and that's why i left the discussion prior because no one bothered to read what i said and started saying bullshit like anger management, "rigid" games and making shit assumptions. once people pull their heads out of their arses and actually listen would be nice for a change.
As I said before, I'm sorry for my part in that. I also want you to know I REALLY do understand your point of view. I would just rather play a different game system if permanent death was going to be a regular element, especially if it was a game system that allowed you to make a character profile in like 5 minutes, hehe.
I think we should have made a further distinction in this. Yes, I support killing PCs. Do I let random things happen that generally turn out to be something that I am expecting to kill a PC or use Coup de Grace on them? Nope, you are correct. This is standard play and we are advancing the plot. But when it comes to The Big Bad... the gloves are off. I expect intelligent enemies to act intelligent. I expect dangerous enemies to be dangerous. But in a normal situation where they might be just encountering the enemy camp and don't know what's what yet... capture and escape are very good story tools to use. I just also believe that death, resurrection and final death are also very good story tools to use in the right circumstances and was all I was advocating for. Ultimately the story is more important than the dice rolls. Adventure League style games don't need much story. Heavy Roleplaying campaigns though are better off with a wide variety of story tools and pacing mechanics.
As for the video from Matt Collville... in general I just don't click on any video links in any forums. But, I've watched a lot of Matt Collville's videos and campagins and read his novels and some of his RPG books. Good dude! Still don't click on video links...
Throwing my hat in the ring here - I am a huge Matt Colville fan and I like his comparison between himself and Mercer. Mercers games tend to build stories around the PCs (ie/ the world reacts to the PCs), Colville tends to present the world and the PCs have to deal with it.
For myself I greatly prefer the latter. My main goal as a DM is to present a complete, logical world. My responsibility is as a conduit, not as a nanny. Colville has said many times that he has had PCs get in situations where he has no idea how they will get out of it, but often they do. I also agree with without risk there is no feeling of reward. As a player (first time in a decade) I had a character die in the first 10 minutes of the game and sat quietly for the next 3 hours. Made a bold decision, had a few unlucky dice rolls and the character is dead. A character I spent a month learning, purchased two different miniatures, learnt a new accent and did a tonne of research. I was fine with it. I do understand not everyone is like this though.
On the other hand I had a player in my Tomb of Annihilation campaign. They crawled into a certain chest and were subsequently disintegrated. The player wasn't really happy. I was surprised. It seemed obvious to me that I had provided multiple fail states. In each case they chose the choice that led to the PCs death. It wasn't just one bad dice roll - it was a series of deliberate choices and then one bad dice roll. In my mind fudging that dice roll (changing the DC for example, or lowering the damage) invalidates the character. At the end of the day I resurrected the character in a story fashion and everyone was happy, but this really changed the subsequent feeling of the campaign.
Getting back to the original post though I feel that there isn't enough information. As others have said you need to decide what tone you and your players want. There is nothing wrong with a Colville game, or a Mercer game or a Gygax or whatever else you want to bow down to - the only issue comes when there is a conflict in expectations. So as long as you and your players are on the same page then you should be fine. You want to run a story-driven plot armor game, go for it. You want to run a grimdark game where anyone can die at any moment go for it. Just make sure everyone is on the same page. Have a good session 0 and find out what you all (DM included) want.
Okahey, I was curious if you could elaborate a little bit further on what you meant by saying the feeling of your ToA campaign changed after you resurrected the player who had died. I have expressed earlier in this thread to why I try to avoid killing my players as much as it is possible, but I'd like to be ready for when I honestly can't justify why they should survive doing something really stupid. Before I do need to make that call I'd like to learn from others what the pros and cons are of simply allowing them to resurrect (though I'd probably bring them back with a penalty of some degree, to add consequence).
As a player (first time in a decade) I had a character die in the first 10 minutes of the game and sat quietly for the next 3 hours. Made a bold decision, had a few unlucky dice rolls and the character is dead. A character I spent a month learning, purchased two different miniatures, learnt a new accent and did a tonne of research. I was fine with it. I do understand not everyone is like this though.
..the only issue comes when there is a conflict in expectations.
Yeah, there is definitely a conflict in expectations in this scenario for me, as a player or a DM. I expect to play or have my players play D&D during the session. Whether it required a character rez or for a new character to get added in, everyone would be playing. I would find the above scenario absurd. I think that a little suspension of disbelief can be endured in order to get the player back into the mix somehow.
