I'm sure any long time DM or Player knows this issue. You have a wonderful intricate campaign planned out with hours and hours of your life sunk into it and a few levels in your players are wiped. OR your players have wonderful and detailed backstories and you've written tons of great stuff for them to discover only for that character to get into a situation where you have to step in and save them from your encounter or themselves. Either way it stinks. On the one hand you want all those wonderful things from you or your players, on the other hand you want there to be consequences and death to ad risk and intrigue to the games. How do you handle this?
Also does anyone have an interesting way to make players scared of dying without making them lose their character? For example I know Brennan Lee Mulligan in his twisted fairytail game let players come back but it was worse for them when they did.
It's a classic, but losing their beloved equipment is always a great motivator. The big bad revives them for plot, or they never really died in the first place but all their stuff has been taken (you know nothing, wizard). Simple but effective.
You can go the Ravenloft way and give them the Dark Powers Gifts when they die and come back. Oh hey, your eyes have melted but you've now got 60' of blindsight, disadvantage on perception checks and advantage on intimidation checks when the target can see your (lack of) eyes.
I personally never give anyone plot armor. I do allow them to attempt to resolve any conflict with non-combat options, even if combat has started. But if the dice want the character(s) dead or the players totally screw up it is what it is. Without the fear of that failure they're not going to have as much joy when they succeed.
Also I would recommend that you stop overpreparing. Have a basic idea of the plots you're using and NPC names and when they come up expand on it. If you don't, remember you can tweak all that really good tons of stuff you wrote for other characters.
If the players are facing death due to a mistake the DM makes in setting up an encounter that's too tough for the players without giving the players any way to avoid or plan ahead for the encounter, then I would adjust the encounter on the fly. Have a hunting party happen by as the players are on their last legs against the beast, adjust the monster's HP, maybe stop rolling for recharge on the breath weapon, etc. You can also adjust the monster's motive on the fly. Maybe once the players are no longer a threat to them, the wild beast doesn't bother killing them and instead runs back to its lair (or to make things interesting, maybe when it runs off, it grabs an unconscious player to feed to its young when they hatch, giving the party time to mount a rescue). Maybe the evil baron isn't fighting to the death, and the players wake up after the fight in an interrogation chamber because they want to know the rebels' plan/location of the mcguffin/ whatever other plot relevant details they need. Maybe the bad guy is just *so* powerful that they don't feel the need to kill these irksome pests and just leaves them in tatters after barely breaking a sweat. Essentially, there's always plenty of reasons for a fight not to be to the death even when things go south for the players.
As far as plot goes, you just have to follow events to their logical conclusions. If you gave the players every opportunity to learn what they're going up against or to regroup and they made a choice that lead to a character death and they're not packing resurrection spells, then you as the DM have to react to that. Your plot should never be *so* intricate that it can be undone by player action (or death). Rather, your plot should regularly adapt to player action as the one initiating the plot (usually the villain) reacts to the players' choices. If your plot doesn't have room in it for player choice, then write a book. Otherwise, you have to keep looking at your plot and game world, the players in it, the villains and npc's, and have to follow events logically based on the actions that take place. There shouldn't be a great need to change things up if a player dies, and usually the hardest part of that is writing in a new character into the existing plot (which is in some senses easier, since the player already knows the plot so far).
I'm sure any long time DM or Player knows this issue. You have a wonderful intricate campaign planned out with hours and hours of your life sunk into it and a few levels in your players are wiped. OR your players have wonderful and detailed backstories and you've written tons of great stuff for them to discover only for that character to get into a situation where you have to step in and save them from your encounter or themselves. Either way it stinks. On the one hand you want all those wonderful things from you or your players, on the other hand you want there to be consequences and death to ad risk and intrigue to the games. How do you handle this?
Also does anyone have an interesting way to make players scared of dying without making them lose their character? For example I know Brennan Lee Mulligan in his twisted fairytail game let players come back but it was worse for them when they did.
Long-time veteran DM's will always give new DM's the same advice.
Whether or not you have character death in your game or whether you create plot armor for characters creates a lens through which your players will see the game. If characters can die, they will see the game and behave in the game differently, than if they know they have plot armor.
The decision you make as to whether it should or shouldn't be part of your game, should be based on the outcome you want in your game and the behavior you want to encourage.
Generally speaking....
