Plot immunity for PCs

[Kichwas]

My Mutants and Masterminds game has a certain level of plot immunity built in by the system and nature of the stories.

My DnD game however is utterly heartless. I put this on my website as one of my "house rules":

Q: How will I run this game?
A: I plan to open my 3.5 rulebooks, read what's inside it, and apply it.

Q: Will you fudge to save us if we weren't being stupid.
A: No, even smart people die when they take risks, I plan to roll my die on the table with no screen and apply the results.

DnD is a game about challenges and overcoming them. More so than it is a game about stories. If you want stories play something else. You can get stories in DnD, but it's not the system focus and I no longer desire to change the system (through fudging or house rules) to make it so. To promote this, I even went out and bought a 54mm big red d20 -no hiding the results of that.

I also put this on that same page:

A game of challenges: A smart well played group can survive and thrive in the very hostile environment that is DnD. But characters will die or face notable setbacks - especially if they press too far.

Fair warning will come when you enter regions that contain threats beyond your scope. I won't pull a dragon's lair out if you pursue a band of fleeing orcs into it, but I'll leave notable clues to its presence -giving you the opportunity to pull out.

DnD is about challenges. It's about facing off against greater odds and somehow pulling through. Its about the risk and very hard won victories. It's not unusual to survive a major encounter with over 50% losses -because somebody did something foolish, or to survive in a very injured state because it was just that hard. This is not from a DM gunning for PCs, but from a DM playing the creatures as prepared and desiring to survive on their end just as much as the PCs do.

The site's listed in the signature.

 

[fusangite]

Very well put, arcady.

Now that I think of it, you're right: the plot immunity of PCs is really a function of genre, of which the rules system is just an element. I think your different standards for M&M vs. D&D are very sensible.

 

[Kichwas]

Personally as DM I find 1-page backgrounds are best, multi-page opuses rarely result in good characters in-game.

I told my players to approach the DnD game with a develop in play strategy. Make a brief sketch of a character concept, and figure out who she is as you play her. Save the long backgrounds and pre play development for the Mutants and Masterminds game.

 

[Kichwas]

i've seen many "death is possible" campaigns that are combat-lite and role-playing-intensive where all the characters are optimized for combat. i've seen many combat-heavy/role-playing-lite "plot immunity" campaigns where the characters were not optimized for combat, because they didn't need to be.

Characters not built to survive combat shouldn't.

To survive, they should avoid it.

By being less forgiving, by not fudging, you can sometimes get players to think more creatively. Their first dozen or so characters will get wasted in the transition, but once they realize the world bites back they'll start thinking like people who want to stay alive -and suprising more of them will be able to do so.

I used to have a philosophy that you had to use script immunity to get in depth roleplay, and about a yewar ago I would have posted the same post as d4 and bekkilyn_rpg have been doing.

In fact if we could all search archives here I could find a post by me to that effect.

But sometimes it just doesn't hold. Removing the script immunity makes it a lot harder to get by, but you learn and adopt and find you can still get into the characters. Even more so after they've managed to pull through. You also find some players will really begin to learn how to survive. Some won't, some are the sorts of people who just can't handle an actual threatening situation -they'll roleplay fine, but keep losing characters from foolishness.

What happens with the smarter players in a lethal play style is that they begin to think as if they were the people in these situations. They stop taking stupid risks, they start planning, they start doing threat analysis, and they start treating NPCs with respect and either trying for alternate methods of goal achivement, making compromises, or accepting that NPCs have a right to their corner of the world as well. In this way, roleplay and depth of story actually starts to go up, not down.

 

[Norfleet]

And this is why I am proudly a killer DM. Until players realize that their brilliant conceived roleplay is going to come to very gruesome end if they insist on acting in an utterly exaggerated, completely unrealistic manner, they're not going to last very long. Frankly, this is a good thing, because some of the plainly unreal stuff people come up with makes me want to hurl chunks.

 

[d4]

However, you seem to have entirely missed the point, the fact that you're not supposed to get into these fights at all. It's kind of funny how a roleplayer like yourself utterly missed the intent of deadly combat: That of discouraging players from engaging in it in the first place, because people who get into combats frequently get KILLED.

in my style of campaigns, i don't want to discourage people from combat. combat is fun.

That's because they stormed through the corridors with no regard for caution or good sense, rather than advancing carefully between points of cover, or under stealth. They ruthlessly exploited their "plot immunity" rather than trying to do things in a sensible manner.

thank goodness! the movie'd be much more boring if they had done it that way. i'm all for wahoo in-your-face storming ahead action.

Running through a corridor engaging in a blaster fight with a bunch of stormtroopers is asking to be messily shot and killed, and when players ask for something like this, I give it to them.

not in the context of the movie's genre. running through a corridor engaging in a blaster fight with a bunch of stormtroopers is an excuse to show how cool and brave the characters are, and to get some good action scenes in. as i said before, killing PCs at that point would be totally against genre conventions.

