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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 3316353" data-attributes="member: 3854">I’ve now read a good deal of that story hour. Wow, that’s a lot of death. And the party seems to continue mostly out of a mutual metagame acceptance rather than in-game character motivation.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?For instance, Nolin died at perhaps the most climatic and spectacular and plot-perfect moment of the campaign. In my game, Nolin would have died long before, and the PCs never would have learned about the “plot” of . . . [what’s his name, the undead wizard guy with yellow text?]’s infatuation with him.That long chase flying through the undead city cavern, with all the spectral things chasing them? Velendo would have decided to stop and try to turn/destroy their pursuers, and so the whole party would have been surrounded and TPKed, never reaching the climax and BBEG.[undead wizard guy with yellow text] would have successfully gotten off the Mordenkainen’s Disjunction and destroyed all the party’s magic items – the party would then have postponed the adventure while they go home and re-equip.Malachite would have died in the arena with the vampire witch – a combat completely unrelated to the campaign plot. (And then the Player would have decided that Malachite would be happy to be in Heaven, and so would decline the raise dead.)You created that arena encounter just to give one of your Players an opportunity to just kick some butt in D&D. But that encounter turned out to totally kick the butt of the PC, instead. But the PC survived the encounter. For my game, it seems, when an encounter turns bad, a PC or two or all, dies – that PC would have died right with Malachite.Etc.I don’t have a [too much] problem laying the plots – my problem, (and a frustrating problem for many, it seems, judging from posts in this thread), is that the PCs DIE. (See my OP.) It’s just a fact of D&D adventuring – it’s dangerous work, and people will die. I don’t think I’d like the game as much if there wasn’t the real danger of PC death.But then I see stories like the Defenders of Daybreak, and I see long-running campaigns, with long-running plots and stories, with long-term characters, and I realize I really want that. I hear about other campaigns in which the PCs went from 1st level to 20th+ level – I want to experience that, too. But that is not the reality I see in all my years of DMing D&D.And even with raise dead available, there are plenty of ways for PCs to die that prevent raising – being eaten, disintegrated, dissolved, beheaded, turned to undead, etc. And I’ve even had PCs stay dead because the Player decided that the PC would accept the afterlife and not want to return. And then of course, there’s just the inconvenience of dying – out in the wilderness, deep in the dungeon, on another plane, etc. If I ever put the PCs in an inconvenient location, I can bank on one of them dying, and potentially having to sit out a game session or two waiting for a place where I can put them back in. The whole “stranded on a desert island” adventure scenario is something I could never do, because someone would die.When I make adventures, I have to make plans for the eventuality of PC death – because if I don’t (and often even when I do), a PC will die and leave me and other PCs and the adventure hanging in the breeze to figure out a way of bringing in a new character.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?Quasqueton</blockquote>

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