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As a GM with a reputation of being lethal, I'll respond to this.
In other threads we've already establish I think you're a bad GM, and somehow it doesn't surprise me at all given your comments in that other thread that you're on the opposite side of this issue here.
Also, none of your examples are particularly accurate. None of those are examples of a hero facing a foe and then retreating, which is what I meant by "running away." I'm not familiar with every case you cited, but I know that neither the chase in Moria or Odysseus's encounter with the cyclops were technically retreats. In the Moria case the heroes were attempting to sneak through Moria (and failed), while Odysseus doesn't retreat - he escapes.
But it's the Star Wars example that really baffles me.
I mean, in the Star Wars Trilogy, Luke, Han and Leia never run away from Vader. I don't know where you're getting that from. The one time Han actually encounters Vader he draws his gun and starts firing. He doesn't retreat, he gets defeated. And survives because the GM (Lucas) decides to take him prisoner rather than kill him. Luke doesn't run from him either time he encounters Vader. In their first battle (ESB) Luke loses the fight and is saved by deus ex machina (he somehow survives a thousand foot fall without injury), and in the second battle he defeats Vader rather handily (hah hah, that's a pun. 'cause he cuts Vader's hand off. get it?).
If Lucas were a lethal GM, the Stars Wars saga would have ended when Luke let go of that tower-thingy and fell (if not sooner). He would have taken his 20D6 damage, splattered, and the campaign would be over.
And I object to your complete misrepresentation of work of Joseph Campbell. Failure, which the hero encounters constantly, is not the same thing as defeat. It is entirely possible to have PCs fail without killing them. That's the difference between heroic adventure and survival adventure. What you're describing ("if I succeed and survive") is player vs GM survival gaming. It's fine if that's your cup of tea, but all it does illustrate my point: Lethal GMs discourage heroism.
Also, dude: "...not because of the GM's desire to give me a false 'heroic' experience."
Classy. You make it so hard not to flame you.
Luke doesn't run from him either time he encounters Vader. In their first battle (ESB) Luke loses the fight and is saved by deus ex machina (he somehow survives a thousand foot fall without injury),
... which is running away.
So is running away from Hoth when the Empire starts winning.
So is in the middle of the first movie on the Death Star when they leave Obi-Wan to die and run away from Vader.
Etc.
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Every one of those characters (Mal Reynolds, Mad Martigan, Han Solo, and Indiana Jones) has run away from combat.
I disagree.
For example, Han Solo ran away from the Death Star the first time he got there.
Han Solo never attacked the Death Star, so I don't know how you can claim he ran away from it. He was captured, he escaped.
He did run away from that large group of Stormtroopers in the Death Star, I'll grant you that. But that was for comedic effect.
Indiana Jones ran away from the giant rolling boulder.
You can't possibly actually believe that's a legitimate example. He outran the boulder, he didn't "run away" from it. You don't fight giant rolling boulders.
One of the defining moments of Mal Reynolds' career was the defeat at somewhere or other before the series started - he ran away from that battle when he figured out his side was going to lose.
Um, no. That is not what happened at all. He fought until the bitter end, and was betrayed when his superiors left him and his fellow browncoats out to hang.
I did think of another example though. The Doctor in Doctor Who is very fond of running away from the bad guys. But the Doctor is not a hero by any standard definition, and certainly not the sort of combat oriented hero that RPGs offer to players.
Fight the good fight Gailbraithe!
(seriously sincere and not sarcastic)
One thing that I think is being minimized in this discussion is why *not* to fudge - and for me the big one is this: agency. The Players need to feel that what their characters do matters. Without that, the game is meaningless, and quickly becomes unfun.
And I've been in campaigns where an NPC or GMPC would always "save the day" -- and others where our foes seem to have some slow-acting int-draining poison which took effect as the PCs got weaker (Maybe they had some sort of "good tactics" pool they were depleting?) -- and you reach a point where you realize that your super-good idea for getting the rogue into flanking position, or using melting down the candlesticks to (poorly) silver-coat some arrows to get past DR, or bottlenecking the oncoming swarm and forming a shield wall where you swap out with readied actions to neutralizing the enemy's numbers -- well.. none of them matter, because you're going to win anyway. At which point, why try?
And where's the fun in that?
And so, having been on the player's side of that --- I don't ever want my players to feel that way when I'm the one behind the screen (figuratively speaking, that is... I use a laptop for my notes and roll in front of them).
