HJRP2709 TPKs and PC Death, GM Appreciation, Safety Tools, Horror

uncommonman

I agree with the idea of if there's no risk, a combat shouldn't happen.

Playing a lot of Year Zero Engine games I'm trying to learn to roll less, you shouldn't ask for rolls when there's no danger.

That philosophy extend to combat, don't have the pc's have a combat if there's no danger.

If you feel a need to deplete their resources just have them roll an approximation for that or let them choose if they want to spend hp instead.

Tyler

From my point of view, that sounds boring as hell, and removes the players from the game. (I almost used the a word there). If I'm throwing a trivial combat at players to deplete their resources, I want them to be making those choices. Let them decide which resources to deplete.

Really, it comes down to what your players enjoy. I know my players. I know they'd be super bent if a kobold rolled a crit and killed their character in the first room of a dungeon. So I don't let that happen. I know that they make stupid choices and they know that they make stupid choices, so sometimes those stupid choices will kill their characters. I know that they'd be okay with their character dying in a fight with the big bad, so I let those dice fall where they will. Being a good gm is a lot like being a stan up comedian. You have to know your audience and tailor your routine to do what makes them happy.

At the end of the day, all that really matters is that everyone had fun, and I personally do what I think is necessary to facilitate that.

bigtroll

Tyler So the numbers on the dice don't really matter at the end of the day?

(waiting, eyebrows up in the air expectantly)

Kainguru

I'm conflicted by the choices above as both have merits and I can see both points of view. It really comes down to the group and flavour of game at the time. Leaving the real prospect of death to the big fights - check, but then, why have any encounters to 'resource drain' if there's no risk?. Then my mind muses about how no combat outcome is predictable - the Big Bad might end up being a dud of a fight because of clever play and a small skirmish can become an unintended tragedy.

To my mind I tend to go with Tyler - that's the art of GMing: fixing shit on fly. Fudging if needed: eg reduce the HP originally intended for that skirmish NPC to bring a combat that's going severely bad to an early close etc - which is heresy to some I know.

Adventure design is also crucial because, if we consider an RPG as an interactive story narrative, then no combats should be unimportant - the Fellowship faced life and death every time they drew their swords and every battle was significant to their eventual success. Continuing with the LoTR analogy: Boromir was a PC killed in a skirmish, but his death became significant because of how it was handled and the narrative it continued to generate afterwards ie: DM JRR Tolkien pulled face of surprise, pulled a Stu for thinking time (retired to the toilet for 10mins) and consequently made the death important and even linked it into the players replacement character, Faramir.

Just my 2 pence while at work. 🙂

Editing: poor grammar and stupid autocorrect

ProbieTim

We've had voluminous discussions of this on the old forums, and everyone probably already knows that I agree with Tyler and his post above.

To @uncommonman I would say that I see no fundamental difference between having a combat designed to deplete resources and requesting players to arbitrarily deplete resources or HP, other than - for me - the former would be much more fun and the latter would be a let-down. I like rolling my dice. 🙂

(That said, generally speaking I only fudge dice rolls in the case of new players getting their bearings; I will, however, adjust HP and AC on the fly if I feel I've made encounters too strong or too weak, based on how the encounter is going.)

My only comment to Kainguru would be this: I think the battle where Boromir died was more than a skirmish. It was a turning point in the entire saga.

On a different but related note, when I GM I make rolls and have my players roll frequently. Many times I have my players roll even when they don't need to, when there's no danger, or when they're going to succeed regardless. In those cases, I use the dice to guide the narrative: for instance, if they're looking for a clue - which they're going to get - the roll they make will help me decide how the clue gets there, and if they get any additional information. A bad roll might get the clue - "the murderer wore VANS shoes" - whereas a good roll might get way more than just the clue - "the murderer wore VANS shoes, and they were a size 12, and they have the imprint of the VANS custom shop and you know that the only VANS store which provides shoes from the custom shop is just outside town".

Kainguru

ProbieTim or it became a turning point in the saga after the fact. Note: Tolkien confessed that he didn't plan his story ahead of time, he let it unfold as he wrote it (because that's pretty much how he wrote The Hobbit - as an ongoing bedtime story for his children). I can imagine Tolkien's DnD group:

Bilbo's player wants to retire his old character and tries to sneakily pass on the most useful magic item in the game to his new character, Frodo - that's when DM Tolkien decides to make it cursed.

