re-joining the party after a death

[zot]

We do enjoy challenging conflicts (physical and otherwise) but if we were to tally each and every one of the conflicts, we'd probably find that the vast majority of them were resolved without a single roll and just passed over in the narrative because when the PCs seriously outclass someone, I don't even bother to roll dice. It's only for the conflicts that are "interesting" that we go to the dice.

Originally Posted by Skarg

Almost worse is when the game world automatically scales up the threat/experience level of everything I meet to match (or be slightly less than) whatever the PCs' experience level is - that's like a surreal nightmare to me.

Hah. Maybe this is an alternative that you weren't considering, you be the judge...

The threat levels of the conflicts we actually play out do tend to increase with PC experience so it might appear to be automatic scaling but it's not. It's because I skip over conflicts that would be boring to play out with something like, "OK, after a short while they realize they're seriously outclassed and they beg for mercy. Are you going to kill them?"

Because, what's the point of spending time on the boring stuff? We just skip it to get to the interesting stuff.

[JLV]

I think the real issue that ecz was addressing wasn't so much "fairness" per se, but the concern that if a character died out of a reasonably "high level" group, that a new, starting level, character would be at a significant disadvantage in dealing with threats the rest of the party could easily master. Which, in turn would tend to make the "new guy" die faster, which would cause another new character to appear, who would be at even more of a disadvantage, thus causing a sort of player "death spiral" that would eventually cause that player to just drop out, since all he does is die, die, die. So, in that sense, the "fairness" issue is more to the human being involved in the game than it is to the game itself.

Personally, I find this LESS of a problem in TFT (and it may be substantially less under the new Attribute cap and XP rules) than in most other games, simply because the difference between a 32 point and a 40 point character isn't totally overwhelming the way it would be between a 1st level character and an 8th level character in D&D (or even a 4th level character, for that matter). However, it may still be a problem, since it becomes a fine balancing act for the GM between creating challenges that are tough for a 40 point character, as opposed to the 32-pointer in the same group without either boring the players owning the higher experience characters or simply annihilating the low-experience character all the time.

[ecz]

Originally Posted by JLV

I think the real issue that ecz was addressing wasn't so much "fairness" per se, but the concern that if a character died out of a reasonably "high level" group, that a new, starting level, character would be at a significant disadvantage in dealing with threats the rest of the party could easily master. Which, in turn would tend to make the "new guy" die faster, which would cause another new character to appear, who would be at even more of a disadvantage, thus causing a sort of player "death spiral" that would eventually cause that player to just drop out, since all he does is die, die, die. So, in that sense, the "fairness" issue is more to the human being involved in the game than it is to the game itself.

exactly what I mean.

not sure all my players were "human being" however, given the rude actions some did. :)

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by zot

Hah. Maybe this is an alternative that you weren't considering, you be the judge...

The threat levels of the conflicts we actually play out do tend to increase with PC experience so it might appear to be automatic scaling but it's not. It's because I skip over conflicts that would be boring to play out with something like, "OK, after a short while they realize they're seriously outclassed and they beg for mercy. Are you going to kill them?"

Because, what's the point of spending time on the boring stuff? We just skip it to get to the interesting stuff.

I agree that when people are outclassed and know it, they should mostly prefer to try to survive somehow (fleeing, scattering, parleying, surrendering, etc).

However it was when the PCs started entirely outclassing most normal people that we started feeling the game system was broken and added magic item breakdown rules and revised the experience system, then started redesigning, and then converted to GURPS, where there was a lot more room to have widely different experience levels but still have struggles with much less capable people be unpredictable and interesting.

But yes, that's another view of the same thing I like to do, where it's not that the world scales to match PC ability, but it's what they do and how the world reacts that tends to naturally lead to more challenging situations... but a large part of it is the players/PCs responsibility to choose what they do and how conspicuously they do it.

