Do your PCs lead a charmed life?

[d4]

Giving the PCs any form of plot immunity stills breaks the suspension of disbelief that I think is important to a game like D&D.

and having a PC die from a random encounter breaks the suspension of disbelief for me.

we obviously have different expectations over what the game should model.

i empathize with your experiences of being under a railroad GM. but that has absolutely nothing to do with what i'm advocating. in fact, the only railroad GMs i've ever encountered have been the "let the dice fall where they may" "kill a PC on a random encounter" types that i dislike so much now.

To me, roleplaying is a game about telling a story that no one knows before it happens in the game. More importantly, the best stories happen in a consisent world mediated by the GM that the player characters inhabit. Generally speaking, the less a GM does in terms of metagaming or plot management PERIOD the better. Let the players play the game. The story of every single campaign should be whatever the players do.

i agree with everything you say above. nothing you've said in this paragraph is contradicted by my playing style.

the outcome of events is not predetermined. the GM tries his best to be consistent in his rulings. the GM does not force a plot on the PCs if they do not wish to follow it. the players are free to make whatever decisions they want. the story of the campaign is the story of the characters.

If the players are so neurotic that a PC death affects them more emotionally than say losing a game of pickup basketball, that player probably has bigger problems than worrying about playing a game.

i'd prefer you leave veiled insinuations about my mental and emotional health out of this. i could just as easily say that if you can't enjoy the game without that paranoid, stressful, fear of death hanging over your head, you might have some problems too.

...and any game where a player can never ever die is run by GM fiat, period.

wrong.

 

[Humanophile]

d4, two objections (of sorts) with your play style.

First, you yourself pointed out that campaign climaxes can produce memorable PC deaths. The problem with that in D&D is that campaign climaxes tend to be rare (campaigns lasting a good, long while). I tend to be fairly lenient about most random encounters, but any plot arc climax strips away plot immunity. Misfortune during a plot arc resolution is weighty enough that I don't think a drama-minded player would feel "cheated" out of anything.

Second, before I'll okay plot immunity, I have to ask the players what they want out of a campaign, and they have to answer in what I consider sufficient detail. Quite simply, as we're all aware, campaigns are no fun if there's no risk, success is no fun if there's no chance of failure. But there are certain players to whom the game is just about showcasing how cool their character is, and to (most of) them, death is the only "failure state" that really feels like a failure.

So if your game is about restoring your noble family to prominence, and adventuring is just your way of being cool while you earn the funds to do it, death can be a nonissue; real success or failure is all in those diplomacy rolls, where no punches should be pulled. If you're playing a swashbucking campaign where looking good is all-important, attack rolls can be fudged while jump and tumble rolls are "call 'em as they fall". But if the players answers to "what motivates you, beyond adventuring/combat success" are two-bit words like "role-playing" or "character development", or if they fall into "Standard Adventurer Mode"... well, if they only have one metric of success or failure, it behooves you as DM to give them challenges that they appreciate the risk of.

 

[clockworkjoe]

i'd prefer you leave veiled insinuations about my mental and emotional health out of this. i could just as easily say that if you can't enjoy the game without that paranoid, stressful, fear of death hanging over your head, you might have some problems too.

I don't mind dying in a game. If I die, so what? It sucks, but it's not a big deal. I don't get ulcers over playing a game. I'm not paranoid about my character. If the game is really good, then I will get excited about a dangerous adventure, maybe even a rush, but that's about it. I like my characters fine, but I like whatever story the PC created with his life. Not every hero succeeds. Sometimes Casey misses at bat. That's just as good a story as the hero living.

One of my favorite adventures ended in a TPK. The last battle was intense and I was the last one on my feet. It was still cool even though I died.

The thing is, most people who GM are more like you than me (at least in my experience). I got bored when a life and death fight with the BBEG was NOT a life or death fight. I got tired of getting knocked out, captured, teleported away, rescued by the pet GM NPC, etc etc etc. It took me out of the story. How evil can the villain be if he doesn't kill his mortal enemies or is unable to? It's just too bland for me.

 

[xenoflare]

Pray tell, what sort of die are you using that you roll stats of 90 and above by adding three of them? I mean, yes, you're life should be interesting if your stats are made from 4d100 drop the lowest

whoops, lemme elucidate. brain wasn't working properly (not to mention dice )..

i mean, we roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die result for each ability score. If an ability score is 7 or lower, we get to reroll. We repeat this process 2 times for 2 sets of stats, and we take the better of the two.

so in my case, i got stats of above 90 from the addition of my lucky rolls (or not so lucky, considering the number of times i got a "7" - if i was in any other roll system, i would be stuck with lots of 6-s and 7-s for this character). Weird thing is that, most people in my game have this strange spate of rolling luck recently, including the evil NPCs. i'm not letting the DM near my dice anymore...

Yours,
shao