The Game-Master discussion thread

Speaking of player death - do you guys generally prefer to run games where a PC can die in a random dungeon encounter, or prefer to let them go out in an epic blaze of glory? Personally, I take option 2.

In the absence of resurrection-like in TGD-I don't have death by random encounters. Or, indeed, death by combat encounters at all.

For me, death is cutscene related-the rest of the time, JUST US A FUCKING PHOENIX DOWN CLOUD, GAUWD

Definitely option 2. I only kill player characters if A) they do something tremendously stupid, B) it works with the plot/they did something incredibly awesome, C) they have expressed a desire to switch characters and use the death (which may include Never Found the Body) to use the PC as an NPC later on or to just get them out of the way.

It all depends on what kind of game you're running. If it's horror, the players should expect things to rapidly go to Hell in a handbasket. For Heroic Fantasy, option two is the way to go.

Considering none of my players have died yet I do not know. One of them came damn close though. He had a one on one duel with a reacurring villain that was a level higher then him in a battle his class was not built for. (He was a rogue his opponent a Blackguard) He managed to win with a few Hp left after using up all of his cure potions. Funny enough he did not even have to fight. It was a one on one duel and the party was allowed to pick who fought. The party was going to pick the Barbarian but the Rogue volunteered before they could say anything.

Also I got a good reacurring villain out of this who is going to fight the party at least 3 times. (the blackguard) The first time they fought him they defeated him and his student (Killing his Student and Knocking him out) Then tied him up and forgot about him. After the Rouge beat him in the Duel (Having droped him to 1 hp enough for the Judge to pick a winner) he survived and walked off. I did not even plan for him to be a reacurring villain I thought he was going to be killed in the first fight.

Anyone else use Reacurring villains.

SADLY I can't say, because that'd be a spoiler for my own campaign :P

(Hint: Yes >:D)

Going to ask the question better. How do you guys use them.

DM Fiat.

I like setting up evil characters who are too powerful or influential to take on directly, and sometimes even forcing the party to take them as temporary allies or face a worse situation (they do always have the choice, mind, but if they snub powerful people, they have to face the consequences). Then at the end of the story, when the apocalyptic plots are all being set off, it's open season on anything with a pulse and everything without one.

An enemy with political protection, good power in a fight, and a reliable way to escape in case he is losing can frustrate a party to no end...and make it all the sweeter when they finally get a chance to take him down.

I tend to introduce NP Cs that end up betraying the P Cs later on. Fortunately, most NP Cs are still good guys.

Unfortunately, when you introduce Gnomish Hitler, it's kind of hard for people to not assume he's a badguy-

Welp, my gaming group is down to 3 P Cs. Glorious! But not unexpected.

I have 5 players but its pretty much impossible for more then 4 of them to show up.

I know that feel, bro.

I came close to killing a couple of P Cs during a random encounter. While out scouting, the two of them stumble upon a group of a dozen or so enemies. They're sneaking around, and hidden behind a low ridge, so the badguys can't see them. But rather than go back and get the rest of the party, they decide to open fire, just the two of them, outnumbered six to one. If not for a couple of good critical hits on their side, and one min-damage crit from the enemies, one player would have been rerolling a PC.

Since we're talking about PC death, is there anyone else who likes to bring characters back to life with stuff that isn't the Fucking Raise Dead Spell or system equivalent? I like "realm of the dead" quests where characters try to do something to get their life back, presumably from the setting's death god. I also like undead and other such things.

Occasionally.

If you want to do that. Making them undead or Using Soul bind or Trap the soul would work well.

Also I think I made my groups Rogue over powered by giving him Hellfire powers. However I feel like a had to. I gave fluff on what would happen if a Hellfire Gem was implanted in a body and told him he had a 50% chance of surving. (And if he died his soul would be destoyed by the hellfire making him unraiseable.) He took the chance and lived (I rolled a d100 if it was less then 50 he would die) so I feel like I had to give him so powerful abilitys out it.

edited 7th May '12 1:40:40 AM by Envyus

So I just losted a PC and then gained a new one (though she won't be joining until the following week).

Ended up allowing in a blatantly OP build-Executioner/Warlock-and I'm worried it'll overshadow the other striker too much. I mean, she's single target centric whereas the monk is more multi-target, but still.

Ahh well, hopefully none of the players will complain.

Blatantly overpowered by your standards? I'm getting worried...

Ha. Well, it's a "dual striker" meaning that it's found a way to get access to two strikerr features at once (Warlock's Curse and Attack Finesse). It only works when using MB As, but due to Assassin's Strike, that's not a huge downside.

