I would consider this scenario a disaster as player & GM. Have you considered Fate Points to reduce PC death? As used in Conan & Warhammer Roleplay, PCs get a small number + more for great achievements, they spend them to get lucky breaks or not die at -10 hp. They don;t affect combat rolls so there's no balance issue.
What do do about lots of deaths/no shows?
- Thread starter Majoru Oakheart
- Start date
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
As some people may have guessed, I am in fact running: (spoiler)
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil converted to 3.5 edition with no changes of my own
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
To summarize, yes, my players are mostly hack and slashers and don't seem to care one bit about a continuous storyline. I'm probably about 80% satisified with the game the way it is now as I still have the heart of a hack and slasher.
Yes, the mod is deadly, and I'd expect nothing less from a mod with its name behind it.
I made a couple of house rules to make death less deadly. I changed the price of raise dead and resurrection so that they were based on the level of the player being brought back and were almost always about half their current price.
However, each player when they dies says "Oh well, I'm dead. Hey, I've always wanted to try <insert class or PrC from one book or another>, let me start making up that character." Each time they die, they just see it as an opportunity to play something they haven't been before who might be more powerful than their last character as survive better.
I'd also like to note, that I haven't really been killing them on purpose. They walk into a room, there is a symbol of death on the floor, 2 PCs fail their save and die. Not much I can do about that.
But the party seems to be having some fun. I introduce new characters quickly and without problems. They happen to be wandering around the dungeon looking to defeat the same evil forces the party is and run into the party or their god gives them a vision of the party and tells them to help them. The story has SORT of flowed, due to the fact that it has basically worked like this:
Party of 6 has one party member die
New one joins, hears about their quest, joins them
2 more party members die, 2 new ones join them
3 more die, 3 new ones join them, entirely new party, but at least a couple of them remember the original party and know what the quest is
I just keep imagining how silly it would sound to people joining the party at this point: "We are going on a quest to defeat evil. We are continuing a quest started by some other people, who died last week, then was taken up by a different group 3 days ago, who died yesterday, now we figured we'd follow in their footsteps."
I think I'd never join them
As for missing members, we've been just having them vanish with no one even wondering why and just reappearing when they get back to avoid having to role play out and make up a reason each session since we have an average of 2 people miss each week now. We once had a TPK, where 2 members survived because they weren't there, everyone rolled up new characters, formed a new party and was in the middle of going on the mission again when the old party members reappeared and we pretended like they had always known each other.
The only way I could find to solve this problem is basically allowing nearly free true res continually, I think my players would only continue to play the same characters if they knew their characters wouldn't come back at a level lower. I already implimented the rule, "if you make up a new character, you come back at a level lower anyways", but I had to put a bottom on it, because the party was starting to drop below 10th level in an area designed for 12th level characters.
Yes, the mod is deadly, and I'd expect nothing less from a mod with its name behind it.
I made a couple of house rules to make death less deadly. I changed the price of raise dead and resurrection so that they were based on the level of the player being brought back and were almost always about half their current price.
However, each player when they dies says "Oh well, I'm dead. Hey, I've always wanted to try <insert class or PrC from one book or another>, let me start making up that character." Each time they die, they just see it as an opportunity to play something they haven't been before who might be more powerful than their last character as survive better.
I'd also like to note, that I haven't really been killing them on purpose. They walk into a room, there is a symbol of death on the floor, 2 PCs fail their save and die. Not much I can do about that.
But the party seems to be having some fun. I introduce new characters quickly and without problems. They happen to be wandering around the dungeon looking to defeat the same evil forces the party is and run into the party or their god gives them a vision of the party and tells them to help them. The story has SORT of flowed, due to the fact that it has basically worked like this:
Party of 6 has one party member die
New one joins, hears about their quest, joins them
2 more party members die, 2 new ones join them
3 more die, 3 new ones join them, entirely new party, but at least a couple of them remember the original party and know what the quest is
I just keep imagining how silly it would sound to people joining the party at this point: "We are going on a quest to defeat evil. We are continuing a quest started by some other people, who died last week, then was taken up by a different group 3 days ago, who died yesterday, now we figured we'd follow in their footsteps."
I think I'd never join them
As for missing members, we've been just having them vanish with no one even wondering why and just reappearing when they get back to avoid having to role play out and make up a reason each session since we have an average of 2 people miss each week now. We once had a TPK, where 2 members survived because they weren't there, everyone rolled up new characters, formed a new party and was in the middle of going on the mission again when the old party members reappeared and we pretended like they had always known each other.
