A Question for Conan GM's Regarding PC Mortality

thelevitator

Mongoose
I have recently had a bit of a revelation about my group's gaming style, and I'm curious to know what the average Conan game is like in this regard. I thought my players wanted a gritty and realistic game full of consequences for their actions, but I threw a plot twist at them Tuesday night and everyone got a little upset.

I'll try to make this as brief but concise as possible. We're playing a 3.5 campaign, but it's my bastardized attempt at more of a Sword & Sorcery game.

There are 2 metaplots in play at this point. The first is that the PC's began the game running for their lives in an orc/orog war against the humans. The other metaplot is that they accidentally unleashed a curse into the world by defiling an ancient tomb. They were unable to prevent the curse from "leaking out", but they did try and use it against the orcs by giving them the cursed treasure in the hopes of turning the tide on the war. Unfortunately, the curse grows out of control as is killing humans , orcs and orogs alike.

The party is discovered to be responsible for the curse but saves their butt in Adbar by volunteering to take the sorcerer Deridius to the tomb so that he can undo what they've done.

Here's the plot twist. Deridius has recently been bought by Trijjia, a woman scorned by the council of Adbar who is working with the orcs and orogs to topple their command of the region. The players at this point already knew about Trijjia and had foiled one of her attempts to destroy Adbar, so she had already become a recurring villain at this point. So, when Deridius hears of the PC's deeds against Trijjia, he hatches a plan to hand the party over to her. He claims to the High Council of Adbar that he can reverse the effects of the curse, and if the party is willing to escort him to the tomb, it will prove that they intended no harm and exonerate them from wrongdoing. The council eagerly agrees, because it's a win-win for them. They treat Deridius as little more than a lackey and don't really trust that the PC's were completely innocent with this curse. So they figure, send all of them to save the world. If they fail and get themselves killed, Adbar is rid of a bunch of people that they don't trust anyways. And if by some stroke of luck they succeed, the High Council is already poised to take the credit for their actions.

So, along the way, the party runs into some minor problems and Deridius realizes that the party is much more dangerous than Trijjia anticipated. So his plan changes and rather than try and take the PC's in a place of power, he is to lure them into an ambush by Trijjia.

Now for the fun part. A couple months ago, one of my players expressed that he didn't like the character class he was running and asked if he could switch characters. As it was the first time anyone had asked to change characters in more than 20 sessions I didn't see a problem with it. Well, he wanted to use a character from our tabletop group, but that was a problem, because that character was too high in level to be with the current party. So he agreed to wait until this group was experienced enough that his character wouldn't overpower them. He then had the idea that he wanted his current character, Kruug, to betray the party somehow because he thought it would be a good way to band the party together against a traitor. I told him I was working on a plot twist without going into a lot of details (the plot twist I mentioned above) and that it might be a good way to work Kruug out of the party.

So, I substituted Deridius as the traitor to be Kruug instead, thinking that this would kill two birds with one stone. It helps me accommodate a player that wanted a different character, and it gives me a plot twist to challenge the party.

So, I introduce the plot twist, and the party is ambushed by Trijjia and an veritable army of ogre mages. Kruug takes his cue and casts Colorspray on the party to affect his escape out of the deserted inn and into the awaiting arms of Trijjia. The party tries to escape, but two characters are knocked out by ogremages, while the third barely escapes with his life, getting Deridius (an NPC) killed in the process. Kruug was killed too in the fight, which was the character that the player was getting rid of.

At the end of the session, it's crickets, and feels very awkward. I then get lambasted as being "in cahoots' with one player to screw over the other players, which isn't even close to reality. They wrongly assumed that Mark and I planned this whole thing as a way to screw the party over, but they've since realized that they jumped to way too many conclusions. I had planned the plot twist of betrayal and capture before Mark came to me with the request to change characters. The original plan was to have Deridius, and NPC, as the traitor.

At first, my players tried to imply that it was the fact that Kruug was involved and they thought that the player was "in on it" from the beginning. Once I showed them that wasn't the case, the issue changed to, we were put in an unwinnable situation, where the only realy choice was capture.

Sorry for the long explanation but THIS is what I'm trying to get to. I basically found out that my players prefer an "Escape Hatch" style of game, where no matter what happens, and no matter what they do, there's always a way out of danger. I was really offended that they thought I was actually trying to screw their characters over.

The betrayal and capture was a plot point that was designed to fuel their hatred for Trijjia and give them an opportunity to get their revenge and either kill her or capture her and turn her over to Adbar, thus turning the tide on the orc war. I was stunned that my players actually thought I was putting their characters in some kind of unwinnable situation.

