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Old 10-14-2018, 05:37 PM   #71
Phantasm
 
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Default Re: Killing PCs

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Originally Posted by edk926 View Post
If Death is required of Life, is it really possible for Death to die?
Don't confuse the issue with logic. ;)
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Old 10-14-2018, 06:13 PM   #72
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Default Re: Killing PCs

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Originally Posted by edk926 View Post
If Death is required of Life, is it really possible for Death to die?
That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.
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Old 10-14-2018, 06:34 PM   #73
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Default Re: Killing PCs

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Originally Posted by Phantasm View Post
I've met dozens of players that are "if it has stats, I know how to counter those stats and kill it." Half of them are able to back that up. This is why for the high-level plot device characters (like Death!) I don't give them stats.
Because what is the point of giving something the same categories of stats as the characters? Doing so is defining it in relation to the characters. What do the characters do in most games? Kill their adversaries.

So yeah, if it has stats in the same categories as the player characters—that is, defining it in relation to the characters—you can kill it. You’re defining it as a killable item.

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Dice don't generate drama, they introduce randomness.
Which introduces drama. Predictability takes away from drama.

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It is not important for the party to succeed at all endeavors. Failures can move the story in unexpected, interesting directions.
By contrast, I agree here. It’s a big part of why I have challenges that are near impossible to overcome. Failing often leads to interesting situations. For example, the one player character death in my current campaign led to an adventure to pay for her resurrection.

Furthermore, running away from something often leads to a burning desire to come back and defeat it later. This goes back to the earliest RPGs—one of the first tables Dave Arneson made was the evasion table to see what happens when his players ran away.
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Old 10-14-2018, 08:22 PM   #74
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Default Re: Killing PCs

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If the goal was to tell a story that was pre-scripted and had to flow from A to B to C to D, then yes. An RPG is an awful way to do it. But that's not the kind of story you should try to tell with an RPG.

Dice don't generate drama, they introduce randomness.
If your goal is a story, you want drama. Randomness can sometimes provide inspiration when you're stuck, but a story isn't just a chain of events -- it has a plot. And randomness is a great way to generate a chain of events, but it will not generate a plot.
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It's not "a" campaign, it's all of my campaigns. Plot devices don't need stats. You are welcome to give them stats, but they don't, ever, need them. Insisting otherwise doesn't make it true.
It needs stats if the expectation is that it can be overcome/exploited/whatever via the tools the game gives you to overcome challenges. This doesn't have to be the case and sometimes leads to lame events (example: D&D campaign I'm in, someone was infected by a curse of lycanthropy. It started on being a bit of a side story -- and then a cleric cast remove curse, and poof, gone). On the other hand, it's somewhat unfair if you give people tools, and then don't let them use those tools.
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And maybe Anthony. But, he's always hard to read.
I don't stat everything out, but that's more about laziness; I'll come up with numbers if it actually matters.
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Old 10-14-2018, 09:49 PM   #75
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Default Re: Killing PCs

Since XP does not exist in GURPS, killing everything is less of an incentive for players, especially since there are so many way to make their characters suffer without killing them. Just have an entity they attack curse them with Blindness and Neurological Disorder (Crippling) and watch the fun.
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Old 10-14-2018, 11:27 PM   #76
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Default Re: Killing PCs

There have been threads here about giving CP for killing stuff so some people play GURPS that way.
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Old 10-14-2018, 11:47 PM   #77
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Default Re: Killing PCs

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Originally Posted by Phantasm View Post
If Death doesn't have stats, then the GM is free to say "okay, you killed a physical manifestation, but Death still lives" when the PCs try the stunt.
I can say that whether 'Death' has stats or not.



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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It needs stats if the expectation is that it can be overcome/exploited/whatever via the tools the game gives you to overcome challenges.
No it doesn't. I'm perfectly capable of winging encounters without any stats.



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Since XP does not exist in GURPS...
Sure it does. It just goes by a different name.
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Old 10-15-2018, 12:24 AM   #78
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Default Re: Killing PCs

Either the player decides he wants to play another character or wants to stop with the game. Then the GM and the player manufacture a way for his character to die heroically, if the player wants to.

When a players acts out of character, stupidly with multiple warnings, it might be that his characters dies, horribly (I've seen this only happened once in my 28 years of player/GM time with someone who wanted to jump onto the face while the PC was only 10 cm tall adn with all of his powers reduced, in a SUpers campaign. The GM warned him multiple times that he could be killed instantly and without much effort on the enemy's side).
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Old 10-15-2018, 02:05 AM   #79
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Default Re: Killing PCs

Quote:
Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
No it doesn't. I'm perfectly capable of winging encounters without any stats.
If the PCs skills matter, you have to specify how difficult various means of influencing the situation are. Those are stats.
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Old 10-15-2018, 06:47 AM   #80
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Default Re: Killing PCs

With respect to stats vs no stats, I don't even see how this is an argument. How can less information be better than more? Obviously time is limited and you can't stat everything, but how could having those stats be harmful? They can only help or at worst be useless, right?
And of course we all know PCs do unexpected things. An NPC meant to be a plot device can turn into something else. The PCs might not interact with your plot device in the exact way you expected them to, and you can either shut that down or see where it goes--seeing where it goes will usually be more fun, and respects the players' roles in shaping the story. As GM you don't really have the luxury of deciding what's a plot device, because events shouldn't be entirely in your control.
In DF, some characters can buy a Patron advantage that gives them a low chance of receiving direct divine intervention once in a while. If they happen to be in a conflict with your untouchable plot device when this happens, what is the result? As a GM, I usually have to make an on-the-fly decision when this happens (since my time is limited and I don't have everything statted). Surely the game would be better though, and my life easier, if I somehow magically had the stats ready for the god being summoned as well as the "untouchable plot device." That way we could have some fun letting the dice and the mechanics help decide what happens, which is part of the fun of what rpgs are all about in my mind--seeing what happens when no one, not even the GM, knows how the story will continue!
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