We've never been big on unplanned PC death in our overlapping groups. I was, I later realized, the "killer DM" in college - which experience later became the first chapter of my novel - so I've pretty consistently avoided system-driven PC lethality since then. What simply isn't true for me personally is the statement some people make that, "For the game to be truly exciting, there has to be at least a chance your character/my character will die during play." I've had a hell of a lot of fun playing roleplaying games over the years, and in very few of those sessions was there a chance of player-character death.
That said, let's return to our SOTC session a sec. If Gradok had failed to beat the Block at the end, I'd have been perfectly satisfied to narrate him disappearing under the rubble, tumbling into the underground river and so on. Missing and presumed dead would have been a perfectly good way to leave him. The one-shottedness of the scenario plays into that.
Like you, I talk a mean game about grim gruesome grittiness and the potential for character death, but I'm always hesitant to actually see it happen. More often than not, in the d20/D&D stuff I've run, I've generally never had that much of a problem with the players getting themselves killed, as it is always their choice that puts them in a situation where they knew the risks involved, or simply chose not the Han Solo route: "don't tell me the odds
( ... )
Hmm... just a quick thought... What if having the death flag down mean you /can't/ do risky things? Or rather, that raising the flag means you risk death, but get a whopping big bonus to do stuff! That way, no-one is penalized, but those who risk death are more likely to be able to do their cool stuff, but always with that risk...
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We've never been big on unplanned PC death in our overlapping groups. I was, I later realized, the "killer DM" in college - which experience later became the first chapter of my novel - so I've pretty consistently avoided system-driven PC lethality since then. What simply isn't true for me personally is the statement some people make that, "For the game to be truly exciting, there has to be at least a chance your character/my character will die during play." I've had a hell of a lot of fun playing roleplaying games over the years, and in very few of those sessions was there a chance of player-character death.
That said, let's return to our SOTC session a sec. If Gradok had failed to beat the Block at the end, I'd have been perfectly satisfied to narrate him disappearing under the rubble, tumbling into the underground river and so on. Missing and presumed dead would have been a perfectly good way to leave him. The one-shottedness of the scenario plays into that.
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Buddha
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