How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

The con of playing players that are technically specialized/trained/educated above the level of the player is that it can quickly devolve into nothing but dice rolls. Like rolling against "hacking" skill to see if you can break into a network. Then rolling against "computer programming" to see if you can insert a virus into the system. Sure, you succeed, but what did you "do"? Geeks like me can relate to and make a plausible description of what it actually takes to break into a network and write a virus from scratch, but most can't. Lower tech levels don't run into anything that extreme. At least not the ones I run. Maybe that's why I like the fantasy genre so much. It can be as easy or complex as you like and still be a pretty good read.

That depends on what you're knowledgeable about.

Decades ago, I was invited to trade off with a household of gamers: I would run a session of D&D for them and then they would run one where I was a player. So when it was my turn to play, I created a fighting man, wanting something simple to let me focus on the quality of play. And when the fight started, and I was prepared to have my character attack the foe, they asked, "What do you do?" They wanted a description, or even an acting out, of the actual combat move. They were all members of the Society for Creative Anachronism and took it for granted that everyone was experienced with simulated medieval combat. And I had never done that sort of thing and hadn't a clue. I could do "I roll the d20 to hit the orc," but there was no way I could relate to what that actually involved.

And that, of course, was what GURPS calls "TL3."