Players who know that as a DM you have no problem killing off characters will take the game more seriously, they will be more cautious and calculated, they will consider their words and their actions and they will actively see the challenges in the game like fights, traps etc... as potentially fatal, the real risk they are to their character.
Players who know that as a DM you give them plot armor will be bold, they will take risks, often crazy risks, they will not be calculated or consider their actions or words with any caution, they will say and do whatever they want, knowing that while there can be consequences, their character can't be killed.
Generally games with character death will have a more grounded realism, the players will see the world as real within the context of the fantasy as one might see THE real world risks. Without character death, games tend to be more like action movies, where characters always find a way to succeed even against the most impossible odds.
I think a game without character death and with plot armor mimics the movies, for example the D&D movie Honor Among Thieves. All the bad guys die, all the good guys survive, the players plans always work out, even when they don't and there is a happy ending. Effectively, a D&D game with plot armor.
I have employed a method in my game that makes dying, worst than death.
Each time a character dies, they lose 1d4 permanent constitution that can never be regained, though players can still gain constitution in other ways. Instead of describing the character as dying, the character has a mortal wound. I usually require an extended period of recovery after such an incident, so the character might be unconscious for a while and the players have to carry their fallen friend out of whatever dungeon or wherever they are to safety.
Then if a character ever has no more constitution, they die for good.
The effect here is that heroes suffer injuries and have a slow decline in their health, illustrated by a declining constitution score.
My players hate this with a deep ceded passion, so I know its perfect because it both solves the problem of character death flawlessly and players avoid death with every fiber of their being as their characters gets a bit more ****** each time they die.
See this is the kind of thing I was after. I am curious how different DMs handle death. I don't over prep, actually I could use a little more lol, however when I have players who pour so much into their backstories etc... and I tie them into the game I don't want to discourage them from investing so hard by just killing them off. People only need to lose a few characters that way to give up on heavy investment and start treating it more like a video game with shallow throw away characters. I like having a rough consequence that gives players a chance to salvage their work without taking away the fear of failure and it's impact.
One thing to consider and I say this only because I am kind of an old-school DM is that modern D&D and old-school D&D, are not really all that different, or perhaps better to say they accomplish more or less the same thing with different mechanics.
Fundamentally however one of the biggest creative differences between modern and old-school D&D is the lens through which players see the game and this I think is best illustrated by the art depicting the game.
In old-school games (and art) adventures are illustrated as being in great peril, they are outnumbered, outgunned, trying to survive, fearing for their lives and facing mortal danger.
In modern games, the art depicts the characters as superheroes, fearlessly fighting dragons and giants, charging into battle against monsters that are desperately trying to defend themselves from the hero's great powers.
This aspect of old school gaming vs. modern gaming however is not a mechanical concept, it's a gaming culture philosophy difference. You can achieve superhero status in old-school games and can run modern games where player characters have reason to fear for their lives and you can do it without changing the rules, be it old school or new school.
Character death however is a problem, old school and modern alike. When characters die in the course of a campaign, it disrupts the fun of the game either way. Character death while it can and probably should be a part of the game during key moments in the adventure, for example when facing the final boss of a long campaign, if a character dies in that final battle it feels epic and memorable, but dying because you had a run of bad luck with the dice against some random and irrelevant encounter has a way of sort of deflating the principle purpose of the game. Contending with character death has always been a challenge for DM's as far back as I can remember and I have been at this for the better part of 4 decades.
What I personally do with the loss of permanent constitution points is remove the most difficult part of character death systems as they appear in D&D in any edition.. luck. Even for example, death saves are just a matter of luck right.. so it can happen unexpectedly, its not a controlled structure. I want to as a DM essentially ensure characters don't die, but I want to make sure that the fear of death, the fear of the penalty still has a strong and potent sting.
That said, that old-school method of just letting characters die, letting them live in fear is actually quite potent. Disruptive sure, but it has a lot more impact and can elevate a D&D table in ways that I don't think modern tables see very often. I still run 0 HP = death (no saving throws, no death saves) for some tables that prefer it and I can tell you that the anxiety, the fear, the level of play is miles ahead of any other table I run. These guys take the game seriously, they play the game as if they are their character and they are in a life-and-death situation.
I guess I'm just trying to point out that there are different philosophies and cultures in D&D, but after 4 decades of play, I can tell you that the best, most serious and most fun tables are games that have harsh death penalties. It elevates the game to levels I don't think most people ever experience. You might consider trying it sometime.
