Earlier this week, on his blog, Mike Mealrs posted this conversation starter:
The best thing a DM can do (thinking specifically of D&D here), is to do his best to push the party to absolute, utter defeat*, and then watch them try to wiggle their way out, with the party’s victory determined solely by their choices and abilities.
*With defeat defined by the campaign and the group’s play style. It could be death at the hands of a growling demon in the lowest level of a dungeon, or the evil archduke’s successful ascension to the empire’s throne.
Reading this, I couldn’t help thinking that this might be too much for my natural DMing style. Maybe it’s the way that Mike phrases it and maybe it’s my way of reading it, but pushing the party to absolute, utter defeat makes me think of dark, nearly hopeless causes. I don’t want a campaign to be bleak or have its overall goal being threthened every 2 weeks.
Then again, maybe Mike says that each challenges you throw to the PCs must be designed in such a way that can possibly bring PCs to be defeated unless they do more than just trust lucky dice rolls. That I can get behind of!
In my current model of campaign, given the diffuse threat that the Sentient Dungeon represents to the game world, utter defeat would mean that the whole party gets wiped out inside the Dungeon. So I need to concentrate my threats at the level of the PCs’ lives.
The thing is, I HATE killing PCs, and I know that other GMs feel like I do (except reader D_Luck, he’s ruthless!). So how can I reconcile my willingness to challenge the PCs to their limit while avoiding a high body count?
While thinking about this, I noticed a turn of phrase Mike used. He said ‘Push the party to absolute, utter defeat’ and not “Push the players…” this means that I should probably focus on creating encounters(combat and otherwise) that the party would have a hard time dealing with, without taking into account the skill with which the players will play the party.
That means that if, by good teamwork (i.e choices) and the use of the proper ability at the right time the players manage to systematically beat my encounters, I can say that my work was done.
In that sense, I will plan to focus on creating encounters using monsters of the PCs level (to keep the threat to defense ratio at a manageable level ). I aim to have battles last no more than one hour and will think about possible outs if the PCs have reached the point of inevitable victory or defeat.
That also means that while I will focus less on monsters that cause status effect( because they rob players of choices when abused),I can certainly afford to have monsters cooperate more with the use of flanking and Aiding one another.
For instance, I’ve seen many examples of Skirmishers and Minions setting up Brutes to deliver a powerful strike on PCs. I’ve also seen that I should make use of damaging terrain to chip at PCs (and monster) hit points faster and create a sense of urgency for PCs to finish the fight faster.
So while I agree that “driving the Party to defeat” is a good basic Goal for a DM, I don’t agree with the “utter” part.
Instead, I’d say:
The best thing a DM can do, is to do his best to apply constant pressure on the players to choose wisely, cooperate and use thier PC’s abilities in the most creative ways to overcome threats that could defeat them.
It basically says the same thing, but at least I feel more comfortable the goal when phrased like that.
Any thoughts?
From a writing/storytelling perspective, I think Mike Mealrs is correct – some of the best stories are the ones where the characters are brought almost to the brink of destruction, and then find a way to claw their way back.
From a DM perspective, I think this is also true – to an extent. You never want a game where the players simply walk through dungeon, swiping away at monsters without any real trouble – but I think the DM should be very careful about going too far in either direction.
You don’t want to torture the players, but you don’t want a party of Mary Sues, either…
But one of the god-like powers inherent in the DM role is the power to alter the players’ perceptions of what’s going on…
So, I think I would further modify your quote, and instead say:
SeiferTims last blog post..Monday Monster #5: Walker in the Dark
Applying the pressure and watching the players wiggle free is my first instinct as a DM, players have fun dominating. Balance them.
Nicholas McDowells last blog post..Help the Robot
I’d say that the basic goal of the GM is the make the players care about what happens in the game. If that means being a complete and total utter b*****d to their characters, then so be it.
Case in point: We ran a scenario a while back in our superheroes campaign where a giant plant took over Manhattan (hey, it made sense at the time). The players weren’t too bothered about combating this particular evil – until I mentioned that one of the hero’s wives was in Manhattan that day. Suddenly, it was personal, and off they went to save the day.
Get the villains to directly affect the lives of the characters and they become much more than a bunch of XP. Have the heroes face defeat at the hands of the Evil Necromancer only to escape and beat seven shades of poutine out of him, and you’ve made a session they’ll remember. One Classic D&D campaign almost entirely revolved around getting the dwarf’s arm back after a particularly humiliating battle. The characters still talk about the endgame to that one 😀
So yeh, I see what Mearls is getting at. Make the heroes lose something (not necessarily an arm!) and taste defeat, and the victories will be all the more sweet.
greywulfs last blog post..DAZ Studio gets dynamic clothing
I’ve contemplated using an Elite Brute and swarms of minions. Each round, one of the minions flanks a PC with the Brute and then uses Aid Another. That gives the Brute a massive +4 to hit, giving a massive boost to the Brute’s otherwise low accuracy. It’ll mean his hard-hitting blows are even more lethal.
I’d also probably use more minions than the XP budget says I should. There comes a point where 4 minions aren’t nearly as effective as one monster.
Well, a female gamer needs to have a say here. I agree as well. As stated so well by “Buzz”: “The DM’s job is to play fair, but play hard… making the players care.” Trying to be against the players is totally counterproductive, but if you set them up in a situation where there is extreme emotional value to the characters AND players, a little “defeat” goes a long way. I recently had a DM set my group up in a no-win situation, which ended up being extremely emotionally gripping, and made us, as players, look at the “bad guys” in a new light, as it was our group that had to make those same hard, and damning, choices. Rockin’ fun!
