Keeping you players alive for dummies

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Willy

Nice, but to be really pedantic you should place the points in the right order:

Perhaps this was the joke?

[Lovewyrm]

Don't fight to the death with humans and most animals, and only fight to the death with horrors/monsters.

And even then, if the players can flee, just encourage them to flee.

In other words:
I throw a rock at the encroaching wolf to scare it off.

VS

The wolf and I will now enter a 20 turn battle to the death.

[Boge]

My group used to allow the players to spend available character points as luck rolls. You could allow this and the players could spend them on critical roles to keep their characters alive.

The thing is, death in Gurps has to be a real possibility or the players will play out of character, going up against challenges they don't have a chance of succeeding (because they do because the GM is protecting their characters from dying).

"Occasionally, characters will fall, and the fear of that occurring is essential to maintaining suspense during the game. If the players are not afraid of their character's taking damage from a fall, they will take all sorts of out-of-character risks." Think of this message figuratively.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Boge

The thing is, death in Gurps has to be a real possibility or the players will play out of character, going up against challenges they don't have a chance of succeeding (because they do because the GM is protecting their characters from dying).

It's entirely possible to fail at what you're trying to accomplish without your character getting killed. That said, there are some players who will play their characters in an arguably-inappropriate manner if they know they have plot armor, which can potentially ruin immersion for everyone. If you have such a problematic player, one option is certainly to have death be on the table. Other options are to talk to the player outside of the game to see if they're willing to treat things seriously, to have the player design a character who actually should behave in the manner they do (someone who legitimately cannot die, has a Delusion to a similar effect, has a straight-up death wish that makes them take extremely risky actions, or similar), to boot them from the game, to run a campaign where going up against impossible odds and coming out the other side still alive is part of the point, or probably any number of other solutions I'm not thinking of.

That's assuming you don't want player character death to be a thing that can randomly happen. Many groups prefer for death to be a possible failure state, and for those the rules will work as-is.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Varyon

It's entirely possible to fail at what you're trying to accomplish without your character getting killed. That said, there are some players who will play their characters in an arguably-inappropriate manner if they know they have plot armor, which can potentially ruin immersion for everyone. If you have such a problematic player, one option is certainly to have death be on the table. Other options are to talk to the player outside of the game to see if they're willing to treat things seriously, to have the player design a character who actually should behave in the manner they do (someone who legitimately cannot die, has a Delusion to a similar effect, has a straight-up death wish that makes them take extremely risky actions, or similar), to boot them from the game, to run a campaign where going up against impossible odds and coming out the other side still alive is part of the point, or probably any number of other solutions I'm not thinking of.

The causality can work differently than that. If death IS an option, and if players are made aware of this from the outset, then they have a motive, right from the start, NOT to play in the arguably inappropriate manner to which you refer; that is, you may prevent them from ruining immersion in the first place. To me that's the strongest reason to have a chance of player character death be the default option.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Boge

My group used to allow the players to spend available character points as luck rolls. You could allow this and the players could spend them on critical roles to keep their characters alive.

Note this would seem to be a significantly worse deal than Buying Successes.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Note this would seem to be a significantly worse deal than Buying Successes.

But significantly better than allowing neither.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Note this would seem to be a significantly worse deal than Buying Successes.

Would it be? IIRC, for Buying Successes you're paying [1] per upgrade from Critical Failure to Failure to Success to Critical Success. Getting two rerolls is rather likely to result in a Critical Failure becoming a Success, unless you're operating at very low effective skill, which makes you pay [1] and get the benefit of paying [2] under Buying Successes. It's not quite as reliable at turning a Failure into a Success as under Buying Successes, but you've got a chance at turning anything into a Critical Success for only [1]. I think that, so long as you aren't trying to turn a normal Success into a Critical Success, it works out to be roughly comparable to Buying Success, but is a bit more interesting at the table.

[dcarson]

Buying Successes is 2 CP from Crit Fail to Fail, 1 from Fail to Success and 2 from Success to Crit Success. So 5 CP to go from Crit Fail to Crit Success.