Killer DMs

[bloodtide]

Like I said that has not been my experience at all in my 30 years of gaming. I have never seen people fight to keep their characters alive in a high death game. The characters are disposable and that is how they are treated. We all had back up characters ready to go but none of them had backgrounds most of the table could not remember their character names much less anyone else character name.

We did not play as well as a team because since there were constantly new characters that we had not formed attachments to so we would not go out of our way to save them.

I've seen such games too. Even ''oh Elrod V died again, ok I'll bring in Elrod VI.'' But in my game the 'death aspect' forces all the players to work together. If they don't, they know they are dead....if they do, they will at least have a chance.

I think you missed my question. I am not saying having back up characters ready I was asking how you introduce them to the party do they just show up, do they have ties to the party already. Story wise how do you fit them in a way that makes the story make sense?

Well, new characters don't just drop out of the sky(well, that did happen at least once when a gnome's cloud clipper exploded and he fell on top of the fighter when his bummer chute failed to open until after he hit the ground....) For my two 'core' games, everyone has characters all ready made with backstories. Most of the time the story is kept vague such as it will say ''the city of _____'' or such. That way it can be fun padded in as needed.

It's easy enough to add in a character with the simple 'they are doing the same thing that the group is, just alone'' type plot. Another classic is just the tag along, where the character just joins the group as a pest. Otherwise a character can be worked into any story in seconds...in wonderful soap opera style (''Yes, I am lord Gunna's half brother...that no one talks about'').

In general, I don't do the sorts of back grounds where every single point of a character's history is interestedly tied into the world and it takes up a novella of space. I'm more then fine with ''Dogu is a fighter from Crossguard and has done nothing yet in his life''. And I really hate closed minded, closed plot type backgrounds like ''my parents were killed by orcs so now I hate and kill all orcs(and do nothing else)."

I am not the only one who seems to think that you are saying there are safe games and killer games several other people have pointed out to you that there is a middle ground

Where do you see a middle ground between 'character death at any time' and 'maybe character death at the right time if the plot and story call for it'. For example, my players are careful of every trap...they know that all the traps might kill a character. But in other games, the other DM would never, ever kill off a character with 'just a trap'. So the players know everything will be fine. The players know that the safe DM has planned a great story, plot or boss fight so the characters 'automatically' have to be there and alive for it to happen. A safe DM would never kill off a character just three minutes before a 'big event' and have that poor player 'unfairly' miss out on all the fun.

That is simply not true in my game. My players invest in their characters to the point that they actually take time out of their busy lives to write game journals, they search for the perfect miniature. When death has happened you can tell that the player who lost the character is upset and so is the party. Not angry upset but genuinely feeling a loss. That death had meaning to the entire table. Which is why I don't take death off the table but make it rare.

My players do this too, but they have to go all out to keep that favorite character alive and well. And the favorite character has a big negative in a lot of safe games....they Can't die. Player Billy (and the DM) like Rog so much that the character will never ever die. Even if Rog 'should die' he will, amazingly, survive (Billy-"I rolled a 1." DM-"Oh, um, er, you fall towards the endless pit of doom....but, but just before you fall in the winds shift and you land on a tiny spur of rock just outside the pit!")

My party works together as a team to make sure no one dies and they make smart plans and use good tactics. They are never blase about combat and you can see them get tense and worried when the combat looks like it is going against them.

But as your not a killer DM type, your group knows that things won't get too bad.

 

[S'mon]

Where do you see a middle ground between 'character death at any time' and 'maybe character death at the right time if the plot and story call for it'.

The middle ground is "character death at any time... but probably not".
You were talking about killing PCs every session, AIR. PCs IMCs can die at any time - in any combat, say - but usually don't. Maybe one PC death per 4 or 5 sessions, but more usually clustered into the rare TPK or near-TPK, depending on fortune, player skill etc. There are no 'you can't die in this fight' fights, but nor are players bringing in new PCs every week.

 

[Elf Witch]

I've seen such games too. Even ''oh Elrod V died again, ok I'll bring in Elrod VI.'' But in my game the 'death aspect' forces all the players to work together. If they don't, they know they are dead....if they do, they will at least have a chance.




Well, new characters don't just drop out of the sky(well, that did happen at least once when a gnome's cloud clipper exploded and he fell on top of the fighter when his bummer chute failed to open until after he hit the ground....) For my two 'core' games, everyone has characters all ready made with backstories. Most of the time the story is kept vague such as it will say ''the city of _____'' or such. That way it can be fun padded in as needed.

It's easy enough to add in a character with the simple 'they are doing the same thing that the group is, just alone'' type plot. Another classic is just the tag along, where the character just joins the group as a pest. Otherwise a character can be worked into any story in seconds...in wonderful soap opera style (''Yes, I am lord Gunna's half brother...that no one talks about'').

In general, I don't do the sorts of back grounds where every single point of a character's history is interestedly tied into the world and it takes up a novella of space. I'm more then fine with ''Dogu is a fighter from Crossguard and has done nothing yet in his life''. And I really hate closed minded, closed plot type backgrounds like ''my parents were killed by orcs so now I hate and kill all orcs(and do nothing else)."



