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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6834421" data-attributes="member: 32740">You're doing it right in this way - you're still open to questioning yourself whether you're doing it right.  It means you have the interests of your players at heart and THAT is important.I'd disagree with a few things though.  It's all fine and well to say that if you're all enjoying the game then you're doing it right, but there is always the possibility of doing it BETTER.  Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the complete absence of PC deaths is an issue for at least some degree of concern.In the earliest versions of D&D PC death was almost of no concern at all. It may, at times, have even seemed like a way to keep score.  If players simply managed to have a PC survive AT ALL then they had achieved something significant, and FREQUENT PC death was the NORM.  With AD&D (1E and 2E) I believe that really began to change.  The game had finally really begun to incorporate roleplaying as the real heart and soul of the game; the achievements and CONTINUED adventures of the player characters became more important to the ongoing success of the game than mere survival.  DMing was far less about attempting to "score" the deaths of PC's by tricks and traps, by hook or by crook, and more about interesting worlds, interesting NPC's for PC's to interact with, interesting monsters to fight, and fun stories oriented around the PC's continued adventures to be played out.  Think of it in terms of the TV show Survivor.  The show isn't simply about, "All contestants must cross from one side of the island to the other, obtain a maguffin, and return to the starting point.  Fail to do x, y, and z along the way and you LOSE."  It's about the contestants backgrounds BEFORE they got to the island, the alliances they form (and break), a VARIETY of challenges that they are faced with, how well they succeed or fail at those challenges given their personal skills and abilities, and how they treat other people whether they are allied with them or not.  It isn't JUST about survival.  Neither is D&D - but like Survivor the game is more interesting when there are genuine consequences for failure.  If the DM always ensures that the PC's NEVER die then that has a SERIOUS effect on how the game is played and enjoyed.  Success tastes sweeter when you have worked hard for it, when you've EARNED it, than when it was simply given to you.Now there's an additional complication with RPGs which is that sometimes failure is simply a random event.  Sometimes you'll get into combats where the DM rolls well, the players roll poorly and suddenly - WITHOUT their having done anything particularly wrong - the PC's are about to die.  Part of the enjoyment of the game - part of the SKILL of playing the game - is when players recognize that they are about to fail and that the CONSEQUENCE for that failure will be the death of their character.  It is NOT supposed to be up to the DM to ALWAYS prevent their deaths.  It is SUPPOSED to be up to the PLAYERS to recognize that developing threat and either take actions to overcome it or avoid it by the choices THEY make.  And even then, sometimes they will not succeed and the price to be paid is the death of a PC.But then the game has already anticipated this possibility and BUILT IN a means to take care of it.  It's resurrection magic.  Once PC's have survived to a certain level or whatever, then their characters achieve access to Raise Dead spells and similar magic so that when they die the consequence is not permanent like it used to be.  Death still carries significant consequences but those consequences can, to a degree, be mitigated.So, in that sense you are indeed doing it wrong.The way to correct it, should you choose to do so, is to TALK TO THE PLAYERS.  Tell them how you've been handling the issue up to this point, that it's become a concern of yours, and that you're going to CHANGE how you handle it and that at some point PC'S WILL DIE.  When that happens, said players must be fully aware and accepting that this is not an attempt by you as DM to screw them over.  It's an attempt to make the game they are playing more interesting and fun by increasing the ACTUAL challenge their characters face and not trying to constantly remove all lethal consequences.Now I personally am still of the opinion that sometimes the DM might still want to surreptitiously cheat the dice or whatever to ensure that PC's survive.  Dice don't run my game - _I_ run my game.  Sometimes an encounter turns out far deadlier than I actually intended it to be (and that's much more likely in 1st Edition games that I run where encounter creation formulae just don't work).  So, on occasion, I'll make changes on the fly to give the PC's a break and actually try NOT to kill them.  My job as DM isn't to just achieve a regular rate of PC deaths.  My job is to ensure that death is possible especially when it's appropriate - like when it's a consequence of the players/PC's POOR decisions.  If they're making the right choices and an encounter is turning out deadlier than it's supposed to be - that's when I'll actively try to keep the PC's from dying by intentionally doing less damage, by having monsters NOT attack PC's who are already down, by choosing to have opponents break morale rather than continue to fight, by simply declaring that their attacks MISSED, etc.  I don't do that very often, and in fact I REALLY TRY to avoid ever having to do it at all, but I permit myself to keep it as an option for when I want it or need it.</blockquote>

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