I think it’s really up to the players as to how much of a challenge they’re looking for (which can vary from session to session, making things hard on the GM).
I don’t think there’s a way to define “defeat” to carefully include only the kinds of defeat the players will find add spice, even if you exclude “complete” and “utter”.
Instead I recommend actually asking the players for their opinions on things like lethality, TPKs, stakes that include bad things happening to NPCs they like, etc. And then be willing to talk some more and adjust if it turns out what they thought they’d enjoy in the abstract is a drag in play, whether that’s the game turning into a cakewalk because they asked for less lethality or a meat-grinder where they can’t get attached to any character because they wanted to “let the dice fall where they may.”
Joshuas last blog post..Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Pile of Crap
Wow! That’s quite a rapid response!
@Seifer: That balance is hard to reach and it remains an inescapable fact that despair/frustration can’t be maintained for long without causing lasting damage to the evening/game/campaign. Unless trust between Players and DM is really high… pushing PCs to the limit week after week can lead to a crash.
But then, everyone knows that I’m a softie DM at heart that sometimes has trouble aiming at that sweet middle between pushing for utter defeat and giving Players cake walk encounters. When in doubt, I prefer to err toward the second possibility.
@Nicholas: Yup. While players will often clamor for easier encounter, they are often only truly thrilled by borderline lethal combats.
@Greywulf: There’s no argument in making the party care about what happens in the game. In fact that may be one of my challeneges in my newest campaign. A city within a big dungeon is all well and original, but how will I make sure that what happens in the game makes the PCs care… and I think I’ll need to go a little bit deeper than just ‘well it’s trying really really hard to kill you”!
Unless I steal from the ‘Final Destinations’ movies and have danger be after them 24/7. Hmmmm…
@Mike: That’s how I plan to use brutes from now on. As for minions, it seems to be common knowledge that as you approach paragon level, you can switch 1 level equivalent monster for more than 4 minions. Feel free to sprinkle a few more (6-8) and don’t attack with them, use them for flanking and aiding.
@Sarah Gagnon: Nothing beats heavy emotional involvement in a game. In that sense, touching/tasting defeat can really galvanize your group to get up and fight harder. But it’s one of those ‘it’s an art, not a science’ thing.
@Joshua: I think I will start a discussion with my group about that. Thanks for the insight!
Thanks for the great comments so far!
I had always believed that playing too hard on the characters as the GM took a lot of fun out of the game. Then, I decided to give it a bash at my last session on Sunday. I went hard on the characters and they came mighty close to a TPK before ninja tactics on their part pulled their fat from the proverbial fire. The players came to me after the game and commended me on a great adventure.
I still don’t think an antagonistic relationship with the players in any way is a good idea and I think that it is important to spread any frustration (such as status or action removing effects) to different players. But I have also learnt that a difficult and near deadly encounter or two don’t rob the game of its fun.
@Corvis: I think the common thread here is ‘playing fair’ over ‘playing realistically’.
I think that I have been overcompensating for my players incredible grasp of party synergy by making harder and harder encounters to challenge the players and use monster tactics that focus on taking a PC out (concentrated fire, more than one status effect per PCs, etc). I know that’s just me being human, but I should really focus more on challenging the whole party and spreading the status effect love to all members 🙂
I strongly disagree with the suggestion to let the players win but try and fake it so that they think there was any doubt they’d succeed. I think that’s amongst the worst things a DM can do to be honest. I’d rather watch TV than waste my time on a game like that. 🙂
Stuarts last blog post..Expedition to the Ancient Academy Podcast – Part 5
@Stuart: I don’t think that’s what I’m advocating, but I do tend to bring everything down the middle when I argue and discuss points of view I find extreme.
Here’s my question to you then.
Should a DM correct for player skill and team-work in designing encounters? D&D 4e is truly a team game and once your players “get” that, they are hard to challenge in a balanced way.
And if you do correct, are you just sliding the scale up to bring the PCs to the same level than they’d have if they didn’t cooperate in a normal encounter or are you just adjusting the scale to maintain the level of tension at the same point?
I don’t know how many other DMs out there have such Synergistic players, but mine is truly a ‘performing’ team and I’m asking myself how to keep the challenge without punishing the ‘phantom’ advantage granted by great teamwork.
Oh hell.. here I am making something more complicated than it needs to be… I love being a geek!
Hi Chatty! Long time, no post. I read your RSS, but haven’t been compelled to comment in a while. You have an interesting topic today, so here goes.
I agree in principle with Mike Mearls. I think the DM should push the players to their limits in a game. D&D is a game of heroes and monsters. The more monstrous the monsters, the more heroic the heroes appear to be. The greater the challenge you present to the players, the more rewarding it is to overcome that challenge.
Your dislike of killing off characters is laudable. It means you’re not a sociopath. However, if your players know that no matter what challenge you present, death is unlikely or at least reversible, your game becomes less-than-challenging and a game like that has few rewards for playing in it.
Chatty, when a character dies in your game, it’s not you that has killed it. The monster or the trap killed it. A bad die roll or a poor judgement call on the part of its player killed that character. You presented a challenge and the player failed to adequately prepare for and react to that challenge.