Where do you see a middle ground between 'character death at any time' and 'maybe character death at the right time if the plot and story call for it'. For example, my players are careful of every trap...they know that all the traps might kill a character. But in other games, the other DM would never, ever kill off a character with 'just a trap'. So the players know everything will be fine. The players know that the safe DM has planned a great story, plot or boss fight so the characters 'automatically' have to be there and alive for it to happen. A safe DM would never kill off a character just three minutes before a 'big event' and have that poor player 'unfairly' miss out on all the fun.



My players do this too, but they have to go all out to keep that favorite character alive and well. And the favorite character has a big negative in a lot of safe games....they Can't die. Player Billy (and the DM) like Rog so much that the character will never ever die. Even if Rog 'should die' he will, amazingly, survive (Billy-"I rolled a 1." DM-"Oh, um, er, you fall towards the endless pit of doom....but, but just before you fall in the winds shift and you land on a tiny spur of rock just outside the pit!")



But as your not a killer DM type, your group knows that things won't get too bad.

We have a very story oriented game and we don't keep things vague. The PCs have contacts in various areas. Some missions don't make sense for anyone else to be doing it as well. The PCs belong to a secret organization fighting to release Bahmut from death and stop Tiamat and Hextra. There is betrayal around every corner there is no way the party would take in a stranger who just happened to be there. I have ways to bring in new characters if needed but I would be hard pressed to come up with a reason every session.

We do backgrounds differently the more background you give me the more I weave it into the game. Nobody does the I am fighter from the village of Barrow's Edge. Some are short stories I have a couple of really good writers who put it in story form which I totally enjoy. Some just give me a few paragraphs of highlights. Also what there PCs goals are at this moment.

Since you don't sit at my table I don't think you are in any position to tell me how my players feel in a combat session. They are always worried in combat if it is a tough fight. They have suffered at my hands with losing a member of the team. They were captured and tortured for information and to escape they had to leave most of their goodies behind. So they are well aware of how bad it can get. They lost a fight and the village they were protecting was razed they only managed to save five people. One of the PCs lost everything his child hood friends, family and girlfriend. They felt that loss keenly.

Death is far from the only way to give your players consequences for losing a combat. But for those to work the players have to be invested in the world and care about more than just getting loot and leveling. My players have told me that not saving the village stung more than if they had been TPKed.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan, go figure

Funny, I was just thinking about this in another context regarding "adultness" of one's game - does one shoot for Belgariad or Game of Thrones content level? (I go for GoT, but that's for another thread....)

As for death and other assorted delights, I set it up right from the start with a warning in the "blue book" that runs our game, worded something like: The game world is not without risk, and can and will at times be cruel to its characters and, by extension, players. Death, level loss, possession loss, etc. are part of the game; and you can always roll up a replacement. I also encourage players to run more than one character in a party, so when one's not functional for whatever reason they still have something to do.

Then I let 'em have it.

In 28 years of DMing I have had one TPK; and that was only a year or two ago. I've had several near-TPKs where there were but one or two survivors, and individual deaths uncountable; I've drained levels, blown up possessions, had characters lose their minds, drained abilities, etc., etc. - and they keep coming back every week in large part, I think, because the death and destruction is cancelled out by a whole lot of fun in the meantime.

That said, I'm not out specifically to kill them off; and characters who show at least a vague sense of self-preservation can and do last quite well in my games. But a surprising number of them show the self-preservation instinct of a moth flying into a candle, largely due to play style - it's no coincidence that Wisdom is often seen as the dump stat for all but Clerics around here.

And then they start in on each other. There's no rule here against killing other party members provided it makes either circumstantial or ethic-alignment sense (and I wouldn't play in a game that had such a rule); and while some parties get along just fine others, well, don't; and I'll leave off there.

The upshot of all this is that I can run a game for many years without the levels getting out of hand.

For the OP: when a new PC joins the party I'll either bring them in a level below the party average, or at an arbitrary start point I've decided on ahead of time to prevent backsliding (I've run parties that have gone backward in level during an adventure, it's a pain). Right now in one party they start at raw 3rd level and in the other at raw 4th.

I don't at all mind having a range of levels within a party, but I'm running a 1e variant and 1e tolerates such things much better than 3e or newer. One group is 3rd-5th, the other is 4th-7th.

Lan-"throw our lives away when we jump in the fountain"-efan

 

[Drowbane]

I am not a Killer DM. To me that term says "some who (ab)uses his DM power to kill off characters - yes I have seen this sort of behavior before and heard about it from others)... usually because he thinks its funny".

That said, there is always a chance of death in my campaigns. Combat quickly becomes stale with no tension and a fight where you know the DM isn't going to let any of you die is pretty lame. Of course such a fight might instead end with all the characters knocked out to awaken as prisoners somewhere... there is only so many times you can do that in a given campaign before its dumb.

I strive to make my difficult encounters difficult and from there "Crit Happens", "let the dice fall where they may". I also plan encounters to highlight the PCs relative power level in the world, some sessions they might just SMASH the opposition (like say, the Avengers going all out vs normals rioting ).