A bit of context first—I go to an after-school D&D club run by my physics teacher. He DMs when he can, but he also encourages student DMs to run their own games. The club has only been around since last year, so it's still pretty small, and this is the only place it's really practical for me to play D&D IRL. In short, leaving the group isn't an option.
Now, one of the student DMs is going to be running a megadungeon adventure (don't remember what it was called, I think I intentionally forgot the name so I couldn't metagame and look up spoilers), and looking through the module in session 0, he says, “Y'all are gonna die.” And then, after my friend (who likes coming up with off-the-wall ideas outside of D&D too) spent a full hour begging for his Warlock familiar to PLEASE look like a chicken (“yes, but only if you eat the eggs it lays, raw, every day for your spell slots”), the DM says, “You know I'm okay with a TPK, right?” I thought he was joking at the time, but as we approach our session 1 on Friday, I'm getting increasingly worried that he's not. I had this conversation with him after class yesterday:
DM: “What are you playing again?”
Me: “Life Cleric.”
DM: “Oh, yeah, you're gonna die.”
And then, later:
DM: “Yeah, I anticipate that at least one person is gonna die in the first session. I'm kind of expecting a TPK.”
And look, I've read enough stories to know that one of the worst things you can have is a player is the mindset that it's you versus the DM—but this guy is making it really freaking hard, especially considering that it's my job as the healer to prevent the exact scenario he's describing where one or all of us dies. And I'm pretty new to playing, so it's not like I'm super confident in my ability to be an effective healer anyways. I haven't talked to the teacher about my concerns yet—it feels too much like tattling, to be honest—but I'm willing to consider it as an option.
Is there anything I can do here to foster a better gaming experience for my party and I, or am I seeing problems that just aren't there? Thank you :/
I get the pressure to stay because of limited opportunities to play the game, but after seven years of playing regularly I can state with confidence that staying in a group where you're not having fun just isn't worth it. First thing I would suggest is talking to the DM. Ask him why he thinks this kind of cutthroat game is fun. Talk to the other players, ask them if they like the style of game the DM plans to run. If they aren't into this style of game either, then sit down and talk with the DM as a group, explain that this isn't their idea of fun and ask the DM if they can tone it down a bit.
It's important to remember that there isn't a "wrong" or a "right" way to play, the books even encourage groups to make changes to the rules if it better fits how they want the game to go. But there is absolutely such a thing as "wrong for you" and "right for you", and they won't be the same as everyone else's. So this DM isn't "doing it wrong", but it may still be "wrong for you".
At the end of the day, there are really only three outcomes here. 1) The game changes to better fit your ideas of what makes it fun. 2) The game doesn't change, and you just deal with it. or 3) The game doesn't change and you choose not to play. If you don't get outcome 1, only you can decide whether outcome 2 or 3 is right for you. But don't be so afraid of 3 that you settle for 2 even though it makes you miserable. If you do choose outcome 3 I wouldn't leave the club entirely, just inform the group that this particular campaign doesn't seem like something you'd enjoy, and you'll rejoin for the next one. Based on what you've said of the DM, it doesn't sound like he's planning for a long campaign anyway.
When the teacher was the DM, were his games cutthroat like this kid is planning for?
pdegan2814 is absolutely right. It would be a good idea to have this discussion with the DM and the group. I'm not sure what all happened in your "Session 0", but that's really the time to discuss what players and DM are looking to get out of the campaign, what type of playstyle it will be, as well as Safety Tools.
If you need resources for Safety Tools (which I think are really important, especially for younger players), here are a few I like:
These help ensure that everyone has an understanding of what is possible in the game and what limits to impose. I DM for a number of people with different trauma (soldier PTSD, sexual and domestic abuse, etc) and trust me, knowing the limits/boundaries as well as giving players tools to address things when they happen in-game is important.
As for the conversation with your group, it's important to know what type of game your DM thinks this is and what type your players think this is. Is it Roleplay heavy, is it a dungeon-crawl, and if the players really want something lighter with less chance of character death, but the DM is all in on causing a TPK in session 1, that's a problem for everyone, as no one will have a good time.
