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<blockquote data-quote="dcollins" data-source="post: 634081" data-attributes="member: 876">You know, this thread just made me realize something about the whole &quot;do you let PCs die?&quot; debate.I started playing D&amp;D when I was like 10, and since I had the rulebook, I always DM'd. At the time, everyone just rolled up statistics for their characters (no &quot;deep roleplaying&quot; existed at that time), and it never even occured to me to change or hide dice rolls (no such thing in the rulebook).Every single one of my friends lost their first character in their first gaming session. In hindsight, this was a good way to start for several reasons: (a) they lost little of value, since they only spent ~15 minutes creating the character, (b) it challenged and intrigued them to make a new character and try again and do a better job playing the game, and best of all (c) everything after that looked like a great success in comparison, even if a PC died down the line at some point.The one thing I can draw from this is maybe there's a great advantage to starting off a campaign in one of those &quot;static dungeons waiting for treasure hunters&quot;, which is playable by a sequence of PCs if early ones get killed, instead of some plot-based adventure where it's difficult to shoehorn new PCs in if they fail at some point.At any rate, there was a time long, long ago when players didn't think to get upset even if you had a TPK right off the bat.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="dcollins, post: 634081, member: 876"] You know, this thread just made me realize something about the whole "do you let PCs die?" debate. I started playing D&D when I was like 10, and since I had the rulebook, I always DM'd. At the time, everyone just rolled up statistics for their characters (no "deep roleplaying" existed at that time), and it never even occured to me to change or hide dice rolls (no such thing in the rulebook). [i]Every single one of my friends lost their first character in their first gaming session.[/i] In hindsight, this was a good way to start for several reasons: (a) they lost little of value, since they only spent ~15 minutes creating the character, (b) it challenged and intrigued them to make a new character and try again and do a better job playing the game, and best of all (c) everything after that looked like a great success in comparison, even if a PC died down the line at some point. The one thing I can draw from this is maybe there's a great advantage to starting off a campaign in one of those "static dungeons waiting for treasure hunters", which is playable by a sequence of PCs if early ones get killed, instead of some plot-based adventure where it's difficult to shoehorn new PCs in if they fail at some point. At any rate, there was a time long, long ago when players didn't think to get upset even if you had a TPK right off the bat. [/QUOTE]

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