I tend to like to still play out situations where powerful people engage much weaker ones, to see what actually does happen. In a serious campaign, I don't find it boring. For one thing, I don't like to dehumanize people or belittle violence. For another, I think that if you treat even low-skill people as people who want to live, often situations play out in unpredictable ways that can lead to various sorts of interesting and fun situations. For instance, if a group of NPCs does realize they're outclassed and they run in all directions, they may well be quite able to escape and tell the tale, raise the alarm, etc.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JLV

I think the real issue that ecz was addressing wasn't so much "fairness" per se, but the concern that if a character died out of a reasonably "high level" group, that a new, starting level, character would be at a significant disadvantage in dealing with threats the rest of the party could easily master. Which, in turn would tend to make the "new guy" die faster, which would cause another new character to appear, who would be at even more of a disadvantage, thus causing a sort of player "death spiral" that would eventually cause that player to just drop out, since all he does is die, die, die. So, in that sense, the "fairness" issue is more to the human being involved in the game than it is to the game itself.

Personally, I find this LESS of a problem in TFT (and it may be substantially less under the new Attribute cap and XP rules) than in most other games, simply because the difference between a 32 point and a 40 point character isn't totally overwhelming the way it would be between a 1st level character and an 8th level character in D&D (or even a 4th level character, for that matter). However, it may still be a problem, since it becomes a fine balancing act for the GM between creating challenges that are tough for a 40 point character, as opposed to the 32-pointer in the same group without either boring the players owning the higher experience characters or simply annihilating the low-experience character all the time.

Have you guys had problems with that in TFT?

I don't think I have. The first TFT adventure I ran had 32-point PCs joining a fairly large expedition with a wide range of experience (IIRC the best were 40 points). And thereafter the parties were all mixed levels and I didn't really ever notice this being much of an issue except in excessive cases, and in the natural cause & effect kind of way. There were regrets about how yes, weaker characters tend to be more vulnerable so you do what you can to protect them and sometimes fail, not that much different from how the experienced people die sometimes too. But that just mainly seemed natural and interesting to me.

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
In the longest running campaign I GM'ed the best players got up to the low or mid 50 attributes. They were a pair of fighters and they were awesome! Death on legs.

A party member died and Dave rolled up a new 32 attribute wizard. Staff, pointy hat, best combat spell was the 1 hex Fire spell.

The three of them continue on a forest trail with enemies stalking them.

The party is going along and is ambushed by 30 tough bandits. These guys are in heavy armor, have huge bows, big pike axes, the whole works. A suitably tough fight for the mega characters.

The NPC leader screams, "Kill the Wizard!"

The look on Dave's face was priceless.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Skarg]

That did tend to be one of the main counter-balances to wizards and pole weapon users and people trying to use gunpowder weapons or molotails - they attracted a lot of attacks and tended not to survive long (both PCs and NPCs) unless/until they were fortunate and used careful tactics, developed defenses, etc.

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Did everyone forget the rule of fun? :-D

The normal thing would be to ask the players, and each campaign with different players or even different themes on the campaign might demand different solutions. If you want a realistic sandbox campaign with opportunities to make your own future out off, but with no planned story, one solution will be more appropriate.

And if you have a very strong central story on rails but with drama and epic moments like a book, a character death might mean the campaign comes to a halt, and so you need other back up plans for new characters or use house rules to limit the final death of characters to begin with.

A good RPG should encourage all types of campaign modes if not all type of campaigns.

GM's went from being authoritarian gods to now being not needed in many new Indie RPGs. But in general, players should have a say and GMs should have fun too.

[JLV]

Nils, I think perhaps you are being a tad harsh here; I don't think any of us have "[forgotten] the rule of fun." Some of us have been playing this for 40 years now. Do you think ANY of us would have done that if we weren't having fun? ;-)

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Sorry if I came across as harsh, was never my intention. :-) I edited my post and added a smiley up front.

The point is that I don't like a system that tells me how to play, how to advance a campaign and what style I should play. I want some suggestions and maybe some help, like the usual questions one should ask before starting a campaign to get everyone to have similar expectations. And I felt this thread turned a little bit into finding the "right" way to play a TFT campaign. Back in the days the acceptable choices were but a few, today there are so many more. So if it is one area that I want TFT to change it would be in that area. Open up for different ways of playing, but keep the old school nostalgic feel.