Tell me about The Black Company Campaign Setting

[Henry]

I have to disagree somewhat -- what constitutes a "PC" and "not a PC"?
[sblock]Hell, of the original company (as in, the first book), only Croaker lives, and eventhen he's presumed dead for years! Arguably, there's a case for One Eye, but there's some dispute whether he died in a battle later on, or whether he lived old enough to get a heart attack. In the first quarter of the first book, Mercy & Tom Tom get killed off, and they had enough character development to make you THINK that they were going to be main characters.Every commander they had died on 'em, and the only reason Suvrin's still alive is because there hasn't been another book.[/sblock]

There's a roll call list in the back of the Campaign setting, and 70% of 'em listed are dead. It wasn't a matter of "who was main" and who wasn't, so much as it was a matter of killing them off steadily for dramatic effect.

 

[Gomez]

So it's the Call of Cthulhu of fantasy role-playing games?

 

[KaosDevice]

I wish I had a money tree so I could buy this. *sigh*

 

[Felon]

I love the BCCS, but I agree with this post completely. I got the BCCS first, read it, loved it, and then partook the novels. While the novels portray sometimes massive amoutns of violence, the "PCs" seem to make it through, and slowly die off with a suddenness after having gone through years of war.

Yep, this thrread is very similar to the Thieves' World d20 thread from a couple weeks back taht was so damn exasperating.

So, some folks want a system that's more deadly than standard video-game-like D&D combat. Characters have to use their heads, and rash actions get you killed. Great. But that doesn't mean an ultra-deadly system where the average blow layes a character low is desirable. And the rebuttal of "that's the way it is by design" doesn't really address the issue of whether or not it's any good. Even in a gritty, low-magic world, protagonists tend to not die ignominiously.

 

[HellHound]

You might find it exasperating, but as I said in that same thread, protagonists -do- tend to die in some stories (such as these). And there are play groups who enjoy highly deadly games, such as mine.

I think the issue here is that you don't like games that are deadly to the PCs, whereas other players and GMs do, and you seem to find fault with that mindset and discount any argument that it can be enjoyable because you don't like it.

Again... from the DM who's best campaigns ran with a 20% fatality rate per session, and no resurrections... and the players LOVED it and came back for more week after week for 10 years. To me, deadly is good. To you, it is not. Where is the exasperation?