D&D 5E Krynn's Free Feats: setting-specific or the future of the game?

[Micah Sweet]

I don't understand this at all.

I mean when you TPK do you just continue as if nothing happened?

I have very rarely seen anyone have scripted immunity to death (I think of HP as your plot armor)

For one thing, a TPK is the whole party, not one warlock. For another, the game might continue with a new party if the goal is important enough to the world and the players.

I've never run a TPK, so I'm actually not sure what would happen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So if the game was harder, you'd be down to two points? Not trying to be glib, just, it seems your comment is based on the current lethality of play, and I'm wondering how a more lethal game would/could affect how you feel.

A more lethal game wouldn't change how I feel, but I would probably enjoy playing it more.

 

[TwoSix]

I agree, but if you're playing in a particular kind of "old school" model the campaign never ends even as PCs die and new PCs come in.

It's a very DM-centric view of what a campaign is, but it's definitely a model I know a number of folks used back in the day.

Oh, sure, I'm definitely familiar with the type. I mean, one of my games now has the party as mercenary company that's only known each other for a few weeks. Any PC death would be met with a shrug and a "Let's hire a new guy, and loot the body". Only a TPK would realistically end that game.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure. I love a new game. But if the existance of a campaign is hinged on the life of a particular PC, then that character is indestructible while the game lasts.

I mean, I guess, but that's mostly semantics. I don't view the PC as "indestructible" if the DM isn't using any particular shenanigans to keep the PC alive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, I guess, but that's mostly semantics. I don't view the PC as "indestructible" if the DM isn't using any particular shenanigans to keep the PC alive.

It depends on the group of course, but it seems to me that, as long as the DM and players want to keep going with the game, the DM is incentivized to keep the load-bearing PC alive.

 

[James Gasik]

It happens rarely, but the last time I had a TPK, it was pretty grim. All the momentum was sucked out of the proceedings, and everyone seemed demoralized. The party had spent months working towards their goals, actually setting up a base of operations, and had several irons in the fire, and now...they were all dead.

I offered a retcon, or "they had been captured not killed" or even "revived but with consequences" and the answer I got was "we'll get back to you".

And then everyone just got busy at the same time. The game had died and I was left wondering what had gone wrong. Had I overtuned the challenges? Should I have softballed things?

I generally don't, I roll in the open, and I'm very transparent about what enemies can do- I've had DM's who lost my trust in the past, and once gone, you can never get it back, so I never fudge or withhold information more than I feel I have to. That way everyone can make informed, tactical decisions.

Heck, one time a player was about to make a mistake and I offered them an Arcana check to realize that their attempt to Command a Gnoll was going to fail because Gnolls only speak Gnoll, and the spell is language-dependent.

In the end, it was just bad luck, but it didn't matter. The players felt cheated out of the fun they were having, and I didn't know how to recover from that. I still don't, really. I've heard suggestions, but nothing "feels right" to me.

So the idea that the game is designed to let players succeed doesn't bother me. The way I see it, that's just a safety net in case I build an encounter that ends up rougher than I'd planned.

I mean, I can always make things harder for the players. That's easy. Find ways to not let them rest when they want to, use terrain and traps creatively, make mixed groups of enemies whose abilities synergize so that combat is more like a puzzle of which enemy to take out first, extra objectives required to "win" a given scenario- that I know how to do.

But how to get a game on track when a lucky crit obliterates a player character who is vital to success? Yeah, that's hard.

 

[Jaeger]

This is why we don't want 'save or die' or 'dead at -10' (or worse dead at 0) anymore... more then once My warlock was down making death saves... and if I failed, or if someone didn't get to me it would have messed up that campaign.

I'll just come out and say it.

If a campaign is "messed up" by a single PC's death, verily, thine GM hast done it wrong.

Because:

If you can't or don't want to continue a campaign if a particular character dies, than that character is fundamentally immune to death. I'm afraid I don't really see a way out of that.

^This^

This is why you should not be able to plan more than one session ahead. This is why you do not do pre-planned "storylines"...

You set up the situation and factions, then manage and arbitrate the madness as the PC's run around pursuing their goals.

If the game world is not compelling enough to keep the players engaged after a PC death or TPK, to want to come back for more; Then the GM has placed the cart before the horse when creating and running the campaign.

There are very good reasons why Gygax listed the natural order of play as:
The Game as a whole First.
The Campaign Second.
PLAYERS Third.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It happens rarely, but the last time I had a TPK, it was pretty grim. All the momentum was sucked out of the proceedings, and everyone seemed demoralized. The party had spent months working towards their goals, actually setting up a base of operations, and had several irons in the fire, and now...they were all dead.

I offered a retcon, or "they had been captured not killed" or even "revived but with consequences" and the answer I got was "we'll get back to you".

And then everyone just got busy at the same time. The game had died and I was left wondering what had gone wrong. Had I overtuned the challenges? Should I have softballed things?

I generally don't, I roll in the open, and I'm very transparent about what enemies can do- I've had DM's who lost my trust in the past, and once gone, you can never get it back, so I never fudge or withhold information more than I feel I have to. That way everyone can make informed, tactical decisions.

Heck, one time a player was about to make a mistake and I offered them an Arcana check to realize that their attempt to Command a Gnoll was going to fail because Gnolls only speak Gnoll, and the spell is language-dependent.

In the end, it was just bad luck, but it didn't matter. The players felt cheated out of the fun they were having, and I didn't know how to recover from that. I still don't, really. I've heard suggestions, but nothing "feels right" to me.

So the idea that the game is designed to let players succeed doesn't bother me. The way I see it, that's just a safety net in case I build an encounter that ends up rougher than I'd planned.

I mean, I can always make things harder for the players. That's easy. Find ways to not let them rest when they want to, use terrain and traps creatively, make mixed groups of enemies whose abilities synergize so that combat is more like a puzzle of which enemy to take out first, extra objectives required to "win" a given scenario- that I know how to do.

But how to get a game on track when a lucky crit obliterates a player character who is vital to success? Yeah, that's hard.

That's unfortunate, and it's a shame your players took that situation so hard. But the only way to keep stuff like that from happening is to prevent character death, and that's a bridge too far for me.

 

[TwoSix]

It depends on the group of course, but it seems to me that, as long as the DM and players want to keep going with the game, the DM is incentivized to keep the load-bearing PC alive.

Sure, definitely group dependent. Our group is pretty hardcore about not being fans of the DM pulling punches when it comes to lethality.

And at least for our groups, I would say the majority (maybe 2/3) of our games are certainly open to just moving on with new PCs. Our Ravenloft game didn't have a single PC from the start of the game around at the end. But we also had a game where the party was a group of retainers for a noble PC; when the noble PC met an untimely end about 7 sessions in, it was obvious that the particular game was over.

 

[TwoSix]

If the game world is not compelling enough to keep the players engaged after a PC death or TPK, to want to come back for more; Then the GM has placed the cart before the horse when creating and running the campaign.

Yea, that's a little One True Way for me, sorry. In some games, the focus is on the characters and their story, and the setting is just there to be a framework for their story. In other games, exploring the setting is the primary focus, and the characters are meant to be somewhat interchangeable.

Neither way of playing is wrong; they're simply different techniques to use that can work better or worse for different groups and different systems.