Thread title. In brief, I had a player who said that he couldn't continue playing unless I could confirm that his PC wouldn't be killed.I told him "That's up to you, if you get unlucky your PC could indeed die" and he insisted that his PC's death would sort of ruin the plan he had for him. I said "Yes, that's what
>>97706332either dont play with him at all or make a compromise
>>97706335Shit my original post got cut offI mean I booted him but I'm like...How do you even get players like that
>>97706340I don't understand the question. The player was clear about something he wanted from the game. You were clear you weren't willing to run a game that guaranteed that. You did not play together.They all lived happily ever after.
>>97706332When you plan to kill off a PC you need to discuss it with a player before the session.
>>97706332I think it's a good thing if a player has an attachment to their character as it means they give some amount of shit. You can take the compliment that he was at least interested in your game enough to make a sincere character, assuming he did it with your rules/world.However, once the backstory is finalized and submitted, you forfeit most narrative control over to the DM.Unfortunately you got someone who wanted to write a book about their OC rather than play a game.
>>97706546>planning to kill a pcThis is a games board sir. Please go story fag elsewhere. >>97706354This exactly. If the player is a pussilimus he can go write about his oc elsewhere.
>>97706340>How do you even get players like thatIt's not THAT far fetched, and there is games that enable it either with "magical" revives or backup clones. eg. Paranoia does the latter. Death is still a setback, you lose gear and all "recent" progression. And games like OSR low key circumvent it by encouraging players to remake the exact same character with exact same backstory whenever one dies.Though the player was probably coming from vidya where it's far more common (Dark Souls, Helldivers, Beyond Citadel) or possibly anime (RE:Zero).
>>97706332>"Yes, that's what—Then OP got shot.
>>97706332>Player doesn't want PC to dieDon't play a game in which character death is a possibility.Problem solved.
>>97706332If death happens, it happens. If you plan to kill off a PC, plan it with your player. If you talk about how your players might be in danger because you run brutal games(tm), but you actually mean you can't be bothered to prep and sometimes you'll just toss an encounter in there that the players have no hope of winning and also can't prepare from or reasonably flee from, consider taking a break from running and play a little more.In my experience, this sort of interaction usually happens because the DM comes across as overly antagonistic and the player doesn't feel like they'll be allowed to actually get to enjoy their character.
>>97706579> However, once the backstory is finalized and submitted, you forfeit most narrative control over to the DM.Strongly disagree. I play my character, the GM plays the world. The narrative is what forms, and both players and GM are responsible for and in control of parts of it.
>>97706332>>97706340player wants to be a novelist not a player.probably too used to fanfic writing and online freeform RP.>>97706354>They all lived happily ever after.I'd imagine the player was not actually happy.>>97706546>When you plan to kill off a PC you need to discuss it with a player before the session.>>97706896>If you plan to kill off a PC, plan it with your player.The dice aren't very communicative about their intentions unfortunately.
>>97706332>I said "Yes, that's whatthe player killed op
>>97706332Fulfil the letter and not the spirit.10000 years of dormancy when he should've died.Immortality as a million disconnected non-functioning pieces as he slowly disintegrates, spirit trapped in his broken down husk.Immediate teleportation to some completely unplayable, useless area when he should've died.Recruitment on death's door by the forces of heaven/hell, immediate removal from proceedings.'But that would ruin the plan I had for my character!'He already implied nothing short of death would ruin his plan by his one caveat, tough shit.
>>97707009>player tries to communicate what he wants>play shitty passive-aggressive mind gamesYou're a cunt.
>>97706980> The dice aren't very communicative about their intentions unfortunately.Then you're not planning to kill off a PC, now are you?
>>97706332The player knew characters can die in the game you were playing, right?
>>97706332This is why TSR editions call the DM the Referee.The DM should be an impartial judge, dramatizing commentator, and narrator in a match of The Game vs The Players ((not so) secretly rooting for the players because they are the valiant home team champions, but never enough to color his rulings for he is an immaculate judge of utmost integrity). He moves The Game's pieces for it, because it has no hands, and devises the traits, moves, and strategies of The Game, the World and its Creatures, true to his concept of them in his own head because they are unable to think its own thoughts.But if That Orc would run up and gore the wizard with his spear, then the DM HAS to move The Orc's piece up to the wizard and stab at him because that's what The Game's move would be, and if the dice say the orc hits, then The Game has successfully wounded if not perhaps outright killed the Player's beloved wizard character Chuffy Von Salamancer.
>>97706980> player wants to be a novelist not a player.probably too used to fanfic writing and online freeform RP.You're making that judgement with only OP's word for it. If I were you, I'd be more conservative with how thickly I pile on the judgement.
>>97706963I said most because I was thinking in terms of works building. A PC backstory can add things to the world that the DM may not have originally added. When it's submitted, the PC only affects their character.You make a good point, so lets say you lose some amount of narrative control as you still can dictate events in the game as freely as in the backstory.
