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To Kill or Not to Kill (PCs): That is the Question...
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<blockquote data-quote="Daztur" data-source="post: 5946924" data-attributes="member: 55680"><p>As far as the Awesome Meter, if people get to decide stuff based on what their Awesome Meter says and not what the dice say, then EVERYONE should get to use their Awesome Meter, not just the DM. The rules then would all be about whose Awesome Meter to consult for any one particular situation. I love those kinds of story games in which there's whole swaths of the rules for injecting story-logic into the game and having "what would be more awesome, THAT'S what happens!" baked into the rules (FATE etc. etc. etc. etc.). I just don't particularly like having a game that's not really built around that and then have the DM having all of the power to decide ad hoc what would be more awesome and have all of the responsibility for shaping the random-ass events that happen in a session into a story.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh agreed completely. That's just what I'm talking about. The demon popped up because of something that the PC did, they knew the risk and then they got lucky and something awesome happened. I'd take that over a dozen pre-set encounters tuned to just the right challenge level any day. What's very important if you're playing a game in which players can die regularly is to make the players feel that if they died it's because of their own choices/luck not because of the DM being a meanie. Your example about the demon is a perfect illustration of that if the player got killed by it he'd have nobody to blame but himself and would probably laugh about it. He'd probably feel very very different if the DM lead him into that fight and then "threw the demon lord at him."</p><p></p><p>That's really really vital. I remember one post on this forum talking about whether to fudge if a fight gets too hard and someone saying that they'd had well over a 100 fights in the campaign he was DMing and that he was proud to have planned them out well enough so that only one had been too hard. That left me scratching my head and thinking "how the hell can a DM plan out a session so that you know what each fight will be and how hard it will be before the PCs ever show up? Does what the PCs do during the adventure not make any difference?"</p><p></p><p></p><p>Exactly, right down to the wire fights are fun (although they can really drag) but I often prefer curb stomps in one direction or another for example:</p><p>-The PC having a duel in which they manipulate the choice of weapons and location of the duel to massively favor them so the fight is over pretty much before it begins (the swashbuckler PC made a deal with the big beefy soldier so that one would choose weapons, the other would choose location, the soldier chose "musket" the PC chose "rooftop," it wasn't very long before the soldier failed his balance check and the PC won without doing hardly anything).</p><p>-Everything goes wrong with the PC's plan and the PCs are on the edge of their seats just trying to escape.</p><p>Now those really get the PC's heart rates pumping and result in high fives and don't get you dragged into round by round hit point attrition (not that long tactical fights are BAD, just that I'd go nuts if most fights went down like that).</p><p></p><p>In my experience players don't like winning a tough fair fight as much as they like cheating and getting away with it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Daztur, post: 5946924, member: 55680"] As far as the Awesome Meter, if people get to decide stuff based on what their Awesome Meter says and not what the dice say, then EVERYONE should get to use their Awesome Meter, not just the DM. The rules then would all be about whose Awesome Meter to consult for any one particular situation. I love those kinds of story games in which there's whole swaths of the rules for injecting story-logic into the game and having "what would be more awesome, THAT'S what happens!" baked into the rules (FATE etc. etc. etc. etc.). I just don't particularly like having a game that's not really built around that and then have the DM having all of the power to decide ad hoc what would be more awesome and have all of the responsibility for shaping the random-ass events that happen in a session into a story. Oh agreed completely. That's just what I'm talking about. The demon popped up because of something that the PC did, they knew the risk and then they got lucky and something awesome happened. I'd take that over a dozen pre-set encounters tuned to just the right challenge level any day. What's very important if you're playing a game in which players can die regularly is to make the players feel that if they died it's because of their own choices/luck not because of the DM being a meanie. Your example about the demon is a perfect illustration of that if the player got killed by it he'd have nobody to blame but himself and would probably laugh about it. He'd probably feel very very different if the DM lead him into that fight and then "threw the demon lord at him." That's really really vital. I remember one post on this forum talking about whether to fudge if a fight gets too hard and someone saying that they'd had well over a 100 fights in the campaign he was DMing and that he was proud to have planned them out well enough so that only one had been too hard. That left me scratching my head and thinking "how the hell can a DM plan out a session so that you know what each fight will be and how hard it will be before the PCs ever show up? Does what the PCs do during the adventure not make any difference?" Exactly, right down to the wire fights are fun (although they can really drag) but I often prefer curb stomps in one direction or another for example: -The PC having a duel in which they manipulate the choice of weapons and location of the duel to massively favor them so the fight is over pretty much before it begins (the swashbuckler PC made a deal with the big beefy soldier so that one would choose weapons, the other would choose location, the soldier chose "musket" the PC chose "rooftop," it wasn't very long before the soldier failed his balance check and the PC won without doing hardly anything). -Everything goes wrong with the PC's plan and the PCs are on the edge of their seats just trying to escape. Now those really get the PC's heart rates pumping and result in high fives and don't get you dragged into round by round hit point attrition (not that long tactical fights are BAD, just that I'd go nuts if most fights went down like that). In my experience players don't like winning a tough fair fight as much as they like cheating and getting away with it. [/QUOTE]
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