Unless you willfully and intentionally target that character for death, you didn’t do it. Remember the DM isn’t another player at the table. The monsters and bad guys are not your characters.
You, the DM, are the world. The world can be cruel and unfair. The world can be bountiful and generous, but the world is always the world. It’s up to you to represent the universe to the best of your ability. Heroes die in pursuit of the heroic. It’s their lot.
Feeling guilty about that affects your game and reduces the challenge. This is the beginning of Monty Haul-ism. Your job as a DM is to be the world, and not to be nice. Your job is to represent everything that isn’t the heroes, so that their players may immerse themselves into the game and play their roles. You are the world, the universe and the universe isn’t nice. It is the universe.
Give this a think: throw out the idea of a fair fight or balanced encounter and instead force your players to consider options other than brute force to apply to the challenges of your game. Make them solve a problem without rolling any dice. Face them off against a monster so powerful they can’t fight it.
Take a hard look at the bad guys you have in your dungeon and put yourself in their shoes. If you were those bad guys and had access to their resources, how would you deal with an invasion or challenge from a band of adventurers determined to defeat you? I think you’d squash them without mercy. I think you’d chase them to the ends of the world if you had to. I think you’d spy on them, trick them, feed them false clues, use “unfair” tactics against them, ambush them, and never ever let them rest.
That’s what people who want to win do, and I think the bad guys want to win in the worst way. Be the universe, play the bad guys to the hilt, and remember that it isn’t personal.
I’ll see you around.
Applause to Carl, who has said my philosophy very well.
I present the world. It has things that the players want to see, take or do. There are things that have their own agenda and ideas. The game is the conflict between the two. I will kill the players (and feel bad doing it, but I *will* do it) if they can’t overcome the obstacle and they allow themselves to get killed.
The players allowed themselves to get killed when they got greedy and didn’t get the hell out of Dodge from a spell slinging troll. The player got himself killed when he faced 4 unknown bodies on his own, and they turned out to be extremely fast, extremely deadly walking Damned.
There are some deaths that are wrong place/wrong time, but that’s the risk of playing the game.
The rewards come.
The players will gleefully stomp on a monster that has rolled 1s and fallen down.
The world turns and sometimes it goes with the players, sometimes not. I won’t make any out and out fudges to give the players an advantage. I might provide them clues, but I’m not going to change the universe in the name of not killing someone.
Chgowizs last blog post..IANAL – Can I keep doing the Ultima experiment.
@Carl and Chgowiz: Absolutely great arguments. I understand where you’re both coming from and I can’t say I disagree with the philosophy. But I guess I’m just loath to see, in the immediacy of a fight turning sour or a PC dying, the faces of my players as they go through the negative emotions linked to such a turn of event.
I guess I’m having trouble distancing myself from my game and I wish to avoid bad feelings and such. Sometimes my conflict avoidance strategies take over 🙂
I mean, our 1st D&D 4e adventure ended on a partial failure and still we felt that the game had been one epic romp that left the PCs with more rather than less in terms of badassery and heroism.
And the fact remains that I need to keep a very significant threat level in my campaign to make the whole Sentient Dungeon stay a believable danger that the players must respect.
I’m just loath to see, in the immediacy of a fight turning sour or a PC dying, the faces of my players as they go through the negative emotions linked to such a turn of event.
I can understand that all too well. But – it’s a game. If someone is going to rate our friendship or my worth on the fact that I rolled a “20” and a “6” and their 4hp left cleric just died in a tabletop game – well… have fun finding a game where they’ll be coddled.
I’ve said this over and over, and I really wish I was smart enough to be able to write a paper on it, but I think our games reflect our society. The funny thing is, when death is allowed, and even a fairly good possibility, players adapt/adjust and if they enjoy the game, they’ll come back.
Want proof? Watch a bunch of kids play Death match on console. All of them have died at some point probably in very crappy ways. They deal with it. It’s part of the game. It makes the victory sweeter.
If someone has a “negative” moment, so what? It’s not like you just stole their money, killed or slept with their wife, took their dog and insulted their parentage. They’ll get over it. Games are always about the possibility of having “negative” moments.
That makes the victories even sweeter.
So yea, I might hate it that the troll mage cast cone of cold on that first level bunch and wiped them out. Doesn’t mean I fudged it or gave up on making it tough. No, last game, another death happened – darkmantles got ahold of one of the longer running hirelings and killed him. The player looked pissed off… but the game goes on and people participate.
Chgowizs last blog post..IANAL – Can I keep doing the Ultima experiment.
I kind of have to agree with Corvys, we develop material together 😉
But my take on it is that modern RPGs are becoming increasingly similar to “tactics” games, at least in terms of combat. Comparisons of mechanics aside, what this means is that tactical play is rewarded, and so this is where players focus.
To this end, I think that “harder is better”, falling in line with Mike Mearls. At least part of the fun of D&D 4e (which is pretty much what Mike would be talking about) is finding the synergy tricks, awesome combos, and intelligent combats tactics that will allow you to succeed. And when you use them against yet another party-level specific encounter, it gets old.
By quickly upping the difficulty curve in a campaign, you get players “stretching” themselves, and that, from experience, is one of the most fun parts of combat in D&D.
