Are you a killer DM?

[Fenes 2]

Flexor gets a gold star for that one. The characters have to feel the fear of their characters, whether or not the fear is actually real. If they find it is not, you lose all credibility as a DM.

-Fletch!

A player that needs the fear of PC-death to roleplay his PC fearing death and danger is not a player I want at my table.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

This is the basic difference. My players and I want the thrill of disarming the trap knowing it will kill us if it goes off. We want the thrill of a hard fought battle that could have gone the other way on the roll of a die or a bad decision a PC makes. They want to feel they have beaten the odds, have stared death in the face and came out on top. They want to really feel thier PC's are in danger of dying. It makes it more "real".

 

[Pielorinho]

This is the basic difference. My players and I want the thrill of disarming the trap knowing it will kill us if it goes off. We want the thrill of a hard fought battle that could have gone the other way on the roll of a die or a bad decision a PC makes. They want to feel they have beaten the odds, have stared death in the face and came out on top. They want to really feel thier PC's are in danger of dying. It makes it more "real".

And again, I think we get at the difference. My players and I both know that the trap isn't going to kill their PCs if they roll badly, just as Harrison Ford knows that the trap isn't going to kill Indy.

Neither Indy nor the PCs know that they're safe from death.

I'm not sure how to explain it any more clearly than this. I do know that I've had much, much more fun in RP sessions in which I knew death would only come when it would advance the storyline than I've had in sessions where death was at the whim of the dice.

Obviously different people play differently. I consider my style to be more cinematic, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

To have death defying situations wouldn't that demand that a PC could die? If not then you are not in a death defying situation. You are in a happy place instead.

Again with the cinematic analogy: Luke Skywalker piloted his little bitty ship into the bowels of the death star. Did you, as a viewer, think there was any chance that Luke would die? Was his situation death-defying?

For me, I find that dice-driven death can actually distance me and my players from the excitement. The joy of gaming isn't dealing with the complex and powerful emotions of grief -- rather, the joy is in the thrill of success. If I know that a character might die, I'm going to distance myself enough from the storyline that I won't risk feeling grief at the PC's death. This distance will also keep me from savoring success quite so much.

OTOH, if I know the PC is probably not going to die, I have much less trouble getting into the character's head and experiencing everything vicariously. I can therefore feel the thrill of success much more viscerally.

Daniel

 

[MerakSpielman]

Obviously different people play differently. I consider my style to be more cinematic, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

This is what it comes down to. Yes, we all play differently. My group has been playing incarnations of D&D for about 10 years. They are sick and tired of the same old thing and want the game to get progressively more challanging. TPK is not unheard of, and a wonderful basis for involving the next group of PCs in the same storyline.

You and your group want a cinematic experience. My group doesn't. People are different.

 

[seasong]

I'm starting up a low-fantasy, epic campaign right now. It is focused on the dangerous act of being an adventurer, and I intend for it to play out as a kind of serial documentary in the lives of adventurers (at least initially). So it might end up having a moderate body count, a bit of callousness, a mercenary attitude.

I ran a Mage: the Ascension campaign a while back, however, where the characters were destined to change the course of the world. There was never any question about whether they would live or die... just whether they would live well, and whether they achieved their goal, or the goal of some other entity.

The threat in each is credible. In the Mage campaign, they were very fearful that they might serve someone else's interests and hose everything.

I also ran a space horror campaign, with a hideous body count. The PCs were vacuum pirates, hardened bastards with few scruples, and the players delighted almost as much in seeing them die as seeing them win.

So I guess, for me, it depends.

 

[Pielorinho]

This is what it comes down to. Yes, we all play differently. My group has been playing incarnations of D&D for about 10 years. They are sick and tired of the same old thing and want the game to get progressively more challanging. TPK is not unheard of, and a wonderful basis for involving the next group of PCs in the same storyline.

You and your group want a cinematic experience. My group doesn't. People are different.

I agree entirely -- and I could see enjoying this kind of campaign. Normally my group is a bunch of artiste gamers, who write journals in-character, create whole cultures in the backstory, describe religious rituals in nauseating detail. And this is part of our fun. But doing a game in which the adventure, rather than each character, is the real focus could also be fun; I'd love to try it sometime.

Different styles, neither better nor worse than the other.

Daniel

 

[mkletch]

And again, I think we get at the difference. My players and I both know that the trap isn't going to kill their PCs if they roll badly, just as Harrison Ford knows that the trap isn't going to kill Indy.

Neither Indy nor the PCs know that they're safe from death.

