[AD&D] First Time DM'ing it
Callan S.:
Oh right. I mixed up the elf as being the cleric and everything.
Yeah, it's problematic with death. Like if someones reading a novel where a character dies and they don't happen to particularly care about it, it's not a deal breaker. But in roleplay - well, like gold backing a dollar, death backs meaning. When people just shrug about their characters death, particularly if they come back/get resurrected, it topples the thing that backs meaning. Indeed I'd challenge any writer to write a novel where no one in it can die, yet the story doesn't just involve people gadding about and acting on flights of whimsy.
So yeah, I can feel the need to make a great cost to death. But I'm not sure the player feeling any level of punishment works aids in that?
Cliff H:
Quote from: Kevin Vito on December 26, 2010, 03:26:17 PM
The cleric and the thief both died, but came back (sort of).
It's a little funny that a game in which two of the three characters die ends up being described as going a little lite on the party. That's resurrection for you though. I remember when a friend of mine ran a briefly lived Iron Kingdoms campaign for D&D 3.0. He gave a quick rundown of how things were different there mechanically from the baseline game, and when he said death was final and resurrection was not available at all, I swear you could feel the cold chill blast through everyone at the table. There were nervous glances from person to person. Death was final? But... but... Let me tell you, that made death really mean something. Unfortunately, this presented a problem in that the rest of the game was still built on an engine that assumed death was in fact not final, and there weren't any other modifications to the rules that made combat any more survivable. Did wonders for ratcheting up the tension in combat though.
I wanted to ask you about the house rule you introduced in which a flavorful action description got a reroll. Did you go into the game with that idea, or was this something that you introduced on the fly for some reason? You also noted that the players took to it readily. Did they do so because they liked it, or because they needed it? Is your group the sort to put in that kind of extra narrative effort anyway, or only when they'd otherwise be hosed? Basically, it seems like you introduced an option that encouraged greater scene decoration on the part of your players and did so quite successfully, in a game that, in my experience, hasn't generated that in the past. I'm curious to know what gave it wings and how to best reproduce it.
Kevin Vito:
Quote from: Cliff H on January 02, 2011, 07:46:43 AM
I wanted to ask you about the house rule you introduced in which a flavorful action description got a reroll. Did you go into the game with that idea, or was this something that you introduced on the fly for some reason? You also noted that the players took to it readily. Did they do so because they liked it, or because they needed it? Is your group the sort to put in that kind of extra narrative effort anyway, or only when they'd otherwise be hosed? Basically, it seems like you introduced an option that encouraged greater scene decoration on the part of your players and did so quite successfully, in a game that, in my experience, hasn't generated that in the past. I'm curious to know what gave it wings and how to best reproduce it.
I introduced the houserule before the fight with the dragon, both to make the fight more survivable and because previous fights were a little too light on narration on the player's parts.
The fight with the orcs had a little bit of narration, but for the most part whenever a player's turn came up they just announced their attacks and rolled. I needed some sort of carrot and stick to force the players to add a little more color commentary to their actions. The fight with the dragon served that end nicely.
The players took to the rule initially because they needed it, but once they got into the swing of it they started narrating for narration's sake.
Callan S.:
One thing the riddle of steel RPG had were....can't remember the name. Destiny points? They were kind of like XP, but attached to the player, not the character. Your character dies? You make a new one, but with the XP you'd accumulated in destiny points.
It depends on whether the tension you want in your game is to be based on players wagering their carefully harvested resources, or based on characters, with whatever attachment the players as audience had to them, potentially dying. The riddle of steel one is to support the latter. Nethack is an example of supporting the former.
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