If it turns out everyone else, DM and the other players, are gung-ho on a DM vs Players slugfest with high possibility of character deaths, then honestly it might be best for you to sit out this DM's campaign. "Bad D&D is worse than no D&D" is a thing that gets said a lot around here, because it is true. Perhaps some like-minded people in the group can have a second campaign that is more to that groups collective wants and playstyle.
Is there a chance the DM is just trying to mess with you? High schoolers have a tendency to exaggerate, could be he’s just trying to seem cool. So my first piece of advice would be to actually play the session and see how things go, and if he’s actually as much of a hard ass as he’s trying to seem to be.
If he is, I’d say then check with the rest of the table and see how everyone else feels about it. Some people like that kind of game. I’m not saying that you should, just that some do, so there may be people who are into it. Then those of you who are upset can come to him as a group and ask for a change.
If none of that works, consider going to the advisor. I realize no one likes a snitch, so maybe do it quietly, via an email and ask to remain anonymous. But if you explain this person’s attitude and that he’s making the game not be fun, the advisor should really step in. At least to move you to a different table.
And to your worries about being a good healer, I’d say take a look at the threads in the cleric section. There’s quite a few that give basic advice on how to play a cleric. And if you have more specific questions that aren’t answered, just start a new post there.
Thanks to everyone who replied!! For what kind of game this is gonna be, it's pretty clear that this is gonna be a dungeon crawl, but I'm personally hoping for at least some roleplay. Honestly, we spent so much time on my friend's chicken familiar that we didn't get around to individual expectations or safety tools at all. (I love my friend, I really do, but he has the ability to fixate on the smallest things and drag everyone off-track. Last campaign he spent pretty much the entire time looking for a saxophone just because he plays one IRL.)
The teacher wasn't really cutthroat as a DM. We got to play in one of his homebrew settings (so cool!!!) and it was more exploration and party shenanigans with maaaybe a single combat encounter. I agree it's very possible that the DM is messing with us (especially since he's already good friends with one of the players, the new guy who showed up with stats he “rolled at home” 😒), and I think session 1 is probably going to inform the rest of my decisions.
Right now our party is me (Mountain Dwarf Life Cleric), my friend (who actually ditched the chicken Warlock to go for a Half-Orc Barbarian, subclass still unknown but I suggested Zealot Barbarian for the free resurrection), new guy DM's friend (Tiefling Bard, subclass unknown), another friend (a High Elf Wizard who for some reason has CHA as their highest stat), plus whoever else decides to show up (Wizard friend's partner might be showing up with a Dragonborn Rogue?). In short, I don't think we're very prepared for hard combat—Wizard friend seems have built their character more for RP, new guy is brand-new, and wacky chicken friend seems to be more into silly shenanigans than hardcore combat.
I'm definitely gonna check out the Cleric threads, thanks!! I've been binging RPGBOT guides and such to figure out how to build the best character, mechanically, I can, but more info is always great. Idk, if I get too fed up, I might just take over DMing myself—I already have this idea for a one-shot that I could turn into a full campaign if people like it. . . 🤷♀️
It sounds very much like you and your friend wants a very different style of game to what the dm is planning. I think you need to sit down and talk with him or you are going to be very disappointed in a few sessions. Full on dungeon bashes do not make for a critical role game.
It's also possible that he's running a published module similar to Tomb of Horrors. That module is advertised as a TPK module and anyone who plays it goes into it expecting a couple of PC deaths. The one time I played it I kept a backup character ready to go in case my original character died.
But that was the module and everyone knew up front that it was a tough module.
Level 1 characters are very fragile and a lot of published adventures start with an extremely deadly first chapter 1.Experianced DMs will either tone it down or even fudge rolls to ensure the party makes it through.
So while it is VERY likely he is messing with you if he been a player but not a dungeaon master he might be reading the book ant thinking if he plays with the NPCs as they are in the book and plays them smart it is likely to result in PC deaths and that is what he should do.