Your example in my mind is equal to the following.
I finally have the weekend ahead of me! Time to log on to World of MMOcraft. I get on and start combat with some mobs and suddenly, I disconnect from the game. I log back on fast as I can only to find out there is an unplanned 3 hour emergency server maintenance.
As a player (first time in a decade) I had a character die in the first 10 minutes of the game and sat quietly for the next 3 hours. Made a bold decision, had a few unlucky dice rolls and the character is dead. A character I spent a month learning, purchased two different miniatures, learnt a new accent and did a tonne of research. I was fine with it. I do understand not everyone is like this though.
..the only issue comes when there is a conflict in expectations.
Yeah, there is definitely a conflict in expectations in this scenario for me, as a player or a DM. I expect to play or have my players play D&D during the session. Whether it required a character rez or for a new character to get added in, everyone would be playing. I would find the above scenario absurd. I think that a little suspension of belief can be endured in order to get the player back into the mix somehow.
Your example in my mind is equal to the following.
I finally have the weekend ahead of me! Time to log on to World of MMOcraft. I get on and start combat with some mobs and suddenly, I disconnect from the game. I log back on fast as I can only to find out there is an unplanned 3 hour emergency server maintenance.
If you call that fun, more power to you!
Depends a lot on the group, but it can be totally fun, to watch your friends further the story and just listening in. But as always, there is no true answer here.
For one reason on Tomb of Annihilation, once a character dies, they start taking damage every day as they succumb to the event that is happening across the land. It certainly changes the tone and urgency of the mission for the players at that point. If there was something else meant, I'm not sure...
I haven't read the thread ( since skimming it, it seems like there's an argument going ), so I'll just give you my $0.02.
The only people who can answer this are the Players; how do they view Character death? You need to have this discussion with your Players.
In 5e, it's pretty hard to permanently kill a Character. Once they have access to resurrection magic, it's almost impossible ( and even low level Characters can find an in-world Cleric who can wield resurrection magic, it just costs the Party in money, or favors, or adventures taken on for the Cleric/Faith that helped their friend ).
It depends on the kind of Character death. A pointless, one shot kill, by nameless bandit #12 is unsatisfying to most Players. An epic, heroic, "sacrifice yourself to bring down the Source of All Evil, save the world, and rescue 100s of orphan puppies" death is dramatically satisfying to some Players, and they would be OK with it.
If you remove the possibility of failure from the game, then you remove the challenge and sense of accomplishment for many Players. However, failure does not have to equal death, however. You can impose penalties for failure that some Characters would view as worse than death.
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Okahey, I was curious if you could elaborate a little bit further on what you meant by saying the feeling of your ToA campaign changed after you resurrected the player who had died. I have expressed earlier in this thread to why I try to avoid killing my players as much as it is possible, but I'd like to be ready for when I honestly can't justify why they should survive doing something really stupid. Before I do need to make that call I'd like to learn from others what the pros and cons are of simply allowing them to resurrect (though I'd probably bring them back with a penalty of some degree, to add consequence).
This will answer some of the other questions too.
ToA - the end dungeon particularly is notoriously dangerous. It is based around the Tomb of Horrors which was a dungeon designed as a tournament dungeon specifically to high level adventurers. As a tournament dungeon you have a fixed amount of time to play and are scored on how well you (or your group) does. If multiple people finish the dungeon then it is rated on the time taken or how many HP you lost or whatever. At the end of the day, you are supposed to die and when you do you have only lost a few hours.
In the campaign the last dungeon for ToA has a lot of "save or die" moments. Other people have written about the tonal shift and how some find it jarring. I went into the campaign saying that it was a deadly campaign but for various reasons the group ended up in Omu and the Tomb very early. Still this was after 5 or 6 months of play. The group made a series of stupid decisions (avoiding spoilers here) and ended up in a "save or die" situation. This is how the adventure is supposed to play out - is a homage to old style of play and essentially the main *point* of the adventure; it could be argued. My grown player who did little more than roll dice and, I thought, wasn't attached to his character was distraught when he died. I thought he wouldn't care because of the aforementioned considerations and the fact that I opened up character creation. (In the beginning we had a several new and old players and one min-maxer so I restricted it to PHB only - for new characters they had anything they could make at the time (excluding UA and homebrew).
