djotaku
Adventurer
I did a quick skim of the replies so far, so maybe I missed this. I think there's a key difference between supposed to lose and supposed to die. If I can spoil an old-ass jRPG, the first time in Chrono Trigger that you go up against Lavos, it's an impossible fight. But this on purpose for plot reasons. When I played it back some 30ish years ago, I remember panicking that we were dying no matter what I did. It was a long time ago so I don't remember if I tried to save skim. But the only thing that annoyed me is that I had spent a bunch of tonics and ethers to try and defeat him and I could have just let him win and get on with the story.
Coming back to the origin of your question: at this point I've listened to or am actively listening to about 10 actual plays. Based on the reactions of the players and the GMs, I believe them when they say it's not scripted. (Critical Role, for exmaple, has been asked this many times) Some of them are more professional like Critical Role or Dimension 20. Some are in the middle like The Badlands or The Misfortunate 4. Some are more amateur like The Vast. However, all the ones I've listened to are not just a table that happens to be recording - they are purposely making an actual play. (In the same way that reality tv is not "reality") So there are things that work for them what a normal table would struggle with: splitting the party, long backstory sections that only focus on one player, long GM descriptions/narrations. MY POINT is that you saw this character death in an AP and someone else mentions that the new WotC one does this - and these are pros who are telling a story and aren't going to rage-quit the table.
So should you do this at the table? I think you have to know your table, including their maturity. (It would be hard to do this with the game I run for my kids. At least one of them gets very upset just at rolling death saves) However, if you come to the conclusion that you will do something like this I think there are 3 key things:
Coming back to the origin of your question: at this point I've listened to or am actively listening to about 10 actual plays. Based on the reactions of the players and the GMs, I believe them when they say it's not scripted. (Critical Role, for exmaple, has been asked this many times) Some of them are more professional like Critical Role or Dimension 20. Some are in the middle like The Badlands or The Misfortunate 4. Some are more amateur like The Vast. However, all the ones I've listened to are not just a table that happens to be recording - they are purposely making an actual play. (In the same way that reality tv is not "reality") So there are things that work for them what a normal table would struggle with: splitting the party, long backstory sections that only focus on one player, long GM descriptions/narrations. MY POINT is that you saw this character death in an AP and someone else mentions that the new WotC one does this - and these are pros who are telling a story and aren't going to rage-quit the table.
So should you do this at the table? I think you have to know your table, including their maturity. (It would be hard to do this with the game I run for my kids. At least one of them gets very upset just at rolling death saves) However, if you come to the conclusion that you will do something like this I think there are 3 key things:
- Make sure this is a fight they lose, not a fight in which they die. (Unless adventuring in the afterlife is the plan)
- Unless it would absolutely destroy your plans, give the players a way out. They might not take it, but let it be there. There are MANY reasons I'm enjoying the heck out of The Badlands. But the one most related to your post is that there are clearly some fights where the GM thought it was going to be a crazy awesome boss fight and the players surprised him with their tactics combined with good player dice rolls and bad GM dice rolls. This makes for awesome scenes for the audience, but also for the players and GMs. You can hear in their voices that it's awesome to kick butt in a battle that was supposed to destroy them.
- QUICKLY transition to the next scene so that the players know they didn't die, but were defeated. Maybe they wake up in a dungeon (like a real dungeon, not what we mean in this hobby as a place to explore), or shanghaied on a ship, or even inexplicably in an Inn or a hospital. This way they don't feel cheated about the fight. They understand it was a story-based defeat that gives the players motivation to level up and get awesome weapons and come back to fight this person and revel in their subsequent win.