I agree with you. If I know I am going to succeed I don't really even want to play, but many players expect to win.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway...
I try to make little balance adjustments throughout the game, but I no longer make ridiculous adjustments to an encounter that the party just plain screws up. I also don't "deus ex machina" an encounter where the DM rolls well and the party doesn't.
I used to do that a lot when I was relatively new to DMing (mostly to make up for bad adventure building on my part), but I noticed that the players began to assume that I would bail them out of a bad situation and stopped putting real effort into the game. No matter how hard you try to hide it, the players can tell if you're coddling them and it kills the sense of accomplishment.
But doesn't that destroy any chance of the game feeling heroic?
I mean, when do the heroes run away? Can anyone name any movies where the heroes run away? Books? I'm pretty well-versed in popular fiction/culture, and the only example I can think of is in season 7 of Buffy, when the Slayerettes under Faith's guidance get lead into a trap, have the butts handed to them, and escape - and that only happened to dramatize the need for Buffy's leadership.
I understand what you guys are saying about teaching players to play smart, but I have to admit, as a GM of twenty plus years, I find experienced players who learned to play under GMs to be, and excuse my language, absolutely chicken****. They play like weaselly little cowards, because they've been taught by other GMs that if they don't act like weaselly little cowards they'll die.
And the thing is, weaselly little cowards never do anything heroic. People who are totally concerned with their survival don't take risks, and taking risks is the heart and soul of heroism.
I get so frustrated and bored with players who play their supposedly heroic characters like craven little dogs afraid of their own shadows, but I know exactly where it comes from: lethal GMs. I've played under lethal GMs, and you learn very quickly that bravado, heroism and risk-taking no only won't be rewarded, you'll be punished severely for them.
There's no place for Mal Reynolds, Mad Martigan, Han Solo, Indiana Jones or other heroic archetypes in a game where the GM punishes players for being stupid - because the line between heroism and stupidity is pretty blurry.
I mean, yeah, you're 100% right: They'll learn to run when they learn they can die. But they'll stop being heroic when they learn to run. Because heroes don't run away.
This conversation reminds me of a (2E) campaign I played in years ago. The first session the DM tells us that we're in this village and that to the north is great danger and to the south is safe passage. So we go north. Then (1st level party!) he attacks us with twelve hippogriffs and we get slaughtered to the man. And after the battle I cried BS on the whole encounter - it was completely unbalanced and we never stood a chance. And he's like "Well, duh, I told you there was danger to the north, and you're the idiot who decided to go North. If you're just going to be stupid you're going to get killed."
And I was just stunned. I was like "Do you not understand this is an adventure game? And that when you say "Danger north, safe south" what I hear is "Adventure north, boring south"?" What kind of hero runs in the opposite direction of danger?
This is why I don't like lethal DMs. I like to play heroic characters, not chicken**** opportunists and cowards. But the thing is that chicken**** opportunists are smarter than heroes.
That's something I think just gets left out of these discussion: how much GM styling influences play style, and how a lot of traditional GMing styles are really antithetical to the concept of heroic adventure.
I understand what you are saying, but I think the fundamental difference is that some GM's consider you to be the heroes which is why they allow auto-success.
Other GM's like myself only give you the opportunity to become a hero, and even then we realize that heroes die sometimes. You should also realize that in many movies in books the hero probably would have ran away if the chance were there, but due to the story he could not run away. Maybe he was trapped, or there was a time limit or another story plot that kept him there.A smart hero retreats to fight another day. If you kill the dragon on day 1 or run away and return on day 2 most likely the result is the same so why risk the death for no reason?
There is a big line between stupidity and heroism. There might be a small line between correctly calculated risk and death though. The comparisons are not the same. As an example I was in a game about year ago where we were severely outnumber, and there was a goblin(low level) but when anyone attacked him they rolled ones or two on the dice, and he kept critting us. We kept thinking "there is no way he will last another round", but there it was. That is an example of miscalculation, mostly due to bad luck.
Stupidity example(certain things changed to avoid spoilers): We had to investigate an organization. We were told they were evil and it was confirmed. One party member decides to knock on the door to ask if we can enter, and no, that was not a group decision. The peephole opened up and was replaced with a crossbow bolt, and a demand to leave. The knocker then decided to disable device by beating the door down with his sword. Of course that put the bad guys on alert. We went in and found nobody. I figured they were hiding since it was a bunch of rogues and monks so I suggested everyone stay together. The knocker decides to go wandering off. At this point as a character and a player I had decided that he gets what he deserves. He got jumped by six monks. We went and saved him, but barely. He went solo again later, and the GM spared him this time, but if it had been me he would have had another character sheet.
