Personally, I find playing a character who can't die about as challenging as playing a game on God mode. It's still fun and I'm with friends, but I could just as well be watching TV because while I don't know the actual outcome, I know what the outcome won't be.

I've played both ways. Consequences appeal to me more. And the bigger the consequence the bigger the appeal for me. Other people I play at this time with aren't that way so I don't sweat it. For me, it's still good times with friends either way.

For me, that's probably the only reason I still bother responding in this thread. The thought that someone is going to come in here an take away from this thread the thought that running a game that's challenging and has consequences is the WRONG way to play just disturbs me. No one has to play that way, but there's no reason they can't if they want to.

I was just trying to gauge your flexibility, I suppose. I know its hard to imagine in the group you are part of and it more just philosophical theory than anything else, but if some or all of you players wanted you to not roll openly, would that just crush your world or would you adapt and go with it? I'm not saying you have to fudge your dice rolls (even though I understand that you view a GM Screen as having no other purpose than to mask your rolls).

There are times that I have built encounters that I thought would be pretty tough and the players devised a way to defeat it with relative ease.

There are times that I have built encounters that I thought would be pretty tough and they were pretty tough.

There are times that I have built encounters that I thought would be pretty tough and they were ten times worse and it was easy for me to see this was going down the path of TPK.

In the former two, live and learn. I may fudge a roll or two in the first scenario to change it from a total cakewalk to a character or two takes some damage. Its still easy, but at least the enemies did something.

The last one though...well, that's no fun for anyone. I didn't mean for it to be that tough, so why should I kill everyone? If I could fudge a couple rolls, give the PCs a chance at a pivotal moment and they pull through to a victory, why not go for that? Sure, there are times where I have had to have enemies leave, and played it off like they figured the rest of the enemies had the PCs dead, so they didn't bother making sure. My players know what I did and they are almost always thankful.

I'm not a "professional" GM. Its a hobby that I enjoy doing. Why should I have to perform to an insane tolerance with the limited time I have available to run a game? If I can have fun and my players have fun because I sometimes cheat, for and against the players, why should anyone try and make me feel like I am doing something wrong?

If I smoke my 3 year old son in Connect 4 a thousand times and then just once, make a bad move so he wins and gets great enjoyment out of beating his daddy in Connect 4, why is that a problem? I think its more a problem that he quits playing me because he has no fun and can never beat me...

Who said anything about not dying?

The GM doesn't have to be out to get you for your character to die. You can die, by chance, in what was theoretically a perfectly balanced firefight. You can die by doing something stupid. But when you die at the hands of the badguys, it should be because the badguys were out to get you for their own game-consistent reasons, not because the GM was out to get you so statted out a fight you couldn't possibly win.

That part of the discussion was about Gygax as a DM. With Gygax as a DM, you could die. Gygax was not about "GM was out to get you so statted out a fight you couldn't possibly win". (well, Temple of Horrors was, but everyone knew that going in. It wasn't like it was just the GM and the players were all WTF about it.) Many people try to paint him as such, just like Cain is trying to paint me that way. It doesn't mean it's so. His games were, for the most part, silly with a chance of death.

Personally, I like silly with a chance of death although I usually have to settle for either silly or chance of death. Last week felt like both. Best time I had in ages.

Actually, we were talking about GMs who are actively trying to kill your character, and yes Gygax (at least at times) was like that. Not to the point of "here's a Great Wyrm for your level 1s to fight" but he did get a kick out of tricking characters to their doom.

That's not the same as "your characters have a chance to die".

I like to consider D&D's 'deathtrap dungeons' as a whole separate category. There's normal RPGs, and there's 'try THIS, mwahahaha!'; the latter is a special situation.

I dunno, we used to have a lot of fun with Call of Cthulu, and that game ran us an average of a 60% character mortality rate, even when playing "smart".

CoC is a very special case.

Horror games in general, with CoC sitting firmly on the top of that chart^^

And Paranoia fires its laser guns at it, smiling all the while.

1) Are we agreed that characters can die then?

2) If so, are we agreed that characters that do recon, get intelligence, form a plan, and follow that plan are less likely to die than characters who behave in random and bizarre fashions?

3) And do we agree that the GM isn't going to have every possible thing mapped out in advance so the more random and bizarre the characters behave the more he has to make stuff up on the fly?

Edit: 4) Do we agree that, in Shadowrun, it's not the GM's goal to kill the players?