If the adventure is a mega dungaon crawl even if he makes it survivable it is likely ot be a combat focused game with little opportunity for role play. If you are wanting the opposite and there are several tables starting it might be possible to swap players around the tables otherwie it looks as if your choise is a combat focussed campaign or no campaign at all.
Beardsinger: First off, awesome name you've got there!! Second, yeah, I'll wanna discuss that with him so I at least know what I'm getting into. I already need to discuss me buying a healer's kit and herbalism kit with the starting gold I get from my background with him (hey, anxiety said redundancies upon redundancies here, and I listen more than I should), so I'll try to bring it up then.
TheGnome5786: He might be!! The problem is I don't know him well enough to be certain—I've only known him for a few weeks (he's a freshman), so I hardly have anything to work off of. Here's hoping you're right 🤞
Tim: I do know this is a published module, so that's probable. And he did warn us to have multiple backup characters prepared (I do—a Tiefling Devotion Paladin, a Deep Gnome Thief Rogue, and the Tiefling Fiend Warlock I played in my last campaign, and I also kinda wanna try out Gloomstalker Ranger but I haven't built them yet), so I suppose we theoretically knew what we were getting into 🤷♀️
Jegpeg: We're starting at level 3, so we're not quite AS squishy as a party of level 1s, but I don't have Revivify yet, for example. We're all pretty new to this and I've never played with him before, so I'm not sure whether he'll fudge it for us. Thus far, this is looking like the only table. I've got my fingers crossed that we can have some intra-party RP between encounters, and I would rather have “eh” D&D than no D&D. I know I'll ultimately find a way to enjoy whatever I get, but fear of the unknown is such a b*tch when you've got very little “known” to fight it with.
Many thanks again to everyone who replied!! My head is such an echo chamber for my anxieties, so it's good to talk it through with other people ☺️
On general principles I feel players need to be willing to have their character die: The character is an adventurer - the character has clearly considered and accepted the possibility of a fatal outcome.
Also as a general principle, I feel GM's need to work within reason to keep characters alive. But the players should never get the feeling that their actions are meaningles - success is guaranteed however badly they mess up.
So, extrapolating - if you lie a little to give players the feeling that death may be imminent at all times, while actually doing your best to keep everyone breathing, that's actually a decent path to take.
Personally, in the OOC, I'm likely to give advice to players along the lines of: 'Oh, it's fine, you can do that without risk. Maybe. Or not?! Maybe you should proceed with caution. At least, if I were you, I wouldn't trust me. My goals are definitely suspect, and not necessarily aligned with those of your character.'
I can add to that I haven't killed a character since .. 1995, I think. And said character jumped onto a minivan, right in front of two drones carrying double missile launchers. There was, quite simply, no way for me to help him at that point. I figured he'd learn the value of cover. Instead, he just never showed up again =(
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As long as I've been playing with the club, no, no one's died yet. The closest I've seen it was when the Paladin threw a boulder at my Warlock during the last campaign and dropped me down to 0 HP before the other Warlock healed me, but that was through no action of the DM. Even though I survived (actually by the mercy of the last DM, who ruled that because the other Warlock rolled a nat 20 for whatever healing spell they cast, it brought me back to to full health even though,,, you don't roll a d20 for healing spells), I was still kinda pissed at that other player. In hindsight, I was having quite a bit of trouble separating my character from myself due to how much I'd projected while making her, but also, that kind of death just feels senseless to me. As a writer, I'm very willing to kill my characters, but only in a way that feels meaningful and closes their character arc in a satisfying way. And as I'm typing this, I realize that maybe what I fear isn't death itself, but death *for the sake of shock value.* That I won't get to see this character I crafted change and grow and develop relationships with the other party members, because she'll have been slaughtered for the DM's enjoyment. And now that I realize that, I think I can safely tell myself that my DM is (most likely) not a sadist and (most likely) wouldn't do that to me. . . and that I need to separate myself from my character better. Nothing like a good moment of personal revelation to start your day, eh?
