Failure and the PCs

[nexus]

To what degree does failure come up in your campaign? Can the PCs actually fail in a major, permenant fashion that changes or even ends the campaign? How much script immunity do you apply to PCs or are you strictly a let the dice fall where they may type of GM? Have any DNPCs ever died or been permenantly scarred or change? How about PCs?

[sinanju]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

It depends on the tone of the campaign--and players. I've certainly run games in which you lived and died by your die rolls.

 

My Expendables game, as may be obvious from the name, was a hardcore "gamist" campaign. If the players made dumb decisions (like, for instance, not dropping their weapons when they're being covered by a mini-gun equipped gunship), their characters died. If the dice went against them in combat, they died. It was a high-bodycount game and it was intended to be; the players all knew that going in.

 

On the other hand, my Santa Carla games (including the solo campaign I'm working up for my wife) were different. I'm using Fudge, and the worst combat result possible on the wound track is "Near Death." Unimportant NPCs can be deemed to be dead at that point; important NPCs and PCs _might_ be dead, or they might--like Wesley in The Princess Bride--only be Mostly Dead, which means partly alive. In those campaigns, you have to work really hard at getting your character killed. It can be done, but it isn't easy. Unless you've been egregiously stupid or intended to die gloriously/tragically, you'll probably pull through.

[Hermit]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

I try to simulate Silver and Bronze age, so I fully admit a bias towards PCs winning in the end.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

I've told my PCs, "The only way I'll kill your character is if you ask, or you do something deliberately idiotic. You have to TRY to die, in my campaign."

 

But failure is an option. They've been outsmarted by a "bad guy", a PC lost a bar fight when he was vastly outnumbered, and they may well lose future combats. But those aren't game-derailing events; just as I have contingencies in mind for their figuring things out ahead of schedule, seeing through master plans or otherwise throwing my plot off-track, I have contingencies in the event they should slip up. I don't believe in letting a few bad dice rolls throw the game off.

[austenandrews]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

The only time the PCs didn't win in the end was if for some reason we didn't reach the end.

 

However, if/when I start running again, I will do what I can to encourage my players to accept temporary defeat more gracefully. For a genre where "trap/gloat/explain master plan" is the norm, I'm always amazed at how violently players hate their characters to get captured.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

My players tend to win most all the time but the villians get small victories or partual success in their plans fairly often. Players are fairly often defeated in combat but rarely lose the war so to speak. The last player I had die basically refused medical treatment despite a gushing wound so he could get the escaping villian and died a heroic death but brought the bad guy in. That was years ago. My players put lots of work and emotion into their characters so I'm loathe to kill them off with some warning ( you know the old "So let me get this straight, you're charging the machine gun nest stark naked screaming at the top of your lungs" question) That usually works although I do get "well that's what he'd do".

Dnpcs rarely die unless people see it coming for awhile or its completely unbelievable they survived but major screw ups are needed for the latter. The most extreme case was when a player had to put down his own grandaughter gone bad but everyone knew that was coming.

There are a very very few villians my players don't expect to beat in single combat so the plan becomes to hold them off while the others foil his master plan. Actually getting a lick in is major bragging rights

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

The only time the PCs didn't win in the end was if for some reason we didn't reach the end.

 

However, if/when I start running again, I will do what I can to encourage my players to accept temporary defeat more gracefully. For a genre where "trap/gloat/explain master plan" is the norm, I'm always amazed at how violently players hate their characters to get captured.

 

 

Truer words never spoken. I get them captured anyway but they really go down swinging. Sinanju used to drive me crazy this way . He would design these cool characters that were combat monsters based on some neat premise. Unfortunately they were very often much easier to kill than take alive, My wife is a darling about this. She fights capture like a berserker but always gives an opening like 2X stun form surprize ( official heroine disadvantage) if I really need her character captured.

[Chimpira]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

Well in most my campaigns the element of failure is played up majorly.

 

That is not to say that my players always fail, but I like that they know that I will let them. Their actions are reflected in the game world and the consequences of those actions frequently come back to haunt them. PC's and NPC's have died in my game, not frequently, but enough times to know that sometimes rushing head long into combat is not always the best course of action.

 

I am not ruled by the dice roll. Sometimes you need to have certain things bend to genre. If a player is falling out of a building, of course their is a flag pole or gargoyle to grab hold of. If you make the roll that is.

 

I find that instead of having a low moral my players generally rise to the occassion and go all out especially when it's crunch time.

[Maccabe]

Re: Failure and the PCs

 

Of course a PC can fail,either by bad rolls or incompetence.

If a player were to do something so extreme as to end the game

(as you say) then I figure it was time for an "out"

Time Travel, say a group from the future goes back in time and they try

to correct what the PC's did/didn't do in a session. "Dream Sequence" is another good "out" , if PC's fail no big loss-it was only a dream.