Because he was upset I did a mini-roleplay event for him. Introduced the Hags, had the Golden Host come and intervene before his soul was taken (important to maintain the story cohesion) and he became a warlock of Garl Glittergold (which he wanted - a celestial warlock level). However - because I had given him that out I felt obliged then to give everyone that out - which meant in my mind that a player death *couldn't happen (or be allowed to last)* and that said deaths just meant more work for me. [For the situation in question I wrote some 5000 words and his contribution was in the order of 15.] This changed the whole tone of the dungeon for me. It wasn't a puzzle for the players and characters to solve, it was a puzzle for me to figure out how to not let them die but still make it seem like there was a point. From my point of view it shifted from me presenting a world and reacting to the players actions to me telling a story around the players actions. As I have said in this thread, that is not a game style I like.
Everyone needs to have fun and that includes the DM. I won't delve into it deeply but a lot of the above was my fault - I certainly share the blame. The most important thing is to make sure that people are all on the same page. I thought we were, but it turns out I was wrong. A session 0 is extremely important.
As a player (first time in a decade) I had a character die in the first 10 minutes of the game and sat quietly for the next 3 hours. Made a bold decision, had a few unlucky dice rolls and the character is dead. A character I spent a month learning, purchased two different miniatures, learnt a new accent and did a tonne of research. I was fine with it. I do understand not everyone is like this though.
..the only issue comes when there is a conflict in expectations.
Yeah, there is definitely a conflict in expectations in this scenario for me, as a player or a DM. I expect to play or have my players play D&D during the session. Whether it required a character rez or for a new character to get added in, everyone would be playing. I would find the above scenario absurd. I think that a little suspension of disbelief can be endured in order to get the player back into the mix somehow.
Your example in my mind is equal to the following.
I finally have the weekend ahead of me! Time to log on to World of MMOcraft. I get on and start combat with some mobs and suddenly, I disconnect from the game. I log back on fast as I can only to find out there is an unplanned 3 hour emergency server maintenance.
If you call that fun, more power to you!
I don't actually think that example is at all valid.
In my case I made a choice, knowing the odds and it went badly. I own that choice. I like it because my choices had an effect. Okay, here is the full story.
Playing a cleric, first adventure of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There is a room with skeletons in it. We bottle necked them in the door and (in my opinion) abused game mechanics to make sure they couldn't overwhelm us. [I started this and therefore showed others how to do it] Step in to the door to attack, step out so someone else could attack, rinse and repeat. While I know this is fantasy I prefer more of the illusion of reality. So this felt ... cheap to me. My character stepped into the room. Surrounded by 4 skeletons. AC of 18, skeletons have +4 to hit, 10 hp skeletons have 1d6+2 damage. They needed to roll 14 or above to hit and I could take one or two hits (probably) and could heal myself. I felt comfortable and three missed. Unfortunately the next one rolled a natural 20. We play criticals as being full damage plus the die roll so it was 8+1d6 damage. No surprise he went down. Started rolling death saves. Had one fail and then ... natural 1. I could have lied, I could have whined and forced the DM to change things. He could have lied about the natural 20. But at the end of the day if any of these things had happened I would have lost trust in the DM and lost my connection with the character. I wanted to play him as a little reckless and not an experienced adventurer. I deliberately made "mistakes" and took the risk knowing that he may suffer for it. I don't want to be "saved" from my character choices. Death is a part of adventuring. It is a part of the characters story. It is a cautionary tale to be careful how far you delve and don't get too greedy.
Everything in this game is risk vs reward. "I disarm the trap" if you succeed you get the treasure, if you fail you take damage. If someone fudges it so that I succeed (ie remove the risk) then they take all the shiny off of the treasure as well.
I am also someone who *hates* automatic scaling in games. Give me areas with weak enemies and areas with strong ones; don't base it on my character level. Give me a puzzle and let me play smart. That is much more satisfying to me than just relying on dice rolls or a kind DM.
Again though - as I have said every time - as long as everyone has the same expectations and is having fun there is no good or bad style of game. Just make sure everyone is on the same page.
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As I said before, I'm sorry for my part in that. I also want you to know I REALLY do understand your point of view. I would just rather play a different game system if permanent death was going to be a regular element, especially if it was a game system that allowed you to make a character profile in like 5 minutes, hehe.