Beardsinger: First off, awesome name you've got there!! Second, yeah, I'll wanna discuss that with him so I at least know what I'm getting into. I already need to discuss me buying a healer's kit and herbalism kit with the starting gold I get from my background with him (hey, anxiety said redundancies upon redundancies here, and I listen more than I should), so I'll try to bring it up then.
Thanks, it came from one of my earliest characters who was a gnome wizard (in a system called GURPS rather than D&D) he had a beard down to his knees and was a complete pyromaniac and part of his thing was he kept accidentally burning his beard when casting fire spells.
Do you know the module name as some such as the terror house in Strahd, or the Dungeon of the Mad mage are well known for tpk’s. He may just be messing with your head but there are some DM’s that think of it as a competition between themselves and the players. He sounds young though - what’s a freshman - so maybe just a young lad bravado thing.
As long as I've been playing with the club, no, no one's died yet. The closest I've seen it was when the Paladin threw a boulder at my Warlock during the last campaign and dropped me down to 0 HP before the other Warlock healed me, but that was through no action of the DM. Even though I survived (actually by the mercy of the last DM, who ruled that because the other Warlock rolled a nat 20 for whatever healing spell they cast, it brought me back to to full health even though,,, you don't roll a d20 for healing spells), I was still kinda pissed at that other player. In hindsight, I was having quite a bit of trouble separating my character from myself due to how much I'd projected while making her, but also, that kind of death just feels senseless to me. As a writer, I'm very willing to kill my characters, but only in a way that feels meaningful and closes their character arc in a satisfying way. And as I'm typing this, I realize that maybe what I fear isn't death itself, but death *for the sake of shock value.* That I won't get to see this character I crafted change and grow and develop relationships with the other party members, because she'll have been slaughtered for the DM's enjoyment. And now that I realize that, I think I can safely tell myself that my DM is (most likely) not a sadist and (most likely) wouldn't do that to me. . . and that I need to separate myself from my character better. Nothing like a good moment of personal revelation to start your day, eh?
I feel it's often vital to trust your GM. Obviously, the flipside of that is that your GM is trustworthy. But generally speaking, we're all playing to have fun, and the GM's role (in case anyone was ever to ask me) is to make sure everyone's having fun.
Is it fun for your character to die? No. Not ... well, not generally. But is it fun to play a risk based game if you know the risk has been manipulated, reduced to zero?
As a player I've found it's healthy for me to have characters die. Eventually (over 35+ years) I've developed an immunity to character death. I'll happily reroll if my character buys it. I cannot, however, abide if my character dies due to a technicality, GM fiat or miscalculation. Have you ever had the GM look at the numbers, and only then realise - 'oh, I guess my guy just 1-shot you 100 to zero ... wow!' That makes me just wanna stab him in the kidneys with my click pencil. He's a lifelong friend, Anders, and he has very occasionally done things that were unbelievably annoying. More often, he does exceptionally cool things though =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Lots of great advice here. The only thing I'll add is that sometimes, those new to D&D will play a module exactly as the book says it should be. This is where DM license comes into play and the DM can adjust the difficulty level to make it challenging but not a TPK. Sounds like your DM is new and possibly doesn't realize this yet. Perhaps have a discussion with them regarding it.
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#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
Update: We just finished session 1 and nobody died, though the rogue did burn through half his HP from tasting some random potions that turned out to be poisonous and then electrocuting himself with his own breath weapon trying to make a magic sword. (I did not heal him afterwards. 🤦♀️) The module is called Barrowmaze. From some of the search results, it looks like it's gonna be tough, but we also have the teacher's (younger, one of them looks like ten) kids playing with us, so I doubt he's gonna go viciously hard on us. If anything, it might be my dice that cause the most problems for me—modifiers aside, I don't think I rolled higher than a 10 the entire session. Thanks for the advice, everyone!! I'm definitely gonna keep this stuff in mind. Now I'm gonna go threaten my dice into submission before we (presumably) face combat the next session. 😆
Update: We just finished session 1 and nobody died, though the rogue did burn through half his HP from tasting some random potions that turned out to be poisonous and then electrocuting himself with his own breath weapon trying to make a magic sword. (I did not heal him afterwards. 🤦♀️) The module is called Barrowmaze. From some of the search results, it looks like it's gonna be tough, but we also have the teacher's (younger, one of them looks like ten) kids playing with us, so I doubt he's gonna go viciously hard on us. If anything, it might be my dice that cause the most problems for me—modifiers aside, I don't think I rolled higher than a 10 the entire session. Thanks for the advice, everyone!! I'm definitely gonna keep this stuff in mind. Now I'm gonna go threaten my dice into submission before we (presumably) face combat the next session. 😆
Glad to hear it’s all working out.
