The Presence of Death

As a solution to the problem of getting back and forth across a large fjord in Norway, separating the party's base camp from the large market city of Stavanger, my party purchased a ship's boat: 3 tons cargo capacity, three oars and a rigged sail.  They obtained a pilot, Nadia, to direct the boat and maintain it, because none of the player characters have any skill in sailing.  In the example below, I'm going to cut out the extra dialogue relating who is present at any given time while we play. 

On the morning the party was ready to leave Stavanger, I described the weather thusly:

"... the morning of the 20th starts with a strong breeze and a moderate rainfall (5mm over a 3 hour period). This is enough to produce a steady downpour, something equal to this. Nadia is game to go nonetheless, though you're all going to get very wet, as the wind will blast the rain sideways. She feels she can get you across the bay in about five hours. I'd intended to describe the journey, but given the conditions, the players will have to decide their intentions first."

This is what I mean when I say it's the DM's responsibility to give a reasonable expectation of risk to the player characters.  I don't have a result in mind.  I know that Nadia CAN manage the weather, but I deliberately word this in a manner that the players cannot be sure ... i.e., she is "game to go."  That phrase, stemming from the adjective "game," meaning brave, daring, gutsy, definitely does not mean "can absolutely and unquestionably succeed," which is why I chose the word.  Even though I decided from the pilot's experience, dexterity, the nature of the storm and the seas where Nadia had managed a boat that YES, she was going to bring the boat safely through.

That did not mean she would bring the party safely through.  In my mind, the odds were high that all would work out.  I had plans to roll dice in this event; dice can always go badly.  The players, as it turned out, were also game:

Pandred: I'm okay with making the crossing.

Embla: Let's cross. I've taken care of wages on my end.

Vafrandir: I am as well. We make sure all the supplies are strapped down tight, we've enough rope. I've accounted for all food to this point.

Marcule was not heard from, this being online, but three persons is a quorum so the agreement is to go ahead.  That's where we ended the session yesterday.  Take note; the party doesn't have to leave today, or even this morning.  They could wait out the weather.  The decision to go is ALL on them, as I've clearly given an impression of what the weather is like, and I've offered no absolute promises.  What's more, they've only just engaged the pilot; the fact that the party agreed to trust the pilot tells me they're beginning to trust ME as a DM.  That's very important.

Today I wrote,

During the crossing, there is a small percentage, 2%, of something troublesome happening. There are six of you in the boat, and to save time, I will roll for each of you: Embla, Marcule, Nadia, Pandred, Vafrandir, Valda. Pandred, sorry to say, your number came up (I rolled 1 in 50 for each of you alphabetically). I will need Pandred to roll a d% as the fjord is crossed.

A 2% chance per player—and one third of those players being NPCs—are pretty good odds.  If the pilot, Nadia, had been the one getting the bad roll, there's really no chance of her suffering any part of what came next.  But Pandred is nearly a landlubber.

Why this matters, and why I'm highlighting this particular moment in this campaign, comes from how often I hear players on the internet bitching about how UNFAIR it is that a single roll of the die can unreasonably ruin the fun of a campaign.  I believe this carping is partly the substance of bad temperaments and a failure to recognize the characteristics of games, where any bad move can, without your expecting it, cause you to suffer a consequence.  If my knight is taken unexpectedly in a game of Chess, is the game "ruined"?  What if I bet and lose at Poker?  What if I fail to attack Irkutsk in RISK, and that turns out to be a fatal mistake?  Who are these people who don't realise that games always involve a chance of loss?  Did their parents keep them in bubble wrap before unleashing their snowflakeness on us?

Watch how it plays out.

Pandred wasn't immediately available to make her percentage roll, so I made it to keep the online game moving along.  This roll was applied to the maladies table shown; this is just a simple table that I occasionally use for any small, minor unfortune that arises.  I rolled a "64", producing a slip and fall for 1-4 damage.  Pandred took 4.  In itself, no big deal.  A hundred times the result could come up and it would never be a big deal.

However, in this storm, in this wind, on this small boat, with the players baling, and Pandred not having any boat skill, there had to be a check to see if Pandred would fall overboard.  For this, I always use a "dexterity check"—the player rolls their dexterity or less to compensate for the slip.  Pandred's dexterity is 14, so she had a 70% chance of success.  Now, let's view that chance a moment.  I am playing online with these players ... because of this circumstance, they have every opportunity to fudge that I have.  Pandred could have easily written that she rolled a 12 and there, no problem, she remains in the boat.  But Pandred answered back that she had rolled a 20.