And finally, a word on retreat: parties that I play with, perhaps, tend to be very tactically and strategically well thought-out. However, they will never, ever, ever contemplate retreat. This interests me, but it also resonates with Mike’s comment. If a DM places something terribly difficult as the goals for players, and just subtly makes sure that retreat (followed by a restock and return) is an option, then I think he’s doing his job right – all the sweeter when you manage to return and trounce the lich/dragon/demi-deity.
Of all places in the world to get game advice, the one bit that really redefined how I saw gaming comes from Gary Player in “SimGolf”: “The best courses are those that look to be incredibly difficult, but play really easily”. When players, through intelligent gameplay, trounce the lich, they’ll be happy – even if they had to run away a few times to restock in order to beat him 😉
As a player, I want to see my character advance in order to achieve abilities that I find interesting and attractive. I want to see how Paragon Tier is different from Heroic. I want to see how that Level 16 Utility works in practice. I’m willing to work my way up from Level 1, but if my characters keep getting killed too soon, that aspect of what I find fun in the game is thwarted.
Also, what if the player’s vision of their character includes some sort of prophecy or destiny? Oops, not going to happen.
Granted, there should never be guarantees. But the chance of failure and death due to a simple run of bad luck is high enough, without setting some sort of artificially high standard of play.
Caveats abound, of course. This is just my perspective, based on my priorities and my vision of the game.
Michelle illustrates the point I’m making.
The best thing a DM can do is to do his best to create challenges matched to what his players want and determine threat based on their readiness to deal with it, both on a session by session basis.
A similar philosophy to Joshua’s but I dislike blunt questions of player desire as it feels metagamey to me. A bit like choosing the difficulty setting on a video game. A general, “Hey, how’s it goin'” does the job well enough. Better to read their moods before a session and adjust any plans to what they’d prefer based on your knowledge of them.
Rough day? Lower combat, or more combat with mooks if they want to vent. Boring day? More puzzles and planning required or more fleshed out acting scenes. Good day? Bring out the big challenges.
I’m an improvising DM so this may be difficult for those that don’t but it consistently results in fun in my experience.
“The best thing a DM can do..”
Isn’t what Digga says, or what I say, or even what Chatty says. What Digga says doesn’t match my campaign, and probably vice versa.
“The best a DM can do” is be true to the game and style they want to run. We can all argue about style and such, speak and post passionately, but in the end, we’re all going to do what we’re going to do.
I guess I’m guilty of my own wanking, then. *laugh*
Chgowizs last blog post..IANAL – Can I keep doing the Ultima experiment.
To achieve this sorta thing all you need to do is make your players think, present challenges that though they are not to much a threat on a pcs life (if say the focus of the campaign is survivign to do x) but that make your parties work together in new and interesting ways.
One Man Hordes last blog post..Creature Creations!: Cat Lord
Michelle, you have a valid player’s perspective. Creating a character is a time-consuming process that leads to an emotional investment. That’s what makes the character worth playing. You develop a backstory, a purpose, a direction and goals. When your character gets gakked due to bad luck, you’re bound to suffer some grief. The DM is also going to feel bad unless that DM is incapable of empathy because every DM knows what it means to invest a significant amount of time in an adventure only to have it side-stepped, or completed too rapidly through blind luck. That said, reducing the challenges and/or fudging the outcomes because the DM recognizes that investment is the wrong approach. The DM did not kill your character. Only you, the player, can put your character in harm’s way. That’s part of playing a hero: facing a challenge knowing that you could be killed or worse. Without that threat, the challenges become essentially meaningless and your character is no longer a hero, but a participant in a Monty Haul exercise (with all due respect to Monty — Let’s Make a Deal was teh awesum).
Johenius, I’d like to briefly address your assertion that RPGs are becoming increasingly tactically focused. They are, but I think it’s because the abstract problem-solving is being shuffled out of the games in favor of fighting (and not just fighting, but fighting where each encounter is balanced) as the solution to all the problems. I see this as a lack of creativity on the part of DMs and Players and I think it’s been brought about by the influence of computer games on tabletop RPGs. It’s a cheap and easy way to produce an enjoyable game, but that game won’t last. It will become boring and you’ll find yourself looking around to other games to rekindle that sense of challenge. If you are a DM, I recommend that you create a bad guy who is ruthless and extremely powerful and play her or him as if victory was your singular goal. The party is not your focus (unless you’re going the nemesis route, but that’s different). The party is an annoyance, a pest that must be stomped. Create an ambush from which there is no escape. Put the heroes up against a monster that they cannot beat and force them outside of their comfort zone where every problem can be solved through fighting or running away and fighting again. In fact, it’s ideal if you have no idea how a challenge can be overcome. Let them cry, “Unfair!” and laugh (you could mua-ha ha, but I’m not a salt-in-the-wound kind of guy, so I go for more of an America’s Funniest Home Videos kind of laugh). Don’t give hints or suggestions, except to say, “Facing this challenge is going to require some creative thought, but it can be overcome.” And then, let them figure it out on their own. Let them metagame. Let them brainstorm, and when they finally get around to trying something, evaluate the merits of their solution, ask yourself if it could work and let them roll the dice. You will not regret it, and win or lose your players will talk about that encounter or adventure for years.
