How deadly do you like your game (as a player or DM)?

[Shiroiken]

It doesn't matter if the original cast are all dead* as long as the party (or campaign) has been and remains identifyable all the way through.

The problem is tied to the setting and to player motivation. If the motivation for an epic campaign is directly tied to the PCs, such as a the last survivors of a battle seeking vengeance against the foreign king, then new PCs just don't have the same focus, even if they have the same objective. If everyone is dead, then that original connection is completely lost. In non-epic campaigns, it's pretty easy to make adjustments, but in an epic campaign the flavor is completely lost. I've had it happen a couple of times, and while I tried to continue the game, the players told me this is how they felt.

Let's look at Lord of the Rings for an example. Consider only Frodo and Sam continuing after the Council of Elrond, with Merry and Pipping going back to the Shire. Imagine Gandalf never returning, but Radagast taking his place. Watch Gimili and Legolas die at the Battle of Helms Deep, but some Rohirim join Aragon afterwards. Golum kills Frodo, so then Sam takes up the ring. Aragorn leads the armies with Faramir and Eowin, while Sam fulfills the destruction of the ring. The important aspects of the story have taken place: the ring is destroyed and Aragorn becomes king, but since not a single character from the beginning remains, would that story have the same epic feel? In my experience (and those of my players), it really doesn't.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

3 - I don't want the characters I GM to die.... however death is not the only, or even preferred fail state.

Also, we play primarily Superheroes for our genre, and we tend to play bronze or gilded iron, where death, while not off the table, rarely sticks, and is usually for heroic sacrifice.

 

[pming]

The problem is tied to the setting and to player motivation. If the motivation for an epic campaign is directly tied to the PCs, such as a the last survivors of a battle seeking vengeance against the foreign king, then new PCs just don't have the same focus, even if they have the same objective. If everyone is dead, then that original connection is completely lost. In non-epic campaigns, it's pretty easy to make adjustments, but in an epic campaign the flavor is completely lost. I've had it happen a couple of times, and while I tried to continue the game, the players told me this is how they felt.

Let's look at Lord of the Rings for an example. Consider only Frodo and Sam continuing after the Council of Elrond, with Merry and Pipping going back to the Shire. Imagine Gandalf never returning, but Radagast taking his place. Watch Gimili and Legolas die at the Battle of Helms Deep, but some Rohirim join Aragon afterwards. Golum kills Frodo, so then Sam takes up the ring. Aragorn leads the armies with Faramir and Eowin, while Sam fulfills the destruction of the ring. The important aspects of the story have taken place: the ring is destroyed and Aragorn becomes king, but since not a single character from the beginning remains, would that story have the same epic feel? In my experience (and those of my players), it really doesn't.

Hiya!

Y'see...this is something I don't get. I'm not trying to single you out, Shiroiken, but you made the points so I'm going to use your example as an, uh, example.

Imagine, if you will, The Lord of the Rings as you just described it. The story is about an Evil Ring of Power, created by a super-evil-super-being-of-evil to rule over all the world. Now, you have key characters; Sam, Aragorn, Golum, Nazgul, "the elves", and The One Ring. If you had never known the 'real' LotR story, this one WOULD be epic. The major Characters would still be there...Sam would take the place of Frodo/Sam. The Ring is still the Ring, Aragorn still Aragorn, Nazgul are Nazgul, always hunting for the Ring. Golum is still kicking, etc.

Still epic...just not what we know the story to be.

The same "argument" is used sometimes to justify a Player being given the power to 'veto' the results of a game event if it would "kill/remove" their PC. Kinda like if someone was doing a Star Wars campaign and someone was playing Luke. The Player might make the assumption "Well, I can do anything I want...I can't die. If I die, the entire epic story is ruined". This is the mindset I don't get. A RPG campaign isn't like a recipe for a cake. Baking a cake you can't just substitute floor polish for milk, and switch out plaster for flour. You will not get a cake. But in an RPG? Yes, you CAN switch out Luke for your character Bel'Atha Kurr, the Jedi Apprentice if Luke dies. Will the "normal" Star Wars story, with the whole father/son/daughter thing be the same? Nope! Not even close! Is this bad? Nope! Not even close! In MY opinion...it's BETTER. Because the 'story' unfolds as the Players play the game. That's the draw.
..
Anyway...saying "well, if you take Story/Movie XYZ and then change it completely ...you don't have Story/Movie XYZ anymore!", is perfectly valid and true. But assuming that if that happens, it somehow "wrecks" the story/campaign? That I don't get. It didn't "ruin the story"... it just changed it. Often for the better.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[pemerton]

Y'see...this is something I don't get. I'm not trying to single you out, Shiroiken, but you made the points so I'm going to use your example as an, uh, example.

<snip>

saying "well, if you take Story/Movie XYZ and then change it completely ...you don't have Story/Movie XYZ anymore!", is perfectly valid and true. But assuming that if that happens, it somehow "wrecks" the story/campaign? That I don't get. It didn't "ruin the story"... it just changed it. Often for the better.

I can't speak for @Shiroiken, but from my point of view I think the point is that an epic story benefits from continuity of characters.

The same "argument" is used sometimes to justify a Player being given the power to 'veto' the results of a game event if it would "kill/remove" their PC. Kinda like if someone was doing a Star Wars campaign and someone was playing Luke. The Player might make the assumption "Well, I can do anything I want...I can't die. If I die, the entire epic story is ruined". This is the mindset I don't get.

