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Old 06-05-2020, 12:53 PM   #31
Axly Suregrip
 
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Durham, NC
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

This is part of what makes TFT fun. You get fun stories and memories from the extremes.

Like the time you where facing a dragon, everyone was an they last couple of hit points and suddenly a triple damage from a fighter that was under the dragon in HTH saves the day.

Also the opposite can be a fun story, that time you ambush a bunch of weak hobgoblins and everything went wrong: a weapon broke and a weapon was dropped in the same turn followed by you top fighter taking a triple damage hit. Now the scramble to recover.

Just knowing that any fight might (but usually not) go in an unpredictable direction, keeps it exciting. Not too frequent to make the game feel random but enough to keep it from just be routine.

Good times.
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Old 06-06-2020, 09:32 AM   #32
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

Exactly; TFT is not designed to deliver you a 'win' - it is designed to deliver you a game.
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Old 06-07-2020, 10:31 AM   #33
hcobb
 
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Location: Pacheco, California
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

Dying isn't annoying. Getting stuck at zero ST for the next two days is annoying.
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Old 06-11-2020, 08:21 AM   #34
zot
 
Join Date: May 2018
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Bofinger View Post
Combat is most exciting if the player(s) are in danger of death. Role-playing tends to be least interesting when characters die frequently, making personalities expendable and relationships ephemeral. So characters must be always about to die but never quite do it. This is arguably the central dilemma of most kinds of role-playing.
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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
You're never really about to die if you never do it.

The risk of death has to be actual, or else you're just pretending you're facing that risk.
The players shouldn't be able to see the NPCs' character sheets so they should have no idea whether there is an actual risk of death or not.

It's only important that the players think the risk of death is actual.

I tend to run story-heavy, combat-light adventures and PC tend to last a very long time. The players invest a lot of time into their PCs and they get attached to them.

Because of this, I've found that it's actually very easy to set players on edge and make them fear for their characters' lives.

GMs can use a lot of ways to communicate great risk to players without actually killing many (or even any) PCs at all:
  • kill one (or more) PCs very early on, so the player(s) appreciate the risks of the world
  • kill hired NPCs
  • reduce one or more PCs to 0 before the attackers
    • get killed
    • capture the downed PCs
    • capture the entire group
    • sound an alarm for reinforcements and flee
  • use a large group of very fragile attackers
  • introduce rumors
  • provide physical evidence of danger, such as freshly dead bodies
  • provide witnesses who attest to danger
  • use out-of-world communication
    • background music and sound effects (check out Mike Oldfield's soundtrack to The Killing Fields)
    • comments about how much trouble the group is about to be in

I ran one story where all but one PC was taken out at the beginning but he was able to finish off the threat, drag the rest out, and get them healed up before they died. The players were on edge for the rest of the entire story.
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Old 06-11-2020, 09:59 AM   #35
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

I don't think there is any avoiding the fact that if PC's don't actually die permanently at some significant rate then players are going to figure out they are immortals (and subject to railroading when things start to get risky). It is obviously up to your group as to whether or not you like this, but I don't think it helps to pretend it isn't true. Fake danger is clearly fake to everyone involved.
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Old 06-11-2020, 12:41 PM   #36
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I don't think there is any avoiding the fact that if PC's don't actually die permanently at some significant rate then players are going to figure out they are immortals (and subject to railroading when things start to get risky). It is obviously up to your group as to whether or not you like this, but I don't think it helps to pretend it isn't true. Fake danger is clearly fake to everyone involved.
Yes.


I like to play in and GM games where the GM runs the situation as straight as possible, so the game is about playing those situations, and the players are responsible for figuring out what the situations are, what to do about them, and how to try to survive them.

So, not a planned story. And no "the GM is trying to keep the players alive", nor "the GM is planning to kill or not kill certain characters".

Certain NPCs on the other hand, sooner or later may be trying to kill certain characters, but separating that from GM plans and intentions is one of the things I think makes for a much more authentic and interesting game.

And having serious NPCs seriously trying to kill PCs certainly does not mean that there can't be plenty of combat, nor that the PCs can't survive or won't become attached to the characters that survive. In fact, at least with smart experienced players, it seems to me it tends to result in the players taking their own survival and what they do about it very seriously, and therefore tending to survive pretty well.

When the players know the GM isn't tuning encounters so that they should be able to defeat them, then they take it upon themselves to assess how dangerous situations are, and to do things to stay alive.