Chatty, please pardon my bluntness, but you’re too personally invested in the characters that your players have created. That shows you’re strongly empathetic, and probably a really nice guy. However, you do your game and your players a disservice. They aren’t your characters. The universe does not care what happens to anyone or anything and you, my fellow Dungeon Master, are the universe. Caring about those characters is going to cause you to lessen the challenges presented and fudge in their favor. When you do this you diminish your game. The same phenomenon occurs when you become too personally invested in the bad guys and the plots you create and cannot stand to see them dropped by a lucky critical roll or chance use of a magic item. Remember, you are the universe, Chatty, and the universe does not care. It simply exists.
I’d like to know why you considered your first game a failure. If it was because all the characters ended up dead, that’s not failure! Failure for a DM is when the players are not sufficiently challenged. Failure for a D&D game is a slow but steady lack of interest in the game on the part of the players because your game is not challenging. Remember, you didn’t kill those characters, the monsters did. The bad guys kill the heroes, not the DM. It is the player’s responsibility to judge the challenges before them and decide on a course of action. They hold all the cards and are more than capable of solving any problem you present them. Just give them a little break on the metagaming and I’m certain they will surprise you.
Carls last blog post..How not to play Rock Band
…eee…
(omg)
Must…. not… coMmENt… rrr… rhar…
-bloop… !-
“Warning”
“Main computer emergency reset”
“iiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttt’Ssssss timeeeeeeeeeeeeeee tooooo REbootTthdsa..qwertyyuiopasdfhjklzxcvbnm_0123456789—————————————————————————————————————————————
Joshua: Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
Quote from the movie Wargame (1983)
😉
Remember, you are the universe, Chatty, and the universe does not care. It simply exists.
Amen.
Chgowizs last blog post..IANAL – Can I keep doing the Ultima experiment.
My gaming group is for all intents and purposes a bunch of RPG novices (they’re not noobs anymore but definitely not seasoned). This is fine because I’m still a novice GM myself. We’re still getting to know the dynamics of play, so I don’t worry too much about challenging the players.
I DO however find myself underestimating their creativeness in overcoming the stuff I prepare for them and as such been trying to make the challenges harder.
Vulcan Stevs last blog post..Announcing a Magical Contest.
Whoa! Super discussion.
@Carl: Your bluntness, as long as it stays polite like you’ve been doing, is quite all right :).
I didn’t consider our first game a failure. Far from it, I considered the first adventure a partial defeat (from the story’s/PCs perspective) because the players were put against overwhelmingly strong odds. And while they were beaten, the PCs escaped with their lives knowing that some force you just can’t beat. We were all happy with the game itself.
But yeah, I got direct feedback from my group’s main barometer and his comment says it all:
“Yes Phil, your game could be a bit more difficult, but right now, the priority is on fun, not challenges”
I know I take things way too seriously and I also have a hard time distancing myself, that’s part of who I am. The day I really learn that lesson, I won’t have to post about my mental well being as often. 🙂
Thanks one and all, keep it up, I’m reading everything with great interest.
I said this on Mike’s blog, and I’ll say it again here. I don’t think the basic goal of the DM has to do solely with combat. Generating an emotional response from your players, having them buy into the game in a visceral way which activates emotions other than “I am entertained” is the basic goal of the DM.
One way you can do that is by skin-of-your teeth combat, but it’s not the only way, and it’s not always the best way. Although if this is really Mike’s opinion, it explains some things about the design choices made in 4e.
I also think that killing players should be approached with a degree of tact and awareness. The “realistic world” or “game loses challenge if death isn’t an option” don’t hold a lot of water for me. As the GM, the world works the way you say it does, and I think saying “if there was no chance of death” is arguing ad absurdum.
To say that you present challenges and it’s up the players to deal with them is slightly dishonest. The DM is operating with all the facts in hand, and the players are not. If you create an encounter, intentionally or not, that the players have no chance of surviving, and then they don’t survive… it’s their fault? No, it’s your failure, the DM’s.
I agree with Chatty that I’m reluctant to kill characters. Actually, let me rephrase that… I’m reluctant to kill characters for the wrong reasons. I’ll kill them for being intentionally stupid or stubborn. I’ll kill them if they seek heroic deaths. I’ll basically kill them if they ask for it.
But I won’t kill them for good role-playing, even if the “realistic world” says I should. I won’t kill them for purely bad rolling, unless it’s compounded by bad decisions. I won’t kill them if I made a mistake. Unless it’s understood at the start that a game will be high-carnage, people put a ton of effort, thought and emotional investment into their characters, and I think you owe it to them to consider that – even if the monster just rolled the third 20 in a row. Or snuck up on them with a Cone of Cold prepped (they asked for it, though Chgowiz).
wickedmurphs last blog post..Psychology and "Enchantment"
I find it amusing that people always believe that anyone playing the game in any style other than their own is wrong. So I play a game for years where the players are pretty much assured they won’t die, unless they do something ludicrous, and everyone has a great old time. But we are playing it the wrong way. So you play a game where everyone is invested in the story, both the DM and the players, and every session moves the story along and everyone enjoys the story. But you are playing it wrong because there is no challenge.
Chgowiz said it already, “We can all argue about style and such, speak and post passionately, but in the end, we’re all going to do what we’re going to do.”
HermitDaves last blog post..pondering the disposible existance
@HermitDave –
“But you are playing it wrong because there is no challenge.”
Is there really no challenge? No combat doesn’t mean no challenge, and no challenge is nothing more than a story.
Do they have to convince the king that his advisor is trying to usurp power? There’s a challenge.
Do they have to seduce as many barmaids as they can before the night is through? There’s the challenge.