I've played in a ton of games where my player was captured and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. But I was always given the opportunity to escape. I just felt like after 20+ sessions of my players telling me how much fun they were having, suddenly changed because their characters were seriously challenged for the first time.

I once had a GM give me some very good advice. He said, if you want to make sure your players are having fun in your games, you must be absolutely sure that you are giving them what they want NOT what they think they want. He said that a lot of players claim they want a gritty and dangerous game, but as soon as their character is facing death, they jump up and down and accuse the GM of trying to kill them off.

I've never had to deal with this before this situation. So my really long-winded question is; what do players REALLY expect out of a Conan game? Do they truly want a gritty and dangerous game, or do they only want the illusion of danger and grit? What bothers me is that I was very up front with everyone on the type of setting and game it would be and everyone said that was what they wanted. Yet, the first time in more than 20 sessions that I put their backs against the wall, I get whaled on.

They have done nothing but compliment my GM'ing style and we've been together for almost 25 sessions, which kinda surprises me because this was my first attempt at an online group.

I'm dying to know what players who play Conan expect as far as the mortality of their characters. How in the heck do you have a grim and gritty game if the GM plays an "Escape Hatch" kind of game? How does a player in that kind of game ever know if it was their role playing and creativity that got them out of the mess, or the GM's conveniently-placed escape hatch? I think some players say they want the chance of character death, but what they really want is the illusion of the chance of character death.

I'm wondering if this "Escape Hatch" play style is a D&D thing, or if it even comes up in what's supposed to be a gritty game like Conan?
 
I'm thinking about two things:
- if it was the first time in 20 sessions that the PCs were really in a life or death situation, it may explain their surprise as it was unexpected. May be you should kill PCs more often. Take a game like Call of Chtulu (spelling...) where your PC has barely 50% max to survive any adventure: players are never complaining when they die as it's part of the deal. If you sold them a high mortality campaign without any death, it might be logical to be totally unprepared for dead PCs.

- capture is something players are hating and will try anything, even dumb stuff, to prevent. If I have to use a "capture like" event, either the way out is blatant (i.e. just kill everybody, jump into this unprotected wide escape route...etc) or the capturing party is so overwhelming that my players are clearly understanding that the plot needs them to be captured (i.e. yes, you just have one knife for the whole party where they have M16, tanks, 2 jet fighters and they are 100 around you).


And I've never really seen a player who is welcoming the death of his PC. :)

W.
 
The Sandbox GMs' Club is currently accepting applications for membership:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=34931
 
By the way, I'm about to work 'in cahoots' with one player to screw over the other players. (Actually, it's not really to screw over the other players, just to deceive them a little bit.) One of the PC's is about to be possessed by another entity, and will role play a Jekyll and Hyde routine, i.e. sometimes he will be the entity, sometimes the PC (who is unaware of the entity possessing him).

I think it will be immensely fun, but what do I know? You could probably just start on the last page of this thread if you don't want to read the whole thing:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=28414&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

I'd love some feedback!
 
Well after 4 pages of discussion on our group board, I think there are 3 factors in play with what happened on Tuesday night:

1. It's D&D. I think that the expectations of the group was for a more traditional D&D-style game, where danger and fear of death is more an illusion and the party expects to be able to McGuyver their way out of any situation. Had we been playing Cthulu, I don't think this expectation would have been present to contribute to the Tuesday Turd session. So this part is mostly my fault for not playing the first 20+ sessions as a truly grim and gritty game.

2. Player inside knowledge. The players contend that Mark implied he had much more to do with the plot twist than he actually had, yet he tells me that he told them he knew very little of his character's involvement with the betrayal. Putting both sides together, I suspect that it was more a case of the players just being mad that Mark knew anything more than they did. Again, this falls on my shoulders for working a player character change into an existing plot twist.

3. 3.5 Fatigue. My players have been helping me develop my own RPG, based on the FUDGE mechanics. I think there was fear in the group that this plot twist was actually an attempt on my part to sabotage the campaign in order to make room for a new campaign using my system. This isn't even remotely true and I don't believe for a second that my players truly thought that. But that said, I do think it was rolling around in the back of their minds in the heat of the moment Tuesday night.

So basically, I think it was just a combination of a few unique factors that contributed to the Tuesday night debacle. One great thing to come out of this is how much my players have gone out of their way to reassure me of their continued interest in gaming with me and of my "mad GM'ing skillz".

We're going to take a break from the 3.5 game for a while and everyone has expressed interest in either running some more one-shots of my game, or having someone else run a one-shot of another game.