I think we should have made a further distinction in this. Yes, I support killing PCs. Do I let random things happen that generally turn out to be something that I am expecting to kill a PC or use Coup de Grace on them? Nope, you are correct. This is standard play and we are advancing the plot. But when it comes to The Big Bad... the gloves are off. I expect intelligent enemies to act intelligent. I expect dangerous enemies to be dangerous. But in a normal situation where they might be just encountering the enemy camp and don't know what's what yet... capture and escape are very good story tools to use. I just also believe that death, resurrection and final death are also very good story tools to use in the right circumstances and was all I was advocating for. Ultimately the story is more important than the dice rolls. Adventure League style games don't need much story. Heavy Roleplaying campaigns though are better off with a wide variety of story tools and pacing mechanics.
As for the video from Matt Collville... in general I just don't click on any video links in any forums. But, I've watched a lot of Matt Collville's videos and campagins and read his novels and some of his RPG books. Good dude! Still don't click on video links...
as soon as anyone gets a resurrect spell or enough gold to buy a revive kill em before hand be careful
Throwing my hat in the ring here - I am a huge Matt Colville fan and I like his comparison between himself and Mercer. Mercers games tend to build stories around the PCs (ie/ the world reacts to the PCs), Colville tends to present the world and the PCs have to deal with it.
For myself I greatly prefer the latter. My main goal as a DM is to present a complete, logical world. My responsibility is as a conduit, not as a nanny. Colville has said many times that he has had PCs get in situations where he has no idea how they will get out of it, but often they do. I also agree with without risk there is no feeling of reward. As a player (first time in a decade) I had a character die in the first 10 minutes of the game and sat quietly for the next 3 hours. Made a bold decision, had a few unlucky dice rolls and the character is dead. A character I spent a month learning, purchased two different miniatures, learnt a new accent and did a tonne of research. I was fine with it. I do understand not everyone is like this though.
On the other hand I had a player in my Tomb of Annihilation campaign. They crawled into a certain chest and were subsequently disintegrated. The player wasn't really happy. I was surprised. It seemed obvious to me that I had provided multiple fail states. In each case they chose the choice that led to the PCs death. It wasn't just one bad dice roll - it was a series of deliberate choices and then one bad dice roll. In my mind fudging that dice roll (changing the DC for example, or lowering the damage) invalidates the character. At the end of the day I resurrected the character in a story fashion and everyone was happy, but this really changed the subsequent feeling of the campaign.
Getting back to the original post though I feel that there isn't enough information. As others have said you need to decide what tone you and your players want. There is nothing wrong with a Colville game, or a Mercer game or a Gygax or whatever else you want to bow down to - the only issue comes when there is a conflict in expectations. So as long as you and your players are on the same page then you should be fine. You want to run a story-driven plot armor game, go for it. You want to run a grimdark game where anyone can die at any moment go for it. Just make sure everyone is on the same page. Have a good session 0 and find out what you all (DM included) want.
Okahey, I was curious if you could elaborate a little bit further on what you meant by saying the feeling of your ToA campaign changed after you resurrected the player who had died. I have expressed earlier in this thread to why I try to avoid killing my players as much as it is possible, but I'd like to be ready for when I honestly can't justify why they should survive doing something really stupid. Before I do need to make that call I'd like to learn from others what the pros and cons are of simply allowing them to resurrect (though I'd probably bring them back with a penalty of some degree, to add consequence).
Yeah, there is definitely a conflict in expectations in this scenario for me, as a player or a DM. I expect to play or have my players play D&D during the session. Whether it required a character rez or for a new character to get added in, everyone would be playing. I would find the above scenario absurd. I think that a little suspension of disbelief can be endured in order to get the player back into the mix somehow.
Your example in my mind is equal to the following.
I finally have the weekend ahead of me! Time to log on to World of MMOcraft. I get on and start combat with some mobs and suddenly, I disconnect from the game. I log back on fast as I can only to find out there is an unplanned 3 hour emergency server maintenance.
If you call that fun, more power to you!
Depends a lot on the group, but it can be totally fun, to watch your friends further the story and just listening in. But as always, there is no true answer here.
For one reason on Tomb of Annihilation, once a character dies, they start taking damage every day as they succumb to the event that is happening across the land. It certainly changes the tone and urgency of the mission for the players at that point. If there was something else meant, I'm not sure...
I haven't read the thread ( since skimming it, it seems like there's an argument going ), so I'll just give you my $0.02.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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This will answer some of the other questions too.
