In your campaign, can the PCs "lose"

[Nightchilde-2]

Yes, the PC's can lose. But, so long as they are alive, they story isn't necessarily complete. Losing a battle does not mean you've lost the war.

QFT.

In my Eberron game, my PCs got all knocked down to negative hp and got captured by Vol cultists. Completely and totally threw off my campaign "plan," but, man, is it gonna be fun...

In my Exalted game, the PCs are going agains the forces of Mask of Winters. So far, they've lost practically every engagement against him. It's made them hate him all the more (and they just discovered who the traitor was in their midst feeding the MoW info...oh, how they long to kill that man).

So while they may lose individual scenarios, I believe that overall they should win. Nobody said I'd make it easy for them, or that they'll succeed all the time, but in the end..yeah...they'll win.

 

[Thanee]

Without loss there can be no gain.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Crothian]

no winning or losing (or loosing for the rouges) in the game for us. we play to have fun.

Ya, but I have more fun when they lose

 

[krunchyfrogg]

If there's no possibility that the players can lose, then in what sense are you playing a game?

-- Honest question, not trying to be smart here.

I agree.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Yes.

 

[Umbran]

"Nooo!!! Don't kill the BBEG now! If you do, we'll never make 20th level!"

"I know Darth Vader's really got you annoyed,
But remember if you kill him then you'll be unemployed."

-Yoda, by Weird Al

 

[painandgreed]

I know there would be always a way to recover, or me fudging things up a tad. But all in all, I'd like to stick to the timeline/story arc I've established... for realism stakes.

It's a hard questions to answer because of how I run my games. They can of course die. They can also perhaps choose unobtainable goals, but in the course of things, I've probably told them they are unobtainable so are doing so for RP reasons. In the greater scheme of things, I don't usually set them up to win or fail but rather to do as they want. I decide what the NPCs are doing and then modify things according to the PC actions. In the last campaign I ran, the PCs were dropped in a city with five competing factions. The PCs were set up as the tipping point. Most factions would curry their favor and the one they sided with would end up winning over the others. If the PCs opted to maintain the status quo it would probably have been maintained. There might be some world changing feature like an orc invasion that can't realistically be stopped by the PCs, or a BBEG they just can't bring down, but that's life and they have been informed that such things exist in the campaign world and they always have the option of simply packing up and leaving if things get too bad. However, if the PCs set goals for themselves and worked at it, they'd probably succed eventually, just maybe not as soon as they'd like.

 

[DonTadow]

If the PCs are following your plot and campaign plans to the Tee, then you're doing something wrong.

 

[S'mon]

Sure, just like in nearly all the old myths, most PC careers end in failure.

If you're asking whether they've ever had a 'save the world' plot and then failed to save the world, no, not that I can recall. But I don't tend to run one-track scenarios where the PCs have to do X, Y and Z to 'win'.

 

[Goldmoon]

Can my PC's "lose"?

I once had a pc drink a philter of love and look up right into the eyes of a warthog.......so yes I'd say they can lose.