>>97707103Ah, fair if that's what you meant. Yeah, you share narrative control. I do think players at a good table have more impact on the world building than they might think, though! For example, if you play a cleric and you make a certain religious gesture, calling it the Salut au Solaire or something like that, that is now 100% a thing in the world, haha.
One of my players brought this up to me after the first session. I told her that I'm not going out of my way to kill the party, but if a death happens, it happens. I do have a contingency plan for a TPK where the party will have the ability to battle their way out of the hell.
>>97707309Telling the PC you're not going out of your way to kill a PC is a good way to deal with this, yeah.I had a GM tell me that they were going to try their hardest to kill the party, which really just tells me they don't know what they're doing.
>>97706546You are the problem. The PC dies if they get unlucky while making bad decisions. It isn't "planned".
>>97707398No, the player who says a GM planning to kill off a player should talk to the player is not the problem. The GM who plans to kill the player and pretends it's the player's or dice's fault is the problem. If they actually run the game in good faith as you suggest, that's perfectly fine, but there are literally adversarial GMs who do this for a laugh.
>>97707453It's best for the story for that PC death, newfag
>>97707463Been here for over 20 years, kid. Learn how to fucking sentence and understand that being the GM is not like being a writer.
>>97707478How many of those years has this place actually existed?
>>97707495/tg/ was created in 2007
>>97707495Around 22
>>97707521Sure, but 4chan started in like 2003. Newfag was in use since, what 2005/6, to refer to people who are new to the site.
>>97707521Rofl, that comic
>>97706896>If you plan to kill off a PC, plan it with your player.By entering the dungeon full of traps and monsters you acknowledge and agree to the risk of bodily harm and/or death. If you don't, go somewhere safe or play a no-violence game instead.
>>97707009>He already implied nothing short of death would ruin his plan by his one caveat>t. failed basic logic
There can be consequences of failure, including combat loss, less severe than character death - such as captivity, gear loss, limb loss or other such persistent injury (which in world with healing magic doesn't have to mean permanent injury). And re-gaining your footing from such setback can be engaging adventure in its own right.Unfortunately /tg/ won't acklowledge that, because in /tg/'s perspective there's only three options - meat grinder games treating characters as completely disposable, D&D where character death just works as written, and storygames where any loss, setback, or player inconvenience become implicitly impossible.As for making this work at an actual table, that's down to agreement with the particular people involved. So your chances will vary, but it shouldn't be any worse than trying to push this idea here.
>>97706332By default I'm ok with my PC dying if it comes to combat, but not by GM fiat. And so far all the GMs I played with have also assumed that default.
>>97706980>I'd imagine the player was not actually happy.A lot happier than he would have been playing with a GM that didn't agree with his basic conception of RPGs.
>>97706332>not even killing the playerngmi You should have explained it as >if you make bad choices and get unlucky your PC could indeed die Its about player decision making. You as the gm have to be responsible in large part for making sure the information players have to make those decisions is good actionable information though. Some of it is players being able to ask good questions too. If the dialogue breaks down the game breaks down.
>>97707559Not what I said. Your example is fine. The GM planning to kill a PC would be that, but then having rocks fall on them or by having a high level ghost appear, one shot the player, then leave.
>>97706748>And games like OSR low key circumvent it by encouraging players to remake the exact same character with exact same backstory whenever one dies.seriously? That's not "old school" at all. TTRPGs in the 70s and 80s had your ROLL a new character, or rather have a pile of filled out character sheets (all rolled, not identical copies) ready before play even began.Guess those OSR bros are all phonies.
>>97706748>And games like OSR low key circumvent it by encouraging players to remake the exact same character with exact same backstory whenever one dies.lol who told you that?
>>97706332Sounds like a Critical Role tard who expected a 100% scripted narrative like that is. Fortunately you can avoid almost all of them by running something that isn't D&D.
>>97706748>>97708017>>97708075From personal experience and reading others' anecdotes in the prior decade (less so in this one,) that's how OSR games have been commonly introduced for new people. Whether or not this was a common practice in the 70s and 80s is not something I think anyone can quantify given how sparse such stories are. But for people who came from the world dominated by the d20 system, 4e, PF1e, CRPGS+JRPGs, YA Fiction and so on, they often had this baggage of being overly-invested in their characters. Remaking "the same" character but being effectively a new person was a halfway point that served as training wheels. I have no clue if this is current since I've not been involved with broader OSR chatter since As a small additon, it also, to a degree, mirrors how in the 90s and early part of the 00s there was that joke about how if your character named for example "Gary Gygax" died, the party then meets on the road a new person named "Bary Bybax". But that seemingly fell out of fashion by the 2010s in favor of some combo of "narratively-appropriate" deaths with asspulls to mitigate the extremes of random die rolls, threats being tuned to never quite be truly lethal or to only escalate to that point once there was ample access to resurrection spells, or lots of fudging die rolls.All just my own experience with things though, might be skewed.