Han Solo never attacked the Death Star, so I don't know how you can claim he ran away from it. He was captured, he escaped.
He escaped, but he did not run away? Now I have not seen SW in a while, but IIRC he got away from the Death Star instead of staying on it. That sounds like running away to me.
Indiana Jones ran away from the giant rolling boulder.You can't possibly actually believe that's a legitimate example. He outran the boulder, he didn't "run away" from it. You don't fight giant rolling boulders.
I think I agree with you on this one.
What about the stories where the hero is some nobody who happens to meet the bad guy and runs away. Later in the movie he gains training/finds the macguffin/etc and fights the dark overlord/bad guy at the end of the story?
You might way he was not a hero at first so what about stories where the hero is already somewhat trained, and runs away the first time he meets someone. This is similar to the attack-retreat trope.
Classy. You make it so hard not to flame you.
LOL, really classy Gail, considering you started your entire comment with a flame about me being a "bad DM." I guess it must be really hard not to flame me after all.
I'll leave it to the others here to point out how incredibly and unbelievably wrong you are about heroes running away since you clearly have decided to discount anything I say.
Not that I care. I mean when RD is your biggest fan....
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Luke doesn't run from him either time he encounters Vader. In their first battle (ESB) Luke loses the fight and is saved by deus ex machina (he somehow survives a thousand foot fall without injury),... which is running away.
No, it's not. Committing suicide rather than succumbing to the power of the dark side -- which is exactly what Luke does -- is not "running away."
He doesn't run away. <b>He is defeated.</b> That he survives being defeated (and does so in such an improbable manner) illustrates the fundamental necessity of GM Fiat (or Authorial Fiat) in creating a heroic adventure, as opposed to creating a survival adventure.
Heroic protagonists have to survive to the end of the story. It just doesn't work any other way, because the audience never gets to see the end of the story if the protagonist dies halfway through it.
If you want to tell a heroic adventure in an RPG, with the players in the role of the protagonists, then <i>they can't die.</i> And when I saw they can't die, I don't actually mean they can't fall to negative ten and expire - I mean they can't do that unless there is access to raise dead. So when I say they can't die, I mean they can't reach a state where the player is forced to retire the PC.
That doesn't mean that killing PCs for real isn't a perfectly viable option for gaming. It just means that you're not telling a heroic story, you're telling a story about survival -- it's not an adventure film, it's a slasher film with a dungeon (or maybe just a vicious DM) in place of Jason.
If your campaign can be justly summarized with the line "Who will survive and what will be left of them?" then that's cool. But it's also the tagline for Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
If "Five friends travel to a dungeon in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons." followed by "The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holds up in a dungeon with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack." describes your campaign, that's not heroic fantasy. That's Evil Dead I & II (just replace dungeon with cabin).
So is running away from Hoth when the Empire starts winning.
They start running away as soon as the Empire shows up. But that's not a sound example, because it's not the heroes that run away - its the Alliance that runs away. An the Alliance is not hero of the story, its simply an institution that supports the heroes.
In fact, they stay until the bitter end, despite the risk that involves. This again illustrates my point: A lethal DM could easily decide to punish the characters for this action. Luke, Leia and Han could have easily left as soon as the evacuation began. That would be the equivalent of "running away." That is the unheroic option in an evacuation scenario (which is totally what the first act/Hoth scenario is).
Think of the whole sequence where Luke in his snowspeeder gets shot out of the air by the AT-AT. His co-pilot (NPC) dies, but he is uninjured. If it were a role-playing game, Luke could have just as easily died - in which case the entire set-up for the story has lead nowhere, and there is no resolution.
To bring this back to role-playing, here's an example from the Castle Whiterock campaign I ran for the Beta rules test: The initial adventure hook -- a wizard hires them to explore Castle Whiterock -- didn't appeal to my players, so when our fourth player arrived for the second session (having missed the first), we came up with a background for his character that explained a) why he was found in Castle Whiterock and b) why he was motivated to explore its deepest depths: he and his sister were captured by the slavers on the dungeon's first level. He escaped, she was sold to the duegar in the depths of the dungeon.