And you should buy more dice. It’s best to have a few sets, so if one is acting up, you can put it in time out and use another, better behaved set. Dice karma is real.
A bit of context first—I go to an after-school D&D club run by my physics teacher. He DMs when he can, but he also encourages student DMs to run their own games. The club has only been around since last year, so it's still pretty small, and this is the only place it's really practical for me to play D&D IRL. In short, leaving the group isn't an option.
Now, one of the student DMs is going to be running a megadungeon adventure (don't remember what it was called, I think I intentionally forgot the name so I couldn't metagame and look up spoilers), and looking through the module in session 0, he says, “Y'all are gonna die.” And then, after my friend (who likes coming up with off-the-wall ideas outside of D&D too) spent a full hour begging for his Warlock familiar to PLEASE look like a chicken (“yes, but only if you eat the eggs it lays, raw, every day for your spell slots”), the DM says, “You know I'm okay with a TPK, right?” I thought he was joking at the time, but as we approach our session 1 on Friday, I'm getting increasingly worried that he's not. I had this conversation with him after class yesterday:
DM: “What are you playing again?”
Me: “Life Cleric.”
DM: “Oh, yeah, you're gonna die.”
And then, later:
DM: “Yeah, I anticipate that at least one person is gonna die in the first session. I'm kind of expecting a TPK.”
And look, I've read enough stories to know that one of the worst things you can have is a player is the mindset that it's you versus the DM—but this guy is making it really freaking hard, especially considering that it's my job as the healer to prevent the exact scenario he's describing where one or all of us dies. And I'm pretty new to playing, so it's not like I'm super confident in my ability to be an effective healer anyways. I haven't talked to the teacher about my concerns yet—it feels too much like tattling, to be honest—but I'm willing to consider it as an option.
Is there anything I can do here to foster a better gaming experience for my party and I, or am I seeing problems that just aren't there? Thank you :/
I get the pressure to stay because of limited opportunities to play the game, but after seven years of playing regularly I can state with confidence that staying in a group where you're not having fun just isn't worth it. First thing I would suggest is talking to the DM. Ask him why he thinks this kind of cutthroat game is fun. Talk to the other players, ask them if they like the style of game the DM plans to run. If they aren't into this style of game either, then sit down and talk with the DM as a group, explain that this isn't their idea of fun and ask the DM if they can tone it down a bit.
It's important to remember that there isn't a "wrong" or a "right" way to play, the books even encourage groups to make changes to the rules if it better fits how they want the game to go. But there is absolutely such a thing as "wrong for you" and "right for you", and they won't be the same as everyone else's. So this DM isn't "doing it wrong", but it may still be "wrong for you".
At the end of the day, there are really only three outcomes here. 1) The game changes to better fit your ideas of what makes it fun. 2) The game doesn't change, and you just deal with it. or 3) The game doesn't change and you choose not to play. If you don't get outcome 1, only you can decide whether outcome 2 or 3 is right for you. But don't be so afraid of 3 that you settle for 2 even though it makes you miserable. If you do choose outcome 3 I wouldn't leave the club entirely, just inform the group that this particular campaign doesn't seem like something you'd enjoy, and you'll rejoin for the next one. Based on what you've said of the DM, it doesn't sound like he's planning for a long campaign anyway.