So, for five years I have worked on a new setting and a new campaign. Five years.
I am still not finished because I have been involving my large group of players in everything, and it can sometimes be a problem since there is this thing called "earth" out there, and it wants me to do things in it. Ugh.
Anyway, I will do the same thing here I have done since 1980, when I ran my first game.
If there is a TPK, and it comes towards the end of a session, I will let them die.
if it comes at the beginning of a session and I spot it happening before hand, I will Deus ex machina that shit in the literal sense by having a friendly neighborhood deity walk on by and quietly reduce the threat level. THen demand payment that is obscene.
If it happens in the middle of the session, I will have watched the players closely, and then I will decide. For my games, there is a lot of development that goes into a character. They are tied into storylines down the road for the campaign, linked into side quests, and there is investment in them. If the party is new -- and by new I mean level 1 or level 2 -- then it is going back to scratch. usually not as deeply invested. Get them up to level 5 or so, and now they have something to lose.
I use a lot of creatures that do not simply suck away hit points. THey do other things, and leave characters in a state of unconsciousness. One that can't easily be lifted by healing. So often, they don't die right away, and if it isn't a TPK then there is always a chance.
But really, it comes down to this: I am not invested in the characters. I am invested in my players. If I think I will be killing them off left and right, i have them create extra PCs. I almost always have them create two, anyway. Because as was pointed out by another long timer, death is the stakes here.
Every published module is balanced and weighed and tested so that while it is dangerous it is doable. My homebrew stuff -- my creations -- are created to test the hell out of people. People who know me, have played with me, have seen the glee and I can take when a particular puzzle turns risky.
I don't care if a character dies. plot hooks for old stories for new characters are something I can create. I care if my player's sense of fun is wrecked. This is why a zero session mattes: it should be noted that these characters will die.
not "could die". Will die. Unless there is some undying race on your world, it is a truth.
it might not be during the campaign, but they don't know that it won't be. And it places the stakes as high.
I create Campaigns. The one we finished in June lasted two and a half years, and only three players survived out of 29. but they didn't mind the deaths because they chose them, sacrifice and all and it was part of the story.
It also set up the new campaign by opening and forging a path to the new world -- one that the old characters may reincarnate in (I know one will).
IT is a running joke of sorts now because the place they came out in was chosen as the playtesting environment and is essentially a re-skinned and localized version of phandelver.
They fought the Demon Prince and his horde and won, and saved an entire universe a the cost of their own lives -- the stakes were something they knew going on, and that's the key here. If they die, make it count. Make it matter, make it mean something, and make it part of the story.
If they just die, because they screwed up, or the encounter was too hard, or they weren't taking it seriously, well, look at the players.
Who is going to be hurt by the loss of that character? Who is so invested that the grief is real?
Who isn't? Those who aren't, they will just roll again. Those who are, well, maybe there is something you can do. You are the DM. Maybe they were just left for dead, stumled across, brought to a place, and now a new team is there.
Death has to matter. Emotionally. Not just "lose a few items", but count to the player.
It isn't an adventure without risk. Bilbo could have been eaten. Frodo literally failed. After all that he went through, including almost dying.
Save the world isn't stakes. It is a goal. Stakes are "everyone you know dies, including you". THey have to know the stakes. Know what the price of a mistake is, as noted above.
Sometimes that can only be learned. I have run games that it took players five or six tries to just get through the first level of a dungeon -- each time with a different team. I didn't change a thing.
Th Dm is not the arbiter of the main characters, the protagonists. That is entirely the role of the Player. The DM is only the arbiter of the Story. Some stories are short and bitter, others are long and sweet. The difference is the protagonist, not the DM.
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I'm like you in that I have plans for all of the characters, and it ends up feeling kind of plot armour like. I had a character die by mistake (I roll open), and it was the best thing that happened to the campaign. That player had a new character ready for next session, and all of the players have made a mission of resolving the dead character's story.
Since then I don't pull punches. I don't try and kill characters, and I do my best to keep it balanced, but if it happens, it happens. Even if I had a tonne of material ready for one of them, I've enjoyed writing it, and I'm sure I can recycle it somewhere down the line.
An earlier poster makes a great point about the tone of the game being set by the imminence of death for the characters. I've found the story elements I was driving for are so much more impactful now that players feel death is on the table than they were before.