Heck, I think Mike Mearls said it best in his original post:
Challenge and defeat does not have to mean combat, and Mearls never said it did.
No, pushing your players to the brink of defeat will not be the style every group should play by.
But no challenge? That sure limits the interactiveness of the game.
Grahams last blog post..32 hours of D&D gaming party!
This conversation makes me want to kill some PCs right now! >:)
Seriously though, I feel in any good story, sometimes characters have to die. If they don’t, no one is ever afraid of dying. ((OK, I should say any good story that is heavy on COMBAT 🙂 ))
Dieing is hardly a big deal in D&D. Get your corpse dragged to the cleric, or *gasp* roll up a new character!! 🙂 If a player can’t deal with that, he/she is probably not someone I want to game with anyway.
I think the fun is a result of the challenges. I think players are reluctant to leave their comfort zones (like fighting the monsters) which leads to complacency and eventually boredom.
I’m not saying make the combats harder across the board. I’m saying to get away from the mindset that combat is all you have to offer the players. Create a memorable villian or Big Bad Evil Guy and bend them to the task of world domination or godhood or whatever pops your corn. Once this is in place and working, the challenges will flow naturally.
I think that many DMs fall into the habit of creating linear plots for their players to follow instead of presenting a problem space for their players to operate within. The Dungeon Master’s Design Kit called these linear plot adventures A-B-C quests.
Instead of creating a plot, define a conflict and an environment (a problem space) and work from there. Create a villian with a purpose and then set that villain to acting on it. A village burned here, a sacred temple defiled there, a prominent ruler kidnapped elsewhere and pretty soon the players will set about looking for the cause.
Remember to look at the world through the villian’s eyes. Someone’s been asking questions in town about his activities. These same someones were identified as having raiding one of his outposts and killing a patrol of minions. What will he do? Would he smash them without mercy? Vanish them from the face of the planet? Sick an Invisible Stalker upon them? Maybe he’s more subtle than that. Maybe he captures one of their relatives and turns them to his cause. Maybe he holds that relative hostage. Again, put yourself in the villain’s place and the answers will present themselves to you. Those answers will lead you to the challenges you present to your players.
Once you break out of the linear plot, the challenges will start flowing fast and furious. It may be tough to keep up with your players, but don’t despair, just ask yourself, “What would the villain do?” and then make it happen. You are the universe after all.
Carls last blog post..How not to play Rock Band
Carl,
I like the basic concepts that you are working with, and as a philosophy for adventure design, they’re great guidelines. But design guidelines don’t really help you with group management, or work if you are designing outside of your group’s preferred style of play.
The job of the DM is larger than just adventure design or impartial mediation of the rules. You are playing this game with a group of people. Many (all, if you’re lucky) of whom are your friends. By being the DM, you are taking on a position of high responsibility relative to the other players, and you have to deliver on that responsibility.
And that, depending on the group and players, can mean that your ideas about how an adventure should be run have to go out the window. I’m not advocating going light on your spouse’s character, for example. Although the one time I did finally get my spouse to play, she failed 4 saves in row and was immobilized for an entire encounter, got bored and refused to play again… Is she “probably not someone I would want to game with anyway”?
Having ideological ideas about how to run an adventure is well and good, but where the rubber meets the road, there has to be give and take, or the car goes off the road. Some people might see that as acceptable, or even desirable… but I’ve lost friends, lost gaming groups, lost great campaigns because I blindly followed the dice or persisted in a “realistic” interpretation of what would happen.
If the powerful, intelligent villain you created gets wind of the characters, sends a company and burns down the inn where they are staying, killing them all a week into the campaign… well, I hope you had fun, cause the players didn’t.
wickedmurphs last blog post..Psychology and "Enchantment"
Please, I don’t want this discussion to derail into badwrong fun territory… I’m happy to see that things have stayed civil so far.
@Wicked Murph: You touch another interesting point here. I won’t kill a PC unless they do something stupid. Yet, they haven’t done something stupid in about 7 years so they aren’t afraid to die much…
and I’m okay with that!
🙂
You asked if people had any though on the subject Phil… We’ll I think they do… 😉
I would like to site Robins Laws’ Immutable Law:
“Roleplaying games are entertainment; your goal as GM is to make your games as entertaining as possible for all participants.”
and he also said:
“There is only one way to roleplay: the way that achieves the best balance between the various desires of your particular group.”
With this in mind everybody here is right, because their is no right or wrong answer. If people keep coming to your game and laugh around the table. Well by all means keep doing whatever it is you are doing because you are meeting your group needs.
This could varies from cutthroat game mastering to a player empowering fiesta. Whatever it is, it need to cater the need of YOUR group.
Carl @21:
Just to be clear, I’m talking about more than just emotional attachment leading to grief. I’m also talking about intellectual frustration at being thwarted from completing an experiment.
To paraphrase, it’s not just an emotional girl thing. If you meant to imply that it was, shame on you. If not, good for you. I can’t tell.
I’ve something to say but since I made the pledge to NOT mention PCs death for a month. I will simply quote myself in a comment 2 month ago in responce to a post phil did about a new DM seeking advice.
Find what is the reason why you want to DM, and be true to that reason. You will then have fun. And 90% of the time if you have fun it means the players facing will have fun too. Unless you want to make people miserable. Then … not really fun for them either way.