Aragorn's player complains that it's not fair that the Frodo Player get to keep his previous characters magic ring when his previous character, Thorin, had a cool sword. DM Tolkien sighs and says "fine, you can have a cool magic sword ... but you're too low a level for it at the moment so it's currently broken and you can only get it mended when you reach a high enough level"

Gandalf's player gets pretty pissed about the Balrog encounter because he hasn't been able to advance in level since DM Tolkien made his characters mentor, Saruman, evil. DM Tolkien realises that was a pretty dick move: "tell you what I'll let you call on a divine intervention, the chances are slim but you never know". Player rolls a 01 - "right so as you plummet into the abyss your God hears your plea, he'll bring you back BUT you gotta be really faithful to that God now and basically you do that God's work on MiddleEarth".
Gandalf's player: "cool, but what about training up a few levels, I've all this XP and no mentor". DM Tolkien: "I told you about Galdriel in Lothorien as a new mentor?". Gandalf Player "No, you didn't, you said the rumours were that bad shit happens in Lothorien and to stay away", Tolkien "no, no that's the rumour I passed you a note saying it wasn't true". Aragorn's Player "ummm I think you passed it to me by accident, I did wonder why the fuck you were telling me that". Tolkien "okie, cool so Gandalf will be out of action for few weeks while he trains up - so I'll have him catch up with the rest of you later".

Boromir's Player decides to seize The Ring, Tolkien has also just checked for wandering monsters - a passing Orc War Band . . . isn't that how all great RPG adventures are made?

ProbieTim

Kainguru isn't that how all great RPG adventures are made?

Maybe, but this is why it's hard to compare fiction to actual RPG sessions; we have no way of knowing if Boromir wasn't just an NPC going along with the party to buff it up, one who was killed off on purpose by the GM to show "how the monster worked".

In fact, I'd probably lean towards the only actual PCs being Frodo, Sam, and Aragon. To me, the others seem like NPC fillers to help those three PCs reach their goals.

And really... who would ever let anyone take Gandalf as a PC? "You want to play... what? An immortal angel that has actually sat WITH God who has been sent down in human form to help? What are you, nuts!?" 😃

Kainguru

ProbieTim or that backstory came later after that 01 roll)- in ADnD terms Gandalf didn't have that many spells, not even a decent fireball. He could monster summon (Giant Eagles), light, pyrotechnics, burning hands, read magic, detect magic, legend lore, fear, Protection from Evil 10' radius, remove curse, true sight, charm person, a few varieties of walls of x, knock, dispel magic, hold portal and a couple of others. Tolkien probably house ruled that he could use magic sword but maintained the 'no armour' rule. Narya, his Elven Ring of Power, was probably originally just a standard Ring of Fire Resistance (with a name to give it providence) which then becomes One of the 3 Uncorrupted Rings of Power after Tolkien let the player roll for divine intervention and the player's improvised line "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor" (for Tolkien canon geeks: I side with the belief that this is Gandalf referencing that he wields Narya when confronting the Balrog. I know the debate remains open and that there are no further canon references in LoTR to swing the argument to a definitive explanation). Maybe a staff of striking or even a staff of command. Otherwise he's one hell of a GMPC, and an example of how not to use a GMPC (all powerful, leads the group, cannot die)

But I'll admit I'm a sucker for ongoing behind the curtain retconning - if a game session goes wildly of track I'll go with it and change everything that hasn't been set yet by PC interaction to fit it into the new narrative or to create interesting complications.

ProbieTim

bigtroll So the numbers on the dice don't really matter at the end of the day?

I know you quoted Tyler, but I'd like to jump in on this.

For me, dice fudging is OK in very specific certain circumstances. One being the case of a new player who is sitting down for their first game (or one of their first games) and they're still learning the ropes, another being the case of a new system where everyone is learning the mechanics of the game. In those two situations, in those first sessions only, I will fudge my dice rolls if they're going to put a character to death. Outside of that, I don't think dice should be fudged. But in those two situations - where you've got a brand new player, or you're working with a brand new system - I think there should be some protection against character death. Because in those two situations, character death sucks.

Outside of that, I won't fudge dice. However, it is part of my job as a GM to tailor encounters for a specific purpose. If I have made an encounter too hard or too easy for that specific purpose, it's my responsibility to adjust it on the fly to meet the encounter's goal. Sure, characters can still die in those encounters if the dice go against them. But certain encounters are made to be against mooks, some are made to be level-appropriate, and some are made to be boss encounters; if I've made my mook encounters too hard, and I can tell that in the first round or two, then I adjust HPs and ACs and stuff like that behind the scenes to match what I was looking for in the encounter. The dice stand as rolled, but the details of the encounter may change as I deem necessary.

