NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 2634596" data-attributes="member: 5328">I know from bitter experience that what Hjorimir writes is quite true. Back in the late '80s I inadvertently trained the players in my usual group to rely on the fact that if their characters got into trouble I would intervene in some way to save them--and not just from danger to their lives, but also to their good images. I began to notice that they were playing their characters with dramatically inappropriate aggressiveness and recklessness. They employed neither prudence, nor caution, nor circumspection. So having sacrificed realism and challenge for drama, I lost drama too. It eventually go to be too much when I realised that if the players realised that their characters had bitten off more than they could chew their response was to quickly bite off still more, so as to have the biggest mouthful when I rescued them. If I brought up a big party of soldiers to warn the players that their characters were out of their depth in, say, attacking a castle, they would always attack rather than sneak away. I likened this gambit to the player taking his own character hostage against the GM.Eventually, of course, my games became completely flaccid, offering nothing much to either the 'gamist', the 'simulationist', or the 'dramatist' taste. I had to start shooting hostages to re-inject rigour into my games. For a year or so I killed a lot of PCs, TPKed a few parties, and let a number of high-stakes adventures and campaigns collapse through the death of a key PC. It was a heavy price, I guess. But now players who know me once more treat the features of my game worlds as needing to be addressed on their own terms, and my games once again present a real challenge and offer real satisfaction.</blockquote>

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