You seem to be making two assumptions: (1) that PC death is the most salient form of stakes/threat in the game being played; (2) that a mechanical ability to "veto" a result is equivalent to fictional positioning not mattering.

Both those assumptions are not true of RPGing, in general at least - though they may be true in some particular RPGs played using some particular systems and approaches.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem is tied to the setting and to player motivation. If the motivation for an epic campaign is directly tied to the PCs, such as a the last survivors of a battle seeking vengeance against the foreign king, then new PCs just don't have the same focus, even if they have the same objective. If everyone is dead, then that original connection is completely lost. In non-epic campaigns, it's pretty easy to make adjustments, but in an epic campaign the flavor is completely lost. I've had it happen a couple of times, and while I tried to continue the game, the players told me this is how they felt.

This is why I try not to tie things to specific PCs: they're always the ones who die first.

And my games tend not to have the same degree of 'focus' yours seem to, even though objectives are generally kept in sight.

Not sure what you mean by 'epic campaign' as opposed to any other campaign, though.

Let's look at Lord of the Rings for an example. Consider only Frodo and Sam continuing after the Council of Elrond, with Merry and Pipping going back to the Shire. Imagine Gandalf never returning, but Radagast taking his place. Watch Gimili and Legolas die at the Battle of Helms Deep, but some Rohirim join Aragon afterwards. Golum kills Frodo, so then Sam takes up the ring. Aragorn leads the armies with Faramir and Eowin, while Sam fulfills the destruction of the ring. The important aspects of the story have taken place: the ring is destroyed and Aragorn becomes king, but since not a single character from the beginning remains, would that story have the same epic feel? In my experience (and those of my players), it really doesn't.

As it wasn't written that way, we'll never really know.

If it had been written that way, we'd instead be asking the reverse: what if all those characters somehow stayed together and survived?

That said, Game of Thrones/ASoIaF is IMO every bit as epic, and that story is rife with character turnover.

 

[Shiroiken]

This is why I try not to tie things to specific PCs: they're always the ones who die first.

And my games tend not to have the same degree of 'focus' yours seem to, even though objectives are generally kept in sight.

Not sure what you mean by 'epic campaign' as opposed to any other campaign, though.

As I said in my first post, I generally prefer a good amount of deadliness in games. An epic game is meant to be one with a single focus that will take the length of the campaign to complete, as opposed to a story arc or single adventure (such as destroying the One Ring). I'm not generally a fan of this type of campaign, not only because they take a lot of effort, but because they can be fragile (and often railroady).

The best "epic" campaign I ran was my first 5E D&D campaign, but the players were unaware of it (or the BBEG) until the last quarter of the campaign. The advantage to this was that it wasn't tied to individual characters (although some of the impact would have been lost if everyone had died before the end, since the references to the start of the campaign would be lost) and I could make minor adjustments based on the actions of the PCs, preventing it from being too much of a railroad.

That said, Game of Thrones/ASoIaF is IMO every bit as epic, and that story is rife with character turnover.

GoT is more the exception, rather than the rule though. Even with GoT (based on the ending of the TV series), the most important characters were not given much note early in the story. With such a large cast, it's nearly impossible to figure out who the "main" characters are, especially when the ones who get the most focus tend to die. Danarious is pretty much the only character from the first book that is obviously meant to be of vital importance to the endgame (unless you count Cerce as the "villain").

 

[nevin]

Hmm GoT to me is just an exercise in stupidity. The entire plot hinges on everyone making bad decisions over and over again till things magically work out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just had a conversation about this with a player tonight. Our game is not very deadly, in part because I have tended to underestimate their ability to overcome situations, but mostly because I don't find character death very interesting. It's threatening, sure, but so is diabetes. Death ends a story, cutting all the strings and leaving no closure. I prefer to create new strings and to threaten the things the party cares about (people, places, institutions, ideas, treasures, etc.), as this builds into something new.

This isn't to say that characters can't die. In theory, they totally can. But I would work to make death a new adventure, rather than the end of an adventure and the forced start of a new one. My player had a good analogy: it's like farming or gardening. If things go wrong, you can always grow a new set of plants. But that takes a lot of time and fresh investment before it can pay off. It is unequivocally good that we can always begin again if things do fall apart. But sometimes you want to eat the strawberries you planted a year ago, and not wait until next year to eat the carrots you're going to plant next.

 

[Lanefan]

The entire plot hinges on everyone making bad decisions over and over again till things magically work out.

That sounds like a typical highly-entertaining campaign, only without the 'magically working out' part at the end.

If characters (and players) only ever made good decisions it's get mighty boring mighty fast.

 

[uzirath]

I can't speak for @Shiroiken, but from my point of view I think the point is that an epic story benefits from continuity of characters.

I agree. Sometimes a game might be about how these particular characters deal with adversity. In those sorts of games, generally, random death should be off-the-table. Real stakes can still be at play if the players are invested in the story. (And if they're not, why are you all wasting your time playing make-believe with dice?) Beloved NPCs can die, kingdoms can fall, the demons can get the upper hand, etc. I would not enjoy a game without any stakes; I want to be able to fail, but failure can come in many flavors.

When I've managed this well, I've found the players take combat just as seriously because the results of combat will likely be dire. Big things are at stake. You don't want to get into a swordfight (or space battle, or whatever) unless you are nearly certain that you will prevail.