game you are wanting to play though and expectations going in. All of our campaigns are basically just hex crawls where we start doing some random mission and kind of just go where the story leads us. We always deal with the lingering effects that our old characters left on the world and that's how our DM develops the world. For example, a wizard in our group planted a bean from the good old bag of beans, but it ended up causing a mummy lord to rise and enslave part of the sword coast. Our characters in that campaign died before they could even deal with it, but the next characters we made had to deal with it as well. We've gotten 3 groups up to various levels, the highest was 9th, and they have all had impacts on the common world the DM is building. Part of my issue with this sort of game, personally, would be that I'd feel like I was repeating a lot of stuff. "Ah, yes, time to spend ten to twelve sessions fighting kobolds and orcs in Dogshit Valley so we can then move up to fighting trolls and minotaurs in Trashfire Canyon." There's always going to be a limited array of level-appropriate options, especially in a combat-heavy hexcrawl. On the player side, you also get the issue that in the sort of simple games where it's relatively unchallenging to roll up a new character after a total party wipe... characters are also going to be mechanically kind of same-ish, defined largely by their race, class and level of which there are a pretty limited number of combinations at chargen. Especially when you consider that unless someone is literally rolling up a wholly random character, they probably picked what they picked because they find playing that combo fun, and will likely want to play it again and... you can see where I'm going with this. There's going to be an awful lot of repetition baked into things mechanically no matter what sort of marks the players leave on the world. It's the same reason that repeated permadeath scenarios work well for roguelikes, but for games where the content doesn't change, we usually just have a reload button(and yes, I realize that a large subgenre doesn't have that, but even that genre has checkpoints) to avoid having to repeat the exact or almost exact same poo poo over and over and over again. Mirage posted:Perhaps a sidekicking system of some sort? Make a beginning character, with all the limitations that entails, but assume their attacks and abilities hit at the current party level -1. Keep giving them party-level XP, maybe with a slight bonus, and they'll be right back up even with everyone in no time. (Idea shamelessly stolen from City of Heroes.) I mean, sure, but that's effectively still "death is not a punishment because you're right back where you started and Kevinnnnn even inherited Kevinnnn's magical sword and shield." Lamuella posted:There's also a lot to be said (if people want to bring that character back) for a Resurrection Quest. Conceptually? Love it. Practically? Either you're once again running several sessions where someone needs to have a backup character(that can then be gracefully retired or faded back as a sidekick afterwards), several sessions where someone's not attending or just watching or several sessions with a new GM who might not have the desire or ability to run said quest. The backup character seems to be about the only consistently workable solution to my mind.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:17
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I think we’re kind of drifting in two directions. One is what GMs/players should learn, and the other is what they actually do learn. Since the inspiration for the thread was how to deal with what people learn from D&D, the second seems more relevant. The dialog with Mr. Grapes shows the kind of issue I’ve been mentioning. The players and GM had somehow learned that the correct way to play was to act like the PCs could die when they in fact could not. This is not necessarily a sign of distrust. After all, if you’re watching an action movie, you don’t feel no excitement because you know the hero will eventually overcome all dangers. And for some players what happened would be sufficient. It would be enough penalty that the emitted story is not about a bad rear end Barbarian who drives his enemies before him yadda yadda but about one who keeps having to be healed by the party’s sidekick. In fact it is possible to argue that the GM assumed that MrG wanted to play a badass and the fact that he clearly was not a bad rear end in play would be sufficient penalty, as how was the GM supposed to know that MrG wanted his character to die? What I find most interesting is that the other players sat there observing Mr Grapes’ character being healed over and over again, but only when the GM admitted this was happening did they say anything. And that was not to ask the GM not to heal them, it was to immediately quit the campaign. Presumably they were not blind or stupid and knew what was happening and could draw conclusions from it. So why that behaviour? My belief - and I fully admit this might be wrong - is that the players knew their PCs would probably always be healed, but only by admitting it and making it definite did the GM break the illusion they needed to suspend disbelief. And once that happened, asking the GM not to heal them please would be meaningless because an answer yes could just be an attempt to replace the illusion. They had learned not to discuss honestly. At the same time, it wasn’t distrust exactly. It was that playing the game required them to suspend disbelief about the nature of the game. (Reminds me of the plan to write “Virtu: the role-playing game of playing the best ever role-playing game.”) I’ve seen this. One when I was running the fighting tournament AP for PF2 a player looked exasperated when a fight ran long and said it was boring because they knew they must eventually win the tournament for the adventure to continue. If you have read the module you know that one of its better aspects is that this is not the case. The PCs do not have to come 1st and the adventure can continue even if they are eliminated. But at the same time I couldn’t tell the player exactly that because a) for all they knew it would just be what I “had” to say and b) if I told them the entire truth they would then feel the tournament was a waste of time because nothing of lasting consequence happens no matter what they do. So I had to fall back on the old trick of being ambiguous. I learned that from somewhere. I don’t know where, and I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t. hyphz fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 16:22
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PurpleXVI posted:Conceptually? Love it. Practically? Either you're once again running several sessions where someone needs to have a backup character(that can then be gracefully retired or faded back as a sidekick afterwards), several sessions where someone's not attending or just watching or several sessions with a new GM who might not have the desire or ability to run said quest. The backup character seems to be about the only consistently workable solution to my mind. That gets back to the point about conversation. The death should be handled how the table wants the death to be handled. For some people that's a sheet rip and a reroll. For others it's going to be something more, either for the drama of bringing the character back or for the emotion of a goodbye.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:27
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hyphz posted:That’s true, but it works more direct ways as well. For example, the vast majority of Podcasted games are railroaded, even if they don’t appear to be on the podcast. In many cases, the players and GM together will have decided on the plot of the next session before recording starts, and then the players will fill-in reasons why the characters take actions which lead along that plot. I run an online game series*. I would love to have players consistently enough to railroad them. Instead, it’s modular, with the adventure centering around specific adventures and whoever shows up. I do try and make sure the characters aren’t unplayably screwed until the last 10 to 15 minutes of the record. I’ve had people make massive success, and times when they were down to one wheel and no gas 50 miles out of town. I like one shots and disconnected adventures cause you can end things when the characters have lost (“… so yeah, he would have no reason not to blow up the Pole Position at this point.”) and it’s understood you’re not being cruel, you’re just saying what the fiction demands. *We haven’t had a new episode this year lol, the editor’s life is supremely busy.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:42
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All this talk about death is also ignoring that oftentimes, in the specific game or game type that is being talked about, resurrection is pretty easily available RAW. Which one, is an indicator of how much that chafes some GM's enough to write it out. And two, shows how death is not even that big a consequence, at least again RAW. Now, of course, that makes a certain degree of sense, D&D of that vintage will happily kill off a character with poison or petrification or whatever on a single roll.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:50
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