His character's motivation quickly become the party's motivation, and the obtrusive wizard NPC faded out of the picture. The campaign was going strong, and then something terrible happen. That 4th player was killed due to a combination of a different player's stupidity -- knowing the 4th PC was near death, this other PC chose to attack a foe other than the almost dead foe that was just about to attack the 4th PC, despite that foe being a valid target and the only foe capable of threatening the 4th PC.
And I accidentally rolled in front of the players. A 20. So everyone demands to see the confirm roll. A second 20. Then the damage roll. Max damage on a d12 with a x3 multiplier. Takes the 4th PC to -27. 4th PC's player is so pissed he refuses to allow the character to be raised (which would have required cheating on my part anyways, since they couldn't afford a raise dead). And a few weeks later, everyone decides they want to start a new campaign because, surprise surprise, the party no longer has any motivation to stick with the adventure.
The problem here is that my players (and I) want a heroic adventure, and Castle Whiterock is a meat-grinder disguised as a heroic adventure. It kind of has a plot, but honestly without a lot of DM cheating, no PC is going to survive long enough to put all the clues together and see the grander narrative and thus participate in it. And when we lost the PC who was the de facto heroic protagonist, driving the story forward, we lost the steam in the campaign. It became the eight and ninth season of X-Files, when Mulder left the show and you lost the character whose personal quest to find the truth took the show's motivation away.
So is in the middle of the first movie on the Death Star when they leave Obi-Wan to die and run away from Vader.
Their goal in the Death Star sequence is to escape from the Death Star, not to confront Darth Vader. They do not run away from Darth Vader, they escape from the Death Star, and see Darth Vader from a distance.
There is a difference between avoiding a confrontation that doesn't help one achieve one's goal, and "running away." Running away implies retreat from the challenges that prevent easy attainment of one's goal.
There's also a very meaningful difference between "running away" and "not committing vainglorious suicide." The heroes in A New Hope escape from the Death Star, which some might interpret as running away from the fight - but that's not fair, because there is literally no chance three people armed with blasters defeat the entire Death Star. A direct attack on the legion of Stormtroopers and their Jedi boss is suicide. That's a case where the DM/Author is setting up the challenge of the scenario as "escape" not "overcome."
But escaping in such a scenario is not "running away," because the escape is the challenge itself, not a means of avoiding the challenge or a retreat from the challenge.
There is a difference between avoiding a confrontation that doesn't help one achieve one's goal, and "running away." Running away implies retreat from the challenges that prevent easy attainment of one's goal.
There's also a very meaningful difference between "running away" and "not committing vainglorious suicide." The heroes in A New Hope escape from the Death Star, which some might interpret as running away from the fight - but that's not fair, because there is literally no chance three people armed with blasters defeat the entire Death Star. A direct attack on the legion of Stormtroopers and their Jedi boss is suicide. That's a case where the DM/Author is setting up the challenge of the scenario as "escape" not "overcome."
But escaping in such a scenario is not "running away," because the escape is the challenge itself, not a means of avoiding the challenge or a retreat from the challenge.
That is still running away. If you flee the enemy you are running away. You can dress it up and call it a tactical retreat if you want to make it sound better, but it is what it is. If my low level character offends a high CR monster and I "create distance" then I am running away. That is not too much different than your Death Star example. Even if the intent is to cause the low level PC's/movie heroes to run away, they are still running away. Whether it was intended by the GM/author does not change that.
You can't ask for examples of running away and then say running away does not exist because........PS:Not having fair chances is the best reason to run away.
PS2:I don't think too many people agree with your idea that running away is nigh impossible.
edit:LT agrees with me. I don't think I need to say much else. :)
Had a TPK as a player one point in time. It was close to the end of the session anyways and we (the players) were all so depressed because we've been playing the characters for so long.
So the DM came up with an idea that by the following week, we were allowed to come up with a scenario of how the characters came back from the dead! So the next session began "three years after the tragic event" where all the characters somehow met again by "destiny". It was quite dramatic and we all had a blast of time.
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He escaped, but he did not run away. Now I have not seen SW in a while, but IIRC he got away from the Death Star instead of staying on it. That sounds like running away to me.
Han Solo never attacked the Death Star, so I don't know how you can claim he ran away from it. He was captured, he escaped.
