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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 4708606" data-attributes="member: 26473">I don't for a second expect the players to be singing hosannas to my ability as a referee when their characters get offed.On the other hand, I don't expect them to sulk about it either.(No, ryryguy, I'm not suggesting you, or anyone one else posting to this thread, is a sulker, a pouter, a whiner, or a tantrum thrower. I just thought one extreme deserved another defining extreme, so that we can perhaps find a meaningful middle.)I've experienced a number of TPKs over the years, almost always predicated by the players rolling aces and me with a white-hot hand.However, the closest example I can think of to the raiders scenario was two adventurers in a 1e AD&D getting separated from the rest of the party by a block descending from the ceiling, sealing a passageway. The two adventurers were promptly attacked by hobgoblins; both were reduced to negative hit points, and I ruled that the hobgoblins finished off the downed characters and ate them for tea.There were a couple of factors in play here. First, it was part of what I planned for the hobgoblins; the adventurers hadn't discovered their lair yet, complete with corpses hanging in the larder, but there were numerous indications that humans and demihumans were a regular part of the goblinoids' diet scattered around the dungeon: gnawed bones in cooking pots, a dwarf's mail-covered leg in a hobgoblin's pack (aka goblinonid 'iron' rations), et cetera.Second, I made the judgment that getting the players of the adventurers-turned-Lunchables back into play quickly was preferable. One player took over a henchman as a character, the other opted to wait a little bit and re-enter the game with a whole new character a little while later as a recently captured prisoner of another group of hobgoblins encountered by the party (an instance of swinging toward the other end of the continuum in my own time behind the screen).In this instance both players took it in stride as a hazard of the game. Both players were also dungeon masters in our group, and they were each familiar with the dungeon crawl sample narrative on pages 97-100 in the 1e AD&D DMG, specifically the fate of the gnome at the hands (and teeth) of the ghouls. Being eaten by monsters was not unexpected.I think many referees might opt instead to make the characters prisoners instead of Happy Meals, to facilitate some sort of rescue or escape adventure. I have done that as well, but in the context in which this particular encounter took place, I opted against it, for the reasons outlined above.I’m going to address the latter points first, then come back to the section I bolded in the quote.So, first, let’s revisit the privateers example I offered earlier.The actions of the privateers will be determined by two things: first, their mission, which is to destroy enemy shipping, and second, the reaction roll which guides me on how severely the raiders will treat their victims. There's a third factor to consider, which is the nature of starship combat in Traveller. For those of you not familiar with the game, starship combat is terrifically destructive, but not in a Star Wars disappear-in-a-flash-of-sparkles way. It’s more like combat between a pair of frigates or ships-of-the-line in the Age of Sail, pounding each other until they’re disabled hulks. A starship exploding in Traveller is the result of a very rare critical hit.Now let’s make this a worst-case scenario: the merchant ship has no weaponry other than small arms for the crew, they’ve emerged from jump without fuel to make another jump, they don’t know they’ve just jumped into a war zone, and they are immediately engaged by privateers aboard a mercenary cruiser armed with lasers and missiles. The goal of the cruiser is destruction of shipping: if they can recover the cargo, fine, but it’s not the first priority, and the cruiser captain will offer no quarter to prisoners (reaction roll 2, adjusted to 1). This is about as bad as it can get for the crew of the free trader, our intrepid adventurers.The adventurers should recognize at least two things immediately: this is not routine behavior for a pirate in this corner of the Imperium, and they are hopelessly outmatched both in weaponry and maneuver. Their options are limited. To start, the crew may try to maneuver as best they can, evading missiles and laser beams until the free trader’s power plant, maneuver drive, or computer is disabled or destroyed, which will put off the inevitable for a short while at best. They may elect to abandon ship, to take their chances in vacuum suits. They can dump their cargo, and perhaps try to hide in or amongst the drifting containers, again in vacuum suits. They may attempt to hide themselves aboard the free trader, like Han and friends in the Falcon’s secret holds. They may attempt to dump decoys to improve their chances of hiding aboard the ship, such as taking passengers out of the low berths, putting them in vacuum suits, and pushing them out the airlock before hiding aboard the ship. (Yes, it’s cruel.)This is just a sampling of the tactics the players might employ on behalf of their characters. None of them are particularly good, but if the players can keep their characters out of the hands of the privateers, they have a (very tiny) chance of survival. If they survive the onslaught against their ship and are caught by the privateers, I’d consider offering them a second chance at a reaction roll if they can give the raiders a good reason to keep themselves alive: someone wealthy who can pay a ransom might work, or offering them information on the location of something of value. Overcoming the extremely negative reaction roll is unlikely unless you have a character with several levels in Liaison skill, but at least it’s something that the adventurers may attempt. If they can’t mod the roll out of the hostile range, then they’re spaced, or otherwise summarily executed. Grab a blank character sheet.So there are some options with respect to how your character might face this situation. The why of it I can’t really help you with: I doubt you would consider this a death that “matters,” and as the referee it’s not something I worry about. Your character may die in a blaze of glorious fusing plasma while facing down some alien menace, or get killed by a random animal encounter while wilderness refueling your ship. It’s a hazardous and indifferent universe, and that’s the way I run it. Skill and luck alone determine your character’s destiny.That may not be your cup of tea, in which case we must simply agree that our play styles diverge on this point.As I mentioned earlier, starships in Traveller only blow up with a rare critical hit. My character, Captain Hauser, was skipper of the far trader Skadi when we were confronted by a patrol cruiser which demanded we allow a team aboard for an inspection. The referee announced that the cruiser wasn’t moving to match vectors, but rather maneuvering to a position behind our ship, presumably for a clear shot at our engineering space. Conscious of the face that our hold was filled with gems and computer parts we’d purchased on spec, representing all of our capital, I ordered the gunners to fire, and a miracle hit on one of the cruiser’s turret caused a massive explosion that destroyed what we later learned was a Sword Worlder privateer masquerading as a planetary navy vessel.We shoulda been space toast. Instead we were very lucky.I’ll take my good luck with my bad.Understood.Obviously it’s a sentiment I share, on both sides of the screen.Now here’s my question to you: would an encounter with the privateers as I described it above, an encounter in which despite your best efforts your character is caught and later spaced by the raiders, would this be a deal breaker for you? Would this unlikely but deadly encounter make the rest of the campaign unplayable for you? Or is even the possibility of such an encounter happening in the game grounds enough not to play at all?</blockquote>

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