I always played Paranoia as a 1 shot weekend game where the goal is to see how many of the other players you can kill in spectacularly amusing ways with each and every clone.

Paranoia is fun, but I never considered it to really be valid for long term campaigns.

You could play it straight, sure, but where's the fun in that?

I've never actually played Paranoia - you guys aren't exactly inspiring me to run out and change that

Your missing out on one of the all-time best beer and pretzel roleplaying games.

it's just good silly fun. You don't take yourselves seriously and you just have a good time.

You've got 10 clones...just don't blow them all on the loyalty exam.

Six clones. And report to the Termination Center for treasonous misbehavior.

Six clones. And report to the Termination Center for treasonous misbehavior.

You don't have sufficient clearance to have a good time, citizen. Please report to the nearest termination booth.

The Department of Redundant Posts requires your assistance in the Tokomak Reactor sector citizen. Citizens of your security clearance will receive an acceptable level of radiation. Remember - It's not a radiation leak, its a teamwork building - group cleanup exercise!

The computer is your friend.
Trust the computer.
The computer has nothing but your best interests at heart.

The computer had noticed a marked increase in erratic behavior from Jonah12Indigo.
Please report to re-education center AlphaBravo7 for a full personality adjustment.

Remember, the computer is your friend.

Thank you Citizen.

Could you perchance elaborate on how to make a session challenging when the players can't die? This is relevant to the situation with my gaming group, where I have more or less been coerced into not letting the players die and generally letting them kill anything in their path without difficulty (the latter of which I'm more inclined to ignore ).

Seriously? They could fail in any of a million ways.

For one thing, if they're killing people, they'll probably be arrested. It's the 'death' of the character, because you can't play it anymore. Obviously, not a much better solution, though. I was thinking more along the lines of not winning; they don't manage to hack the node, they can't defeat the lock, they're spotted during infiltration, etc.

My point is just that any uncertain success is a challenge, not just avoiding death. The choices aren't either a) murder them or b) let them be gods. Plenty of room between those.

That one's easy.

If Death is not a penalty, Failure can be instead.

Death really just being another form of Failure.




-karma

As others have said, when death stops being a possible outcome, the focus shifts to degrees of success. Stupid play may not kill you, but its still going to cost you, one way or another.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think we're clearly in the "It's acceptable for the PCs to never die, as long as they're not guaranteed success" zone.

What I think I'm hearing is "At some tables, the NPCs can die and the PCs can't. That's not metagaming or cheating or any of those bad words. It's fair."

Easiest to play an ork then. "Orkses is never defeated in battle. If we win, we win. If we die, we die. And dat don't count as defeat. And if we runs for it, we get to come back for anuvver go."

I believe in challenging the players unless their plan is so stunningly awesome that it deserves to go off without a hitch. Sometimes the 'what now' after a perfect plan is better than what you originally had planned.

In general I never plan more than a flowchart, maybe with some enemy stats for anything unique I think they will encounter. The more you plan, the more 'metagaming' (as it is being labeled here) will apply. The less you plan, the better off you are to adjust to unexpected plans/actions that the NPCs should be ready for.



Wrong Orks, though 40K Orks and Shadowrun Orks have some things in common.

I suppose if it became a serious enough issue that the players wanted me to use a GM screen or otherwise "roll in secret", I would. I can't imagine that scenario happening, but if it did I would try to cater to their wishes. It is a trivial thing and doesn't particularly effect my enjoyment of the game one way or the other.



A lot of creating encounters suitable to the abilities of the PCs just comes with experience as a GM. Both in general and within the context of a particular game. It can be challenging for a GM to create encounters well suited to the abilities of the characters in a new game they may not be familiar with. One of the reasons I insist on keeping a copy of every players character is specifically to help me in designing adventures suitable to the characters abilities. If there is any doubt, I will either start with a few non-lethal encounters until I feel confident in my ability to create lethal encounters that aren't likely to result in a TPK or simply err on the side of creating encounters that are more likely to be easier for the characters rather than harder.

I always try to answer two important questions while designing an adventure.

1.)What happens if the characters succeed.
2.)What happens if the characters fail.

Failing to complete a task does not necessarily need to signal the end of an adventure or worse a long running campaign. It may create setbacks, new challenges, require a different approach, but IMO should not result in such total disaster that everything is completely unrecoverable.

