Piratecat ruined my D&D game

[Joshua Randall]

If you own and understand that part of the DMG2 then you probably don't need to get RLoGGM. I do think that there is some neat stuff in there on adventure design but the bit about the player types and their "emotional kicks" is the most valuable portion of the book and the bit that is most commonly referenced here.

I think the section of the book on adventure design is solid gold.

Possibly, if you are an experienced DM, you will have intuited most of Laws' adventure design advice already; but otherwise, it will be a real eye-opener.

The really neat thing is how he ties the adventure design advice back into the "emotional kicks" (or "player traits and incentives" in DMG2 parlance). That is, if you design an adventure of this type, how does it appear to the buttkicker? the storyteller? the method actor? etc.

 

[Rel]

I think the section of the book on adventure design is solid gold.

Possibly, if you are an experienced DM, you will have intuited most of Laws' adventure design advice already; but otherwise, it will be a real eye-opener.

The really neat thing is how he ties the adventure design advice back into the "emotional kicks" (or "player traits and incentives" in DMG2 parlance). That is, if you design an adventure of this type, how does it appear to the buttkicker? the storyteller? the method actor? etc.

I agree with you that the "wholistic" approach to adventure design is well tied in with the stuff about the player types. I think I was coming at it from the perspective of a GM who had been at it for many, many years and mostly write all my own adventures. So I guess once I had a good understanding of the player types the rest seemed fairly obvious. YMMV.

One of the things that I found most enlightening about the Player Types was recognizing how you bring your own player type to the GM chair with you. As I mentioned upthread, I'm a Tactician. But none of my players are. So when I'm GMing I've had to learn how to curb some of my worst Tactician traits while keeping the game fun for me to run. Likewise, our Story Teller type player was in the GM chair before me recently and had to learn yet again that some of the REALLY in depth story stuff he was tossing to us was being left on the table for a reason.

I think bento's practice of re-reading it every 6 months is probably a pretty good schedule. I think I'll read it again this weekend.

 

[Yami no Hon]

Here's my trick to keeping continuity (I play at a college, so we get player turnover within campagins every semester, and character turnover more frequently than that): the PCs do not exist in a vacume.

Somewhere out there in the wide world, there is someone else who cares if the PCs die, be it a parent, sibling, aunt, unlce, cousin, old roomate, best friend from kindergarten, or the wolves that raised them after the tragic death of absolutly every other living thing in their village. When the PCs die, some one else cares enough to come looking. That person (the new PC) not only joins the party in their over all quest to get the Big Bad Evil Guy, but they are also seaking revenge for the death of their child/sibling/nephew/cousin/rommate/friend/cub [select appropriate]. As the PC body count racks up, the story become that much more personal for the survivors.

A couple ways to promote this is for the PCs to occasionally write letters home -- ensuring that someone will come to investigate when the letters stop -- or write a will -- ensuring that someone will come to collect the dead guy's stuff -- or in some other way make contact with the world outside the party. Other sources of new party members that don't break continuity with the story, are NPCs the party deals with regularly, for instance the barmaid at the inn (who occasionaly lifts a few coins from open pockets) might join the group when the rogue dies. Another option, is through the leadership feat: the first PC dies, and his cohort steps up to take his place in the party. This way the new character is already someone the other PCs know, maybe even trust, who has a purpose to be with the party other than "the good guys pay the best."

Of course, death does not have to be the end of PC either. One of my more memorable PCs was a demon-summoning gnome engineer who died in the penultimate session of the campagign. She returned for the final fight against the BBEG (or the guy the rest of the party thought was the BBEG) having turned into a demon thanks to a deal she made with the real BBEG. For a less drastic return there are always Raise Dead spells.

 

[Desdichado]

One other question, maybe I should ask of those folks who say "My campaign ran from 1st to 20th level": Did the original *PCs* go from 1st to 20th level, or was it just the campaign -- For instance, Player A's original PC went from 1-3, then died; Player A's PC #2 went from 3-7; Player A's PC #3 went from 7-14; Player A's PC #4 went from 14-20. Or did Player A's PC make it all the way from 1-20 (maybe dying and being raised along the way a few times)?

In my case, no--only one or two characters went that far. But character death wasn't always to blame. At least two of us--myself included--got tired of the character, and right about 10th level decided that that character took another offer from another adventuring group or whatever and brought in some new talent.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, that's kinda the point of Cthulhu.

Either kill 'em or drive 'em insane.

Yes, but even so we had a fairly long running campaign with continuity. It doesn't require a "no character deaths" rule to work.

I know this isn't a universal, but I couldn't possibly have fun in a campaign where I didn't at least think that the PCs could potentially die. And the best way to think that is to actually see it happen on occasion.