Confessions of a Killer DM

[diaglo]

i don't kill PCs...the players do a better job of it for me.

 

[MarauderX]

i don't kill PCs...the players do a better job of it for me.

Beat me to the punch...

I haven't killed any PCs in the game I started in January, but there have been a few close calls. Back in the OD&D days PCs died like fruit flies, so as a DM I didn't feel bad about offing half a party with dragon's breath every other session. Binders of PC sheets outweighed my adventures, and the players learned to create abridged back stories in case the PC got tagged with poison.

With the current story in progress, it would really throw things out of whack for my plot lines if the PCs inadvertantly got whacked. Not that things wouldn't be salvagable, but a certain amount of planning has already gone into the events that are set to unfold, and having things run afoul can be disheartening for a DM as well as the player.

 

[ForceUser]

Sometimes I allow character deaths to happen, and sometimes I throw encounters at my players that, in hindsight, were too tough. I have a hard time judging the difference between challenging and lethal. Occasionally, though, the players just don't pick up on the warnings and plunge into a situation with blinders on. In such situations, I have no mercy: the dice fall where they may. I am more lenient with newer players, but longtime players get little respite from bad decisions and die rolls. In my experience, players don't feel challenged without real risk.

 

[NilesB]

Y'know, I don't mean to kill my parties, but they just keep throwing themselves into the monsters' maw, with the NPCs in the group the whole time crying, "Run away! Run away!"

It's ... surreal.

I see these stories online all the time, and every time specifics are mentioned it's always a monster much faster moving than the PCs that they refuse to flee from.

 

[The_Gneech]

I see these stories online all the time, and every time specifics are mentioned it's always a monster much faster moving than the PCs that they refuse to flee from.

That's a fair cop -- although in the specific case I was thinking of, all the players had to do was get out of the room, the monster was too big to follow them through the door.

(And before you ask how it got there if it couldn't fit through the door, the answer is it was put there by Wee Jas, and it had been there magically sustained for two centuries.)

The situation might not have been so bad, if they'd rested, regained spells, and healed before going into the shrine they already knew was cursed...

-The Gneech

 

[jessemock]

In fact, I'm not didactical about it; I've often allowed the players to begin at above first level.

Cheers!

'dogmatic' maybe?

 

[KenM]

Back when I was playing once per week, I think it was one PC death per four sessions on average, and many of those were raised.

IMO if the PC gets raised or comes back to life in some other way, its not really PC death. With a new group of players I have now idea how they will be, I try to kiil off one PC to estaiblish my authorty as GM.
One older GM looked at his job as being an enemy general and it was his jiob to "get" the PC's. No one played with him for long and he got a bad rep.

 

[the Jester]

I run a pretty lethal game. Typically, though, I have a large number of players (not so long ago we had the so-called Adventuring Thirty, which actually consisted of somewhere around 15 players, with about half at any given session), and that helps spread the damage out.

I'm not really out to 'get' the pcs, but as they make enemies there are more things that come their way, and the better their enemies know their tactics and abilities, the better they can prepare for the pcs. I don't pull punches and I roll the majority of my dice in front of the players.

I have found that as the party got more powerful I could really take the gloves off. Even so, they tear through enemies of equal CR. But when they get into really nasty scrapes, they know that it could come to a tpk. The last time I had one was when Tharizdun ate my old campaign world- that would be Greyhawk- in 1993, but we've come close and I've looked it in the face and realized that, if the pcs are stupid and the dice go against 'em I'll do it.

I rarely fudge dice; I used to do it much more often. Nowadays, I'd say I fudge about, hm, once every 2-4 sessions. I always try to balance it out later- so I might fudge once for the pcs in a really tough fight, then once for the bad guys in an easy fight.

Good thread. We should start some sort of Killer DM Klub.

 

[Yair]

I tend to kill PCs that do stupid things. I still can't get over my first, and so far only, 3E TPK: a result of the party discussing in details their attack strategy on the wizard they just met, at her doorstep, a mere moment after they left it... for some reason, they were suprised that she was well prepared when they stormed in... sheesh
I always give the players the option to "rewind" incredibly stupid acts - but they didn't so far, honest souls that they are

 

[MerricB]

'dogmatic' maybe?

That's it! I knew it began with a "D".

I wrote the word and thought: "That's wrong", but then forgot to change it.

Cheers!