People always bring up books, short stories, tv shows and movies to exemplify the premise of death, but the issue with it is that these mediums are all wildly different to the act of playing D&D and the reality is that the characters that do die in these mediums are planned, very scripted deaths part of a larger story in a totally controlled context and the same for those that don't. A movie does not need to contend with a table full of players the next weekend, nor do movies suddenly shift plots and alter their destination of said story because a key character died. Its all pre-ordained by the author.
If you really wanted to make a movie the basis of a D&D game, it would be the equivalent of the DM simply deciding what happens as they are the author.
As an example, Frodo didn't die because the DM (Tolkein) decided that he shouldn't, he had plot armor and Boromir died because the DM (Tolkein) decided that he should and so he killed him.
More to the point if characters die all the time which was often case in old-school D&D, what results is that players lose the ability to connect with their characters and you don't need to look further than the OSR to realize the impact of that on the gaming culture. OSR players could not possibly give fewer F's about their character's "story", they are focused on essentially winning the game by overcoming challenges through clever play. If any story exists in a typical OSR game, it comes from emergent stories, aka, the story of what happened.
While I'm an avid fan of OSR games and old school style of play, of all the things I love about them, this lack of attachment and commitment to story I see in players is the one clear weakness I see in that part of the D&D culture and it's a real strength in the modern gaming community. You see how excited people get just watching other people play a great D&D game like Critical Role and ask yourself how much anyone would care, if every week a couple of characters died and new ones where created. After a dozen sessions or so, I doubt anyone would give a crap about it one way or the other. Its the ongoing story and personal attachment to the characters that drives the game, its in a sense, the most important aspect of the game, the continuity of character stories, character archs etc.
Now that said I don't nescessarily disagree that without a sense of risk and a punishing penalty for failure, the game loses its meaning just as much as if characters died all the time, which is why I think it's important to have good, potent and meaningful penalties that the players will hate, while still preserving characters to ensure they have the much-needed longevity that ensures commitment and interest from the players.
I'm like you in that I have plans for all of the characters, and it ends up feeling kind of plot armour like. I had a character die by mistake (I roll open), and it was the best thing that happened to the campaign. That player had a new character ready for next session, and all of the players have made a mission of resolving the dead character's story.
Since then I don't pull punches. I don't try and kill characters, and I do my best to keep it balanced, but if it happens, it happens. Even if I had a tonne of material ready for one of them, I've enjoyed writing it, and I'm sure I can recycle it somewhere down the line.
An earlier poster makes a great point about the tone of the game being set by the imminence of death for the characters. I've found the story elements I was driving for are so much more impactful now that players feel death is on the table than they were before.
It is worth pointing out that in 5e, character death is mathematically unlikely so long as your doing a reasonable job balancing encounters, so its much easier to simply put death on the table full force and still end up having very few.
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I'm sure any long time DM or Player knows this issue. You have a wonderful intricate campaign planned out with hours and hours of your life sunk into it and a few levels in your players are wiped. OR your players have wonderful and detailed backstories and you've written tons of great stuff for them to discover only for that character to get into a situation where you have to step in and save them from your encounter or themselves. Either way it stinks. On the one hand you want all those wonderful things from you or your players, on the other hand you want there to be consequences and death to ad risk and intrigue to the games. How do you handle this?
Also does anyone have an interesting way to make players scared of dying without making them lose their character? For example I know Brennan Lee Mulligan in his twisted fairytail game let players come back but it was worse for them when they did.
It's a classic, but losing their beloved equipment is always a great motivator. The big bad revives them for plot, or they never really died in the first place but all their stuff has been taken (you know nothing, wizard). Simple but effective.
You can go the Ravenloft way and give them the Dark Powers Gifts when they die and come back. Oh hey, your eyes have melted but you've now got 60' of blindsight, disadvantage on perception checks and advantage on intimidation checks when the target can see your (lack of) eyes.
I personally never give anyone plot armor. I do allow them to attempt to resolve any conflict with non-combat options, even if combat has started. But if the dice want the character(s) dead or the players totally screw up it is what it is. Without the fear of that failure they're not going to have as much joy when they succeed.
Also I would recommend that you stop overpreparing. Have a basic idea of the plots you're using and NPC names and when they come up expand on it. If you don't, remember you can tweak all that really good tons of stuff you wrote for other characters.