And yes they can't read NPC character sheets, but they can use their characters to assess risk. "What equipment do they have? Do they look wounded? How many are there? How strong and experienced do they seem? I silently cast Reveal Magic and look them over." Etc.

Last edited by Skarg; 06-11-2020 at 04:31 PM.
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Old 06-11-2020, 04:28 PM   #37
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

The problem with games where characters are frequently at a real and significant risk of death is that they will therefore die frequently. There's no way around that unless you fudge things.

So, either you live with a high lethality and turnaround of characters, which can be a fun sort of campaign in its own right, or, if you prefer long running campaigns where players develop their characters in depth, you find ways to keep the characters alive.

Either can work, but I know from experience that even in the second sort of game, where players should have worked out they're probably not going to die unless they do something really stupid; they still feel nervous and panic when the s&@t hits the fan precisely because they're so invested in the character.
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Old 06-11-2020, 04:43 PM   #38
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
The problem with games where characters are frequently at a real and significant risk of death is that they will therefore die frequently. There's no way around that unless you fudge things.

So, either you live with a high lethality and turnaround of characters, which can be a fun sort of campaign in its own right, or, if you prefer long running campaigns where players develop their characters in depth, you find ways to keep the characters alive.

Either can work, but I know from experience that even in the second sort of game, where players should have worked out they're probably not going to die unless they do something really stupid; they still feel nervous and panic when the s&@t hits the fan precisely because they're so invested in the character.
Well, but there is a very important (to me) difference between whether the people finding ways to keep the characters alive are the players (possibly with help from NPC allies) or whether that's being done by the GM using their godlike GM powers and abilities to control game situations and outcomes.

I'd say the GM can and should help players save themselves by providing appropriate clues and possibilities to identify and avoid really deadly situations ... NOT just because they are deadly, but because the GM thinks about the situations and assigns appropriate chances the PCs notice and are given appropriate information in time to do something about it.

That is, it's not simply that "characters are frequently at a real and significant risk of death" to a great degree. It's that they're at an appropriate risk for the situation, and a major part of gameplay is the players noticing and reacting to the most dangerous situations in ways that greatly reduce the risk of death, again, as appropriate and possible in the situation, and without the willful benevolent powers of the GM trying to keep them alive.
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Old 06-11-2020, 05:06 PM   #39
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

If they can find ways out of the danger without actually risking themselves then they haven't really been in danger have they. Unless they ignore the danger and behave rashly.

It doesn't matter anyway, we still get excited watching a James Bond film even though we know he's not going to die.
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Old 06-11-2020, 05:27 PM   #40
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Keeping characters alive

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Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
If they can find ways out of the danger without actually risking themselves then they haven't really been in danger have they. Unless they ignore the danger and behave rashly.
Sure they have. They just made good decisions that reduced the odds quite a lot, which is where the gameplay is. There are several levels at which danger can exist, which interrelate and affect each other. Even in Death Test, where the players must proceed through a series of rooms, new players who don't have much idea what to expect or what works, tend to have a very rough time, where experienced players who work well together and make good decisions tend to plow right through it. In a campaign, there tend to be several levels above that where various decisions affect how much the players & PCs know about the situation and its risks, and what their options are like.

It seems to me that one of the great joys TFT (or GURPS) is that the gameplay of all sorts of decisions and choices make a great difference in how likely you are to succeed or fail, live or die, so that you can set up challenging interesting situations and then actually engage those situations and try to be clever enough to do things that let you have a decent earned chance to survive and succeed (or to not do so and have to face even harder situations). Either way, you have an actual game about facing a situation in a way that makes sense.

And it seems to me that most other games very much don't do that, and tend to consist instead of showing up and finding out what the GM had planned, figuring out what they want you to, then sitting through the ritual of abstract combat that mostly involves rolling dice and winning if your characters are better than the foes, which the GM probably calculated already would be close but have the PCs win, or if some die they get easily magically healed. Yay/yawn.

And it seems to me that it's also possible to run TFT in a way that's close to the latter mode, which to me is a great disappointment and missed opportunity.


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Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
It doesn't matter anyway, we still get excited watching a James Bond film even though we know he's not going to die.
It matters to me. There's a reason I'm usually extremely disappointed when I watch most lazy action films. And a reason I don't play D&D, or like railroad adventures.
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