Non-lethal combat simply cheapens the entire experience of combat, to the point where even the so-called anti-combat "roleplayer" crowd has come to regard it casually as something that shouldn't be taken seriously, because nobody's actually supposed to DIE in a FIGHT....right?

not in a fight against stormtroopers, no.

If you don't want to kill PCs, give them the chance to avoid 'random senseless fights'.

they always have a chance to run. but sometimes its more fun to have a cool action sequence (i.e., combat).

...lots of 'good guys' die in Star Wars.

but i'd argue that none of them were "PCs."

DnD is a game about challenges and overcoming them. More so than it is a game about stories. If you want stories play something else.

i don't think that's necessary. i've done quite well running 3e campaigns in my style.

You can get stories in DnD, but it's not the system focus and I no longer desire to change the system (through fudging or house rules) to make it so.

truth be told, i use very few house rules and don't really have to fudge all that often. it doesn't IMO take any more work to play this way than to play a more lethal game.

By being less forgiving, by not fudging, you can sometimes get players to think more creatively.

i've found you can also get players to think more creatively when they realize that their new, weird ideas might actually work and not get them killed. when they're not paranoid about being killed in every encounter. those situations, in my experience, tends to lead to very conservative tactics, whereas i want to see PCs leaping around the room, swinging from chandeliers, charging into a group of enemies swinging wildly -- in short, the kind of things you see characters in action movies do.

that's what's fun about role-playing for me -- not sitting back trying to find the perfect strategy or running from every fight because the PCs are afraid of dying.

Their first dozen or so characters will get wasted in the transition...

that's not something i'd ever want to put my players through.

They stop taking stupid risks, they start planning, they start doing threat analysis...

all of which bores me to tears... that's why i don't play that way.

...if they insist on acting in an utterly exaggerated, completely unrealistic manner...

that's exactly the type of behavior i want to promote in my players.

i don't really have a problem with people who disagree with my style. i realize i am very much in the minority here. i'm obviously not trying to argue that my style's better, since that is a personal preference; i'm just trying to explain why i role-play the way i do.

 

[Kichwas]

See I also like a flair for the dramatic, and for characters doing the heroic.

But not doing the stupid or foolhardy. Maybe it's the military veteran in me, but I want people to make the right choices to win and overcome -not any choices they darn well feel like.

If there's no consequence for anything you do, then players will start rushing in without thought, bullying about rural towns like a pack of thugs, charging in to Orc lairs they have no reason assaulting, and so on... all because they can -the DM won't hurt them. They can pimp-slap a red dragon and nothing bad's gonna happen.

I'll save that for my super hero game, where it fits and the RPG (Mutants and Masterminds) is built to let it happen.

But DnD is more about making yourself into a hero, earning it rather than having it handed to you.

Being forced to make the right choices to survive a challenge won't lead to conservative or staticly repetitive results - it will lead to innovation and thought. Honestly if you've ever been in an actual 'situation' you'd know that. The ones who win out are the ones who find the better solutions, not the same old solutions.

I want an in depth story and lots of roleplay. But I want it to make sense, keep people in the moment, and reward not the people who violate genre or logic but the people who capture genre and logic.

So in the end, I switched my preference on this issue -at least for DnD.

 

[Nightfall]

*sung to the tune of Last Caress*

I got something to sayaa
I mauled some PCs today
And it doesn't matter much to me
As long as they stay dead!

I got something to sayyaa
I used some PCs for kindling today
And it doesn't matter much to me
As long as the dragon was fed!

Ooh lovely PC death, just waiting for your breath
Come sweet PC death one last dungeoncrawling breath!

 

[d4]

But not doing the stupid or foolhardy. Maybe it's the military veteran in me, but I want people to make the right choices to win and overcome -not any choices they darn well feel like.

i'm a military veteran also, which i believe is why i don't like highly realistic "simulationist" role-playing. been there, done that. i want to see heroics, not spend hours on the minutiae of strategy, tactics, and planning.

If there's no consequence for anything you do, then players will start rushing in without thought...

who ever said anything about there not being consequences? remember, there are things much, much worse than death.

don't get the idea that i reward stupidity. i don't. i do reward brash, bold, heroic, and creative thinking, however.

But DnD is more about making yourself into a hero, earning it rather than having it handed to you.

that's only one way of running it. there are others. in any event, i don't feel i "hand" the PCs anything. i do facilitate. they still have to earn the title of hero.

Being forced to make the right choices to survive a challenge won't lead to conservative or staticly repetitive results - it will lead to innovation and thought. Honestly if you've ever been in an actual 'situation' you'd know that.

i have, and i agree that in real life the creative thinkers are the ones who pull out ahead. i was merely pointing out that in my experience, in the context of role-playing games, i have found that players in lethal campaigns tend to follow very conservative tactics.

I want an in depth story and lots of roleplay. But I want it to make sense, keep people in the moment, and reward not the people who violate genre or logic but the people who capture genre and logic.

of course i want the same thing. the only thing that is different is that i am trying to emulate a different genre.

 

[Nightfall]

Only things I emulate, lots and lots of death...well sometimes. But interesting stuff there guys.