The Final Warning: Avoiding Outright Player Death

It happens in almost every game, the point where a character decides that it is time to slam a mug of poor choices down their throat and run face first into a wall of pain. Of course some parties avoid having situations where the final outcome of their actions leads to death, but instead they fall victim to the dice which can take someone from hero to zero with the flick of the wrist. A trapped door, ambush, monster of unknown origin that sprays them with acid, all sorts of situations can pop up. For many death is a sudden thing that leaves the player questing for a printer or a second character sheet. There are no second chances unless the players provide it, and often the DM will even consider the death a 'solution' to a bad plan or a foolhardy player.

For myself, I never hand out death immediately unless it is in a tense battle. Even players who are playing kick down the door characters are going to get one 'freebie' from myself when they encounter a situation they either stumbled into or purposely charged into. There are better ways to handle suspense and to convey the danger of a situation than outright murdering a player the first time they make an error or act like an idiot.

I have found that the first method that really pushes the message home is targeting their equipment. If I roll the damage on an attack and see the total damage will bypass their current HP and leave the total so far in the negatives they can't be Cure'd back to active duty, I will hand them enough damage to bring them in the high single digits and then roll the damage over to gear. The player instead of finding themselves wiped off the planet instead are forced to limp out of battle, while making saving throws for a few pieces of gear either in their bags or in their hands. It is a first and final warning of what they are dealing with, and the players can see that the creature is wielding abilities that can quickly turn a battle against them if they press against it. This method is best used when creatures use attacks that hit from a distance or can hit multiple targets. In my Escargo game, the players stumbled upon an artificially created Fire Elemental for the first time at Level 1. It was guarding a door silently, and when the players entered the room it turned to look at them. Unlike most elementals, these are giant floating metallic eyes that have three - four rings of fire circling them in a constant vortex. They hover several feet off the ground and can set things ablaze by moving by them as long as they have an active ring. The players stood there for a moment, and the ranger decided to take a pop shot at it with his bow. The arrow flew through the air and struck home, dealing a minor amount of damage.

The elemental sprang to life as one of the fiery rings flew across the room and slammed into the poor ranger, exploding and causing reflex saves all around.

The resulting damage was somewhere in the 20's for the poor ranger who had failed his reflex save. I knew that killing him outright because of a first time encounter with the elemental was out of the question, so instead he took enough damage to drop him to 4 HP, and then he was forced to roll saves against magical fire on his bow and a few items in his bag. His bow cracked and was snapped in half by the bow string being too tight for the stressed wood, and the fires licked him enough that a few items in his bag melted or caught fire briefly. Immediately, the ranger ran and the party followed, hopefully to return another day.

This method is very effective against high speed, low drag players who like to kick in every door and proceed to Spin to Win. It usually causes them to fumble and sometimes causes them to re-think how they handle situations (which your party can be thankful for).

Aw hell who am I kidding they just go back to brainless hack and slash mode anyways.

For this style of player a second method is useful: the setting and situation. Many times a character will stop and take heed of upcoming danger when they pass through the doorway and get hit in the face with the smell of the corpses littering the ground of the room. Seeing the bodies of previous foes, especially fresh ones, can pass a sense of danger on quickly which for some will cause them to immediately double back and force the party to huddle for discussion. Other characters might also be inclined to quickly run forward and stop the aggressive character from entering the room. This is also effective with traps that reset themselves, such as arrow traps or magical traps.

When it comes to sudden ambushes with the ability for the party to flee, having the threat appear and take out an innocent NPC such as an animal or a men-at-arms is enough to cause players to get the hint and proceed to exit stage left. It shows the creature is here for business, and is willing to target anything in its path without reservation. This is effective with encounter roils more than anything else as players generally have a feel if a certain system favors placing danger on the high or low spectrum of the roll. Some players will gauge how the creature is encountered as a method to determine if they can stay and get some easy XP from the beast then move on, or if they need to keep going.

At the end of the day it all depends on what style of game is being run and how the players and the DM expect situations to unfold. The above methods work best for  games where equipment is easy to replace and everyone involved is on the same page in regards to the seriousness of the threats. With most of my games being lighthearted in nature, the above has worked wonders and has even lead to a few laughs.

Give it a shot in your next game, it might work for you!

How Escargo Express turned my love with Tabletop RPGs into a bonfire

Since early September I have been running a game on Roll20.net with a small group of five players using the Castles and Crusades Game System (check it out here.) I am no stranger to running games online, but this one has been special in several aspects which has re-kindled my love for tabletop RPGs big time.