If the players are facing death due to a mistake the DM makes in setting up an encounter that's too tough for the players without giving the players any way to avoid or plan ahead for the encounter, then I would adjust the encounter on the fly. Have a hunting party happen by as the players are on their last legs against the beast, adjust the monster's HP, maybe stop rolling for recharge on the breath weapon, etc. You can also adjust the monster's motive on the fly. Maybe once the players are no longer a threat to them, the wild beast doesn't bother killing them and instead runs back to its lair (or to make things interesting, maybe when it runs off, it grabs an unconscious player to feed to its young when they hatch, giving the party time to mount a rescue). Maybe the evil baron isn't fighting to the death, and the players wake up after the fight in an interrogation chamber because they want to know the rebels' plan/location of the mcguffin/ whatever other plot relevant details they need. Maybe the bad guy is just *so* powerful that they don't feel the need to kill these irksome pests and just leaves them in tatters after barely breaking a sweat. Essentially, there's always plenty of reasons for a fight not to be to the death even when things go south for the players.
As far as plot goes, you just have to follow events to their logical conclusions. If you gave the players every opportunity to learn what they're going up against or to regroup and they made a choice that lead to a character death and they're not packing resurrection spells, then you as the DM have to react to that. Your plot should never be *so* intricate that it can be undone by player action (or death). Rather, your plot should regularly adapt to player action as the one initiating the plot (usually the villain) reacts to the players' choices. If your plot doesn't have room in it for player choice, then write a book. Otherwise, you have to keep looking at your plot and game world, the players in it, the villains and npc's, and have to follow events logically based on the actions that take place. There shouldn't be a great need to change things up if a player dies, and usually the hardest part of that is writing in a new character into the existing plot (which is in some senses easier, since the player already knows the plot so far).
Long-time veteran DM's will always give new DM's the same advice.
Whether or not you have character death in your game or whether you create plot armor for characters creates a lens through which your players will see the game. If characters can die, they will see the game and behave in the game differently, than if they know they have plot armor.
The decision you make as to whether it should or shouldn't be part of your game, should be based on the outcome you want in your game and the behavior you want to encourage.
Generally speaking....
Players who know that as a DM you have no problem killing off characters will take the game more seriously, they will be more cautious and calculated, they will consider their words and their actions and they will actively see the challenges in the game like fights, traps etc... as potentially fatal, the real risk they are to their character.
Players who know that as a DM you give them plot armor will be bold, they will take risks, often crazy risks, they will not be calculated or consider their actions or words with any caution, they will say and do whatever they want, knowing that while there can be consequences, their character can't be killed.
Generally games with character death will have a more grounded realism, the players will see the world as real within the context of the fantasy as one might see THE real world risks. Without character death, games tend to be more like action movies, where characters always find a way to succeed even against the most impossible odds.
I think a game without character death and with plot armor mimics the movies, for example the D&D movie Honor Among Thieves. All the bad guys die, all the good guys survive, the players plans always work out, even when they don't and there is a happy ending. Effectively, a D&D game with plot armor.
I have employed a method in my game that makes dying, worst than death.
Each time a character dies, they lose 1d4 permanent constitution that can never be regained, though players can still gain constitution in other ways. Instead of describing the character as dying, the character has a mortal wound. I usually require an extended period of recovery after such an incident, so the character might be unconscious for a while and the players have to carry their fallen friend out of whatever dungeon or wherever they are to safety.
Then if a character ever has no more constitution, they die for good.
The effect here is that heroes suffer injuries and have a slow decline in their health, illustrated by a declining constitution score.
My players hate this with a deep ceded passion, so I know its perfect because it both solves the problem of character death flawlessly and players avoid death with every fiber of their being as their characters gets a bit more ****** each time they die.
See this is the kind of thing I was after. I am curious how different DMs handle death. I don't over prep, actually I could use a little more lol, however when I have players who pour so much into their backstories etc... and I tie them into the game I don't want to discourage them from investing so hard by just killing them off. People only need to lose a few characters that way to give up on heavy investment and start treating it more like a video game with shallow throw away characters. I like having a rough consequence that gives players a chance to salvage their work without taking away the fear of failure and it's impact.
One thing to consider and I say this only because I am kind of an old-school DM is that modern D&D and old-school D&D, are not really all that different, or perhaps better to say they accomplish more or less the same thing with different mechanics.