One thing is for sure, if we start playing my game, I'm going to be crystal clear as to the nature of the setting and the lethality of the game. That way, no excuses! :twisted:

It's been great getting feedback here, and Style, I really appreciate you sharing a similar incident. What's kind of funny is that one of my players got BLASTED on EnWorld for how he DM'd a RttEToE campaign. His players felt railroaded and betrayed by him and he was shocked that they didn't trust him to be fair. That may explain his willingness to try and understand what actually happened to our game. :wink:
 
thelevitator said:
2. Player inside knowledge. The players contend that Mark implied he had much more to do with the plot twist than he actually had, yet he tells me that he told them he knew very little of his character's involvement with the betrayal. Putting both sides together, I suspect that it was more a case of the players just being mad that Mark knew anything more than they did. Again, this falls on my shoulders for working a player character change into an existing plot twist.

Why is one player working with the GM to make his PC a bad guy a bad thing? I'm not seeing how that in and of itself is a legitimate player complaint.

I don't know your situation as well as you do, of course, but this whole thing just screams of whiny players that are upset b/c they got their butts kicked. It doesn't seem like it's anything deeper than that. For example, would they have cared about the player inside knowledge if you provided an escape hatch and they were not captured? Or how about if there was never even a need for an escape hatch b/c even with a traitor among them, they still kicked ass? I'm guessing no, they would not have cared. They didn't like "losing", so they're looking for something to blame. Maybe it's not that simple, but that's what it "smells" like from here.
 
I agree with you in principle that it shouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing. I think the thing (in talking with a couple of my players) is that he gloated about how he "got them good" and made them feel stupid. That is what really made them mad.

I'm a professional magician. I perform a lot of effects that my audience has no idea of the methods being used. Heck, most magicians don't know, because we all use so many different methods. Anyways, what he did would be like me standing up on a chair and yelling to my audience, "Ha! Suckers! Fooled you! You had no idea how I did that!"

Of course they don't know how I did it, because it's largely the secret of what I do that makes what I do entertaining. If people knew exactly what I was doing, it wouldn't be as entertaining. To insult my audience about something that is built in to the process is pretty low-brow. I think he kind of did the same thing by taunting the group about something that they didn't "miss"; they were never supposed to see it coming. How can he poke fun at them for not seeing something coming that was specifically designed for them not to see coming?

I've talked to my players (well except for the Kruug character), and they had no real problem with the plot twist, which I guess I misunderstood from their original posts. The issue was more to do with one player making them feel stupid about not knowing something they weren't supposed to know in the first place.

Now, all of that said, I do believe that this group prefers a MacGuyver-style game, were no matter what happens, they can find a way out of any danger or inconvenience. Part of the blame is with me, I think, for not making this game grim and gritty enough from the start. But in my defense, it wasn't even supposed to be a campaign. It was an online demo of my highly bastardized version of 3.5. We were supposed to play 3 or 4 sessions to get everyone accustomed to all the house rules (there are a ton), and then start a real campaign for those still interested in the game. Well, everyone remained interested in the game and wanted to continue it, even though it wasn't really a campaign. I know a lot of GM's fancy themselves at great at "winging it" all the time, but I'm not one of them and I've yet to meet one in almost 30 years. Winging it works fine for one-shots and short campaigns, but a long term campaign has never felt cohesive to me when run by a GM who makes it up as he goes along. Two of the GM's I played under really thought themselves to be great at winging everything, but to listen to their players talk about them was downright painful. They complained that nothing made sense in the world and that you could drive a bus through his plot faults, etc.

Now I'm not saying there aren't GM's that can't wing it successfully for a very long campaign. I'm just saying I haven't met one yet in almost 30 years. Even though that's a long time, it's not a large sample of the gaming community, so I'm not naive enough to think that they don't exist. It's just that, the ones I've met, weren't very good at it and truthfully, they just came across as too lazy to put any time or effort into their work.

As I don't consider myself that great at winging it over long periods of time, I was really wanting to reboot the campaign, but everyone said, "Keep going, we're having fun." so I did. And when I finally started to inject my style into the game, it came as a shock to them because it was so different from how we'd been playing previously. So I take the blame for that.

I'm kinda pissed at my player for acting the way he did towards the other players. I wish I had known that happened when it happened, but it was all happening in text chats, so I didn't know. The good news is that talking all of this out on our forum really smoothed things over, and honestly, the feedback here helped me a lot as well.

I know I'm not as active as I'd like to be here, so I appreciate it when people are nice enough to take the time and help me out.
:)
 
thelevitator said:
Once I showed them that wasn't the case, the issue changed to, we were put in an unwinnable situation, where the only realy choice was capture.