Not all combat needs to be lethal in design. I would refer to it as doing the GM two-step if you frequently create lethal encounters and then are forced to fudge dice rolls in order to keep characters alive. That dog's bark is obviously worse than it's bite. Sometimes it just makes more sense that the opposition would have an interest in capturing rather than killing the characters. Creating some non-lethal encounters ensures the character's survival should they fail and can open up several interesting possibilities if that outcome occurs. If the players are aware of potential consequences to their characters should they be captured ahead of time, then even non-lethal combat can have a great deal of tension involved. Or even better, the GM provides just enough rumor and urban legend that the player's imaginations run wild dreaming up horrible consequences for their characters.

When I design encounters in which the characters will be facing lethal force I always have to consider the consequences to the game if a character dies. Generally a TPK would only result if the PCs make a series of foolish mistakes. If they assume their character is immune to death and don't take the threat seriously, that is a mistake. If they insist on staying and fighting to the last man standing, that is a mistake. Too often I think some players forget the whole “run” part of Shadowrun and think they have to stick around and kill absolutely every last bit of opposition before leaving a scene. IMO, that is a huge mistake and is one of the primary causes of character death in games. To encourage PCs to consider making a “run” for it if things go south, I never design encounters in which they would be cornered with no way out except fighting to the last man. If the PCs don't do their homework in regards to the opposition they might face, that is a mistake. Knowing how many guards are on a scene, how they are armed/armored, what their typical patterns are, and what types of tactics and procedures they use is important to success and survival. One of the characters biggest advantages is knowing ahead of time what to expect and being able to plan for it. The opposition rarely has the luxury of knowing ahead of time what they might be facing and planning/equipping themselves accordingly.

I could not agree with Bull more. I have to mod my adventures on the fly so my players feel challenged and get paid for that challenge. I almost never "beat my players" they come out mostly on top and have a great time. I do make the adventures challengeing for my players if they get cooler the opposition is. As the team rises in ability and acclaim the jobs the skill of their opposition goes up.

Other than the one joke, when have I sad that my way is the only way?

If you only plan for A, B, and C, and someone comes up with a Q, then they deserve to bypass A, B, and C. If you read my posts, that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed cakewalk, but it will be easier than going through the door, guns blazing. Anything else, sucks, and is unfair as well as GM cheating.

A very wise gamer taught me that the point of the game is to make players feel awesome, usually by letting their characters be awesome. This is a 100% guaranteed recipe for a fun game. I don't believe that GM success can be measured in PC corpses, nor do I believe that PC death needs to be avoided at all costs. The truth, and my POV, lies somewhere in the middle.

It won't necessarily be easier. Q is likely a stupid or crazy idea, or it would be A. If they want to approach via the incredibly dangerous cliffs, it's not necessarily easier.

I honestly don't think the GM has any business fudging dice rolls. There are so many other things that the GM can adjust on the fly, and there is always Edge to save the players if they have really bad luck.

But I feel that the GM is one component of the game. The other two things are the dice - which both add a random factor and let you quantify things, and the players, who should have the ability to truly affect the game world by their choices and actions. As a GM, I love both of these things - I like it when I can be surprised, when suddenly my scenario is going off in a new, unexpected direction.

It seems pretty clear to me that he's saying "a stupid or crazy idea" should be more successful than "a sane plan based on recon and intelligence gathering". To me, that defies all logic and believability but that definitely would be "letting their characters be awesome".

It also seems clear that he's saying that if the stupid/crazy idea isn't easier than the plan then the situation "sucks, and is unfair as well as GM cheating".

That's definitely not my cup of tea.

Every time you say that doing it some other way is cheating, wrong, sucks, unfair, etc. etc. Mentally it sounds like someone keeps saying "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" over and over.

The same can be said of you as well. At least I find that Cain is making his points in his posts, I am unable to find some point other than "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" over and over for yours. Perhaps that is the point, but if it is, then it has gotten quite stale.

Who says you can't have a crazy plan based on recon? There's a reason why stories of crazy plans become Dumpshock legend, while the others fade into obscurity. Crazy plans not only can work as well as the mundane ones, they're a lot more fun. What sucks is stomping on the crazy plan, because it bypasses the nice, safe, sane run you had planned. That's where the cheating begins.

Sure, but there's no reason the alternate plan should be *easier*. It's not 'evil metagaming' for it to be equally hard, or harder.

Cain, suoq, can you stop it, please?