Fundamentally however one of the biggest creative differences between modern and old-school D&D is the lens through which players see the game and this I think is best illustrated by the art depicting the game.
In old-school games (and art) adventures are illustrated as being in great peril, they are outnumbered, outgunned, trying to survive, fearing for their lives and facing mortal danger.
In modern games, the art depicts the characters as superheroes, fearlessly fighting dragons and giants, charging into battle against monsters that are desperately trying to defend themselves from the hero's great powers.
This aspect of old school gaming vs. modern gaming however is not a mechanical concept, it's a gaming culture philosophy difference. You can achieve superhero status in old-school games and can run modern games where player characters have reason to fear for their lives and you can do it without changing the rules, be it old school or new school.
Character death however is a problem, old school and modern alike. When characters die in the course of a campaign, it disrupts the fun of the game either way. Character death while it can and probably should be a part of the game during key moments in the adventure, for example when facing the final boss of a long campaign, if a character dies in that final battle it feels epic and memorable, but dying because you had a run of bad luck with the dice against some random and irrelevant encounter has a way of sort of deflating the principle purpose of the game. Contending with character death has always been a challenge for DM's as far back as I can remember and I have been at this for the better part of 4 decades.
What I personally do with the loss of permanent constitution points is remove the most difficult part of character death systems as they appear in D&D in any edition.. luck. Even for example, death saves are just a matter of luck right.. so it can happen unexpectedly, its not a controlled structure. I want to as a DM essentially ensure characters don't die, but I want to make sure that the fear of death, the fear of the penalty still has a strong and potent sting.
That said, that old-school method of just letting characters die, letting them live in fear is actually quite potent. Disruptive sure, but it has a lot more impact and can elevate a D&D table in ways that I don't think modern tables see very often. I still run 0 HP = death (no saving throws, no death saves) for some tables that prefer it and I can tell you that the anxiety, the fear, the level of play is miles ahead of any other table I run. These guys take the game seriously, they play the game as if they are their character and they are in a life-and-death situation.
I guess I'm just trying to point out that there are different philosophies and cultures in D&D, but after 4 decades of play, I can tell you that the best, most serious and most fun tables are games that have harsh death penalties. It elevates the game to levels I don't think most people ever experience. You might consider trying it sometime.
So, for five years I have worked on a new setting and a new campaign. Five years.
I am still not finished because I have been involving my large group of players in everything, and it can sometimes be a problem since there is this thing called "earth" out there, and it wants me to do things in it. Ugh.
Anyway, I will do the same thing here I have done since 1980, when I ran my first game.
If there is a TPK, and it comes towards the end of a session, I will let them die.
if it comes at the beginning of a session and I spot it happening before hand, I will Deus ex machina that shit in the literal sense by having a friendly neighborhood deity walk on by and quietly reduce the threat level. THen demand payment that is obscene.
If it happens in the middle of the session, I will have watched the players closely, and then I will decide. For my games, there is a lot of development that goes into a character. They are tied into storylines down the road for the campaign, linked into side quests, and there is investment in them. If the party is new -- and by new I mean level 1 or level 2 -- then it is going back to scratch. usually not as deeply invested. Get them up to level 5 or so, and now they have something to lose.
I use a lot of creatures that do not simply suck away hit points. THey do other things, and leave characters in a state of unconsciousness. One that can't easily be lifted by healing. So often, they don't die right away, and if it isn't a TPK then there is always a chance.
But really, it comes down to this: I am not invested in the characters. I am invested in my players. If I think I will be killing them off left and right, i have them create extra PCs. I almost always have them create two, anyway. Because as was pointed out by another long timer, death is the stakes here.
Every published module is balanced and weighed and tested so that while it is dangerous it is doable. My homebrew stuff -- my creations -- are created to test the hell out of people. People who know me, have played with me, have seen the glee and I can take when a particular puzzle turns risky.
I don't care if a character dies. plot hooks for old stories for new characters are something I can create. I care if my player's sense of fun is wrecked. This is why a zero session mattes: it should be noted that these characters will die.
not "could die". Will die. Unless there is some undying race on your world, it is a truth.
it might not be during the campaign, but they don't know that it won't be. And it places the stakes as high.
I create Campaigns. The one we finished in June lasted two and a half years, and only three players survived out of 29. but they didn't mind the deaths because they chose them, sacrifice and all and it was part of the story.