Me. I want to tell compelling stories. I want to create an interresting world where heros rise against impossible odds. Like in the stories that pushed me to create my own; Dragonlance, Stormbringer, Conan, Sherlock holmes, Batman, X-men, etc…
And, you know what? Remember; Flint, Moonglum, Robin’s parents, Phoenix, etc… All NCs (Novel characters!) who died. Perished by aging, killed by his best friend, by a madmen, by his lover.
Why do we remember them? Because death scenes, death of a character, especially characters we care about are things fiction fans cherish.
I try to give it also to my players. I concider the role of the DM to be more then just the guy who say what rule apply when. The job of the DM is not either to save PCs from a tough encounter. To say a DM is responsible of what encounter the PCs face is very unfair. What about the player who decide that his character care so much for (reason of your choice) that he will go inside the black castle in front of him even after he meet three times, three different NPC who tells him how dangerous it is for him to go there. Even after he’s given other opportunities to do something else, he still wants to go. Not by stupidity, he decide he wants to roleplay his character and he say his character is crazy love of this women, item… name it! Do you believe the DM needs to make sure he gets out oK? I would preferer a DM who is fair. Fair defence. Logical trap. Logical consequence to actions the player make.
I was talking with an old friend a month ago. He was telling me about of his friend who play with him. His friend was playing a monk. At the end of a difficult adventure, the group was in a village they saved. The monk from that village was killed during the adventure. The DM never wanted him to do anything. But the player felt that his character, which he loved more then any character he ever played, IN ROLEPLAY would leave his friends party leave without him and stay in the village to help. So he did not even die, he let his character retire.
My friend was in awe of his fellow roleplayer who’s commitment to perform the best roleplay there is brought him to let his character go.
I think I finally found it. The best way to describ the DM job and the players job.
DM: To create compelling stories told while respecting a fair system where all the possibilities are on the table.
Players: To play their character to it’s full potential, and accept and embrace what happens to it.
Exemple: if it means being forced to die forever like the most popular wizard in the world Rainstlin… so be it!
Sorry phil. I could not resist!
You don’t have to apologize D-Luck. You are entitled your opinion like everyone else on this blog.
Damn 35 comments and the post is barely 8 hours old… 🙂
I was a bountyhunter in a Star war games 18 years ago. My character saved another character from death, but I died while doing it. I never felt so proud in my life. I made a smugler after that. It was fun. Of course I was sad I did not survived. But I never hated my DM for putting us in this situation. It was awesome. And my friend character got another chunk of Background to add to her character. She went back to my family and pledge to help them until the end of her life in payment for the sacrifice I made. It was awesome too.
The death of a PC is like the end of the most awesome chapter there is in a book. You can’t wait to turn the page to discover what will happen next.
I think that dramatic PC death is a skill you easily forget. It’s been a while since Yan died in my games (one-shots don’t count) and I do recall that each time he did, it was while doing something absolutely crazy.
Michelle, unless you’re playing with a sadistic DM, then it is you that is responsible for your character’s death. And by extension, you should know better than to play with a sadist, so you’re responsible there, too, if that’s the case. You may have made a poor judgement call or an unlucky die roll and your character died. The DM didn’t kill your character because the DM wasn’t playing your character.
Grief is a normal emotion when your character dies. It’s not a boy/girl thing, it’s a human thing. You spend time creating them, drawing pictures maybe, filling out the character sheet and writing the back story. You get attached to them and you want to see them continue up through epic levels. That’s the hook in RPGs. It works the same way for DMs, but over time I’ve become accustomed to my players smashing all the monsters and carefully-constructed villains. The challenge for me now is to create foes that are worthy of my players and to do that I have to go beyond balanced encounters and A-B-C quests. I have to play dirty, and think outside the box (cliche alert!). I have to put on my black cloak and top hat and twirl my mustache and say things like, “Nyaaaa!” I have to create serious villians that do seriously bad things and don’t take it personally when the characters interfere, but rather deal with them as they would anything that stands in the way of their plans.
As to completing experiments, how about this? Several years ago I spent the better part of a month creating an ancient blue dragon, her lair, her hoarde and her followers. I got really attached to her and had hoped to use her for the duration of my campaign as the Evil To Be Overcome. One of my players killed her with a single blow of his great-axe on the first round of the first encounter with her. It was incredible, stupid luck. Was I sad? Yes. Was I upset? A bit, yes. Was my experiment thwarted? Certainly. Did that player give a damn? Absolutely not. Further, he did not fudge his die roll, decline his critical or scale back his attack because he felt bad about gakking my dragon, thwarting my experiment, and completely derailing my campaign. In fact he eagerly high-fived everyone around the table….including me. Do I blame him for killing my dragon and ruining my campaign? Of course not! The dragon did not properly prepare for the encounter. She badly misjudged the characters and their abilities and she got her head caved in by a greataxe wielding half-orc barbarian. So it goes for some dragons and so it goes for some heroes.
I fear I’m veering dangerously into a my-game-your-game argument, so I’ll just say this and be done. Every game is as unique as the people who play in it. Gaming groups are like marriages: they’re all different, and they all work or don’t work for different reasons. If your group likes kicking down doors and slaughtering orcs and hates having their character’s lives threatened, then so be it. If your group likes walking the razor’s edge between life and death and having every combat be a titanic struggle, then so be it. Just be ware of complacency and routine, for those are the real game killers.
