Dragonblade
Adventurer
So there has been a lot of discussion back and forth on whether 4e is making the game too "easy". That its not "gritty" enough. Some old school gamers miss save or die, or level draining. They like the Warhammer style of play where even a bar fight could end their life.
However, for my group we are really looking forward to 4e precisely because it lessens grit. We like cinematic heroics. Heroes who can take on dragons and walk away without permnanent disabilities.
Many of us have been gaming for 10+ years. Some of us (including myself) over 20 years. After our last Age of Worms session (likely our last 3.5 game), we had an interesting discussion after almost getting TPKed (which would have been our 2nd TPK in AoW had it happened). We talked about character death and after all the work we have put into our characters, seeing our characters die is almost like seeing all that work wasted. But all of us agreed that the threat of death is important to creating tension and excitement. No one wants to die, but its no fun to play a game where your character is untouchable. What would the point of playing be after all?
One of our players even went so far as to say that if his character dies, he'll be done playing. At least until 4e comes out and even then he isn't sure he would play again. He has lost so many characters and/or had so many campaigns start strong and then fizzle over the span of his many years of gaming that the will to make yet another new PC has been all but beaten out of him. But yet, being resurrected doesn't appeal to him either. Ironically, he felt it would cheapen the death of his character should it actually occur.
Gritty is what our group absolutely does not want. We want the threat of death, and we want death to be real, but we don't want to actually die. How can we reconcile these two seemingly opposite concepts?
After much discussion on ways avoid PC death, but yet not make it seem like we have plot immunity, we hit upon a solution. The next time a PC dies, our DM will let us hit "reset" like we were playing a video game. We will be able to rewind back to before that battle and replay it again (or perhaps even run away this time). This might be much too metagamey for some groups taste, but it seems like it would work out well for our group. I wanted to post this here, because I think it illustrates the drawback of gritty games. Sure they seem "real" but for my group, its certainly not a fun playstyle.
Have any other groups done anything similar? I wonder if the 4e DMG will offer a similar idea.
However, for my group we are really looking forward to 4e precisely because it lessens grit. We like cinematic heroics. Heroes who can take on dragons and walk away without permnanent disabilities.
Many of us have been gaming for 10+ years. Some of us (including myself) over 20 years. After our last Age of Worms session (likely our last 3.5 game), we had an interesting discussion after almost getting TPKed (which would have been our 2nd TPK in AoW had it happened). We talked about character death and after all the work we have put into our characters, seeing our characters die is almost like seeing all that work wasted. But all of us agreed that the threat of death is important to creating tension and excitement. No one wants to die, but its no fun to play a game where your character is untouchable. What would the point of playing be after all?
One of our players even went so far as to say that if his character dies, he'll be done playing. At least until 4e comes out and even then he isn't sure he would play again. He has lost so many characters and/or had so many campaigns start strong and then fizzle over the span of his many years of gaming that the will to make yet another new PC has been all but beaten out of him. But yet, being resurrected doesn't appeal to him either. Ironically, he felt it would cheapen the death of his character should it actually occur.
Gritty is what our group absolutely does not want. We want the threat of death, and we want death to be real, but we don't want to actually die. How can we reconcile these two seemingly opposite concepts?
After much discussion on ways avoid PC death, but yet not make it seem like we have plot immunity, we hit upon a solution. The next time a PC dies, our DM will let us hit "reset" like we were playing a video game. We will be able to rewind back to before that battle and replay it again (or perhaps even run away this time). This might be much too metagamey for some groups taste, but it seems like it would work out well for our group. I wanted to post this here, because I think it illustrates the drawback of gritty games. Sure they seem "real" but for my group, its certainly not a fun playstyle.
Have any other groups done anything similar? I wonder if the 4e DMG will offer a similar idea.
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