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<blockquote data-quote="CharlesRyan" data-source="post: 4670639" data-attributes="member: 5265">They don't. Which makes the shock of the situation that much more visceral, and drives them further out of their character space and into their player space.They're shifted from facing the unthinkable in-game (&quot;Holy crap! This dragon is going to kill us!&quot;) to facing the unthinkable out-of-game (&quot;Holy crap! The game is over and we lost!&quot;). So instead of assessing the solution from an in-game perspective (&quot;We get to live if we just give the dragon our stuff.&quot;), they assess it as players (&quot;If it's game over, I'm going down fighting!&quot;).As for how to teach the lesson--I don't know. . . . It seems obvious from the GM's chair that you have no interest in ending the game for them, but in my experience players tend to kick into knee-jerk reaction mode at these sorts of points. Maybe it is best to tell them straight-out that they'll get their comeback. Sure, that breaks the plane a bit, but then they've already smashed through it themselves by that point.I would definitely discuss this incident with your group, even if it's too late for these characters. That way, at least, the lesson going forward is &quot;unexpected setbacks happen; react appropriately,&quot; instead of &quot;the GM might kill you arbitrarily; always fight to the death.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CharlesRyan, post: 4670639, member: 5265"] They don't. Which makes the shock of the situation that much more visceral, and drives them further out of their character space and into their player space. They're shifted from facing the unthinkable in-game ("Holy crap! This dragon is going to kill us!") to facing the unthinkable out-of-game ("Holy crap! The game is over and [I]we lost[/I]!"). So instead of assessing the solution from an in-game perspective ("We get to live if we just give the dragon our stuff."), they assess it as players ("If it's game over, I'm going down fighting!"). As for how to teach the lesson--I don't know. . . . It seems obvious from the GM's chair that you have no interest in ending the game for them, but in my experience players tend to kick into knee-jerk reaction mode at these sorts of points. Maybe it is best to tell them straight-out that they'll get their comeback. Sure, that breaks the plane a bit, but then they've already smashed through it themselves by that point. I would definitely discuss this incident with your group, even if it's too late for these characters. That way, at least, the lesson going forward is "unexpected setbacks happen; react appropriately," instead of "the GM might kill you arbitrarily; always fight to the death." [/QUOTE]

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