What’s the exact issue? My common PC fatalities fall into a couple of broad categories:
1) They stayed and fought when they were supposed to run. The encounter was planned to be overwhelming and they failed to notice, these situations are usually a TPK (total party kill). In particularly reckless or oblivious groups I’ll give all of them a “Common Sense” advantage, in AO I’d make them pay 20 CDP for it actually. This advantage means they all have a little voice that goes “Dude, that’s a dragon and we have three full magazines between us and the wielder is half dead. Time to run.”
2) Someone made a bad tactical choice. Usually a difficult encounter playing to one or two PCs strengths, for example a ranged combat with lots of cover. The melee specialist is supposed to stay in cover so the gun bunny can have a chance to shine. Melee specialist breaks cover and gets cut down, I usually handle this by explaining the tactical blunder after the fight and let them re-roll if they couldn’t be resurrected.
3) Wretched dice karma. The PCs can’t win for losing, they set up perfect situation that requires a bog average roll on three dice and fail the DR by one. In six attempts. In a row. This is the one situation you can’t do anything about. I’ll usually give a fractional CDP/XP bonus for PCs that are just this unlucky. We call it “Being within a sword-stroke of death” at my table.
I hope the above helps categorize, but sometimes you can’t help PC fatalities beyond giving them a little voice that tells them when they are being reckless.
Do you have a copy of The Encountered: Volume 1? I haven’t done this myself yet but it’s worth a try. I do know that for a team of starting characters that the highest category of enemy creature is Level 3. If you could reverse engineer the stats to figure out what your team is running on what category roughly, it’ll give you an idea what your team can or cannot handle. You may want to build up the encounter so that the first one is easier and then build up to the toughest one by the time the other characters can catch up and participate by supporting him.
Another suggestion is that when he’s developing his character that you may want to suggest to him that he build up his conditioning that the RP he’s running with his character with is going to make him probably the target of the first attack, taking on the alpha damage. He’ll need that to be reflected in his HP and Endurance stats to be able to withstand that damage. His character will need to spend the Trust to have the best armor available as well and stock up on regen patches.
There’s nothing wrong per se with a suicidal maniac on a team as I mentioned to another player who was playing a melee type: tanks can be healers too, it’s called damage prevention. Your tank is taking the aggro and focusing it on him so that the other characters are not getting hurt or injured as much in the initial assault.
It’s a combination of 1 and 2. He as very elaborated characters he just always plans the next one while creating the new one…
It’s funny mind you I have been playing Dming him for years now, we even have a house rules of no free starting XP or loot for him since we farmed him in another high level campaign…
Just to give you an idea he once tried to wrestle a mutant panther by doing a charlie nelson….
I just right now have an urge I must resist, to killing him before he does it (game wise of course). You guys ever had that as GM? Right now when ever he does something dangerous I tend to be extremely blunt on the you die trying that. i don’t try to help keep him alive at all and will sometimes create traps for him.
Hmmm. I don’t have a great solution for that. It sounds like he enjoys creating characters more than playing them. Has he ever tried running a game? I also enjoy creating characters and one of my effective outlets is running a campaign. I get to create tonsof NPCs as opposition and avoid suicidal charges with my more persistent characters in other folk’s games.
It sounds like you have a “Leeroy Jenkins” in your midst. I feel your pain. You can only do so much as a GM but his fellow players who are with them, have they spoken to him about how he plays and how it ruins their enjoyment of the game? I second knight of argh’s suggestion of doing a round robin of the team players, each taking a turn to plan and execute a game session as GM for the other players. It’ll allow you to have a turn as a player and when it’s his turn, he can plan all the NPCs to his heart’s content.
Here’s my solution to a problem player who’s own actions create death for his character…
Plan the first encounter as a challanging fight at the beginning of that night’s game.
If he dies, he cannot bring in a new character until next week, he has to sit and watch everyone else play or go go home.
Do the same thing the next week, have a challenging encounter at the beginning of the session, if he dies, he has to wait until next week to bring in a new character.