It also set up the new campaign by opening and forging a path to the new world -- one that the old characters may reincarnate in (I know one will).
IT is a running joke of sorts now because the place they came out in was chosen as the playtesting environment and is essentially a re-skinned and localized version of phandelver.
They fought the Demon Prince and his horde and won, and saved an entire universe a the cost of their own lives -- the stakes were something they knew going on, and that's the key here. If they die, make it count. Make it matter, make it mean something, and make it part of the story.
If they just die, because they screwed up, or the encounter was too hard, or they weren't taking it seriously, well, look at the players.
Who is going to be hurt by the loss of that character? Who is so invested that the grief is real?
Who isn't? Those who aren't, they will just roll again. Those who are, well, maybe there is something you can do. You are the DM. Maybe they were just left for dead, stumled across, brought to a place, and now a new team is there.
Death has to matter. Emotionally. Not just "lose a few items", but count to the player.
It isn't an adventure without risk. Bilbo could have been eaten. Frodo literally failed. After all that he went through, including almost dying.
Save the world isn't stakes. It is a goal. Stakes are "everyone you know dies, including you". THey have to know the stakes. Know what the price of a mistake is, as noted above.
Sometimes that can only be learned. I have run games that it took players five or six tries to just get through the first level of a dungeon -- each time with a different team. I didn't change a thing.
Th Dm is not the arbiter of the main characters, the protagonists. That is entirely the role of the Player. The DM is only the arbiter of the Story. Some stories are short and bitter, others are long and sweet. The difference is the protagonist, not the DM.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
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I'm like you in that I have plans for all of the characters, and it ends up feeling kind of plot armour like. I had a character die by mistake (I roll open), and it was the best thing that happened to the campaign. That player had a new character ready for next session, and all of the players have made a mission of resolving the dead character's story.
Since then I don't pull punches. I don't try and kill characters, and I do my best to keep it balanced, but if it happens, it happens. Even if I had a tonne of material ready for one of them, I've enjoyed writing it, and I'm sure I can recycle it somewhere down the line.
An earlier poster makes a great point about the tone of the game being set by the imminence of death for the characters. I've found the story elements I was driving for are so much more impactful now that players feel death is on the table than they were before.
People always bring up books, short stories, tv shows and movies to exemplify the premise of death, but the issue with it is that these mediums are all wildly different to the act of playing D&D and the reality is that the characters that do die in these mediums are planned, very scripted deaths part of a larger story in a totally controlled context and the same for those that don't. A movie does not need to contend with a table full of players the next weekend, nor do movies suddenly shift plots and alter their destination of said story because a key character died. Its all pre-ordained by the author.
If you really wanted to make a movie the basis of a D&D game, it would be the equivalent of the DM simply deciding what happens as they are the author.
As an example, Frodo didn't die because the DM (Tolkein) decided that he shouldn't, he had plot armor and Boromir died because the DM (Tolkein) decided that he should and so he killed him.
More to the point if characters die all the time which was often case in old-school D&D, what results is that players lose the ability to connect with their characters and you don't need to look further than the OSR to realize the impact of that on the gaming culture. OSR players could not possibly give fewer F's about their character's "story", they are focused on essentially winning the game by overcoming challenges through clever play. If any story exists in a typical OSR game, it comes from emergent stories, aka, the story of what happened.
While I'm an avid fan of OSR games and old school style of play, of all the things I love about them, this lack of attachment and commitment to story I see in players is the one clear weakness I see in that part of the D&D culture and it's a real strength in the modern gaming community. You see how excited people get just watching other people play a great D&D game like Critical Role and ask yourself how much anyone would care, if every week a couple of characters died and new ones where created. After a dozen sessions or so, I doubt anyone would give a crap about it one way or the other. Its the ongoing story and personal attachment to the characters that drives the game, its in a sense, the most important aspect of the game, the continuity of character stories, character archs etc.
Now that said I don't nescessarily disagree that without a sense of risk and a punishing penalty for failure, the game loses its meaning just as much as if characters died all the time, which is why I think it's important to have good, potent and meaningful penalties that the players will hate, while still preserving characters to ensure they have the much-needed longevity that ensures commitment and interest from the players.
It is worth pointing out that in 5e, character death is mathematically unlikely so long as your doing a reasonable job balancing encounters, so its much easier to simply put death on the table full force and still end up having very few.