The only way I could find to solve this problem is basically allowing nearly free true res continually, I think my players would only continue to play the same characters if they knew their characters wouldn't come back at a level lower. I already implimented the rule, "if you make up a new character, you come back at a level lower anyways", but I had to put a bottom on it, because the party was starting to drop below 10th level in an area designed for 12th level characters.
reveal
Adventurer
Majoru Oakheart said:
Two things:
1) If they're having funy doing this, great, because that's what it's all about.
2) However, I will say that, if this were my campaign, I would look on this as a failure on my part as a DM. If I haven't given them reason enough to care about their characters, to make them feel like their PC is of value and worth continuing to play, then I'm not giving the players enough and need to do more. In my campaigns, I always have a storyline, long or short, revolving around each character specifically. It makes them feel like they have a goal to accomplish beyond "kill things and take their stuff." YMMV.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I've tried doing this sort of thing before, however, my players are the type just not to care about their characters.reveal said:2) However, I will say that, if this were my campaign, I would look on this as a failure on my part as a DM. If I haven't given them reason enough to care about their characters, to make them feel like their PC is of value and worth continuing to play, then I'm not giving the players enough and need to do more. In my campaigns, I always have a storyline, long or short, revolving around each character specifically. It makes them feel like they have a goal to accomplish beyond "kill things and take their stuff." YMMV.
In a game where I was a player with most of the same people who are players in my game, the DM asked us to write a couple of paragraph history for our characters to give us a sense of background and depth (normally we don't care about any of that stuff). One of the other players who was playing a Fire Elf (from UA) wizard wrote "Fire, fire, fire. Burn, burn, burn. I like to burn things. Fire burned down my house and killed my parents, now I want to control it and use it to burn others. I will burn everything." That was about his character's personality in the game as well.
I have another player who gets his character killed nearly every session, he has about 5 times as many deaths as anyone else. He's even played this mod before and I agreed to let him play it as long as he promised not to use ANY of the information he had from playing it last time. He broke that rule, only strangely enough the only thing he's done with it has been to get himself killed a couple of times by touching things he knew were trapped.
So, you can tell the depth I'm working with as a DM.
SweeneyTodd
First Post
I think it's clear that the players are treating their PCs like game pieces, and they're in the game for the challenge of defeating their enemies. And there's nothing wrong with that, since it sounds like everybody's pretty much on the same page.
But you'd like this to tie into a continuing story. I'd say go for a military/adventure fiction model. If you were playing a WWII game, or a spy game, then it doesn't strain disbelief so much that new soldiers show up when the old ones die.
One way to do this that might be palatable to your interest in a continuing story: Have there be a secret organization of adventurers that's devoted to finding strongholds of evil and destroying them. It could be formally organized like a guild, or maybe even as simple as some kind of secret fraternity.
So now the adventuring party is a kind of commando raid. They send in small, highly trained groups (because a full-on attack would be too easily spotted), trained to know what they'll be facing (explaining why these new guys care, and why they get up to speed so fast), and with some kind of implanted magical device that tells HQ when they die (so they can send replacements and have them show up in the right spot). You can rationalize that the implant just says "Someone's dead, here's a body," because if it transmitted more information the bad guys would be able to use it to find the PCs, or something.
As far as the end of the campaign, what you should look at is rewarding the players, not the characters. So they manage to defeat the Temple after X characters, well, they defeated it. Maybe the organization is the thing that gets lauded for its success, so if their new PCs are members, they get the benefits. Reward the players with player perks instead of character perks.
Of course, that's what you're already doing! By allowing people to bring in new characters at the same level as the dead ones, you're saying "Rack up all the XP you can, even if it gets you killed, because you can keep it." So what your players are doing makes sense -- you're rewarding it.
I think your players do have long-term goals, they just don't tie them directly to their current characters, who are just foot soldiers in a war to them. So maybe some setup like what I described above could make that explicit in game, and help with the disconnect between your goals and theirs.
Heck, knowing how they work and what they're interested in, I'd up the stakes! Hand-wave the small stuff about plot with "I'll play the forces of evil, you play the group that's sworn to stop me." Encourage the metagaming by having scryers back at HQ send intel to them, and send them magical telepathic messages congratulating them on clearing another level. Have the "mini-bosses" in the dungeon say things like "More of you bastards from the Company of the Black Hand? You'll die like the rest!" That actually sounds pretty fun.
