Part of the charm of Diablo was the idea that you could be completely inundated with creatures at every turn. Which is fine when you can save the game, when you can't, your players are rolling a new character every 2 minutes.
The save mechanism i have in mind encourages risk taking, without encouraging stupidity. Similar to diablo (multiplayer) if you die, the equipment you have on you is left in the dungeon and your resurrected body is somehow brought back to town, or a certain location maybe. Then the player has to work out how they can get down to their equipment back and kill the hoard of demons.
My issue comes in how do i make it thematic. I could say this is what's happening but it feels as though it breaks the rules of the universe. We are going through a dungeon in which not long ago, a bunch of towns folk entered and mostly died. So what makes my party different. Maybe they find some amulets which when wearing in the dungeon they cant permanently die, but that seams a bit too 'deus ex machina'.
Any ideas? (preferably not, "just get your characters to reroll")
My answer to your question is below the horizontal break, but first an opinion :p
I think what you're asking is a tough - but not impossible ask; you want the save game aspects of a video game, while having it fit within the framework and unspoken design and genre assumptions of a pen-and-paper epic fantasy adventure.
I think that's a mismatch of genres here. Fantasy video games are about the levels and the quests.Table-top RPGS are - arguably - about the stories of the characters.
Trying to import the mechanics of one into the other is tricky at best. There's a reason that it "feels as though it breaks the rules of the universe" - it does, or at least it does for character or story based campaigns. There are no real universal laws about what a so-called real D&D campaign is about, but the system undeniably is better suited to some styles of campaigns than others.
It's already damned hard to permanently kill a character in 5e, and if you're making death impossible, then it takes pretty much any consequences out of the game. You say you want to encourage risk taking, but not encourage stupidity. I'm not sure why a character can't be outright stupid under a setup like you're proposing. They can do something that gets them stupidly killed, and then just keep trying again and again and again to get their gear back until they succeed. It might take them 20 incarnations, but laws of probabilities say they'll get to their gear eventually - so why not take stupid risks?
My opinion aside - if I was going to do something like this, this is how I might do it:
The party is different than the townsfolk because they really screwed up. They've done something that gets them outright cursed by a God - they are doomed to forever live this cycle, until they've made amends by doing this task ( work out how completing this task would appease this vengeful God ). No time off for good behavior, no possibility of throwing in the towel and leaving: they get too far from the town of the dungeon, and they die - and re-awake in the town, and need to do it all over again.
It's a bloody, merciless version of the movie Groundhog Day.
If you need to go "Deus Ex Machina", play up the Deus part ;)
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"Diablo II - The Awakening" suggests having a tracking sheet, where they keep track of things that happen in the session, then if they make it to town they transfer it to the character sheets. Should they die, they rip up their tracking sheet, losing xp, gold and items they have found in the process.
(You know things are going to be hard for your players when the handbook is suggesting that your players might need to save.)
Which could also work but that would be even more difficult to fit into the story. And i know it doesn't have to fit into the story, but i want it to.
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I am running a Diablo I game in 5e.
Part of the charm of Diablo was the idea that you could be completely inundated with creatures at every turn. Which is fine when you can save the game, when you can't, your players are rolling a new character every 2 minutes.
The save mechanism i have in mind encourages risk taking, without encouraging stupidity. Similar to diablo (multiplayer) if you die, the equipment you have on you is left in the dungeon and your resurrected body is somehow brought back to town, or a certain location maybe. Then the player has to work out how they can get down to their equipment back and kill the hoard of demons.
My issue comes in how do i make it thematic. I could say this is what's happening but it feels as though it breaks the rules of the universe. We are going through a dungeon in which not long ago, a bunch of towns folk entered and mostly died. So what makes my party different. Maybe they find some amulets which when wearing in the dungeon they cant permanently die, but that seams a bit too 'deus ex machina'.
Any ideas?
(preferably not, "just get your characters to reroll")
My answer to your question is below the horizontal break, but first an opinion :p
I think what you're asking is a tough - but not impossible ask; you want the save game aspects of a video game, while having it fit within the framework and unspoken design and genre assumptions of a pen-and-paper epic fantasy adventure.
I think that's a mismatch of genres here. Fantasy video games are about the levels and the quests.Table-top RPGS are - arguably - about the stories of the characters.
Trying to import the mechanics of one into the other is tricky at best. There's a reason that it "feels as though it breaks the rules of the universe" - it does, or at least it does for character or story based campaigns. There are no real universal laws about what a so-called real D&D campaign is about, but the system undeniably is better suited to some styles of campaigns than others.
It's already damned hard to permanently kill a character in 5e, and if you're making death impossible, then it takes pretty much any consequences out of the game. You say you want to encourage risk taking, but not encourage stupidity. I'm not sure why a character can't be outright stupid under a setup like you're proposing. They can do something that gets them stupidly killed, and then just keep trying again and again and again to get their gear back until they succeed. It might take them 20 incarnations, but laws of probabilities say they'll get to their gear eventually - so why not take stupid risks?
My opinion aside - if I was going to do something like this, this is how I might do it:
The party is different than the townsfolk because they really screwed up. They've done something that gets them outright cursed by a God - they are doomed to forever live this cycle, until they've made amends by doing this task ( work out how completing this task would appease this vengeful God ). No time off for good behavior, no possibility of throwing in the towel and leaving: they get too far from the town of the dungeon, and they die - and re-awake in the town, and need to do it all over again.
It's a bloody, merciless version of the movie Groundhog Day.
If you need to go "Deus Ex Machina", play up the Deus part ;)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Just make it so when you get to 0 hp, you die.
When you die, you wake up in town without your stuff. You can give characters the option to store extra gear in town.
You're the DM, it is this way because you said so.
Hack and Slash dungeons have their place so if that's what you and your players want, go for it.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
"Diablo II - The Awakening" suggests having a tracking sheet, where they keep track of things that happen in the session, then if they make it to town they transfer it to the character sheets. Should they die, they rip up their tracking sheet, losing xp, gold and items they have found in the process.
(You know things are going to be hard for your players when the handbook is suggesting that your players might need to save.)
Which could also work but that would be even more difficult to fit into the story.
And i know it doesn't have to fit into the story, but i want it to.