But its not, as I pointed out in my last example. Escaping when its an escape scenario is facing the challenge. You can't possibly think Han Solo should have attempted to kill a legion of stormtroopers by himself (I'm assuming the Wookie isn't loyal enough to commit pointless suicide).
Now I'm not suggesting that DM's need to fudge to keep aggressively stupid players from dying. If Han's player decides he's not going to try to escape, he's going to take on the Death Star single handily, I think the appropriate GM response is to say "If you do that, you'll die. Are you sure that's your plan?" And if player says he's going to try it anyways, then the GM should just say "Okay, you're dead."
What about the stories where the hero is some nobody who happens to meet the bad guy and runs away. Later in the movie he gains training/finds the macguffin/etc and fights the dark overlord/bad guy at the end of the story?
In an RPG that's called "backstory." That training, that's your modifer to base starting age. That's what you write in your little essay establishing who the character is and what is motivation is.
"Rogar the Ranger watched his family get killed by orcs. He ran in terror. He traveled the land, learning everything he could about fighting orcs from various masters. Now he is an adventurer, always on the look out for orcs, forever seeking forgiveness for his act of cowardice by heroically avenging his fallen family."
You might way he was not a hero at first so what about stories where the hero is already somewhat trained, and runs away the first time he meets someone. This is similar to the attack-retreat trope.
In an heroic RPG the PCs should never confront the BBEG before they can possibly beat him, unless the GM has already figured out how he's going to save them from the inevitable ass-kicking that will follow when the PCs don't realize you've set them against a foe they can't defeat.
And no, that's nothing at all like the attack! attack! retreat! retreat! trope. Not unless you, as GM, are setting up your players to be the keystone kops and make clowns of themselves. It is like the scene where Han chases the stormtroopers down the hall and then runs from them. But that is, of course, one of many scenes where Han is the butt of the joke. You can't really make PCs the butt of jokes, not without their permission. Either you're doing it to the whole group, in which case you're just a jerky GM, or you're doing it to one player in particular, which is just mean (and jerky).
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It's not "running away" when the forces are insurmountable,
but it's unheroic to run away to avoid a TPK???
First of all, generally by the time a group of players realizes that a TPK is happening, it is too late to run away. The vast majority of TPK's I've witnessed we're not caused by en masse player stupidity, such as attacking a clearly insurmountable force. Most TPK's I've seen were more along the lines of "Four sixth level characters versus a pair of trolls." or "Four first level PCs versus three orc warrior 1s."
Generally, TPK happens because the players have a streak of bad rolls that coincides with the GM having a streak of good rolls. That's not player stupidity, and its often not something you can run away from -- I don't think most "Lethal DMs" get their reputations for being lethal because they have exceptionally stupid players who always deserve to die. I think they get it because they run lethal encounters that push the PCs to their limits, and then let the dice randomizer determine the outcome of the adventure. Players are forced to press their luck, and they get exactly the reward for it that a randomizer delivers: random, purposeless death.
Second, asking whether its heroic or unheroic to run away is missing the point. As is cataloging examples of heroes running away (you'll note I didn't say it doesn't happen, just that its extremely rare, and as we've seen most cases of "running away" are in the context of escape or avoidance scenarios against unbeatable foes, where the characters goal is not to enter into conflict with the antagonist at any point).
Players tend to not run away because players operate on the assumption they will not face challenges they cannot handle. They tend to get killed en masse because they either a) something improbable happened (all PCs fumble, GM multi-crits), or b) they mistook an unbalanced encounter for a balanced one (which 99 times out of 100 I can bet you is the GM's fault).
This idea that a few TPKs will teach players to run away is, I think, a popular myth amongst GMs that doesn't pan out in reality. In reality it turns players into paranoid, sneaky SOBs who try to eke out every advantage they can to minimize the risk of harm coming to their characters.
On the most basic level, it leads to power-gaming. If you teach the players that unbalanced encounters are the norm, they will attempt to compensate by making unbalanced characters. It also leads to meta-gaming - building entire character concepts around rules exploits in an attempt to make a character who can survive.
But it can lead to in-game issues too. If you GM like it's a horror film, and make surviving to the end the primary goal of playing, then the smart players will stop being heroic and instead get clever. If CN is the most popular alignment amongst your players, you're probably dealing with a battle-scarred group. Because CN because the alignment of choice when you're going to have to justify your characters attempts to survive at all costs.