(Note: D&D terms have been used in all my posts in this thread. Adjust as needed to whatever game system you're playing. 🙂 )

Tyler

bigtroll As reductive and glib as that take is, yes. At the end of the day, the numbers on the dice absolutely do not matter.

All that matters is that the players enjoy the game.

If your group enjoys being absolutely true to every die roll, and would having their character die to a random kobold who rolled a 20 (I know no player out there is going to say "Yay! A KOBOLD KILLED MY CHARACTER!" but more likely "The kobold rolled a crit and I died, thats how the game is played and thats what I enjoy!"), then by all means, do that in your game. If you know your players would feel let down by that, roll behind a screen and just tell the player that his character was hit. Neither one makes you a good or bad GM. If the players are having fun, YOU'RE A GOOD GM.

The main thing that I like to preach on the show (aside from 'Don't be a furry') is communication with players. As GMs, our role is to facilitate their fun. If you do that, however you do that, you're doing it right.

bigtroll

After reflecting on what was above for a bit, I think the general feeling expressed is that nobody wants to see a character die due to bad luck. On the flip side, everyone wants to reward players for good luck. And if you have bad luck, just keep rolling until you get good luck seems to be the unwritten understanding.

To me, that seems kind of like selling lottery tickets that are only winners. Buy as many as you want, and you win every time! Nevermind that at some point your economy has gone to shit, because there is money being injected faster than it is taken out causing Versailles Germany inflation.

Maybe it has something to do with tone. Where the heroes will always win, and the bad guys always lose. It may be telling that in my games the PC's usually wind up being the biggest disruptors, and their attempts to 'help' usually wind up bringing out the world-ending events. So I guess I'm going to chalk it up to tone. 🙂

Kainguru

bigtroll my take is fail forward - Boromir dies in a wandering monster encounter (bad luck: it sticks), behind the curtain the DM retcons certain story elements to make the death significant (and introduces the players' new character, Faramir, with significant links to the now dead Boromir) - Plus the opportunity for some major complications later ref: Denethor

Ayslyn

bigtroll After reflecting on what was above for a bit, I think the general feeling expressed is that nobody wants to see a character die due to bad luck. On the flip side, everyone wants to reward players for good luck. And if you have bad luck, just keep rolling until you get good luck seems to be the unwritten understanding.

That is decidedly not what was said, or implied. There WAS the idea that they didn't want the deaths to be boring. That is distinctly different.

bigtroll

And to be clear I am not trying to be critical of how anyone plays! I am just trying to logic through what we do and why, and how it influences our games.

Azhrei_Vep

I'm generally first to jump ship the second someone brings up 'realism' for basically anything.

Buuuuut.... Death is one of the few places I like to maintain a touch of realism. Death happens. It's rarely heroic or glorious. It's often gross, stupid, pointless, unexpected, and/or meaningless. And I like to maintain that.

So, you got unlucky and the kobold jammed a spear in your lower belly and ripped out your intestines? Welp. You're fucked. That's that. Life's a bitch and death even moreso.

Kainguru

ProbieTim this double plus good. Another fudging tactic is to reduce the strategic IQ of the unintentionally overpowered mook - let them make a tactical error to provide an opening for the PC's to exploit, should they choose to do so (or have the mook fail to press an opportune advantage)

Tyler

Kainguru fudging tactic is to reduce the strategic IQ of the unintentionally overpowered mook - let them make a tactical error to provide an opening for the PC's to exploit, should they choose to do so (or have the mook fail to press an opportune advantage)

This is a favorite of mine. In my current campaign, due to a certain character's background choices, specific monsters will focus their attacks on him, to the point that it has trivialized a couple encounters. I don't think the players have quite figured it out yet, but when they do, I fully expect them to exploit it.

ProbieTim

Kainguru reduce the strategic IQ of the unintentionally overpowered mook

I mean... @Tyler can attest to this... ALL of my NPCs have a strategic IQ of about zero, because I have a strategic IQ of about zero. 😃

bigtroll

Tyler I totally agree we are all in this to have fun, and that is what is most important at the end of the day.

And to be fair, I don't know if being 100% true is a good idea at all. I think it is a very slippery slope on when to fudge the rolls, and it is far more often a see people being too far in the extreme of "the dice don't matter" over "every roll as it lands." And I freely admit to being glib, as if I fail my Persuasion roll I am hoping you will fudge the dice in my favor! 🙂

Tyler

ProbieTim I mean... @Tyler can attest to this... ALL of my NPCs have a strategic IQ of about zero, because I have a strategic IQ of about zero. 😃

Sometimes, "no tactics" is a very effective tactic.