Piratecat ruined my D&D game

[Quasqueton]

I want a group of adventurers that stick together and survive for long periods of time. I want stories and plots to unfold over grand times. I want a bad guy the PCs fought at 3rd level to come back to haunt them at 12th level. I want plots that the PCs first saw back at 5th level to be resolved when they are 15th level. I want the PCs to learn that the minor information they learned at 8th level is actually the missing piece of a puzzle they need at 20th level. I want the PCs to have back stories in and from the actual game play.

This story-telling* is what sets RPGs apart from other games. It’s the draw that makes me prefer an adventure RPG game over an adventure board game.

Reading Piratecat’s story hour really showed me what a long-running D&D game can be like, with long-time characters and epic plots. Then I started reading the Order of the Stick. Regular characters, running plots, great stories unfolding.

I’ve never had a single PC group/story that lasted more than about 6 levels. PCs die, singly or in groups. For instance, they make a powerful enemy at 3rd level, they encounter a big plot at 4th level, they have a history together by 5th level, then they die at 6th level. The enemy, the plot, the history are all dropped as a new campaign arises. I could keep the enemy and the plot for the new campaign, but the new PCs don’t really have any in-game connection to it as their predecessors had. I tend to hope to build new enemies and new plots that the current PCs actually build in-game histories with.

Or maybe they don’t all die at one time, but rather one at a time, over many game sessions, each dead character being replaced with a new character, such that by 10th level, there’s no original PC still in the group. That villain from 3rd level, the current PCs have no real history with him. That plot from 5th level, none of the current PCs have any connection to it. That piece of info they learned at 8th level, the current PCs don’t know it.

And bringing in a new 12th-level PC to replace the dead just feels so wrong – building a character up from low levels to high levels is a major cool factor of D&D. A highly experienced character just walking onto the “set” with no real in-game back story, to join other PCs, just seems so against the meaning of D&D. And starting a whole group at 12th level, a whole band of very powerful characters, with no real, in-game back story, just feels so fake.

I like looking at the 12th-level PCs and knowing they’ve been through hell together since low levels, and here they are “all grown up”. I don’t like looking at the 12-level PCs and knowing that one leveled up from 5th level, that one from 8th level, that one from 10th level, and that one is just starting new with the group today, at 12th level.

I used to be content with the rotating door of PCs in a D&D game. The story went no further than the current dungeon. The PCs’ in-game back story went no further back than last game session. But now I want long-term stories, extended in-game histories. “Piratecat, Rich Burlew, you raised my hopes and desires for a D&D game story! Damn you!” ;-)

I know some DMs cheat the game to make sure PCs never die. As a Player, I hate that. As a DM, I find it distasteful, but I also don’t think I’m good enough to do it without being obvious. I *like* seeing how things play out by letting “the dice fall as they may.” But that means deaths, and the end of stories. You can’t have it both ways, apparently. You can’t let the dice fall as they may *and* expect a long-running story with long-term PCs. Are they just mutually exclusive?

I now find myself disappointed with playing RPGs – character death really annoys me. Might as well play a board game where nothing carries over from session to session.

How do you feel about party consistency through the levels of the game? Does it matter to you? Does your game have long-running plots and stories, or is it just a glorified series of one-shots? Do you cheat to keep PCs alive? Do the Players manage to keep their PCs alive without DM intervention? How do you feel about bringing new higher-level characters into a group who has risen “legitimately” to high levels?

Is there a way to have party/PC consistency over long times with a let the dice fall as they may attitude? Or should I just give up and re-accept the revolving door of PCs in D&D?

[* I don’t mean a “story” in the sense of a predetermined script, but just the natural story that evolves from playing the same characters over a period of time – dungeon crawl to dungeon crawl creates a story just as much as following a plot path. Especially when elements of earlier crawls resurface or follow into later crawls.]

Quasqueton

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

This is a huge goal of mine to have those long-term stories develop, and you're absolutely right that character survival is key - although you could always dig up (contact)'s RttToEE story hour if you need an antidote to Piratecat

You might want to consider a tweak or two to the rules to allow you to still let the dice fall where they may - things I've done include making death at -CON hit rather than -10 (I've seen other suggest adding character level even to that to make it easier to survive getting knocked out); I'm giving some thought to using action points and a variation on Skull & Bones "roll the bones" mechanic - rather than death, you're knocked out of the scene and something happens, anything from a scar to a lost limb.

Tweaking the ruleset just a little bit like that might allow the best of both worlds...

 

[Crothian]

Is there a way to have party/PC consistency over long times with a let the dice fall as they may attitude? Or should I just give up and re-accept the revolving door of PCs in D&D?

I think so. One way I do it is have built in plot hooks and story lines that involve bringing a character back from the dea. THis way when they die it is not a complete side adventure to bring characters back.

 

[Desdichado]

IIRC, Piratecat changed the XP rules so characters advanced much more slowly. The big problem I see with D&D as is, if you want to get that really big involved campaign going that lasts a long time, is that character's level up too fast.

 

[Schmoe]

although you could always dig up (contact)'s RttToEE story hour if you need an antidote to Piratecat

Do it. Now. You won't be disappointed.

 

[Kestrel]

I know the feeling. I wish my campaign had half the cohesiveness and metaplot of Sagiro's and Pkitty's games.

Realizing that character turnover is probably the biggest killer of continuity, I've done a lot of things to keep people playing the same characters. I've added action points that allow for an extended death's door, Ive worked in bringing characters back from the dead, and Ive allowed total stat rewrites of characters within a current game.

