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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4994037" data-attributes="member: 62992">One of the major problems with any adventure is when someone dies, and it derails the campaign. It can also happen that people leave the group because of moving out of the area. At the extreme, you have the problem of a TPK, where everyone dies. ONe approach that some DMs use is to fudge alot and make the game less dangerous. This has never satisified me, and I also hate the idea of resurrections/raise dead in most games I play.To circumvent the consequences of PC death, I have used something stolen from games like Ars Magica, to great effect: the idea of the group identity as the major characterAt the start of the campaign, all the PCs belong to some sort of Umbrella organisation and the goals of that organisation reflect the personal goals or themes of the campaign. The focus of the adventure is then on the group and not on its individual members, who might change over time. In extreme cases, the characters who complete a major adventure, might be a completely different group to the ones who started it, because those who started are all dead.Essential to this type of grouping are NPCs (or PCs; see later) who have the resources to investigate if an entire party is killed and bring back their equipment and any information they might have gained: another important pre-requisite is that one of the characters is always writing a coded journal, so that information is seldom completely lost. Thus, if an entire group dies, their kit can be rescued, as can be the information. A new group can then slot straight in, with no need for serious, long-term splits between what the players know and what their character's know.With this sort of game, you gain a number of advantages: the group has a group purpose and goal, as well as individual goals and also often has a base. You can also use this format well for games where you don't want magical healing: in this case, everyone has two or three characters and when one set are badly wounded, they rest and the torch passes to the fitter characters to complete the task. This can also mean that you can engineer a change of pace into the game: if you are fed up with higher level play, use some of the newbie PCs, to run a low level side mission. No one ever plays more than one character per session though.This also adds the idea of rivals back into the equation: the DM can create NPC groups, who are part of the same organisation as "thorns in the side" of the PCs, but who can't be eliminated.What other meta-constructs, like this, have other DMs out there used to change the play experience of their players?</blockquote>

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