Peni Griffin
First Post
But how well-written is it if the degree of lethality is a surprise, or well above what the group normally expects, which often seems to be the case? That's the bit I find puzzling. If you like games with a high body count, obviously RHOD is a good fit; but if you don't, the failure of the module as a "Tough but survivable" challenge ought to appear as a flaw to the average user. I think the suggested levels on modules should have more explication - "In playtest, 50% of PCs who started at level 5 died before the end of the scenario, 100% of PCs who started at 12th level survived." Something like that, to indicate the degree of lethality the designers had in mind.
Everybody's got to adjust their games to their players' preferred modes. Our entire gaming group invests a lot of time and energy into their characters - not their classes, feats, prestige classes, etc., but their characters, the people they are and want to be. We choose skills and feats and so on based on what this person would do and the goals we have for the characters, and we strive to be Big Damn Heroes.
When you have players like that - and in 30 years of play, most of the people I've played with have invested a lot in their characters - they take death hard, even with antideath magic available, and a high kill rate ruins the game for them. Death should accomplish something, or be the result of actions so perfectly in character that if you had to do it over knowing that death was the consequence, you'd still do it. That is satisfying. The DM supplies interesting noncombat stuff, and players work at keeping each other alive. We retreat; we spend time and money on healing magic; paradoxically, we risk our own deaths to save each other, and this works for us in most situations. I confidently expect it to continue to work for us as I run them through RHOD.
Despite the fact that most of the people I've ever played with invested heavily in their characters, modules seem to be written for people with a more videogame mentality. You can't be a Big Damn Hero if there's no risk of death, but you can't be one if you lose half the time, either. We used to have a DM who didn't think a combat was balanced unless each side had an equal chance of winning. 50% chance of TPK per combat was too much for us!
If that's the way most people play, that's fine. I've got my group and we suit. I'm making modifications to the module to suit us better and that's my job as DM. But what I'm hearing are people who didn't make modifications blaming the module and praising it at the same time. This is confusing. Well, I can live with confusion if I have to. But it seems to me that any DM worth his salt whose players don't suck can find ways to keep from killing them more often than is fun for them.
Well, maybe not in Tomb of Horrors. But I'm pretty sure anybody who voluntarily plays Tomb of Horrors is psychologically prepared for nasty, meaningless death and wants the DM to go for it.
Everybody's got to adjust their games to their players' preferred modes. Our entire gaming group invests a lot of time and energy into their characters - not their classes, feats, prestige classes, etc., but their characters, the people they are and want to be. We choose skills and feats and so on based on what this person would do and the goals we have for the characters, and we strive to be Big Damn Heroes.
When you have players like that - and in 30 years of play, most of the people I've played with have invested a lot in their characters - they take death hard, even with antideath magic available, and a high kill rate ruins the game for them. Death should accomplish something, or be the result of actions so perfectly in character that if you had to do it over knowing that death was the consequence, you'd still do it. That is satisfying. The DM supplies interesting noncombat stuff, and players work at keeping each other alive. We retreat; we spend time and money on healing magic; paradoxically, we risk our own deaths to save each other, and this works for us in most situations. I confidently expect it to continue to work for us as I run them through RHOD.
Despite the fact that most of the people I've ever played with invested heavily in their characters, modules seem to be written for people with a more videogame mentality. You can't be a Big Damn Hero if there's no risk of death, but you can't be one if you lose half the time, either. We used to have a DM who didn't think a combat was balanced unless each side had an equal chance of winning. 50% chance of TPK per combat was too much for us!
If that's the way most people play, that's fine. I've got my group and we suit. I'm making modifications to the module to suit us better and that's my job as DM. But what I'm hearing are people who didn't make modifications blaming the module and praising it at the same time. This is confusing. Well, I can live with confusion if I have to. But it seems to me that any DM worth his salt whose players don't suck can find ways to keep from killing them more often than is fun for them.
Well, maybe not in Tomb of Horrors. But I'm pretty sure anybody who voluntarily plays Tomb of Horrors is psychologically prepared for nasty, meaningless death and wants the DM to go for it.
