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To Kill or Not to Kill (PCs): That is the Question...
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<blockquote data-quote="gambler1650" data-source="post: 5943130" data-attributes="member: 11033"><p>So, with a few votes and replies in already, a bit of my philosophy and recent experiences gaming:</p><p></p><p>First of all, I gamed primarily AD&D 1st edition and did a bit of Rolemaster DMing back as an undergraduate. I honestly wasn't paying much attention to whether things were fudged to keep us alive or not but I certainly remember some character deaths occurring. For the most part, we had patrons who would then resurrect the character per the usual rules of XP/level losses... I admit to never playing in a TRUE old school game where if a character died, you just rolled up a new one and the DM tried to find a way to get him into the game as quickly as possible, but I'm pretty sure the games I was in started that way (by the time I joined, they were high level characters). I remember die rolls being in the open (for damage and to hit) by the DM, deadly puzzle traps, and so on.</p><p></p><p>And I enjoyed that a lot.</p><p></p><p>I've also enjoyed the games I've played in recently quite a bit too. And there hasn't been one PC death in the past 3 or so years (we play maybe a dozen times a year on average).</p><p></p><p>The general playstyle of the group is built around enough resources for players to survive most battles, so technically the GM rarely has to fudge - but from my point of view it's the same as a safety net built around modifying die rolls and damage.. Basically we get man points (a couple, maybe three) at first level which let us ignore any die roll we want, and then a man point at each level or for our characters doing exciting/brave stuff. We also get lots of healing potions... And there's fudging of die rolls when needed, though not incredibly so due to the built in buffer...</p><p></p><p>The main point of our current group's games is usually to explore a deep story of some sort, of which our characters are an integral part - and therefore it would make it hard if one of them were killed, to easily slot another character in. One of the problems we have is that we rarely get deep enough into the actual story to really start seeing the cool bits - due to a normal degeneration of everyone's ability/willingness to play regularly after the first spasm of excitement at a new game...</p><p></p><p>So, obviously my group is one of those that finds interest in other aspects of roleplaying games than rogueattorney does, but I personally have noticed that the style of our games takes away from my interest in the combats themselves for precisely the kinds of reasons stated above. I've suggested to my GM that the combats do tend to be exciting when there's something important to fight for (and he doesn't usually just toss in a battle just to have a battle), for instance trying to protect hostages/prisoners who might have valuable information or meaning to the characters, fighting against a time limit (town's burning, an important PC is trapped in a house, but someone's attacking the characters). At least in those cases, the PCs still have something important to lose even if they themselves are pretty much guaranteed not to die.</p><p></p><p>I will point him to this thread sometime soon, as he has expressed disbelief that any significant fraction of roleplayers actually enjoy games in which their characters can (and do) die.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gambler1650, post: 5943130, member: 11033"] So, with a few votes and replies in already, a bit of my philosophy and recent experiences gaming: First of all, I gamed primarily AD&D 1st edition and did a bit of Rolemaster DMing back as an undergraduate. I honestly wasn't paying much attention to whether things were fudged to keep us alive or not but I certainly remember some character deaths occurring. For the most part, we had patrons who would then resurrect the character per the usual rules of XP/level losses... I admit to never playing in a TRUE old school game where if a character died, you just rolled up a new one and the DM tried to find a way to get him into the game as quickly as possible, but I'm pretty sure the games I was in started that way (by the time I joined, they were high level characters). I remember die rolls being in the open (for damage and to hit) by the DM, deadly puzzle traps, and so on. And I enjoyed that a lot. I've also enjoyed the games I've played in recently quite a bit too. And there hasn't been one PC death in the past 3 or so years (we play maybe a dozen times a year on average). The general playstyle of the group is built around enough resources for players to survive most battles, so technically the GM rarely has to fudge - but from my point of view it's the same as a safety net built around modifying die rolls and damage.. Basically we get man points (a couple, maybe three) at first level which let us ignore any die roll we want, and then a man point at each level or for our characters doing exciting/brave stuff. We also get lots of healing potions... And there's fudging of die rolls when needed, though not incredibly so due to the built in buffer... The main point of our current group's games is usually to explore a deep story of some sort, of which our characters are an integral part - and therefore it would make it hard if one of them were killed, to easily slot another character in. One of the problems we have is that we rarely get deep enough into the actual story to really start seeing the cool bits - due to a normal degeneration of everyone's ability/willingness to play regularly after the first spasm of excitement at a new game... So, obviously my group is one of those that finds interest in other aspects of roleplaying games than rogueattorney does, but I personally have noticed that the style of our games takes away from my interest in the combats themselves for precisely the kinds of reasons stated above. I've suggested to my GM that the combats do tend to be exciting when there's something important to fight for (and he doesn't usually just toss in a battle just to have a battle), for instance trying to protect hostages/prisoners who might have valuable information or meaning to the characters, fighting against a time limit (town's burning, an important PC is trapped in a house, but someone's attacking the characters). At least in those cases, the PCs still have something important to lose even if they themselves are pretty much guaranteed not to die. I will point him to this thread sometime soon, as he has expressed disbelief that any significant fraction of roleplayers actually enjoy games in which their characters can (and do) die. [/QUOTE]
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