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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 1052745" data-attributes="member: 63">I thought, perhaps for a moment, that I was a SPDM, but then I realized, "I don't play D&D.  I play Feng Shui Fantasy d20, just with the D&D rules."And it's true.  I don't kill PCs except at the end of story arcs where the dramatic tension is high.  Because of the college schedule, I have a home game, and a college game.  The college game has two seasons a year, Fall and Spring, and at the end of each season, there's a good chance some one can die.  The home game has only one season, in the Summer, but I usually have a Christmas Special.  At the end of the season, crazy stuff usually happens, and I try to make the PCs sweat, and in the Christmas Special, it's a one-shot where I let the players be happy with how cool they are.In mid-season adventures, I don't kill PCs.  I find more interesting ways to make their mistakes hurt.  The PCs in my college game ended up captured, so they lost most of their magic items and spellbooks, and one mage got his leg cut off for being resistant to torture, but they managed to escape, and when they finally beat the bad guys, they'll be happier for it.In my home game, at the end of this season, I plan to have them be confronted by the main villain who can wipe the floor with them, and let them deal with his minions as they try to escape.  I am slowly building up the tension, and a few weeks ago, when one beloved NPC would have died prematurely (for my tastes), I instead had her soul get stolen, but her body be left alive, which hopefully raises the stakes, and makes the game more interesting.I don't kill the PCs, and I do fudge the rules a bit to let them do cool stuff, but that's because I care more about a dramatic story arc than having great danger in their hearts all the time.  And I have fun, and so do the players (I hope), so that's all that matters. * An addendum.  I have killed two PCs, both from the same player.  One time his character's berserker rage kept him from retreating, so he got killed, but it was near the climax of the campaign, so it seemed fair.  The other time, the little gnome was too defiant in the face of a captor, and tried to make three escape attempts.  The first, he was beaten in punishment.  The second, tortured.  Third time was too much, so he ended up dead.  I think he knew what would happen, though, and felt it was appropriate to his character.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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