Players going to extremes to find ways of eliminating foes without direct contact is a symptom of Lethal DMing. And while its a valid way to play, it isn't heroic (its anti-heroic at best, though there's a reason LE is my favorite alignment to play when faced with a Lethal DM - villains are survivors), and thus it doesn't lend itself to heroic adventure.
1) to throw my opinion in the mix... As for the Star Wars 'death star' example... I do not consider that 'running away'. That particular quest wasn't really based on them 'beating the bad guy'.. or even 'escaping with their lives'.
It was a RESCUE. Get in... Rescue the Princess... Get her and the plans out...
THAT was the quest. Mission accomplished. It may not LOOK heroic from the distance... but rescuing the princess is always heroic ;) Nobody said they had to topple the whole government while they were there...
2) For all those DMs preaching the 'Run away' method of adventuring... he's MY problem.
When do you DO it?
When exactly do you cut and run? When your at half hp? 1/4 hp? Remember the players don't know exactly HOW they are doing against the bad guy... Only the DM has access to BOTH sets of HP and can see when they are outmatched..
USUALLY by the time I'm truly scared enough to consider running away... It's too late. I turn my back on the enemy... and he gets free shots on me till I'm dead. MANY times, I can't even justify a round of doing 'no damage' to the enemy to drink that all important healing potion... It's blood and Glory time... Hope for High Damage and low attacks from him, and hope you overcome....
Now, I WILL say.. that Pathfinders rules for Noncorpreal and Swarms have had my characters cutting and running like a coward MORE than a few times... If peopel can't HURT things, then they should flee... but if your trading blows with an armored warrior... WHEN is the right time to leave?
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I agree with a lot of what is being said, some great advice and opinions. I believe (as someone said above) that PC's have a chance to become epic hero or just a footnote in history.
I also think, when taking my group into consideration, that the push forward kick in the door style is fun but if no consequences exist for truly bad decisions, the game loses something.
I think 2 hero point per session, that expire at the end and renew next session is a good start. They can choose to take chances and use them for penache acts or to save their PC if something unfortunate happens.
I also like to ask how DM's deal with restarts (feels like game flavor is lost) and upset players. I like to think if I made an error and TPK'd a group I would own up to it and make things right.
Let's say though you gave them good avenues and in/out of game warnings and ability to accomplish the mission without TPK encounter or diplomacy but they end up all dead....?
Sometimes I get the feeling that some of the player think they are playing against you and not with you? Anyone else experience this?
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I'm typically a pretty soft GM, and, honestly, I think it lowers the excitement for my players a bit.
We just started book 6 in Legacy of Fire, and I warned them that I'm not pulling punches, fudging dice, or any other sort of soft-GM stuff.
They've had a pretty good trudge so far, and haven't died, but have been close, but they made smart decisions to save their hides.
I'm liking the feel of it so far, so I believe I'll be doing this more often :)
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One of the defining moments of Mal Reynolds' career was the defeat at somewhere or other before the series started - he ran away from that battle when he figured out his side was going to lose.Um, no. That is not what happened at all. He fought until the bitter end, and was betrayed when his superiors left him and his fellow browncoats out to hang.
I did think of another example though. The Doctor in Doctor Who is very fond of running away from the bad guys. But the Doctor is not a hero by any standard definition, and certainly not the sort of combat oriented hero that RPGs offer to players.
1. While the Battle of Serenity Valley isn't a good example, Mal runs away plenty. Hell, IIRC, Badger says something to the effect of "You run when you should fight, you fight when you should walk away..."
2. I dunno what you consider a "standard definition" of hero, but I think the Doctor qualifies for most reasonable definitions.
Maybe you use some sort of paladin definition where retreat or surrender is NEVER an option, even if getting killed won't make the slightest bit of difference.
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1) to throw my opinion in the mix... As for the Star Wars 'death star' example... I do not consider that 'running away'. That particular quest wasn't really based on them 'beating the bad guy'.. or even 'escaping with their lives'.
It was a RESCUE. Get in... Rescue the Princess... Get her and the plans out...
THAT was the quest. Mission accomplished. It may not LOOK heroic from the distance... but rescuing the princess is always heroic ;) Nobody said they had to topple the whole government while they were there...
THIS.