>>97708374After posting this I remembered another point:Quite simply a lot of games just die before any of the characters can, but this was especially an issue in the mainstream when the OSR was new. Many people were not used to character death being a thing at all.One element of this was that online games were new and provided WAY more opportunity for flaking. But for those that had reliable players (including IRL games) there was seemingly a huge rash of games in the late 2000s and early 2010s that involved lots and lots of extra options and power given to the PCs. Often this resulted in things like PCs being able to do tons of damage and crowd control for their levels, but having relatively weak defenses and normal amounts of HP. This caused many games to fizzle out due to the inability for anything to be a real back and forth challenge - anything that would normally be appropriate was in fact too weak, an anything that would be able to withstand a few rounds of getting hit would be such a jump in difficulty class or level, that it would instead risk annihilating the party. Balancing this was a repeated problem brought up in forums and places like rpgstackexchange and contributed to DM burn out.Thus, many people didn't understand how to deal with this aspect of a game because it never came up, and it felt tedious if you were used to character creation taking a long time due to all the options if you were past level like, 2. Training wheels helped some familiarize themselves with it.I have yet to see a similar method for helping people get used to encumbrance.
>>97708409>I have yet to see a similar method for helping people get used to encumbrance.This might sound heretical, but tracking app.
>>97708374Seems a bit skewed but no real idea what you played and where a decade ago. The entire time I've been involved (2013ish to now) OSR character generation is very light compared to the list of games like >d20 system, 4e, PF1e, CRPGS+JRPGs, YA Fiction so making new characters has never been difficult. There isn't much backstory to characters so they may have overall similar initial characteristics but all necessarily become different over time. There are exceptions like Beyond The Wall, with that YA focus but its very unsuited to Bob II the Fighter style replication. It seems like you're mashing together the 90s and story focused fudging to keep the plot together has nothing to do with osr play. That was a thing well before the 90s as well as continues to be the main mode of play to this day. The entire training wheels thing is foreign to me, but might have been regional.
>>97708493It's specifically a training wheels thing for people who are open to trying it but a bit hesitant, so that they can be eased in. Old habits die hard and when someone you're trying to introduce to a new mode of playing HAS bought-in to play, but shows up on session 1 with a character they wrote 4 pages of information on, you don't want them to feel like the game is not worth their time purely because they haven't yet grasped that approaching things in this way is not appropriate for the game style. You can't refund them that time, so the least you can do is focus on the playing and get them comfortable and invested enough to grasp how things work.
I tell all my Players in a Session 0 that death is a strong possibility in my game if they don't play carefully. The Players almost lost 2 of their PCs due to carelessness, but they already know what they signed up for.
>>97708575I'd read that as "make sure to bring 11ft pole and prod everything twice before I touching it". Which might seem excessive, I'd rather err on the side of caution.
>>97708547I have literally encountered that, said >that's not the type of d&d we're playing, don't worry we can make characters together did that with them and their gf in 15 minutes and got them into the game. They were great players. You don't have to baby people. you just have to be able to clearly and concisely explain.
>>97707054>This is why TSR editions call the DM the Referee.Strictly, they called that role the game referee, the campaign referee, the referee, etc. with r not R. After they adopted DM it became exceedingly rare and the word was often used in a verbal form like "the DM referees" or "while he is refereeing", though of course one who referees is called a referee, as opposed to directly naming the DM.
>>97708575You don't even need to devote a session to telling them that, knowing what game they're playing should make them realize the likelihood their characters will die.
>>97707478>Learn how to fucking sentence
>>97706546OP's not talking about planning his death, OP is saying "If you get into a fistfight with a dragon you're breakfast."
>>97706332Say you won't let his character die and then let his character dieHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
>>97710072That too, just tell them that you intend to kill them with a dragon
Seems like player and GM talking about their expectations of the eventually upcoming game is reasonable. Getting pissed about it on /tg/ seems childish. And in general I have to agree with >>97707584 for the most part. Death doesn't have to be the only outcome of a failed combat encounter. Especially if you play something other than fast and loose dungeon delve tactics where a new character is made in a few minutes. If you set up your group for a grand adventure and campaign where their backstories and characters matter by going from zero to hero, then it is absolutely a legit stance to keep character death to a minimum or even off the table. Conan got captured like a retard in his movie. As a GM you could of course have random mooks slit his throat in a dogpile. Or you could have the evil wizard give him an evil speach, embarrass and wound him further, then cast him out like the defeated dog he is. Movies do it all the time and there is no reason why a GM can't do the same since he has all the power in his hand. Does this mean you should let PCs off the hook when players insist on retarded shit like: "My fresh character makes a dive down the 50 feet steep cliff on rocky terrain!" expecting to stay alive? No. Of course not. I have to assume you play with actually people and not walking strawman arguments. Should this situation still occour you can always say: "No. That would kill your character, which you stated, you don't want to happen. Try something else." It's really that easy.
>>97710419You can just not fight the dragon, or, indeed, not even meet the dragon. How hard do you railroad mr. baitmaster?
>>97710902No railroads, I don't believe in them