This is the first time I have used Roll20.net, which is turning out to be an enjoyable experience. The site provides you with everything you need to have right out of the gate to run any kind of game. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by all of the options and was considering running back to OSU-GT, but then I found the ability to search through the site for any kind of token or object to drop on my map. I was immediately sold, and we have been using every aspect of the site for our game since. Several of my players have taken to messing around with the formatting code and creating wonderful character sheets as their journal entries, and backed them up with creative macros that allow them to roll dice on the fly. Roll20.net has built-in voice and video support however we do all of our voice chat through TS due to limitations brought forth by several players connections and computers. You can disable both of these through the site under your personal options when in a game.

Introducing a new system to an entire group has never before went this smooth, even with Castles and Crusades which is an extremely easy  and straight forward system. We have one player who is fairly new to tabletop RPGs and after a session or two he has mastered most of the basics, surprising myself and others with creative thinking and innovative use of his class abilities.  In the past I have introduced C&C to groups of people who have played other systems (mainly 3.x based systems) and it has somehow flown over their heads due to how simple the system is. No feats, no skill points to allocate, it made them freeze up as they tried to decide what their character would do in game. The idea that they would need to say what their character did and justify how they would use their attribute rolls only for past character accomplishments was mind boggling to them. It really drove home for me how many people actually play the character sheet instead of the character itself.

The days approaching the next session I have wished were shorter so I could load up that Roll20 game and lead them through their quest. Very few games both online and at a physical table have resulted in me having every session be one I look forward to. In the past I have had sessions where we have ended on a sour note which has carried a bit of a terrible mood over to the next game. The group I am playing with here however, while they have had a few lover's quarrels, has been amazing and able to move on in game. They are creative, great role-players who have embraced what they know about the setting and ran with it. The sandbox world I have given them is being explored thoroughly, using their resources to the limit and building character connections with NPCs and other PCs in the group alike.

Man I am just really happy with how this group has handled this sandbox world. The majority of my games I usually give the players a starting section and a bit of a purpose in life. This game they are owners of a small delivery company that is stationed in a large city state known as Alibag. What makes Alibag special is that it is for them, one of the only two remaining large scale concentrations of civilized life in the known area. The surrounding landscape is still recovering from environmental disasters brought on by both man and otherworldly forces, which has plagued the realm with an invisible force known as Mana Burn. Yes, this is fantasy Fallout and Mana Burn is radiation, but the players love it and have ran with it since session 1 with zero prodding. When the players get a job for the company they plan everything out, talk with the NPC about every detail, grab the goods, complete the task, get the gold, and then find another job. What blew my mind was that they constantly check on older clients to make sure they are okay and to let them know that Escargo Express is there to serve them. Past groups generally never keep contacts open with past NPCs and blow them off, seeing only forward. By far though the best aspect of this group is how they don't mind the wacky stuff I have tossed at them. Underneath their barn, they have discovered on accident a spaceship that is massive in size, that has been used by a band of drug runners to smuggle meth during the midnight hours around town. The entrance to this ship was found by following a hole that was dug through one of their stalls for their horses. This ship is extremely large, and is built in Metroid style where certain areas can only be accessed later on through either extreme ingenuity or special equipment such as better Mana Burn suits to protect from the dangerous radiation. It is a giant homage to Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and the players have loved it and have made plans to extract whatever riches they can from the metallic husk.

Even with the business, they have followed up on leads and rumors of old dig sites and ruined bases outside of the city. Dungeon crawls have been a thing they have freely done on their own, with almost no prodding from myself. It has been a huge challenge for me to on the fly design the dungeon as they explore using a small set of notes that explains encounters, dungeon aesthetics, treasure, and traps (I will cover this method of mine in a later post). For the party the dungeon crawls have had one major purpose: cold hard cash. They understand as a business all profit is good profit, so they have taken to finding it in any place possible.

Overall I am hoping this game goes on for a long. long time and I am ready to do what it takes to keep it moving into the future. I have had games at the physical table bring about the same feeling, but for some reason this group just slams that button down harder than other groups have. My opinion on this is because every character is driven by something more than just money and are there for more than just 'to be there'. Most games you end up with 1 or 2 players who kind of herd the party from Point A to Point B. They make most of the calls and in general are kind of seen as the leaders. This group every character is wanting to do something different, which has lead to them having what can only be explained the craziest roller coaster of events happen.  Most groups break down when everyone wants to partake in something different or has a different motive but this group has adapted and realized that even though some of them are borderline evil, they know that at the end of the day it is a group effort and that the game can only survive if they work together.

As I finish this, I can't wait for Monday!