When the teacher was the DM, were his games cutthroat like this kid is planning for?
pdegan2814 is absolutely right. It would be a good idea to have this discussion with the DM and the group. I'm not sure what all happened in your "Session 0", but that's really the time to discuss what players and DM are looking to get out of the campaign, what type of playstyle it will be, as well as Safety Tools.
If you need resources for Safety Tools (which I think are really important, especially for younger players), here are a few I like:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XHjWwG3vdyhcX1uyAQT-XqwwhTZBFkW-JD9Ubhn_YUs/viewform?edit_requested=true
https://slyflourish.com/safety_tools.html
These help ensure that everyone has an understanding of what is possible in the game and what limits to impose. I DM for a number of people with different trauma (soldier PTSD, sexual and domestic abuse, etc) and trust me, knowing the limits/boundaries as well as giving players tools to address things when they happen in-game is important.
As for the conversation with your group, it's important to know what type of game your DM thinks this is and what type your players think this is. Is it Roleplay heavy, is it a dungeon-crawl, and if the players really want something lighter with less chance of character death, but the DM is all in on causing a TPK in session 1, that's a problem for everyone, as no one will have a good time.
If it turns out everyone else, DM and the other players, are gung-ho on a DM vs Players slugfest with high possibility of character deaths, then honestly it might be best for you to sit out this DM's campaign. "Bad D&D is worse than no D&D" is a thing that gets said a lot around here, because it is true. Perhaps some like-minded people in the group can have a second campaign that is more to that groups collective wants and playstyle.
Is there a chance the DM is just trying to mess with you? High schoolers have a tendency to exaggerate, could be he’s just trying to seem cool. So my first piece of advice would be to actually play the session and see how things go, and if he’s actually as much of a hard ass as he’s trying to seem to be.
If he is, I’d say then check with the rest of the table and see how everyone else feels about it. Some people like that kind of game. I’m not saying that you should, just that some do, so there may be people who are into it. Then those of you who are upset can come to him as a group and ask for a change.
If none of that works, consider going to the advisor. I realize no one likes a snitch, so maybe do it quietly, via an email and ask to remain anonymous. But if you explain this person’s attitude and that he’s making the game not be fun, the advisor should really step in. At least to move you to a different table.
And to your worries about being a good healer, I’d say take a look at the threads in the cleric section. There’s quite a few that give basic advice on how to play a cleric. And if you have more specific questions that aren’t answered, just start a new post there.
Thanks to everyone who replied!! For what kind of game this is gonna be, it's pretty clear that this is gonna be a dungeon crawl, but I'm personally hoping for at least some roleplay. Honestly, we spent so much time on my friend's chicken familiar that we didn't get around to individual expectations or safety tools at all. (I love my friend, I really do, but he has the ability to fixate on the smallest things and drag everyone off-track. Last campaign he spent pretty much the entire time looking for a saxophone just because he plays one IRL.)
The teacher wasn't really cutthroat as a DM. We got to play in one of his homebrew settings (so cool!!!) and it was more exploration and party shenanigans with maaaybe a single combat encounter. I agree it's very possible that the DM is messing with us (especially since he's already good friends with one of the players, the new guy who showed up with stats he “rolled at home” 😒), and I think session 1 is probably going to inform the rest of my decisions.
Right now our party is me (Mountain Dwarf Life Cleric), my friend (who actually ditched the chicken Warlock to go for a Half-Orc Barbarian, subclass still unknown but I suggested Zealot Barbarian for the free resurrection), new guy DM's friend (Tiefling Bard, subclass unknown), another friend (a High Elf Wizard who for some reason has CHA as their highest stat), plus whoever else decides to show up (Wizard friend's partner might be showing up with a Dragonborn Rogue?). In short, I don't think we're very prepared for hard combat—Wizard friend seems have built their character more for RP, new guy is brand-new, and wacky chicken friend seems to be more into silly shenanigans than hardcore combat.