Carls last blog post..How not to play Rock Band
Carl @39:
My-game-your-game doesn’t enter into it. I was just describing an issue that I, as a player, would have if my character were killed under certain circumstances.
Did I say that I could never accept having my character killed? No.
Did I say that fatality-ridden games were inherently bad? No.
Did I say that the DM has to cater to the player’ whims? No.
However, it is unfair to suggest that players who dislike having their characters killed off are just whining (as some imply), and questionable to state that “deadlier=more fun” for a generic group with which the speaker is unfamiliar.
FYI, I’ve never had a character killed under a circumstance that I considered unfair or unreasonable. I am arguing from a theoretical rather than from a historical perspective.
Carl @39:
I seem to have lost the last sentence of my post. It was basically this: I think we actually agree in principle, we are simply looking at different parts of the elephant (or the Hippogriff, as the case may be.)
@Chatty: Yes it’s been a while… I should jump on the back of a dragon next time I see one… 😉
As for the character death discussion. I agree that character death can bring a grander scale to an adventure but it has to be done at the appropriate time for it to have a lasting impact. Otherwise it will be something like “We’ve fought a bunch of orcs and John Doe died”. No epic feel or sacrifice just a boring fact.
I’m the player that as died the most in Phil’s games and in all case it was a reckless move to save the day. It did not bother me because it made for a good story, but to die by a die roll is boring as hell and does not give you story material.
I’ll agree with Carl (especially post 21).
The trick here is, of course, that not all groups play the same way. I don’t really see a point in playing D&D in other way, because it is so focused on challenges and problem solving.
I have had one or two characters die on me in my games over the years. Most of them were due to awesome roleplaying decisions (which normally completely derailed my adventure but thats a different story). And all of them felt great. The players loved it (even then one losing the character). I loved it, because my players were buying into my world to that extent. In general it was great. I think it would have felt significantly less great had it been due to some random skirmish with a bunch of orcs on the way to Big Bads lair. I suppose what I saying is that character death is better when it means something. When it has punch.
This discussion kind of makes me think of a story, here goes:
Earlier this week, I was talking to someone who told me he had failed for his driver’s license 4 times (in the wonderful country of the Netherlands, that costs you A LOT of money) and passed on the 5th attempt.
So I asked him, “What made you pass the 5th time, then?”
Quote the man, “I got lessons from a different instructor in between my 4th and 5th attempt, and he let me drive around for half an hour and I would keep rambling on about the mistakes I made, and finally the instructor said, ‘you think too much, take opportunities when they are there, and stop whenever your senses tell you you’re making a wrong choice’…”
I this line of reasoning, there is no universally right answer to the problem presented here – it just really depends on what you, as a group, want, and what kind of day you’re having. The game might challenge, and sometimes it might not, there may be encounters where the players’ life hang by a thread, and there may be encounters all too easy for them. Challenges and non-challenges fulfill different goals of different players. Determining what applies is a matter of ‘feeling’, which you can train by GM-ing a lot… That’s what I think, and I may be wrong, I have been before 😉
Long-term lurker, first time commenting (properly) – very much enjoying this discussion.
Just to derail it a little, Mike’s suggestion looks to me a lot like the curve taken by comic drama – a situation starts off looking hopeful, darkens as far as the director/cast/author is prepared to take it before resolving to a happy ending. Using this analogy, I wholeheartedly agree that a DM should aim to push the party towards defeat at some point in any given arc.
I don’t think Mike is advocating continuous and ruthless party-bashing (although that is a valid style!), but making things “as bad as it could possibly be” once-in-a-while is fun to watch.
As a disclaimer, I’m yet to actually kill a PC; at the moment I’m busy making a party care about a world before trying to pull it forcefully away from them…
Woah – mega thread! I’m late for the party!
As a DM, I don’t like to kill players either.
However, to my sense, you only get the exhilaration of combat if there is a real challenge – a real threat.
I’ve seen it first hand in my last game session – one of the characters nearly died and all players used everything their character had to get through the encounter.
The harshness of the encounter forced them to use tactics and powers they had never used before. The difficulty was a limit that only stimulates their creativity. (Yes, limits actually do encourage creativity)
While not all encounters will be this hard (I surely didn’t mean it to be that hard!), it surely will have an impact on encounters to come.
Had I watered down the encounter to something where the character’s life were not threatened, it would’ve been an entirely different experience.
Eric Maziades last blog post..Looking for lost hubby…
Our current GM for D&D has a flair for this (although he swears it’s all off-the-cuff): he’ll introduce an enemy, not even necessarily a Big Bad, who’s so obnoxiously powerful he has all of us staring at him going “You BASTARD! What were you THINKING?” Something that could kill us all without breaking a sweat… unless we figure out, early on, how to do the one ridiculously simple thing that can neutralize him and make him defeat-able. It’s always there; whether we figure it out in time to win and retain our dignity (and our lives) is the question. When we do, the victory feels doubly good, because a) we defeated something that was far more powerful than us, and b) we did it, not by throwing numbers at it, but by using our creativity.
Another thing a GM can do to push the party to its limits is to realize that the bad guys have JUST as much ability to be sneaky and outside-the-box as the good guys. Like the osyluths, who realized early on that they couldn’t take any of us in combat… but the dwarven fighter could. And conveniently, he had the lowest Will save… (this tactic, for the record, has an entirely different dynamic depending on whether resurrection options exist…)