Revisting Character Mortality.

Pendragon can be a very dangerous game. On one hand, it's supposed to be a generational game, where the loss of a character means you move down the family tree and start playing the next one. On the other hand, it is unlikely that a beginning character will produce a 21 year old heir any time in the first twenty-five years, given the rules on childbirth and infant mortality.

It is also a game where healing from sustained injuries can take a long time. In a game where characters have 24-32 hit points on average most characters heal 2-3 hit points a week (every Sunday morning). Long convalescences are rare in fantasy RPGs, but they're certainly part of the "tropes" of an Arthurian game.

In a recent adventure one of the characters, Sir Carwyn, was struck by a giant. Where giants normally do about 9d6 damage, this was a critical success, effectively 18d6 damage, minus about 16 points for armour and shield.

Although not technically "instantly dead" the character was beyond saving, and would perish that evening.

What was remarkable was the bonhomie the player approached the situation with. The quest the players' character were on was his -- rescuing Sir Carwyn's sister from the giant. But he accepted it, and immediately engaged in the process of making a new character.

In this day and age I find that this attitude is perfect for the "OSR" movement. To paraphrase the Gospel of Odie, the player was content to gamble with his character's fortune, even when the result ended in that character's fatality.

Lethality and Bonus Points.

Our Kingmaker game should have been pretty deadly.

I'm running a wiki for my game, Heirs of the Stolen Lands (link visible at the right) and when considering what to do about "player buy-in" a number of sources suggested "fate points" -- a mechanism to re-roll or to escape death.

Almost (but not) every player has used one of these points to save their character at the brink of death. Some of the players have used multiple points. However although the goal was to encourage player participation in the blog, it wasn't supposed to become a haves vs have nots mechanic.

We're all busy. We have jobs, and families, and in two of my players' cases, a new child. Two of my players have maintained interest and involvement in the wiki. That's fantastic. C____ has created twenty-two in character "journal entries" -- one every week. J____ has edited the party loot log and done a lot of work with me on the kingdom building process. Other players have made less frequent, but still entertaining and important, contributions. Some players have not. They come out to my game, and they do a great job, but after the game they have other pressures on their time. Contribution to the wiki was never a precondition.

However with almost two dozen sessions under our belts two players have had several opportunities to spend fate points to alter rolls or save their lives. I cap the maximum available at three, but that ends up encouraging "maxed out" players to spend one or two on skill checks. I have no problem with the mechanic, however after several months of play the mechanic has become unbalanced. Two characters can *afford* to throw themselves into mortal danger. It was time for that mechanic to end.

Since we have started the third chapter, the Varnhold Vanishing, I informed the players that fate points were now finit. And I explained why. Sure enough, one of the characters who had a stock-pile of fate points was killed by a Wandering Encounter.

Death, however, is no longer the barrier it was. Although they can't quite cast it, yet, the group is in a situation where they can afford Raise Dead. So with Gentle Repose protecting the corpse of their dear companion, the Cavalier mounted up and raced for the home-castle to grab appropriate treasure, then off to Restov to get the character raised.

I hope the players continue their contributions to the wiki. But the time for bonus points had come to an end. Now the escape from the final curtain will cost the characters as a group, and not even they can sneeze at 5,000 gp, and 2,000 more for Restoration, couched not as the price of a diamonds, but as the massive contributions to the Temple of Abadar required for a spell of this magnitude.

The Weis-Hickman Event

Years ago Grognardia discussed Dragonlance, and its effects. I'm not going to go over the same ground. I am going to call it an Event. The W-H Event.

One of the players in my group, K, is a player who loves nothing more than to really get into character, and while in character explore exactly what being that character means. K has great role-playing chops, and like a lot of us has been at it for over twenty years. Having K in a game that has is going to focus on role-playing is a boon, and K loves a good story.

There is no coincidence that K began gaming after the Event.

The Event eventually spelled the death of a lot of the OSR style of play. But was that a bad thing?

Somewhere between the Caves of Chaos and the Tomb of Horrors something went wrong. The Caves of Chaos could be dangerous, we all have stories of the 1st lvl characters we lost there. My friends and I remember far too many DMs who viewed Tomb of Horrors as a tutorial. They made dungeons that killed parties dead.

Maybe it's a bad stat based on small sample size. Or maybe not. And it certainly is anecdotal. But it sure is my experience.

One thing the W-H Event did? It trained a generation of DMs that the point wasn't to kill the characters. Maybe it was to tell a story. Maybe not. And people could die in the story, or not. But the dying wasn't the goal of the game.

As I re-explore the new games built from the old games, like ACKS and DCC RPG, part of that process is not actually seeking a return to those roots. That lethality can remain, character mortality can exist, but it should never have become the point.