Piratecat ruined my D&D game

[Piratecat]

Piratecat, much as I appreciate you responding to the thread, and your advice is really good for those needing help working plots, you really didn’t address my point/concern/question. How do the PCs in your campaign manage to stay alive through all the plots and keep the campaign going for years and many levels?

Okay, now I understand your question better. I'm not sure you'll necessarily like the answer, because I don't have any hidden knowledge. I think it's a combination of good player tactics, me having several alternative tactics prepared at any given time, and luck.

A few particulars:

Nolin's death. This wasn't pre-scripted. I would have been happy for Nolin to live! But when we ended the game with him half-eaten and at about 3 hit points, everyone was pretty sure that this was going to be ugly. The player made a tactical decision to do as much damage as she could if her PC was going to die. Soder's infatuated, infuriated reaction to Nolin's death was a natural one given the circumstances, but things certainly could have gone differently if Nolin had lived. I'm guessing that Soder would have tried to save Nolin before the Ivory King tried to eat him, but would gleefully have let the rest of the party die.

That long chase flying through the undead city cavern, with all the cloaker spectres chasing them. Velendo was powerful enough to incinerate many of the spectres, and Malachite's positive energy burst would have fried them all. I was actually expecting this! I figured that the PCs would draw the spectres close with some clever flying and then nuke them in one glorious sunburst. The fact that they didn't was cool too, but a little unexpected by me.

And that underscores a point. I knew that all those spectres were dangerous but had a glass jaw, but the players didn't -- and so there was definite terror when the spectres started chasing them.

Soder's Mordenkainen’s Disjunction. The spell made perfect sense for Soder to cast, but I as a DM knew that it was fairly unlikely that he'd have a chance in hell of actually getting it off. The group was ready for some trick. I wouldn't have had him start a fight with that spell from an ambush -- maybe that's realistic for some enemies, but it's really not fun. My goal here was to emphasize his power, and underscore that he was starting to get annoyed.

If it had gone off, I'd probably have compensated with a great big treasure haul in the underdark. The heroes knew that if they went home, they'd probably fail, and the consequences of that were worse.

You get the idea. What you're seeing is not me pulling punches at the last minute or having mystical luck; it's me trying to gauge challenges accurately, having a couple of alternatives in mind, combined with players who know how to work as a team. I generally go with whatever seems coolest for the players. "Coolest" doesn't mean "deadliest," but neither does it mean "harmless."

Know what you want out of an encounter and constantly evaluate your encounters while they're happening. That will help you realize right away when an encounter is unsurvivable, and will let you tone down your encounter on the fly if you want to.

Even more importantly, train your players. If they're in trouble and one of them tries something unusual (gaining cover, taunting a foe, etc.) then let it succeed. Don't punish that success, either. Once they know instinctively that clever tactics work, they'll get used to using them, and that adds tremendously to a PC's survival rate.

 

[Piratecat]

One other note: sometimes my players can be overly cautious. I've been known to say "quit planning and start heroing!" just to get the action going -- and when I do, I try not to punish them for the lack of a certain plan.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

PirateCat = Peyton Manning of RPGs...a real "student of the game".

P.S. - Yes, I used Manning instead of Brady on purpose.

 

[Rel]

One other note: sometimes my players can be overly cautious. I've been known to say "quit planning and start heroing!" just to get the action going -- and when I do, I try not to punish them for the lack of a certain plan.

I am a very tactical GM and I have had a tendency to expect the PC's to survive by gaining every tactical advantage they can grab. As a result, my sessions tended to devolve into a lot of planning because I'd trained the players to be cautious.

One of the things that has helped my games from running one-shots at Game Days is that you can't let that happen. It has taught me to dial back the challenges just a bit and keep the action moving.

However I still have a tendency to throw the PC's in over their heads and rely upon the smarts and creativity to pull their fat out of the fire (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). They almost never disappoint me either so they are part of their own problem.

 

[Quasqueton]

I think it's a combination of good player tactics, me having several alternative tactics prepared at any given time, and luck.

<snip cool details>

You get the idea. What you're seeing is not me pulling punches at the last minute or having mystical luck; it's me trying to gauge challenges accurately, having a couple of alternatives in mind, combined with players who know how to work as a team.

Thanks for the response.

Quasqueton

 

[shilsen]

So the overall question (not just for Piratecat) is: Those of you who have had long-running games, with long-running stories, and long-running PCs, how did the PCs stay alive to get to be “long-running”? DM fudging? Totally brilliant Players? Pure luck? What? How?

For me, personally, I effectively took death out of the equation by using action pts and swashbuckling cards, while making sure to have a lot of repercussions for PCs being defeated. So I get all of the benefits without any of the negatives.

See my post earlier in this thread for more details.

 

[KidCthulhu]

You can't MAKE players like that, either.

Actually, you can. It's all a case of slow training. As the Kitty says, reward the clever, and give the players ownership of the world. If the world reacts to your PCs, and if they have character based reasons to care about the challenges, they're going to stick around. And it's a case of rewarding what you want in your game play with things that matter to the characters and the players.
[/dog trainer hat off]

 

[Kestrel]

For me, personally, I effectively took death out of the equation by using action pts and swashbuckling cards, while making sure to have a lot of repercussions for PCs being defeated. So I get all of the benefits without any of the negatives.

See my post earlier in this thread for more details.

Ive been using APs for a while now, but the pcs mainly hoard them to stay alive. I'm about to add swashbuckling cards for more unpredictable stuff. Do you just give two at the beginning of the session or have some other system for it?

 

[Joshua Randall]

Lots of good advice in this thread. I'll add my tidbit.

Quasqeton (and others), have you read "Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering"? One of the things that really struck me in that book was the following -- most of the time, the players don't have any idea what's going on or what they're supposed to be doing. So, if you're the DM, you've got to give them ample guidance.

Once I read this, a lightbulb went off over my head, and my games started to get a lot better. Before, I would be frustrated with my players. How could they fail to act on the dozens of hints, rumors, prophecies, psychic visions, dying words of mysterious strangers, omens, signs, and portents? Well, perhaps they didn't act on any of those things because they were completely confused and overwhelmed.

So I made everything a lot more direct: one night, each PC's god/dess appeared to him/her, and asked or commaned the PC to do something. Like magic, the PCs turned their resources towards doing that thing, with laser-like precision and with utter dedication.

This actually forced me to become a better DM, because now when I want to throw in a side-quest, I have to answer the question, Why would the PCs do this instead of pursuing their divine mandate? Coming up with a reason that the side-quest is somehow essential to the overarching plot -- it's fun!

If you can get the players to buy into The Big Quest (tm), I think you'll see a lot more of the continuity that you observe in games like Piratecat's or Sagiro's.

 

[Harm]

One other note: sometimes my players can be overly cautious. I've been known to say "quit planning and start heroing!" just to get the action going -- and when I do, I try not to punish them for the lack of a certain plan.

I played with a group briefly that was overcautious about everything. Heroic fantasy it was not. Enjoyable (to me anyway) it was not. As an example, our group came upon some of the baddies having a discussion. It was in a cave and our characters were hidden above them. THREE HOURS of strategizing and much eye rolling on my part I got fed up and said "guys, look, they've having a 2 minute discussion and we've spent 3 hours trying to set up an ambush during those 2 minutes" so I charged. Needless to say they weren't happy despite the easy victory.