ToA - the end dungeon particularly is notoriously dangerous. It is based around the Tomb of Horrors which was a dungeon designed as a tournament dungeon specifically to high level adventurers. As a tournament dungeon you have a fixed amount of time to play and are scored on how well you (or your group) does. If multiple people finish the dungeon then it is rated on the time taken or how many HP you lost or whatever. At the end of the day, you are supposed to die and when you do you have only lost a few hours.
In the campaign the last dungeon for ToA has a lot of "save or die" moments. Other people have written about the tonal shift and how some find it jarring. I went into the campaign saying that it was a deadly campaign but for various reasons the group ended up in Omu and the Tomb very early. Still this was after 5 or 6 months of play. The group made a series of stupid decisions (avoiding spoilers here) and ended up in a "save or die" situation. This is how the adventure is supposed to play out - is a homage to old style of play and essentially the main *point* of the adventure; it could be argued. My grown player who did little more than roll dice and, I thought, wasn't attached to his character was distraught when he died. I thought he wouldn't care because of the aforementioned considerations and the fact that I opened up character creation. (In the beginning we had a several new and old players and one min-maxer so I restricted it to PHB only - for new characters they had anything they could make at the time (excluding UA and homebrew).
Because he was upset I did a mini-roleplay event for him. Introduced the Hags, had the Golden Host come and intervene before his soul was taken (important to maintain the story cohesion) and he became a warlock of Garl Glittergold (which he wanted - a celestial warlock level). However - because I had given him that out I felt obliged then to give everyone that out - which meant in my mind that a player death *couldn't happen (or be allowed to last)* and that said deaths just meant more work for me. [For the situation in question I wrote some 5000 words and his contribution was in the order of 15.] This changed the whole tone of the dungeon for me. It wasn't a puzzle for the players and characters to solve, it was a puzzle for me to figure out how to not let them die but still make it seem like there was a point. From my point of view it shifted from me presenting a world and reacting to the players actions to me telling a story around the players actions. As I have said in this thread, that is not a game style I like.
Everyone needs to have fun and that includes the DM. I won't delve into it deeply but a lot of the above was my fault - I certainly share the blame. The most important thing is to make sure that people are all on the same page. I thought we were, but it turns out I was wrong. A session 0 is extremely important.
I don't actually think that example is at all valid.
In my case I made a choice, knowing the odds and it went badly. I own that choice. I like it because my choices had an effect. Okay, here is the full story.
Playing a cleric, first adventure of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There is a room with skeletons in it. We bottle necked them in the door and (in my opinion) abused game mechanics to make sure they couldn't overwhelm us. [I started this and therefore showed others how to do it] Step in to the door to attack, step out so someone else could attack, rinse and repeat. While I know this is fantasy I prefer more of the illusion of reality. So this felt ... cheap to me. My character stepped into the room. Surrounded by 4 skeletons. AC of 18, skeletons have +4 to hit, 10 hp skeletons have 1d6+2 damage. They needed to roll 14 or above to hit and I could take one or two hits (probably) and could heal myself. I felt comfortable and three missed. Unfortunately the next one rolled a natural 20. We play criticals as being full damage plus the die roll so it was 8+1d6 damage. No surprise he went down. Started rolling death saves. Had one fail and then ... natural 1. I could have lied, I could have whined and forced the DM to change things. He could have lied about the natural 20. But at the end of the day if any of these things had happened I would have lost trust in the DM and lost my connection with the character. I wanted to play him as a little reckless and not an experienced adventurer. I deliberately made "mistakes" and took the risk knowing that he may suffer for it. I don't want to be "saved" from my character choices. Death is a part of adventuring. It is a part of the characters story. It is a cautionary tale to be careful how far you delve and don't get too greedy.
Everything in this game is risk vs reward. "I disarm the trap" if you succeed you get the treasure, if you fail you take damage. If someone fudges it so that I succeed (ie remove the risk) then they take all the shiny off of the treasure as well.
I am also someone who *hates* automatic scaling in games. Give me areas with weak enemies and areas with strong ones; don't base it on my character level. Give me a puzzle and let me play smart. That is much more satisfying to me than just relying on dice rolls or a kind DM.
Again though - as I have said every time - as long as everyone has the same expectations and is having fun there is no good or bad style of game. Just make sure everyone is on the same page.