I'm definitely gonna check out the Cleric threads, thanks!! I've been binging RPGBOT guides and such to figure out how to build the best character, mechanically, I can, but more info is always great. Idk, if I get too fed up, I might just take over DMing myself—I already have this idea for a one-shot that I could turn into a full campaign if people like it. . . 🤷♀️
It sounds very much like you and your friend wants a very different style of game to what the dm is planning. I think you need to sit down and talk with him or you are going to be very disappointed in a few sessions. Full on dungeon bashes do not make for a critical role game.
I vote that the DM is successfully blowing smoke up your nether regions.
Even DMs do not want to kill off characters. That just shortens the game to one session. And what fun is that for anyone, even him?
But it does help the play if the character are brought real real close every once in a while.
It's also possible that he's running a published module similar to Tomb of Horrors. That module is advertised as a TPK module and anyone who plays it goes into it expecting a couple of PC deaths. The one time I played it I kept a backup character ready to go in case my original character died.
But that was the module and everyone knew up front that it was a tough module.
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Level 1 characters are very fragile and a lot of published adventures start with an extremely deadly first chapter 1.Experianced DMs will either tone it down or even fudge rolls to ensure the party makes it through.
So while it is VERY likely he is messing with you if he been a player but not a dungeaon master he might be reading the book ant thinking if he plays with the NPCs as they are in the book and plays them smart it is likely to result in PC deaths and that is what he should do.
If the adventure is a mega dungaon crawl even if he makes it survivable it is likely ot be a combat focused game with little opportunity for role play. If you are wanting the opposite and there are several tables starting it might be possible to swap players around the tables otherwie it looks as if your choise is a combat focussed campaign or no campaign at all.
Beardsinger: First off, awesome name you've got there!! Second, yeah, I'll wanna discuss that with him so I at least know what I'm getting into. I already need to discuss me buying a healer's kit and herbalism kit with the starting gold I get from my background with him (hey, anxiety said redundancies upon redundancies here, and I listen more than I should), so I'll try to bring it up then.
TheGnome5786: He might be!! The problem is I don't know him well enough to be certain—I've only known him for a few weeks (he's a freshman), so I hardly have anything to work off of. Here's hoping you're right 🤞
Tim: I do know this is a published module, so that's probable. And he did warn us to have multiple backup characters prepared (I do—a Tiefling Devotion Paladin, a Deep Gnome Thief Rogue, and the Tiefling Fiend Warlock I played in my last campaign, and I also kinda wanna try out Gloomstalker Ranger but I haven't built them yet), so I suppose we theoretically knew what we were getting into 🤷♀️
Jegpeg: We're starting at level 3, so we're not quite AS squishy as a party of level 1s, but I don't have Revivify yet, for example. We're all pretty new to this and I've never played with him before, so I'm not sure whether he'll fudge it for us. Thus far, this is looking like the only table. I've got my fingers crossed that we can have some intra-party RP between encounters, and I would rather have “eh” D&D than no D&D. I know I'll ultimately find a way to enjoy whatever I get, but fear of the unknown is such a b*tch when you've got very little “known” to fight it with.
Many thanks again to everyone who replied!! My head is such an echo chamber for my anxieties, so it's good to talk it through with other people ☺️
Has anyone actually died?
On general principles I feel players need to be willing to have their character die: The character is an adventurer - the character has clearly considered and accepted the possibility of a fatal outcome.
Also as a general principle, I feel GM's need to work within reason to keep characters alive. But the players should never get the feeling that their actions are meaningles - success is guaranteed however badly they mess up.
So, extrapolating - if you lie a little to give players the feeling that death may be imminent at all times, while actually doing your best to keep everyone breathing, that's actually a decent path to take.
Personally, in the OOC, I'm likely to give advice to players along the lines of: 'Oh, it's fine, you can do that without risk. Maybe. Or not?! Maybe you should proceed with caution. At least, if I were you, I wouldn't trust me. My goals are definitely suspect, and not necessarily aligned with those of your character.'