Whether a plan is devoloped in detail ahead of time or spur of the moment and crazy does not necessarily guarantee success or failure. Even the most well thought out plans can't always account for everything and sometimes those crazy off-the-wall ideas are just crazy enough to work.

OK, consider yourself corrected.

At the time of my posting that the conversation was about "GMs who are out to get you" vs "GMs who are out to entertain you." and you have erroneously assumed that any GM that isn't out to get you is going to not kill the PCs. This is patently false.

PCs can die very easily without having the GM being "out to get them". They can die by picking the wrong fight. They can die from bad luck. They can die from doing something stupid or something heroic (which may well be the same thing).

But they should never die because the GM set them up. The NPCs might set them up, due to the players own actions inviting such a set up, but the difference between being set up by the NPCs and set up by the GM is pretty much what this thread started out as being all about.

(Nor should they die because the GM screwed up, and averting TPK based on his own screw-up is definately a time when the GM should metagame to give the party an out)

Right. There's nothing inherent about either option that is going to dictate one is always better or worse. Sometimes crazy is going to get you killed; sometimes it's going to work. No one (no, not even suoq) is saying that it's ok to stomp on a plan just because the GM didn't pre-plan it. But sometimes crazy means stupid, and stupid has a way of getting players killed in my games. Not because "I hate stupid", but because I'm going to give them realistic opposition regardless of how "crazy" a plan is*. If they think of a way to realistically, or at least believably sneak past my defenses, then crazy or not, I'll let it happen. (With suitable suspense, of course^^)

I'm pretty sure that's all anyone has been trying to say.



*Ok, I have waved them through a couple things because they got me laughing so hard I didn't have the heart to do anything; but that's the exception, not the rule

The GM cant cheat.

He is allowed by the game rules to do all and everything he judge is needed for the game.

If the rules allow you to tweak, adjust and change them and your roll dices, how could you actually be cheating ? you are just following the rules after all.

While technically true, in a cooperative experience game, bending the rules to be an asshat is generally considered cheating^^

Player PC's are challenged enough to die each and every time we set up the dice.
How they go about it is up to them.
How they manage to roll and role-play their way to victory is why we play.

If the character has a good chance of knowing something, I allow the player to "roll relevent knowledge skill: ala Bardic Knowledge".
This of course relies on their rolls.

I assume the opposition (with the many and varied flavours thereof) has the same capabilities as the players, as well as access to the same toys.
Hell, most of our adventures occur because I write down who did what to whom, and why. Instant hooks and ties back to previous misadventures.

Doing stuff because it's cool is fine, because if you don't succeed, it's your character that's going to take the heat for it.

Dicking over the players (unless they've NOT been careful) because "the plot needs to move along" tends to be the sign of a GM that's under pressure to finish a module for review or because their awesome story is at threat and they can't think of a way to get them to want to return to the fold.


Instance: Stuffer Shack. "Oh no," the players groan. "Not this little shoot out in the middle of nowhere again!"
You should smile enigmatically and ask the players to roll a perception....then let them find out why one of the Gangers was looking a bit loopy (the coyote shaman, the chica or the noob are good for this) and have them abruptly shift from Flesh-form insect spirit to a force 6 <insert asswhooping species here> when the gangers open fire. Have the gangers die horrible messy deaths, then the inhuman gaze of the spirit fall upon its onlookers, ready to dispose of witnesses...

Sure, one of your players might remember which isle holds the insecticides, can they get there in time? Is the insect spirit blinded by the last-gasp of the ganger leader and lashing about in a rage? Are the screaming civillians going to die like cattle? Are there more invae coming...?

Think initative.
Take initiative.
Roll initiative.


-Tir.

...And all of a sudden, I have an opening for my campaign.

If that's me, go for it. And don't hold back. None of the "NO WAY IS THAT HAPPENING" backtalk, have the players scared of the night again.
-Gm safety... If the chica, I'd suggest Wasp. The Dope, Ant Warrior. The Shaman, Roach with spit/toxin. But it's your campaign, have at it:) End Discretion


-Tir.

Different definitions of 'easier'. Everything's a tradeoff, but finding out that Mitsu cheaped out on the north wall and used Plasteel-7 could save you a headache in getting into the building (or booby-trapping your Plan B on the way out).

Or better yet.

Finding out that Mitsu paid extra for reinforced plasteel. But the contractor they hired to build the building was having financial issues, and used Plasteel-7 while charging Mitsu for reinforced plasteel

Exactly!