- Styles will differ and this is not gospel, but I try to make sure that the encounters early in the adventure will not likely kill off a PC or that I have some kind of backup plan if they do take a casualty. It really stinks to have your character killed off 45 minutes into the session and be left with little to do for the remainder (though, thanks to our partnership with Trinocon, there are always board games and such going on). I try to design encounters early in the adventure that let the players "warm up" a bit to the abilities of the PC's you've given them, without requiring that they play flawlessly and use every ability optimally in order to be successful. Save the encounter likely to kill some of them off for the big climax near the end.
If there is a PC death, I try to have some sort of backup plan like an NPC they can take over, resurrection or something like that. In my last Orcz adventure, one of the PC's had a pouch of "Zombie Powder" that would bring a PC back to "unlife" with all their former abilities for a number of hours equal to their Con. After that they became a mindless normal zombie. This gave me a safety valve in case of a death but still had some consequenes.
Play Paranoia xp; Fun is Mandatory!