We need to reflect on that.  A 20 puts Pandred in the water of a bad storm; Pandred can't swim.  No one in the party can, except the pilot.  And it wouldn't matter anyway, because if the pilot had jumped in after Pandred, they'd have both drowned.  You can't swim back to an unpiloted boat in three foot waves, because you will NEVER catch the boat.  Pandred is a 4th level fighter; just turned 4th level, after about three years of our playing online (things move slow when you play this way).  YET, she was willing to take the die as it was rolled, because that's how things should be.  As a DM, you should get on your knees and kiss the ground begging for a player like this.

This is the kind of player you get when you take a stand on things.  Not because you make this kind of player, but because you get rid of every other kind; and players like Pandred flock to your door because they're sick of playing with DMs who don't recognize the respect these players have for the game.  When I tell you to boot jerks and assholes, I am telling you to remove the chaff from the grain.  You can't eat the chaff, you don't want the chaff.  You want brilliant, glistening kernals like Pandred here.

But, I am not a monster.  I don't like single life-and-death rolls; I like there to be at least one back-up.  So, I wrote,

The DM: Okay, this is getting dire. Vafrandir, you're nearest Pandred; I will need you to start with an intelligence check, to see if you're too dullwitted by the storm to be paying attention to Pandred's slip. d20, please.

Vafrandir: roll 5, my Int is 12.

Vafrandir is every bit the player Pandred is, so when he says he rolled a 5, I believe him.  I don't have to see the die.  But note here that I'm not just giving Vafrandir one roll to save Pandred.  I having him make a roll just to see if he can save Pandred.  This has two game functions: it builds tension, because I'm not telling Vafrandir ahead of time how this is going to work.  People who have played with me a long time have seen this pattern before—it matters, however, that I'm not saying "Okay, roll to see if you notice so you can roll to see if you catch her."  That's a stupid downplaying of the effect here.  We want to feel the emotion, the fear, of Pandred slipping, and Vafrandir realizing she's going to fall overboard—"OH SHIT, PANDRED!"  I don't need to play that part out, because all the players are doing that without me, in their own heads.  I don't need to "purple this up."  I just need to move methodically through the process.  Telling Vafrandir he's closest.  Telling Vafrandir to check his intelligence (basically, a "perception" check).  This is a hard storm.  Vafrandir, the only person close enough to catch Pandred, could easily be tired, cold, languishing in the bottom of the boat; failing the check, he would hear a cry, lift his head and see that Pandred wasn't there—without even knowing why.  This could have happened that way.  And knowing it could have happened that way gets Vafrandir's heart racing as he reaches for his die to make the intelligence check.  This is ALL STAGING.

Okay, so he sees Pandred start to go.  I write,

The DM: Okay. Temptation is to say, "You see Pandred start to fall, what do you do?" But I think we'll assume that you try to catch her.

In anyone else's game, Vafrandir might have the option to just let Pandred fall.  There's nothing to force him to act.  I don't know why, on this particular occasion, I felt the need to point this out; probably, because we're playing by post and I have time to think about this.  At the game table, I wouldn't say anything like this.  Yet it is convenient for this post, because we can make a point about player vs. player.

If the players need to trust me, they need to trust each other.  They need to be there for each other.  This vastly reduces the number of "silly deaths" that occur entirely at random during a game.  It lets me as a DM count on the other players to be there, to let me let them have extra, logical rolls that can counteract one bad result.  It lets me run a better game.

I told Vafrandir to roll, to see if he was able to catch Pandred.  He did, and I wrote,

The DM: You catch her, and a heart-pounding moment is finished. Chances are, you wouldn't have had time to think about hollering; the dexterity check is a reflex check, to see if you would habitually just reach out and steady her; there wouldn't have been planning in it. But don't forget to keep reminding Pandred that you saved her life. You're a hero.

Vafrandir: Everyone here has saved my life many times! I am honored to return the favor. My heart was honestly in my mouth.

Marcule: Deep exhale.

Pandred: Alright, so next adventure is to slay Poseidon himself. Guy tried to ambush me, you all saw it.

Classic after reaction.  Cheers, release of tension, joke, everyone shakes out the panic and the campaign gets underway again.  Don't tell me these moments aren't intrinsic to the game, because they really are.  But it depends on how they're run.  It depends on the way we respect the player's perspective.  It depends on setting up the moment, so it's not entirely unexpected; this was a dangerous storm.  There was always a chance something bad would happen!  Sometimes, the die tries to take you out.

If not for moments like this, the game would be as dull as dishwater.  They can occur while on a simple crossing of an ocean, or they can happen in the middle of a combat when everything is going well.  Suddenly, the dice turn on you; and sometimes your friends can save you and sometimes they can't.  But if we play it so that you NEVER suffer real consequences, then none of these die rolls matter ... and you can't possibly achieve the kind of sharp alarm that enlivened everyone's afternoon today on the campaign.

And, I might point out, even you, dear reader, wondered whether I was going to say that Pandred died.  That is the power that the presence of death has over the game.  A presence you must give it, if ever you intend to be a good DM.