But you'd like this to tie into a continuing story. I'd say go for a military/adventure fiction model. If you were playing a WWII game, or a spy game, then it doesn't strain disbelief so much that new soldiers show up when the old ones die.
One way to do this that might be palatable to your interest in a continuing story: Have there be a secret organization of adventurers that's devoted to finding strongholds of evil and destroying them. It could be formally organized like a guild, or maybe even as simple as some kind of secret fraternity.
So now the adventuring party is a kind of commando raid. They send in small, highly trained groups (because a full-on attack would be too easily spotted), trained to know what they'll be facing (explaining why these new guys care, and why they get up to speed so fast), and with some kind of implanted magical device that tells HQ when they die (so they can send replacements and have them show up in the right spot). You can rationalize that the implant just says "Someone's dead, here's a body," because if it transmitted more information the bad guys would be able to use it to find the PCs, or something.
As far as the end of the campaign, what you should look at is rewarding the players, not the characters. So they manage to defeat the Temple after X characters, well, they defeated it. Maybe the organization is the thing that gets lauded for its success, so if their new PCs are members, they get the benefits. Reward the players with player perks instead of character perks.
Of course, that's what you're already doing! By allowing people to bring in new characters at the same level as the dead ones, you're saying "Rack up all the XP you can, even if it gets you killed, because you can keep it." So what your players are doing makes sense -- you're rewarding it.
I think your players do have long-term goals, they just don't tie them directly to their current characters, who are just foot soldiers in a war to them. So maybe some setup like what I described above could make that explicit in game, and help with the disconnect between your goals and theirs.
Heck, knowing how they work and what they're interested in, I'd up the stakes! Hand-wave the small stuff about plot with "I'll play the forces of evil, you play the group that's sworn to stop me." Encourage the metagaming by having scryers back at HQ send intel to them, and send them magical telepathic messages congratulating them on clearing another level. Have the "mini-bosses" in the dungeon say things like "More of you bastards from the Company of the Black Hand? You'll die like the rest!" That actually sounds pretty fun.
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reveal
Adventurer
Majoru Oakheart said:
Then it sounds like you're running the game you guys like. If it's something (character background) that you, as a player, don't care about, why should your players when you DM?
For the latest campaign, I had my players start with 28 points to build a character (point buy method). They got extra points for coming up with a character history, a secret I could use in the campaign, and their characters motivations. I'm glad I did because it made them more aware of who their characters were and it gave me more opportunity to play to their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps if you try to put in situations that make your players care more, they will slowly, hopefully, start to take their characters more seriously.
Otherwise, just play a networked game of Neverwinter Nights.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
Overall, this idea actually sounds not half bad. I brought this problem up with one of my players recently and he just laughed about the fact that none of the current characters know any of the original characters. He said "Ya, it's pretty funny."SweeneyTodd said:
We're almost at the end of the adventure now (spoiler):
They are in the Recovered Temple, just about to defeat the Second and enter the Fire Node
I am thinking of continuing these same players through Castle Maure from Dungeon after this, and perhaps the Labrynth of Madness after that. So, they will be continuing the process of dungeon crawling. Perhaps someone after they finish this adventure offers the group to join an already existing secret organization who finances these sort of things. Might also make a good plot device for why the PCs can continue to purchase powerful magic items as they gain levels.
SweeneyTodd
First Post
That sounds like it could fit in pretty well, then.
My personal favorite idea for a situation like that: Health insurance for the PCs. If your last guy died, drag him out of the dungeon to get him raised. Sure he's a level lower than your new PC, but he can retire in comfort. (Do they give Purple Hearts for dungeon crawling?)
Action, excitement, and if you die they bring you back to collect your pension? Sign me up! (Seriously, though, it would almost explain how they can get so many replacement recruits.)
My personal favorite idea for a situation like that: Health insurance for the PCs. If your last guy died, drag him out of the dungeon to get him raised. Sure he's a level lower than your new PC, but he can retire in comfort. (Do they give Purple Hearts for dungeon crawling?)
Action, excitement, and if you die they bring you back to collect your pension? Sign me up!
(Seriously, though, it would almost explain how they can get so many replacement recruits.)Similar Threads