1st level party against a Ancient Wyrm (think epic storyline here)....object of the quest is to rescue the virgin princess its about to eat and figure out its weakness, then go get some friends/other people and go back to fight the beast when you can face it...
or like in star wars, going to notify the WHOLE rebel alliance and taking a buttload of Y-wings and X-wings with you to blow it to smithereens.
Star Wars is NOT running away.
And the previous Battle of Serenity Valley post couldn't have been more wrong unless LT added a bogus Beavis and Butthead sighting in it.
Strategic Retreat. Some people should look that up and learn what it means.
THIS.1st level party against a Ancient Wyrm (think epic storyline here)....object of the quest is to rescue the virgin princess its about to eat and figure out its weakness, then go get some friends/other people and go back to fight the beast when you can face it...
or like in star wars, going to notify the WHOLE rebel alliance and taking a buttload of Y-wings and X-wings with you to blow it to smithereens.
Star Wars is NOT running away.
And the previous Battle of Serenity Valley post couldn't have been more wrong unless LT added a bogus Beavis and Butthead sighting in it.
Strategic Retreat. Some people should look that up and learn what it means.
But isn't that what people have been saying? Sometimes a fight is just too tough, and you don't have a chance. Luke, Han and Leia didn't have a chance against every stormtrooper on the Death Star. They rescued the princess and got out of there.
A 1st level party doesn't stand a chance against an ancient wyrm. If they charge it, they'll die. Dodging it, rescuing the princess and gather resources to take it on later is the name of the game.
You can call it running away or a strategic retreat... what's been argued is simply that charging into hopeless odds isn't heroic. It's just dumb. Your examples support this perfectly.
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This is an interesting discussion. Some DM’s let the dice fall where they may, and others “fudge” things a little bit.
I don’t think I have done a TPK for a very long time. PCs have died here and there in my games, but I’m not out to get them.
My last TPK was back in 2002. The party had to make their way through a disintegrate trap. We were playing 3.0. The party was around 10 to 11 level. They made their way in to the “lobster pot” but got disintegrated on the way out. I realized the rogue could have only made the save, if she rolled a 19 or 20. The entire party got disintegrated. I described the visual effect as a star trek “transporter beam”. Understandably after the last character hopped in, the players all looked at me expectantly and asked, ok so where have we been teleported to?.
It was then I revealed that the beam of light they passed under was a desintagrate trap, not a teleporter.
After asking if everyone wanted to continue with their characters, I quickly came up with a way to revive them.
I decided to run the “Forgotten Realms” comic as a campaign. The crew became Dwamilar Oman’s and Minder’s crew, retrieving artifacts for them. Oman was able to revive the party, and after that they worked for him for a while.
It worked out, but after that some of my players would tease me and say that I was a “killer DM” .
So to answer your question, generally I try to avoid a TPK. I especially try to avoid a TPK, if I am the one that has screwed up. If it is the party’s screw up, well, usually somebody’s character ends up dead.
Sometimes when I am running a PFS adventure, I find that due to the class combinations sometimes the PCs cant deal with the situation. I try to mitigate things then. But sometimes if there is no healer…..well there is no healer.
I play the NPC's exactly as they would act. If they are winning, they press the advantage, if they are cowardly and losing they will break and run. If the party gets over there head, it is up to them to save themselves. This kind of play is beneficial in two ways, as a DM it gives you a 'feel' for what kind of challenge is appropriate to PC's, and it gives PC's satisfaction that they earn every victory they come out of.
That sword cuts both ways however, if the wizard throws a death spell in the first round and it sticks... thats their good fortune, I won't save my NPC's either.
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As a general rule, the DM should never stop a TPK.
The player characters should learn to research what they will be fighting (through local rumors, divinations, tracking, etc.) and keeping a constant eye on the exits. They need to know how to make a strategic retreat.
+1
The Mighty Thoth-Amon has left his mental signature.
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I have my doubts about you.I think you are taking this discussion awfully personal.
Basically, it comes down to this: Heroes in stories run away and/or get captured all the time. You don't like that, so you don't play it like that. Fine. Others do.
This is NOT a roleplay vs rollplay debate, no matter how much you want to turn it into one.
+1
The Mighty Thoth-Amon has left his mental signature.
Is Harrison Ford still in Star Wars? Or has he been digitally replaced with Hollywood's new flavor of the week yet?Star Wars: The Ulimate Supreme version
Starring Shia LeBeouf as Han Solo
*shudder*
I can actually see George Lucas doing that...