Out of curiosity why are they so pissed off at being captured? They didn't die off right? As long as they are alive they can always escape right?

Dunno. I might be annoyed if GM would be aiming to kill off my character but as long as character is alive he can be played so if GM has figured cool plot which requires being captured then fine! As long as I'm not being constantly railroaded fair enough. Occasionally being captured regardless of what I do is fine. Afterall life ain't fair in reality either. There are times where no matter what you do you can't avoid something.

Are they somehow prison-fobics?-)

We don't mind being captured that much but maybe that's just personal preference. In recent traveller session our heroes rather surrendered rather than fight as long as possible precicely because while you are alive you can still survive. When you are surrounded by dozens of guards with some big weaponry with no escape route(hey who told them to try to infiltrate high-security HQ...) trying to fight it would lead to inevitable death.

So they tossed away their weapons and surrendered. Better being prisoners than being killed right away :D
 
Well, it seems that everytime I address what I think the issue is, I get another issue. Now, the main complaint was that the player who was involved in the betrayal came off as taunting the group when it was all going down. He swears that wasn't the case, and that he was just trying to answer all the questions flying in at him.

The part that bugs me in all of this is that, when the crap hit the fan, they started texting to each other and to Mark to figure out what was going. Not a single player texted me to just ask me what was up. They all jumped to the wrong conclusion and assumed the worst about me without even bringing me into the discussion. That really bugs me, that after 20+ sessions, they think I would sabotage my own campaign.

I think that some of the other sentiments here have been the more correct answer. They were just mad at having their backs against the wall, and it was made worse by the fact that they were betrayed by one of their own.

It's been a very weird thread on the issue, because the "issue" with Tuesday keeps changing. I think the bottom line is that this group expected a typical D&D game, where every problem can be solved by fighting and there is no chance of dying because, well, it's D&D, and there is always supposed to be an escape hatch.

They've now expressed an interest in playing in my game next Tuesday, so I included the following disclaimer:

The following game session is intended to be gritty and realistic. This means that character death can happen at any time, even if the character does everything "right". This is a true Sword & Sorcery game, where the threat of danger to the character is real. There may be times when the character is faced with very few, or even a single choice in a given situation. If you don't like this kind of game (like Cthulu, where death is a when, not an if), then please don't play it. Now that the expectations are out in front, there are no excuses!



I hope everyone recognizes that I'm just giving you all shit. But I do want to get all of the expectations out in the open now, so that something like Tuesday never happens to me again. My intention with the CinEpic game is to run a true grim and gritty game. This means that things can go wrong for the character, even when they do all the right things. This type of game takes a high level of trust from the players in their GM. I don't play this style of game to be adversarial. I play this style of game because by not holding everyone's hand, the players know that when they survive or succeed, they did so because of their actions, not because the GM coddled everyone and made sure nobody was sad. I AM NOT AN ADVERSARIAL GM. My intention is always to make my players the main characters in the story and make sure they are doing what they want to do in the game. But at the same time, I prefer to be impartial to the results, and not constantly provide a way out for groups that insist on fighting or fleeing their way out of every situation. I've also found that by taking more of a back seat as a GM, I get fewer instances where players are trying to "figure me out" and do the opposite of what they think is expected in order to "win" the game. That can drive a GM to drink! image My true preference for grim and gritty games is that they usually encourage more roleplaying. The thing that gets so old so fast in a D&D game is that every time there is any kind of trouble, the overwhelming response is the sound of weapons being removed from their sheaths. That style of gaming feels like a video game to me, and it's not how I like to game. I prefer a game with actual roleplaying of the situation, where players consider options like, talking their way out of trouble, or bribing their way out of trouble, or bargaining their way out of trouble, or tricking their way out of trouble, or....well, you get the point. It seems like D&D encourages the "lets' solve every situation with combat" thing. If players have no fear of their characters dying, to me it just degrades into a video game with no dramatic tension. When characters know their character can die at any moment, they are more likely to consider other options to insure survival, other than taking every confrontation as the ringing of the bell to start round 1. The thing that makes a game feel more "real" to me is the fear of consequences. In real life, you wouldn't jump off a 10 story building because of the consequence of landing. But in D&D people rush headlong into fights when they don't even know their relative chance of survival, or know anything about their foes. That's not realistic to me, nor is it even heroic. Even in the action movies we all love, the hero knows when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em.

So that's it. I set up the world and the scenario, and turn you guys loose. If anyone dies, it wasn't intentional on my part. If that's ok with everyone, I would LOVE to run a CinEpic play test on Tuesday.