I'm not certain how it'll actually play. After all, Greg's Blistering Flourish allows for comprable max damage. But Greg can't use Blistering Florish while expending encounter attacks so it's a bit skeevier.

Mostly, I'm thinking that the ninja's boons will just be less powerful overall to compensate for the otherwise more powerful build.

Damnit, this campaign has so much awesome shit, but a lot of it is weighted towards the end of paragon tier or epic tier. History shows campaigns tend not to last that long, even with my, frankly, downright frantic leveling pace. Damnit all!

>Running a GURPS game
>Starting a new campaign
>Superheroes
>Players are basically all psychopaths masquerading a superheroes
>Sent back in time to the 70s
>Intended them to go through a government conspiracy to get it back
>On a whim, have them land in a drug warehouse
>Players steal drugs
>Players kill several civilians and cops, steal a car, and rob a store
>Players begin setting up a vast cocaine empire
>Game has gone from Doom Patrol in 2012 to The Wire with superheroes in 1973 three hours after it started

This is going to be glorious.

edited 13th May '12 8:58:14 PM by rumetzen

One of my buddies, who's played D&D for a decade or so, recently attempted to GM for the first time; only to have his campaign fizzle out because Poor Communication Kills. He and I have different opinions on exactly who shoulders most of the blame; him or his players. I didn't actually participate in the game, so I naturally feel my unbiased opinion is correct, but I'd like to post the story and get some new perspectives.

Basically, his game ground to a halt because the players didn't know jack about the story. They knew who their immediate superiors were and what orders they were given, but nothing more about the campaign world or the bigger picture. The GM didn't volunteer any information about the places they went or the cultures they met; nor the motivations of the people who gave them orders, or the people who attacked them.

The GM didn't give them any information, because they didn't roll knowledge checks. The players didn't make unprompted die rolls to find out about the story, ergo they didn't care about it. He figured he wouldn't force information they don't care about down their throats, so he didn't volunteer any of the greater narrative.

I... cannot express how retarded this sounds to me. The way I see it, the players showed up. Six people cleared between six-eight hours of their Saturday to come play his game; that clearly shows they care about the story, or at least they did until he hid it from them. From then on, it was his responsibility to unfold the plot. If the players didn't think to make unprompted die rolls to find out about the game world, he should have taken the initiative to tell them the general knowledge any inhabitant would know, and try to pique their interest beyond that.

As part of his "they just didn't care" argument, he cites the fact that no character had max ranks in Knowledge: Local, History, Geography, or Nobility and Royalty; the players wouldn't have even been able to make the DC to learn about the world if they tried. Instead, the ranks they put into Spellcraft, Jump, Spot, and Listen prove that all they cared about was dice rolling.

My counter argument was that if the earth shattering plot twist (the rebel leader is the king's son!) can only be learned via a DC 30 Knowledge Nobility check, he screwed up. He should have figured out a way to convey that information that didn't require a character with 18 Int and several skill boosting items rolling at least a 10 (Epic Six game; +9 was the maximum bonus from skill ranks). Furthermore, the player's decision to put skill ranks into Spot, Listen, Bluff, etc, doesn't prove they didn't care about the campaign setting; it proves they did care, as they were preparing to interact with the world in a dynamic way. They were well within reason to expect to be given some motivation to do so.

I mean... Jesus. Am I as right as I think I am here? Because to me his approach seems like a cock up on a heretofore undreamed of scale. Comments, opinions, expressions of sympathy for my wounded brain? Anyone?

...Wow. Yeah, I'm with you on this.

Yeah, totally with you on this.

This logic of "they didn't roll up unprompted checks, therefore they don't care" is flawed as can be. In many tables, including mine, players don't do checks until especially prompted by the GM (or after asking him/her if they could), so the players might not even be aware of this option. And what kind of situations would that lead into?

• "You now arrive in a small town."
• "What does it looks like?"
• "Do you have Knowledge (local lore)?"
• "Huuuh, nope."
• "So you don't know what the city looks like."
• "But my eyes are open, right ?!"
• "You still don't see it."

At that pace, he will soon berate players for not saying they load an arrow into their bow, and therefore shoots blank, and give them malus on their roll because they didn't say they remove their armor before sleeping, and therefore are tired!

And hiding plot twists behind random Lore check is also a pretty bad idea. It's like a movie that can only be resolved because the main character tripped on the script and read it. Especially in a Epic Six game, you don't have that much ranks to put in your skills, you will chose the ones that let you stay alive or, you know, complement the character and make it playable. You can't exactly shun a mercenary for not knowing who's who in the nobility.

Vicious cycle: he doesn't give any information because he thinks they don't care, and since they get nothing, they don't care about the story... Sad story, really.