IS Your GM Out To Get You (Serious)

[loverdrive]

I do believe there is a lot of improvement in the play process to be had with clear wincons and resource limits, both for the players and the GM.

GM should be out to get ya! Exploit every weakness, punish every blunder, that makes the game eleftryfing!

If she can't actively try to obliterate you, it she has to pull her punches and let foolishness slide — that's a design issue, rather than something commendable.

 

[Maxperson]

Is there any other kind unless the DM is actively seeking, planning to kill a PC? Characters die, it happens either because a player does something dumb, they get bad dice rolls, or they enter into a situation or combat that is above their abilities to survive. As a DM in certain circumstances if I inadvertently created an encounter that was way too hard for the players and I can come up with a logical reason to save a player's character I will, but I have never to my recollection ever set out to kill a player's character on purpose.

As the DM by nature of the game there's is always an element of DM vs the players. Not maliciously or out of spite but just because they are running everything else in the players world. They're supposed to challenge them, run their adversaries, even good and neutral NPCs. Take an NPC trying to hire the players to do a job, if the player's make too many demands, the NPC can just walk away. They aren't going to just roll over and give the player's whatever they want. The NPC is offering them "x" to do "y", take it or leave it, DM vs. the players in a manner of speaking.

As a DM it's my job to give the players exciting and challenging encounters, and make sure they have fun. I'm not just going to automatically say yes or no. I want encounters that the PCs can overcome but also have the chance to see them perish. I guess I'm impartial, I don't really care if they succeed or fail either way as long as I'm fair. If I was a player in a game with a killer DM, I'd quit, as I think most players would too.

I have deliberately caused PC deaths, but not because I was out to do it. One time the party was fighting ghouls and the druid went down to 0. His turn came up and he missed a death save. Literally every other PC hadn't had their turn yet, and one by one they forgot to heal him or attack the ghoul. When the ghoul's turn came up again, it did what ravenous for humanoid flesh ghouls do and continued to eat him, and two more failed death saves later we had a dead druid.

Those sorts of situations are rare, but if the circumstances call for an NPC/Monster to attack a downed PC and kill him, I'll make that call. Other times they leave the unconscious PC and go attack someone else. It all depends.

At no point, though, am I ever trying to take out a PC because that's what DMs do or in an adversarial manner.