I have been playing in a hyper-lethal game of throne type game that my cm is clearly aiming to be as dark and bloody as possible. So after dying a couple of times I have lost the ability not to find the whole campaign hilarious and have just been having fun hamming it up. This seems to passing off my gm but I just can't seem to get into the right frame of mind. So does anyone have any tips on how to get into the right mindset for a gothic style game?
Okay, so right off the bat I'm pretty sure that's not a gothic game. Especially not if it's based off of game of thrones. More of a 90s "grim and gritty"™ "hyperrealistic" "blah blah buzzword bs" type of game. Gothic generally means mundane versus supernatural they cannot understand or fight, the supernatural may later be explained by mundane sources but it's absolutely supernatural at the start. Game of Thrones is just light fantasy medieval fiction. Now, do you actually want to continue hamming it up or do you want to try fitting in?
For fitting in I'd go AD&D on this. Ask the GM to let you roll 3d6 straight down, pick your class based on what you rolled (Tables!), refuse to give your character a name or backstory until they hit level 5 (I think). Before that they are meat, fed into the grinder. It's a great way to be mostly disconnected from the character and not give two @#$%% about if they die, until that time you roll great stats and want them to live just a little longer.
If you want to continue hamming it up there's several options, by far my favorite requires you to live to level 5 though. Reincarnated Druid, repeatedly come back as a "new" character. Then there's the cowardly monk who runs away from everything (they're actually great at that), the Goblin with Roll With It to go flying every time they get hit, and last probably the Muscle Wizard (barbarian who's favorite spell is "sword", material components a sword, that you swing at people).
Play a character who is cowardly and manipulative. Try to get others to do the dangerous stuff, while you stay safe. A character who can summon monsters of some sort, can send them in to the danger to sacrifice themselves for your ends. Don't play a good character, helping others will just get you killed.
Look at what got your previous characters killed, and take steps to prevent it from happening again. Are other players having their characters killed, or is it just you?
Mirror Image. Cast this the first round of every combat, if you don't already have it up. If you get down to only one image, cast it again, or retreat.
Get a follower who can heal. Ideally, get them to cast Shield Other on you, effectively doubling your hit points.
Have an escape plan. This could be as simple as an invisibility potion. You need a way to escape when things get bad.
Be really paranoid. Overly super paranoid. Take lots of precautions. Always assume someone is watching or following you. People pretending to be friendly, are out to get you.
Take defensive feats like Dodge and Toughness, don't worry about not being effective, just worry about survival.
Wind Chime wrote: I have been playing in a hyper-lethal game of throne type game that my cm is clearly aiming to be as dark and bloody as possible. So after dying a couple of times I have lost the ability not to find the whole campaign hilarious and have just been having fun hamming it up. This seems to passing off my gm but I just can't seem to get into the right frame of mind. So does anyone have any tips on how to get into the right mindset for a gothic style game? Well, if you don't care if your PCs live or die, you're going to have a hard time in this game. You could just playing a snivelling, conniving coward, and TRY to survive. (How would Ser Edmund Blackadder do in Westeros, I wonder?)
The thing is I am having a great time playing a genre blind toff who ponces into every situation and yes dies quite often, I am just worried that I am peeving my gm.
Wind Chime wrote: The thing is I am having a great time playing a genre blind toff who ponces into every situation and yes dies quite often, I am just worried that I am peeving my gm. If you're genuinely worried that you're irritating your GM, then ask him in person if your actions are detrimental to his style of play. If he says no, then you're free to fool around. If he says yes, then seek out a compromise. You could make an effort to fool around less, but your GM could also make an effort to loosen up on the seriousness of the game.
People enjoying tabletop RPGs enjoy it for many different reasons. Keeping in mind the end goal of having fun, not taking the game overly seriously and occasionally fooling around is a legitimate way of playing. As an example, in my home games, many of my players are mentally taxed every day from work and studying. To further enslave them by forcing them to take the game more seriously than they are comfortable is counterproductive. Though I would personally enjoy a serious game, I do not enforce this on my players, and I try my best to allow any silly action they choose to take.
There's a conflict of purpose, as I see it.
An exceptionally lethal campaign explicitly interferes with player-character attachment. PCs become disposable, and there's no reward to investing emotional or intellectual effort into a given PC.
On the other hand, the GM doesn't like that you no longer feel attached.
Well, yeah, that's life. Some types of storytelling don't translate between media. What works well in a book may make a poor movie. What makes a good movie may make a poor RPG experience. The "what class would Doctor Who be" type processing of trying to shoe-horn things from one media to another doesn't always work. (He'd be a time-lord expert 1, by the way because he literally doesn't have any special abilities that any PF class has. He's a walking pile of maxed-out skills, no more.)
Time to talk to the DM and explain "why would I take seriously a character that has no life-expectancy?" It's one thing to accept that dice are dice and random chance can take a PC, but it's another to play a campaign where you simply expect PC-loss.
Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Wind Chime wrote: I have been playing in a hyper-lethal game of throne type game that my cm is clearly aiming to be as dark and bloody as possible. So after dying a couple of times I have lost the ability not to find the whole campaign hilarious and have just been having fun hamming it up. This seems to passing off my gm but I just can't seem to get into the right frame of mind. So does anyone have any tips on how to get into the right mindset for a gothic style game? That's the problem that all hyper lethal games eventually face. When character survival becomes low enough, you lose personal investment in the game. You stop caring about characters. Like the Pompton Lakes GM I've talked about before who'd kill off at least on of his players characters per session and boasted on it. The entire table had gotten to the point where they just ran mimeographs of their last characters.
As to my answer, I'd quit. Just like I did the Pompton Lakes group.
You have similar problem which I had with my GM. After you start losing character after character each 1-4 sessions, immersion breaks. GM keeps expecting interesting choices and involvement, but for some people, in this case for me and maybe for you, it doesn't work like that. Threat of dying is often more stimulating then death itself. Pathfinder just isn't designed for blood and gory in my mind. Some other systems do this job much better.
Adam
What's the typical way your characters die? If its fairly random and arbitrary you're exhibiting a pretty classic reaction to a no win scenario.
If he's running a combat-heavy game you can try pumping your survivability by going, say, Slayer with a dip in warpriest or inquisitor to grab some domains. Trickery would be a really nice thing to grab due to the mirror image power, and you can add variant channeling to pick up something like dazing or nausea. Bard is also good class - you can be a schmoozing cheeseball and pick up spells like Windy Escape and Saving Finale to pull off a lot of "Nope, that didn't happen!" shenanigans.
The meat grinder style means that, whatever character you build, no matter how potent a combination, your GM will just up his game to compensate. Dark & gritty only seems to work in small doses. I'm especially turned off to it these days - I'm looking for escapism and good times, not slanted hyper-realizm. If I wanted "Life Sucks and Everything is Awful" I'd just stay home and watch the news. Turning the tables on scenarios like that by insisting on pulling a Zoidberg whenever combat threatens is just clean fun, but even that gets old after a while, too.
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