Now, if anyone dies Tuesday, at least they can't jump down my throat about it! :twisted:

And I also think Warzen was right. I definitely coddled them too much in the beginning. But it was my first attempt at running a game online, I didn't know these guys, and I wanted them to like my version of 3.5. So that's where I failed. That won't happen again. :wink:
 
thelevitator said:
The following game session is intended to be gritty and realistic. This means that character death can happen at any time, even if the character does everything "right". This is a true Sword & Sorcery game, where the threat of danger to the character is real. There may be times when the character is faced with very few, or even a single choice in a given situation. If you don't like this kind of game (like Cthulu, where death is a when, not an if), then please don't play it. Now that the expectations are out in front, there are no excuses!

What the?!?!? We don't go for this kind of shenanigans in the Sandbox GMs' Club. :evil: I'm going to have to reject your application.

And here I thought I'd found a kindred spirit. :(
 
Damn! And here I thought I was in like Flynn! Well, I was just goofing with everyone with that. I'm pretty sure that everyone is expecting my CinEpic game to downright brutal!

We'll be having a one-shot on Tuesday night if anyone is interested! :D

I actually had a pretty enlightening conversation with one of my players today, also a 3.5 GM. I kinda came to the conclusion that 3.5 just doesn't do a great job at grim and gritty. I think I found myself putting my D&D hat on and really having a hard time selling it as Sword and Sorcery. Like my player pointed out, it was designed to be heroic fantasy, where the hero can always rely on the same couple tricks to dig him out of any situation.

I'm realizing that it wasn't that my players didn't want a gritty game without escape hatches, I just don't think they want to play D&D as a gritty game without escape hatches. They've all played Cthulu and really like it. I have just been using the wrong tool for the job I think.

So, I guess I've finally learned to use the right tool for the job. I'm currently developing a grim and gritty FUDGE-based Sword & Sorcery sysetm. I wish I could give the ConanD20 system a real test, but I shudder to think of running a D20-based game without using DM Genie. I just don't have the patience for 3.5 resolution. :(

PS. Style, if I promise to kill at least 1 PC Tuesday night, will you send me an application? :twisted:
 
I think some of it has to do with how much you've played a character. The more you play it, the more invested you tend to be, the more you don't want to see the character bite it unless you feel like you've done what you wanted with the character and are ready to move on.

We have a player who seemed perfectly ready to roll up a new character a couple of years back who now becomes petulant whenever it seems like his character will bite it.

Then, it depends upon the genre/system for things like being captured. Players used to D&D would rather die than be captured in most cases because the characters are defined by their crap and tend to be useless without their crap. It's funny. We've never had the whole party captured and stripped of their stuff in Conan, but in a D&D campaign that was running concurrently years ago, we did have that happen and the spellcasters couldn't do anything to where it was just excruciatingly painful. In Conan, being captured should be expected and not a big deal.

I think the general idea for fantasy gaming is that PCs aren't likely to die. Even in something like L5R where death is no further than two hits away, I find that players don't expect to bite the dust.

There's also how much effort you put into a character. The more you have to put in up front, the less you want a character to trip and explode before the character gets to achieve something. If you want characters to be fragile, then I suggest having backstory, personality, or whatever develop over time.
 
Those are excellent points Ichabod! :)

I was actually thinking about this when I was putting the character creation system together for my new system that I'm designing. I came up with a "quick start" method of creation that literally takes about 5 minutes to put a character together. I also included a phased character creation method based off of the FATE system, which can take the better part of an hour to create a character. I hope that by having 2 ways to create characters, that there is flexibility for the player's style as well as the type of game being played.

Last night we were testing my new system and a PC took a critical wound from a sabretooth tiger's claw attack. He made his Health check, so he wasn't dying, but his arm was severed and dangling and his character was at a -2 for all of his actions. The response was like, "whew! I thought I was going to die on that one!" Granted, it was a play-test and not an actual adventure or campaign, so I think that contributed to how well a critical wound was received by a player. But I also think that it's also in part the fact that it is known up front that this system is very gritty and has a higher mortality rate than D&D.

I definitely agree that character creation can play a part in player attachment. And I really like the idea of developing the backstory of a character over time when using a quick-start method to create the characters.

:)
 
thelevitator said:
And I really like the idea of developing the backstory of a character over time when using a quick-start method to create the characters.

:)


That's the beauty of Reign, being able to create a character with just one roll, including his background.
And all PCs should belong to the same "compagny" (i.e. organization, wether it's a petty thief guild or people ruling empires) so it's easy to have a replacement PC. Also, as all PCs should work to increasse the power of the company, a new PC is getting some reward from all the previous actions in the campaign.

I'm probably not that clear. :) Feel free to ask questions.

W.
 
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