Rinse and repeat until he gets it that sitting at the table watching others have fun because their characters live… well, you get the picture, and hopefully so will he.
Players who have one suicidal character can be fun, but if every character has the same suicidal tendencies, it just gets plain annoying.
Yeah last game It was my feeling a bit, they made what I call a Major achievement (something they should not normally do or totally out of their challenge level) by blowing up a big mechanical scorpion (from creature encounter ~150 hp) that was partially damaged (i.e. no eyes sight, no ammo, was reacting on sound alone). I think this is what is making me the most unsettled, what should I do with the other member of the party, we (I also “play” with him every other week) just wait for him to die with the creature… then we mop up and take the loot, it’s getting annoying for me as a Dm.
Example last week:
So instead of carefully and quietly laying down a plan to lure it over the explosives, he started rolling the explosives, a black powder barrel and a unknown gaz tank (which happened to be nitro) towards the “big” monster. A very noisy endeavor, anyway in short instead of stopping and doing a stealth, hiding, etc, he runs while doing sound and yells blow it up, which the other players do.
He was happy he killed the spider but surprised I killed him (we usually spare him) again in two games. I then awarded the group with the major objective benefit but I regretted at the same time. Next time they probably won’t get anything and he will get no start up bonus like the other would normally have.
I don’t want to ruin is or our gaming experience neither, the other player saying I am getting blood thirsty is making me think I may be over realistic too but on the other hand this is a blood thirsty game and rewards should go to the intelligent planers not the strap hem up and blow away type…
1st: It’s really about making it worth keeping a character. If you can really feel the other characters pulling away with CDP’s and loot when you just die and die and die, you’ll be more careful in the future.
2nd: He doesn’t love his characters. This is usually a sign that he didn’t invest enough into creating them. Some of my players spend 2-3 weeks developing personalities (their own prep time), and 4-5 game sessions before they really know who the characters area. They’re afraid their characters should die since they spent a lot of time developing them, they want to see what direction the character develops in (*), and they LIKE the character, so they’d be very reluctant to just let go.
Something tells me that your Leeroy spends time “building” a character with stats and gear, but not much into character and the things to love (?).
(*) One of the things in our “credo” which we’ve developed for our groups, underlines the importance of character development:
“Rule 1: We invest ourselves in character-development through focus on the experiences the characters gets.” (badly translated from Danish). The point is, if the character experiences something dangerous, fun, horrible or whatever, that MUST change the characters personality somehow! We use this as a way to bind groups together as well - if a character saves another character’s life, he’s not likely to forget about it and will refer to it, and the experience will deeply change the way the two characters interacted. The credo contains 10 rules for role playing.
2nd: He doesn’t love his characters. This is usually a sign that he didn’t invest enough into creating them. Some of my players spend 2-3 weeks developing personalities (their own prep time), and 4-5 game sessions before they really know who the characters area. They’re afraid their characters should die since they spent a lot of time developing them, they want to see what direction the character develops in (*), and they LIKE the character, so they’d be very reluctant to just let go.
Something tells me that your Leeroy spends time “building” a character with stats and gear, but not much into character and the things to love (?).
(*) One of the things in our “credo” which we’ve developed for our groups, underlines the importance of character development:
“Rule 1: We invest ourselves in character-development through focus on the experiences the characters gets.” (badly translated from Danish). The point is, if the character experiences something dangerous, fun, horrible or whatever, that MUST change the characters personality somehow! We use this as a way to bind groups together as well - if a character saves another character’s life, he’s not likely to forget about it and will refer to it, and the experience will deeply change the way the two characters interacted. The credo contains 10 rules for role playing.
Which is why I like holding character consultations because I like to hear what the players have in mind for their characters and what goals they want to achieve and discuss RP opportunities in where a character can grow and evolve. Leeroy doesn’t really give his characters a chance to even develop their own voice and that takes a bit of time. I admit I find beginning characters nice but in comparison to what they can do after they’ve improved by leaps and bounds and have a well-developed personality, those beginner characters can’t hold a candle but it’s so worth putting the time, effort and emotion invested to see how they bloom. :D
I would love to read this credo you mention Staun, it sounds like some real thought was put into this. I’d appreciate it if you could post it here.
