What is 'normal' for you?

[Gothmog]

- 6 players (2 female) + DM (me)
- All players are good friends- no random walk-ins or pick-up gamers
- One PC per player
- Don't follow weath by level per DMG
- Don't use CR/XP advancement- instead level at appropriate times, but MUCH slower than the DMG suggests
- Usually a magic rare world- no buying of magic items, and wands, potions, and scrolls are commissioned to be made from NPC allies (only type of magic that can be "bought")
- Almost always homebrew setting, with lots of house rules to the system to get a lower magic feel
- All PCs are humans
- Usually investigative/exploration/mystery adventures- almost no dungeon crawls
- Character driven play and plots- the players decide where to go, what they are interested in from various rumors and knowledge they gain
- PC death is rare, but near-deaths and semi-permanent injuries common
- Usually lower level play between 1st and 10th (my group doesn't like high-level play)
- Long standing campaign of 12+ years now
- Game once every 2 weeks or so
- Gaming sessions are 6-8 hours

 

[Arkham]

In the game I run that has just concluded:
- 6 or more players depending on the night, up to 9.
- Vastly more wealth than suggested. XP strictly by CR/level.
- Almost all standard magic items available with a little effort. Non-core items available with more effort. Most custom items available on commission.
- Wide open choices on books and materials used, but with minor sanity checking.
- Few house rules aside from being a 3.0/3.5 mishmash.
- Totally module-based. No homebrew used.
- Campain lasted almost 4 years and 22 levels ( 5-27 )
- PC death is very common, with at least one dying per night.
- Ressurrection magic plentiful and available ( at 3.0 prices )
- Usually had the "classic" 4 roles covered, but with variation. Ftr/Rgr/Brb instead of straight fighter, etc.
- Hack-and-slash oriented play, originally a blow-off-steam off-week game which just kept rolling.
- 40% of the group is female.
- Play with mostly close friends, those that started as strangers becoming friends.
- Sessions are 6 hours with only about 3 hour of action due to distractions of dinner, smokers taking a break, children that can't sleep, etc.
- Sessions are weekly, every sunday, occassionally moved to Monday on long weekends.
- Play is at my (DM's) house always, due to being mostly centralized and the needs of small children.

Game that is starting up is as above except:
- Gestalt rules + action points used.
- 3.5 only with minor house rules.
- No magic item purchases available except potions.
- Totally home-brewed, no modules.
- Expecting (hoping) to last a year or two, and no more than 10 levels.
- PC death almost nil, and plot significant when it occures.
- Gestalt, so the 4 roles will probably be covered several times over.
- Roleplaying oriented, with action for spice.

In other words, almost totally different...

 

[KB9JMQ]

Between 4-7 players
Homebrew or heavily modified adventures
Setting is normally commercial
33% of my group is female
DMG wealth by level and xp
All Magic items available as long as it falls in city guidelines
Mostly dungeon crawls but alot of outdoor adventuring. Very little urban
Level 12 is normal top end.
Standards are usually covered. Nary a cohort to be found.
PC deaths are rare
Sessions are weekly for 3 hours.
The players are friends outside of gaming.
Play is always at my house due to kids and I have all the stuff
Very little house rules

 

[Theron]

Between 5-10 players, including DM

Rotating DMs with three different campaigns. Two are homebrew, the other is set in the FR.

One homebrew is exclusively urban, the other is traditional wilderness/dungeon mix, and the FR is dungeon-heavy.

The group is entirely male at the moment, but in it's long (20 year) history, there have been a number of female players.

Wealth and XP vary by DM.

Magic items in two campaigns are available as per DMG guidelines. The urban homebrew is set in a place where arcane magic and martial weapons are outlawed, so purchasing magic is extremely limited and dangerous.

Between the three campaigns, we get a mix of wilderness, urban, and dungeon.

In the "traditional" homebrew, we only have one of the core four. In the urban game, we've got about half the bases covered, and in the FR game, we've got enough PCs to cover every conceivable angle.

PC deaths are rare. In the almost year I've been playing with these guys, I've witnessed only one PC death, and that was due to a failed save vs. massive damage.

Sessions are weekly for 4 hours, on campus at Rice University.

The core players have been friends for many years, going back to college. I still consider myself the new guy and a bit of an outsider. We've recently added a number of younger players, who all go to school there (the core players are all alumni). I'm the only non-Rice grad or student in the group at the moment.

 

[Jeysie]

- 4 regular players, two of which are female. We've had several 5th players, half of which have been female, as is our current 5th player.

- Two different DMs - currently, one using a homebrew D&D universe loosely based on core, and the other using a comedic sci-fi universe with no magic (that of the Space Quest PC games, specifically) and homebrew d20 rules.

- Wealth and XP vary by DM. Usually core wealth for D&D, and ad-hoc for XP and the other DM's wealth.