I can add to that I haven't killed a character since .. 1995, I think. And said character jumped onto a minivan, right in front of two drones carrying double missile launchers. There was, quite simply, no way for me to help him at that point. I figured he'd learn the value of cover. Instead, he just never showed up again =(
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As long as I've been playing with the club, no, no one's died yet. The closest I've seen it was when the Paladin threw a boulder at my Warlock during the last campaign and dropped me down to 0 HP before the other Warlock healed me, but that was through no action of the DM. Even though I survived (actually by the mercy of the last DM, who ruled that because the other Warlock rolled a nat 20 for whatever healing spell they cast, it brought me back to to full health even though,,, you don't roll a d20 for healing spells), I was still kinda pissed at that other player. In hindsight, I was having quite a bit of trouble separating my character from myself due to how much I'd projected while making her, but also, that kind of death just feels senseless to me. As a writer, I'm very willing to kill my characters, but only in a way that feels meaningful and closes their character arc in a satisfying way. And as I'm typing this, I realize that maybe what I fear isn't death itself, but death *for the sake of shock value.* That I won't get to see this character I crafted change and grow and develop relationships with the other party members, because she'll have been slaughtered for the DM's enjoyment. And now that I realize that, I think I can safely tell myself that my DM is (most likely) not a sadist and (most likely) wouldn't do that to me. . . and that I need to separate myself from my character better. Nothing like a good moment of personal revelation to start your day, eh?
Thanks, it came from one of my earliest characters who was a gnome wizard (in a system called GURPS rather than D&D) he had a beard down to his knees and was a complete pyromaniac and part of his thing was he kept accidentally burning his beard when casting fire spells.
Do you know the module name as some such as the terror house in Strahd, or the Dungeon of the Mad mage are well known for tpk’s. He may just be messing with your head but there are some DM’s that think of it as a competition between themselves and the players. He sounds young though - what’s a freshman - so maybe just a young lad bravado thing.
I feel it's often vital to trust your GM. Obviously, the flipside of that is that your GM is trustworthy. But generally speaking, we're all playing to have fun, and the GM's role (in case anyone was ever to ask me) is to make sure everyone's having fun.
Is it fun for your character to die? No. Not ... well, not generally. But is it fun to play a risk based game if you know the risk has been manipulated, reduced to zero?
As a player I've found it's healthy for me to have characters die. Eventually (over 35+ years) I've developed an immunity to character death. I'll happily reroll if my character buys it. I cannot, however, abide if my character dies due to a technicality, GM fiat or miscalculation. Have you ever had the GM look at the numbers, and only then realise - 'oh, I guess my guy just 1-shot you 100 to zero ... wow!' That makes me just wanna stab him in the kidneys with my click pencil. He's a lifelong friend, Anders, and he has very occasionally done things that were unbelievably annoying. More often, he does exceptionally cool things though =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Lots of great advice here. The only thing I'll add is that sometimes, those new to D&D will play a module exactly as the book says it should be. This is where DM license comes into play and the DM can adjust the difficulty level to make it challenging but not a TPK. Sounds like your DM is new and possibly doesn't realize this yet. Perhaps have a discussion with them regarding it.
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
Update: We just finished session 1 and nobody died, though the rogue did burn through half his HP from tasting some random potions that turned out to be poisonous and then electrocuting himself with his own breath weapon trying to make a magic sword. (I did not heal him afterwards. 🤦♀️) The module is called Barrowmaze. From some of the search results, it looks like it's gonna be tough, but we also have the teacher's (younger, one of them looks like ten) kids playing with us, so I doubt he's gonna go viciously hard on us. If anything, it might be my dice that cause the most problems for me—modifiers aside, I don't think I rolled higher than a 10 the entire session. Thanks for the advice, everyone!! I'm definitely gonna keep this stuff in mind. Now I'm gonna go threaten my dice into submission before we (presumably) face combat the next session. 😆
Glad to hear it’s all working out.
And you should buy more dice. It’s best to have a few sets, so if one is acting up, you can put it in time out and use another, better behaved set. Dice karma is real.
Ooh, dice make crow brain go brr, and there is this Infinity Stone-themed set on eBay for $7 that looks tempting. . .