Okay, here’s a bad translation, ask for details as I bet a few things were lost in translation. We sometimes need to discuss it even when we wrote it together to do some interpretations - it had also indirectly kicked out 3 players permanently. My explanatory comments in [hard brackets]:
This Credo describes the spirit of Boundaries [The Name of the Role playing Group], and the atmosphere in which we meet each other every week [Yes, we play weekly for 6 hours].
About style of play
1. We invest ourselves in character development through focus on the experiences the characters gets
2. We appreciate the interaction between characters and the group and the dynamics that appear due to this. Not just the conflicts, but the situations were we catch each other [If one of the girls is obviously in love with the handler, ignoring the role playing signs she’s sending would be NOT catching each other].
3. We create and develop an alternative (meaning not identical to yourself) personality for our characters. [You’d be amazed how many fails this fairly simple rule]
4. We are constructive and listens to suggestions from other players, and will actively pursue good ideas by others. [My plots usually take players into paradoxes where they have no idea what to do, this rule moves the game forward. See also Moderator rule #1 which ties into this. The rule basically means it’s not okay to shoot down all the other players ideas, and let them shoot yours - we’ve had months where the game didn’t move forward - see XP graph attached from 3E D&D game]
5. Focus is on plots and role playing relevant to the characters; if only relevant for the world it is not good enough. [Whatever plot must relate to the characters directly, and not just be EPIC]
6. We expect you to improvise and you can’t play “Avoid” at the table, i.e. “I won’t tell you about that right now, but in a week I will”. If you have problems with improvising we expect you to prepare before the game session.
About the Moderator
1. The Moderator will use a permanent “Yes, but”-attitude and not a “no”-attitude. [If it’s a good suggestion it should always pay off, even though unforseen by the Moderator - I’ve always done this, but they didn’t know, so being explicit here helped them. Not just about plots, but also other ideas.]
2. The Moderator will always make sure that when the players run with a good idea, it pays off - even if not expected by the Moderator [Same thing but plot specific].
About the Game
1. We’re focusing on the game, as our game sessions are short. [No 2 hours stories on what happened at work this week]
2. It’s a good idea to bring some edible loot to the game once in a while and share it. [We encourage healthy snacks, all of us being 30+)]
That’s a rough translation, but I hope it gives you some ideas.
In the graph below, notice about 6 months of no XP
Thanks so much for sharing this, Staun. I’ve bookmarked this thread so when I start up NeoPangea again, I’d love to share this with my own players when the time comes.
That’s why we are here on the forum I guess. Some of it takes time to implement, I played with some of these guys for over 10 years. Good RPG really takes a lot of TRUST not the AO type, but people-trust, and that stuff doesn’t build overnight. I’d love to hear where the Credo got you to
I know what you mean. Even when I was RPing with my fellow players/friends in the MMO I subscribe to, after months playing, you learn once you have built that trust and you have a safe place, you can really fully explore and end up going quite deep in some cases with the RP. So, you can actually have your character work out some of the tragedies that may have happened to them in their background or deal with something that has happened only recently to them with their fellow fictional friends/family in the group. It"s not so much that you end up losing yourself in your role as even good actors know once they walk off the set, the character should be left there but you just never know where those RP opportunities will take you as an RPer.
Completely agree, and in a way acting on stage is “easy”, since you know what’s going to happen Imagine a night in the theater where the play was new each night, and the actors just knew the personality of their characters and not the plot
My brother plays characters that he will spend great lengths of time thinking about (translate: talks about his feat build to anyone who will listen) jet he barely ever lives long enough to earn a level. It’s not the Gm’s fault (He has played with 5 Dms each with long lists of dead characters) Although he spends time thinking about his character & their background & storylines they all end up acting the same & dieing a lot. We have running jokes about him & how our characters don’t like how “new” people keep joining up then dieing.