- Magic items are generally available freely from the DMG as long as you have the cashola.

- Mostly core mechanics for D&D. The little non-core stuff that's used generally ends up being base classes and any necessary new components that go with them (Infusions, Invocations, etc.)

- Nobody in our group likes multi-classing or prestige classes, so all our current characters are single-classed and will likely stay that way (with the exception of a couple future PCs).

- Encounters are all over the map. Sewer crawls, wilderness encounters, ship warfare, diplomacy, urban exploring, snowball fights...

- Roleplaying tends to be emphasized more than combat. Additionally, "serious" is not exactly in our vocabulary... think OotS-like weirdness, just with less meta-humor (we tend to stop just shy of fourth-wall-breaking).

- We have all the standard class bases covered. Sort of.

- In our 2 years of gaming, we've never had any PC deaths (aside from voluntarily changing to a new character), although we've had several close calls.

- Sessions are weekly, four hours, online using IRC.

- Most of us were already friends before we started gaming, and the new players have mostly been successfully dragged into our chatting.

- Very few house rules - mostly some tweaks to base classes on an individual character basis and rules to cover odd situations the RAW doesn't.

- The farthest any of our characters have gotten so far is sixth level, so no clue on how we'll handle high-level stuff yet.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[robberbaron]

For my campaign:
- 6 to 8 players + DM
- not too worried about having player wealth above guidelines
- more often than not any magic item is available provided the community wealth level is appropriate
- sessions are about 6 hours in length on average
- players limited to SRD with the odd allowance. DM free to improvise
- a few house rules
- about a 70/30 mix of homebrew/pre-generated adventures and settings
- campaign started at 1st, now at 13/14th. I will continue running until I've had enough
- PC death happens.
- generally have the "classic" 4 roles covered, though cleric is normally a cohort
- power-gamers, casuals, heck pretty much every type of gamer
- hmm. Seems to have slid towards dungeon crawls of late. Putting that right next session (Sunday)
- 0% of the group is female currently, in the past it was around 20%
- I would call most of my players 'friend' and happily hang out out-of-session.

Previous/other campaigns (where different to above - my point of view):
- 4 to 5 players + DM
- wealth kept well below guidelines (one is WLD which is a special case - setting reasons rather than DM stinginess)
- from 100% dungeon (WLD) to 75% wilderness.

 

[Raven Crowking]

For my campaign:

- 6 to 8 players + DM
- not worried about having player wealth above or below guidelines
- no magic shops; deal with individual crafters
- sessions length depends upon participants
- not horribly worried about the SRD or use of 3rd party products, so long as characters "fit" into the world
- house rules....currently a 600+ page document, not universally applied (for now) to all games/characters
- about a 95/05 mix of homebrew/pre-generated adventures and settings
- campaigns start at 1st, some exceptions
- PC death happens
- female % depends on the game....one currently has about 30%
- I would call most of my players 'friend' and happily hang out out-of-session.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

- Very large group (8-12 players + GM)
- Wealth is almost always well below wealth-by-level guidelines
- Essentially everything d20 is allowed, regardless of the source, although some things are specifically banned upon GM review
- 32 or 36 point buy for character generation
- Tech level is at least renaissance, if not outright steampunk
- Typically 1-2 PC deaths per session
- Sessions last 6-10 hours, usually without a significant break
- Sessions are bi-weekly
- Campaigns last about a year and typically go from 2nd to 20th level
- 95% of adventures are homebrew, and 90% settings
- Four players have run games in the last two years
- Four consecutive campaigns had a psionic character or organization as a major antagonist
- Three 'dungeons' in two years; most encounters are urban or wilderness
- Most campaigns have a military theme
- Usually one large encounter per day, sometimes with a small warmup or two

 

[Stormborn]

- Very large group (8-12 players + GM)
- Typically 1-2 PC deaths per session

See, this exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. To me, and obviously several others, this could not be abnormal. I pointed out the frequency of PC deaths to someone else in my group and she was shocked. We have basically only had one PC death ever, and that was voluntary/plot related. Don't get me wrong, I am not being critical. It just highlights how different playstyles are from one group to the next.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

See, this exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. To me, and obviously several others, this could not be abnormal. I pointed out the frequency of PC deaths to someone else in my group and she was shocked. We have basically only had one PC death ever, and that was voluntary/plot related. Don't get me wrong, I am not being critical. It just highlights how different playstyles are from one group to the next.

How do you avoid it? Fudged dice, narrative mechanics, easier encounters, or exceptionally tactically gifted players? Or some combination of the above.

This is one of the reasons I harp so heavily on the need for narrative mechanics; with a large group, almost any interesting, challenging encounter will ALWAYS carry the risk of PC death, especially when the GM has no patience for a lot of small resource-depletion encounters that are not interesting in and of themselves.