Generally, characters don't die in my games unless the players want them to. Between the 8 people at my gametable, I'm sure that we can come up with a plausible way to keep characters in the group that satisfies both continuity and game plot.

 

[megamania]

I understand what you are getting at though P-Cat had nothing to do with it. Before the most recent campaign, I did only level 1-6 or 3-10 then the players would either give up or I would over do it or a really bad day of rolls lead to party deaths and a new campaign.

In Creation Schema I have had more success but not enough and the players just want to reach 21st level but don't care about the story. The risk factors are so high to continue finding/stopping the assembling of the Creation Schema they would rather hang out in Stormreach and have creatures and the type come to them, their turf.

There are MANY factors to a successful campaign.

The players need to want to do it.

The DM needs to want to do it.

Both need to work together to create an ongoing story.

Have backup plans for those days where no one rolls over a 3 the whole session.

To avoid the "A new book is out- I want to play this..... and drop the character/kill him off to do it." syndrome.

I don't blame P-Cat for having that success. He is lucky, that is all.

 

[Kelleris]

I made three changes to the rules/way I DM to get this effect:

1) I use hero points from Mutants and Masterminds, for a variety of reasons. One is that you get some protection from instant death effects, without just making them never hit. (And hero points are much rarer than action points, at least in my games, and I let people do a lot with them, so losing one to reroll a save is in itself a painful thing.) More importantly, though, it lets me engage in plot bribery - "Hey guys, I'd really like this nefarious cleric to capture you guys. Hero points all around?" And most of the time, because I use it sparingly, the players are willing to play along. It lets you fudge things out in the open, as a part of the game, instead of being all cheaty about it.

2) I have an enormous death range - 10 plus Con score plus level. It's just generally difficult to die, though I frequently knock out PCs or cripple them with some magical effect or ability damage.

3) Commensurate with (2), dying isn't the only way to lose - it's not even the primary way. I set up encounters so that everyone can survive and they still completely fail at their goal of chasing off their boss's creditors or finding the MacGuffin or unmasking the mysterious cloaked figure that's been harassing them. Then we run with the consequences of that success or failure. I've occasionally had a "death spiral" effect in a campaign, where the PCs dug a hole so deep for themselves they couldn't see a way out, and retired their characters instead - that's my version of a TPK. Since my players are ill-trained monkeys, this happens more often than I'd like, but in principle...

 

[Schmoe]

I ran a long-running campaign that went from 1st to 14th over about 3 years. There was some party turnover, but most of the members stayed the same, despite party deaths every 6-8 sessions on average. Raise Dead and Reincarnation, though costly, were available and used.

I never really had a problem with story continuity. Part of that was from internal party consistency, but another part was DM/player collaboration on backgrounds. As DM, if you have laid the seeds for high-level revelations based on low-level discoveries, you want to continue to water and tend to that seed. I found that all it takes is a few lines of text in a background. While it may not seem like a good solution on the surface, from the player's perspective, they will have the "holy crap" remembrance of the initial discovery, and they will also have the appreciation that something from their current character's background has been resolved.

 

[Piratecat]

IIRC, Piratecat changed the XP rules so characters advanced much more slowly. The big problem I see with D&D as is, if you want to get that really big involved campaign going that lasts a long time, is that character's level up too fast.

This is true. We advance at what some people consider a glacially slow pace -- one level every ten 3-hour games. I think you could do the same thing with a level every 5 games, though.

There's a couple of tricks to making this work.

1. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a hero. Far from it. I'm not adverse to taking PCs captive at a time when I might otherwise kill them. I'm not adverse to a villain blackmailing the PCs, or using them as pawns against a mutual enemy. It helps keep things challenging without a huge body count. In addition, the slow advancement means that the players really develop good tactics for their PCs, and that helps prevent death.

I've recently gone to a no-xp system (using action points instead) that creates story-based penalties for dying. It seems to work really well. Details if you want 'em.

2. Drop a bajillion plot hooks. Make prophecies where you don't know what everything means. Then watch your players -- and when they start to put together hooks that you've left scattered around, grab those hooks and run with them. I could never have come up with my campaign arcs at their beginning, but I try to make a framework that I can then build on without the players ever noticing.

3. Script NPC motivations, not their actions. After every game I think "what happens as a result of what the PCs did tonight?" Maybe they made friends who will later help them, maybe they made enemies or left a huge hole in the power vacuum. I then use that as my next plot hook. It's self-encouraging; as the players see their actions changing the game world, they become more invested in that world.

4. It's the illusion of danger that's important, not the danger itself. Sure, maybe a NPC is a brutal combatant - but maybe he isn't, and the PCs just think he might be because he looks scary. You don't have to kill people to scare the bejeezus out of them. But don't let your players ever think that you'll pull punches to save them, because then they have no drama. A game where the DM won't kill your PC just isn't fun! There are better ways to balance encounters, I think.

5. Always keep your players on their toes. Don't fall into a rut. One of my goals is to figure out what the PCs expect and then do somethign different; and if you only do this some of the time, you'll still keep the players on their A game because they won't know what to expect.

6. Create penalties for failing that are different than dying. Political or religious-themed games generally do this; if the heroes fail, it's not them who pay the ultimate penalty. It's their faction or church that suffers. Since they can fail and still live, they can then try a different tactic to later win and out-maneuver their foe.

Anyways, thanks! Your problem is one I and everyone else faces, I think; I'm honored to share some of the ways I've weaseled around it.