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Was it too much? Dealing with TPKs and more
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6782363" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Some players like being able to lose. Some of them don't. Some people play video games on Iron Man mode where saving/reloading is not allowed. Some of them don't.</p><p></p><p>One thing I do to keep the decision in the player's hands is that if things go really bad (unwanted character death or TPK), a player has the option of intervening directly in the gameworld as a player (not as a PC) to change one of the decisions leading up to the horrible event. "You (the PC) have a horrible dream [sent by player, as godlike entity] about what would have happened if you'd all gone down into the tunnel." However, doing so accumulates a karmic balance which I, the DM, can use to make their lives unhappy at some unspecified point in the future. I don't believe in secretly changing die rolls, or tailoring opposition to the party's weaknesses, or cheating to save some big important villain from an anticlimactic kill in the first round... but if the players have built up a karmic balance, all bets are off and I will spend karma to do any and all of that stuff. Last time I used karma, it was to sic space lawyers (well, more like Mafia) on the players at their space colony, which ended up costing them everything they owned and then some more in "rent." (They had a chance to escape, gambling with the chief bad guy in single combat, but the PC who fought him lost, and then lost again on a double-or-nothing bet.)</p><p></p><p>Some of my players spend karma freely. Others never spend karma and prefer to let death happen when it happens. One of them once spent two karma points in a single day while hunting for roc eggs, alone. He kept rolling poorly and getting caught and subsequently killed by the mama/papa rocs... but he really wanted a roc egg, so he just spent karma and kept going. The other players were going crazy watching the karmic debt accumulate, but I just smiled evilly and let them work it out amongst themselves.</p><p></p><p>You could do something similar if you want to put the power in the players' hands.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6782363, member: 6787650"] Some players like being able to lose. Some of them don't. Some people play video games on Iron Man mode where saving/reloading is not allowed. Some of them don't. One thing I do to keep the decision in the player's hands is that if things go really bad (unwanted character death or TPK), a player has the option of intervening directly in the gameworld as a player (not as a PC) to change one of the decisions leading up to the horrible event. "You (the PC) have a horrible dream [sent by player, as godlike entity] about what would have happened if you'd all gone down into the tunnel." However, doing so accumulates a karmic balance which I, the DM, can use to make their lives unhappy at some unspecified point in the future. I don't believe in secretly changing die rolls, or tailoring opposition to the party's weaknesses, or cheating to save some big important villain from an anticlimactic kill in the first round... but if the players have built up a karmic balance, all bets are off and I will spend karma to do any and all of that stuff. Last time I used karma, it was to sic space lawyers (well, more like Mafia) on the players at their space colony, which ended up costing them everything they owned and then some more in "rent." (They had a chance to escape, gambling with the chief bad guy in single combat, but the PC who fought him lost, and then lost again on a double-or-nothing bet.) Some of my players spend karma freely. Others never spend karma and prefer to let death happen when it happens. One of them once spent two karma points in a single day while hunting for roc eggs, alone. He kept rolling poorly and getting caught and subsequently killed by the mama/papa rocs... but he really wanted a roc egg, so he just spent karma and kept going. The other players were going crazy watching the karmic debt accumulate, but I just smiled evilly and let them work it out amongst themselves. You could do something similar if you want to put the power in the players' hands. [/QUOTE]
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