Thread: Killing PCs
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Old 10-12-2018, 10:47 AM   #27
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Killing PCs

Quote:
Originally Posted by coronatiger View Post
When I'm the GM, I don't intentionally make obstacles that are too powerful for the PCs. There should be some risk of failure, but failure shouldn't be fatal unless the players' dice rolls are really bad AND the opposition actually wants to kill them.

I go out of my way to avoid situations where "correctly roleplaying the character" is likely ending with a dead PC. If the players are actively seeking out such situations, I remind them of the danger, pointing to the risky disadvantages. I'm inclined to disallow disadvantages that I know can be fatal. I think it's cruel to put the players in situations where "correctly roleplaying the character" will get them killed (unless they're trying to have the PCs commit suicide-by-cop or something similar).
There's a difference between "likely" and "possible," though. As I've said, in a quarter century or more of running RPGs (actually, over 40 years, but I adopted my current approach, using published rules, distributing prospectuses, and running campaigns of finite lengths, in the early 1990s), I think I've had only around three PC deaths. On the other hand, any time I run a combat, there is a nonzero probability of death. It may be small, but it concentrates the players' minds wonderfully. It's like adding that tiny pinch of spice to a dish.

And not only death! When I ran a campaign about French students of the smallsword in the early 1800s, I had one scene where three of the students had gone to the theater and were on their way home, and they noticed that they were being followed by a couple of scruffy looking characters, and that up ahead there was a big fellow sort of standing and waiting. So the male member of the group (this class had two women out of six—a country noble's daughter and an actress wanting to play warrior heroines more authentically) decided to be heroic, and ran full tilt at the big guy, sword at ready. This was a Move and Attack, and he missed his roll; the big guy, armed with a substantial club, made a wild swing as he passed, hit his leg, and knocked him down, after which he was out of the action with a broken leg, and the two women had to defend themselves. (They chose to close in on the big guy before the other two caught up with him, and handily disabled him, after which the other two decided the situation had gone south and disappeared into the night.)

I've always remembered the player's comment after they found a surgeon and some rolls were made: "Bad Leg AND Addicted to Laudanum? Sweet!"

Anyway, (a) the player decided that the situation was one where combat was needed, despite the risks (instead of trying to run, or bluff, or put up with the loss of their purses), and (b) the character was roleplayed as someone reckless going for the bold, high-risk move. I thought and still think that real danger was appropriate and indeed that its presence made the choice to fight more dramatic. And there's not that much difference between a risk of death and a risk of permanent crippling, in terms of dramatic logic.
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Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
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