If the players know the characters are safe from death, then eventually it seems into the play style for the characters. A trap, which everybody knows to be effectively harmless, is merely a sign saying "go here". A trap that will set off a Wail of the Banshee trap is a credible threat. "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

The party discusses it, the decides whether or not to let the rogue take a shot at it. At the very least, the rogue knows he is gambling with his life (assuming everybody else moves away). That may influence his decision. " How about we try to find another way?" he says. A magic missile trap carries little credible threat, and will get a disarm attempt 100%. No decision or discussion necessary on the part of the adventurers.

-Fletch!

 

[Pielorinho]

If the players know the characters are safe from death, then eventually it seems into the play style for the characters. A trap, which everybody knows to be effectively harmless, is merely a sign saying "go here". A trap that will set off a Wail of the Banshee trap is a credible threat. "Do you feel lucky, punk?"

The party discusses it, the decides whether or not to let the rogue take a shot at it. At the very least, the rogue knows he is gambling with his life (assuming everybody else moves away). That may influence his decision. " How about we try to find another way?" he says. A magic missile trap carries little credible threat, and will get a disarm attempt 100%. No decision or discussion necessary on the part of the adventurers.

-Fletch!

Interesting. Maybe it's that we threaten the party in different ways.

Threats my PCs have faced, over their careers:
-Getting collared by the cops for sneaking around a murder site.
-Getting mugged in a back alley.
-Getting sniped at by poisoned crossbow bolts
-Letting a murderer escape.
-Letting ghouls carry a PC off for lunch
-Being blackmailed by the largest church in town
-Almost eating human flesh at a down-and-out caravanserai
-Fighting undead legions on the deck of a storm-tossed ship
-Rowing furiously away from a cultist's den, all while cultists fire crossbows at them from the shore.
-Having a vengeance-minded osyluth trick them into thinking they had committed several murders
-Having a mafia-don-type figure frame them for murder, fraud, and theft
-Choosing to walk naked and unarmed into the holy land of a hostile goddess
-Chased by undead spellcasters and archers riding a trained roc

We've got plenty of excitement, and the PCs regularly run away from overwhelming odds. They don't play in the "we're immortal" style that you suggest: they show fear, they recognize when they're outgunned.

But they also show courage, and they also take risks.

It's a different style of play. I think you're simply mistaken about how players respond to knowing the PCs won't die.

Daniel

 

[fenzer]

I agree with Flexor. I want death to be ever present. If you blow it, it will cost you. Nonetheless, I do go out of my way to give the players a chance.

We use a house rule called the cool roll, don't ask, were everyone rolls a d12, don't ask, and the highest roll wins a karma point. The karma point allows a reroll of any roll, DM or player, and the roll is adjusted by a Karma die, 1d4, 1d6, or 1d8. This house rule has saved the day on more than one occasion. I was surprised at how close this is to the action point in d20 Modern. We thought of it first, so

I do make all vital rolls out in the open, or try to, most rolls I do behind my screen, however.

I have had players dying, -1 to -9, but the party makes it a point to stabilize downed characters. This happens quite a bit but rarely on a party level. I do hold to the -10 is dead rule.

All my players, with the exception of one, have been playing since the 1st edition days. Some of the characters they currently play were ported over.

I do not do catastrophic damage or the two 20s and die rule.

My players are very experienced and use sound strategy, maybe that is the answer to my question.

We rotate DMs as well and come to think of it, I have lost only one of my own characters, an Unearthed Arcana Paladin, the cavalier type, he charged a superior opponent that he shouldn't have.

Its nice to see that there are some DMs who share my mellowed lust for blood. I do agree that it is all about having fun and I believe that all the DMs that have answered my question are doing just that, providing fun. I know my players do. They would tell me otherwise.

 

[incognito]

Pielorinho:

There is nothing to say your groups play style is invalid - I do not assert that. You have rpesented a good discusison on how such a campaign can be run. I will say it is more difficult to have the system of real reaction from Players/Characters within the confines of the 3E system. You mention few heroic scenrios (Fighting undead legions on the deck of a storm-tossed ship). It must be at least *a little* difficult for the PCs to know when to run and when not to if the dice tend to fall in thier direction, no? How may skeletons/zombies can they handle? 3, 4, 50? Since there is only the role-play to decide when enough is enough I, as a DM would sometimes have trouble creating situations which did not become heavy handed.

Movie-wise: Ther are plenty where a main character dies. In fact, some of the best movies have major characters die. Pulp Fiction, American Beauty, Lord of the Rings. Heck, even in Star Wars, Ben Kenobi dies.

Seasong: I agree, different games have different agendas. Unknown Armies, for example, is less about combat, or more about dark politics, and odd types of magic. We are talking Epic Fantasy or Swords and Sorcery, and in these types of situations, I tend to favor some lethality.