I’m a firm-ish believer that death should be an omnipresent possibility in roleplaying games when you are facing dangerous enemies and dishing it out plenty yourself. But ideally – and I mean ideally only from a GM point of view – characters would skirt death by narrow margins after being pushed to desperate acts of heroism and live to tell some amazing tales. I don’t want to kill characters, in part because I tend to become quite fond of them, but also because that’s not really the goal of GMs. I think every roleplayer has a story about a murderous GM and they’re never fun. Anyone running a game who is out to murder one of their PCs is doing it wrong. A vicious enemy NPC should try to do that, under the GM control, but that should end the moment their round is up in the initiative order.
The possibility of character death – through a combination of bad decisions and bad luck, though hopefully never just one of those things – should always be close enough at hand that the PCs strive to survive and win. D&D is a game for 5 players, 4 of whom should be trying to win. Call of Cthulhu is a game for 5 players, 4 of whom should be trying to find out what inevitable they are delaying. Vampire: the Masquerade is a game for 5 players, 5 of whom will be insufferably pretentious. Of course, I’m not saying anyone is actually dead. What happened to the first expedition into the temple will come to light at a later time. I’m just saying that Floki and Nobody left the temple to go tell Victor, Malicia and Sasha that this site was clearly a bit bigger, older and more dangerous than they imagined; while Uun, Percy and Orny pressed further into the cliffside complex and did not return with any kind of report.
Sigh. My brother and Rolland are both out of the country for this week, and god knows what stagecraft needs done among the Tallens.
This might be a week to beer and pretzel, eh?
Ben Tallen is out for a long time; Rolland hopefully will be released from whatever indentured servitude is being called in Singapore these days. Ben O is so far behind on levels that this would be a terrible time to show up again.
So yeah, beer and pretzels this week. Next week hopefully a crack squad of Malicia, Floki, Victor and someone-piloting-Sasha will stage a rescue attempt.
My trip is getting extended because a sub of ours won’t be done with his work until at least Monday the 27th. I’ll push for flying home Thursday the 30th which means I could play that night. I’ve told them I have to be back home by Thursday Feb 6th which also means I could play that day.
Wow. It appears that you guys really need me around. ;-p
I honestly don’t know what my schedule will be for the next month…I am directing one show and acting in two others in the next month and a half. I don’t have the schedule from the newest one yet. But You may see Ben before you see me.