I'm half-way surprised that he hasn't already.
*le sigh*
No risk of death? No point playing.
It depends upon exact campaign being played. It is true when it comes to "classic" heroic fantasy but it might be not when playing highly political court campaign that involves little fighting and when fight is on is duel to first blood or incapacitation.
One thing that I think is being minimized in this discussion is why *not* to fudge - and for me the big one is this: agency. The Players need to feel that what their characters do matters. Without that, the game is meaningless
I couldn't disagree more. The game is about having fun and telling a story, not random numbers. Fudging has been an accepted practice for DMs since the EARLY days of D&D. If it spoils the game for you and your players, that's fine: don't do it. But I and many, many players have had decades of fun with the OCCASIONAL fudge. It hasn't ruined the game for them or me, and in three decades of gaming, I've only had ONE player complain about it, and that only momentarily.
No risk of death? No point playing.
That really depends on WHY you're playing. If you're playing RPG like a table-top video game with winners and losers, then this is true. If your goal is to tell an interesting story in which characters you create take part, then it's completely false.
For example, Super Hero RPGs rarely include PC death, and yet are quite popular.
If it's a fluke or an error in judgement on my part as a GM then I will save them, but if it is bad judgement on their part they get no pity.
That is pretty much where I sit. If I screw up as a GM, then I will adjust the outcome so that the party can recover from it (typically by making it a near TPK instead of a TPK).
On rare occasions I might shift targets to PCs that are not an obvious threat, but have the potiential to be game changers (such as ignoring the nearly dead barbarian to target the cleric who is low on spells). but that decision depend heavily on what the party is fighting. That decision often allows the PCs a chance to even the odds and stage a comeback.
Like a few above I am a "let the dice fall as they may" type of DM and rarely except A DM save for my characters. Our group pretty notorious for not backing down ever even if warned in game and out... lol.If it's the player or party doing something clearly suicidal, I'll probably ask "Are you sure? This sounds like a really bad idea to your character." Then if they insist on continuing, I'll let the chips fall where they may.
If it were a complete fluke (e.g. maximum damage from something the bad guys did), I'd ask the players to vote on how they wanted to deal with it.
EDIT: I mostly play instead of GM, and when I do GM, I'm a pretty big softy.
That's why I suggest asking the group what to do in case of a TPK. Some groups have a lot of fun massively wiping out and rolling up new characters, and that's cool. But I've seen a game stopped in its tracks by character death as well (as people lost interest in a "revolving door" party).
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No risk of death? No point playing.That really depends on WHY you're playing. If you're playing RPG like a table-top video game with winners and losers, then this is true. If your goal is to tell an interesting story in which characters you create take part, then it's completely false.
Nonsense.
I couldn't disagree more. I have been in games where the PC's couldn't die. When a player "died" the GM would come out and fudge things so that he was merely unconscious or had a miraculous escape.
And it sucked. Big time.
If you remove the threat of failure and death from the players then you might as well be reading a book. It's dull. Majorly dull.
My role is to challenge the players, not to mollycoddle them. I feel that the best encounters I have ever ran were the ones where the players succeeded by the skin of their teeth. I always smile when I remove a creature from the battle mat and my players breathe a sigh of relief. I even get the occasional "yes!"
If the players can't die then they can't lose. If they can't lose then there's no risk. If there's no risk there's no excitement.
For example, Super Hero RPGs rarely include PC death, and yet are quite popular.
Yup because no superhero has ever died...
Oh, wait...
Aren't we exaggerating just a tad? Almost the only alterations he made was to enhance some special effects. And he's only revised it once.There must be multiple versions of Star Wars floating around out there.Given that Lucas alters the original trilogy every few weeks, yeah, there are a few.
Is Harrison Ford still in Star Wars? Or has he been digitally replaced with Hollywood's new flavor of the week yet?
Seeing how he already did it to Vader, I don't know how exaggerated it is. :p But this is majorly off-topic, so I'll shut up now.
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Aren't we exaggerating just a tad? Almost the only alterations he made was to enhance some special effects. And he's only revised it once.There must be multiple versions of Star Wars floating around out there.Given that Lucas alters the original trilogy every few weeks, yeah, there are a few.
Is Harrison Ford still in Star Wars? Or has he been digitally replaced with Hollywood's new flavor of the week yet?
Tell that to Sebastian Shaw (the actor, not the mutant), who's no longer in the films at all.